My interest in PC Games has so far been under-represented on this blog. To remedy this, here is a list of the up and coming games that are getting my juices flowing.
- Half Life 2 – Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Everyone who even passingly likes computer games is following the progress of Half Life 2 with eager anticipation. The first Half Life is still the pinnacle of single player first-person shooters, and one of the few games I’ve ever played all the way through. This sequel promises to revolutionise FPS graphics with real-time shadows and bump mapping galore. Add to that the impressive physics demonstrated in the preview videos, and the fact that, well, it’s Half Life, and there’s no way I’m going to miss spending several hundred pounds upgrading my PC so I can play it.
Half Life 2 is expected sometime in the Spring.
- X2: The Threat – Yet another reason to upgrade, this time the real-time shadows are cast by planets and space stations onto ships and asteroids. It’s an open ended space trading and combat fest in the tradition of Elite, which, as we all know, is the best computer game ever. X2 has a huge universe to explore and allows you to build your own space stations, fly anything from a tiny fighter to a multi-turreted carrier, and recruit fleet of wingmen.
The European release of X2 has been delayed for a couple of months, but it will be shipping from DVD Box Office in Canada any day now.
- Deus Ex: Invisible War – Another long awaited sequel to another superb single player FPS, this one has recently suffered from the release of a slightly disappointing demo. However, having adjusted some settings to make it feel less console-y, and played it through a few more times, I’m starting to warm to it again. The twist of Deus Ex is that it offers multiple ways of achieving each goal. For instance, to get into a secret base you might shoot the guards, sneak in through the ventilation system or hack into the security system. Its branching storyline means that the way you play and decisions you make at key points affects the plot. This is what makes it unique. Despite its shotcomings, Invisible War’s demo shows that these features are equally to be found in the sequel.
The developers, Ion Storm, are being somewhat shady about release dates.
- Lock On: Modern Air Combat – I’ve always loved flight sims, and with increasing development costs for games and the low returns of such a niche market, they’re few and far between these days. LOMAC lets you fly a variety of Russian and American jets, including the famous A-10. The terrain and object modelling is some of the most detailed ever seen in a flight sim, and the flight models and avionics are about as realistic as you could hope for. There’s even a community supported, 300 page leather bound manual. Trust me, that’s a good thing!
LOMAC is released on the 5th of December.
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Oblivion Lost – Out of nowhere (or more accurately, out of a development shop in the Ukraine), comes Stalker. It hardly seems possible, but Stalker seems to have even better graphics than Half Life 2; see the videos to believe it. Stalker is a first-person shooter, with Elite-like open-endedness, set in a 30km square exclusion zone around Chernobyl. You can explore the environment, walking or driving vehicles, seeking artefacts to sell, avoiding radiation, defending yourself against mutants, and trading and fighting with other humans. Days and nights pass, so you must find food and sleep occasionally. Weather is modelled dynamically, including rain, thunderstorms, and wind that rushes through the bushes and trees.
Stalker looks like it will be the most stunning FPS yet – but don’t hold your breath. It’s currently billed for a Spring/Summer 2004 release. Plenty of time to get that PC upgraded, at least!
- Richard Burns Rally – Driving games can be extremely cathartic, providing instant fun and endless replayability. For me, the more realistic the better. To date there hasn’t been a completely realistic rally game. Although car physics are modelled very accurately in some games, damage modelling has always been lacking, and the stages are never as long as real-world stages. Richard Burns Rally looks set to provide all this in one game, with realistic physics, full length stages and touch-a-tree-and-you’re-out damage modelling. It looks beautiful, too.
Richard Burns Rally is due some time in 2004.
Update: There’s an excellent article about Stalker on Eurogamer, which describes how the team visited Chernobyl for research. It’s also revealed that the game is inspired by the movie Stalker, which was made by Andrei Tarkovsky, who brought us the original version of Solaris.
It seems that people who work in the Chernobyl exclusion zone also call themselves stalkers.
Well myself I’ve been looking at console games a bit of late…
Yes I know that graphically the PC is superior (assuming you have the cash to burn on upgrading about every year), but really, how many games take full advantage of the hardware that’s available now on the bleeding edge? Not many of them I’ll bet, since most of the gaming PC’s outside the minority hardcore market are probably only of equivalent power to an Xbox (and even that might be a bit too generious).
Anyway Helen’s always moaning that she doesn’t like playing driving games & platformers on the PC so we’re looking at getting a console, either a PS2 or Xbox. Helen’s thinking more towards the former while I’ve been leaning more towards the Xbox, as from what I’ve been told, the PS2 is a bit lacking in support for multiplayer games (or at least games that support more than 2 players). I must admit that’s really going to be my only interest as getting 4 mates together in one place is going to be more practical than getting 4 PC’s hooked up at my place or via the ‘net (since of my group of associates in Leicester, only one other person has a PC).
