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]

It's accomplished in its execution, but threatens to segregate the platform just as Harmonix seemed to be opening it up to all-comers. [Nov 2009, p.103]

Is Muramasa a luscious concept art gallery rudely interrupted by swordplay, or just a ponderous Ninja Gaiden clone. Whatever the case, it doesn't wholly succeed. [July 2009, p.99]

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]