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Well I've ordered a stupid amount of games this week (25 in total), so that should keep me going for a while.

Best old school shooter to try out is Blood. So much more charm than Doom, Duke, Hexen, and Shadow Warrior, but completely under the radar for most people. It's a damn shame.

I am mainly an Strategy player and I would recommend: Civilization: They are all fun, I've enjoyed II-V
Total War: Rome II is coming out soon, and even Rome I, which is almost ten years old, is extremely fun.
Age of Empires: Similar to Starcraft in gameplay, especially Mythology, but lot's of fun.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Well I've ordered a stupid amount of games this week (25 in total), so that should keep me going for a while.

Well done that man. What did you plump for in the end?

I ended up getting the following:

World in Conflict

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway

The Witcher 2

Far Cry 3 (this one doesn't twig my continuity senses as the game has nothing to do with either Far Cry 1 or Far Cry 2)

Mass Effect 1

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 3

Crysis 1

Crysis 2

Crysis 3 (when Crysis first came out it was the game you needed a computer from the future to run, and it's been so long since my last upgrade that two sequels have come out!!!)

Max Payne 3

Fallout 3

Fallout: New Vegas

Borderlands 1 (I'll get 2, but I'll wait for the edition that comes with all the DLC)

Hitman Absolution

Tomb Raider

X-Com Enemy Unknown

Spec Ops: The Line

Dishonored

Knights of the Old Republic 1

Knights of the Old Republic 2

Skyrim (Legendary Edition)

Bioshock Infinite

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Plus also The Last of Us and Arkham Origins for my PS3, and the final season of Spartacus on Blu-Ray just 'cause it was on sale at the same place I got most of the games for.

I'm going to try to trade in my PS3 copies of Skyrim and Max Payne 3 to take some of the price off the Dawn of War II collection (DoWII and its two expansions).

Of course the first game I'm going to play on my new PC will be the last game I bought for my old PC - Hitman: Blood Money. I want to see that thing running at full spec.

You'll be waiting a bit on the Borderlands 2 "all DLC edition", as after Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep there will be more DLC packages that are not part of the Season Pass. The only "confirmed" one at this point is a guns DLC which adds things which really should have been in the game to begin with(notably Hyperion Assault Rifles, Maliwan and potentially Dahl Shotguns, and Torgue/Tediore Sniper Rifles).

They had Borderlands 2 on sale this week for Steam for $29.99 USD though...

My two go-to PC games are Starcraft II and Dragon Age: Origins, both are fantastic.

 Kanluwen wrote:
You'll be waiting a bit on the Borderlands 2 "all DLC edition"...

Given how many games I have to play, I doubt that'll be a problem. Plus I can be a rather patient person. I waited for the "All DLC included" edition of the last Assassin's Creed before I bought it, and will do the same again for ACIII and Black Flag.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You'll be waiting a bit on the Borderlands 2 "all DLC edition"...

Given how many games I have to play, I doubt that'll be a problem. Plus I can be a rather patient person. I waited for the "All DLC included" edition of the last Assassin's Creed before I bought it, and will do the same again for ACIII and Black Flag.

Only reason I mention it is that Borderlands 2 is a game best enjoyed with a group--and it's likely that by the time the "All DLC included" edition comes out, there's not going to be a huge amount of people playing.

Exception can be made if playing as the Mechromancer or Commando classes however, as they both can actually solo effectively. Gunzerker, Psycho, Siren, and Assassin suffer horribly without at least one teammate.

Don't expect too much of an improvement from the Crysis sequels. They cut out most of what made the original unique and interesting to make it fit on consoles.

 Fafnir wrote:
Don't expect too much of an improvement from the Crysis sequels. They cut out most of what made the original unique and interesting to make it fit on consoles.

...lol?

They retain most of what made the original "unique and interesting"(the suit mechanics and the 'alien menace' aspect) but replace the Koreans with a fairly generic "superdupersecret corporate conglomerate of doooooooom!" aspect.

Unless of course you're referring to the multiplayer to which I would simply say "eh". You lost the vehicular warfare in 2(or at least you did on the consoles) but that wasn't a huge loss as it was garbage in Crysis and Crysis: Warhead.