So I’ve been looking towards things like Top Spin, a tennis game, which is supposed to be better than Virtua Tennis on the Dreamcast (which was a bloody brilliant game, especailly when there’s 4 of you playing doubles), or Project Gotham Racing (the first one since it features street circuits in London & New York, places I’ve been, plus San Francisco).
That said, the nostalgic geek within me was tugging me towards the PS2 when I saw the screenshots of the forthcoming Transformers: Armada game (I hadn’t realised Transformers were making such a big comeback… will have to see about trying to flog all my old toys that are gethering dust in my parents attic and see if I can make some cash)
PCs aren’t just graphically superior (although they *are* graphically superior, and it’s as much to do with a PC monitor’s ability to display high resolutions as any bleeding edge 3D rendering).
There are also superior control devices to consider. Like the mouse. And I’d be lost without my stick and wheel.
If you want multi-player, you can’t get anywhere close to Battlefield 1942 or Live For Speed on a console.
It also seems that for some reason console games all seem to lack a certain intellectual dimension. There are flying games but no flight sims, driving games but no driving sims, there is nothing like Civilisation or the Total War games, and not a single freeform game that I know of.
Of course, there are some good, fun console games, and you’re more likely to get a bunch of friends sat around playing a console, so I can see the benefits of having one, just not as a replacement.
The PC’s advantage of a higher resolution (although not that much of an advantage – Xbox can output HDTV 1080i format, as well as 480p & 720p) comes down to the fact that console games are going to be played on TV’s.
Prior to the advent of HDTV capable sets there was really no point creating console hardware capable of producing higher resolutions. I would be surprised if there were not far better support for HDTV resolutions on PS3 and Xbox 2.
Don’t forget also that although PC graphics have higher resolution, the games are normally played on far smaller screens. Plus, unless you have the latest graphics card, chances are you’re going to spend 20 minutes dropping detail levels to get the best performance – not something you have to worry about on a console…
Mice are good for FPS (FPS definitely the one type of game I’ve never been able toget into on a console so far… just can’t hack not having mouse & keyboard for that), but PC joypads I’ve used in the past have been disappointing.
Nothing like Live for Speed on consoles? Maybe nothing in such a realistic vein, but AFAIAA there’s extensive multiplayer on-line communities for Xbox Live compatible more arcade racing games such as the MotoGP, Midtwon Madness, Project Gotham Racing series etc…
To be honest, I’ve gone off the sim side of things, so I’m not going to be bemoan the dearth of them on consoles… Give me something I can pick up and have a quick blast on… I don’t want to spend most of my first hours of having the game wading through a manual that would leave pilots of the real aircraft falling asleep.
Don’t forget there are things that console games also do better – beat-em ups and certain types of sports games (e.g. tennis, football).
BTW, there have been console ports of Civ and similar stuff to the Playstation in the past, but nothing now…
Anyway, the next PC game I’m likely to buy is Call of Duty. This seems to be the game that Medal of Honour should have been… WW2 FPS with intelligent (well far better than MOH) AI squad bots who lay down fire and very rarely walk into your line of fire…
Only downside so far seems to be the lack of a proper run speed… I wish that game designers would just come up with some sort of fatigue system to slow players down the more they run if they’re worried about gamers sprinting all round the maps and throwing the gameplay out of balance…
Still from the 2 demos I’ve played so far, this is miles better than MOH
Call of Duty is everything that MoH should have been and more. Its multiplayer totally rocks. I cannot believe how lame the DXIW demo was in the end. What is it with game companies releasing crap demos? Are they trying to find out what they can get away with? HLII looks pretty amazing and I hope DXIW will be a good as its predecessor and not another Unreal II. A great game right now is Max Payne II, which is amazingly, much better than the first one.
As far as consoles vs PC/Mac debate, I think there is not contest whatever. I can’t stand gaming with those sodding controllers, especially in 3rd & Ist person games. I need my num pad and mouse combo (I am a leftie.) to be able to do all the fancy moves I need to survive. I think consoles and computers have different roles to play for the gamer. It is true that for sports and fighting games the consoles are best, but FPS’ on console are just not the same.
A mate keeps threatening to get me an xbox and I have to confess it does not thrill me that much.
I see I’m going to have to look into Call of Duty – although I don’t know where I’m going to find the time. X2 and LOMAC both arrived this week, and I have about ten books I want to read, a website to update, and somewhere I have to squeeze in Christmas and a social life. Oh yeah, and a full time job.
The DXIW demo was disappointing. From the review in PC Zone it looks like the finished game will be worth it, though. The intelligent, branching plot apparently *almost* makes up for the shortfallings in combat and the removal of the RPG elements.
My favorite game is still Need for Speed.
I enjoyed NFS Porsche Underground because it had a pretty good physics model and excellent force feedback. But later NFS games I’ve found too arcadey for my taste.
Speaking of Transformers, there’s a new movie coming out in 2006 directed by Spielberg based
on the Transformers.
Transformers News