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.

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.

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

The underlying story is engrossing, thrilling, daring.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dark Cloud 2 has a great story, lots of adventure, unique characters and monsters and Spehda! What's not to love? This one is a keeper!

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.

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.

This is an entertaining romp with just enough variation, humor and story to hold your attention right to the end.

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.