PC PC GAMES

My respect for Impulse just rose several levels.  While I’m still a fan of steam and love digital distribution, Impulse has quietly tried to make themselves unique of Steam while providing a similar platform as Steam.

One of the things I’ve liked is that they sell software beyond just PC Games.  And they’re stepping into the philantropic world by Partnering with Child’s Play, Penny-Arcade’s huge charity.  For those who don’t know much about Child’s Play, it’s basically an organization that provides toys and games to hospitalls worldwide to improve the lives of children in said hospitals.

“From August 30th – September 10th, a portion of Impulse Proceeds will be donated to Child’s Play.”

That says it all, so with this in mind, here are some recommended purchases that Impulse offers you can’t get with Steam and some of their current sales.

1. Galactic Civ 2 (and expansions) – this game is tremendously good.  The spiritual successor to Master’s of Orion 2 in my opionion.
2. Sins of a Solar Empire (and expansions) – I picked this up on sale not too long ago and have really enjoyed it.  A RTS that is not a twitch fest but relies on mixed fleets and tactics.
3. On Sale: Future Wars – $9.99 – I’ve looked at this.  a unique looking game that their users are rating 4/5 stars. (Usually $49.99)
4. On Sale: Dragon Age Bundle – $29.99 – From what I hear from everyone – AMAZING Game.  Get it and the expansion.

Enjoy gaming and give at the same time.

Looks like Impulse is putting up some nice sales close to what Steam does.  In this case, they’ve got a Bundle pack for Dragon Age for only $29.99 (this includes awakenings) and they’ve also got the THQ bundle we’ve seen before on Steam.  It’s running around $50 for about everything.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/explore/onsale

Tonight I would love to get some folks together and play some L4D2 and maybe something else. I will live broadcast whatever we play. So make some suggestions and lets see what we can do.

If you are not in the PCPCGames Steamgroup yet, please make sure you are. This will help us get things rolling the easiest and I might give away a game tonight to whoever is online in the group.

This ties in nicely with our PCPCgames.com most recent podcast as we discussed what makes a Deluxe, collector’s, limited edition worth the purchase.

I know many folks are either sitll playing WoW or have returned to WoW in recent months in preperation for Cataclysm.  A tribute to the longevity and the fun of WoW in general.   Myself, I had purchased 2 of the 3 possible collector’s edition and felt I got my money’s worth with the little ingame pets, the books, the goodies in general in the box. Blizzard’s art department is top notch, so I’ve enjoyed the concept art in previous Collector’s editions.

So here it is: for $80 (actually $79.99 on most sites) the Cataclysm CE http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/features/collector.html

The World of WarCraft: Cataclysm Collector’s Edition comes with:

• Art of the Cataclysm art book, featuring 176 pages of never-before-seen images from the archives of the Blizzard Entertainment cinematics department and the World of Warcraft development team, as well as progressive visuals from multiple stages of development.
• Exclusive in-game pet: he may not be a breaker of worlds just yet, but Lil’ Deathwing will still proudly accompany heroes on their struggle to save Azeroth from his much, much larger counterpart.
• Behind-the-scenes DVD with over an hour of developer interviews and commentaries, as well as a special Warcraft(R) retrospective examining the rich gaming history of the Warcraft universe.
• Soundtrack featuring 17 epic new tracks from Cataclysm, including exclusive bonus tracks.
• Special-edition mouse pad depicting Deathwing menacing the ravaged continents of Azeroth.
• World of Warcraft Trading Card Game cards, including a 60-card starter deck from the Wrathgate series, two extended-art cards, and two Collector’s Edition-exclusive hero cards, marking the first appearance of goblin and worgen heroes in the TCG The World of WarCraft: Cataclysm Collector’s Edition comes with:

So I was doing the normal lets check out all the game sites and came across this little golden nugget buried on www.gogamer.com

http://www.gogamer.com/Civilization-V-for-PC-PC-Ancient-Empires_stcVVproductId113094284VVcatId444841VVviewprod.htm

Civ 5 Pre-Order only $39.  That’s AWSOME.  Here is the nice thing for those of us that love Steam.  Civ 5 is taking advantage of Steamworks, so no matter where you buy it, you can tie it to your account. Civ 5 is listing for $49 so this is 20% off initial cost. On Direct2Drive – they’re offering Civ3 and +1 free DLC for Civ 5 as their pre-order package.  No one else is offering anything.

