• 12Oct 08

  2009 and the PC.

  The PC's had its fair share of great years, where it's outdone itself in the pure quality and quantity of quality games department for those years. Remember Half-Life, Starcraft, Thief, Fallout 2, .etc from 1998? Or how about Planescape: Torment, System-Shock II, Heroes of Might and Magic III and Homeworld released in 1999?

  And the year 2000 hitting us with Shogun: Total War, Diablo II, Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate II? Can anyone forget 2004, which brought us Half-Life 2, Rome: Total War, Unreal Tournament 2004, Warhammer 40, 000: Dawn of War, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Far Cry and other greats?

  Looks like 2009 will be jumping in the pool of holy water with all of those years. It is possibly the strongest year for the PC for the last three years, which have already been pretty good for the platform. Why do I say this?

  For starters, let's look at what the biggest PC game developer of all time is bringing us:

  Starcraft II - Wings of Liberty

  

  

  Most PC Gamers probably know that Starcraft is extremely popular, famous and considered by many, mainstream and core gamers alike to be the greatest RTS in the history of the genre. It delivered a high-quality campaign with an amazing storytelling mechanic, diverse and well-balanced factions, tons of content and some insane longevity due to the mapmaker and the polished online component.

  The same people should also know that the sequel is using a completely revamped campaign design, a crossbreed of RTS and adventure game that is separated into three different retail products, each of which contain more main missions than the total of Starcraft's three campaigns did.

  Wings of Liberty is the first of those products. It contains the Terran Campaign. No other details are known about the content division (like the pricing, what main components will be in each release, .etc) other than that the next two expansion sets, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will contain the Zerg and Protoss campaigns respectively.

  There hasn't been a release date announced for any of the packages, though, so Wings of Liberty could possibly release well past 2009, but it's quite safe to assume that it will be done and ready to release by that time.

  

  

  

  Diablo 3

  

  

  Diablo 3 is the third installment of a series of games that stand with the very best of the Hack & Slash Action Roleplaying Genre. A franchise that started off with the first Diablo, a game that revitalized the genre when it was released in 1997 and spawned several imitators.

  It hasn't been announced for 2009 either, but if it does, it only adds to the strength of the PC Gaming library next year. One more muscle to add-on to a steroid-pumped professional wrestling champion.

  

  

  

  That's what Blizzard's giving us for the next few years. If they do make 2009, they'll be the leaders of the pack, easily. In critical acclaim and sales.

  Let's look at what other major projects we can look forward to:

  Empire: Total War

  

  

  After 4 main installations in the franchise, this award-winning (and deserving) series finally makes its way into the early modern age of the 18th century. Continuing the Total War combination of Turn-Based Strategy empire-building and Real-Time Tactics combat and wrapped in shiny new graphics engine, this game looks to be a smashing contender for the best Strategy Game of 2009, if not Game of The Year.

  Total War fans will have to buy several new pairs of pants to wear after wetting their current ones over what this game has to offer them: 3-Dimensional Naval Battles which they can actually play through, destructible environments, incredible visuals that come along with an epic, massive scale of combat, a tech tree for research, new government systems and more, a lot of which has yet to be witnessed in a Total War game so far.

  Funny enough, Empire is also the only fully-fledged continuation which won't be releasing two years after the last. Still, Total War fans have waited one year longer for the best looking RTS game ever made and quite possibly the new king of the series.

  

  

  

  Dragon Age: Origins

  

  

  Bioware's back to its PC roots with this new CRPG - possibly the third great PC CRPG for this generation (before it, The Witcher and Neverwinter Nights II: Mask of the Metrayer) and will most probably be the best among what CRPGs the PC will have to offer this generation.

  In any case, this game is looking to be quite deep, and has been described as being a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series. With it's engine's ability to support hundreds of onscreen models, at least one thing can be said for sure about it: It's going to be absolutely epic.

  

  

  

  Warhammer 40, 000: Dawn of War II

  

  

  As my most anticipated game at this moment, I've shown my enthusiasm about it quite a lot of times. It has a lot to offer - but especially a combination of Company of Heroes' tactical, dynamic gameplay and the personality, manliness and brutality of the Warhammer 40, 000 universe that was captured in the first Dawn of War.

  Ever had fun blowing an area to smithereens with artillery in Company of Heroes? You'll be able to do just that in Dawn of War II, except with giant lazer cannons popping people from space. Every thought about watching melee rushes with the losers ragdolling and getting thrown or gibbed? You'll finally be able to experience that. Ever thought about your Space Marines being more than faceless heavy-armoured tough guys? That's what you'll get here.

