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High Definition Mini-Camcorder Hollywood, FL December 31, 2009 (Virtual Press Office) Concord Keystone will introduce the EASY SHOT CLIP HD, a sleek mini-camcorder that takes 720p high definition video with sound as well as email-friendly still images. (Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas Convention Center, Central Hall, Booth 15747). This super-compact digital camcorder features an internal Lithium-polymer rechargeable battery...
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Scientists in Seattle have made a major breakthrough in designing computer-aided design systems to allow them to build artificial life forms.

In a research project which sounds like it was inspired by Will Wright's magnum opus Spore, the group of synthetic biologists are now designing artificial life forms with the new CAD system.

Meddling with Artificial Life

Deepak Chandran and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle have made the breakthrough, naming their new CAD system 'Tinkercell' – a new technology which the New Scientist claims will, "allow biologists to meddle with the components of, say, a bacterium, and simulate the effect the change has."

"The package has a library of the components of life, from which users can pick different cells, membrane proteins, fluorescent proteins, enzymes and genes to create their organism. Tinkercell can then simulate the life form to see if it functions as expected."

For those who want to know a little bit more about the science behind the tech head over to the Journal of Biomedical Engineering.

Apple's Steve Jobs is officially the 'person of the decade' – at least, he is according to the readers of esteemed US newspaper the Wall Street Journal.

Journal readers voted for Jobs one as their man of the Noughties following the Apple CEO's return to work after some time away for medical treatment.

WSJ notes that Jobs increased the company's stock by an amazing 700 per cent in value after returning to the the helm earlier this year.

Changed music

Jobs picked up 30 per cent of the vote for changing "the way people buy and listen to music," with the iPod and iTunes.

By comparison Jobs' arch-rival and software nemesis, Microsoft's Bill Gates, only managed to garner a mere nine per cent of the votes.

Investor Warren Buffett got 17 per cent of the vote, while Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, got 12 per cent in the poll.

Worlds First and Only Mobile USB 3.0 Flash Drive Delivers Over 300 MB/s LAGUNA NIGUEL & SAN JOSE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Dec 30, 2009 Symwave Inc., a leading silicon supplier of system solutions for SuperSpeed USB devices, and Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today jointly announced they will demonstrate Super Talents RAIDDrive, the worlds first and only...
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Visit NEC Electronics in the USB TechZone, Booth #30769, Las Vegas Hilton for Technology Demonstrations LAS VEGAS --(Business Wire)-- Dec 30, 2009 NEC Electronics America, Inc. today announced it will highlight the latest generation of Universal Serial Bus (USB) technologies at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) January 7-10 in Las Vegas. A working demonstration of the companys USB 3.0, or SuperSpeed, capabilities will...
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Sacramento, CA., December 30th, 2009 Liquid Image is unveiling a wide angle version of the Scuba Series HD Camera Mask at CES 2010. The new Liquid Image Wide Angle Scuba Series HD322 Camera Mask will feature a 135 degree wide angle lens and HD 720P video. The lens modification more than doubles the current Scuba Series HD320s field of view to capture all the action underwater in High Definition while snorkeling or scuba diving. The...
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Sacramento, CA., December 30th, 2009 Liquid Image is announcing a Swim Camera Goggle at CES 2010. The Liquid Image Freestyle Series is the worlds first swim goggle with an integrated digital camera. The goggle contains a 62 degree lens to capture the fun and action while swimming and playing in water to a depth of 15ft. The hands free unit has a 1.3 MP (1280 x 960) camera mode and a video mode that records VGA video (640x480) at a rate up...
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Sacramento, CA., December 30th, 2009 Liquid Image is announcing a wide angle Snow Camera Goggle at CES 2010. The Liquid Image Summit Series is the worlds first snow goggle with an integrated digital camera. The goggle contains a wide angle lens to capture all the action while skiing, boarding, sledding or snowmobiling. The hands free unit has a 5.0 MP (2560 x 1920) camera mode and a video mode that records D1 video (720x480) at a rate up to...
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If you are a heavy downloader and need broadband on the go, then a new subscription service being launched at CES 2010 next week might be just the ticket.

The service is being launched by US company DataJack, set to offer truly unlimited 3G high-speed data for $39.99 a month, with sign-in-sign-out options for you to take as long a time period as you like, without any costly long-term contracts.

