I've done a brief wrap up of a variety of different games that are available this Christmas if anyone is thinking about purchasing for themselves or for someone else. While it is by no means a comprehensive guide (there are a lot of games out there and only so much time to play them!), there are a bunch of titles in there that I've had a chance to check out along with some brief impressions. You'll notice a few old games are covered, such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Civilization 3, but these are still games that are worth a look.

The wrapup is in four sections, sport, first person shooters, strategy, and console. There are a stack of other great games out there on the shelves this Christmas - keep your eyes peeled and if you find anything good, make sure you jump on the forums and let everyone know!

did i sleep for a year

civ3 is such slaw wish I had some pplz to play multiplayer with.

happy christmas gaming it looks like for all

gw trog :)

my picks of the bunch:

1. rtcw - still imo the best multiplayer fps on the market. Theres a very strong australian community and i havent played an fps since its release that caters so well to every important aspect needed for multiplayer success.

2. Tony Hawk 4 - ive never been one for this style of game, and TH3 didnt really appeal to me either. However after reading trogs review on GA i thought id give it a go and ive been very impressed by it.

Keep up with the good reviews trog. So often i find myself totally disagreeing with many game reviews, however in most of yours ive agreed 100% with your comments. Good work :D

rtcw wasn't that good.
Like too many other games around it feels like you're firing pellets from plastic toy guns.

wc3. the only game on there that will last. and isnt frm the crud bucket.

i cant agree with you on that point. The guns in wolf are imo one of its best features. I assume youre referring to the machine guns specifically in saying they feel like youre shooting pellets? Show me a game with better hit prediction/more solid feeling to combat. Machine gun combat is hard to pull off but id rate the rtcw physics miles ahead of cs, bf1942 and on par with sof2.

Medieval Total War all the way

if you say so insolence.

Geno, sorry, but whatever cred you may have had when it comes to discussing effective hit prediction is negated by the fact that WE KNOW YOU PLAYED COUNTER-STRIKE

hey did i say anything at all about cs? noOOooOOOooOO. and you did too so NAR NAR!

RTCW, TacOps, Final Strike, Renegade all suffer from what I call the static weapon syndrome. This is where the weapon is perfectly still and the aim never moves, unless you move it. Frankly GoldenEye has the BEST physics yet, and I enjoy playing that recently on my PC in 1280x960@60fps solid. It looks better, runs better, and has better music than most games do nowadays..

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

rofl. :/

Yeah well when you grow an extra hand so you can control 2 mice and a keyboard at the same time then you might consider petitioning FPS creators to design a non-gun-centric view. You'd need two mice and a keyboard (just two mice if it was a *very* basic control interface) coz PC gamers don't put up with awkward, imprecise controllers like consolers do.

This is where the weapon is perfectly still and the aim never moves

what u mean the aim never moves? As far as I can figure the crosshair is simply a representation of the middle of your vision, and I don't know about you, but whatever I'm lookin at in real life, the middle of my eye ever changes. If I painted a cross on my eye (if it was possible) where ever I looked it'd be in the middle of my vision.

If you mean how the people are always aiming where the cross is and never off to the side or whatever, well that would be a very s*** game IMHO. why the f*** would you want to aim off to the left and miss the target?

recoil and that s*** in games is just stupid, i remember when playing a game it was about aiming, not about gay recoil f***ing it up. and in saying that all games are gay.