gameXplore's Book of Games Volume I (which would lead you to believe that there are more of these books to follow), is a sort of year in review book put together by a handful of gamers around the world. As you'd expect from a book that attempts to cover the current and next-generation of videogaming and the culture that surrounds it, the book is divided into a number of sections that offer some light editorial and straight dope on many of the most recently released videogame titles.

These genre specific sections include Action, Role-Playing, Racing, Adventure, Sports, Strategy and MMORPG. In addition to all that there are a number of special sections – some examples include The Future of Gaming, Entertainment, Hardware, Research on Games and The Best of 2006, Many of these sections feature specific game titles hand-picked by the book's writers, and though most of these choices make sense, some of these choices are questionable. Some examples of titles that don't really deserve to be highlighted in a book (let alone any where else) include The Matrix: Path of NEO and the mediocre Marc Ecko's Getting Up.

Questionable game selections aside, there's a lot of solid bite-sized reading in these sections - the biggest problem is for hardcore gamers who are looking for more than a brief introduction like background information on the game that they can't find anywhere else. And therein lies the biggest problem with The Book of Games and every other book that tries to tackle such a broad topic and manage to stay. Still there's a whole lot of useful information for those folks that don't pay all that much attention to what's going on in the world of gaming.

Each game entry in the book is around two paragraphs long with a brief introduction on the game and a list of game facts (publisher, developer, format, rating, genre, release date, etc.) An additional full color page packed with screenshots from the game in question is also included to round out the presentation. The most striking thing about this book is how much eye candy is packed within its 448 pages (from cover to cover).

There are some great sections of the book like the MMORPG section, which features an exclusive chat with Funcom, the makers of the promising massively multiplayer online role-playing game, The Age of Conan. It's an interesting read for anyone that remembers the films and even the classic Marvel comic books that made this savage king such a household name.

The Games of 2006 section is also interesting because it offers bite-sized thoughts on games based on when they were released. This rather short section offers some light information on the best of 2006 and a sprinkling of screenshots. Though I wish this section was particularly longer, It's a nice read to end a rather interesting and fun read.

Also worth noting is the brief section called Research on Games, which covers everything from the correlation between playing videogames and violent behavior, to games and game technology being used by academics and others outside the interactive entertainment industry to create training and educational progames. Again, an interesting read, but I wish there were more than four or five pages dedicated to this pretty important topic.