Awful controls overshadow everything. [July 2018, p.80]

Vampyr has a bold and ambitious concept at its heart, but the execution is sorely lacking, so while it may be packed with good intentions, it's not really worth the effort. [July 2018, p.68]

Misguided, unfair and boring: a poor mix. [Issue#200, p.76]

An overpriced, underdeveloped disappointment. [Issue#199, p.79]

The dull broken side of medieval busywork. [Issue#198, p.72]

As a game, it's an unfocused, erratic, undeniably loud but ultimately hollow franchise entry where an excess of energy has been mistaken for excitement. [Issue#195, p.84]

An infuriating slog hurt by its own structure. [Issue#195, p.80]

The game is a weak attempt to get your money, by patronising and giving you exactly what you expect... An ugly game that's affecting all its attitude. [Issue#191, p.76]

While SFII itself is obviously still brilliant, there's nothing about this bare-bones package that even nearly does Capcom's classic justice. [Issue#189, p.83]

Getting to the handful of good puzzles Syberia 3 has isn't worth it for all the rubbish you'll have to wade through. This is a jittery, stuttering, mess of a videogame. [Issue#188, p.80]

A really disappointing waste of the 40K license. [Issue#184, p.84]

Entirely unremarkable. [Issue#182, p.81]

A tech demo for the Move controllers disguised as a VR Game. [Issue#180, p.48]

While it might be a communism simulator at heart, its roots in capitalism couldn't be much more obvious or off-message. [Issue#179, p.81]

For games so wholly focused on delivering key emotional beats and complex narratives, the presentation and optimisation leaves a lot to be desired.

Dull, repetitive and boring. Don't buy this. [Issue#177, p.81]

At least Resi can't get any worse than this. [Issue#177, p.78]

An offhand effort that adds little to the series. [Issue#172, p.87]

Assassin’s Creed couldn’t afford another step in the wrong direction, and yet, here we are again. ACC: Russia is still a few weeks away, but Climax will seriously need to re-evaluate its core systems and mechanics to give it a chance to succeed. Chronicles was a leap of faith for Ubisoft; this time there isn’t a bail of hay there to break the fall.

Promises much, but just doesn't deliver. [Issue#170, p.94]

Somewhere buried within The Sky Soldier is the kernel of an idea that defies gravity, as well as our expectations. Sadly, despite Naka’s best intentions, Rodea never hits those heights.

Consistently, SAO:LS made us feel frustrated and a little ashamed with ourselves for actually sitting through it. Die-hard fans of the franchise may find something to enjoy thanks to the relentless fan-service but others would do better to go and actually play an MMORPG.

Nowhere near the level of 2K's NBA productions. [Issue#168, p.90]

This game is about breasts. That's it. There really isn't anything deeper to it, not at all. [Issue#167, p.97]

Activision and Robomodo should, frankly, be ashamed of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. If promises to fix the game are met and it, eventually, becomes a more faithful entry to the classic series, the Birdman’s last outing will still go down in history as an absolute hatchet job.

Neither offensive nor agreeable. [Issue#167, p.88]

Poor graphics and tedious gameplay. [Issue#164, p.93]

It should have been a cause for celebration that an EA Sports game review has forced us to abandon the well-worn ‘It’s like last year but slightly better!’ template, yet Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is like two years ago but significantly worse. Not nearly good enough, especially for a game whose slogan is ‘golf without limits’.

It is without a point. It fires its Uzi rounds aimlessly and manages to hit nothing. It’s not bad, it’s not horrific, it’s not reprehensible and it’s not memorable either.

It offers all the right elements that the genre needs, but fails to utilise them in any particularly original, entertaining or - indeed - working state. [Issue#162, p.112]

Despite its clever purpose it's lacking in execution and duration. [Issue#162, p.105]

Boasts little to enthral any but the most diehard of fans. [Issue#162, p.100]

The game is a shambles aesthetically. The visuals are perpetually murky and washed-out, and there’s barely any sense of attentive design; dim corridors lead to dim rooms that lead to more dim corridors.

You'll have a few hours of fun but by the time its YouTuber-friendly novelty factor wears off you'll have decided it's far from the best thing since sliced bread. [Issue#161, p.104]

What's truly disappointing is that there are seeds of greatness here. [Issue#161, p.94]

Unwritten Tales 2 comes up unfavourably when compared to the classic games it tries to emulate, contemporary titles that have tried to do a similar thing, à la Broken Sword 5, and games that have tried to modernise the genre such as The Walking Dead. In that context, it would perhaps have been better if those ‘unwritten tales’ remained as such.

