This clever, funny, hallucinatory head trip may leave you frazzled, but Tholen's wonderfully singular vision will be burned into your brain for a long time. [Issue#331, p.120]

Stacking's best qualities are its eccentricity and ingenuity. The puzzles lack the tortured bite of Double Fine's early work, but in broadening the narrative-led puzzle game's scope and carefully choosing which elements of tradition to keep and which to discard, Stacking is a bold and charming reinvention.

The fifth in the Colin McRae series is still a fine game if - and here's the major caveat - you didn't play last year's update. Those who did will get more fun out of playing spot the difference. [Nov 2004, p.107]

It's perhaps because the title benefits from such a high production spend … that the average design and execution becomes more pronounced. [Mar 2004, p.101]

It's a game from which you'll find yourself needing to consciously unclench, its rhythm of tension and release proving borderline irresistible. [Issue#352, p.118]

The open levels are fantastic and are complemented by a great storyline with dialogue that's immediately engaging, yet Tribes can feel slightly primitive and the indoor missions are a letdown.

If you've found yourself thinking Pokemon has been showing its age of late, Pokemon Legends: Arceus proves, like members of its playbase, it's more than capable of maturing, too. [Issue#369, p.114]

Blood Money feels only slightly closer to the series’ ideal of a gameworld that’s both complex and cogent, and is more accessible and entertaining with it. [July 2006, p.80]

Guitar Hero has one of the most intuitive and subtle control systems of any game, but here it becomes increasingly subservient to making the game – yes – rock hard, and for the average player will often descend into button-mashing. [Christmas 2007, p.98]

Ultimately, Alan Wake is every bit as compulsive and satisfying as the fiction on which it riffs, but it also runs the risk of being equally forgettable. It’s a game that delivers the requisite number of twists, turns and thrills, but the only real revelations take place on those scattered manuscript pages.

The mission finale is climactic; a frantic last stand awaiting your dropship, enemies pulled in droves towards the beacon, palpable relief if you and your buddies dive through the boarding hatch before your saviour jets from the landing pad. [Issue#396, p.110]

TR-49 is may things simultaneously, to the extent that it can be overwhelming, causing the brain and heart to race - a remarkable feat for something so apparently simple. [Issue#420, p.103]

The killing is enjoyable, but we'd have happily done much more of it. [Issue#333, p.122]

Between the extra sparks of mechanical invention and visual humour, Mortal Kombat 1 offers perhaps NetherRealm's most persuasive argument yet to take the plunge. [Issue#390, p.128]

Cairn, then, is an awe-inspiring journey and a careful character study that captures the thrill and torment of climbing. Yet its flaws are central to that core act. While assist modes and optional visual aids help, the complexities behind the intuitive surface can grind together with unpredictable results. In creating such intricate systems, the developers gave themselves a mountain to climb, and almost reach the peak. [Issue#421, p.100]

It's a testament to the strength of the core concept, then, that The Plucky Squire remains as entertaining as it does. [Issue#403, p.108]

One of the smartest dumb games since Super Time Force. [Christmas 2015, p.121]

In truth, when it does attempt to tug firmly on the heartstrings, Neva is never as effective as we might have feared. But the images it leaves behind are indelible. [Issue#404, p.114]

Perhaps, though, the reason A Highland Song stays in the memory is because of those bumps and scraps rather than in spite of them. [Issue#392, p.110]

Midnight Suns deviates from the XCOM format in many ways, the biggest of which is eschewing dice rolls in favour of a deck of cards. [Issue#380, p.100]

As vivid and memorable an evocation of a place as any hyper-detailed triple-A fantasy universe. [Issue#377, p.106]

There’s more to be got out of this new kind of play than Nintendo has found this time around, and some of it could be better implemented. But, for now, it offers an experience that can’t be matched. [July 2005, p.89]

Ubisoft has taken a flawed game of boundless promise, destroyed some (but not all) of its appeal, fixed some (but not enough) of its problems, and jeopardised the whole endeavour by making the same mistake twice and rushing it to market before it was steady on its feet. Prince of Persia is strong and supple enough to survive this with many of its immense virtues intact. But it deserved so much better. [Christmas 2004, p.80]

It occasionally uses those worn tools to achieve something profound. [Issue#421, p.120]

Ms Splosion Man might have done little to fix the 
first game's flaws, but it confidently follows up on its raucous appeal.

Fair, competitive and, above all, relevant. [Nov 2012, p.100]

This is a game you'll complete, chuckle at and show off. [Sept 2010, p.98]

The game's fusion of rhythm-action and RPG never quite fits as neatly as you'd hope. [Nov 2014, p.115]