When the phrase 'Strategy games' is mentioned, some people feel an almost irrepressible desire to yawn, maybe even quite rudely right in the face of the person doing the mentioning. They're not everyone's cup of Darjeeling, that's for sure.

But for those who like 'em, hardcore strategy games provide a quite astonishing gameplay-per-byte ratio, as they are usually open-ended and can't be beaten as such without exhaustive play - and we're talking 'run the London Marathon twice' exhaustive here. They are challenging, mind-stretching and, once you're into them, incredibly addictive.

Sid Meier's Civilization and its sequels are great examples of classic strategic affairs, placing you in the sandals of the probably bearded leader of an ancient culture, and letting you control the diplomatic, cultural and military evolution of a nation throughout the ages. X-Com is also a damned fine strategy series, concerned with the beating of invading aliens about the head with the butts of plasma pistols. In turn-based fashion, naturally. And there's the SimCity franchise which, although limiting you to a city rather than an entire world, has contributed greatly to gamers' late-night coffee intake.

War games are also a popular sub-set of strategy gaming, with offerings such as Microsoft's Close Combat series and older hex-based games, which essentially bring tabletop wargaming to the PC.

Swimming more in the mainstream are Real Time Strategy games which have a bit more pep to them in that all the action happens, as the moniker suggests, in real time (we'll have no pretend time here). These tend to contain more action oriented, fast-paced warfare, spawned mainly by one game, the classic Command&Conquer (although its father-game Dune II was the very first, it's less of a 'name'). StarCraft and Total Annihilation are also excellent examples, although the trend these days is towards fully 3D RTS games such as Warzone.

Strategy games with woefully inadequate battle-plans include the likes of the shoddy iPanzer 44 from Interactive Magic, and Hasbro's badly-implemented Diplomacy. In the realms of RTS, LucasArts' recent Star Wars-based offering, Force Commander, is a good example of a game with a big licence and absolutely nothing else.