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March 2008: Windows Hacks & Tips

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:53:41 -0500

In the PDF archive of the March 2008 issue, you can find:

51 Tips & Hacks for Windows Vista and XP
The 2007 Game of the Year Awards
Overclocking your Videocard
How To: Stream Media to Your Xbox 360
And Lots of Awesome Product Reviews!
Ask the Doctor
Rig of the Month
The Watchdog
And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

Game Theory: A Good Year or the Best Year?

Thomas McDonald — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:20:25 -0600

Now that we’ve closed the book on 2007, we can finally say what some of us have been thinking for a while now: Best. Year. Ever.

Across all gaming platforms, we have seen not only a marked increase in sales but an undeniable renaissance in content. There have been single years with more groundbreaking, successful, or “classic” individual titles, but we’ve never really seen a year when so many of the artists who create our entertainment were firing on all cylinders. These were not radical new designs or bold new advances, but an absolute refinement of the art of game design. Witness: BioShock, Portal, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2, Gears of War (PC), Quake Wars, Crysis, World in Conflict, Supreme Commander, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Halo 3, and more.

That’s right, I’m including those last three non-PC titles, and for a good reason. They were at the pinnacle of gaming for the year, and they were made by companies with deep PC roots: BioWare, Ubi Montreal, and Bungie.

That’s what makes 2007 a bittersweet year for computer gamers. PC stalwarts like BioWare, Infinity Ward, Irrational, Epic, Big Huge Games, and others turned their sights toward the console for the mere promise of riches, fame, and glory—and were amply rewarded for their treachery.

Paradoxically, this is a good thing for PC gamers. We will benefit because while the non-MMO PC market remains vastly smaller than the console market, it’s still profitable, and growing. PC game sales are keeping pace with the rest of the industry, which grew more than 25 percent in 2007. (Granted, it’s humbling to see the best and boldest, hardware-crunching PC titles of the year, Crysis and UT3, post sales of, 87,000 and 34,000, respectively, in their opening weeks, while COD4 for the Xbox 360 blows through 1.5 million copies in November alone. On the other hand, UbiSoft still sells more games for the PC than for the Wii or PSP.)

PC gamers will feel a kind of trickle-down effect from these shifts, as console games created by developers who have traditionally worked on the PC migrate back to that platform with enhanced content, as Gears of War already has. Let the console sales foot the bill for increasingly expensive game development. PC gamers will still reap the rewards in the end.

Thomas L. McDonald has been covering games for 17 years. He is Editor-at-Large of Games Magazine.

Maximum PC's 2007 Gaming Awards

The Maximum PC Staff and Norman Chan — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:05:37 -0600

Boy howdy have the past 12 months been an eventful time for gamers! With a spate of unbelievably good titles—and a fair number of lemons—we had one helluva time deciding which games to pick and which to pan. So let’s get on with the business of presenting this year’s honors! Or just go straight to the Game of the Year!

Special Achievement for Opening New Doors in Gameplay

Portal

Within four short hours of gameplay, Portal reminded us of a time when game developers could afford to take chances. By eschewing the run-’n’-gun mechanic that’s integral to first-person shooters and replacing it with a series of increasingly difficult physics-based puzzles, Valve created the first new game genre in years: the first-person puzzler. This new gameplay mechanic, combined with a subversive and irreverent sense of humor, not to mention the best baddie since Bowser, makes for an experience that appeals to newbs and hardcore gamers alike. And by selling Portal as an itsy-bitsy part of The Orange Box, Valve proved that taking a chance on something new doesn’t have to be risky.
http://orange.half-life2.com, ESRB: T

The Best of the Bargain Bin

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

The premise: brilliant. Mutants surround the nuked-out husk of the defunct Chernobyl power plant, where you must travel to do stuff that saves people, and… OK, we weren’t paying attention to the story, but we loved the setting. Unfortunately, no combination of quality settings could get this game to run at launch, especially if you were cursed with Vista. Luckily, six months later, the game has finally been patched to the point where it will run on most rigs, making it worthy of reconsideration.
www.stalker-game.com, ESRB: M

