An enticing premise held back by uneven pacing and glaring technical issues.

A mediocre romp through a muddied story, with acceptable breaks for engaging combat. [Nov 2002, p.140]

A frustrating action/strategy hybrid where you miss the action while flailing to control the strategy. [Mar 2004, p.67]

Homely, charmless graphics. [Aug 2006, p.91]

These offshoots are often rushed out in time for the opening of the film, designed to squeeze extra revenue from tired-eyed parents. They're rarely very good, and Arthur and the Invisibles fails to buck that trend. [Apr 2007, p.59]

Normally, I'd never suggest that a classic be tampered with, but in this case, it's a shame that Munch's Oddysee wasn't tweaked. [April 2011, p.73]

Even Abermore's cult of beetle worshippers would draw the line at this many bugs.

Blood Stone's short and uneven mission is no more than the sum of its parts. [Feb 2011, p.75]

Like a movie you'd only watch when your PC's fried and the cable's out, Fantasy Wars may satisfy a turn-based strategy fix when the well runs dry. [Mar 2008, p.78]

The combat is fun in parts and the characters grew on me, but so much more of Bound by Flame is tedious, frustrating, and unpolished.

Positioning yourself for combat is more enjoyable than the actual battles. [July 2005, p.58]

Combine the inability to skip cut scenes with a checkpoint save system, and you have the straw that broke the panda's back. [Oct 2008, p.67]

As a free-to-play game it's reasonably generous. [April 2017, p.91]

The main problem with Diggles is that all this micro-management take a long time to execute. [July 2002, p.73]

Both Holmes and Lupin deserve better than this middling. [Aug 2008, p.71]

This is a game about crashing that feels restrained, almost sterile. [Aug 2017, p.87]

Toss in some dated graphics, a clunky arcade flight component, and some carryover stability issues, and Pacific Storm: Allies just barely keeps itself afloat. [June 2008, p.72]

Floaty combat and repetition mean this cartoon brawler is never more than a pretty face.

Patience pays dividends, but won't cover these clubhouse fees. [Feb 2006, p.49]

Enjoyable arcade handling packaged within a game that gets monotonous long before it rewards your time investment.

And that's about all you get, aside from a few new toys, some forgettable items, and another unnecessary boost to the level cap. [Holiday 2011, p.75]

The shallow management quickly devolves into make-work. Toss in frustrating random hurricanes and fires, and you'll recall why you couldn't wait to graduate. [May 2004, p.73]

Despite an attractive veneer, Planet Alpha offers rote and shallow platforming. Try Playdead’s Inside instead.

At best, Randal's Monday has puzzles that professors at the Institute of Moon Logic would point to and ask "What the hell?" They're nonsensical, poorly explained, reliant on the most painful 'try everything on everything' guesswork, and feel longer than being strapped to a board until Stephen Hawking's voice synthesiser has read out the entire works of Dostoyevsky.

Masochistic stat-chasers will find much to enjoy, but Blackguards’ varied combat is no substitute for a fully-formed RPG.

Its individual parts are pure hit-and-miss, but if you overlook the misses and get on with killing bad guys, you'll have a good time. [July 2003, p.82]

Tiresome racer that only takes two hours to complete, yet somehow feels longer. That's both impressive and depressing.

Two new guns make it a bit too easy to fumigate entire rooms with a few quick blasts, and any hope for an exciting new challenge quickly melts away as I hobble towards the ambiguous, lackluster ending. [April 2011, p.79]