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I have been browsing game retailers today making a list of games I want to play. Its not fair - there are some excellent titles just over the horizon and do I have the time to play?!?!? Bah as if :) To make matters worse, my gaming rig needs to be retired. A complete upgrade has been on the cards for a while but I have been umming and ahhing trying to decide what to buy into. I first started thinking about this a year(!) ago but have been delaying and delaying, there has always been something exciting on the horizon stopping me. Whether is was the release of Dx10 cards, the Dx10.1 revision, Penryn, 1333 MT/s FSBs, ATi/AMD X2xxx series and now (finally) AMD's purported Core 2 Duo Killer and the x3xxx. At the moment a G0 Stepping Q6600 looks like a great buy along with a 8800 GT but it would be sheer lunacy to dive in with AMD releasing its products in just a few days. It has come to a head now as I can't play recent games at my native monitor resolution (1280x1024 - its a 17" and I will likely upgrade that as well.) I don't really want to ruin games like Crysis or World in Conflict by playing them at their minimal settings so I have been holding off. It is a double edged sword however, since there is so much being released soon and so much good hardware already available, its hard to know when to take the plunge and hand over your hard earned money....

So without further ado let me outline games which I am particularly excited about at the moment.

#1 In what looks like a cross between CounterStrike and Tom Clancy's GRAW, Call of Duty 4 looks simply stunning. If you have not yet seen any trailers / previews then I highly recommend checking out the following videos.

I simply cannot wait and am annoyed my current system wont let me play it properly....

#2 Whilst graphically Crysis looks amazing, I was rather disappointed to witness the strength of the Korean soldiers in the demo. I play all my games in the hardest difficulty setting (No HUD and everyone speaks Korean baby -oh yeah!) and whilst I enjoyed the feeling of vulnerability coupled with the god complex thats inescapable in Crysis's nano suit, it was disappointing that I could unload 10-20 rounds into the chest of a Korean soldier and have them not even flinch. The game is very much geared to getting up close and personal where you can either break their necks or sever their heads from close range (which works beautifully) but in light of this, the demo did indicate a lack of sophistication of medium range. The combination of exceptional cinematic atmosphere, graphics and physics should make this game an instant hit I just hope the 'body armour' the soldiers wear is toned down for the final release.

#3 Taking a break from the time honored mechanics of real time strategy games, World in Conflict is as refreshingly different as it is back breaking for modern hardware. The lack of traditional base building / micromanagement is refreshing if a little odd at first. Thankfully the bullet tracers that looked like Storm Troopers laser blasts have been fixed and now the game looks a lot more realistic, although I still am hanking for the first person view demonstrated in the early videos of WIC.

Watch the above trailer and tell me you don't long for a first person shooter that intense :) I played the demo (on 'low' settings - BAH) and this is a game I am definitely coming back to once I have upgraded.

#4 Spore. Does anything need to be said about this game? From the initial developers conference video that we all saw years ago (yes the fourty minute one) to the more recent videos, Spore looks simply fantastic and is beautiful in its simplicity and power. I simply cannot wait for this game to come out so that my weird guys can abduct your weird guys :)

#5 Medieval Total War II has been out for a while but I still have not had a moment to play it. I have put a lot of hours into Rome: Total War and really enjoyed it and the thought of an upgrade to that engine that applies per character details is very appealing.

#6 F.E.A.R Perseus Mandate is coming out over here in two days. I still have mixed feelings about it but I will definitely be playing it. I just hope its a lot better than the first 'sequel.'

#7 Prey came out a while ago and curiously its now available at the bargain price of just £5 from Game! Whilst based on the now aging Doom 3 engine, the game has a refreshing blend of old style puzzle solving that I found quite fun in the demo. That coupled with the brutal killing efficiency and the 'walking on all surfaces' seen in the demo SP mode made me thirsty for more of the same. Multiplayer was limited to classic deathmatch but was still worth trying out.

I have been playing around with Xfire recently as well - add me : T0TM5 is my username. Now I just have to figure out where on my site I stick the damn widget :)