As a whole, Mercenary Kings is a case study in the perils of Early Access. The need to provide a steady flow of content to early buyers has birthed a glut of superfluous systems and a swollen set of missions – the wrong sort of substance to accompany Robertson’s style.

There is a tremendous amount going on, to the point that it's all too easy to miss a mission-critical SOS. [Nov 2014, p.108]

All too often you’re baffled as to how your slick 180° spin failed to satisfy the marking criteria, only to pass on the next attempt with a clunking three-point turn. [Oct 2007, p.94]

With some prudent trimming, this could have been one of Wii U's best games: even with all those maddening missteps, its moments of sparkling brilliance can make it feel frequently close to essential. [December 2016, p.122]

Things pick up considerably in the game's final third, when the excessive exposition has at last been laid to rest and you've learned how to best work with the disobliging visual language. [Issue#424, p.104]

In all likelihood, we'll remember its delightful world for some time. In future years, we may even enjoy the few fuzzy memories of Forgotton Anne that linger. For now, however, they're tinged with disappointment. [July 2018, p.114]

Look at it one way, and it's a choking journey with unprecedented attention to unease and psychological horror, a game framed with unparalleled sophistication. From another angle, it's just a clunky PSone throwback, with all the design wit of a dodo. [Aug 2004, p.92]

This is a generous game in both deed and spirit, and, as such, one it's tremendously difficult to dislike. [Issue#343, p.106]

Perfect? No. Indispensable? Yes. Wii Sports more than earns its bundled place as an essential component of the hardware. [Christmas 2006, p.76]

Did a purse-holder at Activision one day grapple fruitlessly with the last game's control system and scrawl in their subsequent notes "Make the next one so that I can play it"? Speculation aside, someone sure messed-up Spider-Man. [Dec 2005, p.108]

The enticing depths of strategy coupled with the affectionate, colourful realisation of the various characters you control ignites curiosity - and their abilities in battle are well-realised, gratifyingly powerful and many. [June 2009, p.90]

It's a tribute to Me Monstar that, despite lasting a good few hours, you want more.

It remains an early PS Move highlight, but one that can't boast the charm or accessibility of its Wii rivals, despite the improved tech. [Nov 2010, p.92]

It sounds as if the cast are having more fun than we are. [Issue#388, p.122]

Tight ink limitations force creative solutions, but once learnt, certain tricks undermine the action. [Feb 2010, p.94]

While it’s occasionally fiddly, it has pace and spectacle and style to spare. Underworld is that rare game that manages to provide a real adventure to go along with its action. [Christmas 2008, p.95]

Fundamentally a curiously lovable game - one of long, lonely roads, of painstaking parking manoeuvres, and slapstick write-offs when simple turns are misjudged. There's nothing else quite like SCS's brand of cargo-hauling action. [April 2016, p.119]

If this is the series' swansong, it goes out in the luxuirous manner in which the series was born – in a well-produced, moderately thoughful and firmly enjoyable instalment of an established genre – a manner that won't go unappreciated but will just as likely go unremembered. [Dec 2005, p.110]

Mediatonic's experimental blend of tower defence, scrolling shooter and invincibility doesn't always gel, but approached as a survival score-attack in the vein of Canabalt, Who's That Flying?! becomes an uncommonly moreish Mini.

More diversion than challenge, and never leads to stress. [Aug 2009, p.107]

Thanks to this astonishing overhaul, it's now quite impossible to ignore. [Feb 2012, p.120]

Wideload has placed a welcome knee in the groin of the status quo, but by taking its subject too lightly it's also failed to turn an adventurous prototype into a durable production. [Christmas 2005, p.102]

For such a costly flagship title to provide neither the promised statement of mainstream grown-up appeal nor even polished, lesser disposable thrills is a landmark failure. [May 2006, p.92]

Rematch, especially with friends, is an immediate, exhilarating caricature of football. Its pared-down mechanics inject joy back into a sport that's been hollowed out, both in real life through surrender to capital and geopolitics, and as simulation, in the gears of service-game profit-making machines. [Issue#413, p.118]

The most satisfying stages give you a generous toolset with which to experiment, but one too many involves painstaking repositioning of a few items.

A tiny game with some big ideas. [Sept 2012, p.106]

This is a game that prizes style above all else, and emerges a mess because of it. [Issue#331, p.118]

While the overall blandness means Galactrix is unlikely to truly thrill many people, it also means that it won’t exclude anyone either, and the ever-reliable pattern-spotting blends with the steady trickle of meaningless rewards to exert a pull on its audience that is truly Pavlovian. [Apr 2009, p.125]