Paradise loops its action into an endless rush, the possibilities, for arcade racing and battle enthusiasts alike, increasing with every hour. It’s hard not to see it as the birth of a new era, but in truth it might be the last Burnout you ever need. [Feb 2008, p.86]

A fairytale comeback. Extravagance was one of the signatures of the graphic adventure: extravagance to bring them in, and a cracking story well told to keep them.Both tenets of the Broken Sword series remain intact here, and that's all the devoted fans could have wanted. [Christmas 2003, p.94]

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

This is the most unforgettable side-scroller Nintendo has put out in three decades. [Issue#391, p.98]

It has, through painstaking effort, upgraded the card duel into a thoroughly modern form. It has resisted the dark lures of free-to-play, and has made deep systems simple to parse without neutering them. In short, Hearthstone is borderline alchemy, turning physical systems into digital gold.

Persona 4 Golden is full of surprises. Perhaps the biggest is that a console JRPG is so well suited to portable play, and that a four-year-old PS2 game is, by some distance, Vita’s best game to date.

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]

Simogo’s greatest triumph, perhaps, is to intensify the potency of the written word. In using its text both as narrative and as geography – and through its impressively restrained use of illustration and sound – it generates an almost unrivalled sense of place.

The Witness conjures magic from the simplest of components, rustling up a sensational array of experiences without ever deviating from its core conceit. [March 2016, p.106]

In an era of flagging service games, it is refreshing to se an old favourite so thoroughly rejuvenated. Blizzard, take note: this is how it's done. [Issue#391, p.112]

Ostensibly it's a game about overthrowing aliens, but really it's a war against the forces of probability. [March 2016, p.110]

A step forward over both previous entries, combining those elements with meticulous campaign craft and a gallery of inventive ideas. [Issue#409, p.116]

Nintendo has still made something uniquely enjoyable, while wantonly shredding the playbook in the process. Whatever plans might be in place for Mario's next adventure, Donkey Kong has changed the lay of the land. [Issue#414, p.100]

The game's greatest triumph is in delivering a truly singular vision. This is not the work of a team in thrall to trend or fashion, its designers given the opportunity to build from their own imagining instead. At a time when many rival studios are guided by the whims of focus testing and audience pandering, it has resulted in a game with one elusive quality. Dragon's Dogma 2 is, more than anything else, unforgettable. [Issue#397, p.98]

Apex Legends arrives fully formed, feature complete, free and quite, quite brilliant, a game that pushes its host genre forward, refining and redefining its template in the process. [Issue#330, p.102]

Criterion has taken the series back to its first principal of cops vs racers, and constructed a high-octane combat racer of beauty and depth. [Christmas 2010, p.82]

This might well be one of the finest hint systems (certainly in this type of game) that we've ever seen. [Issue#384, p.120]

The action-racing genre has delivered numerous treats this generation, but not one of them has been as rewarding and relentlessly entertaining, nor as feature-packed, as this. This is Ridge Racer unbounded from the shackles of its heritage, rebuilt from the ground up into one of the most subversive, sublime street-racing games ever made.

Is 2010 about the show or the sport? It is, like the UFC itself, ready to be both. This confidence is what makes it such a complete and compelling package – a great MMA sim, a near flawless UFC sim. In a year, it’s made the kind of studious jump that took FIFA almost ten.

What it does have is something an Activision or EA would kill for: a game built up around one good idea that drew in a community of unprecedented size. And that counts for a lot against PUBG's flaws: its rough-edged movement, animations, collision detection, character customisation, spectator functionality, and presentation. Perhaps you might hear all that and think this isn't worth your time. To do so would be to miss out on an absolute, and absolutely deserving, phenomenon. [March 2018, p.106]

When was the last time a game managed to pierce your heart with its third or fourth dialogue choice? [Issue#381, p.96]

The variety of ways for a player to interact with a single narrative is breathtaking, and the way Barlow has paralleled how we shape our own view of a story in the digital era - clicking back and forth across an exploded timeline - truly incisive. [Issue#337, p.104]

The action creeps up slowly, starting out like a gorgeous-looking but fairly standard shoot 'em up. However, by the middle of level two, it's pummelling you with a relentless parade of conceptual set pieces so audacious and inventive you'll laugh with delight as you gape in horror. [Sept 2004, p.94]

After the peerless Bayonettas, this is the best game Platinum has yet made - and better yet, it reflects a developer growing in talent and ambition. [Issue#337, p.108]

For a game with a premise as simple as kill the aliens before they kill you, Ziggurat's stylishly retro visuals, gleeful arcade precision and deeply interlocking mechanics trigger a chain reaction that kicks off like some interstellar combustion. Not the sound of a world ending. But the sort of bang that would make Richard Dawkins lean back, fold his arms and grin like a chimp.

For all its little tweaks, Dark Souls II is, foremost, a game made for Souls players. It is a game that asks everything of you and gives so much back, keeping its cards close to its chest, and revealing them only to those prepared to die and die again. It is made to be played for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours as you try new builds, explore PVP and experiment with covenants, all the while slowly peeling back the layers of its lore.

A scintillating racing experience, and as a revitalisation of the Race Driver series it's utterly successful. [July 2008, p.90]

Rare are the games that can make us see the world a little differently; step outside and look around after playing Gorogoa and you'll realise it probably deserved that round of applause after all. [Issue#315, p.110]