Okay. I’m going to level with you here: there is no way to hide the fact that Football Manager 2010 is a game about football. It's in the bloody title. No matter how cheekily the game may try describe itself as a turn-based strategy in its intro section, it unquestionably is a management simulation. I’m afraid that’s the score. So now you know it, if you don’t like it please feel free to look away.

Mention the words "Virtual Reality" to most people and the same image will always come to mind: dodgy looking glasses, rows of computer banks and visuals that came from the eighties. Mention "Augmented Reality," however, and most people will have no idea what you are talking about and suggest that you stop watching re-runs of Tomorrow's World. Unlike those rocket cars and personal robots, which have remained firmly in their inventors' sheds, Augmented Reality has actually made an impact on the world of technology.

Last week I had dinner with a close friend. Whenever we meet the conversation inevitably makes its way into cyberspace: he invented a popular programming language. Previously we had both agreed that computers were merely glorified watches and that artificial intelligence was just a compensatory fantasy of lonely school children with naught but C64s to keep them company.

Hyperbole is a remarkable thing, especially in the world of computer games. We’re all so anxious that our expensive black box is better than another’s expensive white box, proclaiming new titles as the second coming of Christ. Or in the case of Scribblenauts, the game where you can create anything, it’s the second creation of Christ. Watch him fight a dragon, give him a pirate hat, tie him to a helicopter or feed him a hotdog: the possibilities are endless. Few games have been so hyped, subject to gushing praise and spurious claims that they will revolutionise entertainment.

Featuring a forty-mission campaign spanning three entirely open islands and boasting the most realistic war simulation ever depicted in polygons, no game in existence was as ambitious as Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis when it was released back in 2001.