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Galactic Civilizations 2, the 4X strategy title published by Stardock, has been an utter revelation. For a so-called "indie" title in a so-called "niche" genre, it's done remarkably well: The original budget of about $1 million has spawned more than 300,000 sales and an eight-figure income thanks to a stream of good reviews and plenty of word-of-mouth success.

In Aquaria, you control Naija, who initially just sings to the fish in her favorite thinking spot. She also suffers from retrograde amnesia and desires answers to why there is no one else around. From there, she decides to explore the rest of her world to obtain those answers. Along the way, she will learn different songs that will alter her shape, which is required to fully explore the world of Aquaria.

I've never played a game quite like Gold Miner Vegas. The closest I've come is the time my daughter talked me into dropping some coins into one of those "claw" games you see sometimes in stores and restaurants — you know the ones where you guide the claw around the then drop it onto a toy, hoping to pull something to the exit chute to give your little darling? Yeah, I've never won anything at that game either.

I'm not sure if it's just me, or there is a severe shortage of thoughtful tycoon games out there lately? It was just a few years ago that just about every game company was pumping out low-quality, unoriginal and just plain old boring tycoon games. Since Rollercoaster Tycoon is one of my favorite games, I have always looked closely at the genre, but after a few times burnt, I do tend to be more cautious of which tycoon clones I'll dig my hands into.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a game based on the movie of the same name. The movie is based on a set of books of the same name. I haven't read the books, so I'm not sure how close any of this is to the source material, but the game is extremely close to the movie (at least so far).

Virtual Villagers 3: The Secret City holds many mysteries. The first mystery is why they never thought to include an “Oops” button. Third in a series of popular casual games, Virtual Villagers 3: The Secret City almost made me cry. I lost two tribes to starvation when I forgot to pause the game overnight. Not a good start.

Pinball games are hard to review. Or at least, this is true for me. They tend to be good for a quick, fun, yet uneventful romp through the imagination. The game's physics and layout tend to vary from pinball game to pinball game, and the lack of those two things can quickly kill it. Ultimately, they tend to be accessible games for everyone. I personally do not really get pinball games because it requires lightning-fast reflexes and a mind that can handle college-level physics. It is the latter that confuses me no end. Imagine my surprise when I was sent a copy of Dream Pinball 3D. And I must say, I somewhat enjoyed it for several hours.

Usually I like to play video games and look forward to trying a new one. In the case of Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm, I had no interest. However, playing the game, I can see how it might appeal to a small audience.

Alpha Protocol (AP) is an espionage based action/RPG that looks to flexibility of storyline as its main hook. The real goal of AP is to create a world/scenario that will result in very different outcomes based on how the player behaves in the storyline; not JUST in the ending, but all through the experience.

To me, Stormrise seems to be a game that was designed entirely around its interface, and some of the results are quite interesting when you consider what typefies the RTS genre - even those that have made it to console games. The concept is basically, "design a control scheme that allows a player to manage an RTS style battlefield from the frontlines of the battle, and lets them to do it using a console's standard controller." The game that evolved from this baseline looks and controls uniquely enough that Creative Assembly and Sega also plan on moving it to the PC after the initial console releases, so the meat of the game seems to be deeper than JUST the control system!

There are Lord of the Rings fans – like those of us who re-read the trilogy, The Silmarillion and The Hobbit about once a year; and then there are Lord of the Rings fans – like my son, who at 11 has read all 5 books twice, a few of the unfinished tales, memorized the films, owns more paraphernalia than can be stored in two homes and must own ev-er-y single video game that hits the market. If you are of the latter category, Lord of the Rings: Conquest is going to make you rather happy.

I had a chance to see the pre-alpha of the newest game in the Total War series. Having played many a game of Shogun, and tinkered a goodly bit with all of the subsequent titles, I was interested to see what was coming with this iteration. The game is set in the 18th century, when empire-building was all the rage, and the lifesblood of commerce and military was naval trade/warfare. As such, a wholly new naval component is being added with Empires, in addition to some big changes in the land engine. Let's start, however, with the brand new "if by sea" news!

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was the fact that when I got to Bethesda on Thursday, for my last appointment of E3, I got to play around a half-hour of Fallout 3. There were a few restrictions on what we could or could not write about, but I jumped right into it to the point of forgetting to write anything down.

One of the best looking games I saw at E3 wasn't because of a photorealistic style, but rather what might be called the next evolution in cel shading. Ubisoft called it an "illustrative" style, and it was a distinguishing style for the newest Prince of Persia video game.

The very last game I saw at E3 - though not the last one I'm writing up, in case you're worried about that - was Rise of the Argonauts which is being published by Codemasters. As the final music blared, one of Codemasters' guys walked me through the background, discussion modes, and combat of Rise of the Argonauts.