We'd rather Jack...

If that didn't sound enticing enough, then DataJack is also promising no early termination fees, no deposits, no credit check, and all you would need to spend on top of the $40 a month subs fee is $99 for the company's USB modem at signup.

The modem also has a micro-SD slot so that you can use it as a storage device in addition to using it as your connection dongle.

As an added carrot, those users that stay connected to the service for 12 consecutive months, get one free month of unlimited 3G Internet access.

The downside? No word as yet from DataJack on plans for a UK launch. But watch this space when the company makes further announcements at CES in Las Vegas next week.

Sacramento, CA., December 30th, 2009 Liquid Image is announcing a wide angle version of the VideoMask at CES 2010. The new Liquid Image Wide Angle VideoMask features a 135 degree wide angle lens and D1 video. The lens modification more than doubles the original VideoMasks field of view to capture all the action underwater while snorkeling or scuba diving. The model will be on display at CES in Las Vegas January 7th-10th. The Wide Angle...
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Just as we have all pretty much had our fill of eBook technology news, along comes Ray 'Singularity' Kurzweil with a new colour electronic-reader platform called Blio.

Kurzweil predicts that the 'singularity' will occur sometime around 2045, which is the point at which machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence.

Luckily then, that gives us another 35 years yet to enjoy the world's literature in glorious technicolour on Ray's new Blio reader.

Download it for iPhone or PC

Blio is described as a "platform" that could run on any device. Blio software is free and will be made available at CES 2010 as a download for PCs, iPod Touch and the iPhone.

"Everyone who has seen it acknowledges that it is head and shoulders above others," says Kurzweil. "We have high-quality graphics and animated features. Other e-readers are very primitive."

Blio will be shown to the crowds at CES in Las Vegas next week. Colour us intrigued.

Kurzweil Technologies and the US National Federation of the Blind have launched a joint venture called knfb Reading Technology, which is the company that has created Blio.

"We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time," explains Peter Chapman, an exec at Kurzweil Technologies.

It is official. Games are bigger than home cinema and movie-going in the UK, according to the latest sales figures.

Brits spent noticeably more money on games than DVDs, Blu-rays or cinema tickets in the year leading up to September 2009, according to GFKChart-Track

Over £1.73 billion was spent on games for the 12 months ending in September 2009, while for the same period, the UK Film Council reports that around £1 billion was spent at the box office and around £198 million on DVD and Blu-Ray titles.

Tom Watson, a former cabinet minister said: "Like anything digital, Parliament has a very narrow view of video games. Too many politicians think video games are played by teenage boys staying up all night shooting things in their bedroom.

"And yes there are plenty of those, but there also a huge range of people of many different ages who love playing games. The industry has matured over the last decade, and so too have gamers."

Conservative report

Interestingly, the news comes from The Daily Telegraph, a staunchly conservative newspaper that reports the sales stats to be the "clearest evidence yet that the video games market has come of age and transformed itself from a niche form of entertainment for teenage boys into a mainstream form of entertainment for millions of British families."

The Telegraph added that industry figures nowshow the number of games consoles being used in Britain has risen from 13.5 million in 2008 to over 25 million earlier this year.

Orange is set to expand its "HD Voice" technology early in the new year, which is great news for those mobile users who are sick of crackling voices and dropped calls on their phones.

Finally, the UK will get a decent alternative to standard definition calls via the the new 3G service, which is going to be introduced to work with a "range of handsets" later in 2010.

Like caller is in same room

HD voice will apparently make it "sound as if callers are actually in the same room," says Orange UK chief executive Tom Alexander, who adds:

"HD voice really does inject a level of innovation into mobile phone calls," and that "once people have tried it, they won't want to go back."

It really is about time that mobile phone operators all started to focus more on providing better quality phone calls, so this is a welcome move indeed from Orange.

Korean lens manufacturer Samyang Optics Co. Ltd. has announced that it is preparing to release two of its lenses in Four Thirds-mount variants, according to the official website of the company's Polish distributor, Delta Co. The Samyang 8mm f/3.5 fish-eye and 85mm f/1.4 lenses are both manual focus lenses, and are available in Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Sony lens mounts currently. According to the distributor, both lenses will now also be available in Four Thirds mount for use with Olympus and Panasonic digital SLRs, with expected availability at the end of March 2010. Optically, the new lenses will be identical to the...
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Little has been said about Bill Gates's vision of 'Live Anywhere' by Microsoft – since the software guru first outlined the strategy back at E3 in 2006.

