Age of Empires 2 is a great RTS set in medieval times. It's all about castles and knights and trebuchets and such. It has decent AI, so you can play multiplayer co-op against the computer. The graphics are pretty simplistic by today's standards. There is also some micromanagement issues in the gameplay that are kind of a bother. You have to keep an eye on your non-renewable resources, such as wood, gold and hunting. For instance, if you send a bunch of villagers to cut down a tree, they will cut it down, and then just stand there if there isn't a tree immediately adjacent to it, even if a tree is nearby! Also, you have to keep telling your farmers to farm, or they will let the farm die. Plus, the games tend to go for a few hours. When trees, gold, animals and fish are gone, they don't come back. You do at least have caravans, which provide you with gold, so you can buy the other resources. The single player is brutally difficult. Even at the standard difficulty, you will struggle to beat the scenarios, since they tend to start you at an incredible disadvantage. The multiplayer is what it's all about. Overall it is a great game. Many issues are fixed with the Conquerors expansion, so it shouldn't be played without it.

Age of Empires 3 is the sequel to AOE2. It is based during the colonization of America. It features modern 3D graphics by using an improved Age of Mythology engine. In the gameplay, you have a Home City, which is in your home country across the pond, that can provide additional resources as you earn experience points while playing. Experience points are also used outside the game to upgrade your home city with better resources it can provide during the game. Other than this, the gameplay is very similar to AOE2, and suffers some of the same micromanagement drawbacks with non-renewable resources like trees, mines and hunting. You can still run out of wood very easily, and there is no way to create more. You eventually have to buy all your wood at the market at steep prices. Thankfully they added the ability to create farms which are self-sustaining, as well as plantations that provide gold after mines are used up. Also, the games tend to take only an hour. These are huge improvements over the earlier game. It is a really enjoyable game, and definitely a step-up from its predecessor. The Warchiefs and Asian Dynasties expansions are also quite good. Sadly, it probably will be the last in the series, since Microsoft disbanded Ensemble Studios, the makers of the game.

Age of Mythology was made by the same people that made AOE2. It has improved gameplay compared to AOE2 and uses a 3D engine for the graphics. The single-player was a lot of fun, but the multiplayer failed to capture the interest of the guys at my LAN parties. I think they preferred the real-world gameplay of AOE2 over the fantasy gameplay of AOM. Once Rise of Nations came along, we stopped playing AOM.

Battlefield 1942 is based in WWII. Two teams, the Axis and Allies, have to capture control points on the maps. Capturing control points causes the other team to lose tickets. Each time someone spawns, they use a ticket as well. A team loses when it uses up all of its tickets. BF1942 was one of the first FPS games to incorporate vehicles into the gameplay. Unfortuately, if you don't have a vehicle, you are pretty much useless in the game, and will likely die fast. There are bots included, so you can play co-op multiplayer against bots, but the bots are hopelessly stupid. They tend to take all of the vehicles, and then drive around in circles. Bots on your team will almost never capture control points. BF1942 was unfortunately plagued with many glitches that hurt gameplay. It also hasn't aged well. But it is still pretty fun. A mod called Desert Combat came along that provided a Desert Storm scenario for BF1942, but it was plagued with the same irritating issues.

Battlefield 2 is like BF1942, but is based in modern times. Gameplay now includes a commander that can send a radar plane to any area of the map, which all of his team benefits from, and he can also send air strikes to anywhere on the map. Bots were not part of the initial release, but when they did release, they were a lot smarter than in 1942. BF2 also eliminates a lot of the programming glitches that ruined 1942. This makes for a much better experience. With the Nations at War mod, most of the remaining issues were eliminated, and the game became a LOT more fun. BF2 by itself is 3 out of 4 stars, but with the NAW expansion, it is 4 stars. You are still pretty much useless in the game if you don't have a vehicle, though.

Battlefield 2142 is like BF2 in the future. There isn't any other difference, except that the game runs a LOT slower than BF2, which is odd considering the Refractor 2 engine is the same one used in all the Battlefield games. Even the clunky interface before you start the game is mind-numbingly sluggish and awkward. If you have a beefy enough machine to play the game, the mechs are fun. But everything else is just BF2. Although the graphics look the same, it requires twice the computer that BF2 required. 2142 was nearly as big a disaster as Vietnam.

Battlefield Vietnam is the BF1942 engine with Vietnam-themed maps. The maps feature tons of foliage, which looks cool, but the bots can see through it. So co-op games against bots are impossible. The bots will constantly snipe you through the trees. They also have a nasty habit of spawn camping. Other than their ace sniping capability (including with shotguns or rocket launchers), they are laughably stupid, just like in BF1942. They won't accomplish goals. You can often find them running in circles or stuck on objects in the game.

Bioshock is marketed as a scary game. It's really not. It's creepy for sure, but not frightening. It seems quite tame when compared to F.E.A.R., and the storyline isn't as compelling as the Half-Life series. But it is still a good game. The graphics are great. The gameplay is pretty good as well. The setting and atmosphere are outstanding. The story line does become more compelling about 2/3rds of the way through. There is a nice twist that hooked me back in about the time I was getting bored. It really messes with your head. Unlike some people, I liked the good ending (there are two endings depending on your actions in the game).

Bioshock 2 isn't nearly as good as the first game. It's still a good game, but since it has you playing the role of a Big Daddy, it seemed somewhat less intense. The story line was good, but not as deep or shocking as the first. The graphics, sound and music are identical to the first. I didn't care much for the weird ending, though. Although I got the "good" ending, it was rather disturbing and disappointing.

Blur is an arcade racing game. It is similar to Mario Kart because you have weapons, and it is easy to play. But it has realistic graphics and tracks. I like that there are health icons to repair your damage, and even if you completely wreck, you are reset with a repaired car. You don't get kicked out of a race for wrecking. The weapons aren't cheap like Mario Kart. There is a weapon that causes EMP bursts to appear in front of the lead car that will slow them down if they hit them, but they can be avoided with some careful steering. The weapons typically just slow your car down for a moment rather than wrecking you completely. I like that. There are two things that keep it from being a 4-star game. One is the super-high system requirements (and uneven performance even if you exceed the recommended requirements). The other is that it only works with an XBOX 360 controller. It won't use any other type of controller you may have. If you don't have an XBOX 360 controller, you are stuck with the keyboard. That, along with the poor performance, make it clear that this is a sloppy console port. It also doesn't have an intelligent way of handling multiple profiles. It gets your in-game name from your Windows account, and you can't change it. Who thought that was a good idea? It's especially bad if you have computers in a shared environment like I do.