Controls feel a little unwieldy. [Issue#160, p.105]

The Deer God attempts to give meaning to death but fails to deliver. [Issue#159, p.106]

There's just not much of a game here. [Issue#159, p.104]

The Order clearly sees itself as some sort of bridge between the world of games and cinema, but it fails miserably to create the essence, tones or rewards offered by either medium.

Even if you could play Funk Of Titans on your phone, for free, it is so ludicrously sketchy and tedious that it would still be impossible to recommend. So on Xbox One, for the positively gaudy introductory asking price? No way, José.

The narrated "found footage" was a novel idea, but the developers should have held onto it until they had something interesting to say. [Issue#157, p.126]

Not fixing the irritating failures of past games, however, is inexcusable at this point and indicates a game produced only to sell a few units in the Christmas rush. [Issue#156, p.124]

Creation options also feel somewhat limited, particularly as you can't create a female wrestler. [Issue#156, p.116]

If Black Flag was a self-contained explosion of quick-witted brilliance, Assassin's Creed: Unity is nowt but wreckage. Stand aside. [Issue@155, p.99]

Levels are exercises in banal repetition. [Sept 2014, p.106]

Firefall quickly wears out its welcome; beaten to the punch by games like Tribes Ascend and the aforementioned Planetside 2. There’s still space for a PvE focused take on open world combat, and in time, this could well fill it. For now though, it’s a few well engineered systems in search of a game that fully deserves them.

The central mechanic barely works. [Sept 2014, p.122]

To judge Enemy Front as a sum of its parts reveals it to be an FPS fraud - a pretender. [Sept 2014, p.104]

The whole experience isn’t awful, just thoroughly uninspiring; a box of biscuits where some are moldy and all are digestive. It’s fun to be a pirate, but it’s far, far more fun elsewhere, with Risen 3 once again struggling and failing to rise above anything but its own mediocrity.

It’s hard to understand why the game exists. Did Gaiman desperately want to attach himself to an ugly, boring puzzle game? Did the Odd Gentleman really think this was the best way to display his work? It’s more of a mystery than the actual story of Wayward Manor itself.

Rise Of The Dark Spark feels rushed: a mess of half-baked ideas and sloppy execution that’s put Transformers on the same track as the Spider-Man games, approaching the point of no return.

The gameplay mechanics are uninspired and borderline on being broken entirely. [Issue#150, p.123]

The first great sniper-themed shooter still hasn’t arrived.

Shows some potential, but ultimately uninspiring. [Issue#149, p.122]

Certainly different and endearing, but struggles to keep up with the initial momentum. [Issue#149, p.116]

So unoriginal, it'll be tough to restrain yourself from rolling your eyes. [Issue#148, p.108]

The biggest question you'll be left asking is why the Amazing Spider-man 2 exists. [Issue#148, p.102]

From a player's perspective, feels sadly misjudged. [Issue#147, p.123]

Bluth's journey concludes with a choice, but you'll have to repeat the journey to see the other ending. The prospect of spending two more hours with this self-pitying drunk may be too much for even Spate's Kickstarter backers to take. [Issue#147, p.121]

It's only when the game reaches Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, the weakest of the movies, that the game boasts moments of genuine enjoyment. [Issue#146, p.119]

The cut and paste character models, with their misshapen limbs and dead eyes, together with the inconsistently sampled audio, combine to provide a experience that frequently feels cheap and in places is just downright nasty – a VHS knock off when, in this day and age, you would at least have expected a DVD remaster.

It's not broken, it's just dull. A disservice to the excellent franchise. [Issue#143, p.119]

A disappointment. [Issue#143, p.119]

This is a real party pooper. [Issue#143, p.111]

Fighter Within nearly manages to unravel all its hard work with a few misplaced punches to the groin. [Issue#143, p.108]

Reliance on simple motion controls is bound to put off the more serious sports fans. [Issue#142, p.119]

Simply a bit boring. [Issue#142, p.92]

The combat ideas are awfully implemented. [Issue#141, p.108]

A lazy attempt at translating farming tasks to trivial gameplay. [Issue#140, p.119]

Overall, Farming Simulator does not feel like a simulator – if the point of the game is to offer a realistic experience of what it’s like to run a farm, the game fails: people never fatigue (your staff will work straight through the 24-clock if left unattended), livestock produce is harvested by AI automatically and there’s a few game-breaking exploits that completely undermine the game.