Live Anywhere is basically Gates' vision of seamlessly bringing together gaming on mobile, PC and console platforms.

Xbox Live mobile

A new job posting suggests that Microsoft is one step closer to bringing together Windows Mobile and Xbox Live.

Microsoft is now actively recruiting for a Principal Program Manager who would be responsible for bringing "Xbox Live enabled games to Windows Mobile."

The company wants someone who can develop "avatar integration, social interaction, and multi-screen experiences."

Related Links

• Forrester Research: Microsoft's Live Anywhere

It's the time of year when her majesty The Queen bestows MBEs and other honours on Brits that have given considerable services to British culture and industry, with a number of games devs and execs picking up honours in the 2009 list.

Firstly, the two brothers who founded London-based Sports Interactive - they of the original Championship Manager and (more recently) Football Manager fame - have been given MBEs.

Services to football and gaming

Oliver and Paul Collyer founded Sports Interactive way back in 1992. A statement published on the official SI Games forum says: "We are really proud to have been given this honour, which is something we never thought would happen to us.

"We first started working on the ideas that have become the Football Manager series over 20 years ago because we wanted to make football management games that we wanted to play. That the games have been so successful was never part of the master plan, and we have to thank everyone on the team at Sports Interactive for all their work over the last two decades, as well as our teams of researchers, testers, moderators, Sega and our other publishing partners, and our community for everything they've done, as we certainly wouldn't be able to be accepting this honour without all of their hard work.

"We're still heavily involved in the games, with Paul heading up the match engine, and Ov heading up Football Manager Live, and we look forward to many more years making games with the rest of the team that so many people out there enjoy to play.

"We feel really lucky to be receiving this honour because we've been lucky enough to spend our lives doing something we enjoy, and indulging one's passion is easy - therefore we dedicate the awards to everyone who has helped us along the way - thank you to all of you."

Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens was also given a CBE and ELSPA boss Paul Jackson was given an OBE for their services to the UK's flourishing games industry.

Getting your Mac online is generally quite straightforward, especially if you run your own AirPort network or connect through a USB or Ethernet cable directly to a router or cable modem.

Troubleshooting connection issues can often be as simple as restarting a router, modem or Mac. This doesn't always work, of course. The culprit could be an older Mac or an outdated version of Mac OS X.

Occasionally, a Mac may refuse to see the network even though it's set up correctly. A more common occurrence, however, involves having an older Mac that desperately needs updating – but lacks a wireless card.

Making connections

Increasingly, homes and offices have wireless networks, which means plugging a problematic Mac directly into the router can be a fiddly process and not a practical solution. An ideal workaround would be to get the Mac online without connecting it to a router.

What you may not know is that OS X has for some time offered the ability to share a Mac's internet connection to other computers across a variety of connection formats. The Sharing tab in System Preferences is home to an option to turn on Internet Sharing.

With this, you can choose a source, which is the means by which the Mac connects to the internet, and a destination – the method or device through which you want to connect the second Mac. The available options vary depending on your model and the selected options.

Almost all Macs have a FireWire port, so this should appear as an optional destination. Should your Mac have Bluetooth – which has been enabled in its System Preferences pane – this should also appear.

A typical example is to share a Mac's Ethernet broadband connection over FireWire using this setup window, and then plug a FireWire cable between the two Macs. OS X will then 'broadcast' the broadband connection across the cable to the second Mac and, in most cases, it should be able to see it, with a reboot of the second Mac occasionally necessary to enable the connection to be identified properly.

If this doesn't work, you can go into the network preferences on the second Mac – which will vary slightly depending on the version of OS X it's running – and select the network interface's properties to make sure it's working.

Sometimes you might have to manually add or activate a port – especially FireWire – to bring it online. The same applies to sharing a Mac's AirPort connection over Bluetooth or Ethernet.

AirPort wireless

You can also set up your own wireless network without the need for a router, as long as you have an AirPort card-equipped Mac connected directly to the internet. If you choose to share its AirPort connection to other AirPort Macs by selecting Create Network from the AirPort icon in the menu bar, you can effectively create a wireless network, complete with password protection.

