Finally, after nearly a year of not having my copy of Advent Rising I have got it back from my little brother.

I can't even count how many times I wished I had it back so I could play...that'll be the last time I lend one of my favorite games out to my little brother.

Now I can get my fix in and re-live the exciting story that Advent Rising provides!

My previous blog was a list of games that I own that I haven't beat....

Well, this blog will be a listing of the games that I haven't beat before, that I finally beat!

1. Area 51: This game has much potential, but it quickly loses out in that department after about 1-2 hours of gameplay. Good graphics are not enough to help pull this game off of its knees and out of the gutter.
2. Freelancer: This is one of the more entertaining games that I've played in a long time - too bad the game keeps freezing on me at the Kyoto Base and I cannot progress any further. So I'm chalking this game up as beaten.
3. Titan Quest -Immortal Throne: I had troubles getting myself to play through the normal difficulty to win, I just grew bored of the game- how can people replay the same game up through the Legendary diffculty???

As I add games to this list, I'll edit off games on my previous blog.

Since I have a kid on the way, I can't really afford to be throwing money away on games at the moment. So I figured I'd list all the games that I own that I haven't beat and I can work on this while I stock cash away for the new addition coming to my house! This list will exclude all MMOs

Games that I haven't beat:

1. Age of Empire III
2. Boiling Point
3. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
4. Company of Heroes
5. Dark Star One
6. Diablo II (I've been close several times, but I just stopped....must try again!)
7. Dragonshard (I like it, just haven't played it too much)
8. Dungeon Siege II (gah...I really do hate this game, but I must beat it!)
9. Fallout Tactics
10. Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone
11. Gothic 3 (currently playing this awsome game!)
12. LOTR: The Battle for Middle-Earth (not a very exciting game)
13. Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
14. Painkiller: Gold Edition
15. Project Snowblind
16. Star Wars: Empire at War
17. Warhammer 40,000 - Dawn of War: Winter Assault (this is boring, too)
18. Wizardy 8

Gezz...this list is larger then I thought it would be - Oh well, I've always wanted to beat all the games that I own and it looks like I finally will have the time to do so.

Update -3 down, 18 more to go! That's right...I've picked up come cheap games that I can play, so my list will grow!

My current rig:

• AMD 64 X2 3800+
• 2GB memory
• 160GB hard drive
• 2x 7600GT (SLI config)

• 3DMark05 score: 9499
• 3DMark06 score: 5635

Hopefully by this Friday (5/25/07) I will have my 8800GTS (640 memory) in and I can have it up an running that evening. I'll post my updated 3dMark0X scores as I come across them. I just have this posted here so anyone that cares to see the comparison between my current setup and my new one!

:D New graphics card is in (8800GTS 640MB)

• 3DMark05 score: 12525
• 3DMark06 score: 8071

I was hoping for a greater difference between a single 8800GTS over my old SLI 7600GTs.  Oh well, perhaps future drivers for the Nvidia 8 Series cards will improve performance. I'm still excited about it because I'm now half way to being able to play DX10 games....now I just have to save up for Vista (which I'm in no hurry to get until things become more solid/defined in Vista).

I've only been able to put about 5 hours into STALKER as of now, but from what I've come across the game is very well put together, aside from a few issues that crop up from time to time.

One grip I have is when you're metting up with Wolf's men to help get Nimble, I saved my game right in front of the stalkers that you meet up with. I had to exit the game and when I came back to my saved game, I could not interact with the stalkers, they just ignored me and wandered about, but they did nothing useful.

This similiar problem seems to crop up from time to time when all the stalkers in the starting area have their guns drawn and are all facing one direction, but there is nothing out there. After a while, they eventually relax and go back to milling around.

The quest system is a little on the glitchy side. Take the first quest to get Nimble: I beat it, then ventured through the lands a bit, did a few side quests and saved my game. I return to my saved game and I come across the group of Stalkers heading out to save Nimble again and all the bandits are in the car park.

A few patches and things will greatly improve.

After playing around in the online beta of Lords of the Ring, I'm not very impressed.

Seeing as this is only the beta, I hope they improve on it.

Graphics: While running on medium to high on all graphic settings, you don't see anything that's any better to what WoW can provide.

UI: Tacky and gaudy to look at, as of right now. I do hope this sees some improvements as well. People need to be given the option to move around menus and adjust the UI to fit their needs, I hope this is something they let us do.

Sound/Music: So far, it's ok. Some of the sound effects are a little sappy, but perhaps it's just me. The music seems to fit the game fairly well.

Story line: I started out as a dwarf: You start off having to explore a mine (not very big area) and you set out to help Gimli when you see that he's in trouble....

Tutorial: Rather lacking, in my opinion. You get some pop-up hints as you go along, but nothing that truely helps you out. After the short run through the starting out mine to help Gimli, you are pretty much thrust into the game without much more guidance. Hopefully they expand on this to help people out a little more.

Overall: I'd rate this game (in it's current beta stage) 6 out of 10. A lot more needs to be done to really make this MMO shine above the rest and to steal some attention away from WoW. Just because this MMO has the Lord of the Rings name doesn't mean they can just rely on that alone to sell the product and convince people to spend their money there.