For all of its novelty value, there's no chance of it leaving your feet on fire. [Apr 2013, p.119]

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.

Sadly the world has moved on, and so have our gaming tastes. [Mar 2007, p.120]

With "Oblivion" looming, Untold Legends' one-noe gameplay feels woefully outdated. [Apr 2007, p.116]

The challenge drops out of the game entirely. [Apr 2008, p.112]

It's mostly rubbish; the focus is on combat, and the combat's tied to a camera that flops around like, well, a brain in a jar. [Dec 2007, p.114]

There's the usual workout option and a confusing career mode, but you'd be better off just going to a decent club. [Mar 2007, p.117]

Buy the vastly superior "Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters" before going near this. [July 2007, p.114]

Or just implode at the superpower-draining load times. [Aug 2007, p.114]

RPGs can be emotional, sadly this one is all about raging dispair. [Mar 2007, p.111]

The good stuff is hard to find among the mediocrity. [May 2007, p.120]

The short answer to the question, "Why isn't Jericho a fun game to play?" is that the AI is broken and the hackneyed horror stylings would barely have raised an eyebrow back in Barker's '80s heyday. [Dec 2007, p.104]

Swapping pairs of blocks is unwieldy. [Sept 2007, p.116]

It's gently hypnotic stuff, but fight a dozen super-intelligent skeletons and you'll soon be yearning for the simple pleasures of "Lumines." [Mar 2007, p.111]

It's so weighted down by uninspired foundations. [Aug 2007, p.114]

The shooting at the core of the game is pretty solid, but that doesn't count for much when every complex set-piece cripples its engine. [Apr 2008, p.102]

Outdated and in need of a serious overhaul. [Sept 2007, p.111]

If this were a PS2 game, we'd still consider the graphics a bitter letdown. [Feb 2008, p.98]

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

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 just about beats sitting in an empty room, which is my new scoring standard for movie games. [Feb 2008, p.98]

There's simply no warmth here, just an unrelenting parade of death and loss and regret. With bad controls. [Christmas 2007, p.98]

Fine for fans, but no-one else should touch it with a greasy finger. [July 2007, p.114]

90% of the game consists of twatting robots all the livelong day, and it takes just half an hour for these parts to grow dull. Perhaps naively, we expected a bit more from the motherland's best selling PS3 game. [JPN Import; June 2007, p.112]

From the drab visuals to the limp presentation, it screams 'mediocre' like a moped on a steep hill. [Dec 2007, p.114]

Daft boss battles and duel modes in cramped, pace-sapping spaces mean only real Sega fan boys will stick with this for long. [Feb 2008, p.98]

A suffocating ooze of obtuse controls and repetitive button bashing. [Sept 2008, p.104]

The two-player co-op prevents total shame. [Jan 2008, p.114]

For all its easy-going accessibility, it doesn't play anything like a realistic game of rugby, so those looking for authenticity should kick this one into touch. [Sept 2007, p.106]

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

It's homework dressed up as fun. [Apr 2008, p.96]

Combat is totally hit and miss thanks to a crippling camera. [Apr 2008, p.112]

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

In a word - Boo. [Jan 2008, p.114]

Most people will be put off by the shallow gameplay. [Apr 2008, p.106]

Even in 1080p it's excruciatingly tricky to tell which lane you're in, leading to a lot of unnecessary collisions. [Dec 2007, p.113]

To be fair, this is a game that degrades everyone. [Dec 2008, p.106]

You always cringe at the collision detection. [Feb 2008, p.97]

A spectacularly unpretty game. [Apr 2008, p.108]

The tech might be impressive, but for long-term fun we'll take "Super Stardust" any day. [Nov 2007, p.111]

Note to Sony: next time, just make us a game where we can chuckle at our distended faces. It's funnier. [Dec 2007, p.113]

It's a cheap way to show off your sexy new HDTV. [Christmas 2007, p.112]

This is just like every other Dynasty Warriors game ever, but somehow duller. [May 2008, p.115]

Even the core combat pales after a bit, because it lacks the exacting precision of Gaiden. [Apr 2009, p.93]

Too little bang for your buck. [Feb 2009, p.103]

A seemingly endless succession of chaotic, murky scraps in which it's a toss-up as to what will do you in first - wrestling the camera, the stabbing of grim-faced opponents off-screen or the growing feeling that this is a game that's missed its sweet-spot of public interest by a good six years. [Feb 2009, p.98]

