As you might expect, such breadth comes at the cost of a little finesse. [Issue#372, p.104]

Without seeking to damn a fine game with faint praise, another succinct design philosophy comes to mind: it just works. [Issue#372, p.100]

It's more sopping than soppy, then - despite and abundance of salt water, a game we had pegged as a surefire tearjerker never really comes close to making us well up. [Issue#371, p.122]

Those who like their puzzlers to have a supplementary hook will find it wanting on that front, then, but you will struggle to find more ingenious challenges than these in any other game this year. [Issue#371, p.121]

While Schneider may have moved onto 3D physics-based destruction in more recent years, there's something to be said for the enduring appeal of a 2D twin-stick shooter - and Devastator is a good one. [Issue#371, p.120]

Here's hoping we have bigger and deeper globe-trotting adventures with them in the future (provided we live to see it). [Issue#371, p.118]

Every one of its features you will find in better games elsewhere - with a strong emphasis on the plural, since Rune Factory 5 tries to cram in so many different genres. [Issue#371, p.116]

We struggle through, resisting the urge to trigger the final heist early. [Issue#371, p.114]

For all Tina's spirited efforts as dungeon master, every aspect of the Borderlands experience is showing its age. The next instalment needs more than dismal puns and wonky guns if it's to avoid being the butt of the joke. [Issue#371, p.112]

For all its minor shortcomings, if one of the main design goals of The Skywalker Saga was to make you fall in love with Star Wars again, on that particular front it is an unequivocal triumph. [Issue#371, p.110]

Regrets? Team Ninja may have a few. It's chartered course doesn't seem particularly well planned, nor its steps along the byway especially careful - and it certainly bites off more than it can chew. Yet while this curious, distinctive spin-off may not be close to the finest hour for its developer nor this storied series, its' makers can stand tall knowing that, to paraphrase Ol' Blue Eyes, they did it their way. [Issue#371, p.108]

For the duration of its story, it grips like a grasping, otherworldly arm. [Issue#371, p.104]

This means it's possible for a smaller team to craft a game of joyously intersecting rules. [Issue#371, p.100]

The process of mastering it? Let's just say it's not quite our tempo. [Issue#370, p.123]

A few dramatic sequences do land. [Issue#370, p.121]

Don't let the vibrant colours of this scene fool you: this is the world as seen in Combat Breaker, a brief period in which time slows down. As son as the meter runs out, it's back to the game's usual dusty dullness. [Issue#370, p.119]

No classic, then, but Smilegate has delivered a big, silly, characterful romp that's best experienced with friends. [Issue#370, p.118]

The sense of having travelled somewhere that games have never taken us before. [Issue#370, p.116]

We're ready to see what the future holds for The Creative Assembly after Total War. We're also, however, delighted by the studio's seemingly indefatigable ability to bend its own rules and brew up new playstyles, as it brings one of gaming's greatest licensed adaptations to a thunderous conclusion. [Issue#370, p.114]

This miserable wallow in the psyche of a traumatised young woman isn't so much horrifying, then, as simply unpleasant. [Issue#370, p.112]

Those who've never understood the appeal of Kirby are unlikely to be convinced by his move into 3D. But otherwise this compact, imaginative adventure is a low-key triumph, a work of great craft and wit that, unlike its lead, doesn't bite off more than it can chew. And it only leaves you hungry for more. [Issue#370, p.110]

This is a good expansion, a solid foundation for the next year of updates, and a lousy place for newcomers to start. [Issue#370, p.108]

The characters, however, are what make it sing. [Issue#370, p.106]

When Tunic gestures towards Zelda games of old, something it does with all the subtlety of an air traffic controller, it's indicating an attempt to chip away the intervening decades and get back to the feeling of playing those games for the first time, when they still held what seemed like bottomless mystery. [Issue#370, p.104]

Beyond its technical excellence, then, Gran Turismo 7 feels deeply, idiosyncratically personal in ways firstparty games rarely do. [Issue#370, p.100]

Not for the first time, a Miyazaki game has arrived and the landscape appears transformed. As you play, there is a sense of plates shifting beneath you, of the T&Cs of game development being hastily rewritten. We haven’t felt this way since “Breath of the Wild.” Here, as there, an open world means freedom and fresh air. [Issue#370, p.96]

Taking these works in hand isn't merely entertaining, it really does bring us closer to them - a clever touch. [Issue#369, p.123]

Playing Not For Broadcast for the first time is akin to having a waking nightmare. [Issue#369, p.121]