Darkest of Days

Today I downloaded the PC demo for the upcoming shooter Darkest of Days, which is a game that attempts to accurately re-create historical battles while taking minor liberties with the details, such as allowing you to carry an AR-55 assault rifle into the battle of Antietam. I couldn't figure out how seriously this game wanted me to take it, but upon completion of the demo, I can only say that I strongly support this slightly enhanced version of history being taught in our public schools.

The demo begins with the Battle of Little Bighorn, where our intrepid protagonist heroically fends off wave after wave of identical-looking Indians, only to catch an arrow to what I could only gather is the balls area. Amazingly, he is rescued from certain doom, not to mention infertility, by a guy in a storm trooper costume who pulls him into a time paradox, whisking him 300 years into the future to inform him that time travel is now commonplace and things have gone predictably askew. For no particular reason, this particular Joe is tasked with safeguarding the space-time continuum. I would have thought such a job would be better suited to someone from the future who knew the ins and outs of time-travel, such as whether in real life it follows Terminator rules or Back to the Future rules. But I didn't have time to ask such pressing questions; there's stuff to shoot!

Next is some basic training. After being told how to shoot a gun, throw a grenade, and throw little glowing balls at certain key characters (conveniently marked by glowing blue) to incapacitate them without killing them, I am ready to prevent Biff from establishing his evil empire in Hill Valley. Wait! Wrong demo. I'm then whisked back to the Civil War, this time at the Battle of Antietam. After slowly capping some fools with my trusty musket, my compatriot from the future appears, apparently unsatisfied with my kill ratio, and hands me an AR-55 assault rifle to expedite the process.

Now, if you've ever wondered what it would be like to relive an historic Civil War battle, except with a fully automatic assault rifle, let me fill you in: it's pretty freakin' sweet. Oddly though, none of the other soldiers seemed the least bit alarmed that I was mowing down half the confederate army with a futuristic machine gun. Instead, they just went about their business and even dutifully followed me toward a blob-like time paradox.

I should mention that this game contains some f-bombs and exploding heads, which of course merely add to its historical authenticity. It's not a bad concept, and really, who doesn't want to enhance WWII battles with a laser-guided rocket launcher? But despite the conceptual hook and the entertainingly bad B-movie presentation, it ends up feeling like a pretty routine run-and-gun shooter. I don't need a time machine to know that I probably won't plunk down full price for this one.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Dawn of War II has been out for a while now, but despite the warm reception it's received from critics and the brisk sales it's enjoyed, I hadn't picked it up. Why? Because I don't do strategy games. I had dabbled with a few of them in the past and never really enjoyed them much. I always felt myself being more concerned with menu screens than what was actually happening in the game, and the lack of visceral action left me a bit wanting.

Dawn of War II doesn't shatter the mold, but it does take after games like Company of Heroes and World in Conflict by taking a more action-oriented and accessible approach to the real-time strategy aspects. Now, I'm no RTS expert, as should be painfully obvious by now, but I know what I hate, and I don't hate Dawn of War II. In fact, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. The game integrates some role-playing aspects in that characters level up and can be outfitted with fancier equipment and assigned skill points. Most of the strategy of the game seems to revolve around smart use of cover – conveniently indicated by green, yellow and white onscreen icons – and strategic use of the various squads' special abilities. For example, one squad can cloak, another can break suppressive fire, and one can go all Conan the Barbarian and charge headlong into throngs of evil alien Ogres with his wicked chainsaw sword. As the squads level up, they gain new abilities, thus introducing lots of new strategic variables into the action.

In a refreshing break from most other recent demos I've played, the Dawn of War II demo is actually pretty lengthy. I definitely feel like I got a good feel for the game. I still got stuck paying more attention to menus than the onscreen action (something which I attribute in part to my total lack of RTS skills), and I still missed the tactile thrill of squad-based first-person shooters, but the Dawn of War II demo did exactly what a good demo should do: it convinced me to buy the game. It's deep, fast-paced, exciting, well-presented and accessible to RTS n00bs like me. And, most importantly, it has chainsaw swords.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

I don't care what anybody says, I liked the original Call of Juarez. It wasn't a groundbreaking game, but it certainly did the old-West shooter thing better than it had ever been done before. I enjoyed the alternating gameplay styles of Reverend Ray and Billy, and the presentation was excellent all around.

The sequel, apparently buckling under the criticism of the first game, appears to have taken away most of the gameplay that I enjoyed about the first game. Bound in Blood is a prequel where we see a young Reverend Ray finding some excuse to mow down armies of similar-looking Wild-West stereotypes. After tromping through some very unexciting scripted sequences and some very cliche shooting (albeit with a pretty interesting, if not awesome, dynamic cover system), I realized that this is one of those cases in which a developer had to curb ambition in order to get the game onto shelves. The first game, for all its flaws, was a heck of a lot more interesting. This game seems like the interior of a wealthy home on one of those rich-folks'-homes tours: polished to the point of being completely dull.

The graphics have also taken a step back. The engine looks completely different and while the lighting appears to be somewhat enhanced, the overall look is not as sharp as the previous game. Texture and shadow resolutions are lower, foliage isn't as dense (and can't be adjusted), and the HDR lighting isn't as striking. The original was designed for PC first, then ported to consoles the following year; this game was a simultaneous release, and it appears to have suffered accordingly.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

If there's ever been a game that's guilty of marketing oversaturation, Batman: Arkham Asylum would be a strong candidate for king of the hill. I can't throw a rock at the internet without hitting a video preview showing off Batman's cool gadgets, his ninja skillz, or the freakishly steroid-enhanced killers who for some reason think Batman is lame and should die. But it's probably because, unlike the overwhelming majority of comic book licensed games, Arkham looks like it actually might not be terrible. In fact, it actually looks like it will be pretty rockin', like Splinter Cell without all that pesky realism.

But if this game is going to be any good, this alarmingly short demo sure didn't give me much to go on. The download weighed in at nearly 1.6GB, and I was through the demo in maybe twenty minutes. Compare that to the three or four hours I've put into the aforementioned Dawn of War II demo, and Arkham starts to seem pretty anemic. The demo introduces the combat system, which mostly consists of tapping one of two buttons and then watching Batman kill fifty guys. Okay, it's not quite that extreme, but the combat, while fluid, did seem suspiciously easy and simplistic. Whether it's fleshed out more over the course of the game, well, I don't know. It's a twenty minute demo for crying out loud.

