4. Halo 3 (360)

The game with the biggest hype of 2007 didn’t disappoint…most. The trilogy came to a solid conclusion, and it took you on some interesting twists and turns along the way. The beauty of Halo though can only be experienced by exploring the lore that surrounds it, which is masterfully expanded in books, comics and other literature. It’s especially well noted in the excellent advertising campaign for Halo 3 in which they depicted real life actors as veterans of the war in which the Master Chief fought in. The multiplayer modes are the richest and deepest we’ve ever seen on a console, and tools like Forge and the Replay Viewer are going to be new staples in console gaming. Did the game live up to the hype? No, of course not. No game could ever do that. But god damn was it a fun as hell ride.

3. Bioshock (360/PC)

As the “spiritual successor” to the System Shock series, Bioshock hit the PC and Console world by storm this year. The Action RPG became mainstream in this beautifully decorated underwater art-deco style world. The game was a beautiful blend of puzzles, action, rpg customizations all intertwined with a unique and twisting story which had one hell of a plot twister in it. Everyone will remember their first encounter with a big daddy, or the first time they saved a little sister. Now would you kindly continue reading my list.

2. Call of Duty 4 (PC/360/PS3)

Infinity Ward hasn’t missed a beat with Call of Duty 4. The game is actually their 3rd iteration of the franchise (3 was made by Teryarch), and everyone of the games has a unique flavor about it. Call of Duty 4 is all about cool weapons, insane firefights, and impossible situations. The veteran difficulty of the game will test your patience, but is still one of the most rewarding experiences in gaming to date. The graphics are superb, and at times look downright realistic. The story is an intertwining twist of characters from different backgrounds, and provides more than enough twists and turns to keep you interested. But the best part of Call of Duty 4 isn’t just the single player, it’s perhaps one of the deepest and most unique multiplayer experiences yet for a first person shooter. In a mix between an MMORPG and a shooter you level up your character by using killing enemies, completing objectives, and accomplishing tasks. Leveling up unlocks perks to customize your character, as well as unlocks the ability to use new weapons. It was a god damn genius move and it created some of the most addicting online play we’ve seen this year.

1. Mass Effect (360)

Every year there seems to be a game that just instantly grips me and I can’t stop playing it.  This year, that game was Mass Effect.  After the the mediocre experience I had with Jade Empire, Bioware came back big time with Mass Effect.  Like Bioshock, Mass Effect took the RPG experience mainstream, and it did it without making any sacrifices.   The game sported incredible visuals and a conversation system that flowed back and forth dynamically like watching a movie.  The story was unique and interesting, and literally spanned across a galaxy in which you could freely explore and do side quests on.  The core gameplay was based around a 3rd person shooter mechanic, but was well grounded in the rules of an RPG.  Weapon upgrades, character specialties, and tons and tons of areas to explore all made this a truly amazing experience.  I’m incredibly happy this game is part of a trilogy and can’t wait to see what the second one brings.

Mass Effect truly is the game of the year.

Note:   It should be noted that because of the insane holiday season of all the good games, certain titles didn’t even get to be considered.  Crysis, Assassin’s Creed, and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune among them.

More pictures after the jump.

The PC version of Gears of War supports Microsoft’s Games for Windows Live platform. Unfortunately, much like Halo 2 for Vista, it doesn’t support any cross platform play to extend the community. This is also the first title that allows for GFWL on XP machines. This was a huge complaint with the original GFWL titles as a lot of gamers didn’t want to install Vista. The game does support DX10, though I can’t really tell the difference between that and the DX9 mode visually. The real draw of the new version of Gears is the new chapters of content. Many noticed that there wasn’t exactly a smooth transition between Act IV and Act V, and these chapters help fill that void.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve played any Gears, in fact it’s probably been a good 8 or 9 months since I touched single player. I forgot just how beautiful the game looks and how well it plays. Running the game at 1600×1200 with all the details on high shows off some really impressive visuals, and while the core of the game looks the same as its 360 counterpart, it looks to have a few extra layers of polish and smoothness on the PC.

Of course with a PC version comes the mouse and keyboard controls, and while you can still plug in your 360 controller to play, the KB/M do feel completely natural. There is a trade off of course, and the lack of rumble with a KB/M setup is definitley missed, especially in such a visceral game. I thought that perhaps the KB/M would make the game too easy, but I still found myself restarting at those difficult parts over and over. The only advantage I really found with the KB/M was that it was easier to hit moving targets while sniping.