(I’ve got 48 hours to decide if I’m gonna do this or see if Steam produces something nice).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:35:33 — 27.3MB)

There was quite a bit of news this week, mainly coming out of GamesCon in Germany. We bucked the trend and hardly talked anything GamesCon. We rather focused on what we played and took a closer look at STEAM’s top 10 for the week. Here is the list:

• The Witcher 2
• Call of Duty talk
• Steam top 10
• Deluxe Editions… how much are they worth?
• Some Mail
• Funny Game Questions
• Left 4 Dead (2) DLC
• Bioshock 3 and no Multiplayer is an asset
• Josh got some new Hardware
• Some more SSD talk
• HP Envy follow up talk
• Some mobile phone talk
• Some people need to learn how to control their life
• Farcry 3… do we expect much?
• APB… buy it now… no, not a subscription… the WHOLE MMO!
• UBI… DRM or not DRM?
• City’s in motion
• Shout-outs

At Quakecon they gave away two Shelby GT500′s. There was only 100 raffle tickets that where given out as prizes and such. But with such odds 1:50 that you would win a 50k car would you sell your ticket? You would have to be extreemly silly, right?! It hurts, but see what happens here:

Quakecon 2010: Attendee Blunder of the Year from Daniel Harris on Vimeo.

There is a great Mafia II review over at Kotaku and boy am I glad I didn’t buy the game. If you have listen to our last couple podcasts you know that the demo impressed me and that the open world was created beautifully, at least what one saw in the DEMO.

Turns out that the world is beautiful and that you can do even mundane tasks such as flush the toilet or turn lights on and off. What the devs seem to have forgotten to let you play in the open world. Which is too bad, I wanted to like the game, but from the sound of it it will need quite a price drop and a lot of DLC.

He says a lot about his experience with the game, but this right here is the straw… well that makes this a no buy before it hits the bargain bins:

Mafia II is eminently beatable in a single sitting, and its achievements and trophies can be plundered in the span of a rental. With no multiplayer – not saying there should be any for this type of game – I simply can’t see Mafia II as worth the full fare.

Is it just me or does the game play look lame? Yes yes, lot’s of nice effects, but overall just doesn’t strike me as crisp, fast or fun. It is just a video, but while other videos make me want to have a game this looks too static and slow.

We been saying it again and again. While the PC has piracy issues it is just one platform that has to deal with people not paying for what they get.

Low and behold, the new HALO has hit the Internets 3 weeks before it is even in the store. So much for your secure platform…

The latest installment in the highly lucrative Halo game series for the Xbox 360 has been leaked to the internet three weeks before its official release date by fans who hacked a hair-brained method Microsoft used to secure review copies.

Since I am German I want to congratulate Iran… the finaly made it where Germany where almost 70 years ago. Maybe you can speed it up a little, I wonder when we will see a V2 equivalant?! ;)

If you wonder what I am talking about, here is what Iran come up with:

Here is what Germany had just shy of 70 years ago:

Yes yes… yours is a cool orange, but hey we had a hard time taking color pictures back then… at least you are ahead of us there! HAHAHA

The signs, the posts and the news are promising. It looks like RUSE waited UBI out and might after all be released without BIG Brothers DRM. We even covered this in our podcast recording last night and all where extremely skeptical and not quite ready to belive that the DRM will be droped, even if they use STEAMWORKS.

Here is what we see so far and I like what I read:

Bluesnews 08/11/10

R.U.S.E. Drops Ubisoft DRM
A Steam Community post by the R.U.S.E. Team has the unexpected news that R.U.S.E. will not use Ubisoft’s DRM scheme, much reviled by gamers for requiring a constant internet connection (thanks joao). The upcoming real-time strategy game will instead use Steamworks, and will support single-player play even without a ‘net connection. This message is repeated on the Ubisoft Forums, where they add that more news is coming soon for console players:
This news is destined to our PC players audience, so please spread the information if you know some.

