The following pages contain personal reviews of my favourite games. Without trying to define what makes a game great (it is intensely individual after all), I have chosen just to cover those games of recent years that I have a) played to death and/or b) am still playing. Of the criteria I have used, the most important is, not surprisingly, quality of gameplay. Value for money is a consideration as well, though obviously there is a wide variation between, say, the Civ series which has been played almost continuously since I discovered the original in in 1994, and Half-life, which I played through once and probably won’t do again.

As for graphics, they are clearly important, because if a game looks like crap, it doesn’t really matter how well it plays. Having said that, Half-life uses an old engine and Civ2 is firmly 2D, so I guess it’s all a question of balance.

You can see that my selection is pretty eclectic. Five turn-based strategy (Civ2, Civ3, Civ4, Colonization and Alpha Centauri), four real-time strategy (Age of Empires 2, Populous the Beginning, Dungeon Keeper 2 and Red Alert), a hard-end flight sim’ (Falcon 4), six first person shooters (Half-life, Half-life 2, No-one Lives Forever 2, Aliens vs. Predator, Far Cry and Crysis), a third person shooter (Max Payne) and an adventure (Tomb Raider). Plus there's Deus Ex, which is part shooter, part RPG and a fair bit of adventure as well, Pirates!, which is a bit of everything, an (the?) RPG (Oblivion) and The Movies, which is about as innovative as you can get. Oh, and the God game of all time, Black & White. Near misses include the original Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital, both of which ran out of steam after a lot of play.

In each of the reviews, I have, where appropriate, included links to the developer’s home site and any pertinent patches. Let me know if there are any links you think should be added.

Read on…