Where to start? ....Steam. I love and hate them. Why do they have to tempt me so with their annual holiday sale. I bought so many games it's sickening. Here's an incomplete list: Torchlight, Dawn of War II, Order of War, Defense Grid, Assassin's Creed, Gratuitous Space Battles, Space Empires IV + V, Sword of the Stars Deluxe pack + Argos Naval Yard, Dead Space, Call of Duty: World at War. There's a few more but I can't remember which without checking.

Anyways, the point is that I got a whole bunch of great games and most of them I paid 80% off the regular price. It tempts a person to only buy games once a year at the sale. I honestly doubt that I will have played through all the games I bought by next year. At least I didn't spend a lot of money on them. For example I only paid 2.49 for Defense Grid.

One game that really surprised me is Sword of the Stars. I had always written this game off for some reason. Upon actually playing it I have to say this game is pretty fun. It's certainly not without it's flaws but none of them stop you from enjoying the game.

.....not that I'm complaining about it. In fact, quite the opposite. Here's the story.

Back in the middle of September I bought World in Conflict, little did I know at the time that it would be the last new game I purchase this year. Then all the good games for this year start coming out. Games like Orange Box that I had been waiting for all year long. When I start talking about going to buy it the wife tells me that every year she never has anything "cool" to buy me at xmas because I always just go buy the games I want. So I cave in and from September to xmas I haven't purchased any games at all.

Fast foward to xmas morning. Under the tree I find all of the following:

Orange Box

Crysis

C&C 3 Tiberium Wars

Universe at War

Jade Empire SE (I know not a new game but one I wanted and didn't have)

Plus to top it all off I also got a brand new xbox 360 and a copy of Mass Effect

Where do I even start? I've been playing Mass Effect off and on (that game is really hard to put down once you start playing). On the PC I started with Half Life 2: Episode 2 out of the Orange Box. Once I'm done that I'm gonna check out Portal and go see how much of a noob I am in TF2. I installed Crysis just to have a look at it. I can't get the 64-bit launcher to work with my Vista 64. Reading up on it I've discovered that theres a patch due any day that will fix the SLI issues and such. So I'm gonna wait to play Crysis until it's patched.

Well I have a lot of gaming to do and a lot of games to get through. I still want to get a copy of COD4 but I'll wait until I've gotten through all the games I have first. I do have to say the wait was well worth it.

Just the other week I read a post about EasyTuTu that allows you to play Baldur's Gate in the Baldur's Gate II engine. It installs super easy.

For the last couple of weeks I've once again been entralled in the BG universe. I have completely forgotten how much fun the BG series is. I'm going to play the same character all the way through the entire series which includes BG, BG:TOTSC, BG II:SOA, and to finish it all up BG II:TOB. Even though I've had all 4 games for just shy of 8 years now ( BG came out in 1998 ) I have never played through from start to finish with the same character. EasyTuTu allows me to play the original game with the updated graphics of the BG II engine.

If your interested in doing this as well just google "EasyTuTu" and you'll find out where to download it from.

Hrmmm haven't blogged since last Oct. Better say something I guess. Well recently I picked up Star Wars: Empire at War. Simply a fantastic game. The most fun I've had in the star wars universe since KOTOR. It does start to get old after several weeks but it worth every penny.

I ordered Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords this weekend. Have seen nothing but great reviews for it. I haven't played a really deep strategy game in quite awhile so should be good.

Other than that I'm still awaiting Oblivion, NWN, and Dragon Age to come out. Those are the big ones I'm waiting for. I hope they all come out spaced about 3-4 months apart as I will simply not know what to do if any of these come out at the same time.

Been looking forward to playing a good space sim. There aren't many to choose from these days as the space sim seems to be a dying genre.

Hope to eventually write up an extensive review on X3 in a couple of weeks.

After recently becoming bored with playing DAoC(after 3+ years of it) I decided this week that I would give EQII a second chance. I had originally purchased EQII at release but canceled my account due to technical issues and the extreme focus on grouping within the game.

Just out of curosity last week I went and decided to check up on EQII and was quite pleased to read all about the changes that SOE has made to the game including solo play. Over the last 5 months or so SOE has almost exclusively focused on adding solo content to EQII. In fact when I came back to the game last wednesday I actually felt like I was playing an entirely different game than the EQII I remembered at release. I largely suspect that the recent focus on solo play being added to the game is largely due to the success of WOW. No matter the reason for it I have found that the changes recently made to EQII have made the game accessable to casual players again and I've been enjoying playing it again.

After a month or so of playing I intend to write up a player review on the current status of the game.

Lastly I just wanted to give a shout out to "Explorers of Norrath" on the Antonia Bayle server. These are some of the nicest. friendiest people I have ever had the pleasure of playing with in an online game. Truly selfless people and they strive very hard to give the guild a "family" feeling to it. A large part of being able to enjoy the game is due to atmostphere of this guild.

Having picked up Stonghold 2 last week I've been really sucked into this game. I find it very unique from any other RTS I have ever played. I just posted my full review here

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/stronghold2/reader_review.html?id=3669210

Feel free to leave me any comments about my review or stop by and ask me any questions you'd like answered about the game. I have to say I highly recommend it for anyone who loves RTS games.

After 3+ years of playing Dark Age of Camelot I reached the point where I'm finding myself in need of a fresh challenge. I leave the game on a positive note and I'll probably still end up logging in here and there over the next month or so. I did manage to get my character to RR 9 and I am a bit dissappointed that I won't take him past the proverbial "super-uber" barrier of RR 10 but I'm content in my accomplishments, not many people break the RR 9 barrier when you consider the entire population.

I wrote up a gamespot review which you can find here - http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/darkageofcamelot/reader_review.html?id=3592803

I tried to be as fair as possible in my review so have a look and if you agree feel free to click on the "trust user" button or at the very least give a thumbs up click.

I finally broke down and ordered Gamespot Complete. I have been visiting Gamespot for the reviews/news/cheats/walkthroughs now for oh 3+ years or so now. I've never really been one to be active on the message boards but lately I've been finding myself much more active on them. Whats really funny is over the years I think I've probably had 3 or 4 different login names to Gamespot (One of them being "Frek" but I no longer have the email account under which I signed up for that account and hence have to use "therealFrek" now, bleh).

I really like this journal thing and I plan to use it at least once a week to sorta blog whats been going on in my gaming world.

I pre-ordered Stronghold 2 this week. After reading the previews and watching all the videos on the gamespace this is a game that has really intriqued me. Once I get some real time to play it sometime next week I plan to write up a full review of it.

Besides that I'm still playing DAOC on the Palomides server. My druid named "FreK" has managed to climb his way to RR9. After 3 years of playing that game I can't believe I still find it fun to play. I will comment though that I think DAOC has "the" most boring PVE of any online game I can think of. The only thing that keeps me playing is the friends I have made online and the RVR part of the game. It is alot of fun to run a small group with a regular set of people.