Super Bomberman R doesn’t ruin the classic B-Man recipe, but with a price tag as big as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you can’t help feeling this is a digital-only arcade title with the wrong price stuck to its box.

The best way to enjoy Heroes Of Ruin is most definitely with three friends, but to highlight this as a selling point would be to assume there are going to be people out there with three friends who also own the game, and that will get together and plough hours at a time into it. Realistically, this will rarely happen, and as a single-player looter, Heroes Of Ruin, fairly enjoyable though it is, fails to show the invention necessary to justify its own existence.

If you own any of the three previous Bomberman DS titles – or indeed any Bomberman game since the first SNES Super Bomberman – then the only new experiences on offer here are found in the mini-games and story. [May 2008, p.122]

For those who haven't played a Tales game before, we'd suggest there are better options out there. [Issue#147, p.118]

Parallel Lines is a stylish game; everything from the cut-scenes and dialogue to the excellent soundtrack has been constructed meticulously to produce an almost Tarantino simulacrum of 1970s Americana. [Apr 2006, p.108]

The opportunity to play it all over again, along with the unconventional Metal Slug 6 (in its home debut), makes this collection a joy to play through and exceptional value for money. If only its controls were perfect. [Feb 2007, p.120]

The laboured cut-scenes could be replaced by a title card that simply says 'Whatever'. [July 2010, p.116]

Despite a veritable host of respectable changes and additions, this still can't live up to the standards of the original game. An improvement over the last console effort, but with so much more potential than is actually realised, Bustin' Out still disappoints a little. [Christmas 2003, p.126]

The Urbz feels like a step back for the franchise; despite EA's efforts to bring gamers a 'console exclusive' there's not a lot on offer here. Fans won't find anything new, but newcomers may well discover the pleasure of the series and seek out EA's back catalogue of simulated lifestyles. [Christmas 2004, p.114]

If you’ve the patience, Monster Hunter is worth a look – just don’t expect to fall in love with it immediately. [June 2006, p.132]

A compelling story but mundane survival gameplay. [Issue#204, p.68]

It’s the videogame equivalent of a firework show: you’ll marvel at the pyrotechnics, but while your eyes and ears are in for a treat, there’s little here to engage your brain.

While the accessible arcade action delivers thrill-a-minute multiplayer dogfights, over time the game's inherent lack of substance becomes increasingly evident. [Dec 2003, p.121]

A significant break from the torrent of recent Xbox Live Arcade shovelware. [Aug 2008, p.113]

In order to get any challenge or satisfaction from Rebellion's dustbowl shooter, it must be tackled on the hardest difficulty setting right away; only then will Black Hawk Down demonstrate any of the depth or well-implemented tactical elements it has to offer. [Sept 2005, p.110]

When only a couple of challenges require you to break the million point barrier, only the weakest players will have trouble acing the game in hours. [Christmas 2005, p.107]

Spider-Man 2 emerges as not only a movie licence that eschews the 'fast-buck' approach, but as an enjoyable game in its own right – which is chiefly a testament to just how compelling it is to have superpowers and a vast city in which to show them off. [Sept 2004, p.118]

The atmosphere is electric, the sense of making tiny in-roads to solve a great problem as satisfying as it is frustrating... Spark never allows you to forget that outside the restrictive confines of the first-person viewpoint there's a much, much bigger fight going on involving thousands of men. [Jan 2005, p.110]

Bizarre inconsistencies. [Issue#141, p.106]

Overall, Battle Of The Bands proves a novel, if slightly cumbersome, addition to the rhythm-action genre. [June 2008, p.118]

Touch & Roll is a fun package, but the control problems force you to all but disregard the main game and treat it, instead, as a collection of mini-games. [Mar 2006, p.102]

ReCore is breezier, smarter and more accessible than a lot of its moneyed, would-be contemporaries. Traversing its empty open world is a chore, but when the game carries you indoors and places you inside one of its finely tuned dungeon-style levels, it’s unquestionably good, old-fashioned fun.

On the occasions when the game flows it's possible to produce some breathtaking football, but all too often the game slows to a crawl and it's extremely difficult to produce anything like a constructive passing move. [Nov 2005, p.116]

It's an open world that's not open, a Zelda game with no wit or brain power, and a God Of War clone without bite. [Feb 2010, p.122]

Unfortunately, though the multiplayer game is certainly better than the experience offered by playing alone, it has its own flaws that turn what could have been great fun into something lacklustre. Perhaps if Square Enix had tried something a bit more traditional rather than being blinded by Nintendo's claim that connectivity is the way forward, this wouldn't have been the case. [Mar 2004, p.102]

EA has turned it into a story about gain. Whereas the motive of violence was once to illustrate Michael’s downward spiral, here it is merely a tool with which to boost your bank balance. [May 2006, p.118]

A disappointment, there's no two ways about it. The scares just aren't there – we live in a post-Amnesia world, so we know it's possible for FPSs to terrify – and the rest of the action is so utterly standard it strays into boring territory more than we hoped it would. A more interesting co-op mode and the competitive, point-based leaderboards covering both single and multiplayer drag it out of average territory, but generally speaking we fear this is a missed opportunity.

Fun but equally frustrating. [Jan 2008, p.132]