I’ve never purposely gone out and bought an operating system, they ususlly come with the PC that I’ve bought, like my current Gaming rig, it was bought from MESH and came with Vista Ultimate x64, which I quickly changed back to Windows XP, from a gaming stand point XP was and still is the best, well I thought that until I dual booted Windows 7 x64 Release Candidate with XP and like all the reviews I have read about it, was very impressed, I tried some games running from steam and some I have on disc and they worked, so that was enough for me to completely loose my mind and go and buy Windows 7 Ultimate as well as a 1TB WD Elements External Hard Drive, to back up all my stuff. So now I have only Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on my system, I could go on about the great features of the Taskbar or the other great idea that came from Vista, but it’s the games that are important, I now have 200 games for my PC, (since I just ordered Dragon Age: Origin – Digital Deluxe Edition on Steam) so there is a lot to test, well here are the ones I’ve played so far.
Games on Disk:
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion – Game of the Year Edition, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire
Games on Steam:
Half Life 2, Batman: Arhkam Asylum, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, The Longest Journey
Games from Direct 2 Drive:
Crysis, Red Alert 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, Mass Effect, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
Games from Gamesplanet:
So Blonde, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Deluxe, Sid Meier’s Pirates, Sid Meier’s Railroads
Games from GOG:
Freespace 2, The Nations: Gold Edition, In Cold Blood.
The games from GOG.com are designed to work in XP and Vista so there are a no brainer, the feeling I get from Windows 7 is that the games I now will work do and the games that I think won’t, don’t. For instance I knew No One Lives Forever wouldn’t work and it doesn’t, I feel Thief 1 & 2 won’t ever, but I hope I am wrong when I test them. As you can see there is alot to test, I will update when I have done some more, there is also XP Mode which I have yet to try maybe I can get NOLF to work in that. Half Life 2 had a problem with Vista x64 Ultimate version and did not work, I am really pleased it works in Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, and since Dark Messiah works I am sure all games that use the Source engine should work, but you never know.
The quote that seems to be said in all reviews I have read is “Windows 7, what Vista should have been”, which I am enclined to agree with, my conclusion for Windows 7 is that it has the look of Vista with the compatablity of XP. With most searches online I have looked at, everyone is still using either the RC version or Beta so I hope this will help as I am using the full retail version of Windows 7, plus all the drivers for my system (Nvidia 680i Chipset, Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX, Soundblaster XF-I Platinum Fatal1ty Champion) are all online, NOW, 64bit and 32bit, which I’m sure never happened for Vista.
