Hi, my name is [ANONYMOUS], and I am a Mafia Wars addict. I join with you, my fellow addicts, in reciting the 12 Steps to recovery, as follows:

Not enough weapons!

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These days, the video game industry is fairly narrow. A few big companies dominate the scene, if only because they can pump millions of dollars into the development of what have become professional-level games. The visual design budget alone of any one of these games surpasses the money available for everything in a small studio, so it's practically impossible to compete. It's gotten to the point that ambitious startups are almost automatically dubbed "alternative" or "independent", labels previously applied to film and music that had too small an audience to be considered commercial.

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It's always nice to see a strong, ambitious game series develop to its full potential. Sequels are always tricky business, so when each successive game in a franchise improves upon the last while adding new content it's encouraging. Few series have evolved so interesting or so well as the Jedi Knight games.

Produced by Lucasarts and Activision, Jedi Academy is the most recent game in the series, coming out in 2003. On its own, JA is a fun, engrossing action game that does a good job of mixing up missions and level designs so it's not just one long slog of hack-and-slash. But in the context of where it came from, the game is even more satisfying.

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Games based on movies are usually terrible and this is often because they are rushed out to coincide with a cinema release date. However there is a licensing nightmare even darker and more disturbing - games based on television programmes. These lazily pasted together cash-ins are churned out by greedy publishers. Just like movie tie-ins they are rushed out the door to hit the stores before the ratings die down on whatever television trash is topping the charts. Typically based on kid’s shows or mainstream TV they encourage sales through simple recognition and are often bought as gifts by people who don’t read game reviews. Here are the top ten biggest offenders, if you got one of these for your birthday or in a Christmas stocking you have my sincere sympathy.

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I come from the generation that was awe-inspired by the stunning eight bits of the Nintendo Entertainment System, so I get no small amount of satisfaction from seeing games that far surpass that top toy of 1985 being produced for play on any common web browser. Add to that the fact that many of these excellent games are programmed by fewer than three people and it becomes apparent how far the art of game design has come. The following are three excellent browser games that debuted in April 2009.

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The appeal of puzzle games fascinates me. They are by far the most abstract kind of video games and yet they are some of the most addicting. Whole downturns in corporate productivity can be linked to the release of Tetris and I can't put an exact number on how many kids I knew in college whose GPA's suffered thanks to Snood. In an industry that increasingly relies on shiny graphics and cinematic gameplay, it's amazing that there's still a small fortune to be had in games consisting of some variation on making simple geometric shapes disappear from a two-dimensional field.

For a solid decade there are two puzzle games I keep going back to time and again. They're both great for just sitting back with a cold drink and a favorite album, but they're also astonishing in their ingenuity. There are a lot of story-based games I love, but if I had to choose my desert island games, these two would be high on the list.

Dr.

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Games need a good hook to get your interest and starting out with a gripping opening is a good way to instantly immerse you. There have been some great shooters over the years and the first-person perspective makes it easier to pull you straight into the action and make you feel a part of it. Here are some of my favourite FPS openings.

Medal of Honor Frontline
This was seriously memorable carnage and while the graphics may not have been up to the standard of Saving Private Ryan it did a good job of pitching you into the Normandy beach landings. As soon as you hit Omaha Beach your boat was destroyed and everyone around you was mown down mercilessly. You had to try and work your way up the beach under heavy fire and it was tough to avoid being killed over and over in the attempt.

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The headlines practically write themselves: <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/04/demigod-hit-by-massive-piracy-review-scores-take-beating.ars">pirated copies of Stardocks' new game Demigod overwhelmed legitimate copies, crashing the Demigod servers on its premiere weekend</a>.  Their servers saw 100,000 more users connect than expected, but only 18,000 of those users were legitimate.

Stardock is one of the game industry's most lenient companies when it comes to DRM.  For their newest game, Demigod, they decided to avoid needlessly restrictive (and ultimately futile) DRM schemes, and allow players access to multiplayer mode only with the use of a license key, which was printed on the CD of licensed copies.

This is all well and good, but <a href="http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347467">as a (remarkably open and honest) post by Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell points out</a>, it wasn't the cause of the problem.  The Demigod servers were overwhelmed by simple HTTP request.  Every time a copy of the game is booted up, it asks the Demigod servers, "Hey, do you have any updates for me?"  This occurs whether or not the game has the license key installed

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Back in the year 2000 a British game developer called The Creative Assembly revolutionised the real time strategy genre with Shogun: Total War. I’m not generally given to hyperbole but a revolution is the only way to describe it. This new brand of real time battle on huge varied terrain maps with massive opposing armies was a breath of fresh air. A genre which was stagnating with endless Command and Conquer knock offs had found an entirely new direction and the game-play was captivating.

Shogun: Total War was set in feudal Japan and there was a turn based portion to the game which saw players moving their armies on a board game interface to try and unite the Japan of the Sengoku period. It was inspired by genuine history and attempted to combine a realistic tactical approach to battle with fun immersive game-play. The turn based portion of the game was very basic but the battles were breathtaking.

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