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

Not a patch on the big screen version. [Jan 2010, p.115]

Guns spit out bullets with little heft and explosions feel like gentle farts in the wind rather than loud, powerful releases of energy.

Poorly conceived structures supporting too little new content mean this is, sadly, a great waste. [Feb 2015, p.86]

Great songs, shonky game. [Feb 2011, p.97]

They've proved themselves capable of better than this.

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

[A] musty romp. [Feb 2016, p.87]

A scabby swab that plumbs the depps. [July 2007, p.100]

A belated hit-and- myth successor to a SNES cult classic that doesn’t quite hit its mark. [Issue#181, p.79]

As a box set it's just over-packaged and over-priced nostalgia. [Dec 2012, p.97]

This is one unnecessary relic that can be safely re-buried. [Apr 2014, p.89]

Much of Front Mission Evolved is simply surviving until the next repair kit, and there's not enough customisation to make the online battles truly compelling. However, that saving grace - the intense, supersized combat - should be enough to see you through the short single-player campaign.

Some great ideas, but derezzes in its execution.

Score whores will be entertained for a while. [Aug 2007, p.100]

At just under £20, The Church In The Darkness feels disappointingly insubstantial. [Issue#182, p.86]

Lost Planet 3's basic competence doesn't mask an almost complete reliance on recycled fetch quests. Its story ends on a relative high, but once the pace finally picks up in the final couple of hours, it's much too late and the 14-hour slog to get there isn't worth the payoff.

Gloriously shallow co-op shooting. [July 2013, p.79]

You can create your own general from scratch. [Apr 2015, p.79]

Lacking tension, variety and punctuation, Blade Kitten is a pretty cutscene sandwich with no filling. [Issue#66, p.101]

Ninja Gaiden serves up some Hollywood setpieces with a rock-solid combat system. Forgive the hyperactive cameraman and choose the right difficulty, because the wrong one will ruin your game.

A third-person action-adventure with the beating black heart of a survival horror, Alone in the Dark is a game that needs to be experienced by everybody. Its novel approach of applying shocks into an episodic structure, eight hourly segments in all, is a masterstroke.

With a bit of fine-tuning, Powerslide could be a championship contender. As it stands, it's still a few tweaks away from being truly race-ready.

More than ever, Dynasty Warriors feels like an uncomfortable timefart.

Half precision-shooter, half-acid trip, We Are Doomed is like two ends of different cars shunted together by an unscrupulous dealer. Sadly, it’s likely to fall apart around you when the going gets tough.

A glaring oversight. The turtles all differ, but there's no multiplayer option in the game, either in the main adventure or a separate mode. [May 2007, p.92]

Bang goes the potential. [Sept 2012, p.103]

There's nothing here to make this anything other than an entirely missable Halloween-themed distraction. [Christmas 2013, p.111]

The best fitness game around. [Feb 2015, p.79]

Vigilante 8: Arcade is a glorious throwback to a simpler age in gaming, one that older gamers can appreciate and younger gamers can discover. It will only be as fun for as long as the Live community is there to support it but it's damn fun, so jump on while it lasts.

Passable, but there are better alternatives. [May 2008, p.92]

We think it's too unforgiving, but try telling that to the people who've maxed out the scoreboard! [Jan 2007, p.97]

If you've got the space, get involved. [Christmas 2011, p.107]

Very little new to see here. [Feb 2011, p.97]

A real shame. It's a good concept for a game, let down by poor gameplay and a story that isn't interesting or told well enough to seek out.

Scrappy and limited, this is a disappointing return for a gaming classic. [Sept 2017, p.89]

Not as special as it thinks it is. [Apr 2013, p.89]

A fun concept, but the lack of depth turns it into a snorkelling trip rather than an undersea odyssey. [Aug 2008, p.95]

A light but worthwhile fitness game. [Feb 2011, p.99]

There's no online play, use of the camera is minimal, the only things you unlock are extra difficulty levels for the mini-games that already exist, and it just feels a little bare. Maybe wait until it drops to the £15 mark, then by all means give it a whirl.

A by-the-numbers recreation of the show. [Feb 2012, p.103]

We'd rather be hit by lightning than play Bolt. [May 2009, p.95]

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

Facile puzzles. [Nov 2015, p.87]

For a more exciting game, try playing Scrabble. Alone. [March 2016, p.87]

The end fight where you have to plug every single enemy and boss before facing the unfairly tough villain is the stuff of legends...Co-op play is essential if you want to finish the game. [Feb 2007, p.100]

Looks generic, but plays fresh. [Apr 2011, p.109]

The Six Nations Championship brings fresh hope that we might finally get a great rugby game, but this engaging effort fails to convert where it counts.

Contender for the dullest game ever made. [May 2008, p.93]

The best thing that can be said about ProStroke Golf...is that you can speed through a game pretty efficiently. [Issue#65, p.97]

It's so much easier to forgive glitches, outdated visuals and flick-book framerate when you've got a friend laughing at them too, but this doesn't mean we should forgive them. Should Riptide wash up on your shore, you'd best throw in back in.

