Typography aside, Battle of Europe is an enjoyable game that simply fails to distinguish itself as a particularly great one. [Oct 2006, p.65]

It's not a bad game, and if you're one of the aforementioned strategy fans, you will likely enjoy it. [Nov 2009, p.76]

A solid game, but one that suffers somewhat from stilted gameplay and a cliched plot. [May 2009, p.74]

Those not expecting too much, who may be pining for an uncomplicated spin through familiar territory will certainly enjoy Tarr Chronicles, but it's no substitute for replaying the utterly fantastic and cheap, "FreeSpace 2." [Christmas 2007, p.92]

A money sucking expansion whore. [Oct 2010, p.88]

The multiplayer is what you'd expect: solid, if generic, shooting action around the levels that bored you in single-player. [Nov 2006, p.84]

If it is indeed the last gasp of C&C as we know it, it's an incredibly sad way to go out. With a little more money, a little more time and a whole lot more reverence for what makes C&C C&C, the tiny exploding acorn underneath this confused, scrawny thing could have become a mighty oak of modern strategy.

This is a tale best told on paper, if only because the book doesn't have such awful music and voice acting, and it isn't shoe-horned into a generic RPG template. [May 2008, p.88]

Homecoming is too old-fashioned and lacks the originality and tension that made the previous games so enjoyable. [Mar 2009, p.70]

BattleForge runs smoothly and is pretty enough, with a wide selection of large units to choose from. However, battles see you going up against the same units - the ones players have identified as being the best. So the only real variety BattleForge provides is on paper. [May 2009, p.73]

A few performance issues mar an otherwise fun little racer. [Aug 2010, p.87]

The game is very, very repetitive and very, very dumb, falling light years short of the novel's depth. [July 2009, p.77]

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, this kind of last-generation gameplay would relieve the daily tedium. Now it's in danger of adding to it.

Officially generic. [Oct 2009, p.70]

A bit more attention to the puzzles, the pace and the script, and this old-school adventure might have been more of a turtle's dream than a turtle's head. [June 2007, p.77]

If you like slide puzzles, it's disastrously addictive. [July 2009, p.73]

Delivers the goods in spades, with an improved engine and a new emphasis to real-time rather than turn-based action. [Oct 2007, p.82]

The Halo 2 Vista experience is as forgettable as it is tardy and somewhat deptressing. [July 2007, p.72]

Warriors Orochi never rises above simple hack-and-slash, but is fun, visceral and silly, with daft voice acting and Asian techno-jazz. [June 2008, p.83]

It's sad that there are no great Gauntlet-style hack-and-slash multiplayer games anymore. Despite its flaws, this is the best that an old workhorse of a genre has to offer so, if you must play it, play it with friends. Don't expect too much though.

You're a passenger watching a crime solve itself - except you get to do all the donkey work. [Mar 2008, p.79]

It's a shame this isn't a hopelessly bad game, otherwise I could've called it "BlackShite" and been done with it, but instead it teeters on the edge of being a worthwhile purchase before deciding it's comfortable being ordinary and forgettable. [Feb 2008, p.72]

Criminal lack of story. [June 2008, p.76]

Unless you can't get enough of the original game or you're a Star Wars fanatic who's been hankering for some new plot developments, then it simply isn't worth corrupting your hard disk with what has sadly turned out to be another promising but ultimately inadequate add-on.

All the polish in the world could not mask the nagging feeling of tactical emptiness. [May 2009, p.59]

A definite improvement over "Euro Force." And that's pretty much the best plaudit I can muster. [Oct 2006, p.81]

With nothing beyond a grim gambling fascination, I quickly went from reckless overbetting calamities to profitably unsexy play. [May 2006, p.87]

A disappointing and flat experience that's only really any fun when played with a friend, who may make an occasional error. [Nov 2009, p.75]

Unless my brain is being fried by professor Xavier's Cerebro machine, I quite enjoyed X-Men: The Official Game. [Aug 2006, p.81]

It lacks the logical connections that most strategy games have. [Oct 2008, p.62]

From the unfriendly, baffling set-up screen, everything is unwieldy and cobbled together. [Oct 2006, p.79]

It's just not good enough and, crucially, makes Holmes and Watson do things they just wouldn't do in the books. Which is, at the end of the day, the biggest flaw. [Apr 2010, p.89]

Repetitive. [Feb 2008, p.83]

Boring combat. [Jan 2010, p.76]

A boring game. [Aug 2009, p.72]

May EA blight us with more Harry Potter games than our PCs' hard drives can possibly tolerate. [Oct 2009, p.71]

Lacks any sane rationale behind its price and hides within it a game that could have been so much more, but just isn't. [Jan 2008, p.78]

It does nothing to expand upon the base game and therefore make itself worthy of notice, except for those of you with a burning desire to see how a sub-par fantasy story turns out who can't be bothered to look it up on Wikipedia. [Christmas 2007, p.88]

An adequate and traditional (read 'hugely dated') point-and-click, and there's some charm to the puzzles and story. [Jan 2007, p.76]

Alpha Prime, with a passable storyline and passable gameplay, is a little passable anomaly. [July 2007, p.77]

It has nothing to offer that we haven't already seen in a thousand other hack-and-slash adventures. [Feb 2007, p.82]

A puddle-deep affair that struggles to justify a full-price release. [Apr 2008, p.72]

A farily well done RTS that suffers from a few problems that put you off, like banging your teeth on a sausage gristle. [Aug 2006, p.77]

If you have a knowledge and love of golf, this might give you a more substantial - if less fun - game than "Tiger Woods."

