Burnout Paradise (PS3)
Burnout Paradise’s open world gameplay was a blast of fresh air for the series and successfully combined a solid solo racing experience with seemless online multiplayer. Initially great value for money, it was the game that just kept on giving. Criterion’s “Year of Paradise” saw the retail offering totally transformed by the addition of new online challenges and events, a day and night cycle and the introduction of motorbikes.

Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360)
This four disk opus was my favourite RPG of the year. Managing to deliver a story both epic and intimate, it’s a game that had grown men weeping over their Xbox controllers. The strong narrative will enable most players, even those usually frustrated by JRPG conventions, to overlook any minor technical niggles and the fairly standard gameplay. Completing this title is forty hours well spent.

Civilization Revolution (Xbox 360)
Achieving the almost impossible challenge of distilling the essential elements of the classic PC strategy game into a cool console cocktail, this release deserves the “Civilization” moniker. Even in its slimmed down form, this turned-based game of world domination is still capable of eating into your free time like a famished piranha. Stock up on the morning coffee. You’ll be spending some late nights with this one.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Although little more than a collection of brainteasers, this story driven package with clever twists on classic challenges kept my wife glued to our DS for a week. With sales figures that prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a demand for more cerebral entertainment, the game’s greatest puzzle still remains unsolved… Why did it take so long to reach us in Europe?

LittleBigPlanet (PS3)
Forget the locked down, tightly controlled, commercialised world of Playstation Home – nothing showcases the community potential of the PS3 better than LittleBigPlanet. Level design tools and gameplay fuse together to inspire the player to take on the role of creator themselves. It’s one of the few Playstation exclusives this year that managed to both turn the heads of Xbox 360 fanboys and also fully reward those who chose to pledge their allegiance to Sony’s monolithic machine. LittleBigPlanet may have seemed a little forgotten and unloved these past couple of months, pushed aside by noisier releases offering instant gratification, but it’s a game that you’ll potentially be putting back in your console for years to come.

Your job is to lead a fledgling civilisation through the ages, right from the founding of their first city, all the way to eventual global domination.

You can choose to play any one of sixteen different cultures. Each is distinct and has its own inherent, historically-inspired strengths. For example the British and Spanish get a naval bonus early on. The Mongols can convert barbarian villages to their cause. German warrior units are automatically veterans. The Egyptians generate extra trade and food from desert regions around their cities.

There are four ways to win the game. A domination victory is achieved by taking over your rival’s cities. Developing “great people”, wonders of the world and being the first to build the United Nations earns you a cultural win. For an economic victory you’ll need to stockpile a specified amount of gold and build the World Bank wonder. Finally, a technological win is achieved if you can launch a colonization mission to Alpha Centuri.

Whatever your chosen objective, and to be honest it’s best to keep your options open, the majority of the game is based around manoeuvring your troops and managing your cities.

There are lots of different units on offer, from basic warriors to naval craft and eventually even aeroplanes. The range of troops you can build depends on the era you’re currently in but more importantly on the amount of technology that you have access to. Individual units start out fairly weak but as they win more battles they gain combat bonuses. If you really want an effective fighting force you’ll need to combine multiple units into armies. Unless they’re defeated in battle your troops happily stay around for hundreds or sometimes thousands of years. This might be unrealistic but it’s quite fun seeing units such as archers take on a wing of spitfire or your rifleman destroy an army of tanks.

Each city in your empire generates science, culture, raw materials and gold.

The science produced by your cities allows you to research different technological areas. The more science you create, the less time it takes to discover new knowledge. At first you’re limited to basic research areas such as literacy and metal working but these provide the foundation for more complicated skills using, for example, mathematics, gunpowder and even nuclear energy. Your studies can also lead to improvements in culture and boost your economy.

Cities aren’t that complicated to manage you basically just pick whether you want to develop a unit or a building and what the main focus of your workers will be. Your cities grow according to the amount of food that’s available. If you want, you can take some of your population and send them out to become settlers, founding their own city and expanding your empire.

A range of buildings can be constructed in each city, all of which have beneficial effects. Erecting a barracks means that all your troops are automatically veteran units. Libraries and universities improve science production which leads to faster technological research. Building markets and banks enhance your economy. Workshops and mines speed up the production of raw materials. Including temples and cathedrals in your cities help develop culture levels.

There are also extra special buildings which come in the form of Wonders of the World. They’re appropriate to the different historical periods featured in the game so you’ll come across ancient wonders (like Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon) and eventually modern wonders (like the Manhattan project, the Apollo program and the Internet). Each wonder is unlocked by a specific piece of technological research.

“Great people” will appear in your cities as the culture level grows. These are famous characters from history such as scientists, engineers, artists and humanitarians. You can use each person to give you an instant one-off bonus to your civilization or settle them in your city for a long term advantage. If they become resident there is a risk that an enemy civilisation might send in a spy and kidnap them.

You can also boost different aspects of your civilization by the type of government you choose. City production is increased running under Communism but your culture will be low. Running a democracy will increase trade but your citizens will not allow unprovoked attacks on your neighbours. Choosing a monarchy doubles the amount of culture generated by your palaces. You can switch between all the different types of government you’ve earneunlockedd whenever you like. The only penalty is that, in most cases, your cities won’t produce any resources until the transition is complete.

The game world is large enough for six civilisations to comfortably, or rather uncomfortably battle in. It’s also small enough to explore in a reasonable amount of time. The terrain consists of both land and water squares with raw materials arranged randomly. The map is also littered with barbarian villages, friendly tribes and secret artefacts that benefit your culture if you track them down first.

Game play in Civilization Revolutions is fairly straightforward. This title is nowhere near as complex as its PC relations. A single play through will familiarise you with most of the units, building and wonders. It’s basically Advance Wars with cities and technology thrown in.

The controls have been well adapted for consoles. The thumb sticks move you around the map and direct your units, the triggers and bumper buttons bring up menus and the coloured buttons are helpfully mapped to combat actions.

You’re supported initially by a helpful tutorial mode that holds your hands during the first few turns. After that you can consult the game’s “Civolopedia” for more detailed help and information.

Presentation in the game is top notch. Your advisors barge each other off the screen when they have something important to babble at you. The animation of your units, happily battering ten shades of hell out of each other, is simplistic but effective. The game also does a fairly good job of representing your ever growing cities throughout the ages no matter how many buildings and wonders you cram into them.

Even the museum that records your progress in the game is well done. There are portraits and mini-biographies of all the famous people that you’ll encounter during the game. You can view representations of all the wonders of the world that you’ve unlocked. Spend a few minutes looking around at the end of each game and there’s a slight chance that you may learn something educational.

I should also mention that Civilization Revolutions is perfectly playable on a standard TV. Many current generation console strategy games include cluttered and overly complicated user interfaces that become unreadable unless you’re either viewing them in HD or sitting directly in front of the screen. This is an armchair, strategy experience.

Throughout this review I’ve mainly been talking about the standard single player game. There are also scenario modes, a game of the week feature (with a global score leaderboard) and both local and online multiplayer.

The thing is, even if you only ever play the standard single player game you will get enough value from the game trying to win with each of the different cultures. I can see this title sticking around on people’s shelves for a long time as it’s perfect to pull out for an occasional session.

Overall Civilization Revolution is a much lighter, streamlined experience than the PC version and is well suited to its new console home. A word of warning, though. Even though this is “Civ Lite”, it’s still a time sink. You can easily lose track of time and find yourself playing into the early hours of the morning.