I have recently played Ultima 8 (again). Who played this game before will surely understand me, when I say: I love it and I hate it. It is the last game of a classic Ultima series and as the first one, it creates quite a good looking 'feel 3D' engine. But the game itself has a fantastic story (as most of The Ultima series games by the way). The story begins exactly when the Ultima 7 ends. Avatar is cast to the world of Pagan, and he has to find his way out of there to help Britannia, which is (once again) under attack. But you have to feel the story by Yourself of course :-). You can try the game here: http://www.freegameempire.com/games/Ultima-8

Now, why I love it? It is because of the world it creates, the way Avatar conquers the world of Pagan (Without any real knowledge by the way. It reminds me that there are no too much clever people there), a graphics (well, it is quite old today, but it used to be something) and of course the great story that is always part of Ultima series games.

And why I hate it? I always get pretty angry playing the game. Controlling the avatar is dedicated to mentally strong people, especially when you don't have a patched version. You will probably die many times stucked behind a tree or in the corner, unable to jump over a rock 2 inches high or my favorite; you will die countless times in the bottomless water pool 5 feet wide.

As you can see (and we are slowly reaching the end of my analysis), this is simple the game you cannot miss. Some of Ultima fans will only hate this game, without the love part I think. But it will always have a small place in my collection.

Don't know if you've noticed but there are now plenty of tools for virtualization (abstracing of computer resources). What does that mean ? Simple on your single physical computer you can have multiple virtual computers. And under the virtual computer you can have installed any operation system you like - linux, dos, windows. This is usefull for many reasons - for example if you want to try some program but you want keep your operating system clean or you're unsure about the program source - you can run it under virtual machine without any risk (catching virus, messing os). And - most  importantly - you can run old games on it. So how you can do it ?

• Download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

• Install it (installation is really simple (just Next - Next - Next)

• Run it

• You should see something like this - select "New"

• Select "Create a virtual machine" and "Next"

• Name your virtual machine (Windows95 is cute) and "Next"

• Left operating system as "Other" and click "Next"

• Left recommended ram (128MB by default) and click "Next"

• Select "A new virtual hard disk" and click "Next"

• Select disk location and adjust size (5000MB for more comfort) and "Next"

• Click on "Finish"

• Now insert CD with your Windows95 to your CD-rom drive (CD-rom drive will attached by default in your virtual PC), select Windows95 VM and click on "Start"

That's it, after installing of Windows 95 you can run the game inside :) - such as Pacific General

If you're fan of turn-based hexagon strategies you'll have to check this one out: http://www.wesnoth.org/ Game is set in fantasy world so you can command dwarves, elves, undead and of course human troops (much like the classic game fantasy general), not to mention you've got opportunity to hook up with extremely attractive princess (you have to fight her several times before :). Rules are pretty complex, yet easy to understand - every kind of terrain has different defense modifiers and movement penalties. Units have different types of attacks and different vulnerabilities. For example skeletons are vulnerable to blunt and holy damage while they are pretty hard to harm in any other way, elevens gets defense bonuses when ending their turn in forest, mounted units can do double damage when charging (but then they also take double damage from retaliation strike) etc. What is really great about this game is changing of night and day - chaotic units such as undead or robbers are strongest in the night, while lawful units are strongest in bright day, so you have to plan ahead - attacking undead fort in deep night is nearly suicidemission even for experienced veteran units, while taking them down in bright day is a piece of cake. Also for a game made by community (so it is totally free - really) it has got really good graphics & music background.

I know many of you people are fans of games like Railroad Tycoon or Transport Tycoon. There were the best. But if you're looking for something more complex I have a tip for you - Simutrans. It's a freeware transportation simulator. It's being written by bunch of crazies (read people who willingly spend their free time by writting a code - which reminds me of someone). Today it is far more complex than the old tycoons though grafic is nearly the same as in old transport tycoon and it is still developing. When I was playing this game for first time I was amazed - however the game was only for few choosen people as you had to configure .ini file to get the game running Now you can run and configure it only with single click as they made a lot of work on user friendliness.

You can download the simutrans on http://www.simutrans.com

One joke on the end :

Two guys are talking - "Hey have you heard ? The cars will push the trains away."

"Really ? I have know one guy - he tried it and he is still lying in the hospital."

Today we've launched a blog engine.

It was quite some work - we decided to integrate BlogEngine.NET which is popular and full featured and hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Next updates of our site will be aimed to improve MyGames - we'll enable running games and downloading games directly from the MyGames screen.

Then we're planning to allow you to contribute by adding comments and reviews to games (it's a shame we don't have that yet).

Enjoy !