It's the first game we can recall, for instance, to feature a them tune comprising a single note. [Sept 2009, p.96]

A charming jaunt. [Sept 2009, p.94]

Far more polished than its ragged forebear. [Aug 2009, p.100]

A debut of rare success in the genre: one at once fresh yet familiar, both visually arresting and mechanically enticing. [Apr 2010, p.99]

Heroes consistently relies on its cartoon charm to plaster over its messier elements. [Sept 2009, p.92]

A clever game, then, but not a particularly fulfilling one. [Sept 2009, p.99]

Genre-defining as it is, the drama of Fight Night remains squarely within the ropes. [Aug 2009, p.103]

Nintendo is claiming that The Conduit might attract Halo fans to its console, but this game isn’t fit to wait Master Chief’s table.

Atlus succeeds in creating another idiosyncratic concoction of narrative and play, one that twists convention as often as it builds upon it. [Sept 2009, p.98]

The components here function and rarely frustrate, but the machine they comprise only manufactures mediocrity. [Sept 2009, p.95]

Even if some of the fundamental stuff has been sacrificed to the creation of this huge world, Fuel still makes it across the finish line on a far-from-empty tank. [July 2009, p.97]

A charming adventure, and a lengthy one, but the overwhelming amount of rough edges rather spoil any indulgent feelings toward its foibles. [Aug 2009, p.99]

So, then: the best expansion so far and the game at its worst. Such a contradiction could only be made by Bethesda.

Unite doesn’t offer the kind of transformation at its higher levels that you might expect – the essential purpose is the same throughout: kill monsters, craft new shin pads out of dino-bladders, and swap your pig’s wings for a magician’s hat. Nonetheless, these simple motivations give way to a huge depth of execution which empowers and requires four players.

With a little more in the way of technical polish and a few more hours of playtime thrown in, this would have been one of the best film-based games of all time. [July 2009, p.90]

As a script, Flower, Sun And Rain is, for at least two thirds, hugely witty and effortlessly mad, eliciting enough regular laughs to cover for the game's otherwise painfully tedious forms of interaction. [JPN Import; Dec 2008, p.96]

Let's Tap isn't merely innovative, it's an original concept applied over five distinct types of game that works extremely well. [Mar 2009, p.90]

A curiosity worth looking at. [Sept 2009, p.100]

Prototype does what it does, and does it with distinction. [Aug 2009, p.90]

Black Sigil's big-picture rewards are too fleeting and familiar to justify the considerable effort. [Sept 2009, p.101]

The poor relation of its canceled 360 and PS3 brothers. This is a stripped-down version of a game that never was, offering only fleeting glimpses of a magnificent concept through a console and engine that could never, even with four more years to work at it, have handled it. [Aug 2009, p.98]

Rock Band: Unplugged’s heart is genuine and soulful, evidence perhaps that, in game-making as much as music-making, it pays to never forget one’s roots.

Far more than just a quirky and adept multiplayer romp, then, Swords & Soldiers has found a deeply satisfying sweet-spot where chaos and control are almost perfectly balanced, and the result is a game that towers above everything else WiiWare currently has to offer.

Granted, this is hardly the most drastic of sequels, but it didn’t need to be: instead, it stands as an indicator that, even as the DSi heads ever deeper into the online space, on some level at least, it’s still business as usual.

In many ways, Trash Panic represents the kind of inventive, inimitable Japanese release that comes all too infrequently – but here, such creativity has not been enough to turn an interesting idea into a brilliant one.

For its fights alone Knights In The Knightmare is a worthy effort, another semi-successful attempt to find the sweet spot for stylus-driven roleplay. [July 2009, p.101]

Though the explosions scale with progress, and the act of detonation continues to be a giddy pleasure, Mars could do with a thicker atmosphere.

Though the explosions scale with progress, and the act of detonation continues to be a giddy pleasure, Mars could do with a thicker atmosphere.