The PC Centric Extravaganza 5.27.08

Posted by Chris Evans on 05.27.2008

Chris Evans takes a look at all the PC happenings from the past week.

The PC Centric Extravaganza 27th May 2008

WELCOME!

Welcome one and all to another edition of The PC Centric Extravaganza! I am your host Chris Evans and this week I have an action packed Extravaganza for you all! With my PC back in working order you can expect some game previews and reviews appearing soon (I hope!) so keep your eyes open for them. Lets get on with this.

The Truth Behind Battlefield Heroes

Is that the war in the game came about from an Olympic Cycling Dispute! At that is the reason according to James Salt that is in this latest Battlefield Heroes video!



While he doesn't reveal anything much new, well apart from the fact that an Olympic Cycling dispute is the premise for war, this trailer shows off some lovely in-game footage.

I notice a trend for two's and three's in this game, two maps and two sides, three vehicle and three unit types. Interesting no?

In further Battlefield Heroes news I bring word of how to get into the Beta!Thanks to a helpful Half-Life 2.net forumite I was pointed in the direction of this webpage which allows you to apply to become a Battlefield Heroes Beta Tester.

After agreeing to a Non Disclosure Agreement you then must go forth and provide some information about yourself including any previous Beta testing experience and a reason for why you should be in the Battlefield Heroes Beta.

I now find myself waiting eagerly for an e-mail which I hope will provide me with further Beta information...why don't you try?

Just go ahead and register for the forum as well and anything else it tells you, it is all for the best…honest!

Spore Trailer

Spore's Gameplay Producer Matt Powers (awesome name!) talks us through the Cell Phase of Spore.



Spore lands September 7th so keep your eyes out for even more news over the coming months! I personally am undecided over whether I can or can't wait…I do want to see more.

Tabula Rasa Boxing



Who would have thought that an event known as "Friday Night Fights" from the Tabula Rasa beta would become such an ingrained part of the game that the team would include a Boxing Ring in the upcoming patch 'Deployment 8.'

Well that is just what has happened with the ring being known as CELLAR (Coalition of Enlistees Likely Looking for Aggressive Retaliation) with the new home of Friday Night Fights also allowing players to purchase boxing gloves, helmets and even shorts! You may even see General British himself step into the ring!

More pictures of the ring can be seen below or over here.



Lombardi on the PC

Shacknews recently caught up with the voice of Valve, Doug Lombardi. In this first half of a two part interview Doug talks about the PC Gaming Alliance, the future of PC gaming and system requirements in current PC games. This is an extremely interesting interview and you can read a little bit of it now:

Shack: Does the responsibility lie somewhat with the hardware manufacturers to market their products in a reasonable way, or is it up to the developers to set sane requirements?

Doug Lombardi: Oh I think it's totally the fault of the developers. Totally the fault of the developers. I mean the graphics guys, their job to keep pushing the envelope, and as they push the envelope, move the lower-end cards down to a nice price point, so that there's always this evolution that's happening. If you're a hot rod type of guy, and you want to spend $400 on the latest thing, you want to have a smoking machine, and when Left 4 Dead comes out you want to run it at its highest resolution with killer framerates, and call your buddies over for a beer and make them all drool over your system, awesome. But if you're just a guy who wants a decent PC for less than a thousand bucks, and wants to be able to run games on it, there should be a card out there that runs games at a decent famerate and decent fluidity. Then it's on us to write for both of those guys.

Go read the rest of it here.

City of Heroes – Midnight Hour

The latest 'Issue' of City of Heroes has been released. The expansion pack that is free to all subscribers brings in a massive amount of new content to the game.

NCSoft have recently celebrated the Fourth Anniversary of City of Heroes and Issue 12: Midnight Hour is the perfect way for the team to cap off the celebrations.

New features are a plenty in Midnight Hour. The Midnight Squad has been brought from the game lore into the online world and by helping them you will be able to travel to a new Greek and Roman inspired zone.

Also present in Midnight Hour are new Villain Archetypes and a Powerset Proliferation which greatly increases the range of character creation options. As a result all current subscribers receive two new character slots.

The full press release follows.

NCsoft Covers New Ground in City of Heroes



Newest expansion takes players to ancient city to save the present day



AUSTIN, Texas, May 21, 2008—NCsoft® Corporation, the world's leading developer and publisher of online computer games, today announced the release of City of Heroes® "Issue 12: Midnight Hour." The newest free expansion for current subscribers, Issue 12 brings to life a special covert group from the game's lore, highly-anticipated Villain Epic Archetypes, more powerset options and character slots for players, plus a whole new Greek- and Roman-inspired zone to explore!