The Been There, Done That Award

Unreal Tournament 3

If Unreal Tournament 3’s gameplay feels strikingly similar to that of its previous iteration, it’s because UT3 is pretty much the same game wrapped in a fancy new graphics engine. Not that we’re complaining, since Epic arguably achieved deathmatch perfection with its 2004 classic. We’re more peeved that we waited so long for UT3, only to find several of our favorite multiplayer modes missing, including Assault and Onslaught.
www.unrealtournament3.com, ESRB: M

The Hiroo Onada "Keepin' the Fight Alive" Award

Medal of Honor: Airborne

Like the famed Japanese soldier who did not surrender his post until 1974, Medal of Honor: Airborne desperately holds to the notion that gamers still want to play WWII-era shooters. Armed with a new parachuting gameplay mechanic and sheer force of will, MOH: Airborne defies its anachronistic shortcomings and delivers a fairly gripping shooter experience. We salute its zeal and conviction, even if less honorable gamers haven’t given it the recognition it deserves.
www.ea.com/moh/airborne/index.jsp, ESRB: T

Best Multiplayer

Team Fortress 2

In a year chock-full of great multiplayer experiences—Supreme Commander, Call of Duty 4, and World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, to name a few—the Best Multiplayer Award was a contentious subject among the editors. After much debate (and some name calling), we eventually settled on Team Fortress 2. It not only captured more of our collective multiplayer time than any other game but also brought us night after night of pure joy. TF2 delivers in every way that’s important—allowing you to torch an entire scout rush with a pyro, build a turret that takes out the whole other team, or simply heal your pals so they can keep fighting. With nine very different classes, each with its own specialty and Achilles’ heel, there are literally thousands of strategies to master in the game’s six maps. And at no time did the limited selection of maps feel limited. Oh no. The game’s sublime balance and exquisite design would have made a single map sufficient—as long as it was 2fort.
http://orange.half-life2.com, ESRB: M

We Paid $10/month For This?

Hellgate: London

We have no problem paying monthly subscription fees for a good MMO. But Hellgate: London is neither good nor an MMO, based on the common definition of a “massively multiplayer online” game. Hellgate’s gaming experience is a bitter pill—and the voluntary $10-per-month subscription model is pure poison.

Pony up, and you’ll be treated to awesome features like “hardcore mode” and increased in-game storage space. Neat as it is to pay for a means to permanently die, we’d much prefer new weapons, classes, enemies, and achievement rewards and PvP—all more promises than reality at this point.
www.hellgatelondon.com, ESRB: M

The Timmy! Award for Inspiration in Gaming

Shadowrun

We love console gaming, but it’s time to face facts: The gamepad simply can’t compete with a mouse and keyboard in first-person shooters. The gamepad can be precise or fast—but not both at the same time. Shadowrun’s fast-paced combat leaves us with a deep appreciation of the, umm, handicaps our console-bound brethren must endure. Sure, we were annoyed when we out-circle-strafed our enemy and they accused us of “hax,” but now we know what Fatal1ty feels like when he plays commoners. And believe us, it feels good.
www.shadowrun.com, ESRB: M

Evil This Good Leaves Us Longing for Dungeon Keeper 3

Overlord

Chugging through Overlord brings back fond memories of one of the greatest minion-commanding, good-smiting games ever to come to a PC: Dungeon Keeper. While you control a complete—and completely menacing—being instead of just a disembodied hand, Overlord nevertheless reinvigorates the best elements of the classic DK series: wry, dark humor; silly, smelly monsters; and oodles of replayability.

It takes time—and a big ax—to control a good land afoul with armies of diversely powered imps. Once you’ve rebuilt your domain and found a mistress, you’ll be an evil fanboy for sure—just like all the Dungeon Keepers of yore.
www.codemasters.com/overlord, ESRB: T

The Hobson's Choice Award

Call of Duty 4

Choice. As gamers, we’re frequently presented with choices, both good and bad. And generally, choice is a good thing for gamers. But some games eschew the whole choice thing, instead creating intensity the old-fashioned way, with scripted events. Call of Duty 4 represents the pinnacle of choiceless gameplay, building one experience upon the previous one until you reach a climax so unbelievable, you really have to play the game to appreciate it.
www.callofduty.com, ESRB: M

The Top of the Mountain Award for Extreme Dewness*

Peggle

The concept is simple, really. Peggle is digital pachinko, with crazy powerups, a trippy cast of characters, and an unrelentingly cheerful theme that would be pure saccharine if it weren’t executed with such unrelenting earnestness. With hours played soaring into the thousands, we blame Peggle for more lost productivity at Maximum PC HQ than anything else this year.
www.popcap.com, ESRB: E

*The Top of the Mountain Award for Extreme Dewness is in no way affiliated with Mountain Dew or Spike TV.