How to share your Mac's internet connection

1. Choose a source

Go to System Preferences > Sharing and locate the Internet Sharing option. Don't activate it yet, otherwise you won't be able to change its settings. In almost all circumstances, your Mac's internet will be coming via AirPort or Ethernet. Choose either of these as the source in the menu with the Share your connection from: prefix.

2. Choose a destination

Decide which port you want to use to share the connection. Let's say it's FireWire – choose this from the To computers using: list. Then tick the box next to Internet Sharing in the Service list on the left to start it up.

Connect the second Mac to the first by plugging a FireWire cable between them. The second Mac may need a restart and you may have to go into its Network pane in System Preferences to add FireWire as a network location.

Some versions of OS X will automatically detect all available interfaces, but occasionally you have to add them manually. You can connect the two Macs using an Ethernet cable by selecting the appropriate option.

If you choose to share an Ethernet connection over Ethernet, which is technically possible, OS X warns you that this has the potential to cause conflicts with your ISP. If you want to take this approach it's worth checking with them.

3. Set up Bluetooth

Perhaps you want to share an Ethernet connection over Bluetooth. Go to System Preferences > Hardware > Bluetooth and click Advanced. From here you can activate an option called Share my internet connection with other Bluetooth devices.

If you check this box and return to the internet sharing section, you'll see that Bluetooth appears as both an available source and destination.

4. Share an AirPort connection

Consider this scenario: you have a Mac connected to the internet via a direct cable or USB modem. This is quite common, especially with iMacs or tower Macs such as G4s, G5s or Mac Pros. If that Mac also happens to have an AirPort card installed, it might not be in use since the Mac sits next to the modem, so you don't need a wireless network.

But if you have an iPod touch, iPhone or laptop, you really want to be able to get online wirelessly as well. Normally you would have to buy an AirPort base station or third-party wireless router to achieve this, but you may not have known that you can use the AirPort card in the Mac as a base station.

Making sure the AirPort card is enabled in the Network pane of System Preferences, click on its icon in the menu bar and choose Create Network.

Alternatively, in the Internet Sharing pane, choose Ethernet from the source list and activate AirPort as a destination, then click the AirPort Options button. Both methods bring up the Create Network window.

5. Protect your network

In the Create Network window, choose a name for the wireless network, which will be broadcast from the Mac. Then choose a wireless channel, which can usually safely be left on Automatic (11).

Check the box to require a password, then choose a 40 or 128-bit WEP key as a security option and select a password. Use a five character password for a 40-bit key and a 13-character password for a 128-bit key, the latter being more secure.

6. Join the new network

From the other Mac, Windows laptop, iPod touch or iPhone, choose to join the new network, which should appear as an available network. The AirPort icon in the menu bar of the net-connected Mac will display a tiny arrow icon to denote that its connection is being shared.

So now you are sharing your Ethernet or USB internet connection to wireless clients securely, and all without having to purchase any extra hardware!

If, like us, you have often wished to have the ability to turn the real world around you into a Lego simulacrum of reality, then the new Lego Photo app for iPhone has been designed almost specifically for you.

And while the new Lego app is not the brick-building Lego sim that we have dreamed about, it is still a pretty damn good little fun distraction to show off to your mates down at the new year's eve booze-up tonight.

Lego reality simulacrum

The newly-launched Official iPhone Lego App is two things that we like. It is both awesome AND free, so you really do have no excuse to not play around with Lego photos today.

Unless you have still not bought an iPhone or iPod touch, that is.

Head over to the iTunes App Store to grab the new Lego Photo application to live out your plastic brick-building fantasies right now via this iTunes link.

Now all we want is a proper Lego app, so that we can truly pretend to be five again any time that we like!

If, like us, you have often wished to have the ability to turn the real world around you into a Lego simulacrum of reality, then the new Lego Photo app for iPhone has been designed almost specifically for you.

And while the new Lego app is not the brick-building Lego sim that we have dreamed about, it is still a pretty damn good little fun distraction to show off to your mates down at the new year's eve booze-up tonight.

Lego reality simulacrum

The newly-launched Official iPhone Lego App is two things that we like. It is both awesome AND free, so you really do have no excuse to not play around with Lego photos today.

