I've only seen World in Conflict running on a couple of occasions. The first was at Nvidia's launch party in San Jose for the 8800-series graphics boards last November, and the second was during January's Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Both places weren't exactly conducive to the job of sitting down and really getting into a game. However, I had a chance recently to dive into the multiplayer alpha test of World in Conflict at the luxury of my desk (which isn't that luxurious), and all I can say is, "Wow." The best description for the game that I can think of is imagine if Battlefield 2 were a real-time strategy game, because with its fast-pace, modern combat, and intense combat, this is going to be a crazy multiplayer throw down.

On first impression, World in Conflict seems like a very pretty-looking version of your standard real-time strategy game. Since the game is about World War III between the United States and the old Soviet Union, you've got a mix of modern tanks, artillery pieces, helicopters, infantry, and more that you can control around the battlefield. But then I started to toy with it and that's when its clutches grabbed me.

First of all, this isn't a simple one-on-one multiplayer RTS game. You can have up to 16 players on a server, divided into teams of two. That means up to eight players a side. And the beauty of World in Conflict's design is the division of labor in the game. There are four primary combat arms in World in Conflict, and when you join a multiplayer game you have to select one, and that determines the units that you can bring into battle. Armor gives you tanks, air gives you helicopters, support gives you artillery, and infantry gives you grunts. Once you've selected a combat arm, you can begin to requisition units. If you select armor, that means choosing between different types of tanks, with the cost increasing for the heavier, more advanced models, such as M1 Abrams tanks.

The main limiter to all of this is the number of reinforcements points that you have, and World in Conflict wisely limits it so you can only control three or four expensive units or a slightly larger number of cheaper units at any one time. Doing it this way means many things. First, players will need to take on different roles if they want to win. If your side goes overboard on nothing but attack helicopters, they'll get chewed up if one or two players on the other side simply choose the support arm and load up on antiaircraft platforms. So your team needs a good balance of combined arms. Second, this means that you'll really have to work together, because if you don't support one another on the battlefield, you'll be chewed up quickly. This aspect of the game is reinforced by the small numbers at each player's command. It's awfully difficult to overwhelm the enemy if you only have a platoon (four tanks) of M1s.

Once you've made your unit selections, you hit the deploy button and one of the cooler little aspects of the game kicks in. You'll see a huge, lumbering air transport swoop down out of the skies and airdrop cargo to the ground. Once the cargo lands, your new units instantly appear, ready for your command. Sure, it's not realistic, but it's cinematic and a neat way to quickly usher new units into battle. Plus, you can easily gauge that enemy reinforcements are on the way by seeing enemy transports swooping down in the distance.

Once you have units on the ground, you've got a lot more to worry about than just destroying the enemy. Each map has a number of key strategic points on it, and each point is defined by at least two different nodes. For example, in order to control a bridge you need to control both ends of it, so that's two nodes right there; seizing just one end of the bridge isn't good enough. Or taking control of a town square means seizing three nodes that border it. Unless you can put units in each node simultaneously, then you do not control the point. And controlling strategic points is important for a number of reasons, because it's how you basically win the game.

The longer you can park units into all of a strategic point's nodes and maintain control, the better, because you'll automatically dig in at that position. First, you'll construct machine gun positions that can take out enemy infantry. Once those are complete, next are antitank positions. And once those are complete, you'll construct antiaircraft positions. At that point, the strategic point is fully built up in terms of defenses, and you have a couple of choices. You can sit back and enjoy the defensive advantages at that position, or you can move on to the next strategic point and not have to worry about the enemy just waltzing up and seizing your point as soon as you leave. However, again this illustrates the risk/reward element of the strategy. Building up these defensive positions takes a long time, which means that as long as your units are parked in the nodes they're basically out of the larger battle. So what do you do? Sit back and wait to build up the defenses, or maintain momentum and initiative by moving out immediately and attacking the enemy?

