A by-the-numbers budget shooter with very little in the way of spark. Not a total stinker, but hardly worth your cash either. [June 2006, p.69]

Football without rules equals a mess. Add some crap gameplay and annoying animations and it's a complete joke. [April 2006, p.94]

It's cheap, but so is Jodie Marsh and we wouldn't shuffle her deck with yours. [April 2006, p.93]

Tries to address fans' wishes, but wobbles under the weight of its hollow generosity. [June 2016, p.86]

Entertaining in small doses but that's about it. [Feb 2010, p.111]

Do yourself a favour and pick up a decent shooting game, or a head injury, anything's better than this - because otherwise you'll only encourage the creators to churn out another similarly disappointing movie license in six months time.

Paper armies are all the rage these days; this is just enraging. [Jan 2015, p.89]

The problem that this and indeed any retro shooter has nowadays is Bizarre Creations 2D tour de force, Geometry Wars. Still one of our Xbox Live download favourites, Galaga by comparison is a poor substitute.

It's a waste of some fairly pleasant graphics. [July 2012, p.105]

Sadly, the one time we really enjoyed ourselves was watching a bullet sink into a camel's buttock. [Aug 2013, p.87]

A terribly slim idea for a game, with none of the slick execution, elegant scoring or busy leaderboards to make you want to improve, or even bother trying again. [May 2014, p.93]

Turgid storytelling, poorly explained mechanics and abysmally unoptimised code. [Sept 2017, p.86]

And it's a testimony to their patience and kind-heartedness that they didn't punch us in the face for wasting an evening of their precious, finite life.

It's hard to overlook the lack of a killer hook. [Dec 2014, p.87]

The wobbly plot and hateful characterisation could be forgiven were The Cartel's shooting superlative. It's not. Guns feel flimsy, and enemies stick fastidiously to cover, hopping up and down and waiting to die.

For all its promise, this is another entirely superfluous superhero game. [June 2008, p.70]

Your moves are clumsy, and unresponsive. Arenas wear you out, rather than challenge you. Boss battles are overwrought and underwhelming. The God at the climax of the Land of the Dead is defeated by a drawn-out process of ranged health-whittling and dodge-rolling.

But Despite the artful simplicity of the game we just can't justify paying money for this. Throwback kudos and nostalgia value aside, the game involves too little skill in comparison to the likes of Joust or the aforementioned "Geometry Wars."

Don't be seduced by the trendy soundtrack or gnarly subtitle; there are already too many fantastic racing games fighting for space on the pre-owned racks.

Quantum of Solace never manages to be a Bond game: at the tiniest of nudges, it panics and starts unleashing gunfire. It's clumsy, it's messy, it's not much fun and most of the time, it's not even the right film.

Like Roman Reigns, it looks the part, but the wrestling is rubbish. Scrap this and start again, 2K. [Christmas 2016, p.86]

Any Temple Run player will be familiar with the basic premise, and Infinity Runner does little to shake things up – instead delivering trial-and-error gameplay, dodgy production values and repeated.

Fiddly mechanics and non-intuitive gameplay make this a niche within a niche. [Christmas 2016, p.90]

This is impossible to get excited about. [Jan 2014, p.84]

Lock it to a railing and leave it there. [Sept 2013, p.91]

A promising start gives way to an underbaked story and clunky survival mechanics.[Issue#225, p.87]

A frustrating, joyless platformer that buries its few good ideas under apathetic nostalgia. [Sept 2016, p.77]

Amiable adventure game that gets more annoying as it drags towards its lacklustre end. [Sept 2016, p.79]