If you have a new PC (and I assume that you do) you will have iussues running KOTOR smoothly, it crashes very frequently. There is a fan patch that is supossed to help but it didn't work out well for me.

A few games that are not on your list or have been mentioned are:

Crusader Kings 2 - a deep turn based strategy that is all about creating and nurturing a fledgling dydnasty in the literally cut throat world of medieval politics.

Xenonaughts - A more faithful remake of X-COM but one that has still be modernised. If you find that the new one is lacking, or you simply like the genre, this may be worth looking at. Its on Steam but its still technically in alpha, probably best to wait a few months before buying it.

World of Tanks - technically an MMO but it is free to play (in a good way) and its a remarkably tactical FPS game featuring massive chunks of metal. I have probably put more hours into this than Day of Defeat, COunter Strike and TF2 combined.

Blood Bowl - a suprisingly accurate representation of the GW game via the medium of electrons.

Eador:Master of the Broken World - Another turn based strategy game but this time with RPG elements and world building. Quite a clunky game but its interesting and cheap.

DayZ - An ARM2 mod about zombies and scavenging. It sounds pretty gak but it gets survival horror just about right in that by far the biggest threat is other players. It is one of the most intenese games that I have ever played. It is getting a standalone release in the next few months so its probably best to wait until then as the current build has a lot of problems (not least of which is rampant hacking and that some elements of the community are absolute spankers).

I tried playing Crysis last year when it was on a Steam sale for about a pound. It was OK, or at least it was until I encountered a game breaking bug about 3 hours in, but its nothing Special. I'm not sure if Farcry has been mentioned yet but thats another decent FPS series.

If you like World in Conflict it would be worth having a look at the Wargame series.

With that game lineup, you're going to be set for a while! You've got some of my absolute favorite games there (including Fallout: New Vegas, which is my favorite game of the last decade) and I think you have many, many nights of "just one more mission" in XCOM ahead of you!

 Fafnir wrote:
Don't expect too much of an improvement from the Crysis sequels. They cut out most of what made the original unique and interesting to make it fit on consoles.

I've spent days now watching and reading reviews. Total Biscuit mentioned this dumbing down of Crysis in his Crysis 3 first impressions, and generally he said that Crysis 3 was a return to form over the heavily streamlined game that was Crysis 2, almost as if the developers realised that they cut too much out for the frat-boy COD-loving 360 crowd so decided to go back and make it a bit more like the first one.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
the frat-boy COD-loving 360 crowd

What about the non-frat boy, non-COD-loving 360 crowd?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
Don't expect too much of an improvement from the Crysis sequels. They cut out most of what made the original unique and interesting to make it fit on consoles.

...lol?

They retain most of what made the original "unique and interesting"(the suit mechanics and the 'alien menace' aspect) but replace the Koreans with a fairly generic "superdupersecret corporate conglomerate of doooooooom!" aspect.

Unless of course you're referring to the multiplayer to which I would simply say "eh". You lost the vehicular warfare in 2(or at least you did on the consoles) but that wasn't a huge loss as it was garbage in Crysis and Crysis: Warhead.

Or, you know, that whole massive open environment that could be approached in an endless variety of ways.

 Ahtman wrote:
What about the non-frat boy, non-COD-loving 360 crowd?

Prove they exist. Using science!

My personal suggestions:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Mount and Blade: Warband
StarCraft II
The Total War Series

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Tomb Raider

I've heard there were some problems with Tomb Raider and NVidia drivers/graphic cards. Has this issue been resolved?

I've looked into that. It's the super-duper hair rendering technology that causes the problem. It has frame-rate issues in general, and doesn't work properly on nVidia cards because Squeenix decided to get in bed with AMD.

Doesn't appear to be a solution although there may have been new drivers since then.


But at the same time, I'll be running 2 nVidia Titans in SLI, so maybe the brute force of two of the things can overcome the issues that one card might experience.

I see. Maybe i can live without super stylish hair then (i guess it can be tweaked/switched off?). The game itself looked like it would be really interesting.

