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The gaymes of 06
2006 is a high point in gaming for the decade on the PC with just so many good titles pushed out that it was impossible to get to them all, especially with the game of the year being the time sucker that is Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Add to this that a huge portion of the gaming community was sucked up inside World of Warcraft, and have never even seen the demo videos for Crysis, Team Fortress 2, or tried the beta of Supreme Commander, let alone actually buying and playing incredible games like Company of Heroes and you have a year where a lot of good stuff was woefully ignored. This is a list of games that if you've been typing ‘LFG spellmaw FTW’ into your keyboard for the last year or have just been overwhelmed by the choices out there should help get you on track.
The first game I played until my thumb was raw in 06 was released in 05: Urban Reign by Namco. This totally underrated fighter will be one of the sought after PS2 titles once the PS2 console goes dead simply because it's multiplayer is just a riot. If someone rebuilt River Ciy Ransom with this engine, no one would leave the house or try to touch girl's breasts ever again.
Deep in the darkness of winter while waiting for Oblivion to get pinched out, we delved into the newest Diablo 2 Zyel mod incarnation and it's utter madness. D2 is to D2:zyel what smoking pot on the weekends is to a 18 month long meth-binge that leaves you dead in an alley while your corpse is sodomized.
Once Oblivion hit, for which I built a new machine, I was pretty much AWOL from everything else except dabbling in Ultracorps. Oblivion is one of those high points in video gaming that is really quite difficult to fully describe. While it didn't hit me as hard as Morrowind did, the environments were so much better, the combat system improved and everything big and beautiful and HUGE. With a possible expansion on the way and a cataclysm of mods out there, Oblivion will be a game that takes a bite out of 07 as well.
Company of Heroes was the next horrible addiction and while it still doesn't top Warcraft 3 as the best RTS out there, it's one of the best games to come out in the genre for a long while, and quite and improvement on the Dawn of War engine. It’s fresh and fancy free.
Of course, the release of Dominions 3 caused me personally a great deal of social and hygenic hardships. It's a title that I will always have on my hard drive, and always have a game going, but I haven't gotten to play the multiplayer yet; the real dropping meat of the game.
In tandem with DOM3 this summer was Disgaea 2, yet another Nippon Ichi title that I play for a month or so and never finish.
The final game of 06 that I delved into much more than I should have, to the point where I left my computer on for weeks straight, was Medieval Total War 2. This is pretty much THE GAME and if I had to choose a second game of the year, this would be it. I will be playing this until the next Total War game gets released.
As for games that I missed, for various reasons, the list is extensive because there was too much good shit in 06, and some stuff that should have been good, but wasn't. The first is the new Dawn of War that features a campaign map not unlike Medieval Total War. My no-buy reasons were that I would have to go back and buy the expansion to the game to unlock all the races. Fuck that shit. Secondly, with the release of the better Company of Heroes, there's no reason to get the inferior title unless you are enamored with 40k, which I'm not. Another Warhammer title, this one in direct competition to Medieval Total War 2, was Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, a Total War clone that just didn't make the cut in the initial reviews. When this hits the 20$ mark, I'll be all over it, but for now, especially when MTW2 is better (releasing this at the same time was a mistake), there's little point.
In the cascade of space piss area: Sword of the Stars, by some of the programmers of Homeworld, was a space strategy game that piqued interest, but the demo and voice acting was so horrible that it was all best avoided. Space Empires V, a game I thought would take the Master of Orion crown once and for all, proved to be just too complicated to actually play. I think: 'Maybe I'm getting too old,' but then there's Dominions 2 who's depth of gameplay is bottomless and I realize, no, SEV just isn't all that great. Stardock did put out a new Galactic Civ, but I just didn't dig the first one all that much and have some hesitation. Compared to the other two in this genre, I've heard GC is the best of the three.
Gothic 3, another sequel and pillar of the RPG realm, was released without proper Q&A, so like any good consumer that doesn't feel like getting killed by a boar while on the way to kill the final boss, I'll wait for this to hit the bargain bin and hope it gets heavily patched in the meantime.
Two little games I have missed but mean to pick up are Defcon by Introversion ($17.50 download, and available through steam), a game that lets you play global thermal nuclear war against the computer or other people, and the new version of Strange Adventures in Infinite Space.
On the console front, since I only have a PS2, I didn’t have a choice about missing the cool graphics/shit gameplay launch titles for the Wii, PS3 and 360. King of fighters 2003 and Metal Slug 5 I have played before and will pick up eventually, but one title that got me a bit damp was Bully, a GTA clone by Rockstar that stars a little kid that likes to punch people similar to Sensless's troubled youth. I also took a pass on The Warriors, but that puts a twinkle in the eye so it might be on the long list.
As for 2007 there are only two titles that anyone not stuck on a console thinking Gears of War is the knee of a bee needs to know: Crysis and Unreal Tournament 2007. Having just finished Far Cry, and thinking in half a year or so I’ll try to run through it again, seeing what the game did to Sensless’s bachelor party, and knowing what effect it will have on games like Fallout 2 and hopefully all single player FPS games, know this, it’s true sequel, Crysis, will turn brains all across the lands to pure shit with it's awesomenesses.
littlemute
12/31/06 11:03am
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