This has been a spectacular year for gamers. Sure, there has been no shortage of shovelware and crap games, but the dreck has been more than counterbalanced by some amazing, creative, and–most important–compelling and fun titles. So, here are my personal faves from the last 12 months (in descending order and the platforms on which I played them).

1. TIE: Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 (xbox 360)
Bioshock is not a perfect game, but its attention to detail, awesome art direction, great music and voice acting, and well-paced storytelling were top-shelf. Infinity Ward brough their CoD series into the 21st century and crafted the most intense and thrilling shooter of the year, with the richest multiplayer suite around.
3. The Orange Box (PC and xbox 360)
4. Mass Effect (xbox 360)
5. Command and Conquer 3 (PC)
6. Lord of the Rings online (PC)
7. Assassin’s Creed (xbox 360)
8. TIE: Overlord (xbox 360) and Crackdown (xbox 360)
9. The Darkness (xbox 360)
10. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (PC)

This has been the year when my gaming has shifted significantly from PC towards console, partly because of specific titles and partly because of high system requirements for recent PC games. I know I’m not alone–sales for both Crysis and UT3 have been very poor. Speaking of poor, here are my top disappointments of the year.

Halo 3 (xbox 360)
Supreme Commander (PC)
Unreal Tournament 3 (PC)
Hellgate: London (PC)
Tabula Rasa (PC)
Neverwinter Nghts 2

Finally, here are some fun, but maybe not Game-of-the-Year candidates:

Universe at War: Earth Assault (PC)
Skate (xbox 360)
DiRT (xbox 360)
Medal of Honor: Airborne (xbox 360)
Sim City Societies (PC)

Petroglyph’s UNIVERSE AT WAR: EARTH ASSAULT might have one of the most generic, yawn-inspiring, half-assed titles ever, but the game itself is kind of a kick. Unlike some recent RTS games (are you listening, World in Conflict?) this title has three, really unique races with totally different play styles and tech trees, and it never feels like the units are just variations on the same model. It’s loud, and garish, and the lighting effects are crazy. The game has nothing to do with realism. It’s just a bunch of big-ass, spinning, laser light-blasting, colorful, sci-fi weapons, flying saucers, walkers, robots, and mechs blasting the hell out of each other. And that’s just fine by me.

Winter has come early to our little corner of the northwest. (for a sense of scale, see the little butt end of my Civic sticking out from behind the tree). Thank goodness for games. What better way to warm oneself than by throwing a copy of Left Behind:Eternal Forces on the fire?

Ehhhhh…. Nubian!

Episode One is done.  I’ve got lots of pictures to post soon.  I hope Ryan hurries up and finishes so I can lay down some mad spoilers.  I’ll be like SPOIL…SPOIL…SPOIL…

Oh the pretty things you’ll see
It’s not December 22nd and yet an EMB Winter Games style run of gaming has been achieved. It all began some Unreal Tournament 3. Hit the jump to hear about the rest.
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As I sat down for my Thanksgiving pizza (a quarter century tradition in the Tritone vegetarian household) I couldn’t help but gape in slack-jawed wonder at the metaphorical groaning board of gaming goodness, a bounty of such richness: BIOSHOCK, MASS EFFECT, CALL OF DUTY, THE ORANGE BOX, ASSASSIN’S CREED, HALO 3, SIM CITY SOCIETIES*, QUAKE WARS, TABULA RASA, UT3, CRYSIS–all harvested in the last couple of MONTHS, for cryin’ out loud. Has there ever been a better spread of quality games? And, seriously, let’s give thanks for all the designers, programmers, artists, producers, writers, composers, sound editors**, and QA testers that create all these cool toys for us to play with.

*there you go, Brixtone. $5. ka-ching!
**ditto

Mmmm…. delicious turkey….

Barney posing in front of the Citadel at one of City 17’s new photo op points. Over the last few days, photo op signs have been popping up all around the city. This isn’t a good picture of Barney as he seems to have gotten something stuck up his ass.

(Read on …)

I’ve really gotten into the DS recently, and not just because I’ve been schlepping my ass across country every other week or so. Part of the reason I’m diggin’ it is because there are a lot of RPGs available and the games cost half of what you’d expect from any other console. The most recent hit has been Luminous Arc from Atlus and Marvelous Interactive.

It’s pretty standard Japanese RPG fare. The graphics and sound are pretty great, the characters are pretty interesting if a touch one-dimensional, and its got a good sense of humor. It’s a little bizarre at times though, both in its approach to male/female romance where it’s extra heavy on the double entendre and its use of a talking radish as a between-chapter moderator. The radish has its own story to tell, but frankly it makes no sense what so ever.

I also like the characters. Here are two:

Those Japanese are so wacky.