Happy New Year to all the members of
Tactical Gamer, we had another great year of gaming in 2006, and 2007 looks just as good if not better... why? Well, let's take it one main game at a time folks:
World of Warcraft was the most popular, and most played game of 2006. With The Burning Crusade expansion due out this month, it will only get better, as the cap which kept characters from advancing beyond level 60 is removed.
Battlefield 2 was probably the most played tactical shooter of 2006, at least until Battlefield 2142 was released to the masses a couple of months ago.
Battlefield 2 continues to be supported here at
TG with the release of two excellent mods: Project Reality and Point of Existence 2.
Battlefield 2142, released not to long ago, grew to become one of the hot new titles at
TG. 2007 will probably bring an add-on or two, and hopefully some tasty mods as well.
Counterstrike had a bumpy year. The low points were mostly down to valve pushing unwanted (and either broken or simply bad) updates on the community. The high points were the influx of players each time those same updates caused other server operators to close their servers down, or take them private. The net result was that we ended 2006 with a very busy server.
In 2007, we have an organized season of matches to look forward to, where our best PCS players will be competing in VIP and hostage rescue maps. We should also start to see finished product from our small but dedicated in-house mapping team.
Natural Selection took quite a hit for most of 2006 as the game's main website remained a shell of its former self, owing to a hack in their forum software. This hack also took out main donation utility -- the Constellation Memberships -- which kept NS from hitting its full potential.
The forums and Constellation program came back in the second half of the year, and with it, renewed interest and availability. It wasn't long before the next version of Natural Selection was moved into public beta, and NS2 (based on the Source Engine) was announced to be in development.
A new competitive team, Hydra, has formed out of TGNS regulars, and competes in the ANSL. In the first season, they took the championship in the Open Division.
Tactical Gamer (as of the time of this writing) hosts both a NS 3.1 server and a NS 3.2b1 server. With the next beta release (if not before) we are likely to transfer over to the most recent release exclusively.
Classic games like
Ghost Recon and
Operation Flashpoint, along with all of the total conversions or modifications for the
Half-Life 2 series continue to have their core group of diehards, but their popularity took a hit after the Tactical Gamer Game Club ceased operation after a good run.
Ghost Recon was replaced by
Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter; however, the similarities between these titles do not go much beyond their names. Once GRAW was properly patched and the dedicated server software released, things kicked off big time. Then came the excellent set of new maps that we at
TG downloaded and installed on our server. GRAW continued to be big for a while, even having weekly boot camp sessions. But was it too little to late for GRAW? We know that the PC version was watered down compared to the Xbox 360 version, and now in 2007 we have GRAW2 being released for both the Xbox 360 and PC, (said to be in march). The first GRAW's popularity has waned lately, so GRAW2 will need to bring something exciting to the table if it is to be widely adopted here at
TG.
Operation Flashpoint was replaced by
Armed Assault, and with good reason.
OFP is a true tactical classic, but it's also more then 5 years old. There are so many mods and add-ons for
OFP that it can be a big pain to get a game going. Not to mention the fact that once a 6 hour war begins, no more players may join the action.
With Armed Assault, we get the same great gameplay as
OFP, but with new and improved graphics and sounds. And the biggest joy for Tactical Gamer is the ability to join in progress. SWEET!
Tactical Gamer was so excited about Armed Assault that we didn't even wait for the US release coming in March of 2007. We got our hands on the German and Czech versions just to get a head start. That tells you already how big this game will be once officially released in the US, with bug fixes and new features most likely added.
2006 was a great year for
SWAT4. Tactical Gamer had a hardcore group of tactical players getting together at least weekly for some of the best tactical action ever seen in a PC game. But as things happen, SWAT4 with the same dozen maps or so slowly died and lost the fanbase. Still no word on a SWAT5 but I can only hope for another version of this great tactical game.
Rainbow Six Lockdown was released right before 2006 with terrible reviews and opinions across the internet. Lockdown seemed to have ruined one of the greatest tactical series of game ever made. But at the end of 2006, we were saved.
Rainbow Six Vegas was just released, and has erased the bad memories of Lockdown. Rainbow Six Vegas is just getting started, but if UbiSoft ever gets off it's ass and releases the dedicated server software, I see this game being the next tactical game of choice. True it is the closest port from a console we have ever seen, but damn, it's just so much fun. Not as tactical as the classic Rainbow Six was/is, but a great mix of tactics and action. There is no doubt that the members of Tactical Gamer will play this game properly, with real tactics and teamwork. We'll give this title a good home.
2006 saw two versions of
America's Army released. Version 2.7 was released with multiplayer co-op. Unfortunately it had so many bugs and issues that it died and Tactical Gamer had to remove it's server. Version 2.8 was just released - included in this version is a map editor. So time will only tell if America's Army makes a comeback from it's 2.7 backstep. It's also rumored that 2007 is supposed to bring the all new, and completely updated 3.0 version of America's Army, using the Unreal 3.0 engine and adding an RPG element.
Speaking of RPG's, besides the biggest game here, World of Warcraft, there's also Neverwinter Nights 2. It's taken a slow start, but is picking up speed. It already has an online group forming and a dedicated server in place.
I didn't cover every game that we play here at Tactical Gamer, but the most active and popular ones were hit. We also support titles such as
Civilization 4 and
Company of Heroes (which is rumored to be getting an add-on in 2007 along with a DirectX 10 update that will blow your mind away if you have a DirectX 10 graphic card).
Let's not forget that the next chapter in the Half-Life 2 series is coming in 2007, along with the much anticipated
Team Fortress 2. We are also looking forward to
Unreal Tournament 2007,
Soldner 2,
Crysis, and what other game still to surprise us.
Yep, boyz and girlz, 2007 is going to be another great gaming year, especially here at Tactical Gamer. See you on the virtual battlefield.
Feel free to add any information about a game I didn't cover, or mention by replying to this post.
