Its attempt at being a jack-of-all-trades could seem quite appealing to gamers who casually approach the driving genre. Connoisseurs, on the other hand, will own the highest quality examples of each trade that do the job better, leaving R: Racing Evolution feeling mostly redundant. [Mar 2004, p.98]

Ultimately, Shattered Union is just too frustrating to be enjoyable. Its accessibility problems are crippling and even after you've got to grips with how the game works, it still feels unbalanced and confusing. [Dec 2005, p.127]

The core game is as playable and entertaining as any platform game to have been released since the original Ape Escape, and despite control issues there’s still a whole lot of monkey’s to be caught and a whole lot of fun to be had doing it. [June 2005, p.102]

The action is fast and furious. [Issue#162, p.102]

While boredom can set in as you perform the same handful of actions time and time again, there is just enough variety to keep you entertained. [Issue#165, p.98]

The core of the title has been removed, and, thanks to this, thoughts of extended appeal and any sort of depth soon become void and Point Blank shows itself for the glorified mini-game that it actually is. [Sept 2006, p.121]

Good for a quick burst of fun in the short term, but gamers looking for a test of skill would be better off playing Angry Birds. Yes, really. [Issue#115, p.98]

Re:coded is content to meander, offering only patronising tweaks to what we once enjoyed about the youngster-friendly mash-up franchise. [Issue#105, p.112]

Another Code R commits all the same crimes a bad novel would: the dialogue is uninteresting, the characters unlikeable, the pace slow and the premise so uninspiring that you soon lose the motivation to see what happens next. [Sept 2009, p.122]

The fun and invention at the heart of Ghost Pirates make it a marginal improvement over the equally likable A Vampyre Story. [Apr 2010, p.126]

Interesting political jaunt, but can feel repetitive. [Issue#170, p.96]

It doesn't justify the time investment. [Issue#148, p.127]

Neo Contra sees the series willing to move into a brave new world, but on this evidence it hasn’t put it’s best foot forward. [Feb 2005, p.92]

Could have been a much more adventurously designed PlayStation3 debut for the series. Sadly, Armored Core 4 represents a great opportunity, missed. [Mar 2007, p.106]

The resource management and skill chasing on offer is sound, but everything else is repetitive, undemanding, and forgettable. [Oct 2008, p.110]

Heavy on parlour tricks but lacking any real substance. [Issue#136, p.112]

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

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

Battles soon take their toll on your controllers due to their frenetic nature and generally lack the strategy or refinement of many other mechanical adventures. [July 2004, p.110]

Great game when it works like it should – but is that a disclaimer we should really tolerate?

There's an alarming lack of polish, with characters looking more like rough sketches than finalised art and only boasting a few frames of animation. The storyline is also hard to follow thanks to roughshod translation and there are difficulty spikes to test the patience of any gamer.

Alien Vs. Predator does a few things right, a whole lot wrong, and somehow manages to feel inferior to a game that Rebellion made ten years ago. [Apr 2010, p.132]

Single-player falls down only by virtue of the fact that repetition of missions is crucial to progress, although with such a clear multiplayer focus, it's no surprise that this is the highlight. [June 2009, p.120]

This is the first James Bond game of the century in which we met the final credits regretting the unexplored potential. Bravo. [Christmas 2008, p.120]

Captures the 16-big feel, but falls short. [July 2018, p.83]

Think of a bug that has annoyed you at some point throughout the videogame-playing years of your life and it’s more than likely that Two Worlds has suffered from it at some stage. [Nov 2007, p.114]

It appears to be aiming for family gaming, but just a little more depth would give it more longevity. What’s here is good, but not worth running to the shops to buy.

While the sequel doesn’t exactly surpass the original, it’s at least a fair crack at the boxing genre…Shame it’s still not as good as EA’s "Fight Night." [Nov 2004, p.119]