So another year is down, and what to make of it all? I think 2007 was one of the better years in a while, better than 2005 and 2006 in terms of PC game releases. The big thing though was the sheer number of PC games released from October to December this year, I think there was too many, UT3 sales may be some proof of that.

I know I missed out on World in Conflict, UT3 and SC:Forged Alliance because I had too many other games to play. I will probably pick those up when I have time to play next year, although 2008 looks pretty solid too.

This year I bought 22 games, 12 were released in 2007 and 11 were from digital downloads (mainly steam), they were:

Supreme Commander, BF2142: Northern Strike, STALKER, Oblivion,C&C 3, SC:Chaos Theory, Garry's Mod, Commandos 2, Hitman 2, Quake, Painkiller Gold, Bioshock, Team Fortress 2, HL2: Episode 2, Portal, Call of Duty 4, Crysis CE, Gears of War, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Hitman Blood Money, The Witcher LE and Flatout 2. I also got Uplink and Defcon from The PC Gamer via a steam gift thanks dawg.

Here are some of those games in amazing real life format.

The Witcher seems to me by far the most underrated of these games, although I'm only half way through. Crysis as best shooter was well deserved in my opinion and is probably my game of the year.

28 PC games feature in the top 100 rated games for 2007 on gamerankings, 360 was the only other platform with more at 29 (PS3 a distant 3rd with 15). In contrast, in 2006 only 20 PC games made it in the top 100, even less in 04 and 05. This could change slightly as more reviews come in.

Finally a quick look at 08 games I await:

Left 4 Dead
Far Cry 2
STALKER: Clear Sky
Alan Wake
BF3
Rage
Starcraft 2

I hope everybody had a great christmas and/or had a great 2007. I thank everybody who has taken the time to visit/post on my blog, look at my videos or read my reviews this year, bring on 2008 :D

Review: Hitman: Blood Money

Video: Witcher Basic Combat

Since last blog I purchased 3 games, nfs:mw was cheap and HBM I got free with my fileplanet subscription thanks to a recommendation from my xfire friend Chandu who is just about ready for the big red bad monster at the end of diablo, I forget his name :P. Gears I got because I wanted to check out GFW Live and because my other friend jd1680a said it was good.

I just finished Gears not long ago and it was better than I expected, I think it did a good job at getting the simple things right, having some very good gameplay ideas. I did find it quite hard on hardcore, many sections I died a bit more than I liked, but not quite enough to make me drop the difficulty. The music was very good and I used the sniper rifle quite a bit.

NFS:MW I have been playing and its quite enjoyable, it gives me a break from shooters which is partly why I got it. The cop chases can be really fun and especially when its in the middle of a race and the cop AI is quite nice, coming from somebody who loves running from cops in gta games its enjoyable. Up to blacklist #6 but I'm having to upgrade my car to get through a lot of challenges, one con is the auto leveling of opponents being just a bit too noticable.

Hitman Blood money I have barely started, only done two missions, so far seems alright although I have no patience and just end up gunning down everybody, the newspaper says I'm an inexperienced nubcake and I agree.

In other news Crysis was better second time through, partly because I didn't rush so much (woe :( ) and also because you just see other ways to approach the same position and see battles play out completely differently. I also nearly have 5000 posts, so yay for me spamming the pc games forum!

Reviews: Crysis, COD 4

My Special Edition came yesterday and I've been playing Crysis flat out so I've finished it, heh, don't worry its twice as long as COD 4 and that was on normal mode also, I could even see it being longer had I been a bit more patient.

To get things out of the way the game is very good, has some really epic levels, the basic suit play is solid throughout. The sci fi story didn't turn out that bad, the ending was a bit "sparse" though. Some of the cutscenes were well done and the animation is certainly first class. I do wish they had made some more levels like Contact and Rescue though, I felt they were the best in the game. The simple parts were more enjoyable for me, small huts with some north koreans. I hope the mod community gets around to producing more levels like that.

Overall there is still plenty of potential left in the gameplay itself, only in a few spots did they truly untap what Crysis should have been nearly the whole way through, even then it was fairly briefly.

I finished COD 4 single player already, only regular difficulty but I think I died enough times anyway. Took me less than 5 hours. I thought it was fairly average, mixed bag graphically but runs very very well. Gameplay was very familar and the demo is a good indication of most of the game with exception to the variety of the missions. Production wise its good but the single player is not really my style of game, its heavily scripted.

