Best Strategy Game

Few strategy games aspire to be what Rome: Total War is. Fewer still actually achieve it. You could argue that with this year's winner of GameSpot's Best Strategy Game Award, developer Creative Assembly simply went back to the drawing board, taking its grand-strategy Total War series and adding a 3D engine to it. But that would be selling this epic game short, despite the fact that Rome: Total War's most obvious and arguably most impressive feature is its powerful new 3D graphics engine, which fully models sprawling cities and townships, as well as armies of thousands of individually modeled soldiers, all eager to fight and die for your cause. (Those Carthaginian elephants that cut through enemy soldiers and send them hurtling through the air don't hurt, either.)

The game's impressive graphics are only the beginning of Rome: Total War's deep and refined experience: Controlling these massive armies has never been easier, or more tactical, with the addition of strategic nuances like company leaders who can be targeted and defeated individually. And like the previous games in the Total War series, Rome features both this real-time battle element and a highly engaging turn-based strategy element that lets you manage your holdings in Europe and Asia Minor, but in a much more streamlined way. If you care to manage every last detail of your empire, you're certainly welcome to; if you don't, you can automate pretty much any aspect of the game and focus on whatever you prefer, whether that's charging into battle, forging alliances with neighboring factions by marrying off your heirs, or building a wealthy kingdom. Rome: Total War is a rare combination of ambition and execution--the desire to make a great game matched with the talent, drive, and resources to see it through. That's not to say that no other strategy game this year captured this combination either, because on some level, all our finalists did exactly this--yet none were quite as epic, deep, or uniquely enjoyable as Rome: Total War.