Please note this blog is copied from gamespot, but I thought I'd post it here to see what happens. I haven't been here much, but I know some of you guys came here from gamespot, if you've seen it already don't need to reply. If you haven't, drop me a line and I'll check out your blogs too :)

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2008 wasn't a bad year, on one hand PC gamers didn't get a lot of exclusives, Warhead, Clear sky, Sins to name a few. But we did still get good multiplatform games, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Mass Effect. GTA 4 is not a great running game sadly, I think most agree with me here, if you can get it playable I think you'll find a brilliant game, I enjoyed it more than San Andreas, very long main story.

I think 2007 was a little better than 2008, mainly because of the quality of games, but if 2008 was a "bad" year for PC gaming then I'll take about 3 more bad years thanks.

In 2008 I picked up the following PC games. (Red are 2008 games, Bold are games I finished the story line in)

Psychonauts, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, World In Conflict, Unreal Tournament 3
Tomb Raider: Legend, Trackmania United, Thief Deadly Shadows, Penumbra Black Plague
Unreal Tournament, SWAT 4, SWAT 4 Stetchkov, Rainbow Six Vegas
C&C 3: Kane's Wrath, Painkiller Overdose, Dark Messiah, Shadowgrounds Survivor
FEAR Extraction Point, GRID, Mass Effect, Call of Juarez
Assassin's Creed, Condemned, Lost Planet: Colonies, Bionic Commando Rearmed
Audiosurf, Penumbra Requiem, STALKER Clear Sky, Crysis Warhead
Far Cry 2 LE, Dead Space, Fallout 3, Giants: Citizen Kabuto
Call of Duty World at War, Overlord, Left 4 Dead
Titan Quest Gold, GTA 4, Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil
Tomb Raider Underworld, Indigo Prophecy

Still got a few games to finish, but they will be finished next year! Underworld and Indigo Prophecy were gifted to me by the great man himself [url=http://au.gamespot.com/users/The_PC_Gamer/]The PC Gamer[/url] who's GOTY list is a vast improvement over mine and gamespot's list ;)

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Mini PC Awards for 2008

GOTY 2008:

Fallout 3: Fantastic world to explore, wonderful side quests, better combat than Oblivion, more interesting world (for me).

[2nd Place] GTA 4, not because gameplay is inferior to Fallout 3, it's not. Simply because despite my efforts I couldn't get it running well.

Best Game Character of 2008

Brucie (GTA 4): Well wrtten dialogue and some great voice work sets this character on top of the rest. He's a winner baby, are you?

[2nd Place] Elika (Prince of Persia 2008) getting a companion that follows you from start to finish right is hard, Elika remains helpful, friendly but overall freshens up the PoP experience.

Best non-sequel Game

Dead Space was a great effort by EA, what I liked most about this was the effort they went to creating a bit deeper than usual backstory, downfall, the animated comic. The game wasn't half bad either, great horror sections, good pacing, balance of weapons and enemies and terrific audio.

[2nd Place] Left 4 Dead is just a great product thats had the polish of valve. Great coop multiplayer action, zombies have been done before but who cares this is fun as hell.

Feel Good Story

[url=http://www.gog.com]Good Old Games. www.gog.com [/url] A site that offers old and some newish games with no DRM. The guys involved are closely related to CD Project Red (The Witcher) Great prices, no nonsense, works with XP and Vista.

[2nd Place]: Diablo 3 baby. It will be big, I just hope they don't decide to split it into 10 episodes like starcraft's 3 episodess, then they might charge for content. But hey it's Diablo.

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Some games I am looking forward to in 2009:

Aliens Colonial Marines

Alan Wake

Mirrors Edge

Half-Life 2: Episode 3

Battlefield 3 8)

Rage

FEAR 2

Hope you guys had a good 2008, and all have a great 2009!

In a few months we have some big PC games coming. To give you an idea here are some box shots of most of those top tier games from sept onwards. :)

Not a bad list of upcoming games I must say :D COD World at War could be there, but I'm not sure it will make 08?

Tomb Raider underworld looks good. They announced a new Lara Croft model, Allision Caroll, gymnast :) She fits the role very well, esp her moves. The Red Alert 3 cast trailer rocked, nice to see some great cheesy FMVs are back, some big actors. And I am thankful that they seem to be making cutscenes for the Rising Sun faction.

Which games are you guys excited about? Buying, Preordering even?

As for me I finished Lost Planet, it was ok, not fantastic, had some good boss fights and nice dx10 graphics. I got online and tried some of the GFW Live gold for free. Coming from a PC server background the setup is a bit different, you first join a lobby, then wait (AND WAIT) till 16 players join or the host starts. Then you play, this is not too bad. But what was stupid was as soon as you finish a round, you basically get booted all the way back to the menu, and have to search for servers again. Same goes if connection is lost or server is full. You must refresh them again.

Now the actual MP isn't bad, it has a few game modes, lots of nade spam. But for me it was completely unplayable, Really the best I could get was a Japanese (probably 360 hosted) server, and there was sersiously a few seconds delay when I pick up a weapon. I could really only get kills by spamming grenades. So that ends that escapade. The game did a great job masking lots of the lag, like you could move freely and shoot easily. But I could tell there was a very high latency.

Bionic Commando Rearmed, got it from Direct2Drive, but you can also get it on gamersgate. It's a sidescroller with 3d graphics (good too) and it's a bit of fun, you use a grapple to swing about, good for the price ($15). nice music + sound.

Have fun guys :)

By the way if anybody wants a guest pass to TF2, I have one available :)