The games we normally call open worlds – the locked off cities and level-restricted grinding grounds – don't compare to this. While everyone else is faffing around with how to control and restrict the player, Bethesda just put a fucking country in a box. It's the best open world game I've ever played, the most liberating RPG I've ever played, and one of my favourite places in this or any other world.

Where Mass Effect 2 completely won me over was in the amazing climactic mission, easily one of the best game endings I've played in recent years.

Oblivion is a messy masterpiece; accomplished, bold, huge and occasionally rough around the edges. Your adventures are more varied than those of any other game I could name, and magnificently rendered by the game's powerhouse graphics and physics... Narcotically addictive. [Apr 2006, p.68]

This is the finest WWII strategy game I've played. Hell, I'm having real trouble thinking of <I>any</I> strategy game that's this spectacular, this intense, this <I>fun</I>. [Oct 2006, p.70]

A beautifully crafted first-person shooter, but without a compelling context. How much does that matter? To me, a little. Not a lot, but it nags. [Dec 2007, p.73]

Rich, gorgeous and endlessly fun.

A dramatic and ingenious rethink. [July 2008, p.78]

Still the best looking online world out there. [Jan 2009, p.64]

Still dark, cool, beautiful, smart substantial, funny, creative and endlessly entertaining. Only now a bit better. [Jan 2014, p.88]

A spectacular and beautiful sci-fi epic. [Christmas 2007, p.78]

Nothing else is this slick, this viscerally impressive, this overwhelmingly addictive.

It's just the kind of intelligent silliness that's always made GalCiv a joy to play, and worthy of even the most discriminating Space Miner's downtime. [June 2007, p.86]

The most satisfying brawler ever coupled with an uncommonly creative stealth game. Only the bosses drag it down. [Nov 2009, p.94]

The first fighting game in a decade built for flesh and blood gamers and simply the best brawler available on any platform. [Sept 2009, p.86]

Thrillingly dark, gruesomely adult and one of the most atmospheric games ever. [Dec 2008, p.66]

A gorgeous puzzle-platformer that's both a treat for the eyes and a thorough workout for the mind. [July 2013, p.82]

This is the most enormously detailed game world I've experienced, its history stretching back thousands of years, its cultures vivid, beautiful and flawed, the battles enormous, the humour superb. Roleplaying games now have a great deal to live up to. [Dec 2009, p.74]

A triumph. Competitors beware: this is the best MMO in the world. Once you're hooked it's impossible to stop playing. [Feb 2011, p.91]

A delightful puzzle classic. [Dec 2008, p.78]

Portal is a magnificent puzzle game. The titillating wrongness of every solution and the wonky thinking required to get there make you feel like a space-folding genius, and yet you'll almost never get stuck.

Episode Two is the most sumptuous chapter of the Half-Life saga, and by a country mile. It's as if Valve's tech and art teams are trying to outdo each other: the Source engine has had a striking technical overhaul that renders textures, materials and curves uncannily well, and the artists clearly relish having a fresh palette to work with.

Dizzying, baffling and staggeringly clever. It's a game that uses parts of your brain you didn't know you had. [June 2009, p.94]

Big punchy man action, with a surprising amount of brain. [Apr 2006, p.94]

SimBin have concentrated their efforts exactly where it counts - on the driving itself. And what they've created is the finest, most complete racing sim ever. [Oct 2006, p.78]

It's the peripheral distractions of both going out with Roman, and meeting your girlfriends, that really make your virtual life so worth living. Although incredibly simplistic, they're oddly touching...One of the finest videogames ever. [Christmas 2008, p.87]

It's a tighter, more focused experience than the continental sprawl of "Empire" and "Napoleon", sacrifices none of their intricacy, and brings improved AI to the battlefield. In the final count, it's consistently thrilling, grand in scope, surprisingly atmospheric, and bloody hard to put down. [Mar 2011, p.75]

Astonishing...Immense... A strategy masterwork. [Mar 2009, p.54]

It's got all the nail-biting high tension of a control point assault/defence of Team-Fortress 2, mixed with the tightly designed levels of Half-Life 2 and the weapons of Counter-Strike. As long as they keep introducing new missions, there's no reason why it won't be sucking on your bandwidth for years to come.

Gorier, chainsawier, co-opier, and more infectious. A refreshed stack of content for the best zombie game ever.

