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"No Flare in PC Games...?!"

Would you agree with me?

I think, that today, and for the best part of the last few years, PC games have gone from charismatic masterpieces, to dull, gloomy masterpieces...

I mean, lets compare some of the games to console games... We have Commandos 2, which despite being a great war RPG almost lacks that certain kick that might attract gamers... I know for the older gamers it's almost perfect, but in general it doesn't have that aura about it that say another RPG/Strategy like PIKMIN might...

Now I know what you're thinkning... yuo're doing that stupid 'Uhhhh!' thing that people did about 6 years ago... so stopiit ouy look stupid - I know PIKMIN is a different game for a different audience, but you have to see where i'm coming from...

A lot of PC graphics look faded and seem to lack colour... I mean compare a PC game like Tomb Raider to Jak and Daxter (Ulgh! - Talking about PS2 games :D) and you can see just how big a contrast there is between the formats...

I know I might not make much sense, but do you understand what I mean? PC games to me seem to lack the body that a lot of console games have... it isn't all about colour, but to me, a console gamer, what the PC offers seems a litte mundane... Yes I know there are a lot of ports (Red Faction, Tomb Raider, Fifa), but a lot of the time the graphics do seem faded, in comparison to the games Nintendo and Playstation counterparts.

PC gaming, as you may have heard, has never really hit out at me... nothing on the PC/Mac has even said, "...look at me.. i'm a great, new and exciting game..." I've looked at boxes and i've read reviews, even played demo's, but there is something so different about PC games that makes them seem so reserved and urbane (well-to-do), but at the same time lacklustre... and it makes console games seem so much more attractive...

I liked age of Empires II and the football games look quite polished, but there's something about PC games that makes me stay away...

I just don't know what it is....

Anyone else feel like this?


Game

Would you agree with me?

I think, that today, and for the best part of the last few years, PC games have gone from charismatic masterpieces, to dull, gloomy masterpieces...

I mean, lets compare some of the games to console games... We have Commandos 2, which despite being a great war RPG almost lacks that certain kick that might attract gamers... I know for the older gamers it's almost perfect, but in general it doesn't have that aura about it that say another RPG/Strategy like PIKMIN might...

Now I know what you're thinkning... yuo're doing that stupid 'Uhhhh!' thing that people did about 6 years ago... so stopiit ouy look stupid - I know PIKMIN is a different game for a different audience, but you have to see where i'm coming from...

A lot of PC graphics look faded and seem to lack colour... I mean compare a PC game like Tomb Raider to Jak and Daxter (Ulgh! - Talking about PS2 games :D) and you can see just how big a contrast there is between the formats...

I know I might not make much sense, but do you understand what I mean? PC games to me seem to lack the body that a lot of console games have... it isn't all about colour, but to me, a console gamer, what the PC offers seems a litte mundane... Yes I know there are a lot of ports (Red Faction, Tomb Raider, Fifa), but a lot of the time the graphics do seem faded, in comparison to the games Nintendo and Playstation counterparts.

PC gaming, as you may have heard, has never really hit out at me... nothing on the PC/Mac has even said, "...look at me.. i'm a great, new and exciting game..." I've looked at boxes and i've read reviews, even played demo's, but there is something so different about PC games that makes them seem so reserved and urbane (well-to-do), but at the same time lacklustre... and it makes console games seem so much more attractive...

I liked age of Empires II and the football games look quite polished, but there's something about PC games that makes me stay away...

I just don't know what it is....

Anyone else feel like this?


Game

If you ask me then I'd say that PC offer the best range of games around. Half-Life, Commandos 2, Alien Versus Predator, GTA3, Return To Wolfenstien, Deus Ex and the list could go on and on. Graphically capable of more then any console because of upgrades and add-ons and playable over the net with smooth gamepaly make the PC one of the best if not the best console around.

The games aren't slowing down, they aren't fading but they're just getting better and better. Max Payne and Operation Flashpoint, two contenders for Game of the Year and both on the PC, along with Black and White and Commandos 2. I think you should upgrade and experience the joys these games have to offer.

Well, there is certainly a huge downturn in the PC gaming scene. As it happens, I was just looking through the program for a large European developers summit to be held in Novenmber... the first seminar is by Peter Molyneux (hope I spelt that right!) about Lionhead changing from the development of PC games, to the next generation consoles.

Ok, the fact that one company has changed its focus is not too worrying. Nor is that fact that it's quite an innovative company. But the fact that this is being shown as the first topic at an international conference is pretty scarey... will more companies go the same way? More importantly, why would they?

Well, clearly console gaming is getting far, far more popular. 100 million Playstations are out there, and now we have a new generation of console which will drag even more players into the game. The market has outgrown that of films!

This is in complete contradiction to PC gamers. These numbers are dwindling as more people turn to console gaming. No more upgrading, no more configuring. Just put in a disc and play. The marketting of the consoles is far better also, attracting previously untouched areas of society.

