PC Game Fun Time

After many an hour and quite a few posts on this blog, I have finally finished the main quest of Fallout 3.  Now, I feel like I finally know what everyone was complaining about.  The main quest ended up being quite short and pretty unsatisfying.  I won’t spoil the game for those who have yet to complete it, but suffice it to say that the game’s ending is not particularly epic.

It really leaves me wondering why Bethesda would spend so much time crafting a wonderful, immersive gameplay experience, but then leave the main quest so lacking.  While I personally put in a ton of hours on other aspects of the game and thoroughly enjoyed it, anyone who just blazed through the main quest will undoubtedly be left disappointed.

Be that as it may, I fully intend to go back into the game with a new character.  My first play through was by and large as a goodie-two shoes, and it will be fun to try out some of the more evil roleplaying options.  Also, I am very hopeful that Fallout 3 will inspire some good mods.  Unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether an official editor will be released.  If Bethesda does get their act together and release a proper editor, there will undoubtedly be a great deal of gameplay left in Fallout 3, both for myself and many others.

The demo for Left 4 Dead, Valve’s imminent coop zombie survival horror first-person shooter, is now available to the general public through Steam. So log on and download it! It was previously available only to people who had already pre-purchased the game, which frankly seems like a bit of a dirty trick to generate pre-sales to me.

I’ve personally been looking forward to Left 4 Dead because, I’ll admit it, I’m a huge zombie nut. I make it a point to try out every zombie-related PC game that gets released, including Zombie Panic! Source, a pretty good free Source mod that definitely captures the spirit of the zombie, and Stubbs the Zombie, which frankly isn’t that good. It’s just not that fun to play exclusively as the zombie.

I’ll get back to you with my impressions on Left 4 Dead as soon as I’ve had a bit of time playing the demo. I’ll also render my verdict on whether it’s worth purchasing the whole game, which isn’t a given; sometimes the demo pretty much sates any appetite you had for the game.

It has been a long time since the days of Windows 98. While the famous “Blue Screen of Death” was a common occurrence for users of that operating system, most of our readers have probably only seen a handful of full-blown computer crashes in say, the past year.

Unfortunately, while Microsoft operating system stability has improved by leaps and bounds since the 90’s, the same can not really be said for the games that run on Microsoft operating systems. At least these days when a game crashes, you generally only need to restart the game, not the whole computer. But many PC games, even the very high profile big budget titles, still crash with distressing regularity.

For a recent example, look at Fallout 3, a game that has sold a lot of copies and received a huge amount of press.  The latest patch supposedly fixed several crashes related to alt-tabbing behavior and updating the game.  I did not experience these crashes.  I have however had a steam specific problem: unless I disable the steam “in-game” client, Fallout 3 crashes immediately at startup, every time.  This is obviously not an issue that affects every player, or it would have been fixed by now.  Still, it is an issue that affects me, and it is quite annoying - when I play TF2, I really want to have the Steam in game options, so I have to enable / disable this feature every time I want to switch between games.

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Stardock, the makers of such fine games as Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire, and who are well-respected ’round these parts for their vehement opposition to Digital Restrictions Management, have announced their next game, Elemental: War of Magic. In case the name didn’t give it away, this is a departure from Stardock’s usual science fiction fare into the realm of fantasy. Now I’m not especially fond of said change of venue, seeing as how I tend to think that swords-and-sorcerers fantasy is over-represented in videogaming while space opera science fiction is under-represented, but I’m remaining hopeful.

First of all, the game being from Stardock immediately gives it a leg up in my book, as I’ve enjoyed every other title they’ve produced for PC in recent years. Compare this with a larger publisher like Electronic Arts, whose titles are often hit-or-miss. And the graphical style looks pretty nifty. Rather than aiming for hyper-realism, Stardock is going for a cel-shaded look. It’s now been long enough since the initial cel-shading boom that I think cel-shading can be considered cool again.

