simonlife

The remaining half of this year should prove to be a groundbreaking season for the gaming industry. For anyone who doesn’t follow the news (I recommend Gaming Today), the months between now and the holiday season will see the release of what should be genre-defining, genre-blending, or genre-innovating titles (Alex crosses his fingers). This “revolution” will inevitably take place across all platforms, the PC included.

First, a (mostly) objective, unordered list of the games that are widely accepted to be in this group of must-buy’s.

• BioShock (2K Games, 21 August)
• Halo 3 (Bungie Studios, 25 September)
• Crysis (Crytek, 15 November)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward, Q4)
• Unreal Tournament 3 (Epic Games, November)
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Nintendo, 3 December)
• World in Conflict (Massive Entertainment, 18 September)
• Universe at War: Earth Assault (Petroglyph, October)
• Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo, 12 November) - thanks to Wing.

A few things to note: Will Wright’s Spore and Blizzard’s Starcraft II are not listed, as they are likely to be released in 2008 or even later. Also, this is a big year for PC games. Most of the games on this list (and even a few that aren’t) are first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, which both favor the the mouse-keyboard style of play on the PC, notwithstanding Sony’s support of the hardware on the PS3.

There might be other reasons why PC games are so well represented this year. Recently, the PC has been the platform for pushing technological innovation in the realm of graphics, physics, and artificial intelligence, and this year more than ever, games like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 will butt heads (LOL, “buttheads”) not just as blockbuster titles, but also as testaments to their respective engines.

My List

Anyway, the following is my list of must-buy’s, which is mostly just a subset of the above. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have it in my budget to purchase all these games when they come out, nor do I own a gaming rig with hardware that isn’t at least four years old. Therefore, this is more like my list of games-to-buy-when-I’m-ten-years-out-of-college-with-nothing-to-do-except-spend-spend-spend-or-maybe-get-married:

• BioShock
• Crysis
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Unreal Tournament 3
• BlackSite: Area 51

BioShock is supposed to be the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, the game that kicked off the FPS-RPG hybrid genre (in which the future of great gaming rests, in my opinion). I’ll be honest; the premise is a little on the fantastical side for me, as I tend to prefer shooters that take place in identifiable, realistic, and contemporary environments. Nonetheless, if it does in fact turn out to be a FPS-RPG hybrid, it should provide substantial replay value and many moments of heightened emotionality. I thrive on that.

Crysis will visually stun its audiences. The gameplay footage already does (even the majority of it that wasn’t captured in HD). Real-time physics and bump mapping techniques are old news now; all the games in my list implement these features. The technical appeal of Crysis will be the artificial intelligence, level of detail, and responsiveness of the environment to the player’s actions. Depth of field will also be nice, but this too is becoming standard fare for next generation games. Some might also enjoy shooting North Koreans.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare should satisfy my penchant for realism and modern settings. I like shooting stuff with M16’s and MP5’s, not the BFG9000’s of some supposed, post-human future. I’m also glad the guys over at Infinity Ward decided to put the World Wars behind them. The game looks beautiful, but won’t be anything extraordinary next to the previous two titles.

The Unreal Tournament series of games is the exception where I seem not to care about playing in futuristic environments, and I think it’s because these games are predominantly multiplayer and deathmatch-style. Unreal Tournament 3 should kick ass on its own, but a huge reason why one buys a game in the UT series is the modding community. It’s like paying for one game and getting a whole slew of mini-expansion packs for free. I’ve also devoted my soul to the Unreal Engine since I was twelve, so I’m completely beyond reason.

BlackSite: Area 51 is yet another Unreal Engine 3 game (BioShock was the other). It is a shooter, and you shoot aliens. I could get that fix from Crysis, but more is better. I admit that I have no rational justification for wanting to play this game other than wanting to blow shit up.

The Shooter in Me

What a terrible subtitle.

Anyway, there’s my list. They are all first-person shooters, and they are all destined for the PC. I can’t understand why anyone would want to play a first-person shooter on a console when the control scheme is plainly inferior and when consoles struggle to pump out more than thirty frames per second for games built on next-generation engines.

Unfortunately, there are no traditional RPG’s to speak of, which is kind of sad, since I haven’t played one of those since I finished Final Fantasy VIII nearly six years ago. However, I don’t own a console and don’t intend to buy one anytime soon. I’m a PC gamer at heart.