Matt’s Somewhat Serious Bit
Each month, NPD Funworld releases a sales chart for the US video game market, usually accompanied by a report on the performance of products against the market’s expectations. For a statistics junkie like myself (just ask the PALGN staff about how many numbers I throw around), it’s heaven – but it’s also quite useful to help one gauge where the market is heading; what’s hot and what’s not, so to speak. One trend that seems to be taking the market by surprise in the last six months is the revitalisation of the PC market, lead mainly by home computer mainstays like first person shooters and now MMORPGs.
When you think hard about the current PC hardware market situation, it’s not really that big a surprise that the games market is expanding. Progression has essentially stalled in terms of raw clock speed, and manufacturers such as AMD and Intel are going for a multi-core approach. The problem with multi-cores is that there isn’t a great deal of software that takes full advantage of what the new processors have to offer – particularly on the gaming front, where developers have to try and target the type of hardware that is most widely available, which is still the single cored processor. Graphics cards continue to make leaps and bounds, but they too are focusing on the multiple approach, nVidia pushing its SLI tech, while ATI pushes its Crossfire technology – once again, with little difference offered by the extra expenditure.
Who needs fancy-ass dual cores when you can still do this on a cheaper single core?
With technological progression slowing, developers seem to be taking care not to push so far ahead as they have in the past. For the most part, someone can pick a game off the shelf and have it run on their machine at a decent pace without having to worry about technical deficiency. My rig turns 2 this week; in 2004, I gutted my existing PC and replaced the CPU, motherboard, RAM and graphics card for around about $2,000, expecting to get about 12-18 months out of the hardware, as was the usual case in the past. Two years on, there has not been a game that has ran badly on my rig due to hardware problems (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was a buggy piece of crap) – and it looks like the machine will continue to be highly competent up until Windows Vista and Direct X 10 show up next year.
Hardware isn’t the sole factor in the PC market rejuvenation. The quality of software is picking up in a big way. PALGN has been giving out some big marks in the PC arena recently, and there’s a good base of recent software available for cheap thanks to the fairly mature discounting trend and much more competitive pricing when compared to consoles. Half-Life 2 and Episode 1, Titan Quest, Battlefield 2, Heroes of Might and Magic V, World of Warcraft, F.E.A.R., Doom 3 – all great games and will provide some lengthy gameplay for a much better price than your console friends. And then there’s The Sims 2.
The future of PC gaming is bright, but may be expensive again soon
The future for the PC as a gaming platform looks fairly promising too. In the immediate future there’s stuff like Hellgate: London, Battlefield 2142, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Supreme Commander, Prey, BioShock, Company of Heroes, and Command & Conquer 3 to name a few – then you’ve got “next-gen” PC stuff like Crysis (a forumer on GameSpot has done a great list for 2006 and 2007 - 56k beware). Microsoft are showing a greater commitment to the PC platform than ever before with its XNA Architecture and integration of Live into PC gaming, though the effects of these two proposals could really go either way - Windows Vista may well be the catalyst for getting the hardware cycle back into motion.
License to Thrill
When people think of Bethesda Softworks, the first thing that comes to mind is the Elder Scrolls series, which is fair enough. However, Bethesda has proven themselves to be capable developers on many other occasions, particularly with the 1995 release Terminator: Future Shock. Bethesda did have a little experience with the franchise with Terminator 2029 and Terminator: Rampage, but Future Shock blew them both away, and really sent home the message that there could be good Terminator games after all (most of the Terminator 2 games were developed by Acclaim).
Players take on the role of a human who escapes imprisonment from the machines and joins up with John Connor’s resistance movement. After your recruitment to Tech-Com, you’re assigned with all sorts of missions that require you to cause mayhem and generally make SkyNet’s life difficult. The game has a reasonably large number of varied missions, and is actually quite difficult due to the difference in strength between a resistance soldier and the Terminators – get used to running and hiding, and you might just make it.
..
Talk about a chrome dome
Though not really widely known, Terminator: Future Shock contained a lot of technology that is generally credited to other games. Coming out in 1995, it was one of, if not the first PC first person shooter to use texture mapped polygons for its characters and scenery. Even more important than that was the fact that Terminator: Future Shock was also one of the first first person shooters to require the use of the now common WASD + Mouse for movement and aiming. Future Shock also had a lot of other cool features – you could drive a resistance jeep around the landscape as well as hijack one of SkyNet’s Hunter-Killers and fly around the levels blowing the shit out of Terminators.
Terminator: Future Shock was not a big hit, but it was something of a commercial success. In 1996, Bethesda released their final Terminator franchise title, Terminator: SkyNet, which felt more like an add-on pack to Future Shock, with more focus on its multiplayer component (which supported up to 8 players, and allowed people to take control of the T-800 series), as the single player component was considerably shorter – but still a fun game nonetheless.
Things that make you go “WTF!?!”
From the Ridge Racer 2 (PSP) announcement:
“Ridge Racer 2 offers nearly three times as much play time as its predecessor. Featuring new cars, new racing modes, more courses than ever before along with a brand new opening movie and some great new features to be announced soon - watch out for Ridge Racer 2 drifting onto your PSP very soon.”
A brand new opening movie is a major feature now? Perhaps it's an indicator of just how much new content is going to be in Ridge Racer 2? WTF indeed.
Easy Feedback
Do you think that 1995-2000 really was the golden age of PC gaming? What was your favourite title then? What are you looking forward to now?
Thoughts and views expressed in Easy Mode remain those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of PALGN, its affiliates, sponsors or its advertisers
Featured image: Brendan's current gaming PC.
(ZERG FTW)
I still play it when I can find where I put the disc.
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