Quirky but has been done better and many times before. Wait for Ni No Kuni instead. [December 2012, p78]

What starts out as a delicious parody of The A-Team soon becomes a mess of cramped level design, mediocre graphics and ridiculous difficulty spikes. Couple that with framerate issues and more screen tearing and this is more miss than hit. [October 2013, p83]

Short and puzzling in more ways than one. A clunky oddity. [August 2012, p81]

Every console release has to have its well-intentioned but ultimately not-quite-there launch title. Unfortunately, Knack appears to be that game for the PlayStation 4, despite some cool ideas and genuinely fun moments. [Christmas 2013, p76]

Mechanically, a step up from Assault Horizon, but has barebones solo and is F2P. A nice substitute while we wait for a PS4 Ace Combat. [August 2014, p76]

So-so fighting but an okay diversion. The AR is really cool, though. [March 2012, p63]

Amusing and inoffensive, it's a winning formula. The only problem here is that the PS Vita version has a serious case of port-itis. Symptoms include itty-bitty characters and platforming elements that have clearly been optimised for living room-sized flat-screens, and noticeable compression artifacts in the full-motion video and spoken dialogue. [January 2013, p71]

For all its many faults, the script does at least make a valiant effort of recognising and explaining the politics of war and propaganda. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s an army of games more worthy of your money. [October 2017, p75]

The least awful Sonic game in years. [Jan 2009, p.74]

Movie karaoke isn't a new phenomenon but Yoostar 2 has brought it into the videogame space with some digital wizardry. Yoostar 2, in that case, is to movie karaoke what Rock Band is to drumming along to the radio on your steering wheel. There are some technical imperfections; we found the lights in our office played hell with the camera and resulted in elements of the kitchen behind us popping up during gameplay as on-screen artefacts. Dimming the lights mostly fixed this but it remained a little grainy... Yoostar 2 is far from perfect but it is very different. [May 2011 p.76]

It might offer spurts of fun, but Lord of the Rings: Conquest is mediocre in every way. [Feb 2009, p.76]

Features; criminally stupid AI, rehashed enemies, ear-defiling voice acting and paint-by-numbers levels. This is 'so bad it's bad' gaming. [May 2012, p81]

Dreadful presentation. [Feb 2010, p.74]

Painfully dull, both in looks and entertainment factor. Only the die-hard purists can forgive this ugly, buggy mess. [September 2014, p80]

A sequel nobody asked for, and it knows it. Hugely unnecessary. [May 2012, p78]

Delivers its subject matter like old people have sexual relations. Dull, rickety, and not recommended. [July 2015, p83]

Sloppy. Lazy. Derivative. That sums up Spare Parts, from its level and character design to the actual coding. [April 2011, p.80]

Releasing an Action-RPG this unpolished during the current PS4 drought was opportunistic. That's the best we can say about this. [July 2014, p81]

Brutally difficult and timelessly fun. Another World is an important game, but also overpriced. [September 2014, p77]

Although multiplayer rocks, the single player loses its shine rather quickly. [December 2008, p.78]

Reading about it in abstract, one could be forgiven for thinking that Fairytale Fights is a game for deviants and sickos, created to corrupt the young. This is not the case; everything is far too cute to be offensive. While it may sound sinister that the Naked Emperor character has visibly erect nipples, or that the Mother Goose Gun has an inflamed, purple ringpiece, in reality these flourishes are too stylised to make one bat an eye. It’s like the difference between ‘#@%&!!’ and a proper swear word. [p74 Christmas 2009]

Combat is turn-based stuff that's a hasty facsimilie of Dragon Age: Origins. It's hard to get a kick out of any of these battles when your enemies are clones with all the guile of Hodor the village idiot. Expect no thrill from the grind, either, as the skill trees unlock stat 'boosts' more miniscule than Tyrion. Likewise, rare items are ridiculously so and the purchasable gear is so unattainably priced, not even a Lannister could pay their debts. [July 2012, p83]

All told, Jurassic Park: The Game may be marketed to you as a new-age Dino Crisis and a wild ride, but in reality it plays more like John Hammond's dinosaur tour as it was originally intended. You're locked on a linear track and inelegantly chauffeured through dino dioramas that you'll have close to zero interaction with. The tour grinds to a halt for the occasional toilet break (read: light puzzle moments), but once that business is dispensed with, you're escorted back to your proverbial jeep on a scalextric track and the tour limps on. [January 2012, p.77]

Think of every single sniping mission in Call of Duty all crammed together into four hours of nonsense terrorist stuff, but not nearly as good and you have Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2. It’s a beautiful display of third world foliage, but you won’t be exploring it in any detail, great or not. [May 2013, p74]

[Y]ou're only allowed to customise and upgrade the character you're controlling. You can determine who'll be in your squad, but you can't tell them what guns and abilities to use. In fact, AI-controlled squadmates don't even have abilities. They're just grunts with guns and act with all the intelligence of tactical awareness of action movie cannon-fodder, and it affects your offensive options. [April 2012, p.62]

Whether you invested in the Kickstarter campaign, it’s hard to imagine this aggressively inadequate Mega Man “follow-up” leaving anyone satisfied. [September 2016, p73]

A misguided farce. Offensive. [Oct 2009, p.75]

After a weekend with Hazard, you may want to return him. [Apr 2009, p.77]