After being shown how this bizarrely overmuscled rendering of Batman can dispatch of bizarrely overmuscled hired goons with his elite fisticuffs, we are introduced to the stealth elements of the game. Fisticuffs might be enough for some of the goons, but some of them have appropriately large guns, and although Batman looks like he could deflect bullets with his sculpted pecs, that apparently is not the case. Instead, players zip around on conveniently placed gargoyles and quietly rein hell on unsuspecting bodybuilders hired goons, Sam Fisher style. This aspect turned out to be by far the most enjoyable part of the demo, but it was too short to make me think that old Sam might have some competition. Not only that, but the conveniently placed gargoyles seemed a little too contrived. Hopefully there will be some other conveniently placed statues for Batman to perch upon in the final game.

I'm optimistic about the game, but the demo needed to be about twice as long. I'll be taking a wait-and-see approach, and possibly snatching this one from the bargain bins unless critical consensus informs me that to avoid playing the final game is to deprive myself of steroid-enhanced gaming bliss. Excelsior! Or something.

The post Demo roundup — Batman: Arkham Asylum, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Dawn of War II, Darkest of Days appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

As a dyed-in-the-wool PC gamer and hardware enthusiast, I regularly visit [H]ardOCP, a website dedicated to all things PC gaming hardware. They recently did a performance evaluation of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood using a number of modern graphics cards across various price ranges, and found, as they have with many games in the last year or two, that it performed very well even on lower-end graphics cards. They conclude:

As the prevalence of cross-platform game development increases, it seems that the PC's role as a gaming technology showcase is diminishing. Gone are the days when games were developed for the PC first, the consoles later. It is simply more profitable to focus on consoles, and then throw the PC gamers a bone (or not). There are various and numerous reasons for this, but the reason most cited by game developers and publishers is the persistence and relative ease of game piracy on the PC. It just makes sense that these businesses shift their focus in the face of unswerving opposition.

But whatever the cause, there is no doubt that PC game are getting lighter, and their hardware requirements are becoming less and less stringent. Once upon a time, PC gaming was about tweaking and modifying games to run and look better on the staggering variety of hardware in the wild. But now, almost every game we have seen in the past year has run beautifully out of the box on even the least expensive video cards.

This is by no stretch of the imagination the first time I've heard such things. When I was active on the now-defunct Tweakguides.com forums, I debated the apparent decline in cutting-edge PC technology with PC gamers many times over. It is inarguable that in many respects, it has never been easier on the wallet to be a PC gamer. Many games do indeed perform exceptionally well across a large variety of cards; the high-end configurations seem more suited to those who want to run very high levels of anti-aliasing and/or ultra-high resolutions. My own video card configuration, a pair of nVidia GTX 260s–a reasonably high-end setup–allows me to run even the most demanding games with extremely high image quality on my 22" monitor. While ATI and nVidia are preparing to release their next-generation DirectX 11 cards this fall, I truly see no need for an upgrade, particularly since it will likely be at least a couple of years before DirectX 11 is widely used.

But I think the reasons for this lessened pressure to buy expensive upgrades are more complex than the proliferation of multiplatform development. And I think that, despite the historical performance-per-dollar ratio we see in the video card market, games are continuing to push technological boundaries. Let's consider some of the factors.

1. A competitive GPU market

There is no denying that the video card market has matured greatly since its dawn in the mid-90s; it's hard to believe that ten years ago, the Voodoo3 was considered a high-performance card. nVidia and ATI hadn't even entered the picture at that point, much less become a mature, competitive market.

Over the last eight years or so, nVidia and ATI have continued to attempt to out-do one another, and each generation brings more performance across a greater variety of price ranges. We've seen monster dual-GPU cards that cost over $600, and lean machines that offer surprising performance for a low price. The last year has been particularly good for ATI who, despite still retaining a relatively small share of the GPU marketplace compared to nVidia, has leveraged their efficient, powerful GPUs to force nVidia to drop their prices and offer more cards targeted at more price points.

If Intel's forthcoming Larrabee makes an impact in the GPU marketplace, we may see even more performance-per-dollar.

2. Reusable, highly optimized game engines

Every so often, a game comes along that really pushes graphical boundaries. Doom 3, Far Cry and Half-Life 2 did it in 2004; The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion did it in 2006, and Crysis did it in 2007. But these types of games are few and far between. It makes more sense for developers to reuse existing engines with minor tweaks and optimizations rather than attempt to build a cutting-edge engine from the ground up for every game. Over time, these engines can offer very impressive performance as they become increasingly optimized. Valve's Source engine, which was introduced in 2004 with Half-Life 2, is still widely used nearly five years later. The famous Unreal Engine 3 has likewise been in use for a few years now, and provides very impressive visuals while keeping hardware demands remarkably reasonable. Currently, the most advanced engine is Crytek's CryEngine2, which was introduced in 2007's Crysis. At the time, it was so advanced that even the highest-end dual-GPU configurations could not run it at maximum settings. A year later, the expansion Crysis Warhead introduced numerous performance optimizations which, along with the increasingly competitive GPU market, allowed it to be played at high or even maximum settings without an ultra-expensive PC. And while we will undoubtedly see advanced engines trickle in occasionally, given the immense risk in game development the use of a well-established high-performance engine will remain preferable to ground-up engine development for many developers.

3. Multiplatform development, piracy or not

There is little doubt that more developers are focusing on multiplatform development. Genres that were once solely the domain of hardcore PC gamers have branched into consoles as well–first-person shooters were the first to go, and even MMORPGs and real-time strategy games, while still well-established on the PC, have begun to trickle into the console space as well.

The exact impact of piracy on sales is unknown, nor is its real extent. But piracy aside, the ease of development across multiple platforms (the Xbox and its successor are DirectX-based platforms–hence the name, which was derived from "DirectX Box" during the original's development) and the wide audience granted by multiple platforms make a singular focus on any platform seem somewhat short-sighted. And while Microsoft and Sony are free to throw incentives at developers to keep games platform-exclusive, the PC remains an open platform for developers.