I'm only scratching the surface of the game at this point, too. There's still plenty to talk about, such as how the reinforcement system works, the tactical aid system and how it can deliver everything from aerial recon all the way up to tactical nuclear weapons, the rock-scissors-paper nature between the units, and more. And then there's the game's wonderful graphics that brings all this destruction to life. Seeing a warm glow of a nuclear explosion or the smoke trails of a rocket attack arcing through the air is incredible. After participating in online battles all day, it's safe to say that World in Conflict has quickly rocketed up my chart of must-play games this year.

I interrupt all this PS3 attention to bring you the latest PC update. Above is a photo of my MacBook Pro, which I bought in June. Little did I realize then just how pervasive Macs would become in the GameSpot offices. Takeshi already had a MacBook Pro, then I got mine. Last week, Tim T. picked up a MacBook, and today, Justin Calvert got the latest MacBook Pro. I know that Brian has been lusting in his heart for one, too. We've started a revolution over here. It's only a matter of time before we assimilate the others, too. You may now return to obsessing over a PlayStation 3, but we true computing fans know where the fun is.

Bethesda announced Rogue Warrior last Friday, a new military shooter based on the popular Rogue Warrior franchise by Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko, a former Navy Seal. We got our first look at it earlier this month. And, as part of that look, we were taken out in the Nevada desert and shown Navy Seals (both active-duty and retired) in action.

The Rogue Warrior himself, US Navy Commander Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko, retired. Founder of Seal Team 6.

Dan "T-Bone" Capel, retired Seal, gives us a briefing. Behind him is a simulated enemy outpost.

The Seals arrive and open fire.

But wait, the bad guys have an armored car!

And a 40mm grenade takes care of that.

Another guard suddenly appears and opens fire.

Until he's cut down by a couple of Marine snipers. Campers!

Okay, this may seem odd that I'm going to pimp a print competitor, but this has been on my mind for the past week. If you haven't heard already, Computer Gaming World, the industry's oldest publication, is no more. That's because it's been renamed Games for Windows, The Official Magazine, which is a really lame name in my opinion. However, the folks at CGW did a magnificent thing by putting the first 100 issues of CGW on the Internet for free, in PDF format. The first issue debuted in 1981, folks, before most of you, I suspect, were even born.

I can't help but get flashbacks by looking at some of these old magazines. If I had to pinpoint it, I think I realized I wanted to have the job that I have today because of all the times I spent in the Monroe Public Library reading CGW. Every month, a new issue would come in and I would be there later that day, reading it in the library. I've tried to remember what the very first issue I read was, but it's tough. The "Loom" issue, though, certainly jogs some of the neurons in my head. I loved reading those issues and thinking that it must be the coolest job in the world to be able to write for this kind of magazine.

In those days, CGW was independent, and it was much more of a hobbyist magazine. Then again, the entire gaming thing was a hobbyist kind of thing. Check out some of the early issues and you'll see as many ads for games that a couple of guys made in their garage as you do for mainstream titles. But what I really love is the fact that you could write for pages and pages and pages about all sorts of things, like the best tank tactics to use in M-1 Tank Platoon.

The other great thing about this archive is that you don't quite realize just how much of a time capsule each individual issue is. For instance, TIME has made some of its old issues available in digital format, and it's fascinating to go through them. Everything from the articles to the advertisements opens a window to what life was like in the past. And if you're old enough like me, you'll be taken back to the day when that issue was new. I got the same feeling reading some of these old CGW issues. It's amazing just how much I remember some of the ads in these. And it's even more amazing just how great the games were, even though they are downright crude in terms of today's production values.

There's lots to admire in these old issues, and I smile at the "old" way of taking screenshots. You literally put a camera on a tripod in front of a screen and took a picture. With film, cause digital was still a couple of decades away. Those early days must have been a lot of fun.

If there's a major GameSpot event going on, two things are certain. The first is that GameSpot Live is going to do an amazing job. The second is that I'm going to be walking around with my DSLR, snapping pictures of everything. So here's a taste of After Hours for ya.

Midnight Brown is in the house! Though this was taken during rehearsals.

Greg standing watch on a PS3. Yes, it exists. And yes, it's big.

The line builds outside of Pier 27. Inside, Rich and the gang were going through a walkthrough of all six hours of the stage show.

Walt of CNET IT showed up with his dog, Rosco. Cute little guy, he was an absolute hit with all the girls at the show.

