Wild Earth picked up three prizes at the 2003 Independent Game Festival: Game of the Year, Innovation in Game Design, and Innovation in Visual Arts. All well-deserved. Even three years later, it remains a stunner.

Largely ignored by the mainstream gaming press, this fabulous epic of a game will draw you in with both its warmth and its ever-increasing tale.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is pretty amazing. I have an Xbox 360 and I just got a shiny new PC. I'm on the cutting edge of technology. But when I think of all the games I've played over the past six months, The Minish Cap-a Gameboy Advance game-rises right to the top of my list. It's just that good.

For those who've never played the original, Bad Mojo Redux is a must-have. Load it up and see what all the shouting was about. For those who've played the Win3.1 version, Bad Mojo Redux is what the game should have looked like and, when coupled with the companion DVD, is the deal of the year.

The short version is that Ubisoft has continued its storied tradition of doing nearly everything wrong yet somehow managing to produce a great game. Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones is awesome.

It's the realism that makes the supernatural elements seem so menacing, the beautifully designed, multi-layered puzzles with their much-appreciated clues, the dark atmosphere, lovely graphics, and the restrained, perfectly pitched sounds that make this game an experience.

HOMM4 will infect you with what I like to call the "Turn Based Sickness." Symptoms include loss of temporal perception and inability to perform other functions (including bodily) until "just one more turn" has been completed.

Of the 300-plus games I have played, Zelda: Wind Waker ranks in my top three of all time. It's elegant, enchanting, engrossing, beautifully stylized, perfectly polished-a gaming work of art-a masterpiece.

AGON is a lovely game, beautifully constructed, refreshingly different from the usual adventure title. The makers have done everything right. Interface and other technical features are flawless and couldn't be better. Graphics are colorful and clear, if not outstanding. Voice acting and ambient sounds are exemplary. Most importantly, the essential idea of a journey of discovery rewarded episodically by a fascinating new board game leads this reviewer to an enthusiastic Gold Star.

A fine RPG, very loosely based upon a simplified Dungeons & Dragons motif. The game mechanics are easy, leaving you to focus on the puzzles, the high-adrenaline battles, and the lustful visuals.

Presto has raised the bar, taking gaming from a pastime and moving it into the realm of a legitimate art form.

From involving story to eye-popping graphics, very funny script, incredible characters, great voice acting, ultra-smooth gameplay, and an unusual range of extended play options, FFVTR brings it all together better than any PC game I've played in the past year.

The measure of a puzzle game is not, of course, how pretty it looks or how convincing it sounds. The measure is how well it plays. I am happy to report that Safecracker 2006 plays beautifully. There are some familiar puzzles, some unfamiliar puzzles, and some very clever twists on the whole idea of what constitutes a puzzle.

Frankly, Max Payne 2 makes me confident that the best is yet to come for gaming, that the awesome narrative and creative capability of this medium has yet to be explored to its fullest extent.

A classic. That's what it is. Obsidian may be the most innovative, imaginative puzzle adventure ever conceived.

Knights of the Old Republic is fast-paced, linear, and consistently entertaining, and the goals are always clear. This was a nearly perfect gaming experience, at least by my standards.

I have never seen a game use light the way Deadly Shadows does, nor have I seen such realistic environments rendered on the fly. For those who can get it to work well on their systems, this is an astounding visual experience.

Justice is Served is, by far, the best in this illustrious series. It's excellently written, bigger in scope, longer, better looking. It gets my highest recommendation as a must-buy for any fan of the show and really any adventure gamer looking for an involving and entertaining mystery to be solved.

With a novel, large and intricate set of societies, coupled with excellent graphics and sound, Gothic becomes one of the most immersive and believable single-play adventure/RPGs ever.

Stupid Invaders is fun and funny, a masterful blend of high art and low humor. (I am glad that computer-generated odors are not yet a reality.) It is my new favorite game of all-time, displacing even “The Longest Journey” and “Grim Fandango.”

Half-Life 2: Episode One is really one of the best games I've played in recent months, and I'm eagerly anticipating the next installment. Though it provides little in the way of exposition and does nothing to reduce the opacity of the plot (which would be interesting if it made sense), its mood and design are so elegantly realized that minor complaints about storyline holes can't seriously diminish the accomplishment.

Love it or hate it, I believe we will look back in five or ten years and see this as a watershed moment in our brief gaming history, in much the same way as the original 1993 “Myst” is now viewed.

Warrior Within is not a perfect game. In many ways, it stands as a badly written testament to exactly what is wrong with video games: sexism, teenage hormones, amateurish writing, clumsy franchise handling. But it's entertaining. It's incredibly entertaining.

This game is the sort of which I'd like to see more: breathtaking attention to detail, deeply satisfying gameplay, and a focus on pure, simple fun that doesn't in any way defeat or diminish a richly powerful thematic narrative.

Spin aside, for those with a taste for the creepy/weird and a willingness to see through the grime of the world into the heart of the spirit, Bad Mojo is an extraordinary adventure.

Okami has elements of many genres—platforming, adventure, RPG and action all apply. But there's more to it than that. There's something so ... joyous about it, in Amaterasu's happy barks, in her running, her jumping, her digging of holes. I found myself ignoring the game for stretches, just doing these things. I don't know if it's the way the controls handle, or the graphics, or what, but it's there. Okami is the video game version of Professor Dumbledore, managing somehow to be both gleeful and august.

You find a spectacularly violent and wonderfully thrilling adventure composed of epic, earth-shattering battles between deities' champions, fought in a dreamlike landscape as weird and varied as it is beautiful.

The frenetic pace and intense (sometimes frustrating) challenges of the 10 levels is absorbing, graphically most satisfying, quite varied and, most of all, funny.