The gems that this sequel is connecting - the RPG and match-three puzzler - still need one more to complete the chain: character. [Oct 2010, p.94]

The game could do with a more flexible camera. When the tentacle outgrows the screen in Snake you find yourself failing for collisions you can't even see. [Aug 2010, p.98]

Exquisitely presented. [Sept 2010, p.100]

Wrist ache is inevitable, but it's the imprecision of the strength gauge that ends up causing the most pain. [Sept 2010, p.103]

Its concept feels almost thrown together. [Sept 2010, p.103]

Thoughtfulness pulls Toy Story 3 form the Pixar game mire. [Sept 2010, p.101]

Peerlessly classy, funny and perverse in the same breath, Peace Walker is the most surprising Metal Gear Solid to date.

The game's frustrations are notable, but never spoil the appeal of controlling that indefatigable little guy. [July 2010, p.100]

The game is its own worst enemy, as its fully featured hands-on action never quite sits comfortably with roleplaying combat. [July 2010, p.99]

Not bad for the unlikely sequel to a game hardly anyone played. [Sept 2010, p.96]

Is 2010 about the show or the sport? It is, like the UFC itself, ready to be both. This confidence is what makes it such a complete and compelling package – a great MMA sim, a near flawless UFC sim. In a year, it’s made the kind of studious jump that took FIFA almost ten.

A triumphant toolset attached to a decent stab at the karting genre

Provides too little in the way of engaging structure behind its exemplary racing to make it more than a series of thrilling rides. [July 2010, p.96]

Light Trax continues to zip along the fine line between puzzler and racer neatly. [Aug 2010, p.98]

This isn't a game that redefines the genre: this is one that rolls it up and locks it away.

So much of Aqua, though, feels merely like the crude payoff to a tank rush, your fire moving from one stubborn target to the next until victory is declared. [Aug 2010, p.99]

Ultimately, Alan Wake is every bit as compulsive and satisfying as the fiction on which it riffs, but it also runs the risk of being equally forgettable. It’s a game that delivers the requisite number of twists, turns and thrills, but the only real revelations take place on those scattered manuscript pages.

GTAIV's modern weapons spit bullets like angry hornets until a health circle depletes; here, lives end in uncompromising fashion. For the western aficionado, it is viciously accurate; for the fan of wanton sandbox carnage, it is comically frank.

GTAIV’s modern weapons spit bullets like angry hornets until a health circle depletes; here, lives end in uncompromising fashion. For the western aficionado, it is viciously accurate; for the fan of wanton sandbox carnage, it is comically frank.

Much like a summer movie blockbuster, Split Second offers thrills galore, but there's a hint of glossy superficiality to it, too...Yet there are few games in the genre that create quite so many sharp intakes of breath and instances of unintentionally barked profanity as this one, and sometimes that's what racing gaming is all about. [June 2010, p.96]

Atlus's surgery sim is in rude health. [July 2010, p.103]

Continues the series' longstanding struggle with combat mechanics. [July 2010, p.98]

The game's major flaw, however, is its brevity. [July 2010, p.105]

Commander Video needs to be the bigger rectangle and step aside for the two final planned installments. [July 2010, p.103]

At its best it's an engaging spectacle, but when it falters Lost Planet 2 is a gamble that doesn't pay off. [June 2010, p.94]

While refinement might be the best way to make a good game better, it certainly isn't the best way to justify the cost of a second sequel in as many years. [June 2010, p.101]

A curiosity. An inferior imitation of a two-decade-old series, it's nevertheless delivered with obvious affection for its inspiration and considerable charm of its own. [June 2010, p.105]

The game, though, is the same enjoyable knockabout romp that it ever was, and Gameloft has thankfully made no attempt to shoehorn touch-screen controls in unnecessarily. If you feel a burning urge to spend 500 points to relive some small part of your lost youth, you won't be disappointed.