The Stride CS Tournament underway. These guys were good, but the BF2 team on the other side of the show wiped the floor with us. That's what we get for not practicing.

This may surprise you, but I don't own a PC. Haven't for about four months, when a freak set of coincidence meant that my desktop and laptop both died at about the same time. Of course, I need to play PC games, but I took a very bold gamble and bought a Mac. Specifically, a MacBook Pro. And, four months into this crazy experiment, I find myself having no regrets whatsoever.

Sure, the guys like to haze me about it. When I suggest to Jeff that he buy a MacBook Pro, he says, without pause, "No, I need a computer, not a shiny toy." But I know I've got some of these guys interested. Brian's been inside an Apple store, lusting for a MacBook Pro. And Tim over in News is a closet Apple fan, too.

Switching to Intel was perhaps the smartest move Apple has finally made. I used to own a G3 Powerbook. Great machine, but the software selection was horrible. Apple bet on a bad architecture that not only couldn't match up with Intel and AMD, but that also relegated the platform to being a wallflower at the software prom.

Now that Macs use Intel processors, I can boot into Windows and play all my games without any issue. And games are the Mac's Achilles heel. (This despite the fact that Steve Jobs got his start with Atari!) But now I get the best of both worlds. My speedy, sleek, stylish Mac, and awesome PC games like Company of Heroes and Battlefield 2. Not bad for a shiny toy.

There are so many wonderful reasons to love Company of Heroes. If you haven't played it, you're really missing out. One of my old bosses used to say that the Holy Grail of gaming was to create a completely realistic and destructible environment. Well, it really looks like Company of Heroes has achieved the Holy Grail, and the result is one of the best games of the year.

Yet as much as I love both the wild multiplayer and the intense single-player gameplay, there's one thing about Company of Heroes that I love above all else: You don't need a CD in the drive to play the game. I can't emphasize just how much I love this feature. If I'm traveling, I can launch the game without worrying about having to pack the CD with me. Or if I've got 15 minutes to kill, I don't need to hunt around in my bag for the CD. It's as simple and easy as launching any other application on my PC.

The entire point of CD checks is to discourage "causal piracy," or the idea that the real danger isn't the organized crime rings out there that make millions on ripping off Hollywood and Silicon Valley, but rather the mainstream user who might be tempted to copy a game for their friends. However, at this point CD checks have become an annoyance to legitimate customers who play by the rules. Why do I have to have a CD when the entire game is installed on my hard drive? Why do I have to keep all my discs out of the box and available if I want to play games? If casual piracy is such a problem, then why don't software publishers who make much more valuable products use them as well?

The reason you don't have to put a CD in the drive to launch Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop is because the general consumer would scream bloody murder. It's inconvenient, it's unnecessary, and it's illogical. The only PC programs out there that require a CD check are games. Yet, as the rest of the industry has shown, it's possible to battle piracy without having to resort to CD checks. For instance, as annoying as product activation can be, it's a lot less hassle over the long run than having to haul out a CD every time you launch a game.

So why don't we scream bloody murder? I suspect it's because we've become used to CD checks over the years, not to mention all the conditioning of console games. If you want to play an Xbox or PS2 game, you put a disc in the console. However, PCs aren't consoles. Just because you need a disc in a console doesn't mean you should have to put a disc in a PC. It's time for PC publishers to wake up and smell the coffee. If they want to make PC gaming vibrant again, step one is to make better games. But step two should be to make the platform as user friendly as possible, and part of that means getting rid of the CD check. And hopefully Company of Heroes will blaze the way on this, too.

Jeez, has it really been nine months since I last posted in this thing? I've never been good with journals or diaries, but I'm really getting back into a bloggin' mood, thanks to my new digital SLR. So let's just pretend that, in this blog, I fell asleep under a tree and woke up nine months later. Shall we?

I know that I get unfairly labeled as the Trek nerd in the office. (Brad is about as big a Trek nerd as I am, and an even bigger Star Wars nerd). Anyway, it's a down day for me, because James Doohan, aka Mr. Scott from Star Trek, died this morning in Redmond, Washington, which is just south of my home town of Monroe.

