PC

Gaming From Across the Pond 08.14.10

Hello fellow gamers and welcome to another week of Gaming from Across the Pond. I did something this week which is borderline serious geek zone. As gamers, and especially us PC gamers, we have to accept to some degree we are all a bit geeky. Ever played and MMO? Then you’re a bit of a geek. Ever used hotkeys during a game? Yep still a geek. Get ridiculously excited from trailers that show no ACTUAL footage of the game? Geek. Now this isn’t a bad thing, we all enjoy our hobby and if that makes us geeks then I’ll put my hands up. Yea I drank an inhuman amount of coffee to stay awake to see the announcement of StarCraft II in South Korea, but I loved it so it doesn’t matter. That said being a geek is like any good game, it has levels.

Steam Sales Report 8/13/10

PC games sales aren’t monitored by the NPD, so it falls on the shoulders of the Steam Sales Report to monitor how well PC games are doing in the market every Friday at 3:00 PM. Here is where you can see what Steam games are selling well, and I’ll do my best to explain why they sold. This week, there was a QuakeCon 2010 Steam Sale, which overturned a good chunk of the top 10 list.

Civilization IV Review

One thing the Civilization series does well is kill time, in an epic way. Civilization IV is no different, having chewed up hours of my life. This incarnation of the series is the best to date, managing to streamline the game for new players, while keeping the in depth game play for veterans.

For those who haven’t played or heard of the Civilization series, they are 4X genre games. This means there are multiple ways to win and in Civilization IV that could be Military, Diplomatic, Cultural or Scientific. In fact there are many ways to win, which is one of the things that make the game great. Another important factor is that the game is turned based, choosing all your moves and then allowing your opponent to choose theirs. Finally, one of the biggest things about the game is that it’s EPICALLY LONG. To get an idea how long a game may last think about watching The Lord of the Rings…trilogy…back to back, yea it’s about that long.

Irrational Games Announces Bioshock Infinite

Irrational Games has a long, unbroken history of making spectacular games, including System Shock 2, S.W.A.T. 4. and both Freedom Force.  Not to mention the artsy-smartsy shooter Bioshock. For weeks they have been tantalizing gamers with their new project “Icarus” which, as you all know is the name of the Greek hero who doomed himself by foolishly flying too close to the sun. Is that a symbol?  A metaphor?  Are they making a sequel to the old Nintendo game “Kid Icarus”?  Will it be an ancient Greek flight simulator?!

Paragon Studios Giving Away Tickets to PAX Prime

Big things are afoot in the City of Heroes.  Their new expansion pack Going Rogue is just around the corner.  It will feature the obvious graphical upgrades (i.e. Paragon City is shinier and more shadowy), and also has four new power sets. The Dual Pistol and Demon Summoning power sets have been available for months to people who pre-order, but there are two others: Kinetic Melee and Electric  Control which will become available on launch day.

Yet more DLC for Dragon Age

The good folks at Bioware are making games faster than I can play them.  My Steam account tells me that I played Dragon Age for an embarrassingly long period of time, and that was just with the stuff that was available when it first came out.  Even with the enormous amount of time I spent fighting the Darkspawn and avoiding bisexual elf sex, I did not do anywhere near everything that could be done in the game.

StarCraft 2: Expansion Speculation

Just in case you’ve been away for a while (as in very, very far away, away from any kind of communications device), StarCraft fever has been sweeping the gaming community. StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty was released two weeks ago after over a decade of eager anticipation to critical and commercial success. Wings of Liberty is only part of the story, though: one third to be precise. The StarCraft universe contains three races: the Terrans, Zerg and Protoss, and Wings of Liberty only covers the Terran front, campaign-wise. The StarCraft 2 model is thus: Wings of Liberty, as the first release, contains the Terran campaign and full multiplayer suite, and two expansions will be released to add Zerg and Protoss campaigns. Very little is known at this point about the two expansions, but there are small nuggets of information plus a lot of speculation – so here’s a roundup of some of the most interesting.