Looking back, even without the unusual number of hardware launches, 2005 was a very good year for gaming. It had been a long time since I’ve bought, played, and thoroughly enjoyed so many great games, and over the last ten days of 2005 I’m going to be giving you my top ten, one a day at 9pm GMT, with my last to come on 31st December.

It wasn’t easy and the order may well change slightly between now and when they appear, but looking back at what I played brought a lot of “was that really less than a year ago?” moments, and that’s one possible bone of contention – whether or not some of these came out in 2005. Certain games that I’m including were released outside the UK in 2004 and some haven’t even been released here at the end of 2005, so there’s no hard and fast rule here. Basically they got released somewhere in 2005 and were played by me, either on import or the UK release, at that point. The first will be with you tomorrow and you’re welcome to argue with me when more of them are up.