From awful to appealing. [May 2012, p.116]

If you're willing to rise to the challenge and master its crumby controls, there's just about enough novelty to make it worth your while despite its limited shelf life. [Nov 2015, p.107]

The overbearing cartoon license does its best to gobble up all the fun. [Apr 2014, p.92]

It's a bit of a worry that the redheaded warrior sent out to save the world has been equipped with nothing but a thong and a set of spherical breasts. [Sept 2010, p.117]

Only marginally more enjoyable than trying to read the original poem. [Jan 2008, p.104]

All the depth of a "Saved by the Bell" special, but just as secretly satisfying. [June 2008, p.106]

Another half-hearted adventure to leave on the shelf. [May 2011, p.118]

Guns are loud enough to give God perforated eardrums. [Nov 2011, p.106]

A more-than-passable first effort from a studio more famous for its cricketing output - yet presentation and longevity issues make it less excellent, more AO-K. [Issue#150, p.91]

A superb VR idea mercilessly crushed under the jackboot of mediocrity. Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot has neither the standout quality to be good, nor the memorable identity to be bad. [Issue#166, p.82]

Perhaps this return is 17 years too late. [May 2018, p.80]

Ugly and outdated. [Christmas 2010]

An irritating experience. [June 2012, p.115]

Involving if arthritic, boring yet fleetingly brilliant, Carnivores’ cerebral shooting is genuinely unique in spite of its miserly unlocks.

Never Dead might be a scrappy mess in places – it's blighted by severe screen-tearing and dialogue so bad it makes the original Resi look like Citizen Kane. Yet it's a game about throwing a man around who's usually missing 75% of his torso, meaning it's impossible to be too scathing of its faults.

This would have been an embarrassment in 1987. [Sept 2011, p.116]

The undeniable charm of using automatic weaponry on magical monsters is just about enough to make it worth a look. [Christmas 2008, p.120]

Compared to Call of Duty 4's sensitive and intelligent treatment of the same material, Payback is a joyless, hoo-hahing head butt of a videogame. [Feb 2008, p.95]

The only decent fights and objectives that are there follow the main storyline like a stalker - everything else is just busywork filler. [July 2007, p.112]

It's the most broken game I've played on PS4. [Apr 2016, p.94]

An irredeemable mess. [Feb 2011, p.114]

Absolutely abysmal. [Dec 2011, p.103]

Lacking the immediacy and fun of Killzone Liberation, this feels criminally outdated. [Christmas 2007, p.109]

The core fishing can be surprisingly compelling, but tournaments are unlikely to keep you coming back.2 Let’s cut the carp here: Fishing Sim World is great for fishing fans, but unlikely to salmon hordes of new people to the sport. [Issue#155, p.82]

This is a rugby relic from a bygone age. [Oct 2011, p.116]

Poor signposting is a problem throughout, compounding frustration in by-the-numbers stealth/chase sequences (though each of these is mercifully to the point once you figure out what you’re supposed to do). Bright spots, such as the early story’s compassionate portrayal of childhood bereavement and some genuinely unsettling sound design, are too often overshadowed. We’re not leaving the light on for this. [Issue#177, p.156]

The menus are cumbersome. [May 2009, p.99]

This low-rent top-down alien blaster doesn't even seem to be trying. [Jan 2009, p.104]

It's so ugly that your Vita will likely look embarrassed at having to play it. [Apr 2012, p.115]

Repetitive missions and drab recitals of dialogue don't justify the price. [Issue#51, p.118]

A surefire way to induce nausea. [May 2012, p.107]

At just over two hours Crisis is short. [June 2018, p.80]

We'd still prefer an actual game of Twister. [Sept 2012, p.105]

It's basic, ugly and lacks any sense of excitement. [Apr 2012, p.118]

A lewd, crude on-rails effort that occasionally offers sharp blasting thrills, yet shoots itself in the foot (and mouth) with misjudged gags and gyroscope problems. [Sept 2014, p.104]

Overall this is unimpressive, yet oddly playable through all its flaws. Still, the agonising wait for a formidable rugby game on PS4 goes on. Anyone for tennis? [Issue#172, p.97]

All in all, this isn't a good month for life on Mars. [July 2011, p.103]

The 40 levels are deliberately built to be played in fast bursts against the clock for the kudos of scoring high on the online scoreboard, but none are challenging or interesting enough to keep you going back. [May 2007, p.103]

The striking visual language of Friend & Foe’s stunning world is a painful glimpse of how wonderful an experience Vane could have been. Instead, it’s clumsy, careless, and wholly incoherent. [Issue#159, p.90]

Nauseatingly basic. [March 2013, p.114]

Slinging around New York remains a pleasing hoot. [July 2014, p.81]

The whole enterprise smacks of a hopeless brief. [Jan 2008, p.103]

Botched and broken, irritating and offensive, this samey, soulless sandbox fails to overthrow the old regime's ruling shooters. Good guns, mind. [July 2016, p.75]

The game constantly makes you look a titanic fool, but matching the rhythm of the Move's rumble to your gestures for extra speed is oddly satisfying. [Nov 2011, p.109]

The Arrival is also incredibly short in length (you can be done in two hours if you're quick), but it's sinister, unnerving and full of scream-worthy jump scares while it lasts. [Dec 2014, p.94]

More hands-on control makes for a marked improvement on last year's sadistically tedious effort. [Sept 2013, p.86]

The controls...feel counter-intuitive at first and mean that most of your success is thanks to a very forgiving auto aim rather than sharp shooting. [Spring 2011, p.113]

Transposes the turn-based shooter into a futuristic setting competently, but ultimately is far from essential. For genre completists only. [Issue#174, p.93]

The whole thing's a lot like looking at a picture for ages and trying to find tiny objects. [Dec 2009, p.109]

