Vivid, smart and perhaps a little mocking, then, Infinity Gene, like Extreme, has exchanged the cold depths of space for the trippy vortex of some strange digital migraine: this classic isn't growing old with grace, but it's certainly continuing to evolve.

You’ll discover whether you’re a screamer or a yeller, a wide-striding groover or a bolt-upright pogo-er. This is a game that you can play sitting down, but you won’t. Not once. [Christmas 2005, p.104]

The new control system may ultimately be an upgrade Samus Aran never really needed, but this is still the best – and most logical – Wii reissue from Nintendo to date.

Sega's loss is Nintendo's gain: Bayonetta, twirling away from a gigantic demon's maw and smacking the highest choir of angels on the nose, has just given Wii U its first true classic. [Nov 2014, p.100]

Vlambeer’s game is, as its title suggests, ridiculous. In its simple, gleeful rhythms of play, it’s sublime, too.

It's taken two near-miss games to get here, but Insomniac has finally nailed the art of war, lock, stock and around 20 smoking barrels. [Christmas 2004, p.89]

Added depth and nuance are the guiding principles for this spectacular follow up. [Nov 2009, p.100]

Certainly, Ubisoft Montreal has succeeded in welding a game to what once felt like a proof of concept, and without overshadowing its many strengths. Much devolves into mere stuff – one sword is much like another; a painting’s easily bought and just fills a hole in the wall – and once the story is over there’s little reason to replay it. At the end of it all, though, you’re left with that setting, those cities, and Ezio, and they lend the experience a substance that endures.

It’s the most loveable, exasperating, unhinged, pretentious, ambitious, gorgeous, funny, tedious, thrilling, subversive and just plain silly Metal Gear yet. It’s the most Metal Gear Metal Gear yet, a franchise turned in on itself, a snake eating its own tail. It’s perversely wonderful. [Jan 2005, p.80]

The Wii addition sends players on the same astonishing, grisly funfair ride with a slight new twist. But, though it does little to take the experience to new heights, Resident Evil 4 is still an immense pleasure to return to. [Aug 2007, p.95]

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]

This series has always felt like a breath of fresh air in a genre that grows ever more obsessed with the fidelity of its simulations. With Forza Horizon 3, Playground has flung open the biggest window in the building, then stuck on a few fans for good measure. [December 2016, p.106]

You'd have to be a bumbling turdbag not to at least give Yamada the chance to win your heart. [April 2017, p.123]

If "Far Cry" was a game of ambition, then here is one of power. Power which Crytek has channelled, with both passion and care, into superb freewheeling gunplay. [Christmas 2007, p.84]

Tecmo's refusal to extend any kind of handhold to less dedicated players is simply a failure of design, not a badge of hardcore honour ... it's impossible to believe they couldn't have found a way to increase the accessibility of the game without undermining the gloriously intractable nature of the challenges it contains. [Apr 2004, p.96]

At the halfway mark, Chains is so tremendous, striking an almost perfect beat of difficulty spikes, weapon upgrades and stupendous visual reveals, that you have to question its endurance. And, sadly, it flounders right on cue. [Apr 2008, p.92]

But without the first game’s ambiguities,? ?a sense of humour or even an ounce of? ?intrigue,? ?its story stinks.? ?It’s so slight you could play the levels in random order to? ?little ill-effect,? ?and it assumes knowledge of everything and everyone,? ?not once recognising the real-world echoes of its premise:? ?an allied invasion of an enemy? ?the allies themselves created.?

Reach is a fine conclusion to Bungie's stewardship of the series, but that's what stops it from being anything more. Halo felt like the future. Reach is merely a brilliantly engineered present.

Mass Effect is still enjoyable enough to warrant 24 hours of play (completion with sub-missions), and the stops it makes en route are visually stunning. It just doesn’t find what it goes looking for: the myth and exotica to accurately follow Star Wars. [Christmas 2007, p.86]

On balance, the fourth Forza gets things right. The franchise has earned its place at the forefront of console racing sims and has done more for advancing the social/online element than any of its rivals.

It still requires a deeper commitment than most games ask for, but the rewards positively tumble forth, year after year, generation after generation, treacherous vassal after treacherous vassal. [Issue#351, p.94]

While the script spills plenty of ink on questions of fantasy, sci-fi and prose fiction, Split Fiction's most compelling statements are made without a word, in the shape of the game itself. [Issue#409, p.100]

A much-needed statement of authority for PC - an online spectacle that eclipses the grand rhetoric volleyed back and forth between the manufacturers of tomorrow's super-powered consoles. A new level of multiplayer combat begins here and now, with shock and awe.

It’s a game that rewards the long-haul with deep, inventive missions which eschew the usual fetch and kill structure, ensuring that the many hours spent in Fallout 3’s wasteland aren’t wasted. [Christmas 2008, p.88]

The degree of refinement and technical polish across every facet of Gears 3 is enough to make most other games look tatty.

"Holy Metacritic, Batman! They've finally bothered to dedicate considerable time and resources to putting you in a decent videogame!" [Oct 2009, p.86]

Disco Elysium's skill system is a marvelous reworking of calcified genre conventions. [Issue#339, p.100]

Nintendo’s nervousness around punishment, for fear of putting off newcomers, continues to undermine ALBW’s attempts at novelty.