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Oblivion Sequel, Wii Sims, No Bully 2
Not many new releases slated for this early in the year, but news of what we expect later on is starting to come in. Excitingly (for me anyway), the first real expansion to Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is expected to be release in Q2 of 2007. It will offer an all-new landmass, multiple-branching quest lines, and the power to change the landscape. There are more details available on The Sims for Wii, as well. The Kotaku post wonders out loud what the point is, as (with its cute graphics and Mii-style characters) it looks a lot like a poor man's Animal Crossing. FiringSquad is excited about PC games this year, with a lot of commentators saying this will be 'the year PC games make a comeback'. With titles like Spore, Crysis, and Bioshock on the horizon, it's hard to argue with that. There's some 'negative' news on new games as well: despite a great reception by reviewers, a sequel to Bully may be hard for Take-Two to justify, due to lackluster sales. Finally, Vivendi has tried to deny the existence of a Batttlestar MMOG. Commentators at 1up are skeptical.
for twenty games. I wish I knew more about some on the list.
20: Left 4 Dead (Turtle Rock Studios: Sometime In 2007)
19. Pirates of the Burning Sea (Flying Lab Software: Mid 2007)
18. Medal of Honor: Airborne (Electronic Arts: Mid 2007)
17. Age of Conan (Funcom-Eidos: First Half of 2007)
16. Frontlines: Fuel of War: (Kaos Studios-THQ: Summer 2007)
15. Shadowrun (FASA Studios-Microsoft: Sometime in 2007)
14. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (Sigil Games: First Quarter of 2007)
13. Command and Conquer 3 (Electronic Arts: March 2007)
12. Lord of the Rings Online (Turbine-Midway: First Half Of 2007)
11. Hellgate London (Flagship Studios-Namco: Late 2007)
10. Warhammer Online (Mythic-EA: Late 2007)
9. Bioshock (Irrational Games-2K Games: First Half of 2007)
8. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl (GSC GameWorld-THQ: March 2007)
7. Half-Life 2: Episode 2/Portal/Team Fortress 2 (Valve: Summer 2007)
6. Unreal Tournament 2007: (Epic-Midway: Sometime in 2007)
5. Supreme Commander (Gas Powered Games-THQ: March 2007)
4. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (Splash Damage-id Software-Activision: First Half of 2007)
3. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade (Blizzard: January 2007)
2. Spore (Maxis-EA: Second Half Of 2007)
1. Crysis: (Crytek-EA: Sometime in 2007)
Looking through the list from Firing Squad actualy has me looking forward to alot of games I had forgotten about.
I saw an Article on Shadowrun a while back and it sounds great (I love squad based game play, admitedly they are basicly ignoring all cannon from the SR universe, but I can live, I am not THAT big of a fanboy)
There are about 3 or 4 new MMOs coming out that I am interested in poking around at (I love MMOs, just that the ones I tend to like don't have enough of a player base to keep them running properly, so I always hope for a new one)
BioShock sounds like an atempt to make a new version of SS, and that always makes me happy (though a lack of Shodan is sorta sad...)
HL2 Ep2, TF2, and Portal are probably what I am waiting for the most. If you havn't played Narbacular Drop drop (What Portal grew out of) I highly recomend it.
ET:QW is another FPS game I am eager for (I loved W:ET)
And ofcourse there is Spore.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Vanguard will be coming out first quarter 2007. Still in closed beta, open beta coming soon. Looks very promising ...
I don't know how much they had to pay for the good reviews of Bully, but it really sucked. Save your money. Those $4 Burger King games are probably better...
Duffman can never die! Only the actors who play him!
Nice, but how many of these titles will end up being vaporware? I mean S.T.A.L.K.E.R has been up and coming for like 4 years! I think its giving Duke a run for his money.
Just looking at it, and considering the expanded market of people who are actually using the Wii console to play games that are easier to just get into, I am thinking that the market for this is incredibly huge - and will dwarf that of most PC games. In addition, if the online capabilities include being able to visit friends towns, it will do very well indeed.
Count me in for that, as well as for Spore on the Wii.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...as long as there is some intricate and weird way to have your Sim die in it.
Don't believe it's a factor? Ask anyone who played The Sims what their favorite moment in it was. I can make a safe bet that it revolves around the Sim dying in one way or another.
I swear, that's the only reason anyone played The Sims. In fact, the few Sims games that had death removed from the game (usually the console versions. Not sounding good for the Wii already) never sold well or got good reviews, with most reviewers chastising the port because your Sim couldn't meet the reaper.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I am so disappointed at where Microsoft is taking Shadowrun. Arguably my favorite game of all time is Shadowrun for the Genesis, and when I initially heard MS owned the rights I had hope that it might show up on the original Xbox. Back when GTA III was the biggest game out there -- and exclusive to the PS2 -- I thought for sure someone at MS would wake up and turn Shadowrun into a competitor (borrowing 3D free roaming and adding RPG elements). Anyone who has played the Genesis version of Shadowrun should know how well it could have made that transition. I would have bought a Xbox 360 just for good Shadowrun, but alas that's not to be. A remake of Panzer Dragood Saga might make me pick one up though... On a side note, my other great hope would be a new NiGHTS Into Dreams for the Wii. NiGHTS on the Saturn is way up there in my opinion as well, and the offers the perfect platform for a modern version.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Does TF2 get more points because this is, what, it's 10th year on the "OMG this is going to r0xxorz next year!" list?