City of Heroes Issue 12, developed and published by NCsoft, brings the Midnight Squad out of the lore and into the game. The Midnight Squad is the clandestine organization of mystics, scholars and mages who hold a secret that could bring the alien group, the Rikti, to its knees. Players are encouraged to help the Midnight Squad uncover the secret that could help save Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles from further alien assaults.

Part of this secret will be revealed in a new zone called Cimerora, which uses the Ouroboros time travel system introduced in Issue 11. This zone, inspired by ancient Greece and Rome, is only accessible by working with the Midnight Squad. Once the player has access, both villains and heroes must face deadly creatures and defeat an unexpected threat. As a reward for their accomplishments in Cimerora, players can unlock special Greek- and Roman-inspired armor and costumes.

Another key feature in Issue 12 is Villain Epic Archetypes. Now, villains who reach level 50 unlock two brand new epic archetypes; Wolf Spiders and Blood Widows. Wolf Spiders can specialize into Bane Spiders or Crab Spiders, and Blood Widows can develop into Night Widows or Fortunatas. Each specialty enjoys a unique set of wickedly powerful attacks.

Issue 12 also introduces Powerset Proliferation, which vastly increases the variety of villain and hero characters that players can create. Some powersets, previously only available to hero archetypes, are now available to designated villain archetypes, and vice versa. To help accommodate all of these new character options, the development team has opened additional character slots. All current subscribers receive two new character slots for use on the server of their choice. Other slots may be acquired as a part of the Veteran Rewards program, or for purchase. Details can be found on the City of Heroes web site.

"With the introduction of Villain Epic Archetypes, new costume options and Powerset Proliferation in Issue 12, we knew players would want to be able to create new characters," said Matt Miller, lead designer. "Expanding the number of character slots in this way ensures that our players can use all these new features. We think it's a great solution that adds value to the service."

To join the adventures of the most successful comic-book themed game on the market, players can purchase the City of Heroes "Good Versus Evil Edition" game pack at retailers across North America or through digital download at the PlayNC Store. The "Good Versus Evil Edition" includes the complete City of Heroes and City of Villains® games, as well as a set of exclusive bonus items. Customers receive the first month of play free and both games can be played for the single monthly subscription price of $14.99.

For more information about City of Heroes, go to http://www.cityofheroes.com.



About NCsoft Corporation

NCsoft North America is headquartered in Austin, Texas and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation. NCsoft, with its own development and publishing offices in Texas and California, also works with other NCsoft subsidiaries and third party developers throughout North America to develop and publish innovative online entertainment software products. The company has successfully launched multiple online titles in the last three years and continues to support its franchises, which include Lineage®/Lineage II, City of Heroes/City of Villains, Guild Wars®/Guild Wars Factions®/Guild Wars Nightfall®/Guild Wars: Eye of the North™, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa®, Dungeon Runners™, and Exteel™ More information about NCsoft can be found at http://www.plaync.com.



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NCsoft, the interlocking NC logo, PlayNC, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Lineage, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Paragon City and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

GRID – Sim or Aracde Game?

The Codemasters FAQ for Race Driver: GRID has been put online and provides an interesting insight into the balance between the Arcade and Simulation aspects of the game.

Some big things come out in this FAQ and that is that this is much more of an Arcadey game than previous Codemasters racing games have been.



In GRID there are no car tuning or set up options, at all. While I appreciate Codemasters wanting to broaden the appeal of GRID to the wider Arcade racing audience, this move won't go down well with the Simulation orientated gamers.

The second big thing to jump out from the FAQ in the Arcade/Simulation debate is the lack of any wet weather conditions. Day and night driving has been included, but one of the most interesting and fun forms of driving is not present. The lack of realistic weather is another blow for those looking for more of the Simulation real-to-life style of game.

Finally the FAQ also confirms there will be no "Penalty Flags" which I can only assume means that there are no Yellow, Red or Black flags. If this is what no "Penalty Flags" means then again GRID is going to annoy many of the more hardcore racers.

While it has always been obvious who Codemasters have been targeting with GRID it is distressing to know that the features mentioned above won't be included. I am sure that Codemasters could have included these in a Simulation mode or setting in GRID as they would have added a much greater level of depth to the game.

