World of Warcraft & Team Fortress 2 continue to give PC gamers updates

It’s interesting for me to see the “evolution” of the PC gaming landscape. Growing up on Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem, I’ve lived through the rise and decline of the PC gaming scene, from the introduction of first person shooters, real-time strategy games, online multiplayer, 4X strategy games, and now MMORPGs. If you’ve also grown up with fond memories of Doom & Quake, I highly recommend checking out the book, Masters of Doom. It’s a well-written book that chronicles how John Romero and John Carmack met, formed id Software, and completely shook up the gaming industry. Having said that, today’s entry will contain my more general thoughts on the PC gaming landscape, and why I’m still excited for its present and future.

It’s funny to see how the last twenty or so years in gaming went – PC games spawned new PC games such as FPS and RTS games, and introduced multiplayer gaming. I remember the days of 3DFX, Voodoo cards, and OpenGL. Since then, consoles have really grown up. FPS gaming and multiplayer on consoles have pretty much caught up to PC games, albeit the lack of certain extras among many of them such as free content updates, dedicated servers, etc. RTS games and 4X strategy games are still in their infancy on the consoles, and I can’t really see them taking off too much due to the fact that while the lack of a mouse for a FPS game is not nearly as bad as a lack of a mouse in a RTS/4X game where you’re just navigating around a map. Still, games like Halo Wars and Civilization Revolution are trying. I’ve yet to see a true console MMORPG yet on the 360 outside of Final Fantasy XI (ugh), so maybe we have a ways to go before that starts happening.

In any case, it looks like the PC gaming scene has changed drastically, forming silos around specific companies and their storefronts. Whereas the 360 has the Live Marketplace and the PS3 has the PSN store, there is no real unifying Windows store. Microsoft finally released a Windows Live Gaming store this past week, but it’s far too late and the Windows “Live Gaming” scene is practically dead anyway. I’m appreciating what each of these major PC companies are doing to not only keep PC gaming alive, but to really set themselves up to be the saviors of PC gaming.

The first and most prominent company to keep things going is Valve. If you’ve played Half-Life, Counter-Strike, etc. then you’re probably someone that  can’t dislike the company. Nowadays PC gamers have Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 to play, and while Valve has not quite delivered what they promised in their support for the Left 4 Dead franchise, Team Fortress 2 just continues to ridiculously grow. You can pick up Team Fortress 2 for only a couple dollars these days on the PC, and yet the developers keep adding more and more content. I played through Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox 360, and that was just a barebones version. On the PC, new updates come out all the time, with new weapons and customizable gear for each class, maps, hundreds of new Achievements, and all sorts of gameplay/balance changes. With the newest update, Valve is giving players the ability to customize their hats and weapons for their equipment slots, bringing this FPS game more and more into the realm of MMORPG. It’s fantastic and if you’re a Team Fortress 2 PC gamer, this is a game that just keeps on giving. Kudos to Valve, as Team Fortress 2 on the PC really demonstrates the difference between a PC FPS and a console FPS.

The other company that has been keeping PC gaming relevent for as long as I can remember is Blizzard. People still play Starcraft, Diablo II, and Warcraft III today, and excitement continues to build for the future releases of Starcraft II and Diablo III. While I’ve mentally moved on past World of Warcraft, the newest patch and the upcoming expansion are really making me reconsider jumping back into the game, as the most recently released patch adds full-on matchmaking for dungeons, which means you can easily find a pickup group through an easy to use in-game interface rather than going to town and shouting “LF1M healer”. The upcoming expansion has the developers revisiting the core gameplay world and changing many aspects of that rather than adding in a new continent like Lich King did. In a sense, it is going to bring the WoW population back to the core world, which has been a ghost town since the Expansions. Perhaps when the Cataclysm expansion hits, I may have to check WoW out again.

Stardock is a company that isn’t as strong as Valve or Blizzard but still has PC gaming relevance. In fact, outside of Blizzard, Stardock may be among the last major PC gaming companies that has not started making console games. I’m playing through Galactic Civilizations II Ultimate now, and while it’s not exactly a new game, it’s one of the best 4X strategy games I’ve ever played and I can’t imagine seeing a game of this depth and strategy on a console. The competition that Stardock’s Impulse store gives to Valve’s Steam storefront is a boon for us gamers, as it not only makes the two storefronts compete for our gaming dollars, but each store continues to introduce new features that make you feel more like part of its community. While I didn’t feel that Sins of a Solar Empire had as much depth as Galactic Civilizations II, Stardock continues to work on expansions to this game, to the pleasure of its many fans.

