There's simply nothing here to justify you buying it ahead of 2K's b-ball champ. [Jan 2014, p.84]

This, however, shamefully for a PS3 game, has all the grace of Honda's Asimo trying to climb a spiral staircase. [Sept 2007, p.104]

It's exactly as fun as it sounds. [Feb 2010, p.105]

Mastering hard games can be supremely rewarding, but overcoming a punishing encounter in Knack more often draws a sigh of relief rather than a loud whoop and fist pumps.

Well-intentioned training minigames don’t really help, and nor does the multiplayer mode. There’s always something in the environment that seems more interesting than the game itself, such as a Japanese garden you can’t explore, or arcade cabinets that you can’t use. Give the table tennis experience this game serves up a miss. [Issue#170, p.92]

There's only so long you can spend looking at this piss-poor running animation before you start seriously wondering "What if I just looked out of the window for a few minutes instead?" [Jan 2014, p.95]

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 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]

Special moves are simply executed but look feeble, so you never get the sense that you're shellacking the snot out of your opponent. [Aug 2007, p.114]

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

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]

Ice Age 4 isn't all bad. [Sept 2012, p.113]

There's a sense of satisfaction to slogging through each challenge in normal mode, but with only six levels to beat even this proves to be a hollow victory. [Aug 2007, p.109]

No frills? No thrills, more like. [June 2007, p.105]

When the game does slip into heavy narrative - which is infuriatingly often, creating a horrible stop/start pace - the story is a mess. [Nov 2015, p.107]

It's these impossibly dull missions that let Crash Time 4 down so severely. [June 2012, p.113]

We just can't help but feel incredibly bored by it. [May 2008, p.115]

Tedious. [Feb 2012, p.112]

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

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

Combat is an interminable exercise in smashing the square and triangle buttons. [Dec 2009, p.123]

Basic gameplay, a by-the-numbers story, and graphics from a bygone era leave this PSP port stuck between a rock and a really outdated place. [July 2013, p.100]

The odd firefight generates some excitement, but this is all too rare considering that you're piloting a 30ft tall walking tank of death. [Issue#51, p.111]

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]

Everything from the ideas to the backdrops feels rushed. [Feb 2009, p.100]

The guns are useless. [May 2008, p.112]

You’ve played this before, 25 years ago on PS1. The ideas are ancient, the implementation poor, and when a dubiously named hero is the only fun you get from a shooter in 2020 it’s time to avoid. [Issue#182, p.160]

It felt genuinely good to not be playing it anymore, and that is a rare thing in games nowadays. [Oct 2014, p.92]

Cheap, shonky, sometimes non-functional, Air Conflicts: Vietnam is so pitifully crap that it's almost adorable. Just like those little two-legged dogs with the wheels. [Oct 2014, p.95]

The warfare is as dull as the characters. [June 2007, p.101]

Dull, ineffectual combat. [Aug 2012, p.111]

Turgid mess. [July 2010, p.118]

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

A botched remake. [Sept 2011, p.116]

If you never got the chance to experience the original when it came to PS3 and want to pick this up out of curiosity, it’s probably best to avoid it – it’s outright damaging to the legacy of Crysis. [Issue#181, p.88]

Yaiba is guilty of the most heinous crime: creating difficulty not with precision combat, but with myriad borked design calls and some utterly broken camera work.

Few things are as disappointing as shoot-'em up Alien Zombie Death. [May 2010, p.104]

Absolutely abysmal. [Dec 2011, p.103]

It's just dull. [Feb 2017, p.96]

Major bail. [Jan 2010, p.108]

On a technical level, the game is simply a shambles, with amateurish animation and obtrusive texture pop-in accompanying your every step. [June 2016, p.87]

A shoddy, cynical cash-in that has absolutely no right to be retailing at 32 Pounds. [Aug 2013, p.95]

An ill-conceived mess that goes down as the worst PlayStation game to besmirch the Resident Evil name. [Sept 2016, p.110]

This mess somehow gets worse with every play...It's like buying a Ferrari only for it to fall to pieces as you drive out of the dealership. [May 2007, p.118]

The game taught us that Japan lost the war thanks to shattered AI and terrible clipping. [May 2008, p.111]

It'll only make sense if you've got a PhD in the series. [May 2010, p.102]

What you get for your money is terrible, rendering the mid-level price insulting. There's no reality in which this is worth buying, virtual or otherwise. [Issue#158, p.97]