In another note the game will be available on Steam, but unfortunately there are no voice communications in GRID for us PC users, we will have to resort to typing what we want to say...while racing.

Race Driver GRID FAQ

With my PC working I can now actually play the demo of this! Yes! Expect Demo Impressions soon!

My Take – Digital Distribution

Digital Distribution – A Counter Argument

Everyone praises Steam and its ilk nowadays, digital distribution is the big hot topic amongst developers, publishers and anyone else associated with gaming. Almost everyone is praising digital distribution as if it were the second coming. The voices of discontent are minimal, but there are issues to be considered. Digital distribution, is it really all that great?

The Steam group, Rest of World (missing a ‘the' in there I think) has been a voice of criticism against many of the issues with Steam which is one of, it not –the- leading method of digital distribution on the PC. The group which is over five thousand members strong is campaigning for developers and publishers to provide a fair and equal service to all Steam users regardless of nationality.

Steam suffers massively from issues of pricing and availability of games in different parts of the world. Games such as Call of Duty 4 have cost $40 more to buy in Australia than in the US via Steam. (cnet.au) Many other games that are readily available in the US are not available in Australia or other parts of the world.

Ubisoft the mega-developer and publisher from France has a large range of games available on Steam. These games are only available to those Steam users from the US. While the people who set the prices of games on Steam (not Valve) may have reasons for these examples of poor and equal availability these are not shared with the people who matter, the gamers.

When Rock, Paper, Shotgun enquired about these issues representatives of Ubisoft and Atari provided variances on the classic ‘No Comment' line.

This isn't an issue exclusive to Steam, a visit to both the US and UK Direct2Drive sites reveal some startling differences. The US sites has five pages of PC games for sale, the UK site has only two. Looking at specific games to purchase Bioshock from the UK Direct2Drive site costs around £5 more than it would from the US site after taking into account currency rates.

With Bioshock costing £2 less on Play.com that the UK Direct2Drive site with free postage, the question must be asked, is digital distribution worth it, especially for those of us outside of the US. If it is cheaper to purchase a game from retail, or if there is no option of a digitally distributed copy then surely the whole system must be reworked in order to remove this issue.

The question also arises about micro-transactions. With games moving ever more consistently online surely the rise of digital distribution has played a role in the rise of micro-transactions in games. Battlefield Heroes will use micro-transactions as the key part in its revenue making process and even Valve are thinking about getting in on the act (IGN Interview)
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The rise of digital distribution is surely a key factor in the rise of micro-transactions, with the idea of paying for a digital product put into peoples minds then it surely makes people more susceptible to micro-transactions.

The days of unlocking new clothes and suchlike has gone, now if you want anything extra to what you buy originally it seems that you have to use micro-transactions to give yourself more choice. This is a sign of the games industry changing, and changing for the worse.

Digital distribution also raises the issue downloading all those gigabytes of data. While broadband speeds may be getting ever faster for some, games are becoming ever larger themselves. With Call of Duty 4 and Assassin's Creed clocking in at 8Gb they will take a fair bit of downloading even on faster connections. The latest Steam Hardware Survey reveals that over 30% of respondents are on an internet connection less than 1Mb/sec.

Downloading games such as Call of Duty 4 will take quite a while, a long, long while in fact for those 30% of Steam users. This presents a clear impracticality of digital distribution, if you want to play a game immediately after playing then you will need a retail copy. Digital distribution is taking away the immediacy that should be present in gaming.

Other issues arise when it comes to playing games downloaded via digital distribution sources. Some require connection to a program separate to the game itself, take Steam as an example. Now while often you will be able to play these games fine there are numerous instances when problems arise. These problems are often that the program like Steam recognises that the game needs to be updated to play.

This is a common problem when people attempt to play games from Steam without an internet connection as they will find Steam prevents them from playing with the game not up to date. This sometimes constant need to be connected to the internet to play a singleplayer game is another major downfall of digital distribution. If the game had been bought from retail and used a CD/DVD then this issue would likely not have arisen.

We can therefore see that there are many issues surrounding digital distribution right now, some are pretty small issues, while others are much more pressing and need to be addressed. If these issues are not looked at then digital distribution will stall and fail to evolve and grow.

Wrapping Up

So now I head back to my lovely PC…at long last! Back next week.