Another company that seems to support the PC gaming scene surprisingly is EA. Of course, the entire Sims franchise has been a huge moneymaker for EA, so they can’t be that against PC gaming. I have the new Command & Conquer 4 Beta installed on my PC, perhaps the last of the franchise that will be coming out in March. Also in March is Battlefield Bad Company 2, a PC FPS game that will support servers – something that the Modern Warfare 2 PC version took away. Let’s also not forget about Dragon Age: Origins, the new RPG game that supposedly plays a lot better on the PC than either of the console versions. So as much as anyone may dislike EA, we can see that the company is still keeping the PC hardcore gaming thriving with their string of varied PC titles: a RTS game, a FPS game, and an RPG game.

Finally, this past week I’ve written about a couple different DotA games, and aTOM boomb has shared his impressions on a couple as well. In any case, I feel like the DotA genre will continue to grow like the Tower Defense genre did. Both genres originated as custom mods in Blizzard’s RTS games, and they will most likely do quite well for PC gaming. I would be interested in seeing a FPS + DotA combination game on the 360, but that may be a few years out.

In any case, while I do tend to spend more time on the 360 than the PC for my gaming, the PC gaming scene is far from dead and I have not only these major companies to thank, but all of the others that still recognize PC gaming and continue to provide us with solid titles that not only play best on the PC, but make use of the PC’s strengths as a gaming platform as well. 2010 looks to still be a big year with PC gaming, as Starcraft II has to come out…right?!

You [rank] a bunch of categories, like how competitive you are,” explained Wardell. “What matters to you in someone you want to play? Are they a similar age to you? Do they have a good PC? How competitive are they? Are they all about winning, or are they about having fun? Do they value their time? You don’t just get to say, ‘Yeah, max them all out.’ You put them in order of importance.”

Those self-identified traits are used to match up gamers. If you aren’t online when a match with your game is found, you’ll see the notification when you log in, and you can send a friend request if you choose.

“I say, ‘Alright, I want to play Sins of a Solar Empire or World of Warcraft or Team Fortress,” Wardell continued. “I can choose either a particular group of buddies I want to play with, or everybody on my friend list, or someone who’s similar to me, even if I don’t know them.

“Then it will tell me, ‘So and so, who is 84 percent compatible with you, is going into Sins of a Solar Empire. Do you want to launch Sins of Solar Empire?’ It launches the game, you find that person, you get together, and play with them.”

Added the CEO, “The idea is that now you can play with people who are similar to you, rather than some 14-year-old griefer who’s shooting you in the back every time because he thinks it’s funny.”

Initial reactions to this seem to be jokes along the lines that the gaming service is now combining with a dating service site to figure out people to “connect with” to play video games. In a sense, that’s very true, but I think it can definitely add value if implemented correctly. Of course, I don’t know if Impulse has any games that are so popular online that it can afford to really nitpick about the matchmaking, but I wouldn’t mind playing with similar minded people as me in Halo 3 or Left 4 Dead. The current rating system is just not working on the 360. What’s the point of picking which group your gamer profile belongs to if it just matches you up with everyone in every group anyway?

Guitar Hero: World Tour – Had to start playing it last night since Stan Bush’s “The Touch” just hit the marketplace as a free downloadable song. It’s actually a pretty good song to play with the guitar. Of course playing it with plastic instruments is not quite the same as tearing through Decepticons as Optimus Prime, but it does give me some good memories of the Transformers movie. Now if only we could also get “Dare” from the Transformers movie and Karate Kid’s “You’re the Best Around” – I’d be all set with the ’80s.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Starting to play more advanced scenarios lately. The longest game I played so far was a 4 hour FFA with 3 AI on normal difficulty. That one certainly took a while but it was pretty enjoyable. I even ended up allying with one of the AI to finish off the other AI. But as soon as it was down to just the two of us, the AI broke off all relations and I had to kill him to win. I’m probably going to try 3v3 with the AIs next, but I’m scared that’s going to be like a six hour game.