But of course, what really matters is how the game plays, and we simply don’t have much information available on that front yet. According to GameSpot (if you’re willing to trust them after the Jeff Gerstmann incident; I’m still iffy) , the game will play like a mixture of Civilization and the Total War series. Stardock envisions battles being just as large as those in, say, Medieval II: Total War. It’ll have the ability to pause the action at any time and queue up commands, which is what makes it a bit more strategic than classical-style RTSes (and more of a chore to play online to boot). I suppose the main difference over Medieval II is that the out-of-combat screens are more like Civilization, which will allow creation and settlement of new cities (Medieval II was effectively played on a static map of Europe in which the cities simply traded sides).

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the game is the announced “persistent multiplayer” mode. I suspect it’ll compare to Cities XL in this respect, but there isn’t yet enough information to be sure just yet. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this game as time goes by and new information is released. Unfortunately, it isn’t scheduled to be released until February, 2010, so don’t get too excited over it. Also, I suspect the game is far from completed, because while we’ve seen lots of screenshots from the simple-to-program overworld map, we have nothing yet from the promised battle screens. That could take awhile to do right; heck, the Total War series is on its fifth game now and it still has significant problems with it. Simulating combat between thousands of units in military formations correctly is hard.

The latest news is — if you can believe it — that Fallout 3 has already made $300 million in sales across all platforms. That’s way better than most movies can even pretend to aspire to. And according to our resident Fallout expert, the returns are deserved, as it’s a really good game.

I also find it kind of hard to fault Bethesda Software in deciding to dumb down Fallout somewhat in order to bring it to consoles. They wouldn’t have come close to $300 million in sales without selling those millions of copies for the console. We’re definitely seeing a trend here that has gone from emerging to mainstream: expect pretty much all AAA PC game titles to be released on gaming consoles as well from here on out. After publishers made such a killing on Bioshock, Far Cry 2, and now Fallout 3, there’s no way to financially justify to their shareholders the release of a PC-exclusive game these days. There may be a few remaining exceptions (such as Blizzard), but even they will “see the light” eventually. Heck, even Id Software is developing for consoles now.

It has been a very long time coming, but pricing on DDR3 memory is finally getting to the point where it is just about worth it.  The last time I checked on www.newegg.com, 4 gigabytes of DDR3 1333 could be had for around $125.  This is still several times the going rate on the older, slower DDR2 standard, with the same amount of DDR2 routinely going for $50 or even $40.

In the grand scheme of things, though, $125 is not that much to spend on system memory, and prices will continue to drop.  Also critical is the fact that there are now plenty of DDR3 supporting motherboards available at reasonable prices.  Perhaps most importantly, the new line of processors from Intel, the Core i7, will only support DDR3.  The Core i7 is Intel’s successor to the Core 2 line of processors, due out later this month.  It will be a little while before Core i7s become mainstream, as the early motherboards are all in the $300+ price range.  However, rest assured that once there are some good Core i7 motherboards at lower prices, DDR3 will pick up some serious steam.

There are a few reasons why DDR3 has taken so long to become popular.  The primary factor that provided momentum to DDR2 and kept DDR3 from taking hold was the pin incompatibility between the 2 formats.  While some newer motherboards now have slots for both types of memory, DDR3 memory will not fit in a DDR2 slot.

Also, faster memory speeds generally do not translate to significant performance increases in real world tests.  From a gaming perspective, you might see an increase of a few frames per second going from DDR2 800 to DDR3 1333 or DDR3 1600.  However, this will not hold true forever.  Currently, memory speeds are rarely a bottleneck, and so faster speeds won’t help you much.  Nonetheless, progress keeps marching on, and eventually DDR2 memory will be slow enough compared to other system components that it will become a problem.  This may not be very far down the road.

Of course, the pricing of actual DDR3 memory sticks has also been limiting.  Typically, DDR3 memory has costed about 3 times as much as DDR2 memory for quite some time.  However, DDR2 now costs about 1/3 what it did 12 or 18 months ago.  It is now so cheap that putting 4 gigabytes into even the lowest cost desktops is recommended.