When R.U.S.E. is released in September, it will benefit from Valve’s Steamworks API to offer the best community experience to players. Consequently, a Steam account and Internet connection will be required to activate the game, as per Steam policy. For this reason, R.U.S.E. will not use the Ubisoft protection. Single player can be played offline. Console players, stay tuned for more R.U.S.E. news in the coming days !

And now this:

R.U.S.E. PC demo confirmed for Wednesday

After two multiplayer open beta tests on Steam, the upcoming WWII themed RTS title R.U.S.E. will be getting a proper PC demo later this week. In online ads for the game it’s revealed that the demo will be released on Wednesday, August 25. At the moment there’s no word on what the demo will contain in terms of its content.

The title from developer Eugen Systems and publisher Ubisoft is still slated to be released on September 7 in the US and on September 10 in Europe. The PC port, as we reported earlier this month, will feature an exception to Ubisoft’s “Always On” PC DRM approach. Instead R.U.S.E. will use Steamworks which will allow for single player games to be played without the need for a internet connection.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:52:46 — 32.3MB)

Because we had a mini Lan last weekend and also had some scheduling issues the days after we all sat together this Wed. and just did our first live round table show. It’s quite a different animal when you sit in the same room and talk. We all had a great time and figured this format will make an occasional appearance. That we don’t have pro gear to record such a live event will be apparent when you listen, but I think you will get quite some entertainment out of this podcast. Since I want this to be up quick I also kept the editing to a minimum, so forgive the occasional Kommie rant!
Here are the main issues we talked about:

• Lan Recap
• John Carmack… and other high profile Developers
• BFG not taking anymore RMA’s… there goes that lifetime warranty
• How good is Starcraft2 in the strategy aspect?
• Quake Live
• Guild Wars 2
• APB… not so good news
• MMO talk in general
• It will be released when it is ready… big publishers and small developers
• UBIsoft… will R.U.S.E. use the UBI DRM or not?
• Listener Mail
• Mafia II Demo impressions
• Joe’s new PC and impressions
• Hardware Questions and Answers
• Small Movie Review “The Expendables“
• The Female perspective (Luna shoutout)
• Join the Steam Group of PCPCGAMES
• Reader Mail… Our Top 10 Games?!
• Crazy Josh (Fascinator) outtakes

I’m not the only indie developer writing on this topic today, check out the links at the bottom of this post.

There is a bit of a trend, as I see it, an unwelcome one, for the subject of game ‘length’ to be the dominant topic in the reviews of new games. I don’t think this a good direction for the industry to move in.
As an ‘older’ gamer, I recall a time when the whole idea of game length was silly. How long is pacman? how long is space invaders? As long as you have time for, clearly. Now you may argue (and some do) that the only reason that early games worked this way was the artificial constraints caused by a lack of processing power and file storage. These days we can have games with hand-crafted, bump mapped worlds made in incredible detail, and this is clearly better and more immersive and thus games should be measured in this way.
Now I’m not vaguely going to suggest that more-detailed, more immersive worlds are not a good thing. They clearly are. What I’m against is the weighing up of a games value (both artistically and in monetary terms) by sheer length and content.

Firstly, it would be insane to judge movies or books the same way. Andrew Marrs ‘The History of Modern Britain’ weighs in at 602 pages for £8.99, whereas Malcom Gladwells ‘tipping point’ is an all-too short disappointing gameplay experience at just 259 pages for £7.99, representing far worse gameplay for your gaming cash.

Sounds totally bonkers doesn’t it?

Is Halo a better game than World of Goo? Personally, I probably enjoyed WoG better, but I haven’t finished either game, so I have no idea which is longest. Clearly, game length didn’t vaguely factor in for me. And That doesn’t put me in some minority either. A huge chunk of gamers never finish games. I’ve been gaming since pong and only ever ‘finished’ 3 games in my entire life. I got bored with Half Life (yes really) and Half Life 2, and Bioshock, and almost any game you care to mention. When I read about how some l33t haxxor ‘finished’ a game in 8 hours, I find it laughable. Imagine bragging about ‘finishing’ war and peace in 2 days. The idea is to enjoy the experience, not race to the end as fast as you can.