So, the migration to consoles in not to be unexpected. Irronically the games developers, who have driven the development of PC sound and graphics cards over the years, are abandoning their machine...

But still, things can't be that bad... can they?

Sonic

I'm afraid that I have to think on the contrary to you today The Game. If anything, I would argue that PC games have actually improved in the past year or so. Ok, so the rage of PC games really began with Half Life. Sierra managed to execute their plan very well with excellent timing. Had it not been for them, we may not be where we are today. In my opinion, Sierra revolutionised the gaming industry, well, as far as PC gaming goes anyway.

After that, many companies that had seldom developed for the big wig tried their luck, with excellent results. In a way, gaming turned into an art form during that period of time. Gaming companies created their own pastiches, really pushing the creative envelope. Thanks to Sierra, we have such great games as Deus Ex, Operation Flashpoint and many, many more.

I'm not saying that Sierra are due to take all the credit, because that would be unfair. Fox Interactive also came up with some great efforts before Half Life was released, in Alien .vs. Predator. A great game in it's time, is no overshadowed by the new generation of games. I'm sure however, that Alien .vs. Predator 2 will keep up to date with the trend of the current games and manage to take gaming that 1 step further.

Had it not been for competition, the gaming industry would have crashed and burned as we know it. Lets face it, the PS1 is practically obsolete, the N64 is dead and the Dreamcast is slipping away at an alarming rate, with less than 20 games left to release. The next generation of each company is emerging, even Microsoft are having a go at it. There are a lot of questions that will be answered in the coming months. Will the X-Box produce games worthy of PC status? Where do Sega stand? Most importantly, "Who will win the battle over the consoles?". It will certainly be interesting to see what develops over the coming months. Watch this space for more.

I might agree with your no-flare idea. However, I've never had much experience with PC games seeing as the best this coal-fired heap of junk is Half-Life, just.

An interesting idea, is there no flair in PC Games? It really does depend on your idea of flair, but I'll go into that later. With consoles on the rise, could it be that PCs will be overshadowed?

Well, consoles are certainly getting more common and improving faster and faster. Just a short while ago there was only really the SNES and suddenly there are a huge new range of consoles to choose from, all with exciting new games. The Playstation was created by a company new to the console scene and swiftly became a big hit using clever marketing strategies that had been successful in marketing other entertainment products. The Playstation was to provide high quality games almost rivalling PC games with the added advantages of cheap price, quick loading and the ability to be plugged into a TV for convenient use in bedrooms, living rooms or any other room. People flocked to the stores, especially young people who saw this as a must have purchase. Then the PC was left selling only to certain people or businesses and selling less games since people had Playstations for games and PCs for work. Of course it was never as bad as that would suggest, the internet brought the computer revolution into people's homes and the new possibilities of knowledge and communication it opened caused more flocking to stores, this time to get PCs and get "connected". More people realised that you could actually play games on a PC and that they were not only very high quality but capable of improving faster than console games due to the upgradeability of PCs. Then there was the arrival of on-line gaming, which allowed people to extend the lifetimes of their games by playing with other people from anywhere in the world. What's more this service was generally available at any time and whole communities of people banded together to play their favourite games and make friends with people they had never met and might never meet. Life for the PC didn't seem so bad. Could it be said that the PC has a flair for improving itself then?

What of the games though? Are they all becoming too much alike, with little innovation and just not enough to interest gamers as much as they used to? Well, it's certainly true that there are plenty of games that give nothing new out there. New First Person Shooters are coming out all the time but many fail to impress and some are very disappointing. Red Faction for example promised many things, including excellent new graphics and gameplay with it's geo-mod technology that allowed the destruction of most scenery. Unfortunately Red Faction failed in many ways, the level design did not take advantage of the geo-mod technology, the whole game was a little short, the AI had a tendency to do some very strange things in a bad way and the story was not only unoriginal but poorly told. Red Faction does, however make a perfect link to console games since it also made an appearance on the Playstation 2. Red Faction has been quite praised on the Playstation as an innovative game with good gameplay that is generally good fun. So a game that totally disappointed on the PC was infact quite acceptable on the Playstation. This shows that for a game to be good on the PC it has to beat other PC games and it's success on a console means nothing when it makes the move to PC. Console games are often shorter than PC games and less is generally expected of them, perhaps this is merely because there are less console games to make comparisons with while PC games have a history bristling with innovation and improvement. Red Faction perhaps stood a chance with the consoles because it did not have to compete with memories of Half-Life and Deus Ex. Games like Max Payne, Black and White and Baldur's Gate all cut new gaps in the gaming world and create new standards by which all games made after them will be judged. So could it be said that the PC has a flair for ever improving games?