Why are adolescent sex jokes referred to as "mature humor"? At any rate, if you can get past the fact that the game was aimed at adolescent males, there is some fun co-op gaming in here. You choose one of 4 characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, then you play through a series of tasks, much like an MMORPG. It's not great, but it's fun with a few human players.

I looked forward to the Burnout series coming to the PC. I own all 5 Burnout games for PS2. I've always enjoyed the game play, although I was completely irritated by the constant program glitches and extreme difficulty. In the move to the PC, the glitches are gone, so now I can enjoy the awesome gameplay without feeling cheated all the time. The AI seems pretty dumb, though. I have seen AI cars drive head-on into an oncoming car that could have been easily dodged by even the least competent human gamer. Perhaps the AI has always been this dumb, because in the PS2 games, the AI cars would just go through traffic like they were not even there (and yes, that was irritating). The game play is a blast, though. It is even better than Burnout 4 on the PS2, which is saying a lot. And I really enjoy the much upgraded graphic quality. The reason why I give it a 3 instead of a 4 is because they inexplicably left out LAN play. This would have been the ultimate LAN party race game, but they didn't include the option. What were they thinking?!?

This is a great game, both single player and multiplayer. It is based in WWII. What makes this game stand out in single player is that you have other people fighting along side you. It's not the typical one-man army scenario. In fact, the AI is good enough to actually complete objectives without you if you mess around. That makes the game seem very realistic. You feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself. The multiplayer is fantastic, with many different game modes to choose from. A personal favorite is Behind Enemy Lines, where one (or maybe more, depending on the number of people playing) person is made an Ally. The rest of the people are on Axis. It is up to Axis to find the Ally and eliminate him, at which time the person who got him trades places with him and becomes the Ally. The Axis get a radar that provides a general location of the Ally. The Ally gets no such luxury. You gain points from kills, and from staying an Ally for a long time. The first person to 50 points wins. There are also other game types, such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Retrieval, Search and Destroy, and Headquarters. Retrieval is pretty much Capture the Flag. Search and Destroy has one team trying to find an object and planting a bomb to destroy it, while the other team defends the object. Headquarters has each team trying to find a radio randomly place in the map. Once found, the radio is captured. Holding the radio earns your team points. Sadly, bots cannot be used in multiplayer. So it is strictly human versus human in multiplayer.

This sequel isn't as good as the original. The single-player game is great. The graphics are definitely better, though they require a very beefy machine to appreciate. But the multiplayer has been stripped down. They left out the awesome Behind Enemy Lines mode. Boo! Still no bots in multiplayer, either.

As usual, the single player game is awesome. This game is based in modern times, which is a nice change of pace. But sadly, the original COD game still has the best multiplayer. Someone made bots for it, but they malfunction after a couple of maps, and require you to restart the server. As a multiplayer game, it is 2 out of 4 stars for lack of bot support.

What happened?!? This game is not fun, and is highly unstable. We tried it at a LAN party, because we thought the cooperative gameplay would be fun. But there were many bugs in the game. For instance, I found myself stuck on a crate at the beginning of the second level. I couldn't unstick myself. There were also unexplainable pauses when we played. This game was made by Treyarch instead of Infinity Ward, which probably explains the difference.

Like before, the single player game is awesome, but the multiplayer is lacking because of no bots. The single player isn't nearly as good as the first Modern Warfare, but it is still pretty fun. The story line isn't as compelling as the first Modern Warfare. But it is an Infinity Ward game, so it is good.

As this is another Treyarch iteration of Call of Duty, it just isn't in the same league as the Infinity Ward iterations. It's pretty good, but has some issues. You'll spend a lot of time watching the computer take over the controls for you. When you are in control, it feels very scripted and on-rails. Enemies will typically keep coming at you until you make a suicide run at them, and then they will suddenly let up. AI-controlled teamates are nearly useless in this game. They will fire thousands of shots into an enemy before he dies (if he ever dies), and AI teammates and enemies never seem to have to reload, and apparently have infinite ammo. There are also several glitches in the game that will require you to reload the level, just like with Treyarch's World at War. Unlike World at War, there is no option for playing the single-player game in co-op mode. And as usual, there are no bots in multiplayer. The game engine performs quite poorly compared to the Infinity Ward games. My system (3.7GHz quad-core, GTX460) was more than capable of playing Modern Warfare 2 at a rock-solid 60 FPS, but this game was all over the place. It would often drop into the 20-30 FPS range, which was very distracting.

The Commander Keen games were the first PC games that I actually wanted to play. Prior to that, I found PC gaming to be pathetic at best, especially compared to the quality of games I had on Amiga. The Commander Keen games were fun, humorous and interesting. I played through all of them.

Company of Heroes is based in WWII. It plays a lot like BF2, in that there are control points that you must capture, which make the enemy lose tickets. Some control points provide ammo and fuel points, which are your resources in the game. The games tend to be very quick (less than an hour). It's a fun game, but it is ruined because there is no way to tone down the excessive and extremely foul language.

