It’s a game about picking dialogue options that are metaphorically represented as potential moves on the board, but it’s that which goes unsaid that makes its semi-improvised conversations so intriguing.

A delightfully strange and often surprising piece of work; it’s more plaything than game, perhaps, but the smiles it generates will be broad and frequent.

Battles account for around half the game, and unless you're a fan of the TV series, it's much the better one. [March 2018, p.110]

It's derivative, gratuitous and needlessly profane, but beneath the gruesome veneer lies a tale of – believe it or not – genuine tenderness.

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]

For all its quirks, the overriding impression of Just Cause is favourable. There’s an almost childish enthusiasm at work here – and an unparalleled sense of freedom that can be enjoyed just as easily as it can be criticised. [Nov 2006, p.82]

It’s a feeling that never quite dissipates over the game’s core 15 missions, a sense of lean and focused game design which prizes the exhilarating tussle of conflict over long, drawn-out army building. [Mar 2009, p.86]

A Disney game that finally lives up to the name.

This means it's possible for a smaller team to craft a game of joyously intersecting rules. [Issue#371, p.100]

APB has to learn how to play its obvious trump card, a brilliant customisation suite. With tools that give you power over every aspect of your persona – cars, clothes, tattoos, shape, logos, victory jingles and even the tunes pumped out of your stereo – the game really gets that people are the brands of the 21st century.

A small diversion, in other words, that lives up to both parts of the equation. [Issue#365, p.118]

Beautiful and varied. [Aug 2015, p.122]

This is a game with ambitions that now outstrip the confines of an atrophying engine, but beneath the exterior lies a world rich in atmosphere - the credible and pervading horror of a landscape drawn with unusual finesse. [Mar 2010, p.95]

For the duration of its story, it grips like a grasping, otherworldly arm. [Issue#371, p.104]

Sega Superstars Tennis is well-crafted, lovingly garish, and it plays a solid game. [Apr 2008, p.97]

It's far too easy for veterans in singleplayer, but with four sets of the ludicrous peripheral - an unlikely scenario, admittedly - and each player tapping out their own, interlinking rhythm the game becomes a uniquely entertaining experience. [Feb 2004, p.111]

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]

This is not a conventional pinball game with well-designed skillshots and a challenging layout, but since when was Pokemon ever conventional? [Nov 2003, p.99]

Stray from the beaten track and Crystal Bearers is a different game...That it is so oddly buried is inexplicable, but you can't deny the fun of excavation. [Feb 2010, p.94]

While refinement might be the best way to make a good game better, it certainly isn't the best way to justify the cost of a second sequel in as many years. [June 2010, p.101]

It may not give Supercell sleepless nights, but if you've ever thought Clash Royale could be improved by adding Cinderella on a motorbike, well, fill your boots. [Issue#330, p.120]

Yes, it's a little too familiar in places. [Issue#392, p.114]

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]

It's strangely fitting that there should be moments of boredom: if the world occasionally seems too big and your destination too distant, well, isn't that what being a kid's all about? [Issue#337, p.112]

Some elements of story and gameplay are left disappointingly underdeveloped, and the grand environmental puzzles of the opening section become all but absent in the later locations - but when Belli's running for her life, you won't stop to notice.

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

There is some enormous potential here, and for all its failings Assassin’s Creed deserves to be played, and its achievements savoured. [Christmas 2007, p.82]

For all its minor shortcomings, if one of the main design goals of The Skywalker Saga was to make you fall in love with Star Wars again, on that particular front it is an unequivocal triumph. [Issue#371, p.110]