Cheap on every level. [Issue#139, p.116]

It's a shame the buggy controls make fighting through it a chore. [Issue#139, p.115]

Hasn't soured our memories of the original completely. [Issue#139, p.114]

There's the hollow shell of a game. [Issue#137, p.116]

A few hours ambling around this vapid environment is far too long. [Issue#136, p.113]

It's as if the developer simply ceased to care, or ran out of time, or both. Who knows? What we do know is that Terminal Velocity has crafted something truly loathsome and undeserving of its heritage. [Issue#135, p.108]

Certainly, many of Colonial Marines’ flaws could have been excusable back in the early days of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but now, when every title is polished to a near excruciating level of quality, it just doesn’t cut it.

Omerta will certainly keep you occupied for long periods of time, but only if you’re punishing your attention span. The world itself is quick to drop you into the 1920’s experience, but never amounts to anything more than a lifeless shell. Factor in some embarrassing voice acting, painful writing and a reluctance for Omerta to ever truly let itself go wild with its concepts, and all you’ll left with is a hollow time consuming experience.

Declassified is a sorry way to end 14 years of coding history at Nihilistic. The kindest thing you can say about it is that it's a reasonably authentic facsimile of the Call Of Duty blueprint, yet it feels like the work of an artist who is painstakingly tracing a masterpiece but lacks the craft to replicate the magical that made the original so attractive in the first place.

Nostalgia can be an intoxicating thing, but in the case of this iPad outing it's simply not powerful enough to overcome the boredom borne of run-of-the-mill design. Eternia? More like eternally dull.

It's not a horror experience. There are attempts to slap on some kind of Silent Hill-esque story to everything, but it's utterly worthless. Silent Hill: Book Of Memories is a shallow dungeon-crawler, with even the likes of Dungeon Hunter: Alliance providing more fun. It is, in short, a failure; not the sort of thing we want from Silent Hill, nor the sort of thing we want for the Vita.

There are times when nostalgia wins out; when you realise this is an actual Cannon Fodder sequel, but that's quickly squashed down and washed away by a glitchy, boring and hugely underwhelming experience. In fairness, it's nowhere near as bad as might have been expected. But saying that about a game doesn't mean it's at all good.

If seeing The Dark Knight Rises has inspired you to put the cape back on, do yourself a favour and go back to either of Rocksteady's games instead. Because this one is wearing hockey pads.

It highlights Kinect's flaws rather than showcases its strengths, sending out one, clear, reverberating message – Kinect simply isn't refined enough to unite the hardware with the hardcore.

By journey's end, it's only a passing interest in the increasingly intriguing story that holds attention. Indeed, this is a deeply flawed and overly ambitious attempt for a developer unable to grasp the genre basics. Its only real triumph is that it doesn't completely tarnish the licence's sterling reputation.

There's no doubt that you'll find a lot of praise for Episode II out there, since it addresses the physics issues with the first episode so well, but games™ can't honestly recommend a game so under-developed on quality controls alone.

There are some laughs to be had at its expense, and everything here works, but that's absolutely all it does. [Issue#122, p.110]

Shoddy combat racing. [Issue#122, p.105]

Fundamental control niggles mean very few players will persevere to unlock everything DP has to offer. [Issue#122, p.104]

It's a trudge of a game, and while it performs its chosen task moderately well, it's about as ambitious and captivating as a drizzle-soaked walk to the local shop.

It comes nowhere close to living up to its title's protestations. [Issue#121, p.112]

A truly disappointing sequel. [Issue#121, p.104]

Kinect Star Wars is a hodgepodge of ideas that, either through the Kinect's limited functionality or slipshod execution, simply aren't cohesive enough to deliver the Star Wars experience that fans demand. Our advice? Go outside and pick up a stick.

Outside of novelty value, there's little reason why anyone should pick this up with their Vita over the vastly superior WipEout 2048. [Issue#119, p.97]

It's repetitive, monotonous, and just plain boring. [Issue#119, p.94]

The animation is clunky and below par, but the art direction is quite good, in a lowbrow, pulp comic book kind of a way. The script is trite, and music and voice acting both well below par, but you still couldn't accuse it of being a technical shambles. Design wise, though, it's formulaic, tedious and messy.

A gutless turn for a franchise that prides itself on being the exact opposite. [Issue#118, p.115]