A novel premise wrapped in an awkward and repetitive survival slog.

A fiddly take on management, survival and city building that you can still lose a weekend to.

Fun hero designs and solid combat offer a promising start, but it needs to shed its grind and borderline game-breaking bugs.

An above-average time-killer for stupid-shooter fans who won't miss multiplay. [July 2003, p.70]

I'd really love to know how Corruption 2029 came to be. It feels like a very stripped down, bare bones game—a space for the designers to experiment with concepts in a turn-based tactics space. The big problem with Corruption 2029 is that the same developer put out a very similar game with the same strengths and far fewer shortcomings only two years ago. Fans of Mutant Year Zero might want to check it out to get a bit more of that stealth tactics fix, but anyone else should opt for its more illustrious predecessor.

The best fan experience for the series by far, but cut corners and poor design choices bog down an otherwise fun beat-em up.

We're especially tickled by the game's delightfully campy '50s-era moster-movie trailers used to introduce our origins, and how you can play the game in black-and-white. [May 2003, p.84]

Little more than a two-year-old repackaging job that fixes little and adds even less. [Jan 2004, p.107]

As a simulator, SimCity advances the achievements of SimCity 4, SimCity 3000, and SimCity 2000, but as a product, it is inferior to all of them. Constant connectivity does have benefits, such as leaderboards, worldwide challenges, and the Global Market, but it’s not even close to being worth the hassle for those features, and hardly touches the essence of what makes SimCity so diabolically addictive and engrossing.

Gods Will Be Watching is a very clever idea well executed; one that opts to avoid the branching and overt morality of most similar games in favour of simply asking you to judge yourself as you see fit.

Gory, beautiful chaos, if a little frustratingly rough behind the scenes. A good afternoon's chaos, and that's what matters.

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]

Starships isn’t terrible, but it isn’t the polished product you’d expect from a studio with Firaxis’ history. Comparing it to its full-scale PC competitors, like Endless Space and GalCiv is cruel, as it’s sub-par in every single regard: unbalanced, repetitive, badly explained, rather ugly, with a dreadful mobile phone UI, and buggy as hell. Even judged against Firaxis’ other mobile games, Civ: Rev and Ace Patrol, this is small and crude.

Delivers the bare minimum for an expansion pack. [Jan 2005, p.71]

An MMO for kids that doesn’t patronise. Accessible, sometimes repetitive, but with enough adventure to hold interest.

Strafe skillfully recaptures the look and experience of a full-tilt twitch 1990s shooter while faltering at building upon its potential.

Uneven, bleak and unflinching. You won't enjoy it, but it's one of a kind.

There's virtually no plot, and a lot of the mid-level game seems like a repeat of the novice-level game. [Jan 2005, p.84]

A nasty catch to playing C&C4 is having to log into EA’s servers before launching the game, even for single-player. Considering that EA recently shut down servers for the less than two-year-old Mercenaries 2, I’m not enthusiastic about buying a product that depends on active servers to play. The multiplayer battles are good enough fun once you’ve ranked up, but a potentially short-lived service is a dagger dangling over our heads.

A half-hearted recreation of some fun movies, with almost nothing to offer over its predecessor.

FBC: Firebreak's madcap mission conceits are delightfully silly, but balancing issues and limited replay value hinder the fun.

Sea of Solitude is a gorgeous adventure that knows its way around mental illness, but doesn't make great use of the medium to tell its story.

Beautiful as you could ask for, especially in VR, but exhaustingly repetitive. [Partially tested with VR]

Anyone who enjoys spy thrillers and retro settings should check out this oddball sneaker. [Jan 2005, p.55]

A good Metroidvania trapped in the shadow of too many better ones.

An ambitious attempt, but substandard physics and AI demote it to the B-list. [Sept 2005, p.62]

Die-hard Potter fans will thrill throughout to checking Hogwarts' huge and detailed environs, but Order of the Phoenix's repetitive gameplay will make many wish someone would cast an Avada Kedavara spell in their direction and put them out of their misery already. [Oct 2007, p.66]

Colorful characters alone can't wake up this sleepy sailing and farming adventure.