The end of each year sees a deluge of new game titles vying for your holiday shopping dollar. Here are 10 PC games generating the most buzz, most of them delivering the goods promised, and one not.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X
From: Microsoft
Price: $59.99 Cdn | $49.99 USD
Rated E for Everyone

A flagship title for the new "Games for Windows" brand, Microsoft's Flight Simulator X does the flag proud in this ready-for-a-flyby map of the entire planet, featuring exhaustively detailed renderings of the major airports found thereon (and all the small airports too, albeit less detailed) that you can fly to, from, over, around etc. in this aviation buff's version of heaven on earth, or 30,000 feet above it.

Battlefield 2142
From: EA
Price: $59.99 Cdn | $49.99 USD
Rated T for Teen

Electronics Arts has had great success with the battlefield games, which allow dozens of players at a time to act out plausible warfare scenarios in huge virtual locales and using all equipment made available - tanks, truck, choppers, gunboats, jet fighters and army boots inclusive. Battlefield 2142 looks to take the thoroughly engaging gameplay into the future where the mandates are the same but the vehicles and weaponry used is way tricked out and sci-fi cool.

GTR 2 FIA GT Racing Game
From:10tacle Studios
Price: $29.99 Cdn | $19.99 USD
Rated E for Everyone

Though PC's aren't really known for their driving games anymore, 10tacle looks to change all that with GTR 2 FIA GT Racing Game, a visually dazzling, meticulously detailed, technically astounding driving/racing simulator for both hardcore Motorsport aficionados and aspiring ones, the latter thanks to a sophisticated yet easy-to-understand driving school mode.


Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
From: LucasArts
Price: $39.99 Cdn | $29.95 USD
Rated T for Teen

Not just a chance to relive the Star Wars saga as a real-time strategy (RTS) game but a chance to re-envision it, Star Wars: Empire at War and the new expansion pack, Forces of Corruption, draws on a wealth of long time ago, far far away galactic lore and lets you micro-manage all the skirmish and battles therein from an overlord-like perspective of a galaxy-wide map or zoomed right to play as individual characters, including Luke Skywalker or Yoda for the first time. As a force of corruption, however, that character can also be an underworld type, like Tony Soprano in space.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine
From: Bethesda
Price: $29.99 Cdn | $19.99 USD
Rated M for Mature

Bethesda's RPG juggernaut, the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, gets an appreciably huge expansion in Knights of the Nine, which adds a new faction, quests, weapons, armor, magic, etc. As always, it's prettier than all get out, frightfully immersive, elaborately expansive, technically astounding and a strong contender for 2006's game of the year.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent
From: Ubisoft
Price: $54.99 Cdn | $49.99 USD
Rated M for Mature

The umpteenth iteration of Ubisoft's long running, ever lauded, soft shoed, shadow skulking, stealth commando game, Splinter Cell Double Agent offers twice the anxiety as you play a good guy who's infiltrated the bad guys, so acting like a bad guy, even taking out bad guys, but not so much that you look like an obvious good guy, which would be bad.

Star Wars: Best of PC
From: LucasArts
Price: $49.99 Cdn | $39.99 USD
Rated T for Teen

Star Wars: Best of PC is a limited time retro bundle featuring some of LucasArts' best-acclaimed and/or best-selling Star Wars PC games of the last few years. Spanning multiple genres, the box set includes Star Wars: Empire at War, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, and Star Wars Republic Commando. In addition, a 14-day trial of the company's persistent-world, 24/7 massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), Star Wars Galaxies, is included in the package. After 14-days, monthly subscription fees apply. Either way, that's a lot of bang for forty bucks.

Medieval Total War II
From: Sega
Price: $59.99 Cdn | $49.95 USD
Rated T for Teen

The latest in the long-running, best-selling Total War series, Medieval II Total War offers up some breathtaking cinematics displaying the harsh gruesomeness of archaic warfare. Of course, you don't just sit and watch this one; the game is all about far-sighted strategy as you set budding nations like England, France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, or Venice out to conquer one another but also set up thriving towns and cities, commerce and protected trade routes over a span of nearly 500 years.

Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture ShockFrom: Telltale Games
Price: $8.95/episode, $34.95 full season
Rated T for Teen

Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock is not only one of the best comedic adventures games going, it also exemplifies how the emerging "episodic gaming" formula can be done right, given the right material. As a point & click who-done-it parody, the game is rife with snappy dialogue and bust-a-gut one liners while the mystery to be solved will be doled out monthly, starting with Culture Shock and with six "episodes" total.

Neverwinter Nights 2
Price: $54.99 Cdn | $49.99 USD
Rated T for Teen

Though another dungeon-crawling hack n' slash action/RPG at heart, Neverwinter Nights 2 is indicative of an emerging breed of role-playing games that play out dynamically depending on how you choose to play it - i.e., as a hero, a thug, a narcissist, etc - plus allowing you to actually live in the game world by acquiring property, amassing a fortune, hiring and training your own army, engaging merchants and then taxing them and so on. Totally elaborate and deftly executed.

The Dud; there's one in every crowd

Bad Day in L.A.
From: Enlight
Price: $24.99 Cdn | $19.99 USD
Rated M for Mature

Proof that style over substance does not a good game make, about the only thing Bad Day in L.A. has going for it is the oddball artistic panache of pop satirist and game designer American McGee, best known as the one-hit-wonder behind the cult classic Alice, but now gaining a reputation for disjointed, clumsy games riddled with toilet jokes and ethnic slurs like this here Bad Day in L.A, which doesn't really need the "Day in L.A." bit to define itself.


Also See:

• Cream of the year-end crop '06: Nintendo games


• Cream of the year-end crop '06: PlayStation games


• Cream of the year-end crop '06: Xbox 360 games