We should also keep in mind that multiplatform development is by no means some sort of new trend. It took hold with the first Xbox, and nothing has been the same since. As far back as The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, big-name PC developers have been developing PC and console versions of their games simultaneously, and this has not stopped the PC versions of such games from being cutting-edge. Flexible game engines allow for scaling across a wide variety of hardware, and as we saw with Oblivion, engines can be optimized to take advantage of both consoles and a wide array of PC configurations.

I can't help but think that there really isn't much to complain about. I'm occasionally frustrated when a developer delays or nixes a PC version of a game (as was recently the case with Alan Wake), but in most cases the wait doesn't faze me. There are still many excellent PC exclusives and multiplatform games that take fine advantage of modern PC technology. The competitive GPU marketplace, along with the rise of digital distribution platforms like Steam and the gaming-friendly features of Windows 7, are tearing down some of the entry barriers to PC gaming, which may be vital for the long-term viability of the platform. And ultimately, whether a game was developed for this platform or that often has very little bearing on its quality–and for those of us who are willing to shell out for a more customizable, higher-fidelity experience, the performance is still there. A game like Call of Duty: World at War may not be as demanding as Crysis, but when you see it in native high-resolution with anti-aliasing and every whiz-bang visual effect cranked up and play it with a 1600dpi laser mouse and customized key maps, the console versions just seem flaccid by comparison. The PC gaming landscape is changing, but it's still going strong and, with inexpensive hardware, digital distribution and a vast catalog of games and mods, there has perhaps never been a better time to jump on board.

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I downloaded the demo for ARMA II earlier this week, and I've spent some time dabbling with it. I never played the first one, but the concept of a realistic, broad-scoped military simulator/shooter sounded pretty neat. And, judging from the demo, it is indeed pretty neat. All it requires is a little patience. Actually, it requires mountains of patience. Despite my best efforts to really soak up the experience, the game just keeps getting in the way, and I admit, I just don't have the ambition required to get really immersed in this type of game.

The game is bafflingly complex. There are so many commands and menus that the demo should have come with a 200-page .pdf manual just to explain everything. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but not as much as one might think. Most games have moved on to user-friendly context-sensitive menus and/or GUIs instead of mapping every little command to a key, but ARMA II is decidedly old-school in this regard. There's even a button to raise a weapon to eye level for using iron sights and scopes, which for some reason is separate from the button that zooms in, which can be done regardless of whether a weapon is in hand or not. Really? Oh, and that's not the worst offender–to look around while driving a jeep using the conventional WASD formation, the game requires players to hold the ALT key and then move the mouse around, even though using the mouse doesn't do anything else.

I went through the tutorial, which does a horrible job of explaining most of the game's commands. The game kept telling me to use the "action menu", but the brief message explaining what that was had flashed so briefly that I hadn't caught it before it vanished. Lo and behold, there is a key for going to the most recent hint, but by the time I found it I was already another message ahead. So I fumbled around with various keys until I figured it out. Apparently the scroll wheel is used for all kinds of things, but the game doesn't explain this very clearly at all.

By the time I got to the end of the basic training, which is a little firefight, I was completely confused by all the commands thrown at me, and I found the actual fight mechanics to be rather cumbersome. Now, I'm fine with the more "realistic" motion and so on, but I kept hearing gunshots paired with sound effects like I was being hit, but other than the sound there were no indicators. So I ran for cover, but I still seemed to be taking hits, so I went prone and crawled around until I spotted a guy, who promptly shot me in the face. Mission over. Now, I'm sure that if I wanted to, I could spend some time really getting into the unique mechanics of the game and possibly even enjoy it. But I didn't really get a sense that the reward would be there.

I'm all for complex military sims. I loved the Rainbow Six games before they turned into Halo clones. Some of the Ghost Recon games rank among my all-time favorites. But ARMA II was just too inaccessible. It seems like there are too many times when the UI could have been dramatically simplified, when core concepts could have been explained much more clearly, and when developers could have realized that this is a videogame. I really want to like this game. I don't plan on giving up on it. But this is as far from "pick up and play" as it gets. It's more like "study, experiment, die a lot, then play." Then there's the whole issue of figuring out when there's a bug versus when you just don't know what to do, but that's a whole other beast.

Oh well. At least the graphics are nice.

The post ARMA II quick impressions: I’m really trying! appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

The Times today is reporting that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has suggested that his company, the largest independent gaming company in the world, might cut support for Sony if the PlayStation 3 doesn't become more profitable. Among the juicy quotes:

"I'm getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform," Kotick explained. "It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better."

And this little gem…

"They have to cut the price, because if they don't, the attach rates are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony."

The latter quote comes right on the heels of Sony firmly denying at this year's E3 that there will be any price cut for the PS3 anytime soon. Sony is still convinced that their box is a great value. And while it may indeed offer a lot of features for the price, gamers simply aren't biting.

Sony has already lost tons of money on the PS3, so it certainly wouldn't seem logical for them to drop the price significantly–it may just be too risky. Unfortunately, dropping the price significantly just might be the only thing that keeps their attach rate competitive.

In my view, though, it is probably too late for the PS3. From the start, the system seemed unnecessarily bloated–an expensive Blu-Ray player built in, and a bloated, expensive, unnecessarily complex proprietary processor that few games, if any, can take much advantage of. The initial price tag of $600 was laughably outrageous, and it's current price tag isn't much better. While the Wii offers a completely different kind of experience, Microsoft has been targeting much of the audience as Sony, and seems to be doing a much better job of it with a smart implementation of Xbox Live that has grown to encompass a broad array of features, and a relatively simple DirectX-based development platform.

I have a hard time seeing the PS3 coming down in price anytime soon, and, if true, will cost Sony a competitive install base. A smaller install base could, as today's news indicates, drive away publishers and neuter the growth of the platform's games library. I'd like to see Sony get on their feet with the PS3–competition is vital for consumers–but my suspicion is that things might not turn around for them until they start focusing on their next-gen platform.

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HIGH Using real-time fire as a strategic advantage.

LOW Driving, driving, driving.

WTF People just leave diamonds lying around in the wilderness in unlocked briefcases?

GameCritics.com's own Brandon Erickson recently mentioned Far Cry 2 in his blog, asking whether open-world game design, which has seemingly become the trendy design du jour, is really all it's cracked up to be. Crytek accomplished a lot with the original Far Cry in 2004; the game was large and open, but linear in the sense that the player had a clear objectives and a sense of direction. It wasn't a game like the Elder Scrolls series, where players can wander in any direction for hours on end and discover all kinds of interesting little nooks and crannies tucked away in the vast expanse of the virtual world. Rather, Far Cry sought to provide players with a broader array of strategic options that a fully linear corridor-style shooter could never achieve. In this respect, the game was wildly successful.

