Creatively, New Vegas gets almost everything right. Mechanically and technically, it's a tragedy. So, it's a simultaneously rewarding and frustrating game, the gulf between what it is and what it could be a sizeable stretch indeed.

If you were that kid who was pulled away from the TMNT cabinets by an angry mum, who couldn’t wait for Golden Axe to appear on a home console, and who played Streets Of Rage 2 over and over, Castle Crashers is for you. [Nov 2008, p.103]

One corker of an action game. Perhaps the biggest mention goes to the 'vo-cap' tech behind its extraordinary performances. [May 2009, p.88]

Like the grisly cutscenes, Mortal Kombat 11 is fun as long as you don't think too hard or look too closely at it - but that's exactly where the real joy is found in a fighting game. If Mortal Kombat wants to elevate itself, it's time to start overhauling the skeleton underneath all that flesh. [Issue#333, p.110]

Some may argue over what the series should have become, but what’s important is that it has made that tough decision for itself, and established a rock solid foundation for inevitable, now justified successors. [May 2006, p.86]

Generous checkpoints and quick restarts just about cover for awkward platforming sequences. [December 2018, p.114]

It instantly shares the same atmosphere and pleasure as the original Sonic classics did 15 years ago, even if it does little to move them forward. [Christmas 2005, p.111]

The handling hasn’t evolved and a year on, with the masking novelty of the game’s tuning aspects worn off, it’s disappointingly limited and remote. And despite the increased choice and plot introduction the whole exercise can often feel soulless. [Christmas 2004, p.60]

Series veterans may find there's no individual mission that can compare to past highlights like the nails-down-a-blackboard dread of Return To The Cathedral or the emergent possibilities of Life Of The Party, but they remain admirably clever pieces of level design. [July 2004, p.101]

Offbeat, occasionally twisted, frequently funny and never boring, Horace is the best kind of attention-seeker: it demands you sit up and take notice and never stops rewarding you for doing so. [Issue#354, p.120]

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.

It can't have the same gobsmacking impact as its inspiration, but this is a simple, engaging and occasionally baffling journey in its own right, with plenty of hooks to snare the newcomer.

Most of all, though, there's consistently something new to experience. The thrill of spectacle, and of the weird, both fade fast - too much of the same thing and it begins to feel mundane. [Issue#337, p.100]

Over the Top has tempered its obvious ambition with skill and understanding, and the result is a game that’s refreshingly quick to take flight.

Any gimmicks would have muddied the waters - what you need to bring a golden-age beat-'em-up bang up to date, it turns out, is a team of fans with the hands of a heart surgeon and an eye for why we fell in love with it in the first place. [Issue#346, p.105]

This serves well as a third chapter, conscripting much of what has gone before while upping the testosterone and providing some glamorous distractions to pry your attention away from how little control you actually have over events. [Christmas 2006, p.81]

The campaign prevents Battlefield 6 from hitting all of its marks. [Issue#417, p.96]

The improvements are largely cosmetic, with everything about this sequel – from the menus to the maps – more polished and user friendly, springing to life on Retina-equipped iOS devices with bursts of colour and character.

Having sacrificed racing integrity in "Double Dash" to side with social silliness, Nintendo has turned 180 degrees into an awkward halfway house. [May 2008, p.86]

Arranger's cheeriness and playfulness thus works its way into every facet of its design, from the craft of its puzzles to the personality of its world and its inclusive embrace. This year has already supplied a pair of best-in-class puzzle games in the shape of Animal Well and Lorelei And The Laser Eyes; now they need to shift over and make room for one more. [Issue#400, p.112]

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]

Halo exhibits a single-minded focus that the modern FPS, with its choreographed set-pieces and thrilling scripted sequences, largely disregards. This is a game about the arc of a perfectly thrown grenade, a game about tense games of cat-and-mouse with foes as powerful as you, a game about constant improvisation with the tools at your disposal. It's a game that always feels tactical, and a game that – even now – has the capacity to surprise.

It’s a game that, for all the intricacy of its systems and the charm of its painterly world, feels oddly empty.

Plenty of games have flourished around the slaughter, scale and destruction of war, but few have managed to realise a soldier’s role and worth - disposable, vulnerable, pivotal - as well as this. [Apr 2005, p.100]

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]

The Last Guardian doesn't just live up to its forebears' legacy, it goes further. Despite the callbacks to Fumito Ueda's previous works, it is a unique creation. Outside of indie experiments, we don't get to say that about modern videogames often enough.

It’s an introspective RPG not just in theme, but in the outlay of time and thought it asks of the player to make sense of what’s otherwise a cosmetically unfair challenge. It’s a work of art, but one on such a dauntingly high pillar that only the most dedicated will appreciate it to the full. [Christmas 2004, p.87]

This is surely Nintendo's finest piece of DLC to date. [Issue#322, p.118]