Gears of War for Windows is virtually identical from the 360 version up until Act V. The beginning of the Act starts with Marcus and the crew needing to restore power to a bridge to get the APC across to the train. There’s some great dialog here that really fills in some plot holes, and of course the grand finale is a battle with the big ass Brumback monster. The new content should take you a little under 2 hours to complete, and I dare say its some of the most polished and well designed levels in the game.

Gears of War for windows does have some technical problems. There are some frame rate jitters and drops here and there, it’s not consistent and it’s not often, but it is annoying. I also hit a few glitches with audio being dropped with dialog, and I hit a spot or two where I got stuck in walls. All of these things were pretty minor though, and didn’t necessarily take away from the gameplay experience.

The multiplayer now has an additional game mode, as well as 3 news maps and a level editor. The Games for Windows Live stuff sort of complicates things. With player matches, ranked matches, and a server browser it can kind of be confusing to figure out just where to start in multiplayer. On top of all that, only certain sections are available depending upon your [i]subscription level[/i]. You can play direct matches, co-op, and server browsing matches with any Silver or Gold account. Matchmaking and ranked matches can only be played with Gold accounts though. Because of this all multiplayer achievements can be earned in non ranked player matches. I know this was a big complaint on 360 version, and it really brings in to question just what the hell is going on with GFWL, especially in the face of what Valve has done with the Steam Community.

Technical glitches aside, this really feels like a complete Gears of War game. The additional chapters really fit well into the overall story, and almost feel like they were cut from the original game due to time constraints. It’s an absolute crime that these won’t be available to 360 owners as DLC. This was my 4th time through the game now and it’s still a solid and fun experience. And while I think some core PC Gamers will complain the game is too “console-y”, this is one title that shouldn’t be missed.

Score:
4 out of 5

Buy @ Amazon $49.99

The missions start off fairly easy, but the game does a good job of adding more and more abilities as the missions go on. Difficulty definitely ramps up in the later missions as the objectives become a bit less forgiving, even throwing a time element into effect. In between missions you’ll be greeted with some graphic novel style art and a voice over by the man himself, Alec Baldwin. The core strategy of the game comes in choosing which units to drop in to accomplish your goals. There are so many units at your disposal that each objective can have numerous ways of being accomplished. Need to take a strong point in town? Load up the surrounding hills with artillery and scout the area with choppers. Don’t feel like attacking from afar? Drop in some heavy tanks and go for the blitzkrieg. Or perhaps you can just shove a laser guided missile up their bottle of vodka. Most units have limited special attacks to even further deepen the strategy involved and there’s also an incentive for units to survive and not simply be cannon fodder. Your units will rank up causing them to gain extra health and have deadlier attacks.

Ok, enough of this jibber jabber. Lets talk about the purdy graphics. And this game does indeed have some purdy graphics. You’ve never had so much control in an RTS before as to the view and position of the camera. You can zoom WAY out getting a look at the entire battlefield, or zoom all the way and literally be at street level with your units watching the firefights take place. The detail on units are amazing at close range, and the audio is equally as impressive. I would have loved to see a dedicated “battle cam” button when selecting a unit to get a great perspective on battles. The explosions are gorgeous, with deformed landscapes and big puffy clouds of smoke to follow. Trails from artillery and missiles cover the sky and cause massive damage as they hit buildings and other objects, all of which aredestructible. The interface itself is clean, and not overly big. All buttons have tooltips even though it’s fairly obvious what they do. I never felt like I was looking for a command and couldn’t find it.

Not only is World in Conflict a solid single player experience, but the online experience has even more meat to it. You can really see the developers want to bring in as many people into the online modes as possible, as evidence by including a 10 day free trial in the box to give to a friend. After creating a Massive account, you’ll be able to have friends lists, instant chats, and even see stats of how people are doing. There’s clan support, tournaments and a medal system similar to Battlefield 2 and the ability to save and watch replays of matches. The replay tool is incredibly cool, and you can really get some great angles of the action similar to what we’ve seen in the trailers released for the game. It’s incredibly easy to jump into a match with a quick match button, or boil it down and find the exact gametype you are looking for.

The basis for the multiplayer modes is a bit like Battlefield 2 where your job is to capture and hold strategic points. You pick a role: air, ground, support or infantry and are allowed to drop in units of that specific type. This forces players to work together in order to achieve victory in a match. Massive made sure to give players the tools needed to help communicate quickly and effectively. You can create requests on the fly for different unit types that instantly become hot click-able markers. This makes it easy to call in air support, or anti-air support, or whatever your support need may be. Action is fast and furious with little downtime.