While Crytek focused their attention on their next-generation graphics engine and the Crysis games that made use of it, Ubisoft Montreal took over development duty for a sequel to Far Cry. What they've crafted is a game that retains the open-world design of the original game, but one that conversely sheds virtually any other similarities with its predecessor to the point that it is a Far Cry sequel in name only. I would even hesitate to call Far Cry 2 a "spiritual successor" or "re-imagining" of the original; there is no Jack Carver, no freakishly muscular mercenaries, and no campy science-fiction twist; the game takes on a more gritty, realistic setting in the grasslands of Africa, where the player chooses from a handful of protagonists and aligns with mercenary factions competing over various commodities of the nefarious criminal underworld.

The world of Far Cry 2 is a 50 square kilometer, graphically vivid recreation of stereotypical African locales (no specific country or region is named as the game's setting). There are grassy plains, waterfalls and rivers, destitute villages, and, of course, zebras. However, the "50 square kilometer" talk is a good chunk of advertising hype, because while players can travel across a huge world map, most of the traveling is done on narrow, confined roads. Impassable cliffs frequently choke the player's travel options, such that the game's "open world" motif mostly consists of traveling from one hot spot to the next. The various hot spots are indeed quite large, and the combat situations can be approached with a healthy variety of tactics. But the spaces between those hot spots feel a bit claustrophobic for a shooter selling itself as "open-world."

Ambitious though it is in some respects, Far Cry 2reveals some of the problems developers face when designing consistently engaging open-world gameplay. Non-linearity in itself is not necessarily a good thing, any more than concessions to "realism" are a good thing. I've always believed that a game need only to consistently adhere to its own internal logic, rather than attempt to disguise the contrivances that are necessary to craft any challenging game. In Far Cry 2, those contrivances are not very well hidden. Significant portions of the game are spent simply driving or wandering from one location to the next, and the driving portions are about as exciting as… well, driving. The lack of item management is a successful gamble, but the inability to queue multiple quests results in a great deal of driving from one location to the next, to a large degree negating the value of an open-world game design. After all, part of the concept behind well-designed side-quests is that they can be accomplished with little deviation from the central quest, sort of like picking up dry cleaning on the way home from work. But even when players are pursuing some of the rather tedious side quests, far too much time is spent driving along those narrow dirt roads. Ubisoft seemingly recognized that these portions of the game were devoid of compelling gameplay, so they added some filler to make it more palatable. Enemies re-spawn almost as quickly as players can dispatch them, and the game is saddled with a ridiculously cheesy diamond-hunting mini-game–as if people just happen to leave hundreds of diamonds lying around in suitcases all over the African wilderness.

The combat, where the meat of the gameplay lies, is mostly tight and exciting, with only some minor downfalls. Of the exceedingly few elements retained from the original Far Cry, the cartoony and exaggerated combat is still intact. While this is purely a stylistic choice, I felt it lacked the tactile responsiveness of other top-tier shooters. When I pump an enemy full of lead, I like the feeling that those bullets are hitting them the way bullets tend to hit things. I don't necessarily expect Rainbow Six style one-shot-kill realism, but few elements of a great shooter are as imperative as the visceral thrill of seeing enemies recoil from the palpable thud of a perfectly timed shot. Far Cry 2 never quite achieves this, instead delivering a combat experience that has an inescapable b-movie hokiness to it, where enemies react to being shot like robots covered in ballistics gel. However, there are some other elements in the combat that compensate for the lack of tactile thrills. Guns can jam, environments are destructible, and explosions can and often do result in an inferno that dramatically and convincingly engulfs anything and everything as it spreads with the blowing wind. A graphic health management system in which the on-screen character physically pries bullets and shrapnel from his flesh or pierces himself with a syringe further adds a dramatic and strategic flair to the action. It's the moments when these elements gel with the game's solid artificial intelligence that Far Cry 2 is at its best, forcing players to improvise their way through difficult and unpredictable situations.

When Far Cry was released back in 2004, it was one of the most advanced first-person shooters ever made, and featured an open-world design of a scale that had never been accomplished in the genre. Ubisoft made some ambitious design decisions, some of which worked and some of which did not. The action portions of the game are great, as the combination of tight gunplay, destructible nonlinear environments, a creative health management system and respectable artificial intelligence make for a satisfyingly visceral challenge. But much of the rest of the game meanders, and Ubisoft resorted to cheap tactics–inexplicably afflicting the protagonist with malaria, re-spawning enemies after a short period of time, and tacking on a silly diamond-hunting mini-game–to fill in parts of the game that are devoid of substantive, engaging gameplay. And while the game's plot is fairly interesting and well-developed, the repetitive gameplay makes it feel tacked on and tertiary. A mixed bag that redeems itself just enough to be worth playing, Far Cry 2 serves as a valuable experiment in open-world first-person shooter game design, but one that is not quite up to par with what developers like Crytek and GSC have accomplished. Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

Disclosures: This review is based on the PC version of the game, version 1.02.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood, drug references, intense violence, sexual themes, and strong language .The game is not over-the-top or gory and no worse than most PG-13 movies in most respects, but it is clearly inappropriate for children.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The game allows the use of subtitles for all dialogue, but is full of real-time audio cues (gunfire, enemy chatter, etc.) that impact the gameplay significantly.

The post Far Cry 2 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This week, Polish developer CDProjekt announced, boastfully, that their 2007 role-playing fantasy game The Witcher had cracked the top 100 of the all-time best-selling PC games, having sold around 1.2 million copies. A reworked version of the game, called The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf, is on its way to consoles this Fall as well.

I had actually intended to do a review for The Witcher long ago when I first bought the game shortly after its release in October of '07. Unfortunately, after spending many, many hours with the game, I re-installed my operating system and accidentally deleted all my save games. I shelved the game for a long time, as it's tough to find the motivation to re-start such a deep and complex game, but CDProjekt's release of the "Enhanced Edition" content–which was a free download for all owners and is now the de facto version of the game–provided a nice incentive to do just that. But unfortunately, by that time I was quite backlogged with numerous other totally new games that I wanted to play. I've plowed through most of that now, and have been re-playing The Witcher with the new enhanced content. I may still do a comprehensive review one of these days, but for now this humble little blog will have to suffice.

