When Before the Storm embraces its individuality, it produces stunning moments. [Issue#315, p.106]

Tomodachi Life proves beguiling and boring in equal measure. [Issue#424, p.110]

A couple of murderous boss battles spike the difficulty level during the second half, but what occurs for the most part is a largely cyclical, if inspired and infectious routine. [Dec 2006, p.83]

Still, we reflect, while launching all our problems into the sea one by one, it makes a nice change from pointing and shooting. [Issue#387, p.120]

This pulpy provocation has more than enough ideas to take root in your own monkey brain. [Issue#391, p.121]

Crucially, we never lose our will to continue. [Issue#410, p.114]

This is a game of contradictions, then. It's an impressive exercise in mystery construction that often cringes at its own geeky strengths, masking its intelligence behind juvenile posturing. But at the same time its technical shortcomings rob it of that swagger, its anime stylings lacking the gloss you'd expect from the cocksure tone. Much can be forgiven when you're submerged in its waterlogged crimes, but you never quite shake the sense that Master Detective Archives is raining on its own parade. [Issue#387, p.118]

Not much here could be called outstanding - if we're hyper-critical, even though the game's visualisation of Japanese myth is a treat, it's not one we haven't sampled before. While there's a decent brew here, then, it doesn't refresh like a really good cupa. [Issue#400, p.116]

Motorstorm has a special relationship with chaos, and if you can keep your head when all about you are throwing their controllers, you're just as likely to lose. Less battle than survival racing, it's happy to let fairness be a stain on the tarmac. [Apr 2011, p.95]

As a place, Los Angeles simply isn't as much fun as Liberty or Vice. Too much of this silicon LA exists simply because the designers wanted to show that it could be done rather than because it serves any gameplay purpose. [Christmas 2003, p.107]

A detailed and intelligent fraud: a slice of cool, corporate entertainment for an audience that probably sees no contradiction within that notion. [Oct 2010, p.98]

By far the most slickly produced and gorgeously rendered version of the series, the pacing this time around is even more fluid than its predecessors – less an open-ended matter of hide and seek, and more focused on the stylish, dramatic pursuit and capture that its TV and silver-screen themes would seem to require. [Oct 2005, p.89]

Arlo may have the grimace and mane of Geralt, but his game needs to be more than a series of narrow squeaks. [Issue#408, p.118]

Isn't a hard game, but it is occasionally a taxing one. [Sept 2012, p.108]

While it doesn't always gel in a way that feels genuinely new, there are enough successful unfamiliar concepts here to make Quantum Break feel like a step forward for Remedy. [June 2016, p.100]

It's to Super Crush KO's credit that, after rattling through its brief but bouncy campaign, we immediately dive back in for another crack at perfecting our high scores. It is some of the best gaming junk food around: moreish although not particularly nutritious, best enjoyed in small moments of convenience and often while watching something else. [Issue#342, p.116]

Takes great pride in its science-fiction absurdities and provides a genuinely entertaining skirmish game for those who still hanker for the base-building battles of old. [Feb 2008, p.94]

A game that is not only at its best when played with other humans, but is critically dependent on them. [Issue#344, p.112]

This dark world - frequently illuminated by its eccentric characters and cheeky dialogue - is so captivating that the slight loss of late-game momentum is easily forgiven. [Issue#399, p.114]

It's much like Twitter itself - raucous and ridiculous, funny but infuriating. [Apr 2015, p.122]

Open about the toys you can play with in the final stages of research, strategy in Supreme Commander 2 is pure – worked out before the battle begins and maintained as a line under your tactical moves.

The only occasionally clumsy element in Surge Deluxe’s otherwise efficiently streamlined processes is you – or, rather, your big fat finger. Tracing lines between blocks obscures the screen, which can make quick, precise movements difficult, especially between narrow gaps.

With the episodic development cycle all but demanding that structure and form be locked down in the first instalment, with content added thereafter, the series' future looks precarious at best. [June 2008, p.90]

Had the level design have been a touch more ingenious, and the creatures exhibited more guile, this could have been memorable. [June 2004, p.106]

A wonderfully honest game that points out how important it is to acknowledge the hole, but reminds us that, at the end of the day, it's what's - and who's - around it that counts. [Nov 2018, p.121]

Yes, it's a little light on content, but what's in there is delightful, accessible, intuitive, playful stuff. From the off it's fun and, before long, it becomes oddly magical, too. Over time, it may become wondrous. At launch it will just have to settle for being merely excellent, and yet another standard bearer for Nintendo's new console. That, we suppose, is really the most important thing about ARMS. [Aug 2017, p.102]

Rebellion's not reinventing the wheel, then, but there's an admirable clarity of focus here from a studio clearly confident in its handiwork. [Issue#373, p.116]

The title is just painfully apt: never has a free-roaming structure brought so little to improve the quality of a game's world. The mooted open-ended environments of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland feel like a fallacy, a bleak repackaging for hocking the game to a jaded audience. [Dec 2005, p.107]