Counter-Strike is a tactical first-person shooter. It is a mod for Half-Life. It pits terrorists versus counter-terrorists. There are 4 map types: Assassination, Bomb Defuse, Escape and Hostage Resue. In Assassination, one person is chosen at random from the CTs to be the VIP. The VIP only has a pistol with limited ammo, but has twice the normal body armor. The goal of the VIP is to get to a rescue point somewhere on the map. The CTs have to keep the VIP from being assassinated. The Ts must assassinate the VIP. The CTs can also win by eliminating all the Ts. In Bomb Defuse, a randomly chosen T has a bomb that must be planted at a designated bomb site. There may be more than one bomb site. If the bomb is planted and detonated, the Ts win. The Ts can also win by eliminating all the CTs. The CTs can win by eliminating all the Ts before the bomb is planted, or by defusing a bomb after it is planted. In Escape, most of the Ts must escape to a designated point on the map. The CTs win if most of the Ts don't escape, or if the Ts are all eliminated. Escape maps are rare. In Hostage Rescue, there are 1 or more hostages somewhere in the map. The CTs must go to the hostages, then lead them to the rescue point. The CTs can win by rescuing all the hostages, or by eliminating all the Ts. The Ts can win by eliminating all the CTs. CS is different from other FPS games in that you have only 5 minutes to complete your objective. If you die, you are dead for the rest of the round. Rounds tend to never go a full 5 minutes, though. Counter-Strike has been the most popular online FPS pretty much since it came out in June 1999. The M rating seems a bit steep for this game. I think if it was made today, it would be T at most. You can turn off the blood, which leaves only the violence. Version 1.0 came out in November 2000, which is when we started playing it at my LAN parties.

Condition Zero is basically Counter-Strike with bots and slightly improved graphics. The bots allow you to play single player, or play multiplayer cooperatively. The bots are some of the best in the industry. However, the bots don't know how to handle Escape maps, but those maps were rare and unpopular anyway. The bots are also not very good at being the VIP in assassination maps. The hostages have been updated to have intelligence and personality in CZ, which is fun. You can play all original CS maps with CZ, but CZ maps can have better graphics, and can have location names that appear below the radar. One major difference between CS and CZ is that you can "use" a hostage from a distance to get him to follow you, whereas in the original CS you have to stand right next to him. This is more realistic. Otherwise, CZ plays just like CS. The single-player has you playing games of CZ with bots on both teams. You are required to complete certain objectives, like win the round in less than one minute, or snipe 3 people without being shot yourself. It's fun and challenging, and good practice for playing online. The ESRB rating applies primarily to the incomplete single-player mode called "Deleted Scenes", which is what CZ was originally going to be. The blood can be turned off, which makes the game more like a T-rated game at worst.

Counter-Strike:Source is basically CS 1.6 ported to the Source engine (which is used by Half-Life 2). That means it has MUCH better graphics and realistic physics. They also ported the CZ bots, but they left the hostages like they were in original CS, so they have no personality or intelligence, and you have to stand right next to them to "use" them. That's a bummer. CSS only supports Bomb Defuse and Hostage Rescue maps by default. Several in our group prefer CSS over CZ, but there are just as many that prefer CZ over CSS. It is apparently a very subjective experience. I personally prefer CSS over CZ, although I miss the intelligent hostages. In August 2010, Valve added in-game statistics and achievements, which added some freshness to the game.

I thought Far Cry was bad. Crysis is actually worse! The gameplay is repetitive and boring. There is barely a storyline. The weapons are stupidly inaccurate, requiring you to unload a whole clip of machine gun ammo into a guy's face at point-blank range before he even reacts, and at least 2 full clips before he dies. What in the world?!? You might as well be firing blanks 99% of the time. Meanwhile he'll turn around and pop you once and you die. Annoying! And the F-bomb is dropped every few seconds by everyone in the game. Yes, the graphics are pretty, if you're living in 2025 and have a cutting-edge machine that can play it. For those of us that don't have the convenience of time travel, you have to reduce the graphics quality so far that a 2003 game looks nicer. By the time people have good enough machines to actually play this game, it will be just a painful memory. This is a failure on all counts. And they claim the game didn't sell because of piracy! Nonsense!

I got this game because I was convinced by reviews that it was much better than the first. I was tricked! You know, you can't use the F-word to replace all adjectives and adverbs in a normal conversation, or it just sounds stupid. Sadly, the idiots who wrote the script for Crysis Warhead haven't figured that out. This game has a completely incoherent story line, if you can call it that. There are awkward, jarring cut scenes throughout the game that have terrible animation (the characters move chopily), bad voice acting, and seem to be showcases for the F-word. I found myself getting stuck in the scenery a lot, and having to kill myself to restart. It is very short (about 4 hours), and the performance is very bad, even with the settings on the lowest possible. And then it has all the problems of the first game as well, such as stupidly inaccurate and underpowered guns. Avoid this game. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about it.

Day of Defeat plays like an intelligent Battlefield 1942. Although it has the same control point gameplay, some control points require multiple teammates to be present, which eliminates the lone cowboy gameplay that is prevalent in the Battlefield games. It also has Destroy Target, Capture Target and Capture Item play modes. Destroy Target has you planting a bomb to destroy a target (very Counter-Strike-like). Capture Target is like the main mode, but uses objects instead of flags. Capture Item is basically capture the flag. Sadly, I couldn't get the guys at my LAN parties interested in this game at all.

Day of Defeat:Source is Day of Defeat ported to the Source engine, so it has pretty graphics and realistic physics.

Dead Space is basically Doom 3 played from an over-the-shoulder third-person-perspective. It does a lot of things better than Doom 3. For instance, it doesn't turn off all the lights all the time like Doom. Also, your weapon has a light on it to make things even easier. But I struggled with the over-the-shoulder perspective. I would rather have played it in first-person. It's definitely a mindless shooter, but it is a good one. There are a lot of weird, unexplainable things, such as stores that sell weapons and ammo on a mining ship (uh...), caches of money laying around in public areas, and so forth. If you turn off your brain, it is more fun. Awkward game mechanics aside, it has an interesting plot that kept me engaged throughout.

This sequel follows where the first game left off. It's pretty much just more of the same, but that's a good thing.

I really wanted to like this game. It gets a lot of praise from gamers and reviewers, and often shows up in "Best PC Games Ever" lists. But I found the game boring and difficult. The antiquated graphics and public domain sound effects don't help the situation any. I found the controls cumbersome, and had a hard time with aiming and shooting. It just didn't feel right. Maybe if I had played the game when it was new, I would have had a different experience. But compared to something like Half-Life, this game just doesn't even come close. It's not even in the same league. I've never even bothered to finish the game, because it's too frustrating.

