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

While Rockstar made its millions capturing the grotesque allure of fantasy crime, every character in this me-too endeavor is simply grotesque. It has a taste for hot coffee, but only knows how to serve it straight. [Oct 2006, p.88]

In Assassin's Creed, the bloodthirsty are typically punished. For all its breadth and splendour, there is still not quite enough room to condemn its two most murderous inhabitants. [Issue#410, p.98]

Memories of Mizuguchi's original may hold more value than anything offered here, making for an unusual proposition. Highly enjoyable as it is, Lumines II is tough to recommend. [Christmas 2006, p.89]

It bears all the hallmarks of its maker. The future, it seems, is in safe hands. [Aug 2015, p.110]

It's a peculiar idea to grasp, but it's impossible to argue with how successfully Game Freak has taken one simple design decision and made it integral to movement, combat and puzzle solving. [Mar 2006, p.95]

For all of its little stumbles on the journey from Vita to PS4, and its odd mix of new ideas and an old world, Unfolded retains one of its progenitor's most vital ingredients: buckets and buckets of charm. [Nov 2015, p.116]

This lightness of touch, combined with instant restarts and a Trials-style checkpoint system, makes for an extremely moreish racer. [June 2016, p.123]

Gunplay is conveyed through some truly dazzling visual feedback and blare. But, once the smoke clears, it feels all too repetitive in terms of its deathmatch-style objectives. [Christmas 2005, p.109]

Nippon Ichi’s disregard for the cult of stagnated updates is at once exhilarating and unnerving. It’s exhilarating because it leaves the player wondering exactly where these craftsmen of the strategy minutiae will go next, and it’s unnerving because Phantom Brave’s reworking is a bridge too far for all but the most dedicated of videogame strategists. [Nov 2004, p.100]

Everything is unabashedly cheerful... It's a shame that later levels begin to run out of steam, repeating tasks over and over as a contrivance for lengthening narrative. [Oct 2006, p.90]

Brutal and rather short, VVVVVV's also devious and darkly funny. It's a pedantic classic, and a game for watch-makers as much as speed-runners.

Unite doesn’t offer the kind of transformation at its higher levels that you might expect – the essential purpose is the same throughout: kill monsters, craft new shin pads out of dino-bladders, and swap your pig’s wings for a magician’s hat. Nonetheless, these simple motivations give way to a huge depth of execution which empowers and requires four players.

It’s not necessarily badly constructed, but in many ways it is badly intentioned, failing not just because of its conga-line of racial and sexual clichés, but because of the way it makes it a little bit easier to criticise videogaming as a hollow and sadistic pursuit. [Dec 2008, p.91]

With "Denied Ops" dropping the Conflict ball and "Call Of Duty 4"’s snappy splendour drowning any tactical sense, it’s a likeable and distracting continuation, but one that won’t be difficult to usurp. [Apr 2008, p.90]

This isn't a game about saving the world, but rather achieving some peace within it. [Issue#391, p.114]

For all those little frustrations, it's clear Paradise Killer is going to stay with us for a while longer. It's a considerable achievement for this tiny studio. Kaizen Game Works: may you continue to reach for the moon. [Issue#351, p.98]

Dual Destinies is an Ace Attorney game, all right, and that’s perhaps the best result anyone could have hoped for.

Its clumsiness of presentation and lack of explanation might be partly excused as aesthetic choices that enrich even as they frustrate. But perhaps its truest accolade is in returning the horror of survival itself to the survival horror genre.

Advanced Warfare is still Call of Duty, but it's more playful, knowing and refreshing than COD's been in years. [Christmas 2014, p.112]

As uneven and unpolished as it is, Fallen Order is still the best game to emerge from EA's stewardship of the Star Wars license, even if that's to damn it with faint praise. [Issue#340, p.98]

While it feels dynamic for what is, essentially, an RPG of skill harvesting and exploiting, the end result is more about flexibility than exhilaration, more a colourfully-framed and extended session of rock-paper-scissors than any kind of rush. [June 2005, p.87]

The game fumbles its potential with unanticipated incompetence. [Christmas 2007, p.94]

There's little here that truly improves the Overcooked recipe, an din that regard, only those with extra large appetites for this particular brand of couch co-op need apply. [Nov 2018, p.122]

This first segment is potent. [March 2013, p.106]

The game's angled view and coloured stacks mean that some of the best moments – cascading chains that ripple outwards as the landscape collapses in a shower of points – can sometimes be the result of luck instead of judgement.

Provides you with plenty of stealth mechanics but leagues of ground to cover, and that tension is deadly. [Issue#344, p.116]

Like the wings of your Rathalos in the opening, there's a majesty to this sequel, even if it doesn't really soar. [Issue#422, p.110]