Unless you have still not bought an iPhone or iPod touch, that is.

Head over to the iTunes App Store to grab the new turn-reality-into-Lego application to live out your plastic brick-building fantasies right now via this iTunes link.

Now all we want is a proper Lego app, so that we can truly pretend to be five again any time that we like!

It's not only the traditional time of year for us to compile our lists of favourite things, it is the time of the decade for definitive lists of favourite things.

Add this to the fact that geeks, tech-heads and gamers just love to compile definitive lists, and you will understand what a job it has been trying to identify a list of only 12 games that could genuinely be described as 'definitive' of that strange decade we are just leaving which we (always slightly uncomfortably) called the noughties.

The last ten years has seen gaming become the number one mainstream entertainment medium of choice for millions worldwide, with Sony's market dominance with the PlayStation 2 earlier in the decade gradually giving way to the new dominance of Nintendo's Wii, the latest rising (and glowing) star in the most recent round of what we all now call 'the console war'.

And throughout it all, the humble PC has retained its foothold as many true hardcore gamers' format of choice, particularly if you happen to be a fan of strategy-gaming or massively multiplayer online games such as Blizzard's mighty World of Warcraft.

On which note, we debated long and hard about WoW's worthiness for inclusion in the following list, on the back of its sales, its 11 million-plus regular subscribers, its overall scope and its developers sense of ambition for what is possible… but we eventually knocked it off the bottom of the list.

As we then did with about 50 other games that a number of our writers demanded should be on there. Which, if nothing else, is proof positive that the noughties were the decade when videogames really started to matter. And while we cannot wait to see what new gaming tech the Tenties (the Teenties?) serves up, let's pay our dues to the games

Strangely, there are no mobile games or handheld console games on our list, which is perhaps indicative of the fact that we are no longer teenagers (Zelda on the DS was utterly charming, but didn't make the final cut). And the fact that mobile gaming, by and large, has been rubbish - with only a few recent exceptions to that rule on the iPhone suggesting a brighter future is hopefully in store for gaming on the go.

There was no real system we employed in whittling down the list to the following12;, we might have made the choice of a particular game because of the media storm around it (GTA), its massive sales figures (Call of Duty), because it was responsible for shifting a console or popularising a new way of playing (Wii Sports) or simply because we smiled a lot when we remembered the fun it had given us (all of them).

12 - Call of Duty (2003, PC)

OK, sure, we can all debate whether or not the original CoD or the most recent outing in the franchise Modern Warfare 2 should have been included in this list, but for the sheer fact that this was the game that utterly redefined war-gaming in the last decade and kickstarted what is arguably the most important and lucrative series in gaming today, we plumped for the original.

SETTING THE TARGET: Infinity Ward's first Call of Duty game defines modern wargaming

Infinity Ward's masterpiece garnered high scores, with 10/10s and high 90 per cents across the board. The UK's leading PC mag, PC Gamer, summed it up at the time in its December 2003 review, noting:

"It's the 24-mission single-player experience that you'll remember for years. Call of Duty is a first-rate achievement. The sensory overload is amazing, and the interaction with intricately scripted action set-pieces is a big step forward in the art form."

11 - Timesplitters 2 (2002, PS2, GC, Xbox)

Free Radical developed Timesplitters 2 for UK publisher Eidos back in 2000, originally on the PlayStation 2, and it quickly became one of the original hardcore gamer's games of choice on Sony's new console at the time. It was fast, funny and really showed off the potential of where multiplayer gaming was to go later in the decade. And it had lots of monkeys and stuff in it.

WITH MONKEYS: Free Radical's Timesplitters 2 was proof positive that shooters worked well on console

Games Radar UK noted back at the turn of the 21st-century that Timesplitters 2 was, "an unconventional - hence invigorating - impetuous, inciting, and utterly, utterly playable first-person multiplaying affair."

10 - Wii Sports (2006, Wii)

While the hardcore wince at its mere mention, Wii Sports (bundled with the new Wii console at launch in late 2006) very quickly became the fastest selling game of all time, while being largely responsible for Nintendo's much-vaunted opening up of the gaming market to casual gamers, female gamers, elderly gamers and those that had not picked up a joypad in around twenty years. And while we might not play it so much throughout the year, we still pull it out every family Christmas. So there.

