I could have sworn I wrote an entry in December, however I recently upgraded the database, and upgraded to WordPress 2.7 so that might have gotten lost in the update. So it is a new year, new database and now a new update. December was just a amazing month for me, this year I started backcountry ski touring and over the holiday break I got so amazing days of skiing in. All my time was spent in the West Kootenays, hitting up hot spots such as Retallack, Kootenay Pass, the Bonnington Range, and Whitewater. Good turns, good company, good life. January isn’t shaping up to be a great month for skiing with the avalanche danger being high due to unseasonal warming and rain.

With the lack of skiing I finished off Fallout 3 which turned out to be a awesome game. I had some doubts about it at first but I stuck through the beginning and really enjoyed the experience. I have now started on Dead Space which is looking to be amazing with a great atmosphere and sweet graphics. The awkward camera angle started out as annoying, however it leads to some very scary oh crap moments. Dead Space is defiantly a game that needs to be played on a surround sound system, in a dark room alone.

I’m looking forward to 2009 and what the New Year will bring and I wish everyone the best in the New Year.

I have update the Now Playing / Reading section as well as fixed a link to the GFW podcast, which changed in the last couple of months losing some key personalities and gaining some new ones. It is still a great podcast to listen too. In Kelowna I had an old laptop that could play some older games and I started playing through Grim Fandango, I’ve almost finished it and have to say it truly is one of the greatest games of all time. Games really aren’t made like this anymore. Old adventure games made you really think about the puzzles presented to you, and some just don’t make any sense.  The last time I had to use a walkthrough was Zelda: Oceania of Time another older game that is awesome. Now that I’m back home I need to finish the last chapter in Grim Fandango, and get started on some new games that I’ve been looking forward too such as Fallout 3, and Dead Space.

Another mod of note is ZombiePanic: Source. Filling the void of a zombie shooter until Left 4 Dead comes out, it is very funny and the people I have meet playing it are great. Everyone is into the zombie feel, and the slow speech of zombies looking for braiiiiins… over voice chat from people is great. Gameplay I feel needs some tweaking to balance out the survivors and the zombies and some maps are pretty poor, but it is a nice break from TF2.

In 2007 this was the only notable single player RPG that was released for the PC and the only RPG I played except a brief return (and exit) to WoW. I was a huge fan of older Bioware games like Baldur’s gate and this is very reminiscent of those games. Besides using the same engine it follows the same game play principals, with the exception of the combat which is real-time and by clicking at the right time you can string together combos. The combat was a nice innovation and kept most battles entertaining switching between stances and trying to string combos with finishing moves and spells. A trade mark of Bioware’s games is the engaging storyline and well written dialogue. This is another area where The Witcher went right. The driving force of the story is racism between humans and non-humans and your main character is stuck in the middle throughout the game having to pick a side. During my play through I sided with the non-humans after being burnt by trying to turn a vampire whore nice. The human knight I was trying to help didn’t pay me and other human NPCs would always make snide remarks about me being a Wticher and not like them. Sick of their intolerance I turned against the Order of the Flaming Rose and slaughtered them all. Helping my elven and dwarven friends find their place in the world.

One of the large controversies over the game is the abilities to have sex with pretty much every woman in the game. It seems the women are only in the game in order for the main character to find a way to conquer them, which makes it the best mini-game inside the game (which there is a few). Every time you have a new conquest you get a tarot card with a picture of the woman minus some clothing. Unlike Team Fortress that tracks your achievements there is no way too see how many times your character has ‘scored’ which is too bad. As this kept the game entertaining and through the slower parts in the story and kept me playing the game.

If you are a fan of any of Bioware’s RPG’s I highly suggest picking up the Witcher. It’s the best RPG I have played in a long time on the PC, probably since World of Warcraft. If you can get past the load times you will be presented with a engaging story, interesting combat and a solid game play experience.