Conan – Just finished it, but now I have to go through on the hardest difficulty as well as do any of the menial Achievements if I want to get the 1000. I’m practically ready to move on to the next game, but I’ve always gotten all of the single player Achievements I could in games I own so I don’t think I should set a precendent with this one.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed – Ended up getting it due to its $5 sale price this week. I’m sort of excited to play it, but I’m also a little worried that it may be harder than I remember. After all, even with all the fond memories I have of the NES version, games back then were a lot tougher and less forgiving. I’ll probably start it up this weekend.

These last few days, in between my bouts with Conan I’ve been playing a different game I had in my backlog: Sins of a Solar Empire. Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the few PC games to be released last year to rave reviews, as it’s a game that’s like Civilization, but in real time and in space. I’m not the biggest fan of space/sci-fi type games, and when I first started playing it, I wasn’t too impressed. But after only a couple of hours, my wife was already calling me to bed and I realized that perhaps there is some sort of addictive quality to this game if I don’t even realize two hours have already gone by without my knowing! Read on for my impressions of the game some are calling the 2008 PC game of the year.

First off, let me explain that I’m not that big of a sci-fi strategy game fan. I was perhaps too young and never played games like Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri. They seemed crazily complex, and while I’m more interested in them nowadays since I’m older, a part of me is still a bit worried I’d be biting off more than I can chew. Perhaps that’s why I’ve yet to buy Galactic Civilizations II, even though I hear it’s great. But when I heard that Sins of a Solar Empire was real-time based, I figured I’d give this game a look since things would move along quite faster so I wouldn’t be bogged down with all sorts of details right?

Gameplay
The easiest way for me to explain the gameplay in Sins of a Solar Empire is to compare it to Civilization. If you haven’t played the game yet, that’s a travesty! Civilization games pretty much have competing empires trying to expand their land over a fictional playing field through turn-based gameplay. As you try to grow your empire, you have many things to worry about: gathering income and resources, creating military units to attack/defend locations, developing culture and religion to keep your citizens supportive, and you can even bargain and ally with other nations. There’s also a huge tech tree that you can research towards that allows you to upgrade parts of your nation based on any way you want to play. Ultimately, you are trying to conquer the entire field of play and wipe out all opposing empires.

Sins of a Solar Empire is generally no different than Civilization from a core gaming persective. Instead of tiles and cities that competiting empires go to war over, we take it one step further out in Sins so you’re fighting over planets now. At the same time, each player has to worry about gathering income and resources, creating military units, developing their citizens, and a lengthy tech tree to continue progressing forward. The big difference, besides the switch to the space motif, is that Sins of a Solare Empire is real-time based so you don’t have to hit “End Turn” and wait for the AI to finish making its moves – instead everyone just keeps playing. Of course, resources are the limiting constraint in this game, so even though it’s real-time, the game can’t be played as fast as you can click – you still have to wait until you amass enough resources to create units, research tech trees, colonize worlds, etc.

At first it may be hard to take in that you’re fighting at a space level and we’re talking entire planets here instead of simple grids on land (like in Civilization). But honestly, each planet is pretty much a grid in and of itself if you were to compare it to Civilization. There are only certain ways to travel from one planet to another, so if you were to look at a system from far away, it’d be a like a connected constellation where these connection paths are the only way to get from one planet to another. These paths are what the ships use to hyperdrive (or whatever it’s called) to get from one planet to another, and in a sense they also make up choke points since you know there’s only a certain number of paths the enemy can get to your planet’s orbiting system.

Like Civilization’s barbarians, Sins of a Solar Empire also has a neutral enemy type: pirates. Pirates will send out attacks every 15 minutes or so and if there’s no player influence, they will attack the most valuable target. Researching tech allows you to create new structures that orbit your planet, from defense turrets to factories to repair stations. Sins of a Solar Empire also has something called Capital ships, which are almost like hero units from RTS games such as Warcraft III. These Capital ships are huge, generally have excellent firepower, take reduced damage from regular units, and can even level up to learn new abilities.