We Would Have Been Even More Excited if it Came Out Last Year

Gears of War

We’ll admit that by the time Gears of War finally arrived on the PC, we’d already beaten it twice on Insane difficulty and unlocked most of the multiplayer achievements on the Xbox 360. And can you really blame us for caving? With so much hype surrounding the visceral shooter, we crossed the PC fanboy picket lines and drank the sweet console Kool-Aid. But more steadfast PC gamers needn’t fret—the PC version’s extended campaign and additional multiplayer maps are a worthy consolation for your admirable resolve.
http://gearsofwar.com/, ESRB: M

We Love the Smell of Napalm in the . . . Well, Anytime.

World in Conflict

We’ll say it: There’s nothing more fun than calling down airstrike after unholy airstrike while playing World in Conflict. Although “playing” is perhaps the wrong word to use. Fighting to retake the upper chunk of the United States is more a matter of “turtling” than anything else. And we can’t get enough of it.

Light artillery, heavy artillery, napalm, fuel air bombs, laser-guided missiles: This game drips chaos with its massive amounts of targetable air ordnance. You can’t help but smile the first time you toss a nuclear missile in a multiplayer match. We cackled with glee.
www.worldinconflict.com, ESRB: T

The Most Anticipated Game of 2009

Crysis

Long development times and delayed release dates are something gamers have grown accustomed to with many of today’s high-profile games. And most of the time, an extra six months or a year of waiting is a small price to pay to ensure that Triple-A titles are polished and tested for bugs. With Crysis, the problem isn’t that the game was released before it was ready—the conundrum is that Crytek released a game before our PCs were ready. Screenshots of Crysis running at max settings taunt us like a photo of Albert Pujols—both are emasculating reminders of our inadequacy. Sure, we could enjoy Crysis’s nerve-racking stealth gameplay without the next-gen graphics, but that’s a disservice akin to driving a Rolls-Royce without leather seats. We’d rather wait a year until our systems are worthy enough to play the game in all its glory. www.ea.com/crysis/, ESRB: M

We'd Have Been Pissed About the Crap Port if the Game Didn't Suck So Much

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Take away all of the port problems in this game—crazy system requirements, unoriginal content, lack of crossover leaderboards between the PC and Xbox 360 versions—and what do you get? A game that’s just not fun.
It’s the same ol’ button-mashing rhythm game reskinned with a snazzier interface. Sure, you get new songs, but the difficulties have been cranked to finger-bleeding levels. And it’s not even a gradual ramp up; if you make it past the game’s crippling battle modes, the final chunk of five songs will rain blood on your fun parade.
www.guitarhero.com, ESRB: T

What Can Brown Do For You?

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

In many ways, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a drastic departure from the deathmatch origins of the classic id Software franchise. But even with its startling team- and objective-based design, we are comforted by the familiar earth tones that saturate almost all the game’s maps. The terra palette is deeper now for sure—bronze, sienna, and hazel now blanket the tawny battlefield—but when the dust settles, brown is brown. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
www.enemyterritory.com, ESRB: T

Fail

Halo 2 for Vista

We’ve come to love the occasional port from the console world—after all, Gears of War turned out OK. But releasing Halo 2 for the PC almost three years after the Xbox version shipped is silly. It’s bad enough that after all that time the game was essentially the same as the original Xbox edition, but Bungie added insult to injury by tying this 3-year-old, last-gen console port to Vista. Instead of ratcheting up the Halo experience for an audience that may not have been previously exposed to it, and potentially selling some more consoles and copies of Halo 3, the publisher added a few achievements and required a wonky OS.
www.microsoft.com/games/halo2/, ESRB: M

Game of the Year (February 16, 2007 - August 20, 2007)

Supreme Commander

Oh, how we love Supreme Commander. Its lightning-fast pace and emphasis on balancing economy and massive unit production makes for an entirely new kind of strategy game. Where most RTSes have focused on smaller and smaller conflicts, Supreme Commander is strategy writ large. Instead of taking 10 units to battle, you command 1,000 minions on a map 10 times larger than those of any other RTS. Now that’s maximum!
www.supremecommander.com, ESRB: E10+

The I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK Award

Crysis

Forget the gorgeous graphics and repetitive combat for a moment and remember your first time. It’s just you and your machine gun, alone in the jungle. You tentatively lift your rifle, gently nestling its butt against your shoulder. Your finger caresses the trigger as you align the target in your sights and slowly… slowly… slowly pull the trigger. Bang. It’s over.

