The PC Centric Extravaganza 2.12.08
Posted by Chris Evans on 02.12.2008
PC PC PC PC PC PC PC...PC anyone?
The PC Centric Extravaganza 12th February 2008!
Welcome one and all to the PC Centric Extravaganza! It has been a busy past week; university work is increasing steadily, buying Valentines presents, sending out feelers about a summer internship and trying to get some interviews sorted out! Unfortunately all this busyness has left me little time for gaming =[ However I have been reminiscing with some Red Alert 2 and you can read my thoughts on this great game right here on 411 Mania!
It has been a pretty busy week in PC and general games industry news…I have made over 20 posts on my blog since the last PC Centric Extravaganza! Wow….that is a fair bit I think! Some highlights this past week include – British MPs on UK game ratings, Steam getting fixed and hell of a lot of other juicy and not so juicy information!
Videos – Kane's Wrath and Facebreaker
Ok, so Kane's Wrath is a PC Game, so that should most definitely be featured here. Facebreaker I hear you ask? A console game in the PC Centric Extravaganza, what am I thinking of I hear you ask! Well seeing as I covered it in my EA Changing column here the other week I thought I may as well throw in a cool video for it!
Anywho, the Kane's Wrath trailer is showing off a new Scrin unit, the Mechapede. It is an interesting looking…creature…so check out the video below to see it in action!
The second video is, as I mentioned regarding Facebreaker the new boxing game from EA. This video shows off some of the characters and some of the facebreaking that you will be dishing out in the game.
All hail GameTrailers for these videos!
Valve and Steam related newsbits
I sense a growing trend here in this new column…I sense….a lot of love for Valve! Yes I love Valve and all that they do, Steam is awesome, Portal is even better, the only thing better than Valve is GameTrailers…oh and my blog…but that is just so awesome I shouldn't need to shill it so shamelessly here should I….ah well! Anyway these two bits of lovely information originally were posted on halflife2.net and, well, probably somewhere else before that! Anyway I will take what I blogged/wrote on my blog and give my thoughts on the news from there, seems easier that way!
A new feature from PC Zone has David Speyrer and Doug Lombardi talking in-depth on Episode 2 and Spreyrer talks a bit about Episode 3 and how they still don't exactly know the plan for it.
"We don't know entirely what's happening in the next episode, but we're gonna figure it out!" laughed Speyrer."There are always things we want to do that we can't because of the constraints of either the story or the arc we've laid out for the gameplay - or just time. So we shelve them and carry on. Ideas fly around here quite a bit, so we have this huge laundry list of things to try for the next thing..."
This is a very good read, so head here for the whole article.
*slight spoiler warning*
I have seen some people collectively go ‘D:' in horror on halflife2.net from Doug and David telling us that they don't know exactly what is going to be happening in Episode 3 of the Half-Life 2 story. However I have fewer worries, they are moving the game into a totally new setting – the Arctic. Well at least it seems that way following the end of Episode 2 so Valve need to make some dramatic new environments, and well all know that we won't be seeing Episode 3 until 2074 so everyone should just calm down and wait for Valve to get it all spit-polished and shined.
Steam has now officially hit 15 million subscribers and has witnessed year-over-year sales growth of 158% through the holiday season. Pretty impressive figures there for Valve. Some words from Gabe.
"PC gaming is thriving, and has evolved into an era of constant connectivity," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "That connectivity gives us the ability to have a much better relationship with customers, not just for delivering our games, but across all aspects of our business - including the design, development, and support of our games. Features like Guest Passes, Free Weekends, Gifting, and the Steam Community have been very well received both by customers and the developers who are using Steam. We are accelerating our release of new functionality in the next year as well as finding new ways to work with our partners such as the release of Steamworks, which allows them to bring the many benefits of Steam to their packaged products."
Now we shall bow down to our overlords of Valve and Google! All hail! All hail! But seriously, congratulations to Valve, this is a great landmark, and to carry on trouncing World of Warcraft numbers wise is always good!
Wahoo! Steam has a bigger user base than the mother of all games World of Warcraft! As I am not a real big fan of WoW I am really excited to see Steam doing so well. I really think Steam is the way forward for the PC so to see it performing so well is a great sign for all you PC die-hards! Anyway I think this means I will need to go and update my ‘Steampunked – A Comment' (linky) article to feature this new'ness and whatever else Steam has done since then!
It seems that the issues I reported on back in January have been resolved in a new Steam Client Beta. I have had download speeds go from 25k/sec tops to around 100k/sec.
A Steam client beta is now available. To access it, go to File -> Settings and on the Account tab choose "Steam Client Candidate" in the Beta participation section. The specific changes include:
- Fixed downloads becoming paused
- Improved download speeds
- Decreased application launch time
- Fixed URL links in chats to not include trailing punctuation as part of the link
- Changed group event notifications to open at most 8 dialogs
I can now happily proclaim that this new Beta Client for Steam is a must have! It has resolved all of the issues I was experiencing and everything is now much better than it was just a few short weeks ago. Right now I am downloading STALKER (prefer to have it on Steam rather than via discs) so I can get my fix of that before the expansion Clear Sky lands sometime later this year.