That’s pretty much a quick recap of gameplay notes I have for now. Next is a recap from my first two games.

My First Game
Having only gone through the short and simple tutorials, I decided to fire up a game on a randomized small map with me and the AI (set to Easy) both going random. You can go up to large 10 player maps, but I opted for the small map, which consists of about 16 planets or so. There are three races in the game with their own units and tech trees, but I have no idea what the differences are among them as I just started playing. Also something to note is that there’s no real campaign or story mode. It’s pretty much playing scenarios, not unlike Civilization games.

When the game started I didn’t really know what was going on so I started focusing on my home planet, upgrading and creating whatever structures I could. I then pumped out a couple of scout frigates, and had them explore neighboring planets. It looked like I was on one extreme end of the system, as the planet directly to the west of my home planet had no other “warp lines” going into it, which meant the only way for any ship to get to it would be through the warp line between my home planet and the new one I was about to colonize. Both planets I explored were uninhabited except for patrolling pirates. To deal with the pirates, I created my first capital warship and some low class offensive units so that I could kill off the pirates and colonize the planets (making them mine). Unfortunately for me, I discovered that I needed to have researched the tech to colonize lava-based planets, so I hung out for some time until I had the tech researched. Once researched, I colonized the planet and began to develop it. I next set my two scouts on auto-explore, so they kept traveling all over the entire star system to see what was out there and where my AI opponent was.

Having secured another planet, I was alerted that pirates were going to invade my home planet, so I sent my fleet back there to protect it while I continue to upgrade the two planets I just colonized. My ships were pretty weak, and some were taken out by the pirate ships but my capital ship was ridiculously strong and fought them back with ease. I continued to push out more, colonizing planets and harvesting more resources. It seemed very difficult for me to find crystal resources though, the third resource in the game (that is apparently the rarest). I had to end up trading a lot of my metal on the black market just so I could buy more crystal. In any case, there was so much on the tech tree and I figured that since I was playing on easy, I wouldn’t have to put too much tech into military upgrades so I spent most of my resources on civilization/culture upgrades such as getting trade routes set up between my planets.

I soon discovered that the pirates were relentless. They seemed to keep attacking, but with more and more units every fifteen minutes. I was holding one asteroid that seemed to be a major chokepoint that they continued to attack, and started constructing defensive turrets there but I needed ships there to actually hold the choke. How would I go colonize other planets when pirates were putting me on defense every fifteen minutes? I couldn’t get my fleet back there in time. It was then that I was able to figure out that I could spend resources to upgrade my fleet unit cap, as well as create an additional capital warship (hero type unit). That pretty much solved my problem, as I was able to bring in a second capital warship and accompanying fleet to defend against the pirates, while my other fleet was out colonizing. And boy do those pirates give some good exp. I think I can keep going out even further, with more capital warships and fleets, so what I’m going to do next is expand enough but station each of my fleets at strategic chokepoints throughout the system. Then my wife called me to bed. It’s been two hours already? Dang it! I haven’t even gone to war with my AI opponent yet!

I resumed this game the next evening and while I was able to fend off pirates, they started attacking a different planet as I continued to expand. Then the AI attacked at the same time, and I wasn’t too happy with how things turned out so I decided to just start a new game since I figured I’d be a lot more prepared now that I had sort of played a game already.

My Second Game
Instead of choosing a randomized “small map” for my second game like I did on the first, I decided to pick one of the existing maps. It was tiny, at only 7 planets it was less than half the size of my first game so it was a lot more manageable. I actually ended up winning the game in a little less than an hour, so it wasn’t bad.

I still kept the AI on the easiest, just to familiarize myself more with what I wanted to try and it flowed very well. The map was symmetric, with each side having three planets, split by a pirate base in the middle as well as a star. I quickly took over my three planets, started setting up defenses, and upgrading my planets. What surprised me was that on such a small map, I was really struggling for resources, unlike the first game where I jumped to owning 6-7 planets pretty quickly. On this map I was just working off of three planets, so to get a second capital ship was pretty daunting.