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

A staccato, trick-land-trick-land experience. [Christmas 2008, p.118]

It's not even technically impressive. [Jan 2009, p.103]

The gameplay is so repetitive and robotic. [May 2009, p.101]

Barge-like handing and joyless backgrounds. Pass. [Jan 2009, p.104]

Great stuff for masochists who think progress ended with 8-bit gaming - not so much if you're looking to have fun. [Dec 2008, p.121]

The only guarantee this brings is tears before bedtime. And that's with two ADULTS playing. [Jan 2009, p.99]

This is not destined to join the pantheon of action greats. [Mar 2009, p.90]

Looks lovely, but it offers few thrills. [June 2009, p.102]

It loses whatever grip it has on your attention too quickly. [Mar 2009, p.103]

The original's art style divided fans, but at least in Epilogue we can all agree to being disappointed. [June 2009, p.107]

Then there's the visual sadness, which includes duff lighting, awkward cameras, and the stuttering Zoetrope-style framerate. [June 2009, p.98]

It all feels a little soulless. [Sept 2009, p.106]

A control scheme and camera that are aggressively opposed to you actually achieving any success or pleasure. [Christmas 2009, p.116]

The combat's decent, but it falls down on more complex stuff like clumsy boss battles and awful dialogue that makes you want to rip your own throat out. [Jan 2010, p.119]

It's not as if previous game adaptations have set the bar high, but this manages to fall below even those minimal standards. [Jan 2010, p.116]

A cheap and cheerful arcade shooter. [Sept 2009, p.112]

When your whole game is build around a mystifyingly unintuitive control mechanic, you're pretty much screwed from the outset. [Sept 2009, p.113]

There's nothing substantial here beyond desperate button hammering. [Dec 2009, p.125]

It's almost completely joyless. [Oct 2009, p.116]

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

Star Ocean is essentially a long corridor filled with too many enemies. [Apr 2010, p.100]

Avoid. [July 2010, p.118]

Frustrating and tedious. [Apr 2010, p.113]

There's little here to warrant dusting off your spacesuit. [Feb 2010, p.111]

An avalanche of mediocrity that you'd be insane to buy. [Mar 2010, p.116]

Reasonably pretty, totally inoffensive, and crazy cheap at 3.19 quid. [Mar 2010, p.107]

At least the fact that the alien looks like a sad, green little poop makes it visually amusing. [Feb 2010, p.105]

Part of the problem is that it's nearly impossible to make any sort of properly rude image on the tiny grid. Believe me, I tried. For hours. [June 2010, p.113]

Naughty Bear certainly isn't a sweatshop import with lead shot for eyes and asbestos filling, but it's no Steiff original either. [Aug 2010, p.116]

"Quotation Forthcoming"

The frame rate is embarrassing. [Christmas 2010]

An opportunity missed. [Christmas 2010]

A complex game for strategy buffs, but tiresome and inaccessible for others. [Christmas 2010]

Muddy textures, horrendous voice acting and repetitive gameplay plague an otherwise functional hack 'n' slasher. [Issue#51, p.103]

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

The overall atmosphere is weaker. [Feb 2011, p.113]

It's not bad, just basic. [Jan 2011, p.113]

There's no reason to choose it over the tabletop version. [Jan 2011, p.121]

A decent game. [Spring 2011, p.113]

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]

It's distracting rather than involving. [Apr 2011, p.101]

Ugly and limited. [May 2011, p.103]

Sure, it's no damp squib, but it's certainly not the firework display it should have been. [May 2011, p.110]

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

The first half hour of this stat-heavy RPG is as incomprehensible as Mission: Impossible in Turkish. [June 2011, p.111]

Looks awesome in a retro, scattering-of-bright-pixels way, but playing is like trying to perform keyhole surgery after a unicorn has barfed glitter straight into your eyes. [June 2011, p.111]

It fatally crosses the streams after only a short amount of time. [June 2011, p.112]

Laborious menus. [July 2011, p.95]

Not good enough to be set free, not bad enough to be tossed to the lions. [July 2011, p.95]

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

What excitement there is gets suffocated by the inert tracks. [Aug 2011, p.107]

The choice of missions in the open world is disappointingly limited. [Aug 2011, p.110]

Occasionally fun. [Aug 2011, p.110]

The trouble is the interface, which is cumbersome like a one-legged elephant. [Sept 2011, p.109]

It feels like Ape Escape is a curio from times past. [Sept 2011, p.111]