  So far, it's confirmed that you'll be able to play a nonlinear interplanetary campaign as the Blood Ravens, a chapter of Space Marines of mysterious origin serving the Imperium of Man, the greatest and most powerful organization still in the Warhammer 40, 000 universe. You'll be fighting foes such as the tricky and deceiving Eldar, the mindless, seemingly endless and terrifyingly Tyranids, the brutal, uncivilized yet quite cunning Ork Horde, and playing as them against each other in the Skirmish and Multiplayer Mode.

  The campaign features the ability to customize your Space Marines' appearances, equipment and realize their importance to your overall progress in the game. With your choices in the campaign making differences in how the overall campaign turns out, it looks like this epic-looking game will also be quite replayable. And with that, it's packing destructible environments, shiny graphics with quite a lot of detail and more. And most important of all, it looks fun.

  

  

  

  There's more than these 5 coming out in 2009, of course. But these are the ones that would be major PC releases, quite possibly selling in the millions of copies and getting AAA scores across the board. If all of them make it in 2009, and live up to their hype, it'll be a humongous year for PC gaming. And yes, the recent major PC releases will pale in comparison to these.

  • Posted Oct 12, 2008 5:05 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 28Sep 08

  Damn, another stupid problem with my PC....

  Well, the big one before this was my stupid sound system unreliability (bloody thing could stop making any sound at any time) - my bro fixed that by updating the drivers, but he had to remove SoundMAX and that caused my sound quality to go down the toilet.

  Now, it's running at an annoyingly slow speed. It takes somewhere around 5+ minutes to even startup the damn machine, and running multiple tabs at a time on my browser causes severe slowdown.

  But the most irritating issue is the fact that I can't run any large EXE files. This means I cannot install my newly downloaded Europa Barborum 1.1 (Mod for Rome: Total War) and the newly declared-freeware game The Suffering. The former isn't even 1 GB and trying to start it up causes my Total Commander to stop responding, same for The Suffering. And I can't even close them when they stop responding.

  Eventually, running these executables causes so much slowdown that it becomes impossible to run any program, and I have to shut down or restart the PC. And for some odd reason, I can't start a new campaign in Rome: Total War after patching it to 1.5 (with the correct procedure, I patched to 1.3 first).

  On the bright side, I can now play STALKER with Oblivion Lost 2.2 with the sound on.... it never came on for some odd reason before my driver update...

  

  • Posted Sep 28, 2008 9:47 pm PT
  • Category: Computers
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• 25Sep 08

  This is by far the most facepalm-worthy news story I have ever read...

  LINK 1

  LINK 2

  Destructoid wrote:

  A man has pleaded guilty to killing an 18-day-old baby so that he could finish his videogame in peace. On October 26, 2007, Rene Edward Barrios was trusted to look after his girlfriend's newborn baby while it was sleeping. Leaving it in the next room, Barrios was playing an unspecified game when the baby started to cry.

  Enraged by the noise, the man went into the next room, where he violently shook the child and hit it in the head. With the baby subdued, Barrios then went to finish his videogame for the next ten minutes, coming back to check on the child only to find it blue and unconscious. The baby died later in hospital and Barrios was arrested there and then. He has officially been found guilty of manslaughter and faces between 10.5 and 21 years of prison.

  Having lived with far younger siblings, one can sympathize with the agony of having a child's screaming ruin your gaming. But Jesus Christ on a ferris wheel, it's depressing to think that people are capable of this.

  thehdroom wrote:

  We love our videogames as much as the next guy but there's a point at which other aspects of life supercede their importance.

  Unfortunately Rene Edward Barrios didn't feel this way on Oct. 26, 2007. He was left to watch his girlfriend's 18-day old baby who was sleeping in a bed. Rene was playing an unknown videogame in the next room when the young baby began to cry. Enraged by the noise, Rene paused the game, grabbed the baby, shook him and hit him the head.

  With the baby asleep, Barrios return to his game and finished up whatever level he was on for about 10 minutes. When Barrios returned to the bedroom to check on the baby, he was blue and unconscious.

  The baby went on to die at the hospital and Barrios was arrested on the spot. Today, Barrios officially pleased guilty in the case to manslaughter and will be sentenced to anywhere between 10.5 and 21 years of prison.

  We think he's getting off easy for whatever plea bargain he struck for the manslaughter charge versus murder. And he better not have access to an Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii in the slammer.

  • Posted Sep 25, 2008 4:05 am PT
  • Category: News
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