Whereas Super Meat Boy accounted for its punishing difficulty by creating micro levels, most of which could be traversed successfully in just a minute or two, Wakfu frequently commits the cardinal sin of using extended sections of grind to raise the stakes during its seismic and vaguely arbitrary difficulty spikes.

It's not taxing or provocative, it will leave you neither upset nor elated; it simply wants to give you a good time. Sometimes that's enough. [June 2016, p.114]

But the lack of crispness in the controls undermines everything else here, and too often does the same to the player.

The Red Star is more of a red dwarf next to some of the more sharp-witted and unabashed action titles that have landed on PS2 in recent years, but one that's still capable of shininig. [May 2007, p.95]

Its most striking ideas don't fulfil their promise, and its successes are etched by pervasive minor flaws. The towering, terrifying city, and the lens through which it is shot, drag you onwards through the game's lesser parts, but you sense that the real crime in this whole bloody escapade is that it doesn't live up to its dark flashes of imagination.

With just one area to mess about with – and doubtless more to come – it currently feels more seed than flower. [Feb 2008, p.95]

In the end, it falls beneath our expectations as often as it stretches beyond them. [Issue#349, p.96]

There's a real earnestness to Ever Oasis's tale, as Ishii and team meditate on our relationship with nature and the value of coming together to build a better, more hopeful world. It's unfortunate that the actual substance of the game doesn't trouble itself to embody that reaching ambition, content to stay resting comfortably at the wellspring of other, better games' ideas. [Sept 2017, p.114]

There's something here: a glimmer of promise, the kind of idea that surely shone bright in the game's original conception. But the realities of development have resulted in a game that, like a misjudged Translocator leading only to a dead drop, falls well short of the imagined outcome. [Issue#385, p.102]

Once fluent in Hulk’s explosive vocabulary of lamppost-javelins, boulder-bowling balls and tank football, it becomes apparent how much there is to praise in this game. It’s hard to think of a superhero title that has come so close in delivering the spirit of the hero’s super-ness. [Sept 2005, p.95]

More consistent is the creeping sense of dread throughout, an atmosphere that's built on Robot Invader's preference for slow realisation over jump scares. [Tested with Oculus Rift; June 2016, p.118]

As much as Carrion's moment-to-moment feel might benefit from the uniquely wobbly shape it gives you, the game as a whole wears its own amorphousness a little less elegantly. [Issue#349, p.98]

Despite its name's implications, this is a better game when you're following Lucky's nose, rather than his tail. [Tested with Oculus Rift; June 2016, p.119]

Need For Speed seems like it would benefit from choosing a priority to stick to: be either a rowdy pursuit rampage or a lustrous street racer unbothered by traffic or law enforcement, as mixing both can leave it feeling much less than the sum of its generously many parts. [Christmas 2006, p.89]

Lego Harry Potter is a more focused experience than, say, Lego Indiana Jones 2, but proves ungainly in its own way. [Aug 2010, p.100]

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]

The final third of the game abandons grubby criminality for altogether more lurid, excessive and enjoyably silly climes, testifying to the fact that Saints Row is at its best when it rejects the expectations of the series and the strictures of the GTA format.

If The Unfinished Swan didn't do such a marvellous job of tantalising players with its patiently evolving visual signature, it would be easier to sense the messy whiteboard of ideas churning beneath the surface. It's not that the game feels unfinished, just ungainly.

Salt & Sanctuary can be brilliant, but it's held back by undersized visual design, both in UI and open play, making playing it from distance a pain. [June 2016, p.122]

Though the stage design is carefully plotted to the last pixel, there’s little room for deviation – and none for the ultimate three-star prize. As such, it’s a case of brute-forcing the solution over dozens of repeated attempts, a process that feels less engaging here than in some of its peers.

The core racing is pleasingly intact for 16bit nostalgists, but that doesn't make Micro Machines a no-brainer for the new-school, season-based multiplayer model. [Sept 2017, p.119]

Smart Remote-pointer-based controls and Mason's nimble pace around the snowy locales ensure Shattered Memories is not a disagreeable six hours, but it is very rarely scary or spooky. [Feb 2010, p.93]

Sadly, the developer's good work is all but undone by its publisher's demanding IAP structure.

Elements such as marching onto an island, or talking to a governor, seem flat and underdeveloped. Islands are sparse and awkward experiences, while their governors are often illogical and nonsensical in their responses. [Jan 2005, p.88]

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]

Spider-Man 2 presents players with a city ripe for action and exploration, but once you swing down out of the clouds and take a closer look at the grubby streets and roads strewn with vehicles, you'll find little to pique your interest. [Sept 2004, p.100]

A curious game about exploiting systems and psychology. The discussions surrounding it deal in politics and morality, because it’s a game about Rohrer’s response to a controversial real-world issue. Yet The Castle Doctrine’s notoriety ends up feeling like another fakeout – a disconnected conceptual commit gate at the entrance of an often-frustrating sandbox puzzler.

In its current form, Payday 2 is a slog, and it’s no fault of the game itself but all the bloat that surrounds it.