With this year's gaming harvest already played and beaten and filed away into memory like so many saves, it is time now to look on.

Past the bulbous shores of 2007, far off in the distant recesses of release schedules, lies the gone-golden bounty of untapped potential. And while many may slip their surly bonds and give flight to the year 2009, more still will cement their crusted plastic into delighted hands. Here we mark the prophecy of the PC legacy, a concrete, yet tumultuous hour of reckoning for this still-great platform.