Even worse than paying for games where the effort is spread out over 100 hours, when i know I’ll get bored at 20, is games where, in a desperate bid to make the game sound ‘longer’, the designers introduce tedious sections where you plod back and forth between the same points to get their moneys-worth from the scenery. It’s obvious, it’s tedious, and it’s embarrassing. Please stop.

I don’t judge food purely by quantity. Anyone can produce a ton of bland rice for a trivial cost. We tend not to judge things purely by quantity, and when we do, we can at least admit we are being shallow. So lets stop doing it with games. Tell me if a game is good, tell me if a game is dull, but some meaningless statistic about how many levels, or how big the installer is, or how long it took you to ‘finish’ it is meaningless to me. Size doesn’t matter.

Other blog posts:

http://24caretgames.com/2010/08/16/does-game-length-matter/
http://2dboy.com/2010/08/12/too-short/
http://blog.wolfire.com
http://brokenrul.es/blog
http://gamesfromwithin.com/size-matters
http://macguffingames.com/2010/if-size-doesnt-matter-where-do-you-get-the-virtual-goods
http://mile222.com/2010/08/a-haiku-about-game-length/
http://nygamedev.blogspot.com/2010/08/coming-up-short.html
http://retroaffect.com
http://the-witness.net/news
http://www.copenhagengamecollective.org/2010/08/17/size-does-matter/
http://www.firehosegames.com/2010/08/how-much-is-enough/
http://www.hobbygamedev.com/
http://spyparty.com/2010/08/16/size-doesnt-matter-day/

Considering the number of older gamers involved with PCPCGames, it surprised me that all of missed the announcement last week.   In days of yore (think late 90s to early 2000′s) PC Gaming Genre’s were usually coupled with a pair of big boys in each space.  Command and Conquer vs World of Warcraft.  X-Wing vs Wing Commander.   Ultima Online vs Everquest and soo on.

The FPS Genre was no different.  Between 1999 and 2002 gamers basically played one of two FPS games.  You were either a CS Newbie (that would be me) or a Quaker.  I remember the lans in those days.  We either played Quake or CS, and that was about it.

Well, lets give a nod toward the announcement that QuakeLive went live on August 6th.  This is a Free to Play FPS onyour internet browser.  following in the footsteps of Battlefield Heroes, QuakeLive allows you to play FPS through your Internet browser and does not require any major installations (there are some game clients but nothing like installing multiple GB from disks). 

They’ve added some subscription style services to help make some profits, a $1.99 a months ($24/yr) for some extra maps, etc and a $3.99/month ($48/yr) that gives you access to your own server and where to host it.

Check everything out at http://www.quakelive.com

For those that might be interested, I ran across these links and coupon codes for Crucial’s Indilinx based SSDs. Both average out to around $1.55 per GB. The lowest cost per gigabyte that I’ve ever seen!

128GB Crucial M225 for $199 ($299 regular price, ~$275 on newegg)
Enter Coupon Code at checkout: 100M225US

256GB Crucial M225 for $399 ($599 regular price, ~$625 on newegg)
Enter Coupon Code at checkout: 200M225US

You will probably be charged tax and the shipping charges are pretty reasonable
Free for 7-12 day shipping
$4.99 for 3-5 day shipping
$7.99 for 2 day shipping
$19.99 for Next-Day, before noon shipping (for those that are really impatient)

For more detailed specs, refer to the PC Per SSD Decoder Ring. As you can see these support TRIM support in Windows 7 with the latest firmware and have Read/Write speeds of up to 250Mb/sec and 190 to 200Mb/sec. For reference, these drives will perform very similar to many other Indilinx Barefoot based drives such as the Corsair E series, OCZ Vertex and Vertex Turbo Series. They also come with a 5 year warranty!

Here are a few old reviews for you to look over:
PC Per
TweakTown
Benchmark Reviews
Legion Hardware

Being too hard to pass up, I’ve already ordered one! lol

Peace out
The Wizzle