Simply put, this game is so brilliant that it ought to be fined. Created by the same team responsible for 2001's critically acclaimed "Ico," it follows a similar sort of theme and demands even more sentimental investiture than its predecessor did. Its elegant simplicity, its beauty, its unbelievable capacity to draw you in are without peer. I have never played a game like Shadow of the Colossus, because there are no games like it.

However, its extreme nonlinearity, the inclusion of violent scenes, and a sense of being what is in reality a completely timed game set it apart from standard pure adventure fare.

Superb craftsmanship, inventive scripting, wonderful acting, brilliant enemy AI, and sumptuous graphics are all placed in a huge, varied, and intensely colorful 60s setting by a team clearly bestowing care and love on their work and product.

Shadow Hearts is in turn tragic and comic, deeply philosophical and completely fluffy, and overall a great gaming experience that I was sorry to see come to an end.

If you can overlook the annoying aspect of having to start over and only being able to save at the beginning of a new episode or when you quit the game, you will experience an amazingly hard but also wonderfully fun game.

Portal, tucked neatly alongside four other games, outshines them all and ensures itself a place in posterity.

Indeed, A Quiet Weekend exhibits not only two of the hallmarks of fine adventure titles—story accompanied by relevant puzzles—but also adds the unusual component of a real place that can even simply be toured, if you wish!

Trace Memory is a cracker-jack adventure game developed and beautifully suited for the DS system. It's not at the level and complexity of the best adventure titles for the PC, but it's not reasonable to expect that from a handheld title. What it does bring to the table is an engaging, wonderfully done and integrated story with facilitating puzzles.

The high production values, unique setting, beautiful graphics, and lack of old chestnuts in terms of puzzles make this a refreshing alternative to the usual generic Egypt-Atlantis-maze-sliding-tiles pabulum we've been force-fed for the past few years.

I always appreciate it when a game treats its players as if they were intelligent adults, and Post Mortem does that in spades.

It is a masterwork when viewed as an exemplar of the video game as art, one of the very best fusions of story and imagery extant in the medium today, and for that reason alone it deserves a place in the eventual Electronic Entertainment Hall of Fame.

A magnificent tribute to the 1983 coin-op Lair and a highly entertaining game for today's players. It offers a simple, almost relaxing format of fighting/jumping/adventuring set in a huge and vividly colorful castle. What more can one ask from a video game?

The most amazing thing about Bioshock is that it never comes off as preachy or self-indulgent. For all its many themes, it is, and can be enjoyed as, exactly what Ken Levine has always said it is: a shooter. One of the very cleanest, best-executed shooters ever made.

The overall quality of the game far outweighs every one of its shortcomings. In my humble opinion, this game represents a labor of love from people who wanted to pay homage to Lovecraft.

Its story made me want to find out more about Randolph's search, the puzzles kept me entertained and the hunt for Easter eggs had me clicking like a madwoman.

I was disappointed that no effort was put into the PC version, and it even lacks any of the extras featured on the console versions, but I found it a fun little action game that kept me entertained for 10 or so hours.

And I did have fun playing Gods: Lands of Infinity - no question about that at all.

Generally speaking, though, the gameplay of Battle out of Hell has the same adrenaline-soaked excitement of the original. Wild firefights, huge minibosses and the occasional challenging puzzle are rolled up into the same tight, clean, delicious package.

I am a big fan of casual games. It takes a special type of genius to come up with an easy-to-learn game that rewards hours of play. Given how much fun I've had playing D.N.A., I would have to say that the folks at 5th Cell Media are geniuses of that special type.

If you've ever wanted to enter the puerile world of your Sims with a team of bizarre spirits, then this is the game for you.

The depth of the options menus puts many bigger-budget games to shame. Virtually everything about Mob Enforcer can be tweaked.

Clock, with its sunny exteriors and perpetual daylight, feels like the adventure game equivalent of a beach book. It's light, bright, and fun.

With an original concept and less cliché-mongering, we could be bearing witness to a rising star. For now, though, it flickers with dim promise on the horizon, catching our eye but not holding us long enough to do much more than raise a finger and point.

And Then There Were None is, as the developers hoped, a "loving tribute" to the classic Agatha Christie novel on which it is based. With a sterling script, fascinating characters, superb voice acting, beautifully detailed graphics, and sensibly practical puzzles, it ranks among the best adventure games of the last couple of years.

ER is not a terribly complicated game, with a setting and tasks that are limited in scope. Yet fans of the show, and those desiring a bit different sim experience, will undoubtedly find laughs and enjoyment in this light-hearted depiction of an intern's first days.

While the repetitive combat and dated graphics keep me from awarding it the FFC Gold Star, I got a lot of mileage out of it on my own personal Fun-O-Meter.

Chaos Theory gives a compelling gameplay experience that suffers a bit from a weak narrative and a failure to make consistent use of the graphical power of the Gamecube. Even with its flaws, it's one of the best games available for the Gamecube.

If you didn't like DOOM 3, well, you won't like Resurrection. The Grabber is fun, but there's one in "Half Life 2." But it still looks amazing, and it's still an enormously gory, satisfying experience for those who just want to blow off some steam.