By any reasonable criteria, this is a bag of balls. [Jan 2009, p.102]

A painfully slow and aged Millionaire quiz. [Jan 2012, p.114]

Almost painfully familiar to anyone who's ever seen a Diner Dash game. [Spring 2011, p.113]

The biggest challenge is dealing with the wonky physics. [May 2007, p.114]

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]

No amount of ragdoll-fumbling can save this Gothic horror show. [Sept 2013, p.94]

Another below-par racer that makes turning left every five seconds exactly as exhilarating as it sounds. [Sept 2008, p.103]

Most disappointing is the length of the game. It'll take anyone with opposable thumbs little over an hour to unlock all 17 songs. [Spring 2011, p.114]

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.

An embarrassing, nauseating mess. [Spring 2011, p.116]

Fugly ships chugging along even fuglier tracks. [Aug 2008, p.104]

It just isn't any fun. [Apr 2011, p.114]

Pretty far from brilliant. [May 2007, p.120]

Stupid. [Apr 2011, p.118]

Think tower defense stripped down to the barest essentials. Think an empty screen an no sense of fun. [Issue#51, p.103]

Overpriced and shallow. [Christmas 2011, p.104]

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]

Dropping bombs is fiddly and inaccurate - and they do as much damage as releasing a blancmange from a plane's undercarriage. [Feb 2013, p.101]

Unless you enjoy dressing-up games or cluster headaches, run for your life, and don't look back. [Dec 2012, p.117]

Whichever way you play, you start seeing the same levels repeated within 15 minutes. [Feb 2013, p.105]

This installment lacks the humour, thrill and charm of any of its franchise's predecessors. [Oct 2016, p.94]

There's crippling slowdown and the excruciating script. [May 2009, p.102]

I'd have happily raved about this clever Bejeweled-style puzzler were it not for its utterly outrageous price. [Sept 2009, p.107]

Dodgy ball-physics misery. [July 2007, p.114]

Did the developers even watch the show before they made the game? [Aug 2007, p.112]

The combat is still woeful. [Apr 2012, p.97]

The graphics and gameplay are so simplistic that this could probably be run on a high-end calculator. [Oct 2012, p.119]

2Dark will not make you feel annoyed, it will make you feel sad, and that's definitely worse. [May 2017, p.96]

Hideous graphics. [Nov 2011, p.99]

A longer development period might have made this into something more playable, but it would still be a game of rehashed concepts notable only for its sheer banality. [May 2017, p.96]

A game as dead in the water as its protagonist's bullet-ridden backside. [Nov 2012, p.119]

Left Alive is most disappointing because it had such potential to revitalise the stealth genre. Instead you get something far behind even the titles it tries to emulate. [Issue#161, p.85]

Put it on the endangered list. [Christmas 2010]

A pitiful tie-in to a sub-standard movie. [June 2011, p.111]

A miserable cash-in...A poorly conceived and clumsily executed waste of time and money. [Mar 2009, p.101]

A joyless chore. [Apr 2018, p.84]

So casual it's wearing flip flops. [Jan 2011, p.118]

The framerate is pathetic and the textures are sub-PS2. [Apr 2009, p.96]

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]

The web slinging...now feels mundane thanks to a randomised upgrade system and the stupidly unpredictable camera. [Aug 2007, p.107]

While its underpinnings are strong, it never fulfils its potential, and there are probably some lessons on how not to write a visual novel in here. If you came for cool werewolves, you’ll probably be bogged down by all the deforestation stuff. If you came for an environmental story, you may well be overwhelmed by World Of Darkness lore. Either way, it’s a miss, but it does at least aim in the right direction. [Issue#187, p.81]

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

As awful as the 'big console' version is great. [Christmas 2009, p.116]

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

A boring stealth game, made all the more annoying by Tom's bewilderingly poor fitness (four seconds of sprinting and he's knackered) and the worst gun in the history of games. It's rubbish. [Apr 2017, p.90]

I'd rather go to an actual bowling alley and risk getting attacked by an eight year old who's all hopped up on sugar. [Feb 2011, p.103]

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

Patches may rescue this to some degree. For now, it’s an unfinished game which should remain unpurchased by your wallet. [Issue#170, p.86]

If this was eye candy it would be the ancient fluffy Polo mint at the bottom of your grandma's lavender handbag. [June 2010, p.113]

Awful. [Christmas 2014, p.85]

Avoid this like you would a back street endoscopy. [July 2007, p.114]