This is big, dumb fun for the first couple of hours. [Sept 2011, p.113]

Repetition limits the fun. [Oct 2011, p.115]

The game certainly doesn't make things easy for you. [Nov 2011, p.99]

Just a competent arcade game and a dire soundtrack. [Christmas 2011, p.97]

Doomed to averageness. [Christmas 2011, p.97]

Bizarrely, Disney Universe offers up no incentive to not die. [Christmas 2011, p.103]

Like the periodic table? You're in luck, because Mercury HG is flipping obsessed with it. [Christmas 2011, p.109]

The repetitious enemies and rail-line progression make this occasionally thumping adventure little more than an aerobic ghost train. [Christmas 2011, p.109]

As solid as the combat is, there are numerous contemporaries that offer as much challenge and fun with much more visual flair, and without horrendous loading times.

The biggest problem here is the minimal interaction on offer. [Jan 2012, p.113]

A slightly strange fit. [Jan 2012, p.114]

Between the travel sickness, the lurid colours and the nightmare-inducing soundtrack, one level is the playable equivalent of food poisoning. Another over-used puzzle has you rolling around collecting stars as time ticks away in a manner horribly reminiscent of a smartphone app that would cost around £17 less.

It quickly becomes repetitive nonsense. [Apr 2012, p.97]

Brainteasers are trapped in an overly punitive framework. [Apr 2012, p.113]

The stealth lacks Ezio's style. [Apr 2012, p.115]

A bit inconsistent. [Apr 2012, p.115]

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

It never reaches the breakneck speeds you're hoping for. [June 2012, p.115]

Give me the option of a night in with the first season's Blu-ray boxset or this mostly shabby spin-off and I'd go HD Sean Bean chivalry every time.

There's not much to it. [July 2012, p.109]

Go for last year's Overkill for your undead shooting needs. [July 2012, p.115]

You'll have had enough of the quirky humour in roughly 90 seconds. [July 2012, p.115]

As a whole, this is a step back for the series and an insult to those who know that Vita and Gotham deserve more. This is not the Batman game that you need.

This courts motion sickness with a bottle of wine and a mixtape. [Aug 2012, p.107]

Best left on the bargain bin's seabed. [Aug 2012, p.113]

The turn-based combat is swift and (overly) simple. [Aug 2012, p.117]

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

A reskinned arcade game with tacked-on multiplayer. [Oct 2012, p.117]

In booting out such a shamelessly phoned-in product it shows a flagrant lack of faith in Vita as a format. If you own FIFA Football, there's no way you should buy this… unless you really can't bear to see the Arse line up minus Santi Carzola. Naughty FIFA.

Doom 3: BFG Edition has its darkly atmospheric highlights. But a generous amount of content can't salvage a package that's decidedly dated. If you want a cracking Id shooter, buy Rage on PS3 for about a tenner, because this is one mission to Mars you're better off skipping.

It's the repetition that grinds you down. Boss battles provide brief breaks in the monotony, but they're just the seeping gizzard of consolation inside a disappointing, fleshy haystack.

Often it simply feels like too much work for a single player, as you're constantly bombarded with conflicting tasks.

It's the glitches and game-breaking annoyances that most let things down. [Christmas 2012, p.96]

Nauseatingly basic. [March 2013, p.114]

By far the game’s biggest problem: a crippling lack of invention. Riptide exhausts through repetition. Your flooded playground lacks the visual variety of the first game’s Banoi and missions never blossom into fresh concepts, merely escalating in difficulty and frustration.

You certainly can’t fault Defiance for lack of content, then. Sadly, what you can fault it for is being an ugly, buggy and monotonous shooter with a tenuous link to a mediocre sci-fi TV drama.

It's a brilliant idea, let down irreparably by a sub-bar fighting engine. [May 2007, p.114]

Given that fans of the movie have surely long-since moved on, there is simply no reason for this game to exist. [May 2007, p.120]

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

The on-foot sections provide passable, brain-numbing fun and fighting fans will enjoy collecting new combos and going up against familiar end-of-level bosses. But if you're expecting anything new or intellectually stimulating you're in for a bumpy ride. [Mar 2007, p.115]

The most muddled and irritating Sonic game yet. [May 2007, p.110]

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

Frustrating. [Sept 2008, p.104]

The wrestling element has been butchered. [May 2007, p.90]

The visuals are lovely, so that'll stave off some tantrums. [Mar 2007, p.120]

