It's a dazzling experience, combining carefree spectacle with careful score attack, a game that's as concerned with its looks as the precision of its underlying mathematical systems. [JPN Import; June 2009, p.94]

The perfect candidate for the 100th WiiWare game, LostWinds is on the verge of outgrowing the service it almost single-handedly redeems. [Dec 2009, p.101]

The game’s depth is matched by a generous breadth of modes and options.

But the puzzles themselves are nearly an unmitigated joy.

Brutal Legend has the looks and the attitude, and a hefty chunk of original and engaging content to go with it. Whenever it goes near a stage, though, it begins to fall apart. [Dec 2009, p.94]

Ultimately, no one will disagree that Uncharted 2 is one hell of a ride, and the best PS3 action game to date.

But what of the gamers who have paid WayForward’s bills, the Contra lovers and Shantae fan clubs? They're rewarded with extreme difficulty spikes, enacted by the amorphous lovelies of a Miyazaki film. A Boy and his Blob panders to the Wii’s unique audience all too well, dividing itself, and its impact, in the process.

Sparsely scattered save points, un-skippable animations and cutscenes, and repeated locations and boss fights are anachronisms that will frustrate and alienate all but the most ardent traditionalist.

A frustrating experience, though thankfully not a long one. [Dec 2009, p.103]

A Witch's Tale is the teacher who says 'look, but don't touch.' [Sept 2009, p.97]

It's certainly fun, but at times it's more than that: around the parody of leveling orbits a whole universe of bigger and better systems to lose yourself within. [Feb 2010, p.92]

It refreshes with its purity of purpose and ambition, even if, as a mechanising of the grieving process, it’s a game few will wish to return to once completed.

It refreshes with its purity of purpose and ambition, even if, as a mechanising of the grieving process, it’s a game few will wish to return to once completed.

But it’s hard not to be disappointed that one of gaming’s true visions – of life’s multiplicity and constantly changing nature – should end up broadening itself by slumping into a worn groove of genre pieces and business dogma.

Demon's Souls is the antithesis of the fashionable approach to gaming. It encourages mastery over mere perseverance and every reward is so hard won as to make it almost unattainable. But if gaming's ultimate appeal lies in the learning and mastering of new skills, then surely the medium's keenest thrills are to be found in its hardest lessons. For those who flourish under Demon's Souls' strict examination, there's no greater sense of virtual achievement.

To an industrious, moralising serial killer, Saw would seem an apt punishment for a life wasted on videogames. [Christmas 2009, p.99]

Extraction is not just a gun game that happens to work on Wii; it's a gun game that couldn't work on anything else. [Nov 2009, p.90]

When you're playing a Ninja Gaiden game and not dying until the eighth chapter, it doesn't bode well for the future of the series as we know it. Oh, and the camera's still rubbish. [Nov 2009, p.100]

There are some interesting ideas here, but in practice the game is overloaded with cut corners and blunting repetition. [Mar 2010, p.97]

Despite the game's uncluttered arenas, the camera regularly manages to find a way to flip out and point you in the wrong direction. [Dec 2009, p.101]

The amount of material here, familiar though some of it is, and the consummate presentation means that this is the most exhaustive Katamari to date, if not the finest. [Nov 2009, p.97]

ODST doesn’t quite take Halo into unfamiliar territory, but it does show how robust and adaptable the core of the game is – and, more importantly, stands on its own two feet as a spin-off that’s better than the vast majority of original games.

Some cool things happen to crazy people in A2M's Wet, but unfortunately there are times in between where you're actually expected to play it. [Nov 2009, p.99]

For a game that covers everything from drift events to time trials and eliminators, not to mention bumper-to-bumper tuning options, a top-tier physics model and authentic handling, Shift has enough precision and purpose to give anyone pause. [Nov 2009, p.98]

It delivers on 5th Cell's unlikely conceit far more capably than expected, and fulfills a blueprint so bizarrely ambitious almost nobody believed it was possible. [Nov 2009, p.92]

Zuma's simple ingredients have once again brewed up a surprisingly powerful brand of magic. [Nov 2009, p.104]

A game that's more than the sum of its parts. [Dec 2009, p.98]

The early promise is blunted, however, when too many cooks arrive and you're left relying on potshots and memory games. [Christmas 2009, p.106]