I actually knew that I’d become bored with Starcraft 2 in fairly short order, but I bought it anyway.
You see, I’m an eternal optimist. I’d read most of the previews who said it was a much more polished version of the original, with only a few new features. But it would still be a game about managing peons, attacking your opponent’s economy (rather than engaging in battles) and clicking your mouse button a vast number of times during a game, despite the hotkeys.
Of course, I have fond memories of the original Starcraft, mostly because – and I want to emphasize this – I loved the story in the single player game.
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I’ve been heads down on a number of freelance writing projects, many of which are finally reaching fruition.
I had fun writing an article on new graphics technology as it affects games. That ran in the August issue of Maximum PC, and is online now at MaximumPC.com. The real bummer is that I had lots of cool screen shots, most of which the magazine ran. But the need to reduce size for both print and online makes them less effective. Still, I think DirectX 11 will have the biggest impact on PC gaming since DX8.
Also up on Maximum PC is a review of Bigfoot’s Killer 2100 network interface card for gamers. It’s an interesting product, in that it works as advertised, reducing lag and ping times… but most people won’t notice any benefit. I’d class it as a luxury product, maybe useful to the 0.5% of gamers who compete online, care about winning and have the insanely fast reflexes to notice the small differences.
More stuff after the jump.
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Both Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 are Bioware creations, albeit by different development teams with clearly different goals. Dragon Age: Origins is touted as the spiritual successor to Bioware’s first major success, Baldur’s Gate. Mass Effect 2 is an action/RPG hybrid, building on the first game, but enhancing the action bits while streamlining the role-playing.
Both games offer extensive storylines, lots of spoken dialog and some excellent voice acting. Both also allow you to take your character in different directions. Once you get beyond those Bioware tropes, the two games diverge pretty significantly.
I’ve played through both games once, and working through second run-throughs on both games. Given that both games have been reviewed and discussed substantially, I’m going to narrow in on one aspect of the two games: how characters are developed. (Note: there may be spoilers ahead.)
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I’ve been somewhat… obsessed with Dragon Age: Origins lately. The voice acting is entertaining (Claudia Black as Morrigan and Steve Valentine as Alistair, in particular.) The story is engaging. The slightly dark take on yet another Tolkien-esqe fantasy world provides and interesting, if somewhat overwrought, spin on the old fantasy tropes.
I’m also having more fun with combat than I often do with computer-based RPGs. Maybe that’s because I’m treating the combat as if it were really a tactical mini-wargame. Because of that, I’ve been having a blast – and been successful – even in some very tough fights. Here’s what I’ve been doing to be successful.
What follows is my take on effective combat in Dragon Age for the PC version. Combat in the PC game becomes much more of a tactical strategy game than the console version, so bear that in mind. I’ve avoided any plot spoilers, focusing on tactics to take down enemies as effectively and quickly as possible.
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I’m not much of an online gamer. That’s not to say I don’t play online games. It’s just that, when I’m alone, I generally gravitate to single player games. On the other hand, I do like a good multiplayer game, and I get to indulge my desire for playing with others on a weekly basis.
The problem is, though, I’m spoiled.
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An interesting division is happening in game publishing and game development. No, it’s not the oft-mentioned indie game developers versus big game media. It’s not PCs versus consoles, either. In some ways, it’s a return to the past: passive versus interactive, but taken to a meta level.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen something of a furor surround the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . First came the news that the latest entry in the franchise would have no dedicated servers – which also meant no user generated maps and no mod tools. On top of that, it was revealed the multiplayer maps would be limited to 9 vs. 9.
The other thing that happened to me last week was listening to latest Three Moves Ahead, the podcast produced and hosted by Troy Goodfellow of Flash of Steel, which was an interview with Chris Park, developer of the RTS AI Wars. It’s well worth a listen.
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And here’s a shot of the various Windows 7 upgrades. So far, I’ve installed several onto the five gaming systems I have set
up here. Some, of course, have already been running Windows 7, which I obtained from my Technet account, and have been using in articles on Windows 7.
There’s not really a lot I can add to the hoopla about Windows 7. Like any new OS release from Microsoft, there is good and bad. But for our weekly LAN party group, I’m looking forward to moving everyone to 64-bit Windows 7.
Four of five gaming rigs in the basement lab are now running Windows 7.
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In the past year or so, I’ve been experimenting more with tabletop roleplaying games. The games I’ve been most attracted too are best described as “narrative roleplaying.” In that style of RPG, the players often describe an action during conflict resolution, rather than game it out. Sure, there’s usually still dice rolling to determine outcomes, but the actual conflicts and actions are described, rather than played out on a game board. Good examples of these types of games would be White Wolf’s Scion series and Evil Hat’s Spirit of the Century.
On the other hand, a game like Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 is very tactical. You really can’t play D&D 4.0 effectively without miniatures and a game board. I’ve played through some D&D 4.0 sessions, and found them to be somewhat tedious.
My friend Ron, on the other hand, really loves D&D 4.0. When he’s sat in on some of the games I’ve run, he tends to get bored after a few hours. “It’s your fault,” he told me recently. “Battletech ruined RPGs for me.”
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Recently, Logitech sent me their G500 Gaming Mouse. The new mouse appears to be a refinement on the original G5 mouse. The old G5 is still the favorite of many a gamer, including Joel Durham. The G5 was Logitech’s first attempt at building a “competition” gaming mouse, complete with adjustable weights, which slide into a small compartment. Later, Logitech shipped the G9, a smaller mouse offering greater precision. I never really warmed up to it, though.
I used the G5 for almost two years. I loved the G5, returning to it after brief flings with the G9 and Razer’s Deathadder. So in theory, I should love the G500. But I don’t, and I no longer use the G5 either. Here’s why.
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Does PC gaming have a future? Or are PC gamers relegated to an ever-shrinking market of increasingly marginalized, low-quality titles and poor console ports?
There’s been a great deal of gloom and doom in various online forums and gaming web sites. Sales of boxed, retail PC games were substantially down in 2008. You no longer see many AAA PC-only titles being announced (Command and Conquer 4 being an exception.)
The problem isn’t that PC games are dying. The problem is that PC games are evolving, and the way people look at PC games hasn’t changed.
I like to think of PC gaming as a beam of light passing through a diffraction grating. Read More »
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