As nostalgic joys go, though, it's a damning one. [Issue#367, p.106]

There is, after all, something quietly revelatory about a big-budget videogame that has as much in common with the work of Bennett Foddy as Ubisoft's boilerplate sandboxes. Far from a masterpiece, then, but Kojima's first post-Konami release HAS laid the foundations for something greater. Which is fitting, since that's what he's had us doing for 60-odd hours. [Issue#341, p.102]

Ara is at once too shallow and too deep, a 4X game where one of its crosses bears far more eight than the others. [Issue#404, p.118]

A series that, for all its wanderlust, is never truly going anywhere. [Christmas 2015, p.112]

Not quite a serious Pokemon challenger, then, but with pressure on The Pokemon Company to bring in an experienced development partner for future titles, this is a fine calling card for Tose. [Issue#381, p.104]

It is its maker's most successful free-to-play endeavour to date, even if that is to damn it with faint praise. [Sept 2015, p.118]

There's still much enjoyment to be found in the interim grinding between boss fights, but Lords Of The Fallen's greatest sin is that all feels rather soulless. [Christmas 2014, p.116]

A workmanlike effort. [Jan 2007, p.78]

Think of it like fast-forwarding through an action movie past all the poorly written dialogue to get to the good bits. [Issue#367, p.112]

Stuffed with extra modes, supporting character upload to GC Toadstool Tour and bundled with a wireless adapter, Advance Tour is great value, but it's also rather clumsy and bland. Only in the minigames, when Mario and company show up both in person and in spirit … does it really find a life of its own. [July 2004, p.109]

Another decent GunCon arcade experience from Namco, which shoots all of the (now very familiar) lightgun game boxes. Fun for a while, certainly, but there are no surprises. [Dec 2003, p.107]

What it adds to the original formula is essentially redundant, and everything it does that is successful was already in place in the original. [Feb 2008, p.93]

Very much a sidewards step for the series rather than a bold leap forwards for its kind. [Christmas 2014, p.118]

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]

As an arcadey flight game it’s just about on the enjoyable side of average, especially when compared to its still superior genre stablemate Ace Combat 6. [Apr 2009, p.122]

At first glance, Post Trauma appears to be a meaningful iteration on a familiar formula, but in practice it's more like a cover of a favourite song on the radio. You tap your foot, but you long for the original. [Issue#411, p.114]

While it lacks the scope or density of Oblivion’s The Shivering Isles, it’s the most you’re going to get out of Fallout’s current batch of DLC. And as a long-anticipated reopening of the game’s original map, it at least gives you something to live for.

It's a decent enough excuse for some very good times. [Issue#383, p.120]

You could never accuse Strange Scaffold of resting on its laurels. [Issue#367, p.115]

Once again we leave a Nintendo mobile game feeling a little underwhelmed. [Issue#338, p.114]

For the most part the game has been intelligently repositioned for the PC platform, but a lack of polish means that many minor flaws coalesce to make the experience a rather uneven one, often obscuring the creators’ worthwhile efforts. [Sept 2007, p.96]

Fantasia is a novel twist on the music name, then, but one lacking the sprinkling of Disney magic its title promises. [Christmas 2014, p.122]

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]

Unlike in a game such as Limbo, the main challenge is not finding solutions to puzzles but performing them. [Issue#411, p.118]

Within 20 or so minutes, it's all over. [Issue#367, p.116]

An amusing localisation (“he is cleaning his knife with a complex facial expression”) and some enthusiastically squelchy sound effects add charm to a decent challenge, and there’s enough vigour and character here to make it a worthwhile, if fleeting, diversion.

It's strange that players aren't given more time to make decisions. [Christmas 2015, p.122]

As a reminder of the old days of the series, The Serpent’s Curse just about serves its purpose; it sounds the same, works the same and, mostly, looks the same. But as a contender on the modern point-and-click landscape it offers little to drag players away from the new age of superior soirees.