-Styopa
I swear, that's the only reason anyone played The Sims.
Two words: Lesbian Sims.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Why do you call it Sims 2? That exists already. This is 'Wii Sims' or some such.
As for the death... The major complaint in the console versions of The Sims is that is has a plot and is scaled back. It wasn't just freeform-do-whatever like the PC version. Death is sometimes one of the scaled back things, but is by no means the major reason for lack of sales.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
An Expansion pack is not a Sequel. Example:
Oblivion is the Sequel to Morrowind. Nights of the Nine is an expansion pack for Oblivion. The next Expansion pack, named "Shivering Isles", is not a Sequel to Oblivion.
The Elder Scrolls V: "Taking The Customers for a Ride" - would be a Sequel to Oblivion.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
I guess this is why I usually don't like Sim-type games...I usually try and be all serious about it and then get bored because it's not as "fun" as other games. Perhaps later I'll dig up the $15 Sim-compilation-pack (or somesuch) that is lying around somewhere at home, and destroy some stuff.
...
Also, I think different demographics find different qualities in simulations. A few (female) friends of mine said they liked The Sims because it was like a virtual dollhouse, and another enjoyed it because of the architecture/interior design elements. I guess they're called "sandboxes" for a reason.
Wow, OK. So this post is basically me writing down my stream of thought after reading your post. Most people probably already realize this stuff about sandbox games. I'll post it anyway...maybe somebody will get something out of it.
Three t's just isn't enough.
Comment of the year
They have to compete with Viva Pinata which, I'm told, allows cannibalism. When you tire of a pinata, you can smash it open and all the other pinatas eat its guts.
Comment of the year
The best part is the happy children cheering when your shovel blows finally rip the dying pinata open.
Yaaaaay!
Everyone knows not to link to the reg, but why do they still link to Kotaku which is 100x worse.
this will be the year PC games make a comeback
As a PC gamer from way back, it's curious to see how the "comeback" year has changed.
It used to be that the PC was generally a couple of years behind consoles in power. This made sense because the average PC spec had to accomodate people that hadn't upgraded whereas each new console itteration would reset the bar.
For the first year of a console's life, it was undisputedly more powerful than a PC and it's games were undeniably better. During the second year, it held the lead over PCs because, even though quite a few people had more powerful systems, games weren't able to expect them yet. By about the third or fourth year, the average PC had caught up, was at least as powerful if not more powerful, games were taking advantage of it and it was taking the lead. By the final year of a console itteration, the PC was now fairly significantly more powerful and held the lead by a good margin - which it promptly lost with the next release cycle a year later.
Thus it was with the NES, SNES, PS1 and PS2/XBox generations.
The interesting thing has been the effect of add in gaming graphics cards. Circa NES/SNES and even PS1 to a degree, there was an incremental step from 386 to 486 to earlier pentiums and from EGA to VGA to SVGA to the early 3DFX cards. In those days, PC gamers couldn't disperse that far from the mid point and games didn't have that much potential to vary for different system specs.
By the PS2/XBox launch of five years ago, just about every gamer was running a GeForce or better card which allowed games companies to make games much more scalable to different hardware setups. The XBox could have great hardware (NV2A) but the GeForce 3 (NV20) had already been in gamers hands for six months and the GeForce 4 (NV25) followed within three or four months. Almost right away, the richest gamers could have just as powerful hardware and so mainstream PC games caught the technical lead up within a year.
With the PS3/XBox360, undeniably exciting things are happening with the processors. The interesting thing is that no one seems to have really figured out how to write good multi-threaded code for the XBox's three processors - let alone the PS3's 7. In the year they've been working that out on the 360, almost every home gamer has a dual core system and quad cores are already an option. Add in DirectX 10 cards with their relative speed boosts and it's little wonder PCs have closed the gap to the point where they easily matched the 360's launch and can handle going up against the PS3's launch year.
Yes, a pair of $600 graphics cards and a $1,000 processor in a $3,500 gaming rig is still WAY more than a console. The curious thing is that $300 graphics cards and a $300 processor in a $1,000 rig now have most of that power whilst a new console has gone up from $200 to $400 to $600 and availability problems in the first six months likely mean you'll pay over the cost of the $1,000 PC to get a console on EBay anyway.
Powerwise, the war's over. Of course one problem remains: we get to see if PC game makers can harness all that power and compete against the simple ease of installation/use of the consoles.
It should be an interesting year: Now the playing field's equal in terms of power, can the flexibility of PCs along with their availability vs. limited console releases allow them to finally take over?
There is a huge amount of good PC games out. If people would only play them...
A short list of some games that I have really enjoyed lately:
*Psychonauts (available from Steam). It is Tim Schaeffer damn it! All the great artwork and wacky humor from Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and so on.
*Bookworm and Bookworm Adventures.
*Puzzle Pirates. Free
*Neverwinter Nights 2. Now that it has been patched properly it is a really good game, and it keep growing on me.
Also some old goodies like FEAR, Oblivion, World of Warcraft...