As forgettable as the story mode is, this is a game that should be judged by the pleasure it can bring to a room full of gamers eager for furious arena combat and a splendid variety of team games. And judged by those criteria, it has few peers. [Apr 2005, p.94]

Atlus's surgery sim is in rude health. [July 2010, p.103]

Like a Dragon is a JRPG that's at least as interested in its hero's growth as a person as as the incremental increase of his statistics - and a Yakuza game that retains all the humour and heart that made us fall for the series in the first place. [Issue#353, p.100]

The price of this intricacy is that Gwent is anything but accessible... It feels both remarkably grown-up, and finely aged by its years of open development. [Jan 2019, p.120]

A captivating follow-up. [April 2016, p.117]

It's totally faithful, and if you're of a certain age worth it without question for the nostalgia hit and sheer fizz of the nutty robots and explosions.

What will stop you in your tracks is the scale, detail and beuty of the environments. Even after repeated play it's impossible not to pause and breathe in the magnificant view from the top of the Deep Amazon Temple. [May 2004, p.94]

There’s not much that can be said about Shadow Of The Colossus. Not because there aren’t pages to be written about the designs of the colossi, the wisdom of some of the puzzles involved in defeating them, or the deliberately ambiguous implications of the story, but because this is a game with so little content that to discuss specifics would be to tarnish an experience that needs to be approached with as few preconceptions as possible. [Christmas 2005, p.98]

If there’s one great story in The Sims 3, it’s of how the biggest game in the world continues to act like it, expanding in some respects, shrinking in others, but always evolving. And it’s about EA learning more and more how to act like the world’s biggest developer, the production values, build quality and feature set here being almost overwhelming.

A labour of love. The core of the game might be a remake, but the features and polish applied move it beyond the realm of simple cash-ins to one of the finest games to grace PSN or XBLA yet. [Sept 2008, p.92]

QuBit is only held back by itself: as a linear drive-into-things score attack game, it's a great one. But it never quite unfolds in the way that the very greatest do – a Space Giraffe or Geometry Wars – to reveal layer after layer of variation.

Irrespective of talent, taste, spare time or even online connectivity, it has something for anyone with even a tingle in their trigger finger. [Jan 2008, p.78]

Whatever the oddities and missed opportunities of its singleplayer mode, Bad Company 2 delivers a fulsome online game that continues to hone a winning formula. [Apr 2010, p.90]

No matter what comes next, Lawbreakers is a success. It's proof, among other things, that veteran design talent really does mean something - and that the shooters of the late '90s still have something to teach the modern game industry. This is more than nostalgia: it's a paean to the genre's potential, performed by people who know it well. [Issue#311, p.104]

At the core remains the solid, steady hand of Halo, but those hoping Halo 4 would roll back Reach's intricacies and deliver an alternative to the current wave of console shooters will be disappointed.

Much like a summer movie blockbuster, Split Second offers thrills galore, but there's a hint of glossy superficiality to it, too...Yet there are few games in the genre that create quite so many sharp intakes of breath and instances of unintentionally barked profanity as this one, and sometimes that's what racing gaming is all about. [June 2010, p.96]

The details of each individual victory may fade with time, but you’ll never forget the fractal patchwork rippling beneath you, or the stormy static of the clouds that clash overhead.

Developer PAM has reinvented a game that no longer strives to be a thinking man’s alternative to Virtua, but something altogether superior. [May 2006, p.94]

The shift from WiiWare to 3DS, meanwhile, may not see Art Of Balance really benefiting very much from either the handheld's touchscreen or the developer's range of depth tricks, but it does add a generous suite of new levels - and it does raise the chances of a larger audience finally discovering this playful, wonderfully-calibrated puzzler.

Lost Legacy's shorter runtime and reduced scope means it has something many of its mainline forebears lack: focus. There is a game with neither faff nor filler, no sense of a story being stretched too thinly across a game that is too big for it. Once it gets into gear, this is a rare breed: a finely paced action game with a story to tell and no creeping sense that the needs of one are undermining the quality of the other. [Issue#311, p.108]

Minor lapses in cohesion and polish drop Lumines short of the absolute completeness of "Rez," but it expands upon its concepts in ways even Mizuguchi followers couldn't have expected. It's a block puzzle that celebrates the joy of light and sound – to the question of whether the PSP can encourage new experiences, it's a resounding 'yes'.

Gravity Rush might not always live up to the promise of its tutorial, but it's exactly the kind of original game that a fresh-faced system such as Vita needs, taking subtle, thoughtful advantage of its control inputs while showcasing its power.

Where Is My Heart? revels in simplicity, beauty and restraint, yet the experience tempers such qualities by proving challenging, infuriating and exhausting.

Prey is an accomplished game in an under-served genre. Its problems are those of a game that tries to do more, and give the player more, than most shooters aspire to - and to that extent, they're forgivable. [July 2017, p.106]

On the strength of Stray Children's eccentric charm and hopeful outlook for younger generations, whether or not we see another RPG from the studio after this, it feels certain that Onion Games will reveal still more strange and succulent layers yet. [Issue#417, p.112]

It feels rare to play a game that coheres so completely around its protagonist and his value system; rarer still given those values are puppyish enthusiasm, unquestioning compassion and the unashamed pursuit of interactive entertainment. [Issue#395, p.100]

Compared to so many free-roaming games to date, it so rarely stumbles. It’s the very skeleton of the genre, those bones strengthened to the point where they alone can stand as a game, rather than serving as hangers for threadbare ideas to be dangled from. [Mar 2007, p.76]

It might not be a system seller, but provides further compelling evidence of the Wii controller’s lofty potential. [July 2007, p.92]