Represents the pinnacle of great action shooters because it strictly adheres to the one rule that makes an FPS great, the one rule that so many developers ignore, or break due to ineptitude and then conceal behind a shroud of tacked-on complexity: in a first person shooter, level design is <I>everything.</I>

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.

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.

This is what other adventure games only aspire to be. It is extremely well-written, well-executed, and above all, fun to play.

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.

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.

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.

It really is an extraordinarily beautiful piece of work. For me, though, it missed the mark. I got bored with it about halfway through.

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.

A magnum opus. Even though it does have some small flaws and a couple of things I would change, it is absolutely breathtaking in all respects. They just don&#146;t get any better than this.

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.

Planescape is very, very special. Some might say it's too bizarre and weird, but I found it a refreshingly deep and thoughtful interlude in an otherwise cookie-cutter world of Samegaming.

There is not much to say. Neverwinter Nights is fun, a lot of fun. It is also bland. Despite its figurative colorlessness, it has an addictive quality to it.

If it sounds like NOLF2 is a lot like NOLF, and you're wondering why I'm complaining so bitterly, you have my sympathy. When I say they "gutted" NOLF2, I mean it, and I can back it up.

It is very frustrating at times and loads of fun at other times and on the whole well worth a play through, with the magnificent ending making it all worthwhile.

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

For the first time in its history, Valve has produced other than a superlative product. That's more disorienting than disappointing, as though the sky had suddenly changed color or cats started speaking. I don't dislike Episode Two. I just wish I liked it more.

In an age where you thought everything has been done before, along comes Freedom Force, shattering genre lines, daring to do something different, and instilling fun for all ages into a game&#151;you can't ask for anything more.

While Jedi Outcast is firmly entrenched in the action genre, that shouldn't frighten away adventure gamers. If you've ever played an action/adventure game and have an interest in Star Wars, it's imperative to play this game.

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.

It is a beautiful, exciting, rich, and well-written game. It is everything that a great CRPG hopes to be.

It is vastly enjoyable. It consistently seduces with its vitality, its muscular flex, its postapocalyptic &#233;lan, its vivid, hyperreal environment.

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.

Overall, the Silent Hill 2 experience is worth having, if just for the freak-out value. It's not that compelling a story, and the puzzles aren't too difficult, but it's gorgeous to look at and listen to.

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.

Yet Mafia oozes class, polish, and style like no other game so far this year. To not "experience" Mafia is a far greater crime than any in the Salieri family ever committed.

An example of what a company can do when it takes an existing genre and reshapes it into something refreshing. If you want to experience a game with a great story, you like FPS games, and you have an open mind, then I highly recommend it.

DOOM 3 joins the tiny handful of games we've seen this year that really are all they're cracked up to be. It's got fun, excitement, good looks—everything people look for both in a potential mate and in a video game.