If you’re like us, we’re sure you’ll never forget your first time. Your first time shooting down a tree.
www.ea.com/crysis, ESRB: M

Best Lyrics in a Closing Credits Song

"Still Alive" from Portal

Capping off an absolutely magical game with this hilarious ditty (specially written for the game by Jonathan Coulton - look him up!) is the win. We’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves.

This was a triumph!
I’m making a note here:
“HUGE SUCCESS!!”

It’s hard to overstate
my satisfaction.

Aperture Science:
We do what we must
because we can.

For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.

But there’s no sense crying
over every mistake.
You just keep on trying
till you run out of cake.
And the science gets done.
And you make a neat gun
for the people who are
still alive.

I’m not even angry...
I’m being so sincere right now—
Even though you broke my heart,
and killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because
I was so happy for you!

Now, these points of data
make a beautiful line.
And we’re out of beta.
We’re releasing on time!
So I’m GLaD I got burned—
Think of all the things we
learned—for the people who are still alive.

Go ahead and leave me...
I think I’d prefer to stay inside...
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you?
Maybe Black Mesa?
That was a joke! HA HA!! FAT CHANCE!!

Anyway this cake is great!
It’s so delicious and moist!

Look at me: Still talking
when there’s science to do!
When I look out there,
it makes me GLaD I’m not you.

I’ve experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I’m doing science and I’m still alive.
I feel fantastic and I’m still alive.
While you’re dying I’ll be still alive.
And when you’re dead I will be still alive.
Still alive.
Still alive.

http://orange.half-life2.com, ESRB: T

Next: The Game of the Year!

Game of the Year

Bioshock

“A man chooses, a slave obeys.” With those six words, THQ Boston opened the door to a new era of gaming. Ken Levine’s team built a gorgeous undersea world, filled it with interesting and believable characters, invites you to kill said characters using a perfectly balanced combat system, and then uses the game to do more than simply tell a tale. Unlike every other game we’ve ever played, BioShock uses the medium’s interactivity to explore concepts in a way that is simply impossible in films and books.

While other designers would have taken the underwater wonderland that is Rapture and driven the player through increasingly difficult mazes, Levine uses the framework he built to explore objectivism and free will with the player as an active participant. By allowing the player to choose whether to save or harvest the Little Sisters, but not whether to kill Andrew Ryan at the game’s climactic moment, Levine forces players to make difficult ethical choices, while confronting them with the fallacy of free will in games.

Sadly, the final act of the game doesn’t match the brilliance of the first two parts, and the “big finish” is an offensively clichéd boss battle. Even with its flawed third act, BioShock represents everything that we want to celebrate with our Game of the Year Award. Bravo.
http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/, ESRB: M

Maximum PC's 2006 Gaming Awards

Maximum PC Staff — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:46:49 -0500

Let’s get this out of the way up front. This year’s Gaming Awards won’t include any Duke Nukem Forever jokes. We’re not going to mock Jack Thompson, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Lieberman. Nor will we take any digs at our console-gaming, thumb-monkey counterparts. And we won’t even mention the debacle known as the PlayStation 3 launch.

This year we’re simply going to praise our favorite gaming moments from 2006. Last year was a banner year for PC gaming, chock-full o’ amazing experiences that you just couldn’t get on any other platform. And the PC proved to be the best platform for many multiplatform games—Oblivion, anyone? We also saw a couple of new trends really take root. The fi rst episodic games appeared, and we reveled in their too-short glory. We also saw the good and bad of microtransactions, with some publishers delivering hours of gameplay for a nominal price, while others gouged for tutorials and cheat codes.

In short, 2006 was like any other year. Some good stuff happened, along with some bad. But we played dozens of games and enjoyed a whole bunch of them. So without further ado, let’s roll out the metaphorical red carpet and begin the annual bestowing of props!