I went to the Ubisoft demo room to look at Far Cry 2 and I had one big concern about the game. When I'd first heard about the game in some gaming magazine it was mentioned that you would be battling malaria. "Malaria?" I thought, "Dealing with disease isn't fun." What I found, however, was that Far Cry 2 is fun, and the malaria bit is actually something that adds to the feel of the game.

One of the games taking a lower profile at E3 was the new Tom Clancy branded air combat game, HAWX. The fact that it's not coming out until next year might be part of that, but the build that I got a chance to play at Ubisoft's floor booth was a lot more fun than I'd expected it to be (especially with that unfortunate name).

One of the things that amused me at E3 was watching people who were unfamiliar with the Brothers in Arms series pick up the controller for Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and try to play it like most other first person shooters. Usually they were fairly quickly dispatched by the relentless German fire and they would wander away from the game, annoyed. That would be because they don't realize how realistic the third incarnation of the Brothers in Arms series can be.

So. Your name is Will. You fly a cargo plane. You crash said cargo plane in the Bermuda Triangle and now you're stuck in a mysterious parallel dimension called The Void. Intrigued yet? What if I told you the same guys who brought you Crimson Skies for the Xbox are helping to bring you Dark Void from Capcom to the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3?

In the first person shooter genre, there are many fine franchises with games worth playing. As such, it is important to ask why you should play any particular title. What is it about that particular game that you're not going to find anywhere else? Gamecock's “Legendary” is well aware of this question, and answers it in two ways;

The first thing that Boris, of Akela, told us about DIsciples 3: Renaissance, was that it was most certainly an entry into a franchise. Akela is aware that the first two Disciples games had a following, and they want to make sure that the expectations of those fans are met while they're developing new wrinkles for their game. Having never played the initial entries in the series, I don't know anything about their look and feel, but I can share that Renaissance looks really good, considering its stage of development.

It's easy to admire the scope of Spore from a "reality" perspective. The concept of tracking a small organism in the primordial ooze, following its evolution into a complex creature, and watching subsequent development of its society - straight through to that of a spacefaring race - is immense. It's an impressive undertaking, and in person it comes off well. What's more noteworthy to me, however, is the breadth of gaming that's covered by Spore. It includes a bit of resource gathering/management, a bit of real-time combat, a bit of RPG leveling, some unit-group management, and through it all, a content manager and editor that ties in the personalization/collectible genre. That's a lot of gaming to be included in a single title! Thanks to some always-handy dev cheats, I had a chance to see Spore in all 5 stages of game play, which are (in order): spore, creature, tribe, civilization, and spacefarer. I'll give a short rundown on each segment, and then some overall game impressions as well as a peek at features that don't fit squarely into a given phase.

Did you buy the original version of The Witcher? Atari loves you and wants to reward you by giving you a copy of the new "Enhanced Edition" for free! Did you not buy The Witcher? Well, here's a good excuse to do so, because with the new enhanced edition you'll find that the game has been considerably...uh...enhanced.

Sometimes it's just a matter of scale. Combination action/strategy World War 2 naval games exist - I do believe if you look here you'll see another one - but PT Boats: Knights of the Sea is a smaller scale, primarily European theater game of that sort.

There are two things that really show up for a street racing game: credibility, in terms of having the verisimilitude of the racing, as well as the setting, have a unique and interesting setting that sets you firmly into position as to where and why you're racing. Moscow Racer does this on both counts.

Battlestations: Pacific is the sequel to the popular Battlestations: Midway game. It is a combination strategy and action game - you not only have the ability to command your fleet of ships and planes but at any time you can jump over and take control of various craft.

Crysis Warhead is a sequel of sorts to the original PC-killer Crysis - but not necessarily directly. It's more of a side story to the original, following "Psycho" as he traverses the other side of the island from the original.

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 is, as you might've guessed, the third installment in the alternate history real time strategy series of Command & Conquer games. In this alternate history, Hitler was assassinated before World War 2, and in this third game the Soviet and American forces go to war against the Empire of the Rising Sun, also known as Japan.

I have children: boys, ages 9 and 11. As they've grown there have been few constants in our lives other than video games (I am their mom), bathroom humor, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Harry has been an integral part of my children's development; the stories, films and games are a huge influence on their sense of wonder. I am in debt to J.K. Rowling for this. We have never not played the games over the years — the good and the bad, the console titles for the older children and the PC titles for the younger. The latest offering from the franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, learned many lessons from last year's less than stellar installment, and is already quite a lot of fun!

Raven Squad combines real time strategy elements with the first person shooter genre to make an interesting hybrid of the two as you try to lead your group of eight mercenaries out of the treacherous Amazon region you've been shot down in.