Oblivion Sequel, Wii Sims, No Bully 2 62
Not many new releases slated for this early in the year, but news of what we expect later on is starting to come in. Excitingly (for me anyway), the first real expansion to Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is expected to be release in Q2 of 2007. It will offer an all-new landmass, multiple-branching quest lines, and the power to change the landscape. There are more details available on The Sims for Wii, as well. The Kotaku post wonders out loud what the point is, as (with its cute graphics and Mii-style characters) it looks a lot like a poor man's Animal Crossing. FiringSquad is excited about PC games this year, with a lot of commentators saying this will be 'the year PC games make a comeback'. With titles like Spore, Crysis, and Bioshock on the horizon, it's hard to argue with that. There's some 'negative' news on new games as well: despite a great reception by reviewers, a sequel to Bully may be hard for Take-Two to justify, due to lackluster sales. Finally, Vivendi has tried to deny the existence of a Batttlestar MMOG. Commentators at 1up are skeptical.
Good PC games (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw an Article on Shadowrun a while back and it sounds great (I love squad based game play, admitedly they are basicly ignoring all cannon from the SR universe, but I can live, I am not THAT big of a fanboy)
There are about 3 or 4 new MMOs coming out that I am interested in poking around at (I love MMOs, just that the ones I tend to like don't have enough of a player base to keep them running properly, so I always hope for a new one)
BioShock sounds like an atempt to make a new version of SS, and that always makes me happy (though a lack of Shodan is sorta sad...)
HL2 Ep2, TF2, and Portal are probably what I am waiting for the most. If you havn't played Narbacular Drop [nuclearmon...ftware.com] drop (What Portal grew out of) I highly recomend it.
ET:QW is another FPS game I am eager for (I loved W:ET)
And ofcourse there is Spore.
Sims 2 should do fine regardless of it's looks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't believe it's a factor? Ask anyone who played The Sims what their favorite moment in it was. I can make a safe bet that it revolves around the Sim dying in one way or another.
I swear, that's the only reason anyone played The Sims. In fact, the few Sims games that had death removed from the game (usually the console versions. Not sounding good for the Wii already) never sold well or got good reviews, with most reviewers chastising the port because your Sim couldn't meet the reaper.
Re:Bully (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the game play was fairly engaging and that there was some decent social commentary being made.
Now if you thought you were buying a grand theft auto where you get to run around killing people stealing cars and doing al kinds of violent and illegal acts then yeah your gona be disappointed, because it wasn't that type of game. This really was just about school yard fighting gone out of control and I liked that.
My biggest complaint is that there wasn't enough variety in the missions that you got.
Historic Patterns (Score:4, Interesting)
As a PC gamer from way back, it's curious to see how the "comeback" year has changed.
It used to be that the PC was generally a couple of years behind consoles in power. This made sense because the average PC spec had to accomodate people that hadn't upgraded whereas each new console itteration would reset the bar.
For the first year of a console's life, it was undisputedly more powerful than a PC and it's games were undeniably better. During the second year, it held the lead over PCs because, even though quite a few people had more powerful systems, games weren't able to expect them yet. By about the third or fourth year, the average PC had caught up, was at least as powerful if not more powerful, games were taking advantage of it and it was taking the lead. By the final year of a console itteration, the PC was now fairly significantly more powerful and held the lead by a good margin - which it promptly lost with the next release cycle a year later.
Thus it was with the NES, SNES, PS1 and PS2/XBox generations.
The interesting thing has been the effect of add in gaming graphics cards. Circa NES/SNES and even PS1 to a degree, there was an incremental step from 386 to 486 to earlier pentiums and from EGA to VGA to SVGA to the early 3DFX cards. In those days, PC gamers couldn't disperse that far from the mid point and games didn't have that much potential to vary for different system specs.
By the PS2/XBox launch of five years ago, just about every gamer was running a GeForce or better card which allowed games companies to make games much more scalable to different hardware setups. The XBox could have great hardware (NV2A) but the GeForce 3 (NV20) had already been in gamers hands for six months and the GeForce 4 (NV25) followed within three or four months. Almost right away, the richest gamers could have just as powerful hardware and so mainstream PC games caught the technical lead up within a year.
With the PS3/XBox360, undeniably exciting things are happening with the processors. The interesting thing is that no one seems to have really figured out how to write good multi-threaded code for the XBox's three processors - let alone the PS3's 7. In the year they've been working that out on the 360, almost every home gamer has a dual core system and quad cores are already an option. Add in DirectX 10 cards with their relative speed boosts and it's little wonder PCs have closed the gap to the point where they easily matched the 360's launch and can handle going up against the PS3's launch year.
Yes, a pair of $600 [newegg.com] graphics cards and a $1,000 [newegg.com] processor in a $3,500 gaming rig is still WAY more than a console. The curious thing is that $300 [newegg.com] graphics cards and a $300 [newegg.com] processor in a $1,000 rig now have most of that power whilst a new console has gone up from $200 to $400 to $600 and availability problems in the first six months likely mean you'll pay over the cost of the $1,000 PC to get a console on EBay anyway.
Powerwise, the war's over. Of course one problem remains: we get to see if PC game makers can harness all that power and compete against the simple ease of installation/use of the consoles.
It should be an interesting year: Now the playing field's equal in terms of power, can the flexibility of PCs along with their availability vs. limited console releases allow them to finally take over?