Best Multiplayer: Battlefield 2

That’s right, rub your eyes. There’s no typo here. We spent more hours online in 2006 with Battlefield 2 than we did with any other multiplayer game, even though it was 2005’s war. EA’s release of two lean booster packs kept us hooked on the habit, taking the good fight from the Great Wall of China to the suburbs of Middle America. We were far from enthralled with its futuristic sequel’s obnoxious in-game ads and dearth of vehicles—real men fly jet fighters. Home’s where the heart is, and our hearts are still bleeding on the streets of Karkand, Mashtuur, and Sharqi.

www.battlefield2.ea.com, ESRB: T

Least Offensive In-Game Ad: Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

In-game advertising is a necessary evil; whether you like it or not, it’s here to stay. The thing is, when done properly, you’ll barely even notice it. The ads in Ghost Recon are placed on large billboards that are high in the sky. Instead of drawing your attention away from the action, they add to the game’s sense of realism, giving you the feeling you are playing in the real world. Nokia, we noticed your ads, and we appreciate you not ruining our game.

www.ghostrecon.com, ESRB: T

Crassest Cash Grab: Rainbow 6: Vegas

Surprisingly, both the least- and most-offensive in-game ads we’ve seen this year were from the same publisher: Ubisoft. The ads in Rainbow 6: Vegas are both ubiquitous and intrusive. They stand out not just because of the cheesy copy but because their textures seem to be fuzzier and of a lower resolution than the surrounding walls. Nivea, Axe, and Comcast, your ads are lame and they annoy us. That is all.
www.rainbowsixgame.com, ESRB: M

Best Excuse to Upgrade Your PC: Flight Sim X

This award could have also been titled Biggest System-Requirements Fibber, as FSX crawls at near-slide-show levels on machines vastly exceeding Microsoft’s guidelines. This might tick off many gamers, but honestly, it thrills the masochist in us. We just love it when a game comes out that punishes top-end PC hardware—it gives us a new performance benchmark with which to showcase the most cutting-edge gear. We’re sure this game won’t run at its maximum potential until the release of DX10, spawning a wave of upgrades across the country.

www.microsoft.com/games, ESRB: E

Best MMO for People Without Internet Access: Oblivion

If you’re stuck in the boonies with limited or no access to the Internet, crying in your +7 Orcish Armor of Dread about not being able to join the MMO party, we have good news: Oblivion is the next best thing, if not THE best thing. This massive RPG has just about all the best MMO gaming elements—free-form gameplay, a huge world to explore, tons of side quests, rideable horses, houses and businesses you can own, scores of NPCs to interact with, and downloadable content—and none of the nasty side effects (glorified that rooms and annoying noobs talking about Hilary Duff while you’re trying to slay dragons).
www.elderscrolls.com, ESRB: M

The Next-Gen, My Ass Award: Oblivion

The simultaneous release of Oblivion on the 360 and PC made the console fanboys proclaim victory in the ongoing console-vs.-PC debate. But they cried victory too soon! Oblivion served to illustrate the fact that the PC remains, without a doubt, the most powerful, flexible, and enjoyable gaming platform on the planet. Not only does Oblivion look better on the PC, but several free PC-only mods have fixed the game’s flaws—does anyone like the console-tastic interface? Not only that, but we enjoy being able to play without enduring 30-second load times every three minutes.

www.elderscrolls.com, ESRB: M

Most Nauseating Experience We Loved: Prey

Forget space Camp. Not since the original Descent has our ability to stomach disorienting environmental twists and flips been put to such a test. The unique combination of gravity-shifting panels that turn rooms upside down and portals that create Escher-like spatial puzzles warrants not only special acclaim, but doses of Dramamine too. The best part about Prey is that its unconventional level design transfers to the multiplayer arena as well. We had great times fragging buddies while running upside down and dropping grenades... upward. Take that, gravity!

www.prey.com, ESRB: M

We Salute You, Boss Key: Defcon

Our game time with Defcon would probably have been even more enjoyable if it weren’t part of our job. The gracefully designed strategic simulation of nuclear war is fun to play not only for its hidden complexity, but also because it’s the perfect office distraction. This is the kind of game that sparks budding workplace alliances and collusion against the bosses. In fact, the "office mode” of gameplay forces rounds to run in real time, lasting up to six hours. Those of you who can devote six hours of an eight-hour work day to nuking your communist coworkers are our nation’s true heroes.

