Ok, so for the past week and a half I’ve played:

1. Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns – finished the single player campaign. This is a pretty good RTS which concentrates more on squad tactics. Units are grouped into squads which move together (reminds me of the table-top version of Warhammer). You can change formations and what not. The spell casters and other support units all auto-cast, etc. making this game very non-micromanage. I hated how in Warcraft and almost any other RTS, any special abilities including spells are only executed by the player’s order. Building the cities is also relatively easy without all the crazy upgrades you find in War/Starcraft, just building emplacements. Upgrades to troops comes in the form of exploring the map and finding monster lairs. Some of the lairs give you heroes or special technology upgrades. Overall, a very fun game and I’m sorry I passed this up when it came out like 3 years ago.
2. some Baldur’s Gate 2 – yeah, some friends and I are about to start this game, so I decided to refresh my memory by playing a bit. There are a ton of mods out there and we will be using some of the more polished ones. George, you never replied; we need people who are committed.
3. Far Cry – finished single player but with god cheats. I just don’t have the patience for arcade first person shooters anymore. I much prefer playing co-operatively with friends in a realistic squad-based shooter. This game, however, features incredible graphics so I decided to play it through. Overall, I’d say the first like 2 or 3 missions are the ones that are worth it. Afterwards it’s more of the same but gets all weird Dr. Moreau-ish. If I want to be freaked out by mutants or whatnot, I’ll just go play Doom 3.
4. Kohan 2: Kings of War – about 1/2 way through. I didn’t even know this game was coming out when I picked up the first one. After I played the first and did a web search I found out this sequel is just came out and features a move to 3D. It’s pretty good, but for some reason I don’t like it as much as the original. They decided to make it more like other RTSes, with tech upgrades found on buildings instead of rare monster lairs, etc. Just not as exploration heavy (except to scout out enemy locations).
5. Codename Panzers – only played first mission. It’s an RTS that also features units formed into squads, set in WW2. It’s main selling point is that it is all about tactics, there is no resource management portion of the game, so no building of units and buildings and such; wouldn’t make sense for there to be one anyway. My main problem with this game is that the troops aren’t automated. I mean they fire and have stances and such, but you have to manually tell them to use grenades and so on. It’s biggest selling point is that the main campaign is playable co-operatively. It’s drawbacks are that only 2 can play. Oh, and also the multiplayer part doesn’t work on my computer for some reason and no one in the forums seems to know what the problem is.
6. Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War – only played first two missions. Awesome graphics, amazing in-depth world, and squads of units rather than stand-alone units (I see a trend here). I love the gritty Warhammer world. Biggest problem with this game is that it moves too fast for me to really enjoy all the massive carnage. I want to see it in slow motion.
7. Rome: Total War – currently playing. Man, this game is awesome. It’s the 3rd one in the series of Total War games, the other two being Medieval: Total War and Shogun: Total War. I heard good things about the others and I saw this one at E3 this year, so decided to check it out. The strategic level is like a lite version of Civ. The battles are zoomed in and play out in real-time with the player controlling massive amounts of units in formation. Ben and George would love this game. I normally don’t like Civ-like games since I find them tedious (yet addictive). This, for some reason, just doesn’t feel tedious, maybe because I really enjoy the tactical portion. Also, you get to learn a hell of a lot about Roman culture and geography.
8. Kingdom of Loathing – This is a little web-game like the old-school BBS game, Legend of the Red Dragon on steroids and injected with humor. It’s like a MMORPG-lite, being all text heavy. You get 40 action points a day and can spend them on delving into dungeons (1/room) or doing other actions. Just check the site out and read the about page. Very fun, and only takes like 30 min a day.

Starting tomorrow, I figure my game playing intake will be drastically cut. 🙂

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