Could allowing complete freedom to draw support sharply designed puzzles? Mid-way through the completed game’s 80-plus levels, you’ll still be wondering. [Mar 2009, p.94]

A strangely admirable bore: smart enough to take direct movement out of your hands, but not quite smart enough to find anything suitably enjoyable to replace it with. Never less than earnest, Doom Resurrection ignores the central lesson of much horror fiction: there are certain things you probably shouldn't do, even if you can.

Accept those technical shortcomings and it's hard not to marvel at the way this feels like a complete, self-contained world. [Issue#377, p.122]

In its still somehow unique blend of humour and heart, spectacle and introspection, that Like a Dragon roars loudest. It may be nine years late, but we're glad it got here in the end. [Issue#382, p.94]

Cliffhanger endings are fine when the next episode of a TV show is days away, but less so when the wait is likely to last a couple of months. Yet Telltale has already achieved something remarkable, proving – to both Clem and to you – that there’s life after Lee.

There's plenty to like here - the script almost justifies a playthrough by itself - but it's a little overlong, a little padded out, it's obvious charms soon obscured by busywork, reputation and irritation. [Christmas 2017, p.122]

Zuma's simple ingredients have once again brewed up a surprisingly powerful brand of magic. [Nov 2009, p.104]

It is, however, successful as an adaptation that gets to the core appeal of the original tabletop game, and uses it to the betterment of the strategic campaign system that it has adopted from elsewhere. [July 2018, p.116]

The end-of-stage bosses remain something of a saving grace. [Issue#410, p.112]

Alien Hominid is just about an essential title for anyone who's caught themselves yearning for a forgotten past, or to any young blood wondering what people mean when they say they don't make them like they used to. [Jan 2005, p.97]

For all Tina's spirited efforts as dungeon master, every aspect of the Borderlands experience is showing its age. The next instalment needs more than dismal puns and wonky guns if it's to avoid being the butt of the joke. [Issue#371, p.112]

For all the very human flaws in its script, it ends up somewhere in the uncanny valley of narrative games: it looks the part, but behind that glistening exterior, something vital is undeniably missing [Aug 2018, p.96]

That Disgaea 3 is perhaps the finest of its self-referential and casually wicked yarns, is almost an irrelevance. We’ve got numbers to think about. [Dec 2008, p.97]

Yakuza 4 is ultimately too set in its ways to welcome anyone new to the family, and too laden with cutscenes to let its nuances. [Apr 2011, p.99]

What was once a pleasing console compromise now seems overly restrictive post-"Knights of the Old Republic." Despite hints of moral choices and a dusting of side-quests, it soon boils down to a straight slog, mashing the 'A' button as you wander through prettily rendered - if largely linear - dungeons. [Feb 2004, p.100]

Festival Of Blood has plenty of ideas, very few of which are its own, but such is the way of the open-world superhero game. Where it succeeds is in casting aside the main game's mechanics in favour of fast, graceful movement around one of the most generous worlds available on the download services.

Lost Odyssey contains some of the most tender writing ever committed to a videogame. [Apr 2008, p.86]

Too much of it is cut from old cloth instead of woven from its own loom. [Aug 2015, p.116]

Stellaris simply communicates its tangle of resources, currencies and modifiers with improbable elegance. [July 2016, p.112]

It’s difficult to be too nitpicky about one of the most flat-out entertaining games of recent times. Overkill resurrects an old franchise as anything but a shambling corpse, and raises the bar for third party production values on this generation’s best-selling console. [Mar 2009, p.89]

The fact that Arkedo has made such a simple gimmick work as well as it does over a longer distance is a testament to the developer’s skills at providing cheerfully mindless variety. [Feb 2009, p.95]

While the game remains focused on atmosphere and aesthetics, concessions have been made to a more dynamic style of play. [Sept 2008, p.86]

What a pity, then, that the story is the one element that doesn't have the courage to stay true to its narrative successor. [Issue#354, p.110]

Robotic and methodical, and firmly in second place. [Dec 2009, p.97]

The plot proves strong enough to keep even the most disappointed player clicking through the dialogue trees, and in the final chapters the endless conversations finally give way to something more engaging. [Mar 2007, p.80]

Prototype does what it does, and does it with distinction. [Aug 2009, p.90]

Playing Blek is pure intuition, not a puzzler so much as an act of freeform creation. That’s quite a feat within a genre which can feel so stiff and prescribed.

While Snowblind never truly escapes the feeling of being a well-dressed, derivative run’n’gun shooter, it never fails to get the running and gunning right, and in that respect, at least, it’s a sound success. [March 2005, p.86]