| Year | Company | Game | Comments |
| 2007 | AGEOD | AGEOD's American Civil War | Another new game of the whole American Civil War. I suspect that I might like this one better than Forge of Freedom, but I seem to have so much else to do in my life that I can't find the time for a game of this size and duration. |
| 2006 | Western Civilization | Forge of Freedom | A new game of the whole American Civil War, at last (ten years after Frank Hunter's game!). It seems competently done, but I have some disagreements with the design philosophy. I still haven't got around to playing it. |
| 2005 | Firaxis Games | Civilization IV | In most respects, the best version of Civilization so far. But it still suffers from some of the enduring problems of the whole series: a fundamentally bad combat system, a dreary endgame, and some grossly unrealistic features. It's a good game in the early stages, but it's not a great game and never has been, despite the puzzlingly high ratings it gets in reviews. It would be a better game if it tried to represent history (a) more accurately and (b) more simply. A game can represent reality well enough without going into lots of detail. |
| 2005 | PopTop Software | Railroad Tycoon 3 | What I was really looking for here was a computer version of Railway Rivals, the delightfully simple and elegant railway-building game invented decades ago by David Watts. When I received Railroad Tycoon 3 and starting looking at it, I realized that for me it's way over the top. There's too much detail and too much work for players to do. I'm not that interested in railways and I don't want to have to go to so much trouble to run them. I haven't even tried to play the game. Why are most computer games so huge and over-complicated? |
| 2005 | 2by3 Games | Gary Grigsby's World at War | A high-level turn-based game of the Second World War, with a map of the world divided into large areas, and each turn covering three months of real time. Despite the superficial resemblance to Risk, this looks quite a sophisticated and realistic game, and it's presented in a very slick professional manner. Not too difficult to play, despite the extensive manual, but probably difficult to play well. I played one game to the end but felt an odd lack of enthusiasm, and haven't tried again. I think one problem is the subject matter: the Second World War as a whole is a vast and complicated subject and it's very hard to simulate it in any way that I'd feel comfortable with. |
| 2004 | Adanac Command Studies | Campaigns on the Danube: 1805 & 1809 | Another Napoleonic wargame similar to 1806 (see below), but with some improvements. The rules are very well conceived and not too complicated, they simulate Napoleonic strategy very well, the game is easy to play and flows well. But somehow I don't find it addictive. The only significant problem I can identify is that the combat resolution system is complex and undocumented: so, when there's a battle, I don't know what's going on, and when I see the result I don't really understand why I've won or lost. |
| 2003 | Maxis | SimCity 4 | Repetitive, boring, and slow. I liked SimCity 2000 better in 1994. As usual these days, more attention has been given to graphics than to gameplay; but even the graphics aren't as good as I expected. |
| 2002 | Adanac Command Studies | Campaigns of La Grande Armee: 1806 | A Napoleonic wargame. I never got around to playing it. |
| 2002 | Digital Eel | Strange Adventures in Infinite Space | Mildly diverting for a short time. |
| 2002 | Chessbase | Fritz 7 | See my comments on Fritz 6 below. |
| 2001 | Firaxis Games | Civilization III | A game that, in theory, has many improvements compared with Civilization II, and yet I tired of it much more quickly. Above all, like its predecessors, it's FAR TOO LONG; and I found I enjoyed only the beginning of the game, the rest of it was tedious. |
| 2001 | Bitmap Brothers/EON | Z: Steel Soldiers | The sequel to Z (1996). It's quite pretty to look at, but I found the interface hard to handle, and it failed to grab me. These days people seem to think that graphics are more important than gameplay. |
| 2001 | Chessbase | Fritz 6 | This seems to be the most popular chess program among serious chess players. It can play at grandmaster strength and has more facilities than you could imagine. The graphics aren't wonderful but they're fine for the purpose. It has a Friend mode in which it will handicap itself to try to match your own playing strength, and you can see from the size of the handicap how well you're doing. It will also assess your Elo rating, but the lowest grade of opponent you can choose for a rated game has a rating of 1680, equivalent to an experienced club player. |
