EVE Online reviewed in GFW latest issue

It's not every day that an MMORPG which is about to turn 5 years old get a review in a mainstream gaming magazine. Well EVE did just that in the March issue (#016) of Games for Windows -The Official Magazine. In the Updates section (on page 83) they review Trinity an 8 out of 10 score. On the plus side they mention that visual update that came with the patch is simply gorgeous and that there's new content. On the down side, they complain (with reason) that the agent missions need an overhaul. Couldn't agree more with this review. Unfortunately, they mess-up the DirectX version saying that the overhaul bring DX10, though in reality, Trinity is DX9.

As well, they review a a series of PCs as part of an Ultimate Gaming Machine competition, and one of these PC, the one from Commodore Gaming, has an EVE Online skin.

Quite cool to see EVE still getting some press after all these years! Guess CCP's hard work over the years is paying off.

Games for Windows Issue 07

Just finished reading the latest issue of Games for Windows (June 2007) and I must say, I'm still very much impressed with the quality of the content, the articles, artwork and reviews.

The four articles that I enjoyed in this month's issue (well actually next month's, since we're not even in June yet...) were "GFW Live", "Inside Blizzard: World of Warcraft" and the Spore and Mythos preview.

As a current XBOX Live Gold subscriber, I'm looking forward to GFW Live and seeing the various community possibilities it'll offer. Cross-platform gaming will bring in a whole new aspect to bragging rights and plain fun.

And even though I don't play WoW, I was still very much interested in the story behind it's phenomenal success. I'd be first in line to buy a book on the subject. Something along the lines of "Dungeons & Dreamers: From Geek to Chic", a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

As for the two preview, I can't wait to start building organisms and see them evolve in Spore - it's just to bad EA delayed the game until 2008. And I've signed-up for the next Mythos' Beta testing phase. This last one looks like a lot of fun, with some heavy flashbacks to my days of Diablo 2 and carpel tunnel syndrome episodes (thank god for Myoflex).

Which games would you always reinstall?

Some of you know that I've recently updated my current gaming rig with a new 320Gig drive from Seagate (see post here for the juicy details). Having completed the install of XP and a bunch of utilities I can't live without (future post subject), came the time to start to install the games.

The first one to be installed was an easy choice: EVE Online. And don't tell me you're surprised! The second, was also a given, Guild Wars -- the first two since I don't have Nightfall yet. But then came the questions; which would I reinstall, which would be next, should I install all of them, or just the ones I play regularly.

After giving it some thought, I took most of Wednesday evening reinstalling the following games, since CCP was making some hardware upgrades, which meant that EVE was down -- duh! So without further ado, here are the games I deemed important (which means FUN) enough to take the time to reinstall.

1. EVE Online: The Second Genesis
2. Guild Wars (original and Factions)
3. Homeworld 2
4. Dungeon Siege 2
5. Starcraft (original and Brood War)
6. Battle Realms (original and Winter of the Wolf)
7. Warcraft 3 (Reigns of Chaos and The Frozen Throne)
8. Lord of the Ring: The War of the Ring
9. Neverwinter Nights (all 3 versions)
10. Aquanox 2

So there you have it. These are the games that I'll pretty much install every time I do a Windows reinstall. Don't get me wrong, I still spend most of my time playing EVE and Guild Wars, but I also like to come back to old games. There's nothing like a good Starcaft match against an opponent half-away around the world.

So what are the games you would reinstall? Let me know.