Valkyria Chronicles PS3

Valkyria Chronicles PS3 should be a horrifying game. But its gritty honesty spoke as much to me about humanity as it did loss of life.

Settlers of Catan Board Games

Settlers of Catan is a strategy game where players compete to build the biggest and best settlements using a combination of strategy and luck. Due to a modular board and dice-directed play, the game is differently every time you play.

Supreme Commander 2 360

Supreme Commander 2 360 tries everything to make its real time strategy work on a console. But even realistic units and massive battles fail to compensate for controls that hamstring your orders.

Tetris Party Deluxe Wii

Tetris Party Deluxe arrives in Europe to turn the Wii-ware offering into a full game, as well as updating Tetris DS to boot. Local and online multiplayer modes combine with chain reactions, bombs and power-ups to extend the already excellent pair of games on Wii and DS.

LEGO Shave a Sheep Board Games

Shave a Sheep from LEGO Games offers a self-built customisable board game with comical Ardman style sheep pieces. Cute, endearing and a lot of fun.

We Rule iPhone

We Rule on iPhone places you in charge of a little kingdom, growing food and manufacturing goods for money and experience. Its toytown charm makes it fun for a while, but connectivity issues may mean missed opportunities when you can't access your kingdom. If Farmville is your idea of fun, this one's for you.

Men of War: Red Tide PC

Men of War: Red Tide is a curious game that offers glimmers of emotional connection despite ultimately feeling rather limiting and overly complex.

Supreme Commander 2 PC

Supreme Commander 2 has good RTS ideas, but having lost too much time to stressful university life, I have to be picky about which games I'm prepared to get sucked into. Real Time Strategies have to be really streamlined to fit the bill.

Animal Crossing 3DS

Animal Crossing looks like it was made for the 3DS.

Space Junkyard Board Games

Space Junkyard like its topic is a little messy and complex. Given a bit of time though and a spatial puzzle board game emerges that will keep your grey matter ticking over for some time.

Greed Crop XBLA

Greed Corp XBLA presents like an old board game, but that's mainly a symptom of the hexes. Strong technical delivery and single minded focus on well balanced turn based play make Greed Corp a steady XBLA experience.

Chess.com PC

It's not often you review a game dating back to the 16th Century. But what I'm bringing today is the wonderfully slick massively multiplayer experience that Chess.com has turned this board game into. Three words sum it up for me; tournaments, rankings stats and community - if you've never been into Chess now is the time because Chess.com takes this board game and fits it into your life, even into your phone.

Greed Corp XBLA

Greep Crop XBLA is a perfectly simple strategy game. It sets itself apart from other 360 downloadable strategy games with its unique interplay between resources and territory, combined with a charming aesthetic. But for all its charms, it is the chilling implication of the story that has stayed with me.

Line Rider 2 Wii

Hurling a little guy on a sledge down a hill makes Line Rider 2 sound instantly appealing. Originally a PC title, the sandbox physics fun the game is a good fit for the Wii. Unfortunately, overly complicated menu navigation and tricky controls made accessing the promises of my imagination more of a challenge than I had bargained for.

Warhammer Battle for Skull Pass Board Games

Warhammer is a tabletop battle game made by Games Workshop. Rather than its sci-fi sister Warhammer 40k, Warhammer is filled with magic and medieval references. Players gather around a table and use miniature lead figures in epic battles, determined by measured movement and dice rolls. Dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins and men create a battle reminiscent of Tolkien's classic saga.

We Rule iPhone

We Rule on iPhone is a gentle kingdom-building game, easily as addictive as Farmville on Facebook. While it lacks any real depth or meaningful objectives I found its persistent nature reason enough to care for my ongoing creations. Before long I was crafting my own iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch farming kingdom with as much care and attention as I had done with Rune Factory or Harvest Moon on the DS.

Puzzle Quest Galactrix DS

Puzzle Quest Galactrix DS proves that originality isn't everything with a charmingly generic space opera storyline wrapped around its addictive RPG puzzling.

Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight PC

Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight is exclusive to PC again, but the base-building Real-time Strategy is lost in favour of a more streamlined tactical system similar to Company of Heroes. The new approach offers a lightweight experience perhaps better suited to the console market than the PC.

Toy Soldiers XBLA

Toy Soldiers delves into childhood toy box and finds a tower defence game with novel first person elements. End to end tabletop plate spinning takes a surprising amount of time to learn before you can hit the multiplayer modes.

Starship Patrol DSi-Ware

Starship Patrol is football management for the masses. The DSi-ware game's stripped down visuals and clockwork strategy scratch the same itch as many a soccer sim. As I later discovered these games to be called, tower defence doesn't get much better than this.