A return to Hogwarts to relive Harry Potter’s school years, this remaster features an enjoyable adventure for fans who haven’t taken this trip before. Though the games are still fun to play, the experience doesn’t offer anything new (other than updated graphics) from the original releases. While the Harry Potter movie world keeps expanding, game fans get a rehash, which is something of a downer. If you haven’t played the Lego Harry Potter games before, this is a great package in terms of value and sheer amount of gameplay. Otherwise, it would be better to play one of the newer releases in the franchise.

Beyond breaking a set challenge score for each level, the prospect feels more like an endurance challenge than a great deal of fun. Strange Scaffold thus shows once again that it has no shortage of slick ideas. With this hook, though, we need a little more to keep us on the line. [Issue#412, p.123]

It's disappointing mostly because its strongest elements, from its dialogue to its excellent soundtrack (see "Radio ga ga"), are packaged within a limp rerun of its superior predecessor, providing scant few reasons to face the ghosts of the past a second time. [Issue#387, p.112]

Given all the admirable character work and tactical substance on display, it's a shame that individualism isn't spread more evenly. [Issue#391, p.118]

For all the atmospheric window-dressing, it doesn't extend its reach beyond competent familiarity. [Jan 2007, p.85]

We've seen so many of these puzzles before. [Dec 2015, p.121]

The player is required to reap their principle enjoyment from the narrative and the cinematic rather than the interactive. The traditional flow of play has been turned on its head: cut-scenes are the new king, gameplay elements little more than lines to link the drama. [Apr 2005, p.104]

If you share director Ragnar Tornquist's view that being engaged in dialogue is a form of gameplay, then there's a richness here that few other titles have the ability or luxury to create. [June 2006, p.86]

City Folk is effectively Wild World 2.0, allowing players of the DS game to migrate to Wii and continue pottering aimlessly around their mature towns, bringing their possessions and neighbours with them. [Christmas 2008, p.97]

After the interesting and confident debut of The Suffering last year, Ties That Bind remains a straightforward action game, and one with a coherent story that feels well paced, if too full of schlocky cliché for some. But that is, ultimately, all it does: remains. [Dec 2005, p.106]

Cleverest when at its most minimal, It's Mr Pants is a little too convoluted and coy a brain-tease, destined to live in the shadow of purer designs. [March 2005, p.93]

It might not be as easy on the eye as its 2015 contemporaries, but it's an awful lot more honest. [Sept 2015, p.120]

Konami has backed a game here, then, that's far from designed just to make a quick buck. Though, tentacles crossed, we hope it does that too. [Issue#423, p.110]

Unbound is ultimately and encouraging statement of intent, demonstrating that Criterion is not afraid to tinker with established formula. [Issue#380, p.114]

Beneath EA's layer of crafty monetisation, however, Flight Control Rocket is a stellar effort. The generic sci-fi visuals and overly busy menus might lack the instant appeal of Flight Control's handsome '50s styling, and that game's purity is sorely missing here, but underneath all that EA sheen is a game with genuine heart.

Time and again in The Angel Of Death, a perfectly obvious solution is ignored in favour of an absurdly contrived one, and whenever a puzzle hinges on the responses of NPCs... these prove bizarre and unpredictable. [Nov 2006, p.84]

There’s a great twitch game beneath this hostile exterior, but Ragequit can’t afford to test players’ endurance on so many levels if its niche shooter is to thrive.

Screamer becomes repetitive, overly simplistic and needlessly verbose, a hybrid vehicle for narrative and racing where the only thing less engaging than the off-track drama is the driving itself. [Issue#423, p.114]

This is a rich, interesting design, then, but one whose capacity for long-term competitive play is questionable.

Beyond the sharper picture quality, there's little here that couldn't have been done on DS, though it matters little in the face of such ageless design. Picross E may not do much more than the basics, then, but sometimes that's all that is needed.

But if, as the end nears, its unswerving focus seems less of an asset than in its early hours, Dead Island 2 has emerged from development hell in more robust shape than we could have expected. Certainly, there is enough potential in a refined and updated version - one that finds room for more immersive sim-style experimentation - to leave us pondering something that seemed unthinkable going in. Dead Island 3? It doesn't seem quite such a terrible idea after all. [Issue#384, p.100]

Banished is a rare technical achievement, pure in design and of purpose. Its many deaths almost always feel fair, and the battle up to self-sufficiency is gripping. But the absence of a long game beyond this early toil makes it hard to find reasons to settle down here, except for the views, especially if you’ve established yourself on these frosty plains before.

It's an all-too timely (big) mood piece. [Issue#361, p.120]

The frame-rate occasionally chugs, but little else can truly hold Mr. Dreamer back. This is a confident twist on a popular genre, and a case study in how a good idea needs little embellishment.

You can see things worth admiring here. The promise of sandbox combat emerging from the interplay between environment and gun-modes never comes good, instead devolving into a repetitive, gruelling bedlam - but that promise alone is more than many shooters offer. To make anything of it, however, Hard Reset would need to go right back to the drawing board.

Horses is a fascinating work, capable of moments that lodge in the memory, such as the late-game sequence when the projector's whirring finally stops and the tired clomp of footsteps registers to our ears like the sound of freedom. [Issue#419, p.122]

FromSoftware's second stab at this stuff produced Dark Souls. Deck13 still has a way to go before it really delivers on the concept it holds so dear. [July 2017, p.112]

Once the novelty of the new setting and storylines has worn off - there's little genuine inovation to hold your interest. [July 2004, p.104]