Played some multiplayer and it saves the game for me, its really good fun and the netcode and performance seems solid. Just stay away from 32 player FFA servers if you want some decent gameplay. If you aren't going to play mp then wait for the price to drop, it's just too short with limited replay value at $50 USD.

Oh and I preordered Crysis CE, could get it as soon as Wednesday next week and I can't wait.

3 Discs including Soundtrack CD, Art book, Steel box, extra videos :D

Some COD 4 pics:

Yeah I'm pretty young, but its time to start thinking about the future. This person has been around my life since early 2004 and I really appreciate everything they do for me. Nice is probably an understatement, but this person sticks by me even when there are great benefits elsewhere.

This blog might sound a bit serious, but its a big decision. I really want some feedback from you guys about this.

Only very recently has this person done something so incredibly amazing that I'm really contemplating just asking them the big question. I see this person everywhere I go and its starting to drive me crazy.

So any of your married guys want to give me tips?

I'm unsure what to do, how do I know if I'm in love?

I didn't ask this person if I could post pics of them, but I don't think anybody would know them.

So here is the person I'm thinking of asking

http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/2194/yerlithumbso4.jpg

here on the right:

http://p3.focus.de/img/gen/O/I/HBOICABT_Pxgen_r_467xA.jpg

Oh and this totally unrelated video

[video=I3w3kzv65b8FuTXb]

Yeah Crysis demo is a damn masterpiece if you ask me, consider the hype around this title and then the overall positive reaction from the demo. Hint: YOU CAN'T RUN THIS GAME ON MAX. As soon as you get it playable, it will look better than anything else and if you liked Far Cry it will be amazing. Sandbox 2 is incredible, tornados, sharks, aliens and heaps of pretty easy tools.

:D:D:D:D

GO CRAZY! :lol:

2007 holiday lineup has got to be one of the best lineups for PC I've ever seen and I've been playing pc games since the early 90s. Just so many high quality games due out november especially. Some demos already impressed me like UT3, my ut3 video.. I know many of you guys have been disappointed with some of the demos, but I'm sure there are enough quality games for everyone to find a few good games.

I played and enjoyed Episode 2, Portal and TF2. Already beaten Episode 2 three times its just that good! I'll have a review up in a few days when gamespot lets me. I have a few shots that feature major spoilers so beware. Anyway just an update for now, have fun :)

Reviews: FEAR, The Orange Box

First beta test game I got with my black box (ATI card) was Team Fortress 2. This game is very funny and very well put together, there has been drastic changes since TFC but some are for the better, no more nade spam! However the game was crashing pretty often for me, seem to have reduced that by reading info on the steam forums. CRY SOME MORE.

The other beta I have is under NDA, so I'll probably be killed in my sleep for saying anything. It's mp but I must say that its better than I thought it would be, much improved over the developers last efforts. I'll probably still prefer the sp side of the game but the first impression is very promising. You'll have to guess what game I'm talking about ;)

Review: Bioshock

Yay! Finally after some waiting I have a replaced the guts of my old computer. Now I have a X2 5600+, 2900XT and 2gb of RAM. Ahh the smell of new computer hardware :D Bioshock was the first game I tried and it was wonderous.

Still installing programs, drivers etc on this new hard drive and I will be out of action from tomorrow until Friday due to unrelated stuff thats too boring to go into here. Oh and I also leveled up on gamespot, 27 tada.

Reviews: Counter-strike: Source and Painkiller

All this week and last week I've been playing Commandos 2, finally finished it today and enjoyed it very much. My review of it can be found here if you are interested it's on Steam for $10.

I gained a level this week to 26 but it keeps getting harder from here on. I also got to 3000 blog views recently which I'm fairly pleased with, I thank all you guys that have viewed and especially those who post here. :) Also nearly hit 4000 forum posts, I'm a bit surprised I have so many already.

id released a ton of games over Steam too, lots of cheap packs of old games like Doom, Commander Keen, Quake that you might also be interested in (I just got quake), guess we will see their newer games come to steam too like Quake Wars and Rage.

So Ubisoft launched their teaser site http://farcry.uk.ubi.com/teaser/. Apparently it's set in Africa this time and so far it's PC only, which surprises me as it's ubisoft although I'm sure ports will come later.

Lots of leaked concept art can be found here http://www.crysis-online.com/images/news/FarCry2/. It looks interesting but I wonder how well Far Cry will turn out without Crytek though.

**Update** Screenshots 28/7/07

http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/screen.asp?id=12246