Trouble is, whichever character you pick, the game ends up largely the same. [Nov 2007, p.112]

Next-gen? It's barely present-gen. The Godfather has no business calling itself a PS3 game. [May 2007, p.108]

It's as exciting as waiting on people in real life; which is to say, not very. [May 2007, p.114]

The combat system is leaden. [Aug 2007, p.114]

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]

Placing your shots feels random. [July 2007, p.109]

This might have seemed enjoyable 14 years ago, but then again so did MC Hammer. [Feb 2008, p.91]

The anti-Hawk. It lacks excitement, it's shy of thrills, and it really isn't worth bothering with at all. [Sept 2007, p.108]

Poorly thought out and ultimately frustrating. [Oct 2007, p.108]

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]

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

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

Rather than doing anything very clever, it just nicks some of the best lines from the films, reminds you of the bits you liked, and carries on quietly being an incredibly average platform scrapper. [Sept 2007, p.117]

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]

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]

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]

It's barely a game. [Nov 2009, p.130]

It's a below-average platformer in a Bugs Bunny outfit, and that's all folks. [Christmas 2007, p.112]

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

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]

It takes a decent idea, then tries to compensate for its unpredictable framerate with grinding and shooting and powerslides that just make it a confusing mess. [Apr 2008, p.112]

Dull puzzles. [Sept 2008, p.96]

A shallow package that you might buy as a PSN download: there's fun here, but only the sort of amount you'd pay two pints'-worth of money for. [Oct 2008, p.102]

Another of Sony's bite-sized attempts to make motion control work, and although skydiving's a better idea than skiiing (seek out "Feel Ski" for proof - or rather, don't), it still isn't much fun. [Mar 2008, p.113]

A fairly significant disaster. [July 2009, p.92]

The puzzles are simple but require the exact kind of precise control this doesn't provide. [June 2008, p.106]

A lazy wasteful mess. [June 2008, p.103]

20% of Sonic Unleashed is brilliant. [Jan 2009, p.92]

The Hulk is ugly, outdated, and from the look of some sections, maybe even unfinished. [Sept 2008, p.100]

Shambles. [Aug 2008, p.104]

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

Half-arsed superhero rubbish. [Christmas 2008, p.119]

A one-note, ugly button masher. [Apr 2009, p.102]

Above all Rock Revolution just doesn't have the charm or depth of its rivals. [Christmas 2008, p.111]

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

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]

But MLB 09 instead. Now. [June 2009, p.96]

It's a nauseating barrage of flattery, hand-wringing commiseration, and toothlessly apologetic joshing. [June 2009, p.103]

Stop buying this crap and eventually they'll either cease making it, or make it better. [Sept 2009, p.104]

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

No innovation, no fun, no thanks. [May 2010, p.113]

Just to add insult to injury, Inferno Pool started out as an iPhone app - costing a paltry 59p. Boo. [July 2009, p.97]

As far as being an actioner that's worthy of your time, this is not up to the standard we'd expect. In fact, it's nowhere Nier. [June 2010, p.105]

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

Feels like the sort of shovelware your mate sneaked onto the school PCs in 1996. [Dec 2009, p.18]

Pinball is awesome - this is just a massively unsatisfying version of it. [Dec 2009, p.18]

Look, I didn't say they were fun objectives. [Feb 2010, p.104]

Hell, Speedwalking Arcade would have more longevity than this. [Feb 2010, p.114]

Any environmental message (or fun) that might be hidden within is scorched by the fury of having to pay an astonishing 7.99 quid for the privilege. [Apr 2010, p.113]

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

Unless you've got masochistic urges to indulge, you'd be wise to steer clear. [Apr 2010, p.113]

In a word, "poor." [July 2010, p.107]

It's basically an 8-bit knock-off of Wipeout, without all the fun destructive bits like mines or rockets. [June 2010, p.113]

Relegation fodder. [Aug 2010, p.117]

If the tracking listing consisted of Lady Gaga and Crystal Castles, twiddling a little arrow around and hitting the face buttons might be more satisfying. [Sept 2010, p.117]

One of the worst lightgun titles ever. [Christmas 2010]

There's some mild appeal. [Christmas 2010]

Ugly and outdated. [Christmas 2010]

Play time is kept to a minimum, with most of the development effort put into designing reams of menus for you to navigate...ensuring that you never start to have actual fun. [Issue#51, p.118]

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]

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