Porkchop Technology Review's

If you are either looking try a new game, that you haven’t played before on this list, or want to to get into Computer gaming, read on.  In this article I will be telling you the current games I play and games I stopped playing but I still enjoyed in the past.  Warning these games are highly addictive, and will probably cause you to loose your social life.

Counter-Strike: Source

Coming from Counter-Strike beta, and quiting in Counter-Strike 1.3 I moved onto Counter-Strike Source later on.  At first I did not like it, but it improved with updates, and now it is a great game.  A lot of famous gaming clan, play/played this game for top prizes of even around 1 million dollars.  I think everyone should have this game, it is cheap around $20.00 and it does not require the best computer to run it, since its been around for awhile.  But when you first start getting into this game a little bit more, you will realise you will need a faster computer, since it’s all about who sees the person quicker, best computer Win’s sort of thing.  In this game, its completely multiplayer, and its based off teams, Terrorists and Counter-terrorists, there are 2 map modes, de_ terrorists plant the bomb, counter-terrorists try to defuse it and cs_ hostage maps, were counter-terrorists have to rescue the hostages while the terrorists hold them hostage.  The guns are realistic and hit boxes as well, if you hit someone in the head with a gun, they most likely will die in one shot, if you hit someone in the hand they will only suffer minor damage or foot.  This game is a FPS, First person shooter game.  Buy this game online on steam, at http://www.steampowered.com

World of Warcraft

Warning World of Warcraft is highly addictive, I have seen shows of wife’s going onto shows complaining that there husbands have ignored them for this game, and ended up leaving them.  This game is an incredible game when you first start playing it, for me, I was addicted to it when I first started playing it, then when I took a break, and went back to it, I got pretty bored, since I had to start over again, and I knew what every mission was about pretty much.  I also found that the starting area’s of the game, was pretty lonely, back then it was busy, easy to find someone to quest with and the chat was busy.  But if this is your first time playing this game, its worth checking out, you can have a lot of fun playing this game, this will probably be the only game you will play at the time as well, so you can see yourself saving some money for awhile.  But the drawback to this game is the monthly fee, its only $15 but I think its worth it if you enjoy this game, they also are constantly updating it, which offers the developers money to maintain the game, and improve it.  They also release expansion packs making new worlds and level caps.  This game is a MMORPG, which you have a character that starts as Level 1, that works its way to higher levels, the standalone game goes to Level 60, in order to accomplish these levels, you do quests in game, and kill things, you gain experience points.  In the lower levels you move up quickly, but as the levels progress at the same time you have to do more work.  Since the game has been around for awhile you don’t need a very powerful PC to run this.  You can get this game at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com

Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4 is another First person Shooter, but it uses the level system, kind of like a MMORPG, as you go around fragging people online, you gain unlocks and special weapons that are saved, and that you can use on each server.  The game has a single player aspect to it as well, which is really good, but a bit short, I wouldn’t buy this game for just the single player, this is more of a multiplayer game.  I really enjoyed this game online, I bought it for both the PC, and PS3.  This game is like Counter-Strike Source, but with polished graphics, and a different type of gameplay.  It is a very good game to play, it puts you in a war setting, and the technology you get in it, is really cool, such as the UAV you get after 3 kills, then after I believe it was 5 kills you get a Helicopter air strike at the location you want.  There is a new game out in this franchise called Call of Duty: World at War, but I have never played it, but I heard it is the same graphics and engine as this game, some people even claiming this one is better, you can buy the game directly online at http://www.steampowered.com

Battlefield 2142

Battlefield 2142 is a great game, there is a new game in this franchise called Battlefield: Bad Company, but it is only available on consoles, such as PS3, XBOX 360, kind of sucks in my opinion, but at the same time I think it is not much better than this game.  I think they are working on a new Battlefield for the computer, which I am very excited about.  If you have never played the Battlefield series, the thing that sets the difference between other FPS games is that you can drive vehicles and planes online in multiplayer.  For example, if you go on the helicopter in this game, you can have another 2 buddies in it operating different gun’s on it and shooting other people, with a driver.  Its a real fun game to play just for this reason.  I do not really enjoy the weapons in this game over other games such as Counter-Strike, but the fact that you have vehicles and Helicopters to drive makes this awesome.  They also use the similar unlocking system like COD4,  that when you frag more people, accomplish more in maps, you get more points and unlocked weapons.  The difference between this is that you have to buy the weapons with the points, instead of just receiving it, I kind of like that, since there are different classes in this game, and you can buy the weapons for the class you like to play the most.  A problem with this game is, I think they still have compatibility issues with Windows Vista 64bit, at the time they did when I tried to re-install this to play, but maybe they have fixed it with a new patch, I’m not sure.  The game has been out for little while now, so again you won’t need a very powerful PC to play this, you can directly buy this game from the EA online store at http://eastore.ea.com/

