Mini Ninjas offers an assortment of simple pleasures and its tooth-rottingly sweet presentation wholly endears – but it isn’t sustained, and in places falls disastrously below the watermark.

From the patchwork fields of the Dover coastline to the unforgettable sight of Berlin burning in the pouring rain, the carefully characterised locations are as integral to the experience as its encyclopedic line-up of planes. [Oct 2009, p.97]

Codemasters is as attuned to track-building and racecraft as it has ever been. [Oct 2009, p.92]

Ingenious, experimental and entirely polarising, games like ColorZ show that WiiWare continues to take the road less travelled. In doing so, the platform’s most poignant offerings reveal something a little bit magical - a fleeting glimpse of the soul lurking within the machine.

Under the topsoil its functions are often ingenious, improving genre weaknesses with more success than its over-familiar form might suggest. [Nov 2009, p.95]

An accomplished effort that is every inch the Soul Calibur of the home consoles, just squeezed on to a smaller screen. [Oct 2009, p.98]

Guitar Hero 5 does stand as the most accessible version of the game concept to date, presenting a significantly tidier, more intuitive menu to get you playing sooner. [Nov 2009, p.103]

At least building the game around a mountain ascent avoids survival horror cliché. Instead of stepping bravely into the murk you are motivated forwards by the peak's promise. [Oct 2009, p.98]

"Holy Metacritic, Batman! They've finally bothered to dedicate considerable time and resources to putting you in a decent videogame!" [Oct 2009, p.86]

It revitalises both old and recent characters and, despite the basic environments having the odd clunky element in their geography, triumphantly succeeds as a new breed of fighting game. [Oct 2009, p.90]

The new control system may ultimately be an upgrade Samus Aran never really needed, but this is still the best – and most logical – Wii reissue from Nintendo to date.

No other game catches the exhilaration of mental exercises, while doing just enough to smooth over their occasional frustrations, in quite the same way as Layton. [Nov 2009, p.104]

Proportionally, far more casual players will finish this than ever finished Super Metroid or Contra III, and their enjoyment might even compare. Sat nobly between emulated coin-ops and overpriced turkeys on high street shelves, Shadow Complex is something of a Live Arcade landmark.

For all its foibles, Raven's brand of brazen, aimless carnage is a gruesome thrill with just enough dynamism in each battle to keep its anachronistic heart beating. [Oct 2009, p.88]

Even when you disregard the charmless character, ignore the relentless music and eventually manage to tame the handling, something comes along to spoil the party - an odiously placed bump on the road that causes an unnecessary spin, the sudden inability to respawn even when off the track, resulting in a lost race... the list goes on. [Jan 2010, p.90]

Over the Top has tempered its obvious ambition with skill and understanding, and the result is a game that’s refreshingly quick to take flight.

If there's a benefit to the game's focus on local co-op multiplayer, it's that players can stand suicide watch over each other for when the awfulness of it all finally overwhelms them. [Oct 2009, p.97]

Design flaws include a bizarre decision to cordon off most of the ship after completion, locking away any unique items you previously overlooked. Much of the game commendably favours stealth players but the rest can feel shambolic.

While you won't necessarily win without some loyal subjects from your friends list, there's a deceptive amount of fun you can have while trying. [Oct 2009, p.94]

That teetering battle between pride and strategy than ensues every time you decide whether to comprehensively flatten a villain with an unnecessary monosyllabic flourish or gamble on saving it for your next target, hoping the board doesn’t get scrambled before you get a chance to show off.

Puzzle Bobble's hardly become a bad game, it just doesn't seem interested in getting any better. [Oct 2009, p.99]

Sports Resort is controlling, and even solemn, about just how much fun you should be having with it. And that’s a development that should chill every Wii owner to the bone.

‘Splosion Man lives up to his name, providing a burst of exciting, arresting fresh IP that significantly changes the landscape around.

Every moment feels like it's been lavished with attention; Little King's Story is as rich as it is long, and it's a very lengthy game indeed. [May 2009, p.90]

What felt greedy before is on yet more dubious ground here - the feeling of tactical scope missing from the singleplayer campaign is largely due to Square Enix cutting out the goods to sell at a later date. [Oct 2009, p.99]

A simple, finely tuned and comprehensive shooter that only rarely wobbles. [Sept 2009, p.100]

A perfectly sized, expertly-crafted romp, Pacific gives other download games their marching orders. [Aug 2009, p.97]

ArmA 2 isn’t just dogmatic and unforgiving – it’s also very awkward in its construction and the weight of its ambition frequently proves too much for the sometimes-brilliant main campaign to pull off. Nonetheless, its vast, detailed world and unapologetic dynamism turn the game from sandbox to snowglobe – something you can’t resist shaking up just to see how it looks.