A few other Valve related newsbits that have cropped up on halflife2.net – the Jailbreak: Source is soon going to be having ‘perks' in-game; Pirate vs Knights II has now entered Beta 2.0 with new maps, playable classes and much more; the Eternal Silence mod has undergone some more updates and of course there are more links other various interviews the Valve guys have done this past week (makes a note to get in touch with Doug about doing an interview.)
Wow, that was a fair bit of Valve'y news!
Red Faction III – First Info
This was originally posted here on 411 or on my blog (following Kotaku's news)...I forget which! Anyway my thoughts are pretty much summed up below…and that is that I have minimal thoughts on it right now.
Some early details has now emerged on Red Faction III. It has been confirmed by THQ that it will be named Red Faction III and that Volition will be working on the game. It is slated for release on PC/360/PS3 any time between April and next March.
Pretty wide release window so plenty of time for Volition to work on the game. Must say it is good to see it is scheduled for the PC and that we ain't being abandoned totally!
Early days, but as long as they don't follow Red Faction 2 I will be happy....well really I just want to see the GeoMod stuff again!
Following the blow given to all PC gamers wanting Assassin's Creed following the extra high system requirements we get a little bonus with four new missions! Whether this is to make up for needing a monster PC to run it is yet to be seen...
Ubisoft have also confirmed that it will be landing in March and will be known henceforth as 'Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut.' Should be called the 'Director's "PC Killing" Cut'.
Do four new PC exclusive missions make up for the ludicrously high PC specs? I think not, have Ubisoft optimised it for the PC? I don't know, but time will tell how it does run.
Game Ratings
Two bits of news regarding game ratings both in the UK and over in the US, I'll give the news as I reported it then expand on my thoughts…
NextGen.biz is reporting that the ESRB has published details and statistics on game ratings handed out for 2007. This is the low-down according to the ESRB.
ESRB assigned 1,563 ratings in 2007, the largest amount in our 13-year history. While a handful of M-rated titles tend to garner a majority of media attention, the E (Everyone 6+) rating category continues to dominate. The E category saw the largest increase over last year, accounting for nearly 60% of ratings assigned overall.
The M (Mature 17+) category represented 6% of the overall ratings assigned, down from 8% in 2006 and 12% in 2005. The E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) and T (Teen 13+) categories accounted for 15% and 20% respectively.
This just goes to show that claims by many 'mass media' outlets like Fox News that 'M' rated games are a large proportion of the gaming market are just plane wrong. 'M' rated games may get the most publicity, but they are clearly in the minority.
See that last paragraph? Yeah that is my low-down on this. Less and less games are rated ‘M' nowadays, whether this means that developers are toning down the games themselves or whether the rating system is getting softer is a moot point. This is clear factual evidence for everyone who thinks all games are blood and guts ‘killer-training' or ‘sex-box' games (read: Fox) that shows that they are full of crap. Their arguments are based on jack-shit most of the time, and stuff like this shows that the games industry is made out as a big evil, when in fact that is far from the truth.
Oh, I didn't get a response from The Times columnist I talked about last week. Bitch.
The other piece of news, all about the UK rating system;
A report by the Guardian newspaper says that UK ministers are discussing plans for introducing a cinema like age rating system for all games sold in the UK.
At the moment only games showing sex or "gross" violence to humans or animals require legally enforceable age limits. Ministers plan to impose measures requiring all games to carry a legally binding age restriction rating. Ministers also are thought to make a recommendation to parents that games should only be played in the kitchen or in an area where parents/carers can view and manage what is being played.
Ideas are also being discussed regarding enforcing filters on internet sites that are deemed unsuitable for children.
Hugo Swire, a former shadow culture secretary, has suggested that the default setting for internet content would be for children, with a password or pin needed for unfiltered material.
Finally it is expected that Tory MP Julian Brazier will launch a private members bill aimed towards setting up a new body to assess and appeal against BBFC classification of games and DVDs.
Now parts of this pose potentially a very dangerous situation for us UK gamers. While I totally agree that game ratings should be legally binding everywhere (not just the UK) to follow the way they work with the cinema I can see the BBFC taking a tough stance against many games. We have already seen Manhunt 2 get banned from our shores, and with the BBFC possibly rating every game (some games in the UK are rated by the PEGI) we should be worried.
The aim of the Tory MP to set up a new body to assess BBFC classifications is potentially an even worse move. I can already see that if this private members bill (these proposals rarely get passed) goes through then the BBFC will be taking a harsher line on games to avoid being called to account. While it is possible that the BBFC and a possible new body will be fair and judge games as they currently are I foresee many games getting higher ratings and more games being banned.
Finally the possibility of the internet being restricted is plain ludicrous. Are we living in China now? If anything like that gets passed then I think it will be time for me to move elsewhere or start a revolution! For the gamers!
Oh, funny little thing while I am talking politics, Gordon Brown lost to his four year old son in Wii Tennis! (linky.)
Wrapping Up
As ever check out all the great articles around here on 411 Mania in the games section! Leave me some feedback if you want me to focus on other issues or whatever else you want!
Hopefully some interviews will be appearing later this week…god I hope so! I may give STALKER a whirl so I may get my thoughts on that gathered up sometime soon.
