No secret here, I love games.  Let’s knock off a few…

Rebuild – A browser flash game where you have to rebuild a city in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.  The first time I played I got trounced so I then went to easy mode and tried a few things.  Now with a good strategy, you can get through hard mode without too much trouble, you just need to balance everything and always, always make sure your base is defended at the end of every turn.

Rift – Sort of like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online.  Fantasy setting, great visuals, dynamic content (rifts appear in the sky randomly and attack the world).  The Soul system allows near infinite customization of play style.  Great buzz about the game too.  I bought it to play the beta and I’m writing a few guides for it.  Might not be the next WoW but I think there’s room for it.

DC Universe Online – DC Comics online, so a superhero MMO.  It’s available on the PS3 too, so it plays more like a multiplayer twitch game than a huge MMORPG.  Actually, I bought it and have been trying to upgrade to Windows 7 at the same time, so all I’ve seen is the loading screen and youtube videos.  Good press here too as it appears to be a step up from City of Heroes and the crud that is Champions Online.

Plants vs Zombies – A tower defense type of game where you plant, uh, plants in order to stop zombies from eating your brains.  Made by PopCap, the makers of eternal crack Bejeweled.  Of all the devs in the entire world, these people know how to make fun.  Wife is addicted.

World of Warcraft – I got my Rogue to 85 rather quickly then with 40 minute queues to play in groups, I leveled my Shaman to 85 as well.  I modified my gold making methods to pull in about 10,000 gold per day (average coin drop from a kill is like 1-2g for perspective) and I’m realizing it’s more of the same but with a larger amount of crappy players.  When the expansion launched, it added a new layer of difficulty to group play where you couldn’t just smash any old button, you needed to pay attention.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see that 25% of the group playing population is not accustomed to that and you get times where it feels like you’re playing with chimps.  I also realize I don’t have hour blocks to play with a daughter to take care of, so my play is very sporadic.  I find I don’t mind that one bit.

Civilization V.

You know that feeling you had when you first tasted apple pie and you were like “damn, this is the best thing ever”?  Then you had an even better apple pie with ice cream?  Imagine they made ice cream out of apple pie, distilled down to its greatness in an easy to eat package.  That’s Civ V.

Everything* has been improved upon.  Hex tiles for better movement.  More land improvements, better politics, better research, more culture, happiness means something, terrain combat means something, military unit improvements, no more stacking 1000 hopplites against a single tank.  (*)The only thing that seems to be worse is the computer AI but I am guessing that will come with a patch.

I picked this up on Tuesday night and put in 6 hours after I downloaded it from Steam.  Time just flies by and all you can think is “I can play another turn”.  That other turn means an extra 50 turns.  This game is crack.

On a side-ish note, you should be using Steam for game purchases.  They have every game you can think of, a log of the games you have so you can reinstall it on another computer (laptop and desktop for me!), many games save their files on the Steam network so you can continue from one PC to the next. Not to mention the games are always cheaper and often come on sale.  Try it out!

ICO / Shadow of the Colossus remastered for PS3!

Can you say two of the best games of all time?  Really, the only way this could get better is if you packaged XCOM and Legend of Zelda: OOT with these two games.

I know many people don’t like the idea of buying a game without a box but I’ve used STEAM a few times now with great success.  If you happen to wipe your box, you can always reinstall the software since it’s account based, sort of like linking your hotmail account to all your games.

Right now, STEAM is having a huge sale, like 50% off almost everything they have.  How about Bioshock 1, 2, Borderlands and all the exp packs plus 20 more 2K games for 85$?  Crazy.

Take a look!

If you weren’t aware, Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption a few weeks back.  Think Grand Theft Auto in the old west.  The game is damn good.  Here’s a short film made from the game, machinima at it’s best.

It’s only 3 minutes but damn, what a good 3 minutes.