For those who haven't treated themselves to this little gem of a game, it's the story of a "witcher" (duh) named Geralt (pronounced with a hard "G", as in "Garfunkle"), who is a monster hunter in your typical olde tyme fantasy kingdom. The story is far too complex to recount here, but the game's unique twist is that, in addition to being simply a well-rounded and entertaining RPG, it forces players to make morally ambiguous decisions that often have significant ramifications considerably later in the game. The consequence's of one's actions are never as readily apparent as they are in games like Mass Effect where there is always a clear-cut "good guy" and "bad guy" path. In The Witcher, all the characters have their own plights, and while shady characters are in no short supply, Geralt often has to make difficult decisions about who to trust, and the game can play out dramatically differently from seemingly inconsequential actions.

Normally, a video game selling well isn't anything to throw a parade over, but The Witcher is a bit of a special case. It's the first big project from a mostly unknown European developer, and while the game is based on a series of short stories, it's relatively unknown and a totally new IP for video games. Its commercial and critical success is cause for optimism at a time when we are being inundated with sequels and generic, formulaic games with monstrous budgets. The Witcher was an ambitious and risky undertaking for CDProjekt, and it's nice to see them pull it off well and find enough success to become a multi-platform developer. CDProjekt has also done a fantastic job supporting the game, not only through a series of patches but through their excellent Enhanced Edition patch, which reworked significant portions of the game and added some new content, all free of charge.

It's also nice to see that there are PC developers out there who are still interested in evolving the single-player RPG rather than jumping on the MMO train that seems so du rigeur these days. Personally, I'm not a big multiplayer fan at all, and I really enjoy immersing myself in a big, complex game like this. For those PC gamers who haven't taken the time to check out The Witcher, this Spring's somewhat dry release schedule is a great opportunity to do just that. Console gamers, meanwhile, should definitely keep their eyes peeled for the reworked version of the game hitting PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this Fall. I only hope that "consolized" doesn't translate to "bastardized", and console gamers get a game every bit as sophisticated, complex and fun as the PC edition.

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HIGH Exploring the game's vast landscapes and detailed architecture.

LOW Shooting another character with a shotgun nine times from a few feet away and doing no apparent damage.

WTF What happened to the game I loved?

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: The Shadow of Chernobyl was one of my favorite games of last year–an ambitious, mature, and incredibly atmospheric game that was marred only by some unfulfilled promises and amateur execution here and there. The game spent some five years in development and when it was finally released, it still had a lot of bugs and unfinished features. Now, only a year and a half or so after the first Stalker (I'll refrain from typing it as an acronym for my own sanity), the series has been expanded with a prequel under the title of Clear Sky. It promised to expand on the ideas presented in the first game – ideas that were forward-thinking but never fully capitalized upon. It promised to be released with the prim and polish of a finished game, rather than the rushed-out-of-beta feel that the first had to it (which was only corrected after a series of patches).

Consider the promises unfulfilled. Clear Sky is a colossal disappointment on every front, retaining all the flaws of the original and indeed amplifying them to a large degree. The new concepts are implemented with such an amateurish neglect of fundamentals that one can't help but wonder how this game ever made it to retail in such a sad state. It's also buggy as hell, in fact quite a bit more so than I ever remember The Shadow of Chernobyl being. The only thing clear in this sky is that if the original was woefully delayed, the prequel is woefully rushed.

The problems begin right out of the gate. The game boasts "enhancements" to its proprietary X-Ray engine that now take advantage of DirectX 10. As in the Crysis games, this isn't necessarily a good thing. Under the normal "dynamic lighting" mode from the original game, performance is good. Under the new "enhanced dynamic lighting" mode in DirectX 9, performance is a little slower, as expected, but still consistent. Under the DirectX 10 version of this mode, which brings with it some exclusive effects, performance is erratic. The game swings between being butter-smooth and unplayably choppy for no apparent reason. Beginning the game, I was treated to an absolute slide show, right from the opening cut-scene that chugged along with all the speed and finesse of a wounded duck. Keep in mind I am running a reasonably high-end PC. One particular level loaded with a chugging frame rate, but when I reloaded the level, it ran fine. Keen gamers have also noted that certain sun effects absolutely kill framerates at certain times of the day. It all makes for a game that is very difficult to judge in terms of what kind of in-game settings to expect.

After fiddling with the settings for far too long, I was able to get a smooth frame rate…most of the time. Then came the gameplay, and it just went downhill from there. Clear Sky departs from the original primarily by greatly expanding the role of various factions in the game. Players can form alliances with various factions and experience the rewards and consequences of such alliances. For players familiar with the first game, it will feel much like the Freedom/Duty section (both of which make a return appearance), but much more fleshed out. However, the game shifts its focus to factions at the detriment of the atmosphere and storytelling that made the original so compelling, and its core gameplay is so flawed that I ultimately found the game to be little more than an exercise in frustration.

The first area of the game serves to introduce the player to the core concept of factions. It follows the titular group, a ragtag band of researchers, attempting to capture various strategic points from bandits. Our hero is asked to pitch in, with the promise of reward. Problem is, the factions just seem to go about their business. Clear Sky advances on a group of bandits, there's a firefight, and it's mission accomplished–regardless of whether the player was anywhere near the actual fight. The rewards are the same regardless of whether players actually do anything. As I played this confusing section of the game, some serious problems reared their ugly heads. While the first game featured bleeding, it was done in three stages of severity (noted by green, yellow and red icons), and most of the time would stop on its own; only occasionally would it be "red", which necessitated the use of a bandage. This time, bleeding is always "red" and thus always requires a bandage. The bleeding does stop eventually on its own, but it lasts long enough to require a health kit or two to survive, and health kits don't exactly grow on trees. Making matters worse, it seems like a stray bullet can cut a player just by looking at him wrong, which makes for an incredibly imbalanced feel to combat.

That's not the worst of it though, unfortunately. Weapon accuracy and damage modeling were problems in the first game, but Clear Sky takes it to a whole new low. I can appreciate some semblance of realism in a game, but when I shoot some goon literally nine times with a shotgun from a few feet away and he doesn't so much as flinch, there is a problem. These kinds of oddities wouldn't be too horrible were they not compounded by the cheap bleeding system and the scarcity of decent weapons early in the game. The combat ends up feeling cheap and frustrating. Instead of being challenged by the game, I felt as though I was fighting my way around the game's contrivances.

