A Top 50 list. An explanation is almost redundant. We all sit down and work out which games we've played this year and how much we liked them, we then swap lists and argue them into the shape of a Top 50. We then post comments to argue for and against each of them, and you then post comments explaining how very right we are or, far more likely, how very, very wrong and mad we've clearly become. In the hope of avoiding actual death threats this time around, however, we'd like to preface this year's countdown by pointing out that this is entirely a matter of opinion, and that nobody on the staff has in fact played every single game on the list. It's just not possible. This is not a definitive Top 50 Games of 2004. There's no such thing. What this is is a list of our favourite games based on titles released in Europe over the past 12 months. We hope you'll find it interesting, and we hope you'll feel compelled to respond in the New Year by submitting your favourites in time for us to compile the Reader's Top 50. Expect details of that in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here's the first instalment in Eurogamer's Top 50 Games of 2004, dealing with numbers 50 to 41. Tune in every day this week for more.