Though admirable in ambition, it doesn't quite deliver the punch we'd wanted. [October 2018, p.90]

A jack of all military trades that could have been master of one. [July 2017, p.79]

Compellingly creepy and narratively stimulating, but poorly served by its puzzles. [April 2017, p.84]

Ditches tricks for a succession of lame ideas that don't belong anywhere near a biking game. [Sept 2016, p.87]

Loss of (creative) control. [Mar 2010, p.96]

The only thing this is good for is scrap. [May 2012, p.97]

This is more disappointing than a pearl-less oyster. [Oct 2015, p.74]

A handful of clever ideas hamstrung by poor execution that leaves the game a tedious grind. [Issue#178, p.86]

Feels unfinished. [Jan 2015, p.84]

It represents the sport in a grittier light than the super-polished Fight Night series.

With cheap presentation, bland art and pratfalls so lacking in impact that it's not even fun to fail, Pumped BMX+ is a bare-bones port that struggles to earn its place on the big screen. [Dec 2015, p.86]

Does a few good things, but is horribly basic compared to other big sporting titles. [Christmas 2017, p.90]

One for hardcore collectors only. [Aug 2007, p.101]

While it's a quick-fix burst of fun, the fact SkyHeroes is a kids' game isn't an excuse to be this shallow. [Issue#66, p.98]

Not the home run we'd hoped for. [June 2012, p.96]

A decent port of the classic board game. [Mar 2009, p.93]

A playable and competent - if lightweight - crack at a Left 4 Dead style shooter. [October 2018, p.78]

Like being trapped in a barrel of monkeys. [June 2011, p.103]

Critical flaws in every major respect, then, and yet it just about hangs together. There's an affecting moodiness to it, a real satisfaction when you do chain together several silent kills, and the low-tech 1940s setting lends a refreshing purity to the sneak 'em up genre. With a little more polish, further adventures for Violette could well be to die for.

Enough to make Blackbeard retire. [Dec 2012, p.97]

A functional if predictable four-player beat 'em up. Does everything you'd expect from a Turtles game, but nothing more. [April 2006, p.88]

Guilty pleasure - with emphasis on guilty. [Oct 2010, p.111]

A dated and repetitive shooter. [July 2007, p.105]

Two above-average games receive a sadly below-average port. [Oct 2015, p.86]

Perfect for quick blasts of fun. [Jan 2010, p.112]

Overall, though, with its fundamentally flawed handling, glitchy physics and a tendency for the game to just play itself, Sonic Riders is a huge disappointment. [April 2006, p.84]

This is never going to be the game that sets the world alight or is a critical success - but it is far from a cheap cash in like many party games, and might just prove the right direction for Rare's misjudged franchise.

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

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]

Pretty ugly, but it has a nice personality. [Sept 2008, p.84]

It's not entirely run-of-the-mill. [Aug 2008, p.85]

Sadly, we've Scene It all before. [Apr 2010, p.107]

Sloppy effort. Such as disappointment. [Sept 2007, p.104]

Shrek the turd, more like. [Sept 2007, p.106]

Somehow Dynasty Warriors 9 fails to meet even the lowest expectations.

Speeder Bikes are unresponsive to the point of fury, and the one-on-one duels don't respond to your attacks in anywhere near as satisfying a way as the exploding droids. The assault courses are fine, but easily rehearsed, and there's nothing in this game that convinces me that anyone making it thought it was actually a good idea. There are flashes of inspiration that make it genuinely likeable - but it fails, and hard, as a forty pound game.

The result is that the game's flow shudders and starts - a ponderous affair punctuated by sudden bouts of extremely messy and imprecise combat.

You're expected to know who these characters are, you're expected to know why certain plot twists are a big deal and you're expected to be excited when a character from Zeta Gundam interacts with one from Turn-A Gundam.

Another failed idea is the ability to pick up items littering the different districts and use them as weapons. [June 2007, p.93]

"it's for fans" isn't a good enough excuse. [Christmas 2011, p.105]

Crimson Dragon entertains most when it's the power fantasy it wants to be - when you're mopping up streams of curious beasts from an early level, with credits and items flying into your backpack as you 100% a level. When you're beset, besieged, and bullied by streams of incoming missiles, you feel cheated rather than challenged, and the beckoning gem shop makes the process feel dirty.

A puzzler homage to Portal that’s arguably better to read than it is to actually play. [Issue#186, p.83]

A monotonous one-note brawler. [Apr 2013, p.87]

Old, tired and uninspired. [Jan 2008, p.99]

The tennis is good when your'e in a match. You feel like you're really in control of the game thanks to the array of shots at your disposal, but the pace of it and the euthanasia-like tedium of the Pro Tour will put most players off after half an hour. [Aug 2008, p.84]

The gameplay is riddled with bug-induced frustration, uninspiring combat and a sluggish control system that lacks any kind of invention. [Mar 2007, p.88]

Funny at times, but not a lot of fun to play, metal wolf chaos feels too much like a relic. [Issue#182, p.85]