I have to admit that, after a dismal first few hours in the game, it took a lot of willpower for me to swallow my disappointment and keep going. Were I not playing the game for review, I probably would have given up on it–and I have no reservations about saying that if a game bombs in the first few hours, it might as well be a total wash. Gamers shouldn't have to wait for a game to start getting good, particularly when the gameplay is flawed in fundamental ways. I nearly threw in the towel, but instead I dutifully slogged through to the end in the hopes that I would see more of the elements that made the original such a favorite of mine. Fortunately, Clear Sky does get better as the game world opens up and the faction system gets fleshed out a little more. There are a great many rewards to gain from aligning with various factions, including a great deal of customizable weapons and armor–although even the faction system is quite flawed, rife with scripting problems and AI bugs. And, for the most part, the game retains the compelling art direction of the original (indeed, quite a few areas from Chernobyl make a return appearance). However, the decrepit underground labyrinths that were so gripping in Chernobyl are few and far between in Clear Sky, sapping the game of its strongest and most memorable survival-horror elements.

I'd be remiss not to mention the game's revised artifact-finding system. While artifacts were abundant in Chernobyl, Clear Sky takes place before the Zone became such a volatile place. Artifacts can now only be found near anomalies, which are mostly invisible. Players get the chance to use some nifty high-tech artifact detecting equipment, although the core mechanic for finding anomalies is the epitome of lameness: players toss bolts around until one hits an anomaly. Apparently in the Zone, bolts are in infinite supply. It's disappointing that GSC couldn't be a bit more creative than giving players a magical infinite supply of bolts. Artifacts are however much more valuable this time around, and there is a nice risk-vs.-reward factor in what is essentially the artifact-finding minigame. Unfortunately I found it more tedious and contrived than rewarding, especially since it's easier to make money just by killing people and selling their equipment.

All of these problems compound one another to the point that the game's stronger elements are hopelessly drowned out in a sea of bad ideas and sloppy execution. Clear Sky is a disappointing showing from what just a little over a year ago seemed like one of the world's most promising developers. The team at GSC Game World showed such hints of greatness with The Shadow of Chernobyl that to see the prequel descend to such depths makes me wonder if the first wasn't just a fluke. I really wanted to like Clear Sky, but it's executed so poorly on so many levels that I simply never had any fun playing it. I still passionately recommend the original as one of the most unique and evocative first-person shooters ever made, despite its roughness around the edges. But Clear Sky takes everything that I loved about Chernobyl–the mature storyline, the nerve-wracking underground laboratories and the rewarding combat–and muddies them with a litany of bugs and bad design to the point that it overwhelms its more redeeming qualities. Five years might be too long a development cycle, but a year and a half clearly isn't enough. Maybe next time GSC can find a happy medium. Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This review is based on the 1.05.04 version of the game.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood, drug references, language, violence. While not gory or over the top, the game is not meant for children, and has an element of realism that may be disturbing.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The game does allow subtitles to be enabled for scripted dialogue, but the action relies heavily on contextual aural cues, such as enemies talking to each other and gunfire coming from all directions.

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Last year when Crysis came out, I think all of us who played it were a little disappointed in the abrupt, cliffhanger ending. It felt like the ending of Halo 2, where you think you're about to get the biggest, baddest level of the game, and then the credits roll. Crytek's reason for such a lame ending? "It's a trilogy". What? Why didn't anybody say anything before? Are they sure they didn't just run out of time to put in all the levels they wanted?

Today, EA announced that Mirror's Edge will be the first part of a trilogy. What? The first one isn't even out yet. We don't know if it will be any good or if it will sell worth a spit. Need I remind everyone what happened with Too Human?

Ah yes, Too Human. Silicon Knights began development on the game sometime around the release of Space Invaders. Of course, they reminded everyone that it's just one part of what will be this big, epic trilogy. Then the game, after many, many years in development and great fanfare, garned a whopping 69% on GameRankings.com. Guess a trilogy isn't sounding like such a good idea anymore.

And I would be remiss to neglect the news of Starcraft 2 being broken up into an episodic trilogy, possibly spaced out years apart. At least the Starcraft brand has an uber-loyal following, and Blizzard has a track record of doing, well, pretty much everything right. It just might work.

I remember a time when developers actually waited until a game was successful before they started talking about sequels. I mean, what is more embarassing than being in Silicon Knights' position – hyping up a trilogy for years, then releasing a lousy game? Couldn't these developers just say, "You know, a trilogy would be cool. But we'll have to take it one game at a time."

First of all, most of the big trilogies, like say Star Wars, weren't actually planned as trilogies. When George Lucas filmed the original Star Wars, he wasn't thinking about Return of the Jedi–at least not publically. He focused on making that one movie really good. No stupid cliffhanger endings, just a good movie that built up interesting characters and had enough subtext that there was still a lot of storytelling to do, if audiences cared.

Maybe The Lord of the Rings spoiled everyone. The LotR movies are really just one big nine-hour movie. It's quite possibly my favorite movie. But LotR was based on an immensely popular series of novels that had garnered a loyal fan following over four decades, and Peter Jackson was no hack. He had not just the talent, but the resources at his disposal. The entire trilogy was filmed at once. Silicon Knights, this was not. And here's the other fact: it was an unprecedented gamble, but New Line needed it. But despite being a trilogy, each movie stood on its own. Each had little subplots that resolved nicely while teasing you for more. And when it all finally ended, the final act alone was longer than most movies.

Besides, what's so special about trilogies anyway? Is there something magical about the number 3? You know what's more magical than the number 3? Stories that have good endings. Stories that have interesting characters. Stories that leave you wanting more, instead of just feeling like you should have gotten more. Trilogies are awesome, when they happen. But you can't force them, okay developers? Take it one game at a time, and make sure they each stand on their own. If a trilogy is meant to be, the fans will let you know.

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HIGH Combating scores of aliens while being pursued by nanosuited KPA soldiers through dense, frozen jungles.

LOW Realizing it has to come to an end.

WTF Plasma cannon? Oh yeah!