| 2000 | Electronic Arts | Need for Speed: Porsche 2000 | A realistic car racing game in which you have access to the full range of every Porsche car ever produced, and can race them over a variety of European roads — mostly country roads. The scenery and car handling are simulated well. Recommended accessories: a steering wheel and pedals (though it is possible to play without). The programmed opponents are good enough to challenge just about anyone, and you can also play against human opponents by network, modem, or Internet. |
| 2000 | Hasbro | Risk 2 | New computer version of an old board game that I played as a child. It's a faithful implementation of the board game, although you can choose various alternative rules if you like. I do think it's silly that such a simple game has been inflated to fill a CD by graphical and sound effects and video sequences. This is superfluous and I switch most of it off. The programmed opponents provide some opposition but aren't very good. |
| 1999 | W R Hutsell | American Civil War, Napoleonic, World War 2 |
A set of short and simple shareware wargames (for DOS). The only one I've actually played is the American Civil War, which entertained me for a while. |
| 1999 | Infogrames | Anno 1602 | A medieval empire-building game. Quite pleasant, but long. Once I'd learnt how to play it competently, it became boring and I stopped playing it. |
| 1998 | Sean O'Connor | Slay update | An improved version of the game I had already (see below). |
| 1997 | Microprose | Civilization 2 Fantastic Worlds | A set of add-on scenarios for Civilization 2 (see below). I've never played these scenarios -- mainly because of the lack of specific documentation for each scenario. |
| 1997 | Firaxis Games | Sid Meier's Gettysburg! | A game of the Battle of Gettysburg — real-time but with a pause facility. A good try, but like all battle games it fails to give a good solution to the command-and-control problem. |
| 1997 | Cyberlife | Creatures | An exercise in artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, the creatures (called Norns) never achieve much intelligence, and this is not really a game. It's more like caring for a roomful of babies who never grow up. |
| 1997 | Talonsoft | Battleground: Antietam | A turn-based game of the Battle of Antietam. I tried it but didn't like it. |
| 1996 | Bitmap Brothers | Z | A fast, real-time game of tactical combat with robots and tanks. Not the sort of game I usually like, but this one had a touch of humour and was quite fun. |
| 1996 | Interactive Magic | American Civil War | A strategic-level game of the War for Southern Independence. Well designed, but too long and rather buggy (though Interactive Magic eventually produced a patch that fixed the major bugs). |
| 1996 | Blue Byte | Settlers 2 | A sort of empire-building game. Quite pleasant to look at, but not a good enough game. |
| 1996 | Microprose | Civilization II | An updated version of Civilization (see below). I was addicted again, and continued playing until the end of 1997. Then in 2001 I installed it again and played some more. |
| 1995 | Microprose | Master of Orion | An empire-building game in space. Popular, but already old when I bought it, and I never got around to playing it. |
| 1995 | Avalon Hill | Advanced Civilization | A computer version of a board game that predates Microprose Civilization and is quite different from it. The board game was popular once, but I don't think it works as a computer game. |
| 1995 | Sean O'Connor | Slay | A small and highly simplified empire-building game, well designed and programmed. |
| 1994 | Maxis | SimCity 2000 | A city-building exercise. Quite fun for a while, but sooner or later it gets boring. It's not really a game: there's no competitive element. |
| 1992 | Microprose | Civilization | An empire-building game, starting in 4000 BC. I thought it looked too complex and didn't try it until 1994, then became addicted. The game is much too long and makes a rather boring wargame, but I liked the exploration and building. |
| 1992 | Software Toolworks | Chessmaster 3000 | A chess program. I played it occasionally in 1992, 1993, and 1996, but don't remember anything about it now. |
| 1991 | Microsoft | Entertainment Packs 1, 2, 3 | A collection of small games. Some of them were OK. |
| 1991 | Maxis | SimEarth | A game about evolution. Quite a good idea, but not a good enough game. |
| 1991 | Microsoft | Flight Simulator | Boring. |
| 1991 | Accolade | Ishidó | A good and original abstract pattern-making game. My mother still plays it. |
| 1990 | Chris Crawford | Balance of the Planet | A poor game about global ecology and pollution. |
| 1986 | Borland | Turbo Gameworks | Chess, Bridge, and Go-Moku provided as Turbo Pascal source files, so you could modify them yourself. A good idea and quite well done, for the time. |