It's very slick, enormous fun, continually dynamic, and more than any other MMO it brings the genre closer to the ideal of a fantasy world filled with hundreds of players in which just about anyone can lose themselves. That sentiment, as much as anything else, makes it well worth playing.

There’s definitely a special vibe about Microsoft’s next first-party racing game, and it’s taken a solid leap over the inaugural Forza title. [July 2007, p.100]

This is without doubt one of Capcom's finest offerings for the Sony console…A sublime clash of old-school action and devious design, Joe on PS2 is more Viewtiful than ever. [Nov 2004, p.120]

GTR 2 is a serious driver’s utopia and an experience unrivalled by any other PC racing game to date. [Nov 2006, p.118]

Simply refines the challenging gameplay armchair tacticians have come to associate with the Total War franchise. [Issue#107, p.92]

A refinement of what has gone before, and what has gone before still stands as one of the finest exercises in strategic entertainment available. [Apr 2009, p.108]

We also take some issue with Borderlands 2's sense of humour. While it's welcome, it draws so frequently on up-to-the-minute memes that it becomes hard to remain immersed in an experience supposedly taking place in the distant future, on a remote planet, and among people who have no reason to understand the significance of an arrow in the knee. Most of it's just not that funny.

Magnificent. [Issue#110, p.133]

The sense of mortality, tension and sheer scale makes for a truly stunning experience. [Christmas 2005, p.110]

By far the biggest step up lies in the course design, offering dozens of alternative routes and short-cuts on each map and making far more use of vertical travel than Burnout ever did. [Nov 2005, p.90]

For the first time in the series’ beleaguered overseas history, the game is going to hook westerners long enough to draw them in past the insane difficulty and into one of the most rewarding, player-loving games of the last decade. [JPN Import; Feb 2005, p.86]

As much as we enjoy Zero Mission, we can't help feel disappointed with the many boss encounters you'll face throughout Samus' adventure. ... It's all very well filling Zero Mission with an array of huge, well-animated bosses but they're crippled by extremely poor attack patterns and being incredibly easy to dispose of. [Apr 2004, p.104]

Imitating a swing with the analogue stick is still as satisfying as ever, and the balance between control and room for error is nigh-on perfect. However, it would have been nice to see a few more changes to keep the experience fresh. [Oct 2003, p.122]

Never have we played a game that punishes so much while constantly providing a reason to keep pushing on and see what brilliance lies beyond the next hurdle.

Immerse yourself in its choices and the peerless beauty of the world that supports them, and it reveals a quality that cannot be detected through objective distance. This is a game you can love, and that’s at least as rare as perfection. [Dec 2008, p.122]

Hitting the mark in just about every area, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a stunningly considered improvement on its predecessor. Essential for fans of the series, it's also an adventure of tremendous substance and beauty in its own right.

If you do already own and have played to death (excuse the pun) the original Left 4 Dead, the feeling that you've just purchased the same product again doesn't take very long to start tugging at your coat-tails. [Christmas 2009, p.110]

Games like these succeed because they suck the player into a virtual world of their own creation and never let them go. Football manager does so in spectacular style. [Christmas 2004, p.104]

Valve has put together a wonderfully unconventional game – a taut FPS multiplayer that retains the same unease felt in the likes of Resident Evil. [Jan 2009, p.114]

BioWare has managed to create a new franchise that will grow to become the cornerstone of the developer's flourishing portfolio. [June 2005, p.94]

Year on year, the main modes in the THPS games have moved further away from traditional over-the-top skating to encompass more and more 'crazy' goals, something we're not entirely sure we approve of. One thing we are sure of, though, is that the core skating engine makes for by far the best extreme sports game of this generation. [Christmas 2003, p.98]

Everything we hoped it would be. While the excessive speeds on some courses can approach eye-melting territory, this only becomes a problem on a couple of tracks, and even then it only encourages better course knowledge and use of boosts. [Oct 2003, p.120]

Rockstar North hasn't lost its grip on its capacity to take the GTA template and invent interesting twists on its design, ensuring that every mission is as amusing and explosive as the last, right up until the bombastic finale. [Dec 2009, p.122]

In creating the Minish Cap, Capcom has managed to bring back feelings we haven't experienced since the first time we went adventuring with Link; considering those are the feelings that made us love Zelda in the first place, that can only be a good thing.

It's a crazed urgency that you'll embrace until completion, threading your way round Polytron's crazily idiosyncratic open-world masterpiece until every corner has been reached and, more importantly, understood.

Though the original is free to download on PC, Cave Story still feels like a steal at 8.40. [Issue#96, p.121]

Although it may lack the sense of immersion that titles like World of Warcraft and City of Heroes provide, it’s a classic example of an ‘easy to pick up, hard to put down’ title. [July 2005, p.120]

Imitating a swing with the analogue stick is still as satisfying as ever, and the balance between control and room for error is nigh-on perfect. However, it would have been nice to see a few more changes to keep the experience fresh. [Oct 2003, p.122]