Crysis was, to many, a brilliant game. It really nailed the open-ended, player-centric combat experience in a way that no shooter had yet achieved. It was a thinking man's shooter, a game that rewarded players not for slogging through a series of predictable scripted events, but for exploring and experimenting with ample weaponry and interactive environments to conquer intelligent and often unpredictable foes. To others, Crysis was an exercise in frustration. The advanced graphics engine was perhaps the single greatest selling point of the game prior to its release, but gamers quickly discovered that even the most robust systems had difficulty playing the game at its eye-popping maximum settings. Crysis was ahead of its time, figuratively and literally.

Now, a year later, the franchise has returned with Crysis Warhead. Warhead is not a sequel but rather an expansion, a game that recounts the story of Sargent Michael "Psycho" Sykes, in events that run parallel with and tie into the first game. In Warhead, Sykes is in pursuit of a mysterious weapon being transported across the country by the KPA, and he'll battle through icy wastelands, dense jungles and underground labyrinths to capture it. While Nomad-the original's protagonist-was measured and predictable, Sykes is brash and reckless, heavy on firepower and doing whatever it takes to finish the job. Yet he also shows an unwavering commitment to his comrades, defying direct orders to rescue a downed pilot and nearly losing his life and his mission to save another. It was hard to know what to expect with Warhead, because creative mastermind Cevat Yerli had said that the game was going to feature more scripting (leading some to speculate that it would have more in common with the Call of Duty series than the original), but also that he and his team at Crytek had listened to the criticism and were planning to emphasize the non-linear gameplay of the original. Well, which was it going to be?

The answer is unequivocally both. Warhead is both less linear and more scripted than Crysis, combining the best elements of the Call of Duty archetype and melding them seamlessly with the dynamic gameplay that made Crysis such a standout shooter. Not only is it a dramatic improvement over the already impressive original, but it stands as a beacon of progress to the glut of first-person shooters stuck in their rigidly scripted ruts, showing that open-ended gameplay and carefully scripted dramatic tension need not be mutually exclusive. As before, the highly interactive environments and cunning artificial intelligence of the enemies combine with the broad palette of weapons and abilities to create near-endless ways to experience the game. Warhead rewards players for their creativity, not their memorization skills.

As if to reflect Sykes' adrenaline-pumped personality, Warhead is a tour-de-force of big set pieces and dramatic action. One level finds Sykes crawling out of a frozen ship to confront a squad of nanosuited KPA soldiers, then thrust into a tense hovercraft chase across massive frozen ocean waves. But despite such scripting, the game does not lose its player-centric focus. One of the later levels involves a train plowing through the jungle with the aforementioned precious cargo. In nearly any other game, this would be a restrictive, on-rails sequence (pardon the pun). But in Warhead, players are free to disembark from the train at any time and progress through the expansive surrounding jungle in whatever creative ways they so desire. There are tons of vehicles scattered about the levels and a number of scripted sequences involving them, but they are always optional. Some concessions in logic have been made to accommodate player freedom-for example, the aforementioned train comes to a stop at certain points until the player catches up, and in another sequence an escaping vehicle seems to attract enemy fire only when Sykes is manning the gun. But save for some minor concessions in believability, Crytek have expertly capitalized on the dramatic flair that characterized the final levels of the original game, yet retained the sprawling, complex levels that allow players plenty of freedom to get creative with the various weapons and nanosuit abilities at their disposal.

Sykes packs a fair bit more firepower than Nomad did, carrying more ammunition, a nice variety of new explosives, and some killer new weaponry that I shall not spoil here. He'll need it, too: enemies are packed much more densely than they were in Crysis, and they do a much better job of reacting, planning, and coordinating their attacks. Significant improvements have been made to the alien AI in addition to introducing a number of new otherworldly foes, making them much more imposing adversaries than they were last time around. Moreover, KPA soldiers are often entangled with the aliens as well, making for some dramatic full-scale battle sequences that are as tactically challenging as they are grand in scope.

Crytek also aimed to address many of the criticisms that Crysis was unreasonably system-intensive; even the highest-end rigs couldn't play the game at maximum detail. Crytek boasted of many optimizations to the engine for Warhead, and indeed they have delivered. Far more impressive than the performance improvement though is the dramatic increase in graphical detail. Environments are stunningly lush and vibrant, filled with weather effects, wildlife, dense and detailed foliage and It's not without its flaws. There are some bugs with textures not streaming in properly, DirectX 10- the default in Vista-is sluggish (again), and the performance drops a bit from in the ice levels. Still, Crytek's engine remains the unmatched standard in visual fidelity, even when the settings aren't cranked to the max. This isn't just a showpiece for realism, either; as before, the set pieces are large, complex, and dramatic. The icy landscapes and lush jungles are full of tasteful and creative artistic flourishes, from massive frozen battleships to schools of fish swimming through the ocean. Even the game's indoor sequences prove to be surprisingly robust, full of imposing steel and rock structures and teeming with interactive objects.

Warhead expands on the forward-thinking ideas presented in Crysis and truly takes them to the next level. The pacing is better, the action is better, the scripting is better, the enemies are better, the levels are better, and the graphics are better. The game is relatively short-I completed it in about six hours on "Delta"-but like the original, its open-ended nature lends it to virtually endless replayability. In fact, prior to Warhead's release, I still played Crysis on a regular basis. If Warhead has a weakness, it is still in its rather typical near-future science-fiction motif, which compares weakly to more compelling backdrops like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky's post-apocalyptic battleground. But although its setting is a familiar archetype, its gameplay is a progressive vision that, a year after Crysis shattered boundaries with a new level of open-ended gameplay, continues to be the standard bearer for what this longstanding genre can achieve. Rating 9.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This review is based on the 1.0 version of the game

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood, strong language, violence. The game is not graphic in the sense of being gory or over-the-top; however there is some blood and it is very intense and violent with a fair bit of profanity. Though it's no worse than a R-rated action movie, it's clearly not intended for children.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The game does allow subtitles to be enabled for scripted dialogue, but the action relies heavily on contextual aural cues, such as enemy soldiers talking to each other, aliens whirring about, and gunfire coming from all directions.

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Then came the piracy talk. Developers including id, Epic, Crytek, Ubisoft, and Infinity Ward suggested that piracy was so rampant on the PC that it was fueling their decision to focus more centrally on console development. Was CryEngine2 the last great PC gaming engine? Would PC gamers become increasingly subject to "dumbed-down" multiplatform games and belated ports like Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, while PC exclusives that didn't fall into strategy or MMORPG categories faded into obscurity?