Large, engrossing and exquisite. [July 2008, p.68]

It's entirely its own creature and brilliant. [Nov 2007, p.74]

Brilliant and unrivalled multiplayer makes it a game worth playing, despite bugs and crappy singleplayer.

A beautifully designed masterpiece of a platform game, that will chill, challenge and charm in equal measure. [Oct 2011, p.78]

For the single player, though, Master League is where it's at and, personally speaking, it remains the greatest game mode of all time in any game ever. [Dec 2006, p.84]

A fast, deep and exciting card game let down by its business model. Great when you're on a roll, rough when you're not. [Apr 2014, p.84]

Mesmerisingly challenging... If there's another wargame that blends geopolitics with tactics this brilliantly, or portrays war so memorably, then I'm unaware of it... The new king of wargames. [Dec 2006, p.56]

A delight. [Dec 2013, p.95]

It's a game that's precisely as ambitious as it needs to be. No plot. No anti-aliasing. No in-store cardboard standee. Just you, a physics engine and an armadillo. [Sept 2006, p.96]

Frighteningly compelling. [May 2009, p.74]

A delightfully challenging platformer, and the most fun you'll have by dying repeatedly. [Feb 2011, p.98]

More accessible, still daunting for newcomers, life-swallowing for anyone with an interest in the beautiful game. [Christmas 2009, p.102]

With a clearer incentive to progress, Paradise would have the cohesion it lacks. But it's still a stupendous amount of fun to play. It doesn't offer a challenge for hardcore racing fans, but instead presents you with a giant island of opportunities for mucking about and enjoying yourself. Which is just fine. [J.Walker]

Satisfying, unintimidating war with rich visuals, held back by flavourless map design and a poor singleplayer mode. [Apr 2010, p.85]

A racer made of style and substance. [July 2008, p.84]

Epic in both space and time. [Apr 2008, p.72]

Stunning graphics and excellent voice acting. [Sept 2010, p.86]

Episode One is full of sophisticated visual effects. [July 2006, p.64]

FIFA 14 has the same old problems as previous incarnations, but it remains the same great football game. [Dec 2013, p.84]

A decent slow-mo shooter spoilt by technical issues and a heavy focus on an empty plot. Wait for patches or a demo. [Aug 2012, p.88]

It's the best add-on so far, playing to all the series' strengths. [Sept 2013, p.97]

An excellent action-horror sequel. Dead Space 2 doesn't try to innovate, but it's a highly polished alien-rending experience.

The most exhaustively detailed, realistic combat jet simulation you'll find outside of a classified U.S. military facility.

Despite the 'semi-sequel' tag, there's as much here as the original game. This isn't like the expansion packs we knew in the past. This is World War, Too. [Dec 2007, p.64]

FM 2007 remains a blinding mass of statistics at first sight, but they yield an intoxicating world of heartbreaking injuries, transfer coups, heroic defeats and the pursuit of glory. In short, it's football. No other game comes close. [Dec 2006, p.104]

The PC version of Gears of War is absolutely the definitive take on one of the most talked about games of the last few years. [Christmas 2007, p.70]

Repetitive, but well worth repeating. [Dec 2006, p.78]

A charming hack-and-slash RPG, with an excellent soundtrack, great colouring, and a superb narration gimmick. [Nov 2011, p.124]

A remarkable piece of work, and a worthy successor to "Total Annihilation." Strategy games don't come this big, and this ambitious, and they never demand <I>this</I> much from you. Take command - if you think you can handle it. [Feb 2007, p.62]

Flawed RPG fixed. [Nov 2008, p.88]

The new elements it adds feel more like a patch than a genuine expansion whilst the mods are hit and miss - and you can already get the best ones for nothing. Would I want to go back to playing Civ IV without what Beyond the Sword adds? No. But should I have to pay this much for the privilege of balancing a game that, by the very intent of this expansion, its developers clearly feel needs it? Again, no.

Improved but basically the same, The Sims remains a joyful simulation, and celebration, of life and all its dramas.

A beautifully animated, brilliantly scored, exquisitely judged platformer, equally modern and classic. [May 2012, p.92]

There's some superb gaming here, no sci-fi indulgence, no grim Star Wars fanboyism, no recourse to statistics or tedious switch. This is an action-puzzle game for all brains great and small. [Oct 2006, p.94]

Takes a dangling plot thread and ties it up, but unsatisfyingly and with a lot of repetitious combat.