Although Doom, Doom 2 and the various expansion packs have not aged well at all, they were certainly fun at the time. I couldn't really get into Wolfenstein 3D. The graphics were pretty bad, and everything looked the same. Doom had more variety to the levels, and adding height to the levels really added realism. At the time I enjoyed trying to find all the secrets on a level, but I find the "click on everything to see if it is a secret" gameplay kind of tedious now. I played through all the Doom games on my Amiga using ADoom. Unfortunately, Doom is pretty hard to look at these days, and feels sort of clunky. GZDoom does a good job of improving things, but you can only do so much with the source material. Doom can be played cooperatively with up to 4 players, and also has a deathmatch mode for up to 4 players.

Perhaps I had too great of expectations, but I was not terribly impressed with Doom 3. I though the scare tactics were pretty weak. The game felt a lot like a rehash of System Shock 2, without the depth. And what's the deal with constantly turning off the lights and expecting me to fight guys without a flashlight? That's just stupid! Again, it just seemed like a failed cheap scare tactic. In fact, that kind of describes the whole game. It was nowhere near as fun as the original games. I found the cutscenes to be jarring, and it really killed my immersion in the game. The graphics and sound are great, though.

Duke Nukem and its sequel Duke Nukem II were based primarily on Turrican and Mega Man. It has a similar feel, although it's pretty clunky because of the PC's limitations at the time. It's too bad they added all kinds of sexual content to the 3D sequels, which I chose to avoid. The original platformers were fun. They weren't as fun as the Commander Keen games, but they were still good.

I enjoyed the 2D platformers, but the 3D games are terrible! The pornographic sexual content and harsh language were major turn-offs, as well as the really ugly graphics. The 3D graphics have a weird fish-eye effect that I found distracting. I briefly watched someone else playing it, and decided to avoid it completely.

Empire Earth came along after Age of Empires 2, but before Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations. It plays a lot like AOE2, but without all the micromanagment headaches. It uses 3D graphics as well. Its main drawback is its steep learning curve. Not only do you have upgrades at every building, but every unit can be clicked on to reveal more upgrades. Managing the upgrades is rather distracting. The gameplay is more strictly rock-paper-scissors than AOE2. You can have 20 guys fighting with 3 enemies, but if they are not properly matched, your 20 guys will always lose. It becomes a bit tedious to manage this complex relationship. You can't just create a large horde and send them against the enemy, because they will definitely all die. You have to carefully choose which units fight. So instead of micromanaging resources like AOE2, you end up micromanaging battles. We played Empire Earth a few times at my LAN parties, but when Age of Mythology came along, it was quickly abandoned.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the sequel to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. It plays almost the same as WolfET, except there have been a few gameplay refinements, and it is based in the Quake universe instead of in WWII. Objectives are now visible in your HUD. No more checking the map to see where you are in relation to the objective! The Special Ops now has a hacking objective, so now they are good for more than putting on the enemy's clothes and sneaking behind enemy lines. The Soldier now has the ability to use demolition packs, so the Engineer can now only fix or build things. In WolfET, everybody wants to be the Engineer because you get to do the most stuff. In ETQW, spreading around the responsibilities makes it more interesting, and demands cooperation. The graphics are much improved over WolfET. ETQW is based on the Quake 4 engine, which was based on the Doom 3 engine. The creator of FritzBot for WolfET was brought on to make the bots for ETQW, so the bots are very intelligent, and are quite formidable in multiplayer co-op. It's an excellent game all around. Unfortunately, it doesn't get the community support that Wolf:ET did, so you are stuck with the original 4 campaigns of 4 maps each. This game deserves some new maps!

F.E.A.R. is a really intense, scary shooter. I don't usually care for the horror genre, but this game really intrigued me. It uses the same story telling method as the Half-Life games, in that you experience the story from your perspective without cutscenes. Instead of the typical horror game scenario of fighting zombies or mythical creatures, this game is more believable, which I think makes it infinitely better.

If you don't think too hard about the way things are happening in this game, it is quite enjoyable. It takes place at the same time as the first F.E.A.R. game, although there are only a few times that remind you of this. The weirdest part is that your main character is a different guy than the main character in the original game and expansion, yet he has the exact same abilities. That's odd, considering the uniqueness of the main character in the earlier games. But if you don't dwell on that, it is more of the same, although it takes a while for things to get as interesting, or should I say as creepy, as the earlier games.

I enjoyed this game. It wasn't as scary as the earlier games. Part of this was because Alma showed up way too much, and she was never dressed. This time the game explains how your character, yet another person than the one in the first game, comes to acquire the same supernatural skills. But in a way the explanation made it less compelling, kind of like explaining the Force with Midiclorians. The F-bomb was dropped WAY too many times. It does a good job filling in the back story of Alma, but it ultimately leaves a lot more questions unanswered. There will certainly be another sequel. My biggest issue with the game is that I felt sorry for Alma and wanted to help her in some way, but the game required me to fight her instead. That bothered me. I had the same issue with the earlier games as well. But this moral conflict was probably done on purpose.

Far Cry is a very pretty game. The graphics are, unfortunately, the best part. The story line isn't very compelling, and the gameplay is insanely difficult. Even playing on Easy, you will be lucky to make it to the final battle. Even in god mode, you will find the final battle nearly impossible. Yes, even while invincible, the final battle is so stupidly hard that you will barely be able to finish it. This game had a lot of potential, but it really missed the mark. The glitches in the game also take away the enjoyment. I played through to a certain point in the game, only to find out that a glitch was keeping me from progressing, and the only work-around for the glitch is to start from the beginning and hope you don't run into it the next time. And this was a known issue! This is unacceptably poor quality. I did eventually go back and play it, but I was glad when it was over.

Flat Out 2 is a great racing game. The races play like the Need for Speed games before they turned "gangsta". In addition, there are demolition derbies and stunts. Races take place on dirt tracks, city streets and oval tracks. The stunts are great. They usually involve racing your car to a launch point, and then launching your driver through the windshield at an angle you specify in order to land your driver in a certain place. This makes for a lot of laughs. I recommend turning off the music. Much of it is offensive. The game's T rating comes mostly from the offensive music lyrics. There are mods for it from FlatOut Joint that add new cars, tracks and game modes.

Nice graphics, but no LAN play. Why bother?

