Hearts of Iron III? You rock, sir, and you are entirely correct.
Although I would recommend the expansion - it fixes most of the broken stuff.

And it's summer, the time for sequels.

How timely as this coming week I plan on playing what will probably be a ridiculous amount of Bad Company 2.

As far as I know, Hearts of Iron III suffers from a whole slew of bugs and glitches. While this is standard for Paradox, HoI III took a particularly nasty hit.

Overall, I would much rather recommend Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday. A fantastic title, easily one of the best from Paradox.

Hmmm Napoleon Total War tempts me... I loved Empire and pretty much all of the Total War games.

I just don't know enough about it. Maybe I'll pick it up eventually.

If my PC didn't have the graphics card of a tamagotchi I'd check out Napoleon Total War. In the meantime, I'll just fire up my Xbox and play some Mass Effect and Bad Company 2.

To all those who have played the Mass Effect games, would you recomend starting at the first one and then loading a save and continue on to the second one? Eventually I plan to get it for my brand new PC, though I wonder if it's worth spending some extra money on the origina.l.

In contrast to John's picks for this summer, I thought I'd hand out a few options for those of our readers who don't happen to be Japanese schoolchildren

hahahaha that was awesome.

This list is great! It's good to see some top tier strategy games on there.

Steve Butts:
The Escapist Staff's Summer Picks: Steve

Steve picks four more games to while away the lazy days of summer.

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THE STACHE COMMANDS!

Nice picks. I am impressed

Jumplion:
To all those who have played the Mass Effect games, would you recomend starting at the first one and then loading a save and continue on to the second one? Eventually I plan to get it for my brand new PC, though I wonder if it's worth spending some extra money on the origina.l.

Yes, I strongly recommend starting from the first. Transferring your character from the first game to the next is just a good feeling. There are also a few "bonuses", but they really don't matter
EDIT- also, the default Shephard's "choices" in ME2 are just stupid, and you really would be missing out on a lot by not transferring.

BlueInkAlchemist:
I'm tempted from time to time to play Mass Effect 2, but the thing preventing me is this notion I have that I want to redefine Shepard's history and make sure I have the best bonuses to start - which means playing Mass Effect again and taking Shepard all the way to 60. If I really want to grind something that much, I'll go play World of Warcraft.

But there are no submachine guns in Azeroth, so... I'm torn.

Eh...the differences between transferring a Shephard from 1 playthrough and one from 2 playthroughs is pretty insignificant. Maybe one or two extra levels? Trust me, it isn't worth it. It's just a better idea to do one playthrough and transfer, unless you want to get sick of your Shephard and Mass Effect as a whole there really is no point in grinding...ever, really.

BlueInkAlchemist:

But there are no submachine guns in Azeroth, so... I'm torn.

Play dwarf, roll hunter, buy gun, stack haste :D

I never really bothered with mass effect 2 tbh. I found the original to be too bland that until half a year later when everyone was raving about it I really though it would be a waste of money. The rest or sound rather interesting, especially Hearts of Iron III.