This Week i have Been Mostly Playing... (6)

Xbox 360
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

It has taken me over a week to complete this FPS (on normal difficulty too!). This game is not without its flaws but it is a unique FPS and well worth checking out if you like to use a bit of grey matter in your games.

Forza Motorsport III.

The best racing series just keeps getting better. I've

been pining after this game for months and i was finally able to pick it up after Christmas. well worth the wait and it has lived up to all expectations. cars are beautiful tracks are amazing and the user interface is a nice improvement over Forza II

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

Picked this up on a whim and it is great fun. Do you enjoy in depth simulations with manuals you could hollow out and live in? Well this isn't one of them, it's

a pure arcade flight sim. Oh and I seem to be quite good at it if my performance in multi-player is anything to go by.

PC

Gratuitous Space Battles.

If you like space and like blowing things up I suggest picking up this game. A sort of cross between a tower defence game and an RTS. You basicly build your ships, arrange your fleet, give it some basic tactics and then sit back as it takes on your opponents fleet with quality 2D graphics. There is even a demo to try it out so go on try it today, you will not be dissapointed.

Fritz Chess 12.

Okay a little secret about me, I love chess. I was given this software by a journalist friend of mine who had received it through work, he didn't know much about it so he gave it to me. For those who don't know, Fritz is one of the best pieces of chess software and earlier versions have drawn games against the likes of Garry Kasparov. Needless to say Fritz at full power is well beyond my chessic abilities, but it is a wonderful training tool and comes with millions of games to study and learn from.

Links:

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Forza Motorsport III

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Gratuitous Space Battles

Fritz 12

Hawx multi-player I am Top Gun!

Well I picked up Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. last week for the barganus sum of £12. Personally I like all of the Tom Clancy games I have played this generation (all of them apart from R62) and H.A.W.X is a decent enough and enjoyable game with a nice single player (and drop in/out co-op) campaign. I played the multi-player VS mode tonght for the first time though and was very surprised. In my first game, with players of a superior rank I (pardon the following leet speak) PWND them! I couldn't believe it, next game was the same, and the next too. At first I thought it was because I was using some noobtoobesque (good word, eh?) technique but no, I am just awesome at it!

Ooooh Yeah Welcome to the Danger Zone!

What i got for Crimbo

Well things all got a bit hectic before Christmas. All the lovely things I was planning to do for the blog all got sidelined by real life I am afraid.

However all is not lost as I am back and ready to share with the world some of the Gaming things I got for Christmas.

Tom Clancy's End War
Before Christmas I returned to playing Rainbow Six Vegas, a game I never got around to completing. Now back in the day I loved the original Rainbow Six but had fell behind the PC technology curve needed to play later versions and due to a motion sickness problem i avoided most console FPS till this generation.
Despite being somewhat simpler than the original game, R6V is a great game and good fun online too. So after getting back into Rainbow Six, I decided to check out the rest of Tom Clancy's gaming catalogue. First Stop End War.

End War is very simple as far as RTS games go. You only have access to 7 or so units, only have 3 armies to choose from and the combat system is best described as a rock paper scissors affair. So far nothing is making this game stand out.
What does make this game standout though is its voice command system. Almost all commands you could want to give are given using your voice and the consoles microphone and it works!
This is the first game I have ever played using voice command and it is fantastic. You should see me stomping around the front room shouting at the telly and as a first foray into voice command games it shows what the technology is capable of. I can not wait to see where this technology pops up next, apparently Tom Clancy's Hawx will have a little voice command in it and I hope it shows up in other TC titles.

"Unit Two Secure Alpha"

MCT