Player of Games is good, but I suspect you'll be disappointed if you're coming from more complex titles like Matter or Use of Weapons. Excession is one of my favorites that's not quite as dense as the rest of his work.
Massively off topic, of course.
To continue offing the topic: Use of Weapons greatly irritated me. You spend all this time getting to know the guy through flashbacks, then at the end Banks pulls a bait and switch "No it was really the other guy all along!" The book makes no sense with that ending.
Quite the contrary, it does make far more sense with that ending. The whole book is centered around that.
It is, by far, my preferred Culture book and the one that apply the best today.