Who likes this game? It isn't in the least bit fun. I took the first turn, and my car spun out like I was driving on greased ice. I tried several times, and got the same result each time. Once I was on the grass, if my car wasn't totalled from just spinning out (what?!?), I couldn't get out of the grass, period. I had to restart the race. I thought, what did I do wrong? I found that nothing I could do would allow me to drive the car succesfully around the track, even one time. Meanwhile the pack of 30-bazillion other cars leave you in the dust, since they don't have these issues. Stupid, lame, and irritating. The foul-mouthed, redneck, country-and-western, NASCAR feel to the game wasn't very appealing, either.

Half-Life was a breath of fresh air. It differs from other FPS games in that there are no cutscenes. You ARE Gordon Freeman. The entire story unfolds from your perspective. It is completely immersive. The storyline is great, and is fairly believable. The gameplay is also great. It has some puzzle solving, exploration, and lots of combat. I like how non-linear the game is. If you go off the beaten path, you are almost guaranteed to be rewarded in some way. There are lots of secret passages and shortcuts in the game. But everything feels natural, like it could really happen that way. It's an excellent game, and a must play for all.

Half-Life Blue Shift has you playing the role of Barney the security guard. It takes place during the events of Half-Life. You will cross paths with Gordan Freeman a few times during the game. Very fun! Kind of short, though.

Half-Life Decay was originally a bonus item that was included with the Playstation 2 port of Half-Life. It is unique in that it is a cooperative game that is best played with two players. There is a lot of puzzle solving that requires the two players to work together. It's every bit as fun as the other addons for Half-Life. It was converted to PC non-commercially, and it does have some bugs. There were a few times where we had to restart a level because we couldn't trigger an event that would allow the level to continue, and it crashed on us a couple of times. But it was still a lot of fun. We played through it in about 4 hours, including restarting a couple of levels due to bugs.

Half-Life Opposing Force has you playing the role of one of the military sent in to cover up the mess at Black Mesa. It happens during the time frame of Half-Life, and you will see Gordan Freeman a few times. But it is rather short compared to the original game.

Half-Life 2 continues the storyline of Half-Life. Where the original was based on a modified Quake 1 engine, HL2 uses a new engine called Source. The graphics are awesome. Plus the game adds realistic physics. There were some physics in the original game, but not like this. The storyline is compelling, and the physics are used throughout the game to solve puzzles. Another excellent, immersive, must-play game from Valve.

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 continues the storyline where Half Life 2 left off. They've improved the graphics even more. The only complaint I have is that it was too short.

Half-Life 2 Episode 2 continues the storyline where Half Life 2 Episode 1 left off. They've improved the graphics yet again. It's also too short, like the previous episode, but still awesome.

The Halo series is considered to be the best games on Xbox, but I guess that's not saying much. The gameplay was awful, and not just because it didn't survive the transistion from console to PC (awkward controls, steep hardware requirements). The single-player is completely stupid, mostly because it doesn't know its audience (it tries to be serious and adult while being silly and kiddish at the same time, and ultimately fails at both), but also because it is repetitive and uninspired. The multiplayer is just deathmatch. Yawn. Unreal Tournament does the same thing better. We suffered with this weak game at one LAN party. That was more than enough. Why on earth do people like this game?

Left 4 Dead is a zombie apocalypse game where up to 4 people work cooperatively to make their way through levels to get to a safe house while zombies attack. At the end of the last level of each campaign, you have to survive waves of zombies while waiting for rescue to arrive. There are several special zombies that add to the challenge. The Smoker will grab you with his long tongue and suck you in, where he will beat you up. You can't escape the tongue by yourself. A teammate must save you. The Boomer is a fat zombie that vomits bile that blinds you and attracts zombies to you. He will also explode bile when shot, spraying it on anyone nearby. The Hunter can jump large distances. Once he pounces, he begins beating on you. A teammate must knock him off. The Tank takes a ton of shots to kill, and is very strong. He can pick up vehicles or large chunks of debris and throw them at you. If he hits you, your body goes flying. The Witch will attack relentlessly when startled. You have to try to sneak past her. The four characters in the game are interesting, and their interactions make for some humorous moments. There is a ton of gore, and some bad language. This game is NOT for kids! A unique aspect of the game is the AI Director, which changes the way the map plays based on the skill of the players. If players are doing well, it will throw out more special zombies. If they are doing poorly, it will reduce the number of zombies attacking, and provide more item pickups. This makes the game play differently each time.

Left 4 Dead 2 is pretty much the same as the first game, except with a different location (southern United States) and new characters. The characters are not nearly as interesting, and they tend to treat each other badly. The foul language and gore was increased, unfortunately. A few new special zombies were added, such as the Charger, who can charge long distances, and will grab you and beat you against the ground until a teammate kills him. There is also the Spitter, who spits acid at you, which pools up on the ground and causes damage for a while before it disappears. The Jockey jumps on you and steers you into trouble, like into fire or traps or off of ledges. The regular zombies can also wear armor, which makes them impervious to frontal attack, or a hazmat suit, which makes them impervious to fire. The AI Director has been improved in that it can change the configuration of maps and modify weather and lighting. But it really feels like an expansion pack for the first game, not an entirely new game.

Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth is based on the movies, and has the music from the movies, both of which represent the best parts of the game. The multiplayer gameplay is very limited, repetitive, and ultimately boring. It's also fairly buggy. It is almost guaranteed that at least one person will be kicked off randomly, and you will definitely go out of sync multiple times in a single game. Horrible! It takes micromanagement to an extreme. It takes forever to make a single soldier to fight. But he's a weakling that will die in one hit. So you can perform upgrades by clicking on him. But those upgrades are ONLY FOR HIM. 10 minutes later, when you finally have an upgraded soldier, he'll still die almost immediately. Terrible! It thankfully didn't last long at my LAN parties.

Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 improves on its predecessor in many ways, but it still not very good. Many of the limitations of the first game have been removed, but ultimately the gameplay is pretty much the same (extreme micromanagement), and it is still very buggy. It thankfully didn't last long at my LAN parties.

Midnight Club 2 was a good racing game. Sadly, it primarily featured a bad "gansta" attitude. It was made by Rockstar, the people that brought us the Grand Theft Auto series. It shows. It has a very dark feeling, and I'm not talking about the fact that the races all occur at night. For instance, you can actually run over pedestrians, and they are more than willing to cuss you out for doing so, if they live. The main draw to Midnight Club 2 was the multiplayer capture the flag mode. It plays a lot like Cops and Robbers in Midtown Madness 2, but with much better graphics and physics. Ultimately, the dark tone of the game turned everyone off at my LAN parties. We didn't play this game for long.

