These are my Top 5 games on any platform this year. Being a transition year between console generations has been tougher than I expected on the release cycle. Early 2006 and summer 2006 were particularly sparse for releases, leading to a high number of titles launching in the Christmas season.
On a personal note 2006 was a year where I played very little between the months of January and May. Finishing up that degree seems so long ago but it involved going cold turkey for several months to get it done. With new releases on the level I mentioned this resulted in only needing to catch up on a small number of titles luckily enough.
This list is composed of games released in 2006 which I played, so anything which I didn’t spend time with is not included. I don’t see this as a problem as games which I don’t choose to play wouldn’t have made this by their very nature anyway. Argue all you like by the lack of Zelda Twilight Princess but it simply didn’t move the genre forward and ultimately was the reason for me not getting a Wii.
The two games perched far and away at the top of this list did move their respective genres forward. Both Gears of War and Oblivion are huge technical and creative achievements that have set the bar obscenely high for what games can do. If you play any two games this year it must be these.
1. Gears of War
2. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
3. Company of Heroes
4. Rainbow Six: Vegas
5. Neverwinter Nights 2
I will be posting my picks for the best games, movies, etc of 2006 in a while. I started this last year and I think it’s a great way, although totally clich√©d, to look back on the last 12 months and put everything in perspective. Last year I did a runners up and overall winner type system, this year I may do a top 5 depending on how close I feel it is. Look for this over the next few days.
Overnight it would seem that the popular web based news aggregator NewsGator has added new features to it’s service that make it frustrating and unwieldy to use.
Many people such as myself consume a large proportion of our daily news through the service. There is a lot of junk out there whether it be redundant news items or just simply things that don’t interest me. NewsGator used to display the entire contents of a feed, allowing hundreds of articles and posts to be quickly scanned through and stopped at if they peaked my interest.
To hamper this, in a clear effort to save bandwidth, they have restricted the length of all items to 3 lines and added a 
icon next to each entry which allows it to be expanded to show the full content. Right now I have 412 unread items in NewsGator and I do not plan on clicking on that little icon 412 times.
The great thing about NewsGator was it treated feeds like a river and not the email style system so many of their competitors were using. This is a massive step back and judging by a quick Technorati search I am not the only one annoyed by this.
For a temporary solution to this I recommend logging into the UK version of NewsGator which is held back a few versions from the main site. But when the update hits there you can guarantee I will be switching to something else. Any recommendations?
Managed to get some time in with the new TV (JVC LT-32DX7BJ) over the weekend. It’s now plainly clear to me that if you don’t have an HDTV with Xbox Live Gold there is no point getting a 360. You’re only getting a fraction of the experience if you don’t - seriously. And for that reason you should get both rather than missing out.
I fired up a Gears multiplayer match to see how it was looking and I found it quite hard to concentrate on the match as I was noticing details I hadn’t seen before. Also having an overall larger, sharper view made the game easier to play after getting used to it. I can definitely see the guys with HDTVs having in edge online against those that don’t.
Being the only HD device I own I also tried out some movies via the 360. It upscales standard def stuff nicely but if you have a low quality source prepare for it to be exposed. DVDs are fine but if you backup to Xvid on a single CD prepare for a shock. Of course all this wasn’t playing natively but via TVersity which transcodes to a compatible format from your PC.
Aside from the general HD stuff the TV has excellent features in other areas. The VGA input is extremely handy and the best way to get the perfect resolution for the screen. It also allows you to tweak the position of the image on the screen if it’s off slightly, something many TVs leave out. Colour and brightness are good and there are so many levels and tweaks that can be done behind the scenes that it would be hard not to get the picture you seek.
As for normal TV (Sky, Freeview, etc) it seems to handle that as well as most other similar displays. Essentially stuff shot in HD or wide-screen with a decent bit rate even when broadcast in SD will look great. As for everything else (low bit rate channels, old movies) it will look shockingly bad. I don’t even want to think about VHS on this thing (or a Wii without component cables for that matter ;-)).
So a very solid display with some handy features. Highly recommended if you have a lot of different devices and sources that need hooking up, no matter what strange image is being sent it can usually be tweaked to look as nice as possible.
Is anyone going to the XNA Launch Event at Warwick Uni on Wednesday 13th December (next week)? I’d love to go so if you need a ride let me know.
Peter Molyneux will be there so we can pester him about Fable 2 ;-).
We popped into John Lewis over the weekend hoping to pick up a new TV (JVC LT32DX7BJ) only to be told it wouldn’t be available till Friday. Why must I wait for my HD goodness!
Seems like a good display and if you go into the store its ¬£200 less than on the website even though it’s probably going to be delivered from the same warehouse. It will be nice to finally get a new TV, we completely skipped getting a regular wide-screen so we are about due.
It’s only recently that they became viable with the reduction in LCD prices and more HD content being available either via Sky HD or the Xbox 360. Not that we are subscribing to Sky HD yet - that’s a whole other investment.
I’ll have some time to play with it over the weekend so I’ll post my thoughts up when I get the chance. Gears on insane difficulty in HD sounds good to me!
Congratulations are due to Nex on getting their debut album out the door. I’ve known Ed for a long time (birth) and he and the rest of the band have worked extremely hard and sacrificed a lot to achieve this. As I’m sure those who have listened to the album will agree it’s really paying off. It’s a strong mixture of metal and punk stylings with catchy riffs and a raging pace. Particular highlights for me include text speak sung in chorus (yes, it’s true) and Ed laying down the best ROARS I’ve heard in ages.
Nice one guys, See you on the tour!
nexmusic.com or myspace.com/nexmusic
I am very under the weather today, and have been shuddering and feeling bunged up all day. But for 43 minutes none of that seemed to matter or bother me in the slightest as Battlestar Galactica was on.
I know I have posted many times about how good it is, but once again this week it proved it’s head and shoulders above anything else around today, or, dare I say it - ever.
If you have never seen it, never considered watching it or have just dismissed it in the past I urge you to seek it out on DVD, TV, the internet or whatever and enjoy. You are truly doing a disservice to yourself if you let this one slip by. Seriously this time folks. Just watch it.
Finally caved in this week and bought an iPod, more specifically the brand spanking new 8GB nano you see on the right. Once I finally got over the fact I dont actually want to watch videos or need the extra space there was only one choice. The new ‘pods’ coming out and my new commute starting just happend to cross paths on the same week :-D.
Much better than the old nano due to its scratch resistance but sadly that doesn’t extend to the click wheel which is already showing some damage. From what I have seen of other ipods that goes virtually smooth after heavy use so it may be an inevitable problem.
In my opinion this is THE device for podcasts. I got so used to the way I used to do things (nomad/phone) I had no idea how the iPod handled podcasts. The fact I can listen to something then whack it in the dock and carry on listening in iTunes from where I left off is a godsend.
iTunes 7 has come a long way but it’s still handling video like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s fine for audio but I’m sticking with Democracy for that side of things now.
All in all highly recommended and a good update to the range.
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