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.
4 pages of article.... (Score:5, Informative)
20: Left 4 Dead (Turtle Rock Studios: Sometime In 2007)
19. Pirates of the Burning Sea (Flying Lab Software: Mid 2007)
18. Medal of Honor: Airborne (Electronic Arts: Mid 2007)
17. Age of Conan (Funcom-Eidos: First Half of 2007)
16. Frontlines: Fuel of War: (Kaos Studios-THQ: Summer 2007)
15. Shadowrun (FASA Studios-Microsoft: Sometime in 2007)
14. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (Sigil Games: First Quarter of 2007)
13. Command and Conquer 3 (Electronic Arts: March 2007)
12. Lord of the Rings Online (Turbine-Midway: First Half Of 2007)
11. Hellgate London (Flagship Studios-Namco: Late 2007)
10. Warhammer Online (Mythic-EA: Late 2007)
9. Bioshock (Irrational Games-2K Games: First Half of 2007)
8. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl (GSC GameWorld-THQ: March 2007)
7. Half-Life 2: Episode 2/Portal/Team Fortress 2 (Valve: Summer 2007)
6. Unreal Tournament 2007: (Epic-Midway: Sometime in 2007)
5. Supreme Commander (Gas Powered Games-THQ: March 2007)
4. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (Splash Damage-id Software-Activision: First Half of 2007)
3. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade (Blizzard: January 2007)
2. Spore (Maxis-EA: Second Half Of 2007)
1. Crysis: (Crytek-EA: Sometime in 2007)
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I'd personally give the BC expansion an outside chance of outselling the entire rest of that list combined by the end of its shelflife.
Although one day another MMORPG will usurp World of Warcraft, none of the 2007 titles seem positioned to do so. And as for FPS games, they're tired and very 1999-2003ish. Great to show off your dual-video card overclocked rig, but the gameplay is the same over and over.
Spore looks very interesting, but I'
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That's always a possibility, but so far Will Wright has been pretty good at delivering a good solid game. Peter Molyneux, on the other hand, has had a ton of "good concept, flawed execution" games. If anyone could be trusted to make this game work, it's Will Wright. I certainly hope it works out, anyways. It's by far the most interesting game on that list for me. Other than
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If Command & Conquer 3 has great graphics and well balanced gameplay, it might make a splash...its been a long time since a good RTS was available.
I've seen a few videos of C&C 3, but from what I've seen it's nothing new, just better graphics than Generals, but I'm sure they're not showing everything. You can get a preview DVD at Best Buy and I'm sure everywhere else if you pre-order for 10 bucks. Personally, I enjoy playing Generals and the expansion, but I know a lot of people who hate it. Meh...
Have you had any experience for LoTR Battle for Middle Earth 1 or 2? I've been eying it for a while now but haven't been able to work the courage
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You need to play Company of Heros. It was completly off my radar, and then it won lots of GOTY awards for various catagories. I picked it up for my GF who loves stradegy games. It's very well done.
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That's why I'm hoping Bioshock and Stalker live up to the hype
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I'll try and help you out where I can.
A first person shooter involving zombies.
Looks like a Pirate based MMORPG. I hope it's good because I love pirate games.
Never heard of it, but from the title, it sounds like a World War 2 fighter pilot game.
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> I'll try and help you out where I can.
>> 18. Medal of Honor: Airborne (Electronic Arts: Mid 2007)
> Never heard of it, but from the title, it sounds like a World War 2 fighter pilot game.
Uh, "Airborne" doesn't describe pilots, it describes paratroopers. Since Medal of
Honor is a WWII FPS, this most likely serves up scenarios of the drops behind the
beaches at the Normandy invasion. Maybe also Operation Market Garden, but
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Sigh...
TFA said that they chose Crysis as the most anticipated game because it has the nicest looking graphics. In fact, FS didn't really talk about any other features about it. The graphics engine does look friggin amazing, but give me a break. You would think a website that does game reviews would know by now (Doom 3)that they shouldn't judge a game by it's graphics.