Midtown Madness 2 is a fun street racing game. You can race in London or San Francisco. For multiplayer, our favorite mode was Cops and Robbers. In that mode, players are randomly placed on the map. A gold bar appears in a random location, along with a bank for the cops and a hideout for the robbers. The goal of the game is to pick up the gold bar with your car, and then race to the bank/hideout. You get points for picking up the gold, and big points for making it to the goal. You can ram the person with the gold to knock it away from them so you can take it instead. The game ends after one player reaches the designated number of points. The game is very light-hearted, and it makes for a lot of laughs. Sadly, the game engine has not aged well. The physics and graphics are pretty bad, and the network code is pretty pathetic (other cars will bounce along or go through things). The performance is terrible under Windows 7. You have to turn the cloud shadows to low to make it playable, but it still runs very choppily. And networking is broken under Windows 7, so no more multiplayer. :( Midtown Madness 3 was apparently ready to ship for PC, but Microsoft canceled it so it would be an Xbox exclusive. Morons. I hope they screw their heads on straight and release it some day. Or maybe make a Midtown Madness 4 for PC? Please?

Motocross Madness is from the same people that made Midtown Madness, but it lacks the fun. We played it at one LAN party, then put it away forever and never looked back.

Need for Speed 3 is a great racing game. It has nice graphics and excellent car physics. Races occur on lengthy tracks in a variety of locations. You can choose from many different makes of cars. The races are kept interesting because you can add cops to chase you (get caught three times and you are out), add weather (rain and snow), play at night, and you can mirror and/or reverse the tracks. There are many hidden shortcuts on the tracks. Gameplay tends to encourage bumper cars. It's a lot of fun. Sadly, it doesn't play under Windows XP or higher.

Need for Speed 4: High Stakes plays a lot like NFS3. There were improvements to the gameplay, AI and graphics. This was the last great Need for Speed game. It can be made to work in Windows XP with some hacks, if you are lucky.

Need for Speed 5: Porsche Unleashed plays like NFS4, but you can only drive Porches. As a result, it felt more limited. It can be made to work in XP with some hacks, if you are lucky.

What happened? Need for Speed 6 is a real step backward. Although it plays in Windows XP, it lacks most of what made the earlier NFS games good. For instance, you can't add weather, make it day or night, reverse or mirror tracks, or add cops (isn't this called Hot Pursuit?!?). You also can't watch the other players after you finish a race. You just get to stare at your car until the race ends. Terrible! The version for PlayStation 2 was the best one, as it was made by EA. The other versions, including PC, were outsourced. It shows. What a shame.

I avoided the completely gangsta Underground, Most Wanted and Carbon games, so I thought I would try ProStreet and see if they improved their act. Nope. This is a COMPLETELY TERRIBLE GAME. Please, just stop making this garbage! Let Need for Speed die!

This is a fun game that reminds me of Syphon Filter on the PS1 and PS2, but easier, and with a less serious tone. There is a lot of humor sprinkled throughout the game, mostly in the form of conversations between the bad guys that you overhear. But I was turned off by the extreme sexism throughout the game. Every man was a chauvinist pig, and the feminist lead character one-ups the males throughout the game with her grrl power. It was overdone, and got old fast.

I heard a lot of buzz about this game being outstanding, so I decided to give it a try. While it is a fun game, it's not exceptional in any way. It takes 1 part skill and 10 parts luck to play the game. I've never been a fan of luck games. The adventure mode is too easy, and the challenge mode is so ridiculously hard that I gave up and uninstalled the game. I'm just not lucky enough to beat the challenge levels. It has nothing to do with skill or practice. It's not bad for a short diversion, but not great, either.

Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game where you use plants with various abilities to fight of zombies and keep them from entering your house. It's easy to learn, but surprisingly deep, and very addictive. The game is light-hearted and humorous, despite the zombie theme. Highly recommended.

This is an oustanding game built on the Source engine. It is a physics-based puzzle game played as an FPS. The levels are very fun and challenging, and the atmosphere is fantastic. It is quite humorous and engaging. The ending is one of the best in the industry. Definitely a must-play.

This is a fan-made mod for Portal that is supposedly a prequel to the original game. However, the difficulty level starts at the hardest level of the original game, and gets progressively impossible. Even after looking at video walkthroughs, I had a very hard time completing the levels. It was a good effort, but ultimately not worth playing.

Quake was one of the first fully-3D games. It has a fun single-player, and it can be played multiplayer cooperatively. Fun! It also has a deathmatch mode, and there are many mods available to add other multiplayer modes.

Quake 2 has even better graphics than the first. It also lets you play through the single-player mode cooperatively in multiplayer, and there is also a deathmatch mode. It's not actually a sequel to the first, though. The storyline is entirely different. Apparently it was supposed to be a different game, but id decided at the last minute to release it as a Quake sequel to get more sales. It worked.

Quake 3 is just plain deathmatch. No storyline for single-player. Yawn. It does have nice graphics, though. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory use a modified Quake 3 engine. An expansion called Quake 3: Team Arena added capture the flag and a couple of other similar team-based multiplayer modes.

Re-Volt is an RC car racing game with weapons. It takes place in real world environments, such as driving through neighborhoods and houses. It's a lot of fun, although the multiplayer would have been better if you could follow your opponents with a camera after you finish the race. It just makes you look at your own car until everyone finishes. We played this one to death at my LAN parties. It doesn't work in Windows 7.

The single-player was not so hot, being focused on fighting zombies instead of Nazis. The multiplayer was very fun, though. The maps are objective-based, and part of the fun is figuring out what exactly you are supposed to do. Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory took the multiplayer to the next level, but many of the same elements are in RTCW. We stopped playing RTCW at LAN parties when WolfET came along.

Rise of Legends is the sequel to Rise of Nations. Although it has some similar gameplay, such as building cities to expand your territory, it has a futuristic fantasy setting, which changes the feel considerably. There are three races: the Vinci, which use clockwork and steam power, the Cuotl, which use stone and metal and a mysterious power, and the Alin, which use magic. Each civilization plays very differently from the other, but they are well-balanced. The games tend to last about an hour. It's not as good as Rise of Nations, but it is a great game.

