... or whatever holiday you do or don't celebrate today, Dear Reader. Today was full of hustle, bustle, and holiday cheer around our house, as relatives from both sides of the family came in for a great day of presents and hanging out. The surprise hit was the boardgame Dominion, which got a lot of play even from people in my family who aren't usually much into games. I highly recommend it -- a very interesting design and a fast play (though the stated 30 mins on the box is wildly optimistic).

Key video game loot for me included Last Remnant, Dragon Quest IV, and the latest Destroy All Humans!, all of which should get some good playtime next week with another week off for me (at least assuming I'm not called in for any last minute disasters at work). I suspect that Mirror's Edge and CoD: World At War will be getting purchased with holiday gift cards soon...

Crispy Gamer is running a 3-part "behind the scenes" piece on Ensemble Studios, what with our impending shutdown and all. Very well written so far (only the first two parts are up as of this post).

http://www.crispygamer.com/features/2008-12-16/age-of-ensemble-part-1-a-titan-passes.aspx
http://www.crispygamer.com/features/2008-12-17/age-of-ensemble-part-2-perfecting-the-formula.aspx

Personally, AOM is my favorite of our games rather than Age 2, though I think both are great. But AOM was my first full start-to-finish game with the company, and my first RTS, so it definitely has a soft spot in my heart. I still love the way the God Powers work in that game, as well as the feel of the combat with the Myth Units. Of course, giant Trebuchet battles and Castles were pretty fun too.

After more than 9 years at the company AOM, and the Titans expansion, were the only two games where I was on the team for the entire process. In the end I actually spent more time working on games that eventually got killed for MS political reasons than actual shipped products (though punctuated with helping get our other games out the door). At least Halo Wars, while another game I just came on at the end to help out with, is shaping up nicely so I won't be leaving with a 5-year unfinished MMO project as my last legacy with Ensemble.

Fortunately I can start to see a how my post-Ensemble future is starting to shape up and I couldn't be more excited about it... hopefully I'll have something more to say on that in the next few months.

Ok, I'm cheating in this category, since it will be for the best wargames that *I* found this year, since apparently despite being a hardcore strategy gamer and WW2 buff, I missed out on some of the classic series.

Case-in-point, I'm going here with HPS Sims' / John Tiller's Panzer Campaign games. They certainly aren't brand new, though the series is numerous, with something like 17 (!) releases in the series. They aren't flashy, they aren't fast, but they are full of the hex-based, detailed goodness that got me into wargaming in the first place. Strong AI, at least as far as I can tell -- despite loving this kind of game I'm generally awful at them. The graphics are old-school but totally serviceable, but it's the gameplay and the scenario design that really carries these games. There is a lot of love of history here, and it comes through in all the little details. In addition to the monster thousands-of-units full campaigns they all have a pretty wide variety of smaller scenarios to cut your teeth on.

Panzer Campaigns: Stalingrad '42
Panzer Campaigns: Market Garden '44
Panzer Campaigns: Tobruk '41

... among many, many others. Sadly HPS hasn't joined the modern age of direct downloads (something that Matrix and GamersGate / Paradox have completely spoiled me on). Aside from that they are relatively modern games, at least in that they work on Vista, support widescreen and high resolutions, etc. Now, those may not sound like cutting edge technologies, but believe me, for turn based wargames they certainly are.

Note you can get them a lot cheaper through someplace like NWS Online, rather than direct from HPS.

Honorable Mention goes out to SSG's "Kharkov: Disaster on the Donets" which did in fact come out this year. It's the most polished of SSG's game series, and despite some annoying limitations (no widescreen!) the game is quite playable once you learn your way around the interface and it is probably one of the best looking hex-based wargame I've played in a while. However, it has one very critical flaw -- there is only one scenario to play, and it is ginormous. If they had a variety of smaller campaigns, like the excellent Decisive Battles in Normandy, I'd have been all over it. Also, it has a name that is impossible not to make fun of.

Time of year for these kind of lists...

No question about my pick for the best expansion pack this year -- Europa Universalis III: In Nomine.

While I think Hearts of Iron 2 is my favorite of the Paradox Plaza games, EU3: In Nomine finally makes it a decent race. This is particularly notable after how flat the vanilla EU3 game was, which really didn't do it for me. But In Nomine (combined with the 2nd expansion, Napoleon's Ambition) adds much needed structure, UI, and gameplay that the base game was lacking. It's still a bit ugly in comparison to the older 2D Paradox games, but there's now a game there worth looking past the first-gen 3D. If you already have EU3 and were disappointed, that probably means you love the core Paradox gameplay and/or this slice of history -- both of which are much, much better served by the addition of In Nomine.

Honorable mention goes out to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, which is easily the best new content for World of Warcraft. They've got their process down to a nice shine, yet aren't afraid to still try out a few new things. It doesn't change the base game, but it certainly provides more of the (great) same.

Not-so-honorable mention goes out to Sims 2: FreeTime and Sims 2: Apartment Life, both of which I would really love to play, but are a bridge too far for the aging Sims 2 engine. Load times between neighborhoods are approaching 3-5 minutes on my high-end gaming rig, and that's just beyond my threshold of pain. Here's to hoping Sims 3 gets that problem right.

Finally had a few hours of kid-asleep time to play some Left 4 Dead. Warning, minor spoilers ahead.

I *love* zombie games. Resident Evil and Dead Rising are probably among some of my favorite games of all time. But L4D just isn't doing it for me. Maybe it's one of those things where I can't accept the game that is, because of the game I want it to be. But I don't want to be playing co-op with random people in my intense zombie horror game -- a feeling confirmed when my attempts to play online were full of idiots, disconnectors, and resource hogs. I didn't even have to get to the verbally abusives and team killers to have my experience ruined.

Ok, so after failing to communicate to people several times about any kind of a plan for surviving the final mission of the first campaign, we keep dying over and over. So I give up and go to single player, which is maybe where I should have started but the UI and the whole game vibe so strongly pushes towards online co-op. The experience is still pretty good, but after dying yet again on that same final mission of the first campaign, frustrating factor is going up. Mind you this is a game with a 15 minute weather-the-storm following a 5-10 minute regular mission area, and failure = restart. At least the game is usually pretty fair amount when you get knocked down or incapacitated someone else can save you. On this attempt at the final heli rescue, a giant "Tank" zombie shoulder-rushes me and knocks me all the way off the building = instant death. Total shelf moment for me.

I can see how this game might be fun -- it is well executed in many ways and the co-op vibe is kind of neat. The tension can be pretty high, and I love the way there is a lot of variance to how the missions play out. But at the end of the day, it feels like zombie mod for Rainbow 6 or something, rather than the zombie experience I know, love, and want to have more of.

So I guess I'm stuck waiting hoping they do a Dead Rising 2.