I had a chance to meet with Mr. Doohan a decade ago, when I was on my college newspaper. The Pacific Science Center was opening up a Star Trek exhibit, and since he was the resident Trek cast member in Seattle, he came over to talk with the press and meet people. It was an awesome experience for me, because this is Scotty we're talking about. He told me some stories, as well as showed me his hand, which was missing a finger. Turns out that he was one of those guys who actually landed on a beach during D-Day, and the finger got shot off during combat. My respect for him went up 10 fold, after that. Here was a guy who had seen it all, put it all on the line, and been a real hero, as opposed to the celebrity heroes that we worship today. The only "bullets" that Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt have dodged have all been fake. If you carefully watch old Star Trek episodes, you notice that they always manage to hide his maimed hand.

Anyway, rest in peace, Mr. Doohan. You've earned it.

Right now, I'm hot, tired, hungry, and trapped in a room filled with lots of noise and people, and I wouldn't have it any other way. There's something awesome about E3 prior to the show, where people are rushing to get the booths complete and staff (including booth babes) are getting their instructions. It's almost a pity that we'll actually have to open to the rest of the industry tomorrow. It's like our own little world in here so far.

The Halo 2 update is going out today, and the one thing that I truly hope is added in this patch are harsher penalties for quitting out of a multiplayer game early. I didn't mind all the exploits, such as being able to grab a flag through a wall, anywhere as much as I hate those idiots who quit out of a match as soon as their team gets behind. It completely screws the rest of us trying to fight back, and it's worse when the idiot who quits is the guy who was hosting the damn game, so you have to sit there for 45 seconds while Xbox Live reconfigures the match.

My personal feeling is that gamers should be banned from playing for 5 minutes if they quit early, and they should be penalized a full rank point. If they serially offend, such as quit 2 or more games in the span of an hour, they get banned for a day.

All the stuff that the patch addresses is nice in terms of fixing some of the cheating. But the biggest problem with Halo 2 is the fact that most people can live with the cheating (after all, they can cheat back), but they can't live with huge imbalances in team numbers. Try coming back from behind and capturing the darn flag if you're team is down 2 or 3 team members against the defenders.

Like many GameSpot editors, I got my PSP yesterday, and it's just a slick machine. Totally amazing. I definately plan on playing a few games, like FIFA, but my main interest in the PSP is as a media platform. Ryan Davis already showed me an episode of Lost running on his PSP, and it looked amazing. I'm also going to take the TV programs that I record on my PC already and compress them down to PSP format, so I can watch them on the go.

However, while I was walking around last night I realized just what a technogeek I've become. I've got no less than four major pieces of electronics on me at all times. First there's my GSM cell phone, which I can use anywhere in the world. (That came in useful when I called my family atop the London Eye.) Then there's my PocketPC, which I use for books, music, web surfing, email, and such when I'm on the go. The PocketPC has built-in wifi and bluetooh, so I can surf the web if I'm near a public wifi hotspot, or I can simply use bluetooth to create an Internet connection through my phone. Next is my laptop, which I use for work purposes, like when I need to take notes at a meeting or write something on the bus. And then there's my PSP.

It's become so bad that I no longer have a good fallback plan if I trip. Since I normally pack everything in my left-side pockets or my laptop bag, the plan is to fall on my right side if I ever trip up. However, now that I'm running out of pockets, I really can't fall anywhere without the risk of landing on something fragile.

The other problem is that I'm now going to have pack four different chargers when I travel, like when I go to E3 this May. One for my phone, my PocketPC, my PSP, and my laptop. I wish hardware manufacturers would get together and create a universal standard for power adapters, because trying to charge so many different batteries is becomming the bane of modern life.

And then there's the fear that if I ever get mugged, I'm going to be out a small fortune. Oh well.