Played correctly, it's still fun, but never feels as important as its older brother did. [May 2011, p.79]

An oddly clumsy reprise of a much loved game. Beautifully hand-pained, wonderfully acted, but strange design choices. [Sept 2009, p.70]

It might sound trivial to criticise the lack of a good in-game tutorial, but when each game takes hours to play out, discovering which technologies are most useful by trial and error can be a painful and tedious process. [Apr 2006, p.76]

Without doubt, it is the most realistic, rewarding and compelling football title around, so we can only hope that this prosaic update is a blip, rather than a sign of serious stagnation.

Leaks fun like a cracked sump leaks Castrol. Thoughtful additions ensure it's as irresistible as its predecessor.

This is a game which takes absolutely no risks, as much Middle-of-the-Road as Middle-Earth...You won't be surprised. You will, almost certainly, be entertained. [June 2007, p.70]

Whether your preference is for PvP or PvE, the frustrations of aimless wandering and vague directions are gone.

Dead Space is solid, but it's not entirely smooth. [Dec 2008, p.74]

BCR is at once beautifully reminiscent of its era, and polished enough to be palatable to a modern audience. The core grappling and swinging mechanic is satisfying, the weapons a joy to wield and the levels are imaginatively designed.

This is the biggest and best combat flight sim money can buy, but it's by no means flawless. [Jan 2007, p.70]

How DLC should be done. A chunk of game almost as substantial as the full release for a third of the price. [Feb 2011, p.94]

Tactile, bloody and substantial. One of gaming's most exciting open worlds - but only when you're online. [Apr 2010, p.96]

This odd land is worth exploring, and its meaty questline worth bashing through. Whether it's worth £18 for the privilege comes down to your appetite for Oblivion's combat.

The artists are on form, even if the writers are coasting. [June 2008, p.89]

It might well be more twitch than tactics, but Vegas is the fun, modernised version of its own predecessors and FPS cousin "Brothers in Arms." I reckon that right now you're itching for a shooter with a brain at the top of that jittery reptilian nervous system, and this is it - if you have God's own PC. [Feb 2007, p.84]

We don't give marks for effort, so the game they've ended up with is all that matters. It's a great and truly new one, just not varied or exciting enough to live up to this particular name. [Feb 2009, p.54]

It's deeply hilarious - as aracde-feeling as strategy games can get...It does everything it can, bar a song and dance routine, to entertain you. And it succeeds. [Apr 2007, p.62]

OotP's baseball smarts may be undisputed, but it struggles to capture the passion and sporting flair of the infield. [Sept 2012, p.106]

One expansion to rule them all. [Jan 2009, p.72]

Rich in atmosphere and big on scares, Amnesia: The Dark Descent goes where survival-horror fears to tread.

Demands more work than its predecessors. Get it right and there's little as satisfying, but it's easier than ever to get it wrong.

There's almost no reason not to mount your horse and charge through the doors of PC World, beheading the security guard with a Zweihander and screaming blood-oaths as you enter your pin number, to get hold of a copy of Kingdoms. Only the weak will not be buying this expansion pack, and frankly, the weak are there to be trampled. [Sept 2007, p.82]

Chaotic but magnificent bouncy fun. [June 2007, p.76]

By far one of the funniest S&M episodes for dialogue. [June 2008, p.89]

Gloriously beautiful, infuriatingly fiddly. [Christmas 2009, p.98]

An elegant game of pure tactics and psychology, won by wits instead of reflexes. Good against AI, great with friends.

After playing Far Cry 2, I'm simply unable to go back to straight and simple first-person shooters. This game has executed my expectations. [Nov 2008, p.62]

A blissful union of game and music.

In the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40K future, there is only a solid, satisfying game let down by a lack of variation. [May 2010, p.100]

As much mental workout as excellent puzzle game, SpaceChem challenges and entertains, plus it has an engaging story.

A splendid puzzle made glorious on PC. [Apr 2008, p.70]

It forms a natural companion to "Richard Burns Rally," which will likely remain the more technical racer's weapon of choice. In many ways, DiRT supersedes it, the sheer viscerality of hte roads putting the shoe to anything the older game can offer. [Aug 2007, p.78]

The perfect entry point into the series for PC gamers. Time to clear some desk space. [Sept 2011, p.82]

Often beguiling and sometimes infuriating, FM 2012 remains a compelling and comprehensive sim of footie strategy and tactics.