I'm relatively new to the PC gaming landscape. I played some PC games here and there over the years and once lost a whole summer to Quake 3, but until a couple of years ago I had always been a console gamer. But I had always looked at the PC with envious eyes, and had always wanted a really nice, high-end gaming rig. Of course, I realized that an uber-rig was not necessary to enjoy PC gaming. But I figured that since I was going to get a new PC and I could afford to treat myself, why not get something really great? In early 2006 (back when AMD processors still ruled the performance charts) I built my first PC. My first game was F.E.A.R., which at the time was still a PC exclusive. I haven't looked back since. As both a gamer and a hardware enthusiast, I can honestly say that I enjoy PC gaming far more than I ever enjoyed console gaming. But to listen to some people, I got into the game at a pretty dismal time. However, I think that a closer look at the facts tells a different story.

Let's look back at that NPD data. First, it should be noted that the sales for Crysis actually exceeded the NPD's forecast. Second, it should be noted that the NPD only tracks a limited amount of U.S. retail sales – notable exceptions include Wal-Mart and Toys 'R' Us. With the exception of Amazon.com, it does not track boxed sales through e-tail, nor does it track digital download sales. The NPD only recently began tracking online subscriptions. When you figure in these markets and look at the global picture, things might turn out differently. And they do. According to the July 2008 issue of PC Gamer UK, Crysis has sold over 3 million copies. Since the release of Crysis Warhead, Crysis has been available on Steam and Direct2Drive, undoubtedly bringing the game to a bigger audience (Steam alone has over 15 million users). Not bad for a high-end PC game that, at one time, was thought to be a flop.

At the same time, long time PC gamers have to accept that as consoles have evolved, genres once considered to be squarely in the PC niche have now found a comfortable home with an expanded audience that encompasses both consoles and PCs. These include both single-player and – more recently – online first-person shooters, strategy games, and even MMOs like Age of Conan. Consoles have always encompassed a much broader audience than hardcore PC gaming, so if developers have the capability to bring their games multiplatform, it's safe to say that they will.

Not that this is some sudden new trend. The first Splinter Cell was ported to the PC after it made its debut on the XBox, as was my personal favorite XBox game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was developed and released simultaneously for XBox and PC, as was Thief III and Deus EX: Invisible War, just to name a few. Sometimes, these games seem to suffer in one area or another because of their multiplatform focus; other times, they translate very well. Generally speaking, I think the difference tends to be negligible. Many of my favorite games have been multiplatform (Oblivion comes to mind), and I've found that with the right developer, multiplatform games can push PC hardware just as much as PC exclusives.

And while it may have been disheartening to see a game like Mass Effect belatedly ported to the PC, Bioware is now developing a new, PC-exclusive RPG slated for release next year. EA, the world's biggest publisher, is firmly behind the PC with exclusives like Spore and the Crysis games, both of which have been both critical and commercial successes. Smaller developers like Stardock and GSC are contuining to garner a strong following, and of course the almighty Blizzard is stirring up legions with Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and the 800 pound gorilla that is World of Warcraft and its forthcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King. There is still a strong PC niche for strategy games, adventure games, MMOs, and online shooters. As consoles evolve, those niches may bleed into multiplatform focuses as well. But the PC platform will continue to evolve as well, just as it always has.

And what about the veritable explosion of customized gaming computers? Not too long ago, three companies ruled the roost: Alienware, Voodoo, and Falcon Northwest. Now, Alienware has been purcahsed by Dell, who have also ventured into the gaming PC arena. Voodoo was purchased by HP, who stormed on to the market with their innovative Blackbird gaming PC. Overclocking fiends OverdrivePC were purchased by another growing boutique, Velocity Micro. Countless boutiques have found a successful niche, with names like Maingear, Hypersonic, Uberclock, and Digital Storm. Would there be such a burgeoning market for customized gaming PCs if PC gaming itself was waning? And this is of course not to discount the market of which I am a part, which is the massive DIY hardware enthusiast crowd. Communities of this sort have sprung up all over the internet, and even the once niche practice of overclocking has become so mainstream that component manufacturers advertise their products for easy overclocking.

And lastly, a word on piracy. While many developers insist that that piracy is a primary reason for their increasing focus on console development, the reality is that the data does not exist to show, empirically, just what kind of a sales impact piracy really has. Research in the music industry seems to suggest that piracy may not have remotely the impact many perceive it to. Recently, Myriam Sughayer of EA and Dan Hewitt of the ESA commented on the hullabaloo over Spore's piracy, and had this to say in an interview with Gamasutra:

"Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale"

"It’s important to remember that it’s not a one-for-one equation. Our calculation isn’t such that we say that every game that’s been stolen is a sale loss."

"We’ve talked to people that made several unsuccessful attempts to download the game and ended up with incomplete, slow, buggy or unusable code. In one case, a file identified as Spore contained a virus. To say that every download represents a successful copy of the game —- or that there’s been more than 500K copies downloaded — that’s just not true."

Developers who blame only piracy for their woes without critically examining other contributing factors of their business models (I'm looking at you, Epic) are left to explain the success of PC-exclusive games ranging from Crysis to Spore to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to Sins of a Solar Empire. While the PC has never had an audience comparable to consoles (with the notable exception of "casual" games like The Sims), it's patently absurd to believe that developers cannot have great success on the PC. PC gamers are a devoted bunch, a strong community of gaming and hardware enthusiasts that, like anyone else, will purchase strong and innovative products that speak to their interests. While the particular genres popular on the PC and the sometimes complicated hardware aspects may not be for everyone, PC gaming will, for the foreseeable future, retain its core audience of devoted gaming enthusiasts. Perhaps with the success of Steam and other digitial platforms, along with CDProjekt's innovative Good Old Games store, the advent of the PC Gaming Alliance and the Microsoft Games for Windows initiative, we may see PC gaming expand its reach. But despite looming controversies over DRM, "consolization" and piracy, I don't think long-time devoted PC gamers have anything to worry about. The last couple of years have seen more top-teir releases than any other time in PC gaming's history and hardware that has brought incredible performance to mainstream pricing. Now isn't just as good a time as any to be a PC gamer, it's a friggin' amazing time to be a PC gamer.

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