If you genuinely don't like it, then you genuinely don't like having fun.

PROPER FUN: Wii Sports has become a Christmas fixture for many gaming families

"When you're introducing people to something radically different from what they're used to, it's a good idea to start off slow and simple," noted GamesRadar at the time. "With that in mind, Wii Sports is the perfect pack-in for Nintendo's Wii console; not only are its simple minigames fun and ultra-accessible for casual gamers, but you couldn't ask for a better tutorial on using the motion-sensitive Wii remote.

9 - God of War (2005, PS2)

God of War came out in 2005, fairly late in the PS2's lifespan, at a time when many were more interested in what was due later that year from Microsoft with its new Xbox 360. As such, it was very nearly (and very criminally) overlooked. Thankfully, though, the quality shone through and it now stands as one of PlayStation gaming's greatest moments in the noughties. A mythological hack and slash romp of biblical proportions.

HACK 'N' SLASH: Sony's God of War was the moment the PlayStation 2 could seemingly do no wrong

"God of War is the finest action adventure we've seen for ages," enthused CVG at the time. "It's the spiritual successor to games like Golden Axe and films like Clash of the Titans. With a mix of thrilling combat, some gobsmacking locations and a storyline that doesn't get in the way of the action, you'll eat up God of War like pie."

8 - Gears of War (2006, Xbox 360, PC)

Gears of War was, for many, Xbox 360's first truly great game. Just as Halo was the Xbox's defining moment, Gears gave the hardcore what they wanted. In spades.

METAL JACKET: Gears of War - so good, they released it in a special tin can!

"Reptiles with guns. Chainsaw bayonets. Buckets of gore. Very little hope for humanity. No longer a covert operation, Epic's sci-fi shooter Gears of War has finally emerged, and it's pretty much everything we hoped it would be, as well as a few things we didn't expect," was Official Xbox 360 magazine's verdict on Microsoft and Epic's, er, epic.

7. Guitar Hero (2005, PS2)

Amazingly, many laughed at the concept of Guitar Hero back in 2004 prior to the game's release, claiming that it was an expensive folly and an attempt to cash in on the dance-mat craze in a gimmicky way. It proved to be neither. The slew of copycat titles and follow-ups over the last five years are testament to that, despite what some hardcore gamers might want you to think.

ROCKIN':Guitar Hero first hit the PS2 in 2005 - yet it seems to have been around for ever...

"This is exactly what video games are all about: putting us into the shoes of people with abilities we only wished we had," is how PSW magazine summed up the game back in 2005. "Guitar Hero offers the chance to become exactly that...With what is surely the best console peripheral ever designed coming as part of the package.

"It's the perfect workout for music lovers who wretch at the thought of warbling along to Girls Aloud in SingStar or skipping about on a dance mat to a Sugababes ditty. This is a sweaty, boozy, shouty alternative which is liable to make a hell of a mess of the living room. And the garden, too, if anyone gets carried away and starts hurling tellies through windows."

6. GTA 3 (2001, PC, Xbox, PS2)

Just as with the original Call of Duty, there have been a number of genuinely classic Grand Theft Auto games throughout the last 10 years, but we would vehemently argue that the one that changed the game entirely was GTA 3, an immense 3D sandbox game, when nobody really knew what that term even meant. Many have followed since. None have even come close. (Well, apart from Rockstar, of course.)

FOR LIBERTY: Grand Theft Auto 3 - quite possibly the most controversial videogame of all time...

GamesRadar UK said in the review of Rockstar's finest: "Almost immediately after your first play you'll realise that underneath the cloak of controversy that will forever shadow GTA3 sits a truly special, groundbreaking and brilliant game. You'll love it."

And, unsurprisingly, we did. And still do.

5. Ico (2001, PS2)

Ico was a charmingly left-field story about a small boy with horns who had to look after a mysterious princess. It was defiantly arthouse, yet mesmerizingly lovely to play and watch others play. In a world of generic sub-Tolkienesque fantasies, big guns and beefy aliens, Ico was also proof positive that not all gamers were morons. The studio's follow-up title Shadow of the Colossus was also a triumph (and sold a lot more), but it is Ico that still tugs at our heart strings. Next year's The Last Guardian is already on our must-play list, too.