Rise of Nations is the greatest RTS to come along so far. I REALLY like this game. It takes everything that is good from the AOE series and makes it better, and it removes all of the annoyances of the AOE series as well. Micromanagement is kept to a minimum so you can focus on expansion. Most resources never get used up, so you can put some villagers to work, and they will stay at it until the game is over if you'd like. The game starts in the Ancient Age, and progresses to the Information Age, with the technology available changing with each age. It's like Empire Earth done right. The game uses the concept of a territory that you expand by building cities. You can only build in your own territory (no more building a castle next to your enemy's town center like in AOE). Attrition can occur with your units when they leave your territory, making expansion a risky process. If you take over an enemy's city, it becomes yours along with any buildings in that city, and your territory expands. The game is very nice-looking, but uses a hybrid of 2D and 3D graphics, which makes the game very playable even on older systems.

Serious Sam is a pure shoot-em-up. There are some puzzle elements, but it is mostly about blowing away tons of enemies with really big guns in large open areas, with lots of secret areas to be found. It has a very light-hearted mood, and it is a lot of fun. The best part is that you can play multiplayer cooperatively. The whole game is 5-6 hours long. We've played through it a couple of times at my LAN parties.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is more of the same crazy fun. It's considered the second part of the first game. We played through this one cooperatively at LAN parties a couple of times as well.

Serious Sam 2 is the sequel to Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. And it is more of the same, which is awesome! The game is a lot longer this time, but we still managed to play through it a couple of times at my LAN parties. Fun! This game uses Serious Engine II, which is an improved version of the engine used in the first two games that includes refraction, high resolution textures, and HDR lighting. The only unfortunate thing is the lack of puzzles in the game. The first games required you to solve puzzles (mostly the push-the-switch kind) in order to make your way through levels. SS2 is pretty much just running and gunning the whole way. No thought is required. The InSamnity! 2 mod looked promising to make things more fun, but it was very unstable, so we couldn't play it.

Setters II 10th Anniversary is a graphical update to the original game. All the original gameplay is intact. I believe Settlers II was the best in the series. The gameplay changed after the second one. I played the first game on the Amiga. I spent many hours playing that game! I was pleased to see the graphical update. It's still a very hard game, and there is a ton of micromanagement, but it is fun if you are willing to put in the time to learn it.

This game was terrible. It feels more like an amateur mod for Quake 1 than a commercial game. The main bad guy is a woman with a breast bounce that would shock the girls of Dead or Alive. Good grief! I spent $1 on this game in a bargin bin, but even that was too much. Avoid this game!

Split/Second is an arcade racing game with a twist. You race around realistic locales, and you earn points for drifting, drafting, jumping and other tricks. Once you earn enough points, you can cause events to occur. These events are catastrophic in nature. For instance, you can cause a fuel tank parked on the side of the road to explode, or cause a building to collapse, or cause a dump truck to dump garbage into the road! If you time it right, your opponents will crash into the resulting mess. But you need to be careful not to get caught in the mess yourself! There are no weapons or boost or anything, so these events are the main way to pull ahead of opponents. The events definitely are fun, and have a huge "wow" factor. There are two reasons why I only give it three stars. The first is that the graphics are capped at 30 FPS, which betrays its game console roots. The second is that when you finish a race, you can't watch the other players. You just have to sit there and stare at a stats screen while everyone else finishes. Boo! Other than that, this is a great game.

It's Battlefield 1942 with Star Wars graphics. But not nearly as good. It takes 10 shots to the face to kill an AI opponent, but only one shot from them, which will usually happen while you are trying to kill them, especially since your gun will only shoot once per second. The AI is completely braindead, so you will win anyway. Who in the world thought that would be fun?

The sequel is better than the original. They've included headshots, which makes the game more reasonable to play. They also added heroes, which is a lot of fun. If you do very well in a multiplayer game, you are given the option to play the hero of that map, which is a character from the Star Wars movies. They can do considerable damage, so it is fun while it lasts. The addition of space flight maps was also a big plus. You can dogfight in space ships, and complete objectives while flying around. But there are not enough maps to keep you playing long.

It's AOE1 with Star Wars graphics, but not as fun. It's a micromanagement fest. It's like they wanted to make something as good as Starcraft, but failed miserably. There are WAY too many types of units, and most of them are worthless. This game is just a waste of time. Play RON or an AOE game instead.

I really tried, but I just couldn't get into this game. The story was weak, everything felt like a side-quest, the pacing was too slow, and most of all, the game itself was highly unstable, crashing to the desktop or locking up my system regularly. With a little more polish, better pacing, and a more stable game engine, this game could have been good, but probably not great. It's clearly a console port.

This game is the best of the X-Wing space flight sim series. The single player is fun, but hard. The multiplayer is just boring deathmatch. It is also quite dated, in that it will not use a 3D graphics accelerator. This is very much a flight sim, in that nearly every key on your keyboard does something useful. There is a huge learning curve. But if you like space flight sims, and if you like Star Wars, then you won't do better than this game on the PC.

This is a classic RTS, but it has not aged well. The learning curve is very high. You have to be an RTS master in order to enjoy the single player or multiplayer. If you play against someone with more experience, you are toast. The high difficulty level is the biggest turn-off. It is a well-balanced game, and is fairly intuitive. You just have to invest some serious time into learning every nook and cranny of the game in order to succeed. This is definitely not a game for casual players.

This was terrible. It was like they wanted to replicate Dead or Alive. The women in the game were all underdressed. Cammy's outfit was obscene. What were they thinking? Then there is the awful voice acting. I much prefered the voices in Japanese as in the older games. Americans suck at voice acting. The game also required Games for Windows Live. I'm not interested in installing Microsoft spyware. The graphics were nice, but everything else was a major step backwards. I'll stick with Street Fighter II Championship Edition on MAME, thanks.

