PC Features

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Preview

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon is a long running series from Ubisoft that spawned out of the legacy of the Rainbow Six series of tactical shooters. Rather than focusing on the paramilitary anti-terrorist police force and its myriad rules and regulations on combat and planning, Ghost Recon attempted to expand the tactical shooter to a military landscape, taking control of a unit that was sent to do stealthy missions in a time of war before such things were common. Future Soldier, previously known as Ghost Recon 4, is the latest in the pedigree that has been announced; the title is intended to take the force into the near future, featuring cool new technological devices and a brand-new story.

When Developers You Love Work With Publishers You Hate: Part 1 Bioware And EA

There are several video game developers who have unbroken strings of great games.  Anything game put out by Blizzard, Irrational Games, or Bungie can be counted on to please their fans, and get spectacular ratings.  Unfortunately these developers are only part of the team that brings a game to market.  They have to work with a Publisher.  Where the Developer is the group of artists and programmers who make a game, the Publisher is the company that promotes, distributes and funds the development of that game.  Publishers have to make a lot of the hard choices about a game; they generally set the budget, the release date, and have to decide how to deal with anti-piracy.  Limiting the budget or development period can turn a potentially great game into a mediocre one.  Even worse, choosing the wrong kind of anti-piracy software can turn the joy of starting a new game into a frustrating experience that makes players ready to vomit with rage.

Tron: Evolution Preview

With the release of Tron: Legacy so close, it doesn’t come as a surprise that there has been a video game in the works to take advantage of the predicted popularity. Developed by Propaganda Games and published by Disney Interactive, Tron: Evolution will allow players to experience the Tron universe first-hand. Tron: Evolution is intended as a prequel to the film Tron: Legacy that is being released around the same time, 

Back to the Future: The Game Preview

Just when you thought that dredging up old favorites like Ghostbusters to be remade in a modern gaming context was overly nostalgic, another popular movie series is staging a comeback. Back to the Future: The Game is an adventure game that is being developed by Telltale Games, a company well known for its graphic adventures ranging from Sam & Max to their best known work,Tales of Monkey Island. It has been commented that Telltale Games are one of, if not the best, developers to get the episodic-style of games refined to the best experienced possible. Both Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd return to provide their likenesses, unfortunately, Fox does not provide the voice for Marty, that role has been assigned to AJ LoCascio.

Exile: Blurring The Line Between Comic Book and Game

World of Warcraft Cataclysm Preview

In the last six years, World of Warcraft has exploded and most certainly dominated the MMO genre, with subscriber numbers hitting the 12 million mark whereas most others are lucky to break 100,000. Two expansions have already been released, each expanding the content and lore of the Warcraft universe. As we enter into the 2010 Christmas season, Activision-Blizzard has been preparing the online world for the newest expansion, Cataclysm, showering players with ominous rumbling, elemental invasions and new boss encounters, setting the stage for events that will remake Azeroth into a scarred hellscape filled with both lava and new opportunities. As with the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm brings with it a multitude of content that expands on virtually every facet of gameplay, including new races, new professions, new guild features, whole new areas and remakes of old lands, and the integration of old lore favorites from Warcraft 2 into whole new storylines and instances.

On Live’s Micro Console: A Terrifying Step Into The Future

Last week we discussed the new gaming service Onlive.  It’s an innovative way to let players with low end computers run high end games.  Basically, Onlive lets you play games  by hosting them on a powerful server, which streams live video of the game back to your computer.  You can control the game without any lag using your own computer’s mouse and keyboard.  We briefly mentioned that a “Micro Console” was on the way from Onlive that would let you do the same thing, but with your TV  and a console-style control pad.  Today Onlive announced that the Micro Console will be released in two weeks.

PC Digital Download Sales 11/14/10

Steam continued to do what Steam does best this week, namely, they sold the newest release at the top and got great sales for one of their latest deals. The entire list is standard, top to bottom, with no surprises. Football Manager 2011, does stand out a little, though. Call of Duty will stay on the top for a long time, probably as long, if not longer than Civilization V did. 

Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny Preview

Spellforce was an interesting blend of RPG avatar character development while also allowing the player to control large armies in an RTS framework. Since 2003, two expansions for the original title have been released, as well as a sequel in 2006 and one expansion for that in 2007. Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny is the second such expansion to the sequel and continues the story from where it left off. In the gap between this release and the last, publisher JoWooD Entertainment and developer DreamCatcher Games have improved on a variety of features, including new units, buildings, spells, missions and maps. The actual graphics are based on the Spellforce 2 engine that the others are based on, but have been updated with contemporary Shaders to reflect the better hardware available.

Call of Duty Retrospective

Call of Duty: Black Ops is coming soon, and most everyone will buy it, complaining bitterly or otherwise. That’s just the kind of status that the Call of Duty series has reached. This wasn’t the case in the beginning, though. Call of Duty used to be the up and coming World War II shooter, competing against the then popular Medal of Honor. Infinity Ward, the creators of Call of Duty, had been newly developed from departing members of the Medal of Honor development team, and everyone thought that Medal of Honorwould remain on top. This radical change from new kid on the block to multi-billion dollar franchise is remarkable, and something well worth looking at.