With all these facts in mind, I think we have now reached the turning point.  If I were to build a gaming machine today, I would go with DDR3 memory.  It is not that expensive, and it will give you a lot more upgradeability options in the future.  Of course, I would also probably wait on building anything until Core i7 motherboards come down in price, but that is another story.

It’s election day here in the United States, which is Kind Of A Big Deal. I don’t want to get too political on a gaming site (though if you search my personal blog carefully, you can discover my political leanings), so instead I’ll divert your attention to something political yet completely nonsensical:

The presidential and vice presidential candidates have officially been released by Maxis as space ship designs for Spore. Apparently some enterprising individual at Maxis figured out that the space ship editor was flexible enough to render human shapes, and from there made the natural leap to re-creating the candidates.

Just don’t make the mistake of choosing John McCain as your space ship; the left blinker gets stuck in the on position on journeys clear across the galaxy.

After spending about a week with Fallout 3, I think I have experienced enough to write a decent review.  I haven’t spent much time on the main quest, so I won’t be able to talk much about that.  However, I do have a character currently at level 11, and have seen a pretty fair fraction of the game world.

Being a high profile, hyped title, Fallout 3 automatically received glowing reviews from the majority of the mainstream gaming press.  However, there has been a very real concern from much of the fan base that the game suffers from being to much like Oblivion.

It is true, Fallout 3 does feel similar to the previous major title from Bethesda.  If you totally hated Oblivion, you will probably hate Fallout 3.  If, instead, you thought Oblivion was a pretty good game, but marred by some serious flaws, there is a good chance you will love Fallout 3.

First of all, Fallout 3 takes all the strengths of Oblivion and makes them its own.  The immersive nature of a first person game with gorgeous graphics is definitely here.  The annoying stuttering issues with Oblivion while outside are gone as well.  More importantly, Fallout 3 also has an incredible atmosphere going for it.  Everything from the wastelands to the scattered settlements to the Washington D. C. ruins fits beautifully into the game to create a sense of immersion far greater than anything seen in Oblivion.  The use of some of the most recognizable landmarks in the United States, such as the Capitol building and the Washington Monument, creates a sense of awe, something rarely seen in a video game.  (Disclaimer: I live and work in the D. C. area.)

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Unlike Grokmoo, I somehow didn’t end up giving up Far Cry 2 for Fallout 3. Having just beaten it earlier today, I’m ready to give my final impressions, as I won’t be playing it again.

My Far Cry 2 experience was a bit uneven. I wouldn’t say that I genuinely loved the game, but I felt a strange compulsion to keep playing it. I would feel this compulsion even after the game succeeded in frustrating me immensely (like never failing to put objectives on the diametrically opposite side of the map, on the opposite side of many manned guard posts), so it was not uncommon that I’d play the game for a half hour, take a short break, and then end up playing it again in another half hour after the frustration faded. These repeating cycles of frustration and compulsion occurred several times in some days.

It finally hit me what the Far Cry 2 experience feels like: an MMORPG. I wrestled with World of Warcraft around the time that it came out (and haven’t played another MMORPG since finally quitting it). Far Cry 2 shares a lot of the same game mechanics that make an MMORPG so addictive: the free-form roaming, the slow grind of achievement (earning scarce diamonds to purchase/upgrade weapons), and the side missions. I kept playing through Far Cry 2 even when I wasn’t enjoying the experience very much simply because I wanted to keep getting to that next “level”.

But thankfully, unlike World of Warcraft, Far Cry 2 does indeed have an end, an ending left me really dissatisfied because — spoiler alert — like much of the rest of the game, you are given a false choice between two “alternatives” that result in the same outcome. The final outcome of the game? Your suicide (and in one of the options, your completely unnecessary suicide). It’s like, after an entire game full of wanton mercenary killing, the developers want to jam a moral lesson into your head and force you to atone for your sins by paying the ultimate sacrifice. Except it’s not really atonement if you aren’t given a say in the matter.

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