As a University of Washington grad, yesterday (Sunday, March 13) was easily one of the greatest sporting days of my life. And I was there when the UW was at the peak of the college football world, but that just doesn't compare to the thrill of seeing the UW men's basketball team secure a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, otherwise known as The BIg Dance, March Madness, etc, etc. What you have to understand is that this is literally an example where a bunch of kids who were utterly flailing about helplessly two years ago got their act together and turned themselves into a winner. UW was 10-17 two years ago, and they were 0-5 in conference play just last season, and were about 1 second from going 0-6 when little Nate Robinson hit a miracle 3 to send that game into overtime. And just like that, nothing was the same ever since. In the span of 14 months, they went from conference "doormats" (which is what the Oregon students chanted) to getting a #1 seed in the NCAA tourney. Wow. Just wow.

So yeah, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the next few days. As anyone who follows college basketball knows, anything can happen in the Big Dance, and a #1 seeding can be as much a chain around your neck as it is a boon. There are expectations now, and if you stumble even a little bit the entire college basketball world will come down on you. But no matter what happens, you've still got to admire the tenacity, drive, and fight in that team.

Remember how a couple of years ago, wags proclaimed that the traditional one-hour scripted drama on television was dead? Reality television was more popular and far cheaper to produce. And yet, the disappointing (and in some cases, crashing and burning) of some reality shows this season (The Will, The Rebel Billionaire) has put a damper on the reality movement, which couldn't come too soon for me. Meanwhile, the scorching performance of Desperate Housewives and Lost have the networks scrambling back to find the next big dramas.

And that got me thinking about gaming genres. Conventional wisdom is that adventure games, simulations, and space games are all but dead. Heck, even turn-based strategy games have seen better days. But what has this left us? We're in a glut of first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, and online role-playing games, and that's just not healthy. When you get down to it, there are only so many ways that you can shoot a guy, or there are only so many times that you can gather wood before it just gets tiresome.

I think the problem with conventional wisdom is that it has become rigid and inflexible. It has almost become a matter of blind faith now. Just because publishers got burned in the past doesn't mean they shouldn't try again. That's just insane. There are talented and smart people out there who have new ideas for these genres, but the only thing that publishers focus on are shooters and RTS games. And that's understandable, because publishers need to make money. The one critique that I have with most fanboys and fangirls is when they diss a publisher or studio for only caring about making money. I want to ask these people how they pay their bills. Yes, money is a very important thing.

But even Hollywood studios know that variety is a good thing. The major studios use the money from blockbusters to pay for all the movies that didn't make money, but also to fund Oscar bait movies, the kind of low-budget movies that attract talented writers, actors, and directors tired of trying to figure out how to blow things up every 30 seconds. These movies generally garner critical raves and create good buzz. More importantly, they add needed variety to American moviegoing.

Publishers will always have their triple-A projects, but they should experiment with smaller titles. All you need is for one to take off and you could reopen whole new genres.

I was browsing in Borders Friday night and, on a whim, picked up Wonderfalls on DVD. What a truly amazing television show. I love TV, but I can't watch reality crap at all. Sitcoms bore the hell out of me. Most dramas suck. So what do I watch? There are interesting shows out there, if you can find them. Wonderfalls is one of them, and it's a damn crime how Fox treated this show. The network aired only four episodes, with each episode on a different night and time, so it was almost impossible to find.

It's almost pathological how Fox greenlights these kinds of shows only to snuff them after a few episodes. It's almost as if there are two sets of executives over there: the first set likes to create wonderful, original, creative, and intelligent shows (Wonderfalls, Futurama, Arrested Development) while the second set can't wait to kill them as soon as they start airing.

Anyway, it'd be easy to dismiss Wonderfalls as a Joan of Arcadia wannabe, but that would be a mistake. (For one, the pilot for Wonderfalls was originally shot way back in early 2001, which means it predates Joan.) It's smart, funny, and charming, but without the schmaltz or treacle that infuses most "family-friendly" dramas. Give it a try if you haven't seen it.

Does anyone have a computer where the Windows clock keeps running too fast? About a month ago, the Windows clock on desktop started to run a bit fast. If you leave it alone for 24 hours, the clock will be about 2 minutes fast. This is a problem, because my PC is my Digital Video Recorder that I record TV shows with, and so I miss the ending of shows because the clock is out of sync. I keep resetting it using the "syn with Internet server" option, but it just keeps running fast. At first I thought it was an overheat issue, so I blew out all the dust in my case. I've scanned for viruses and spyware. I suppose the last thing left is to try and reset the CMOS.

