Zoo Tycoon 2: Zookeeper Collection Gold

If you fancy yourself as a budding John Aspinall or Lord Bath, Zoo Tycoon 2 is for you. It’s the sequel to an already well-established title, and works along the same lines as SimCity — budget your fortune to create a zoo that will draw visitors to it like bees round a honey pot. You can also become a zoo keeper, caring for and feeding the animals and scooping poop, as well as planning the layout of your zoo.

Splash the cash on a menagerie — $50,000 for a panda (a poor investment: mine barely lasted the day), or a more manageable $10 for a raccoon. You can even erect walkways, paths or a cable-car ride. It is unashamedly designed with children in mind, and adults might struggle to maintain a long-term interest, but it’s undeniably relaxing. While the fiscal sense it instills is almost impossible to apply to real life, it is mildly educational, even if it does avoid any notion that nature might be red in tooth or claw.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

By now you know what you’re getting with Nintendo’s blockbuster Zelda series — a land threatened by darkness; a green-clad youth finding the tools to save it. In Twilight Princess, you alternate between playing as a human and a rather handsome wolf, cleansing the land of evil bit by bit.

Although it’s far more cinematic than its predecessors — the Nintendo team has clearly been watching the Lord of the Rings movies and scribbling down things like “more flaming arrows” — the basic model is still that of 1998’s Ocarina of Time.

But given that Ocarina remains one of the most engrossing games ever made, its template proves sturdy enough for one more life-swallowing outing.