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.
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I now remember the interview where they said the entire "Spiritual Sequal".
Yah, Looking Glass still owns the SS rights If I remember. I don't really mind that it isn't the sequal, the only thing that they could use in BS (bad name
If they can
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Looking Glass just plain doesn't exist anymore. Their IP was bought up by..EA! (Dun, dun, dun!) IIRC.
Yes, SHODAN is missing and the setting is different. But if you look closely at the gameplay videos, its the same gameplay. The AI is much better and more integrated into the world, the graphics are way better, and you use 'Adam' instead of nanities and cyber modules but its all the same idea. Instead of being a cyborg, you're kind of a mutant th
Vanguard, 1Q 2007 (Score:3, Informative)
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And before anyone tries to counter with something like 'They can patch it in!' or 'It'll be ready before anyone gets that high!', bear in mind how fast "uberguilds" and concerted efforts by shut-ins and power-g
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My system is hardly high-end and I get 30fps everywhere I've been in game on highest settings. Granted I haven't tried higher than 1280x1024 resolutions since that's my LCD's native, but I would hardly call that running like a pig.
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Also recall McQuaid's last big project, Everquest: the poster child for intentionally broken and incomplete content that somehow nonetheless was always "Working as intended."
As a hardcore Everqu
Bully (Score:1, Funny)
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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 viole
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I freeze the game at least once in just about every game I play. I seem to have a knack for it (perhaps it is the QA experience kicking in) I would take a game with a few bugs and a freeze over a game that crashes relatively of
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Regardless of how good the game was, I think that maybe what might have turned people down was the title, which must make the game sound worse than it actually is.
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How many Dukes on the list? (Score:2, Funny)
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Wii Sims looks like a wildfire success IMHO (Score:2)
Count me in for that, as well as for Spore on the Wii.
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But you also use the old GameCube memory cards for the GameCube games when you want to play those on the Wii, as well as your old GameCube controllers - so don't throw those out.
The built-in system memory is fairly large though.
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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:Sims 2 should do fine regardless of it's looks. (Score:5, Funny)
Two words: Lesbian Sims.
Re:Sims 2 should do fine regardless of it's looks. (Score:2)
As for the death... The major complaint in the console versions of The Sims is that is has a plot and is scaled back. It wasn't just freeform-do-whatever like the PC version. Death is sometimes one of the scaled back things, but is by no means the major reason for lack of sales.
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Also, I think different demographics find different qualities in simulations. A few (female) friends of mine said they liked The Sims because it was like a virtual dollhouse, and another enjoyed it because of the arch
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Yaaaaay!
Shadowrun (Score:2)
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(I actualy realy don't like CRPGs all that much, the old SR included, however I am a large SR Table Top player)
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There is only so much that can be done with an FPS game, however comparing what has been said aobut SR to CS is like comparing Dystopia (a cyberpunk mod for HL2)to CS.
Now, if you were to compare dystopia to SR, then yo
Just one thing... (Score:2)
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There have been countless years of pure speculation on TF2 from the community, but that is b/c we are gammers, and speculate with 0 bits of evidence is EXACTLY what we do. Valve is actualy one of the better com
Expansion Pack != Sequel (Score:5, Informative)
Oblivion is the Sequel to Morrowind. Nights of the Nine is an expansion pack for Oblivion. The next Expansion pack, named "Shivering Isles", is not a Sequel to Oblivion.
The Elder Scrolls V: "Taking The Customers for a Ride" - would be a Sequel to Oblivion.
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I'd like to see a Batttttlestar game (Score:2)
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?
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Consoles seem have been trying to be 'more PC like' for at least the last couple of generations. I hadn't really thought about it in the way you presented it.
One of the interesting things you brought up that hardly ever gets discussed is the converging price points between the platforms. Most people are quick to point out the PCs are more expensive, but we've seen the cost of highend to midrange PCs continue to fall while the