Power Grid: A Calculated Assessment

I've been wanting to publish a review of Power Grid on here for ages, largely because the prevailing attitude of gamers around here is one of undisguised adoration for the title which I find utterly perplexing. I tried playing Power Grid because it seems to be a game everyone loves – my geekbuddies love it, all the Ameritrash crowd seem to love it, Eurogamers of course love it and it seems that it has lots of appeal to Wargamers too. I wrote up my experiences not long after as a review and, on re-reading it, it seemed that in spite of a couple of games in the meantime, it remained a fairly accurate assessment of my attitude to the game. So since I don't really have time to write a completely new article on the subject nowadays, here it is again, with a few tweaks for modernisation purposes.