I also learned that when the pirates decide to attack, the players can put bounties on each other, so the one with the highest bounty gets attacked. Some of the waves I decided to put the bounty on the AI so they would attack the AI, but then other times I would let the bounty remain highest on me so I would get attacked and level up my capital ships. After setting up my defenses on my three bases and amassing two fleets each led by their own capital ship, I decided to start heading towards one of the AI player’s two expansion planets. I caught the AI by surprise, as it was attacking the pirates in the area and when I engaged and attacked the AI, it pulled out and retreated. I easily took over the planet, then pursued the AI to its other expansion. The AI put up its final fight there, as I started attacking his planet but my two fleets easily overpowered his. With his fleet gone, I mopped up and took over his second expansion and then his home planet and the game was over.

Parting Thoughts
Hopefully you found these recounts useful. While I’m a little disappointed that there’s no campaign, there’s actually Achievements in the game so at least I have particular goals I can try to fulfill while playing it such as taking on multiple AI opponents at the same time, not using a particular unit type, tech, etc. Plus, I haven’t even gotten to larger maps with FFAs, teams, etc. yet. Some say that the 5v5 online multiplayer is the best part of the game! Right now though I am definitely enjoying it – it has certain similarities to Civilization, but in a way, it’s both simpler and more complicated. Simpler in that the movement is really just traveling along single lines that connect from one planet to another, but more complicated in that the tech trees and all that are more sci-fi oriented and not as intuitive as the tech trees from Civilization. Still, I’m sticking with it though for now and if I play it enough maybe I’ll be able to get out a full review in the future.

It feels somewhat weird for me to play the 360 these days since I switched over to the PC with Dawn of War II. Ever since then, I’ve been doing most of my gaming on the PC and I guess that’s a good thing since I do have a backlog there. And thankfully, it’s shorter than my 360 backlog. This week hasn’t been too eventful in gaming, but I can mention a few games:

Sins of a Solar Empire (PC) – I just started playing this game this past week, and it’s been the centerpiece for my gaming sessions these past few evenings. It’s pretty much Civilization in space but in real time, so it has enough going on that I’m enjoying it. I’ll put out some impressions on it next week.

Empire: Total War (PC) – With its recent price drop to $30 and it continuing to be in the top 10 PC game sales, I decided to check out the demo by downloading it off Steam. I guess the user reviews for the game is right. It is very buggy. It’s not just buggy, but very resource intensive. In any case, I’m not too big a fan of that period of war anyway. I guess I’ll skip out on this one.

Mother 3 (GBA) – Still playing this on my commute to work each day (when I’m not sleeping on the subway) and I continue to enjoy it. I’m almost halfway through and it’s just a nice simple RPG game that I can play without thinking too much. I’ll put out some detailed impressions soon.

Pure (360) – Ended up ordering it off Amazon when it went on sale for $20 this past week and I got it the next day. I haven’t had a chance to open it yet, but maybe I’ll end up playing it next after Conan since it seems mindless enough. People say it’s like the next version of SSX, which can’t be all that bad…

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – cmfl3x and I have continued to make our way through the campaign, just finishing off the last two missions on the Allied campaign late last night. We must have retried each of those missions 3-4 times, as it gets pretty hard on Hard difficulty. The last Allied mission is rough – there’s a timer and we ended up destroying the last building when the timer hit 0:00 (maybe it even hit -0:01 heh). It was funny because both the Victory and then the Defeat videos started playing one right after another, but luckily we got the Victory endscreen. Talk about a close call!

Left 4 Dead – Just when I thought I was done with it, the PC version has to go on sale and I ended up picking it up. Expect a write-up with my thoughts comparing it to the 360 version at some point.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 – Never considered picking this up since it’s a PC game, but the fact that it’s tied into the Live system and has its own Achievements has me interested. Maybe I’ll wait for a price drop.

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad – Campy Japanese zombie beat-em-up playing as a girl in a bikini sounds like it could be enjoyable as I like zombies and I like Japanese developed games. A girl in bikini doesn’t hurt either but since my wife may not like the idea of seeing me play as a scantily clad woman throughout the game I’ll hold off on this one for now.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Picked it up since it was on sale at Best Buy this week. I think it got lots of 2008 PC game of the year awards, so I’m curious to check it out. Supposedly it’s a cross between an RTS and a Civilization game, but in space. I’m not the biggest space strategy gamer, but maybe this one will turn out ok for me.