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is created by Valve, the developers of Counter-Strike: Source, this is very fun, comedy type game.  It uses cartoon graphics and it has funny taunts, and voice commands.  I already talked about this game a little bit in the Free TF2 weekend post, so I won’t say that much about it.  The game is a FPS game with different classes, and is entirely multiplayer.  The game is also being constantly updated right now, with different classes receiving unlocks, and more weapons.  The coolest part of this game is the achievements, for example if you kill 3 enemies in a row with sniper not wasting a bullet you unlock an achievement, which makes the game fun.  There are many players online playing this, so you will never find empty servers, much like Counter-Strike Source.  I find this game mostly good for people who are not really into FPS, or are as good at FPS games, the reason why is because it does not publicly record your deaths, only you can see them.  You can buy this game at http://www.steampowered.com

Left 4 Dead

Another good game released by Valve, there newest game. Left 4 Dead is a unique game in a sense, if you are a fan of co-op type game play, then you will really enjoy this game, what this game is, its a FPS with 4 real human players against zombie AI.  You play through single player campaigns with team work and different difficulties.  I do not like this game that much, the reason why is because I enjoy fragging a real person on the other end, instead of killing computer players (the zombies) and I also am not a fan of there verses mode where they have humans vs zombies, the zombie class is very difficult to play, very unbalanced, the worst zombie to be in that game, is the hunter, it is virtually impossible to do any real damage, when you can only jump on top of the player, and there’s 3 people to shoot at you.  Many people enjoy this game, mostly because it is not as challenging as a real FPS game, such as Counter-strike, or COD4, a computer player can never beat the difficulty of a real player on the other side.  I still enjoy this game, playing it with friends online, but I would probably never play it by myself, just joining a server.  The server system is still flawed in this game, making it all random, joining servers, and hosting servers.  It has a console type server finding method, not like CS:S or TF2.  I still suggest to get this game to play with friends, and if you like to play co-op games. http://www.steampowered.com

Eve Online

Eve Online is a more  sophisticated MMORPG game geared towards people who are little older.  This game is pretty confusing at the start, but fun after.  Basically what this game is, a game set in space, you have different spaceships, that you buy/acquire with time making your fleet.  The game is PVP – Player vs player, meaning that its pretty much everyone for themselves, you travel in a unsafe zone, you risk of being shot down by other players.  There’s players in the game, that just do this, they are called pirates, and have a negative level, and they usually cannot enter the friendly spaceship areas, or else they get shot down by security spaceships in the area. Once you get shot down, you loose your spaceship, that is the bad thing about it.  The leveling system is bit weird, making it that you do not level by killing people or doing missions, you level by just updating your stats, for example, say you pick to upgradede your missiles, to level 2, and it says it takes 2 hours, it actually takes a real 2 hours to update, but the nice thing about that, is that it updates even if your PC is off.  The bad part about this is that, of course, people who started this game earlier, will have a huge advantage over  you, since they had more time in the game., you probably will never catch up.  The game also offers free updates, to there expansions once you play it, it has a monthly fee I think around $15.  The game also has one of the best economies in it, with the game developers realising professional economy stats.  In the game you mine ore for money, there currency is ISK, and you can sell the ore online in its market, so in the game you can basically be a miner for a bit, or go around killing other ships and making money that way. You can buy this game at http://www.eveonline.com/

These are just a few games that I recommend to get, of course there are many more great games out there, and people have there own tastes. But these ones that I mentioned are the best in my opinion, I probably forgot to mention a few, and I’m pretty sure you will have fun playing all or just one of them.