The Book of Games: Volume 1, a large compendium of gaming knowledge compressed onto the wonderful and portable media that is a book. Aimed primarily at those with an interest in gaming, this informative hardcover book covers over 150 top gaming titles as well as articles about genre histories, the main gaming platforms and other interesting articles such as the future of gaming.

The Book of Games is an original idea initiated by Bendik Stang, the founder of gameXplore and an avid gamer to boot. Showcased in prototype at the massive gaming event that is E3, this book gained a massive response which ultimately set the cogs in motion for this book to go into full production.

Taking a look at what the future might hold in store for the world of gaming, and how gaming hardware may play a bigger role in our lives, The Book of Games explores possibilities such as Virtual Rowing machines at the Olympics, Major League Gaming on National Television and PGA tour stars who hone their skills on the Nintendo Wii. Some of these predictions may seem a little silly, but the stories behind each of these predictions are very real indeed.

Any real gamer will have his or her gaming hero. The Book of Games takes a look at the popular gaming heroes and how icons such as Mario and Lara Croft have been transformed from characters in video games to Hollywood heroes.

So, before I mention the reference pages for each game, there are the genre histories. I could not quite work out why the makers of this book call these genre histories, because quite frankly they do not actually tell a history to any of the genres, that is unless you count a few screenshots from the some of the older games in the genre as a history lesson. What these sections do contain however is an informative description of each genre; what the basics of each genre are, what a normal game of this style might entail, and so on. A bad section title, but a good and interesting read all the same.

Next, we have the section that most of you will be bothered about, the game reference pages. As you would expect from anyone who has visited pretty much any gaming site, including this one, you will find the vital statistics of each game. Publishers, developers, release dates, summaries and screenshots; it’s all in there. Thankfully this book does add things that you will not find in the average game review site such as a game’s time period, complexity, your role within the game and the challenges you will have to overcome. Other details include similar games, US and EU ratings and other platforms that each game is on. I really like the reference pages of this book. They are well presented and with a good mixture of text and screenshots for an easy read.

Due to the fact that MMORPGs are so huge and so popular, this book dedicates a section to MMO’s to tell us what makes them so addictive and where MMOs will go next. The book takes a look at the making of Funcom’s Age of Conan. In an interview with product director Jorgen Theraldsen we find out all about Age of Conan, how it was made and how this game sets out to be better than other games in the genre. A fascinating read for any MMO fan out there.

The book has already talked about gaming heroes and what makes them great, but now we come to a section entitled ‘From Games to Movies’. This section is fairly interesting, with details of how video games such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Resident Evil gained film glory. And an even more interesting page which tells us those adaptations which just didn’t quite make it. This is definitely one of the better articles within the book, but unfortunately lacks images from the movies they talk about and is replaced by images of the games.

Any good games book would be lost without a section regarding the hardware that we need to be able to play the games we love so much. This colourful and well presented section provides us with information and specifications on the major consoles and hand-helds.

Game research is an interesting section which talks about, as you would expect, the research into games. I really like how this book has steered away from what many would expect to be a section about the research conducted by games developers, and constructed a section which looks at the study of video games by engineers, technology students and behavioural psychologists.

The book closes with a section that looks at the year 2006 in the world of gaming with a calendar format of dates and information that tell us what is supposed to be the best of 2006 in gaming. After reading this section of the book I felt myself asking questions like, Why have they left out October 17^th and the release of Battlefield 2142? A game which, earlier in the book, is described as being a highly addictive game with an infinite replay value. Surely it deserves a mention in the best of 2006?

This book is a reasonably interesting well-constructed read, and with a fairly reasonable price tag of around £20 or $30 depending on your geographical location. It is available from many online shops, most noticeably Amazon.

In the end I suppose it all comes down to the all important question of whether this book is worth buying. Well, I would have to say that if you are buying this book for a friend or relative as a present, then yes it is. As a book for a fairly serious gamer however, no it is not. I really did want to be able to say yes to this question, but I feel that this book is defeated by the information that is freely available on the internet.

If you would like to find out more The Book of Games, then please visit the website at www.bookofgames.com .