Not much going down. Just reading The Great Influenza, about the 1918 flu epidemic that killed an estimated 100 million people around the world. And this during a time when the world population was barely over a billion. Really fascinating stuff.

Wow. I downloaded the first major Rome: Total War patch last night and it feels like a whole new game. Now, the unpatched game is a great game. I did give it a 9.1, after all. But this new patch improves the game across the board. The AI seems a lot smarter, a lot of the tiny little bugs and quirks have been fixed, and there are things I hadn't seen before happening now. I started playiing as the scipii and I immediately went after Carthage, and it's been a tug of war. I landed in North Africa and took a city and the AI immediately launched a counterattack. And then it started blockading my ports. This is going to be a fun slugfest. Definately get the patch, and if you've been thinking about Rome, you should give the game a try.

There's a Taco Bell commercial on television that's about the company's new value menu. Basically, the gist of the ad is that people are experiencing a strange new sensation after eating at Taco Bell: they're full. Now, I almost never eat at Taco Bell, but lately I've been having a similar feeling about my PC. In terms of hardware, I'm feeling a sensation I haven't felt in a long time. I'm actually content with what I've got.

Now, you've got to understand that I'm one of the complete tech geeks at GameSpot. I'm always bugging James or Sarju about some piece of hardware. Last year, I couldn't go a month without buying something new, such as new Logitech 5.1 speakers, or a new motherboard, a new CPU, new RAM, a new video card, a new case, a laser printer, a PDA, a laptop, a new router, and so on and so forth. Well, apparently all that purchasing has finally paid off, as I've finally got a setup that is fully complete.

Without going into the geeky details, I can run any game on the market or coming this year at high detail with no sweat. But that's only part of what my PC can do. I built my own version of a Windows Media PC, but using third-party hardware and software. My PC is also my TV, as well as my digital video recorder. My DVR does everything TIVO does, and more. I can watch TV, pause live TV, playback recorded TV, burn episodes to DVD, or compress episodes down and watch them on my PocketPC. And because my TV tuner card also has a built-in hardware encoder, I can play games while TV records in the background. I used to never watch that much TV, but now, I can record all the shows I'm interested in and watch them on my PDA during my bus ride to and from work.

I'm basically in tech heaven right now. It's going so well that I can walk into computer stores and not feel the need or urge to buy anything. After years searching for the perfect system, I've finally got it. Now I can save money for other worthwhile things. Oh, yeah, I imagine I'll need to upgrade eventually, but right now I've got enough computational horsepower to keep me happy until the next big hardware and software advances.

While it's still (barely) January, I wanted to muse about PC gaming in 2004. Yes, it was by far an amazing year, one unlike we've seen in quite a while. However, while I know that there are plenty of folks out there who think it was the "Greatest Year Ever" for PC gaming, I'm not so sure. For one, it's always tempting to label the latest thing as the "greatest" or the "biggest" or the "best." But for another, I still think the greatest year ever for PC gaming was 1994.

One thing that you'll notice about most of the big PC games in 2004 is that they are all sequels. Half-Life 2. Doom 3. Rome: Total War. The Sims 2. While most of those are truly great games, they're also felt familiar. Go back to 1994 though and you're in the heady age of PC gaming, with new genres and gamestyles emerging. 1994 saw: Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, which represented the birth of real-time strategy; Master of Orion, still one of the greatest turn-based games ever; Star Wars: TIE Fighter, yes, it's a sequel, but still one of the greatest action games ever; Wing Commander III, another sequel, but an amazing blend of high-end technology and Hollywood; 1942: the Pacifc Air War, one of the great WW2 simulations; and last but not least, a little strategy game called X-COM: UFO Defense.

TIE Fighter, X-COM, and Master of Orion are still in my Top 10 games of all time. And TIE Fighter and X-Com are pretty much in the Top 3. Those games combined gave me hundreds of wonderful hours of gameplay, which is far more than most of last year's best games. Seriously, having played through Half-Life 2 a couple of times, I have no urge to ever pick it up again. Ditto with most of the other 2004 games. That's why 1994 still remains the greatest PC gaming year for me.