GAMES Magazine's Top 100

GAMES Magazine has come out with their annual Games 100 buyer's guide and as usual there are some curious decisions in there. First off, Australia was chosen as their game of the year. I find that EXTREMELY odd. Australia is a decent game but it was definitely just one face in the crowd from what I've heard. It's received only moderate reviews on the geek. It wasn't even in the running for any of the other major awards of the year. Strange choice. I would have thought Around the World in 80 Days or even this year's Spiel des Jahres winner Niagara would have been more natural choices. I really wonder about GAMES Magazine's selection process. Clearly they're on a different page from the rest of us. They consistently choose very good titles for their Games 100 and this year is no different but they also consistently make odd choices as to which games get the top spots and sometimes even which categories games get put into. Take for instance Fearsome Floors. This is a great game. It's a wonderful, whimsical family strategy game that I'm happy to own and I play often. But this year, GAMES has placed it in the party games category. Fearsome Floors is many things but it's definitely not a party game. I guess to their way of thinking any game that supports more than 5 players can be a party game? Very odd. Anyway, there are definitely some really good games in this list and GAMES is one of my favorite magazines. Go pick up a copy if you haven't already. Just take all their category winners with a grain of salt and make sure you give the other games on the list a good look as well.