A hollow experience. [Feb 2010, p.80]

Wooly, hollow and redundant. [Aug 2007, p.78]

I wanted so badly to be enjoying myself, with all the effort that had gone into the characters and likenesses, but I wasn't allowed to. And now I am cross.

Had Life Stories...been a little more mature in its scripting, I might have even recommended this. As it is, your mum would find it patronising. [June 2007, p.86]

Considering the budget price, you could do a lot worse on your quest to find an original adventure game this summer. [Oct 2008, p.65]

If it's multiplayer automotive giggles you're after, "FlatOut 2's" party mode is far superior. [Sept 2006, p.78]

The levels feed artificially protracted. [July 2009, p.74]

It's designed for console, so the mouse and keyboard controls are horrendous and the disparate gameplay elements don't add up to a whole hill of black-eyed beans.

Just because this game isn't as cynical as "The Godfather's" art-slashing antics, doesn't mean it's any good - it's with great regret I have to say it's not. [Nov 2006, p.74]

So sloppily ported. [May 2007, p.68]

A series that increasingly looks stuck in the past. [Jan 2007, p.77]

That Overclocked isn't better is sad because there's a good story being told. [July 2008, p.85]

A tired old rehash of Blitkrieg - the last RTS game from developers Nival. [June 2007, p.76]

There's little point bothering with Mata Hari, unless you're looking to sedate a relative and lack Rohypnol. [Dec 2009, p.75]

Lengthy load times, dated visuals, and obtuse interface and an unnecessarily decentralized recruitment system. [Dec 2009, p.73]

While it does nothing spectacular, it has enough pretty colours and plain, shallow addictiveness to hold your attention for the two or three hours the game lasts. [Sept 2008, p.76]

Right now, Star Trek Online is a mess of a title with little to recommend beyond the novelty of flying around in a replica of the Enterprise. As soon as that novelty wears off (ideally within the 30-day trial period), this will be one universe badly in need of a reboot.

A proper ship simulator. And within that bracket, it faithfully reproduces long, combatless floating sessions. [Sept 2006, p.75]

As far as Sims expansions go though, it's mediocre. I mean, come on, it's bloody weather...And gardening. What's next? "The Sims 2: Picking Your Arse?" [June 2007, p.86]

If you're a reality fan looking for a full-on Civil War experience, this is it. [Aug 2006, p.54]

While Pipe Mania is a pretty good remake, shelling out 20 quid when you can play perfectly good Java-based versions for nothing online is simply money down the drain. [Dec 2008, p.77]

It's actually a bit dull if it doesn't strike you in the right way. [Apr 2010, p.91]

It's really hard to put into words how excruciatingly bad the acting is, but the phrase "unnecessary pauses" comes to mind. [Nov 2008, p.77]

It's choked by its own clumsy presentation and inability to develop its own ideas. [July 2007, p.83]

The forecast is bleak. [Feb 2010, p.85]

A criminal waste of time and energy, as standard and generic a game as you could hope to find. [Feb 2010, p.74]

The shallowness of the gameplay quickly starts to show through the cracks. [May 2007, p.69]

The very definition of average. [Nov 2008, p.64]

The script and the acting is great, but the imagination going into the levels is hugely lacking. [Oct 2006, p.78]

Sad to say, the lumbering combat, laborious controls, frankly bizarre collision detection and remarkably glitchy graphics really put a bit of a kibosh on things. Disengage. [Mar 2007, p.70]

Annoyingly, there's no way to change the controls and looks-wise, it won't win any medals. [Sept 2007, p.84]

Apart from the amount of content, things haven't moved on very much since the 2004 version. A few nips and tucks here and there, refined content controls, better tutorials and a slight expansion of the simulation 'rules' to make driving your choochoos a touch harder, but otherwise it all looks much the same as before.

It's strangely hypnotic. [Dec 2008, p.74]

The menu system is a confusing mess. [June 2009, p.73]

Blandly fun for a bit. [Aug 2009, p.73]

Looks and plays like a game from 1999. [Christmas 2006, p.93]

You'll be left scouring the floor for items no bigger than a gnat's nutsack. [Jan 2008, p.78]

So tough it's nearly impossible, and so it's almost unplayable. [Sept 2009, p.72]

It's leagues behind the subscription-based MMOs of the world. [July 2009, p.74]

Imagine "The Sims" sans animated characters, depth, humour and variety. [Dec 2006, p.104]

It's got too many issues to recommend it. [Oct 2010, p.]

Utterly, shabbily redundant. [Nov 2007, p.87]

It's nothing more than average, and occasionally nothing less than irritating. [May 2007, p.76]

It hangs together. [Oct 2008, p.63]

Damnation is so deeply generic and boring, so it gets the sort of mark that it deserves. [Aug 2009, p.71]

Handling is fiddly too, on both control pad and keys, and it doesn't feel as fun to play as Tony's series. [Apr 2009, p.70]

For 30 minutes of so, you'll be having a strange amount of fun. [Aug 2009, p.76]

The AI doesn't match up to the ambition. [Aug 2006, p.68]

Entirely average. [Feb 2009, p.83]

Overwhelmingly unremarkable. [Nov 2006, p.84]

Transparently not finished. [June 2010, p.80]

By peddling this sort of single-minded crud to children EA are creating a new generation of absolute morons who won't be able to think one step ahead of themselves. [May 2008, p.86]

At best, this DLC is thoughtless, unoriginal and for those who simply must have two extra skill points. At worst, it's a waste of time and money, and poor form by Gearbox. [Apr 2010, p.88]

The puzzles are the main problem. [May 2010, p.90]