Did’ya hear? Microsoft released Halo and Shadowrun recently and required gamers to get their new Vista OS to play them and pay $50 a year for Shadowrun to be able to play against XBOX360 gamers! And what about other new games from third-party publishers ? They aren’t following suit: they are allowing gamers to use Windows XP or Vista. The injustice of it all! How can they just turn their back on … oh, wait, that is a good thing.

And then there is the upcoming Gears of War … aside from the injustice of having to wait 12 months for it to arrive on the PC, we find out that it will feature content and downloads that will be UNAVAILABLE for XBOX360 gamers. Can you believe THAT!?! Not only do we have to wait but … we … um …

There are a couple of interesting games coming to the PC this week – and of course, both are also coming to the XBOX360. You know what that means, right – yep, we get some ‘XDroppings’ … let’s take a look:

If you are like me then you are highly anticipating the release of Bioshock this week, the so-called ‘spiritual successor’ to the amazing System Shock games. My initial thoughts on this were highly skeptical – I took a ride on THAT particular train last year with Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, thank you very much. But it turns out from every early indication that this one is going to be pretty good. So if, like me, you are a PC gamer, then you have also been sitting on the sidelines while your XBOX360-owning friends have had a demo of the game for over a week. The PC demo is coming, so they say – but that only makes me think of a line from Real Genius “Coming?!?! It isn’t even breathing hard!” It has been announced, denied, confirmed, unconfirmed, released, unreleased … and so on. Of course there is an excuse ready for the separate demos – seems there is a different development house doing the PC interface than the one doing the XBOX360 interface. Uh huh, we know what that means. So now there are reviews starting to trickle in and some feedback from the developers. Yeah, I know – get your outrage and PR filters ready! So the developers are saying that because the Australian studio doing the PC version had more time that it will be what they call ‘more polished’ and ‘a better version’. And the early reviews are calling the PC version ‘better than the XBOX360 version’ and commenting that the game ‘controls better’ and ‘looks better’, and that it is beyond just the typical ‘mouse & keyboard advantage’. Yeah, we know how all of that works with ports … and … um .. what did they say … PC version better … controls better … HEY?!?!?!

OK, so .. so maybe with Bioshock we won’t see things like the ini files of Deus Ex Invisible War with lines saying ‘set this to 0 if not on the XBOX’ that aren’t set to 0 … or have fonts that take up half the screen like in Oblivion. But that is probably just because Bioshock is revolutionary and astoundingly good, and one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ deals. I’m sure that won’t be true with Two Worlds. Let’s see – coming to PC and XBOX360, open world game in the spirit of the Gothic series and recent Elder Scrolls games like Morrowind and Oblivion. Ah, yes, an Oblivion clone … this should be good. So what can we learn from looking at the development history – the game was released for PC in Europe a few months ago, and has since seen five patches that have focused on tweaking gameplay and balance and taking care of bugs and other issues. All of this was done so that the XBOX release would reflect final quality. Yeah, we knew that was coming. But it was all done on the PC so that gamers in Europe note that every aspect of the game has improved significantly from beginning as a fairly problematic game to being a very polished and much better balanced experience. So we have a game that has been tested and tested and quickly patched and is now running quite nice and polished on the PC. Well, at least the initial version was pretty broken so we can still claim PC gamers got screwed, right? No? We can’t … hmmm …

So we’ve got a couple of decent games this week, but what else is there to show on the PC? I mean, no one develops for the platform anymore! Let me think of stuff I’ve played that was new and pretty decent on the PC recently – there was the latest Civilization IV expansion that was excellent, the independent Nethergate Ressurection from Spiderweb Software, another independent Gods: Land of Infinity, the awesome adventure series Sam & Max Season One, more cool adventure games Dead Reefs and Secrets of Atlantis, not to mention the really cool, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl from earlier this year. And looking forward there are games like the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion, The Witcher, independent RPG’s like Eschalon Book 1, Depths of Peril, Legend: Hand of God, Hard to Be a God, Not the Time for Dragons and so on. DOSBox continues to make better and better versions bringing more compatibility to old games.

What the heck is going on here – it seems almost like PC gaming ISN’T doomed, after all? Sure it isn’t holding the heyday position it had when Baldur’s Gate 2 was released seven years ago in 2000, but heck, there wasn’t even an XBOX at that point! Speaking of which, the thing that really started me on this tear was a thread in a forum somewhere ranting about the XBOX360 users were getting screwed because they weren’t getting the Gears of War downloads and a … heated … debate about whose platform was getting screwed the worst ensued and it all sounded like little kids whining to their parents. Some sounded like the youngest complaining that he got the least freedom; others like the oldest complaining that the baby was spoiled; still others sound like the middle child complaining that they get screwed from both sides.

Gaming is alive and doing very well – genres are being split apart and ideas are being ripped from all sides to make cool new games where they have never existed before. One of my two favorite RPG’s this year has a combat system based on match-three puzzles, the other is a tough-as-nails mega-old-school dungeon crawl where you have to draw your own dungeon … and both are on handhelds! I have been enjoying games on my three gaming systems – PC, DS and PSP – across all genres and non-genres, and seeing loads of great games released for other systems as well. Yet there are plenty of people who will tell you that the PC is doomed … or the PSP or the PS3 or that the Wii will be dead by summer or fall … or whenever Nintendo can get them to stay on the shelf …

Don’t listen to them. You are a gamer to have fun, not be miserable. I remember letting myself get very upset when Steve Jobs took over Apple and killed the Newton, then I realized that it was still the best PDA available and it wasn’t until a couple of years later when the synchronization software and my corporate email software stopped talking to each other that I ended up putting it aside. There are loads of fans still having tons of gaming fun on the Dreamcast; my kids get tons of use from their GameCube library despite the fact that it ‘lost’ the last generation; and the fact that the PSP has already ‘lost’ this generation has never stopped me from enjoying some of the really excellent games on the platform. So take heart – if you are a PC gamer you can rest assured that PC gaming will continue to live on. It has always been the most expensive way to game, and always will be – but it is far from ‘d0med’!

Tags: Misc