With every gorgeous PC Game, there’s always the age old question: “How does it run on my PC?” From the accounts I’ve heard it can vary greatly, and this seems like a game that’s VERY video card dependant, especially in DX10 mode. For instance, on my FX-60 Vista64 machine with 2 Gig of Ram and a 8800GTX 768MB I get rock solid frames of 50FPS or more at 1600×1200 with every thing maxed. A friend of mine has a similar build, CoreDuo 6600 Vista64, 2 Gig of Ram, 8800GTS 320MB and gets frame rates around 15FPS at 1280×1024. This is with knocking down details, etc. As soon as he disables DX10, the frame rates increases dramatically. DX10 mode doesn’t add much, but what it does add is really slick. And when you have the hardware for it, you’d like to utilize it. So it’s kind of disappointing to hear that. Other than that though, the game does scale very well for lower end rigs, and still looks fairly decent to boot.

It’s truly rare to find such a complete game today. With a solid Single Player experience that should take you 10+ hours to beat and an equally satisfying multiplayer mode, World in Conflict provides a great value at $50 in a gaming market where we find our dollar value shrinking. The game seems accessible enough for a novice RTS player, and the multiplayer seems deep enough to satisfy veterans. It’s been a long time since blowing shit up looked so good, sounded so good, and was this much fun.

Score: 5 out of 5

It’s called Meet the Engineer and really gives you an idea of the flavor of the atmosphere for the game.

In case you missed it, you can also Meet the Heavy  and you can Meet the Soldier.

Bioshock Demo (PC/360)  – While the demo is only available on 360 right now, this shouldnt’ stop you from downloading it immediately.  Initial impressions of the demo have been solid, with considerable praise to the graphics.   If you are looking for a FPS with lots of atmosphere and the freedom to accomplish things mulitple ways, this game is for you.

 Stranglehold Demo (PC/360/PS3)  – The Stranglehold demo hit last week on the 360, with a PC demo coming this week sometime.  Anyone who was a fun of Max Payne needs to play this ASAP.  Fully interactive enviornments, incredible damage modeling, and just an all around fun game.  The greatest thing about this demo is successive playthroughs will unlock new abilities and higher difficulty levels.  Sweet!

All Pro Football 2k8 (PS3/360) -  I know, I know.  Madden 2008 hits this week.  But you SHOULD be playing APF2k8 instead.  Stick it to the man by playing a solid football game that’s more than just a roster update.  The graphics are decent, but the animations are top notch.  Overall the gameplay is solid, and should satisfy any football fan.

“Some people say it’s a little too Big-Brotherish, but it’s a legitimate progression of making the PC feel more – not like a console, but like a closed system,” id’s lead designer Tim Willits

Well that certainly doesn’t sound very good for PC Gamers. Nobody likes a closed system. He goes on to explain that some of the benefits include a certification style system yielding higher quality software, with less incompatibilities. Finally though, it all comes down to piracy, which has plagued the PC platform for years.

“As we move forward, if it can help prevent piracy, if it can help people connect together, if it can help things be more uniform, so when end users buy any PC game they know how to connect, they know how to search for games – I do think it will help the games industry, and it’s just the way things are going to need to move.”

So while it sounds like id may be behind the Games for Windows Live initiative, it doesn’t sound like they are very happy about it.

Of course I’m still playing Crackdown. I’m only progressing through the story when I get to play Co-Op with a buddy, and even then half the time is spent screwing around the city. I just obtained the Firefly (heat seaking rocket launcher) and it’s added a whole new element to the game. I managed to body jugle a corpse in the air for a full 30 seconds.

I’m renting The History Channel Presents: The Civil War from GamezNFlix. It’s a pretty average shooter, but it’s in a fresh setting. On top of that I played the Battle of Little Roundtop (Gettysburg) last night. Living only an hour and a half from Gettysburg I’ve been there a handful of a times and the developers did a great job with the level design. It looks very authentic, and in a sense it matches exactly how I envisioned some of the skirmishes playing out.

Finally I’ve been playing the Command and Conquer 3 demo on the PC. The game feels like a return to the C&C roots the franchise deserves complete with cheesey FMVs (BILLY DEE!) and great one liners. The ion cannon effect is particularly impressive. I’m really looking forward to this title now.

The Massacre of the Fairies info page allows you to download MoF V0.96 Beta. The game is an arcade style shooter with over the top gore, and crazy weapons.

Also added to the page is my home theater construction log. This was a project I started back in 2005 and completed in early 2006. Enjoy!