I suppose it might be a good idea to show you the system I'll be running, just in case any of you more tech-savvy guys can think of any potential problems:

Corsair Obsidian 800D Case w/all possible fans (7 in total, I think, 3x140mm and 4x120mm)
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200i Modular 1200 Watt 80 Plus Platinum
CPU: Intel i7-3930K LGA2011 3.2GHz Six Core (10%-20% overclocked)
Motherboard: Asus RAMPAGE IV Extreme Socket 2011
Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H100i Liquid Cooler for CPU
Memory (RAM): Corsair 16GB Dominator Platinum 2400Mhz Quad Channel DDR3
Video Card: 2 x Nvidia TITAN 6GB GDDR3 in SLI
Hard Drive: Intel 520 Series 120GB SSD
Hard Drive 2: Western Digital 2TB HDD
Optical Drive: 22X DVDRW Drive Black SATA
Operating System: Windows 7 Pro Edition 64bit

If anything stands out, lemme know.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I suppose it might be a good idea to show you the system I'll be running, just in case any of you more tech-savvy guys can think of any potential problems:

Corsair Obsidian 800D Case w/all possible fans (7 in total, I think, 3x140mm and 4x120mm)
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200i Modular 1200 Watt 80 Plus Platinum
CPU: Intel i7-3930K LGA2011 3.2GHz Six Core (10%-20% overclocked)
Motherboard: Asus RAMPAGE IV Extreme Socket 2011
Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H100i Liquid Cooler for CPU
Memory (RAM): Corsair 16GB Dominator Platinum 2400Mhz Quad Channel DDR3
Video Card: 2 x Nvidia TITAN 6GB GDDR3 in SLI
Hard Drive: Intel 520 Series 120GB SSD
Hard Drive 2: Western Digital 2TB HDD
Optical Drive: 22X DVDRW Drive Black SATA
Operating System: Windows 7 Pro Edition 64bit

If anything stands out, lemme know.

Show off!

Must've cost a bob or two.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I've looked into that. It's the super-duper hair rendering technology that causes the problem. It has frame-rate issues in general, and doesn't work properly on nVidia cards because Squeenix decided to get in bed with AMD.

Well, both of my friends who got TR actually turned this feature off because the hair looked out of place.
You had a scared, cold, dirty, hungry and wet girl, all plastered in mud and all that. On top of this she had a beautiful, shiny, perfect hair.

And I see a potential problem with your machine. People will not like you

 Macok wrote:
And I see a potential problem with your machine. People will not like you

Yes, this. I'm insanely jealous. One question... I do hope you're dropping extra on an aftermarket fan if you're going to overclock the CPU? Or going for something more exotic like water-cooling?

 Super Ready wrote:

 Macok wrote:
And I see a potential problem with your machine. People will not like you

Yes, this. I'm insanely jealous. One question... I do hope you're dropping extra on an aftermarket fan if you're going to overclock the CPU? Or going for something more exotic like water-cooling?

looks like he's got 7 fans and liquid cooling...

 Super Ready wrote:

 Macok wrote:
And I see a potential problem with your machine. People will not like you

Yes, this. I'm insanely jealous. One question... I do hope you're dropping extra on an aftermarket fan if you're going to overclock the CPU? Or going for something more exotic like water-cooling?

Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H100i Liquid Cooler for CPU

Missed that one. Bah, triply jealous then.

 Super Ready wrote:
Yes, this. I'm insanely jealous.

Good.

Well... not good that you're jealous, more than I'm happy the specs inspire jealously rather than "Oh my God! Why did you get that???". I'd've been more worried about that happening to be honest.

 Super Ready wrote:
One question... I do hope you're dropping extra on an aftermarket fan if you're going to overclock the CPU? Or going for something more exotic like water-cooling?

As mentioned, Corsair liquid cooling for the CPU plus every possible case fan that my case allows. I intend to use my PC as a second frige.

Only thing I see wrong is the i7 - its entirely not necessary for gaming, the latest i5 would have sufficed.

However if I had the money to spare I would have probly done the same thing. I just want to know how you afforded it, 2 Nvidia Titans is nearly $2000 themselves.