I didn't play this game when it first came out. I only recently played it, and I played it with lots of mods that bump up the visual quality considerably such as Rebirth and SHTUP. I can tell this is a predecessor to the Bioshock games. It has a similar feel. It has a deep, compelling story, and the gameplay is great. It also has good music and sound. I agree with my friend Blain: Portal's GlaDOS has nothing on SHODAN. This game can be played through cooperatively. The game loses a star because the last few levels are terrible, mostly because the lack of ammo makes it impossible to play. In order to beat the game, I ended up having to use a combination of god mode and a cheat to make ammo boxes appear.

I started the game, and was completely put off by the cussing redneck in the intro. E10+ is NOT an appropriate rating for that kind of language. Then I tried to play it. If you can imagine a bunch of rednecks driving badly in circles, then you know this game. It's NASCAR. Blech. I have better things to do than drive in circles.

This is another classic RTS that has not aged well. The steep learning curve and very slow pace make it not very fun to play.

Trackmania Nations is a racing game that was released for free as part of the Electronic Sports World Cup. It is basically a stripped-down version of Trackmania United with only the stadium locale. It was more-or-less a demo for Trackmania United.

Trackmania Nations Forever is the free, stripped-down version of Trackmania United Forever that was released for the Electronic Sports World Cup. It's very similar to the first one, except there is more variety to the track building blocks, and the graphics quality has increased. Technically the stadium levels are the best ones in United, so there isn't much point in buying the full game.

Trackmania United is an outstanding stunt racer. It differs from most racers in that you play to get the lowest total time for a track. When you play multiplayer, the other players are "ghosts", and you cannot interact. You have a set amount of time in which to beat your best time. At the end of the time, the person with the lowest time wins. The tracks have many jumps and twists and loops, which makes it quite fun to play. TMU plays all of the tracks from Trackmania Nations, which only had the Stadium locale. TMU basically combines everything from all the previous Trackmania games.

Unreal is a fun game. It came out at the same time as Quake 2, but had MUCH better graphics, and a more compelling storyline. The story kind of unravels towards the end, though. Still, it's worth a play. As for the multiplayer, it was the beginning of the Unreal Tournament series, so it was pretty good.

Although there is no storyline in single player, this game is a lot of fun to play. It is mostly geared toward multiplayer. It has better bot AI than Quake 3 Arena, and far more multiplayer options. Although it does have Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Last Man Standing modes, it also has Capture the Flag, Domination (capture control points) and Assault (one team defends a base while the other attacks it). This made UT a far more enjoyable game than Quake 3 Arena and the Quake 3 Team Arena expansion.

This is pretty much just an update to UT, but it lost the Assault mode, and the Domination mode was replaced with Double Domination, where you had to control two points on the map. It added the Bombing Run, which is kind of like football with guns, Invasion, where you play cooperatively against invading aliens, and Mutant, which has one person fighting against everyone else, but they have unlimited ammo and super speed. If you kill the mutant, then you become the mutant. The goal is to rack up the most kills playing as the mutant.

This is UT2003 done right. It is the last great game in the Unreal Tournament series. It brings back Assault mode, and adds Onslaught mode, where you have to capture power nodes in order to connect your base to the enemy's base, at which point their power core is exposed and can be destroyed. UT2004 also introduces vehicles to the gameplay. Unlike the Battlefield games, you can still play without a vehicle in UT2004. They are just there to enhance the gameplay. I highly recommend turning off the foul language. Sadly, I couldn't get the guys at my LAN parties to play this game much. They tend to prefer shooters with less fantastic weapons.

UT3 is the latest in the UT series. It uses Unreal Engine 3, so the graphics level is increased, but that means you need a VERY beefy system to play it. It doesn't reuse any of the material from the previous games. It includes Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Duel (kind of like a 1-on-1 deathmatch game with a tournament ladder), Warfare (which sort of combines Onslaught and Assault), and Vehicle Capture the Flag. It doesn't have Invasion, Mutant, Onslaught, Bombing Run, Last Man Standing, Domination, Double Domination or Assault modes from the previous games. Unfortunately, the game is saddled with a VERY clunky UI, and the required online login in order to play makes it a pain for LAN parties. The new Warfare mode is pretty fun, but between the increased system requirements and the awkwardness just to get into the game, the overall experience is ruined.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a tactical first-person shooter based in WWII. It was originally going to be released as a commercial expansion to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but due to problems with the single-player portion, it was cancelled, and the multiplayer portion was released as freeware. Maps generally have multiple objectives, such as escorting a tank, repairing it as necessary, then using the tank to blow away doors to a bank, then entering the bank and stealing two gold bars, then loading the gold bars on a truck, repairing the truck as necessary, and escorting the truck out of town. Most maps give you 30 minutes to complete all of the objectives. There are five classes that you can choose from: Soldier, Engineer, Medic, Field Ops and Special Ops. The Soldier carries more ammo and can use heavier weapons. The Engineer can build and destroy objectives. The Medic gives health and revives soldiers from death. The Field Ops provides ammo and calls down air strikes. The Special Ops can steal and wear the uniform of the opposing team, and can use sniper rifles. When FritzBot was created, it breathed new life into the game, allowing humans to play co-op against the computer. The bots are pretty hard, though, even on easy mode.

World In Conflict is an RTS that is based on a what-if scenario set in the late 1980s of the USSR deciding to go to war instead of ending the cold war. It differs from other RTS games in that there are no resources to gather. There are only reinforcement points that you use to purchase units. When units die, your reinforcement points are replenished. In multiplayer, you can choose to command infantry, air, support or armor units. The last difference is the camera, which is free-roaming in 3D. So you can zoom, pan, tilt and move your camera any way you want. Unfortunately, WIC seems very shallow and limited, especially in multiplayer. It's just not very fun. I don't understand why this game is reviewed so highly.

Worms World Party is the fourth game in the Worms series. It isn't much different than Worms Armageddon, except that the Dreamcast version got network capability, whereas the PC version of Armageddon already had it. In Worms, you control a team of 4 worms in a side-view perspective. Each worm takes turns firing a weapon at the opposing team. The weapons range from normal stuff like bazookas and grenades, to more bizarre stuff like bananna bombs and old lady bombs. It is over-the-top funny, and is great for parties. We played this at a couple of LAN parties, but I guess people lost interest. It is best played while gathered around a single screen with everyone sharing a single controller.