An interesting concept, but the game's lack of control over the scares removes any possible creeping horror. [July 2014, p.92]

The Fight can still entertain a crowd for all the wrong reasons. [Christmas 2010]

Controls-wise, the game is near-identical to "X-Men Legends." [Aug 2007, p.108]

Worst of all, it never feels even vaguely scary. [Aug 2008, p.102]

Frustrating. [Sept 2008, p.104]

Useless like a paper hammer. [Feb 2011, p.113]

By turns mildly irritating and laceratingly dull, Extinction is a hopeless mess with one of the worst third-person cameras you'll ever encounter. Give it a miss, eh? [June 2018, p.86]

It's ambitious, but everything in it suffers from some hideous defect, like a garden centre in the middle of Chernobyl. [Oct 2012, p.110]

Was it necessary to also make it so ugly? [Aug 2011, p.110]

This can't contest Undisputed as an MMA game, nor the best fighters on beat-'em-up terms. Yet there's a place for it, simply 'cause no one has bridged the gap between these genres. So, who wants to step outside?

Moments of fan service and an ambition to do more than simple shooting can’t overshadow the aged feeling of Terminator: Resistance. [Issue#170, p.93]

Stupid. [Apr 2011, p.118]

One afterlife that's plain hard to enjoy. [Aug 2016, p.94]

It's an enormous game, but a bit of a shambles. [Sept 2016, p.103]

It's definitely playable, and respectable value at a penny under seven quid. [Sept 2009, p.112]

An unmistakably devilish puzzler with a truly hellacious price tag, that it’s so flippin’ brilliant only gives Angry Birds: Star Wars’ exclusive-to-PS4 cost extra sting. C3P-no.

Everything's been needlessly fiddled with so that it no longer makes sense. [March 2007, p.120]

Lacks harmony in track and mode selection, but is still the best party game going once you get to the singing/drinking/ritual embarrassment. [Christmas 2014, p.95]

A flimsy-feeling team shooter that squanders an appealing premise in a mess of poor controls and design. This is one set of dinosaurs that should be put to rest. [Jan 2016, p.91]

Awful. [Christmas 2014, p.85]

Playing as either character simply isn't much fun. [Jan 2008, p.114]

Relegation fodder. [Aug 2010, p.117]

The quests are grinding, the dialogue linear, and the loot at lower levels decidedly 'meh.' [Oct 2012, p.117]

For all the filth and frustration it's still oddly fun in places. [Issue#51, p.105]

As big a letdown as Tim Henman's efforts at Wimbledon, it does a huge disservice to Top Spin's legacy. No amount of Pimm's should sanction you buying this. [Issue#151, p.96]

What Star Trek does well is to achieve a serviceable level of entertainment. However it never stands out thanks to derivative design and occasional shoddy corners. If this was a cheaper, downloadable title I’d score it more favorably but this is competing in price and scale with bigger and more impressive games with a well practiced bag of last year’s tricks.

The only redeemeing feature is that you don't have to deal with the AI's incompetence as much when playing against a mate. [Apr 2008, p.104]

This stinks worse than week-old zombie balls. [Feb 2011, p.103]

Too technically deficient to get a high score, but the over-the-top voiceovers, evolving combat and ripping yarn make this worth a look anyway. [Dec 2011, p.111]

Avoid like you would a family holiday to Nudefest 2010. [Issue#51, p.110]

It's an awkward fudge, and compared to the full sex that is "Call of Duty", feels like five minutes of unsatisfying over the sweater action. [Feb 2009, p.99]

A framerate that's juddery like a hand-cranked projector. [Feb 2009, p.103]

Pretty amusing until you realise what a shameful rip-off it is. [Sept 2011, p.108]

As sure as I am that Infinity Runner is a bad game, it's certainly not a game I dislike. [June 2015, p.88]

While there’s not much to Avalanche’s mechanical uprising, running-and-gunning bad robots with buds is a blast. The arresting Scandinavian vistas are worth visiting. [Issue@162, p.93]

Random turn-based combat and impenetrable inventory. [Spring 2011, p.116]

We're going to have to wait a little longer for a true VR Time Crisis. [May 2018, p.92]

Feeble mimic. [Spring 2011, p.108]

While this bug-infested horror doesn’t quite inspire us to grab the fly swat, we can’t recommend this in its current state. However, its few bright spots draw us like a moth to a flame. [Issue#182, p.152]

Almost every idea included here is a strong one - yet they've all been exectured terribly. A patch to slow the entire game down by 50% would immediately elevate that score. [Aug 2016, p.89]

Basic graphics, a beyond dull battle system and truly hateful lead characters make this an unwelcome flashback to deservedly forgotten J-RPGs of decade's past. [Apr 2010, p.100]

It's not worth it, mate. [Christmas 2008, p.116]

It's an overly complicated system that screams of an attempt to be modern and forward-looking, but will actually end up with a bunch of pissed-off purchasers feeling like they've paid nearly 20 pounds for a trial version. Which, to be perfectly honest, is pretty much all this is.

There's an element of novelty in the first few minutes of play, but it doesn't last long. It isn't even the sketchy gameplay that sinks this Battleship – it's the abhorrently commercial objective apparent in every second of rushed gameplay. There's no artistic vision here, and the original idea at its core hasn't been given the time and love needed to build a coherent or enjoyable game.

Bland weapons and generic enemies. [Spring 2011, p.111]

Major bail. [Jan 2010, p.108]

Among the rubble there are elements of what could be a good game, but it's not worth your time to excavate them. Technically disastrous, it lets down its own story. [Sept 2014, p.111]

The game mostly consists of busywork. [July 2009, p.102]

Tells an entirely forgettable story. [Nov 2012, p.97]