BOY MEETS GIRL:Ico, one of the first truly arthouse videogames of the noughties

"Persevere to the bittersweet conclusion and Sony's uniquely atmospheric puzzle adventure will hold a place in your heart forever," said Official Playstation 2 Magazine UK in 2001. And it still does. So they were right.

4. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006/7, PC, Xbox 360, PS3)

Bethesda's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion took up so much of our time in 2006, that it seems bizarre that anybody else might not be aware of how immense it was. The world was massive, the number of side-quests seemed never-ending (and never seemed in any way dull) and the fact that this was an unashamedly geeky RPG in a very traditional sense did not stop us all playing it to death.

MASSIVE:The mighty Oblivion was the decade's ultimate role-playing experience

"Magesterial. That's the word we're looking for," said PC Zone.

"Morrowind can take the plaudits for laying the groundwork and scrubbing out the rules of location linearity in role-playing, but The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion takes that model, streamlines it, seamlessly integrates exhilarating combat, smothers it in beautiful graphics and takes both Tamriel and the art of role-playing to an unprecedented new height."

3. BioShock (2007, PS3, Xbox 360)

When we first saw BioShock running on a debug Xbox 360 'behind closed doors' at E3 in 2006 we genuinely swooned. After numerous false starts and missed opportunities and broken promises about the new 'next gen' of gaming, this one took us by surprise – because this was the real deal. The art-deco underwater city of Rapture was beautiful.

The mere fact that we had a cracking shooter that wasn't based around a fantasy or a historical war scenario was almost enough in itself. The big daddies and little sisters were genuinely frightening and unsettling. Suffice to say that the follow up, BioShock 2 (out early 2010) is one of our most highly-anticipated games for the new year.

THE DADDY:BioShock - art deco meets Ayn Rand in an underwater dystopia

"It wasn't impossible to build Rapture on the ocean's bottom; it was impossible to build it anywhere else." The quote is from Andrew Ryan, the fictional founder of Bioshock's setting, the great utopian city 'Rapture', but the sentiment could apply to the game itself. Bioshock is the ultimate self-contained game, completely internally consistent, beautifully-designed and endlessly rewarding," wrote the Official Xbox 360 Magazine rreviewer at the time.

"It fits perfectly in its location, a dreamlike steampunk city where biotech has run rampant and where philosophers and scientists murder artists and musicians over conceptual quibbles."

2. Fallout 3 (2008, PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

While we furiously debated whether or not Fallout 3 should have trumped Bethesda's 'other' magnum opus, Oblivion, in our chart, the overwhelming consensus was that it should. So it has.

SURVIVING:Fallout 3 'game of the year' edition is the one you need to buy, should you not have it

"In almost all respects, Fallout 3 is a staggering, genre-defining achievement - marrying an utterly immersive world, memorable characters, incredible production values, some of the most inspired RPG mechanics ever devised and so much heart," enthused CVG's Rob Taylor in his review of the Xbox version.

"Fallout 3 stands as the perfect companion piece [to Oblivion] - a near unparalleled RPG that stands so far ahead of the majority of the games on 360 that it would be a crime against gaming not to laud this title as anything other than a masterpiece."

And the best game of the decade is...

1. Half-Life 2: The Orange Box (2007, PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Valve showed pretty much everybody else how to do things properly with its sublime Half-Life 2 series, culminating in the release of every episode of the game to date and two stunning extra titles - Portal and Team Fortress 2 - all bundled together in one awesome package that represents, in addition to lots of other things, perhaps the best value-for-money entertainment product released to market in the last ten years. The Orange Box is something that every gamer must own.

BEST BOX:Valve's masterpiece is the single greatest entertainment product of the noughties

It is simply the gaming masterpiece of our age. Even Edge relented from its usually harsh scoring system and agreed that it was worth a perfect 10/10, noting at the time in December 2007 that: "As a whole it is almost overwhelming in its depth, irresistible in value and certainly, unreservedly, brilliant."

GamesRadar.com (as well as every other videogame website and magazine in the world) wholeheartedly agreed, noting that "Valve's Orange Box is finally here, and its five big sections - Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life 2: Episode One - are all juicy, delicious, and priced to sell."

With the general agreement that for less than £40 at the time (and much less now, over two years later), this was unbelievable value for something of such depth and consistent quality.