www.everybody-dies.com, ESRB: NR

Best Game Adaptation of a Movie Adaptation of a Book: Battle for Middle Earth II

You’ve got to love an RTS that lets you slay 10,000 orcs in a little less than two hours (that’s roughly 84 orcs/minute) in skirmish mode, and that’s just one of the reasons we loved The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II. This point-and-click fest beautifully captures the look, feel, scope, and mayhem of the epic battles in Jackson’s films and Tolkien’s books. This could be the best movie-licensed game yet, and proof positive that coughing up for a major license isn’t always a waste of time, money, DVDs, and hard drive space.

www.ea.com, ESRB: T

The Second Annual Award for Humane Gameplay: Prey

You guys love repeating the same tricky section of a game over and over just to defeat a challenging boss, right? Neither do we. Prey tries a new tactic to reduce the death penalty and make gameplay more fun. Instead of loading your last save every time you die, Prey has you play a brief minigame to restore your health and vital stats before the game reinstates your corporeal body right back where you died. Any time a dev adds fun where most games add heartbreak, we’ll salute them!

www.prey.com, ESRB: M

Finally, Proof That an Episode 1 Doesn't Have to Suck: Half-Life 2: Episode 1

We were afraid that George Lucas had tainted the Episode 1 badge forever with The Phantom Menace. But Half-Life 2: Episode 1 not only proves that Episode 1s do not have to suck but also gives us hope that episodic gaming will provide us more frequent, if necessarily shorter, tastes of our favorite games. Going episodic will force developers to maintain quality throughout their games—after all, if Half-Life 2: Episode 2 sucks, no one will buy Episode 3.

www.half-life.com, ESRB: M

The NOLF Award for Incidental Scriptwriting: Hitman: Blood Money

We love game devs who take the time and money to write and record dialogue for the underappreciated, hapless stooges who are the cannon fodder that make our games fun. It all started with No One Lives Forever, but this year, Hitman: Blood Money used stooge dialogue to inject needed comic relief in a brutally brilliant game. Creeping through missions, we heard everything from Mob bosses calling in hits to musings on the meaning of being a professional henchman.

www.hitman.com, ESRB: M

The Jack Bauer Award for Moral Conflict: Splinter Cell: Double Agent

We’ve played tons of video games that promised to force us to make tough decisions, but most of them presented nothing more than straightforward choices between right and wrong. Double Agent thrusts multiple moral quandaries upon you—Jack Bauer-style—and forces you to discern different shades of gray. Should you kill an innocent man to save thousands of lives? Only you can decide.

www.splintercell.com, ESRB: M

Best. Comic Book. Game. Ever.: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Stroll into The Android’s Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop on any given day and you’ll find Jeffrey Albertson laying down authoritative verdicts on pop-culture happenings. But even the Comic Book Guy would have to agree with us that Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is the holy grail of comicbook games. Not only can you control 20 of the greatest superheroes from the Marvel universe, but more than 100 familiar Marvel faces make cameos throughout the game. It’s another reason for geeks to stay indoors—sunlight is overrated anyway.

www.marvelultimatealliance.com, ESRB: T

Fabulous, but Shorter than the Movie: King Kong

The eponymous movie was an amazing spectacle of grandiose cinema, and its game counterpart performs admirably as a complement to the man vs.beast epic. Gameplay is split between playing as Jack Driscoll leading the daring film crew through Skull Island and Kong gracefully swinging through the jungle and besting ferocious dinosaurs. For those of you who enjoyed the movie (us included), King Kong clued us in to what was happening behind the silver-screen story, filling in some plot holes along the way. The brief adventure is capped off with an alternate ending to the movie, “revising” the Kong canon for fans who couldn’t stand to see the big guy die.

www.kingkonggame.com, ESRB: T

Game of the Year: Company of Heroes

OK, we admit it: We thought the WWII gaming horse had been beaten well beyond bloody pulp and was now best reserved or glue production. Company of Heroes proved us wrong, dead wrong. Extremely clever “attack from anywhere” mission design (read: no choke points) and over-the-top sound and pyrotechnics had us zapping Nazis with unbridled joy all over again. Heck, Company of Heroes even had nongamer editors playing. We can’t wait for the add-ons.