Speaking of the games we must of course go into innovation. With games like Quake IV and Doom III coming out is it time to give up on new ideas? While games like Deus Ex and Black & White blur the boundaries between genres people often worry that these kinds of games are too few and far between. Not all innovation is in the creation of new genres. From Quake 1 to Quake 2 there were many innovations that were perhaps taken for granted. For example Quake 2 did improve graphics, not exactly innovative but improvement is always a good step to originality. Quake 2 had good level design and some interesting new challenges and enemies. Then there was Quake 3 which took a whole new approach to First Person Shooting. It took the multiplayer element and made a whole game based around being able to fight progressively difficult bots in single player or other human players on-line or over a network. It allowed for all sorts of new methods of play and new features for multiplayer games and while it had no story it concentrated on making gameplay as good as it could in as many ways as possible. Of course there was also Unreal Tournament, which had the same idea but both were new ways of doing things. With games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein bringing us new stories, new levels and new features we can look forward to more innovation from the FPS genre even if it is less obvious. FPS isn't the only genre though and perhaps isn't the biggest example of innovation, which I'm coming to now. RPGs have been nothing but non-stop originality recently. When Fallout first came to the gaming world it was surprisingly overlooked. It took a new way of doing RPGs by making a futuristic setting, not to mention a whole different style. It also brought character interaction which was more than just the stereotypical "if you get me a staff I'll give you a potion to give to the alchemist who'll give you the key to the next level". It also brought in an element of choice, with the option to deal with problems in many ways, to not deal with them at all or even to make them worse by working for the "bad guys". You could be generous, you could be self interested or you could be a maniacal murderer and never speak to anyone (you probably wouldn't get far but it's possible). Baldur's Gate was then made by the same people and it created the RPG genre of today. It took all the lessons learned in Fallout (except the setting) and improved on them taking them to a whole new level. Then it made a game which was very different to Fallout even though they were both RPGs. It made the player feel involved with an excellent storyline. It gave freedom of choice in everything, you could make the choices of party members who had character of their own, you could make choices of actions good, evil or neutral (neutral rarely if ever seen before), you had as much freedom as Fallout and still more. Then there were the character classes, all unique in their own right and with their own ways of playing. It was worth playing through the whole game multiple times even though you knew the main story just for the different styles of play including both character wise and of course how you dealt with "quests". Since then there have been more innovations in the RPG genre. Characters were improved to have their personalities making a large appearance in Planescape: Torment and this was carried on to Baldur's Gate 2 which improved even further. Your party became your friends rather than only being there to help you in combat and you were even given the opportunity to have a love interest and what's more, it wasn't compulsory. In the future we can look forward to Neverwinter Nights allowing us to make whole quests, dungeons and adventures ourselves and who knows what else? Of course that is only one kind of RPG, there are at least two more. The Hack and Slash RPG was made famous by Diablo. Allowing you to play a character and improve them in a quick action way without having to worry too much about long quests taking you back and forth to places. While quests did exist they added a lot to the game by giving the player a sense of purpose while always allowing you to progress forwards rather than having to go back. The random dungeon generator allowed every game to be different and with the thousands of possible items which could be found the task of searching for better equipment could be great fun. Perhaps Diablo's biggest achievement was the online community element it created. It allowed players to meet up and work together against the evil forces, sharing treasure and having a laugh rather than always trying to kill each other. The mixture of chat rooms and games meant that you could go on to play a game of Diablo but end up chatting and having just as much fun or even doing both. The RPG's other big innovation has been the Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games (or MMORPGs). They created communities of gamers that not only play a game as teams but are involved in a full active world which they can affect themselves. People could band together and inhabit towns, they could set up shops and really create their own role playing world. People didn't have to team up either, if they were in the mood they could go and find other people to fight with. MMORPGs pretty much mixed the gameplay of RPGs with an in game chat room. People could congregate at pubs and discuss things as their character while still playing the game and being able to immediately walk outside and hunt orcs. MMORPGs then spread all over the place, with new worlds springing up all over. They also gave rise to new ideas of innovation, in time we may see the first Massively Multiplayer On-line First Person Shooter that takes the action and gameplay of a FPS and mixes it with the community spirit of a MMORPG in the form of Planetside. There may even be elements of Role playing in that, especially on the part of what weapons and vehicles will be available. I don't think there will ever stop being new ideas for games, someone is always working on a new way of tackling things and when you least expect it you are playing something original that appeared as if from nowhere. So perhaps you might say, the PC has a flair for innovation?

What people think of as having flair is the sort of thing that opinions differ over. Some people think flair can mostly be seen in good graphics, some people like the flair of a new way of gaming, some people believe flair is all in the gameplay and some people have no idea what they would consider flair, they just like games. PC games will just keep getting better and better, as will PCs and while consoles will be doing the same I doubt PCs will ever become obsolete. I would say that whoever you are, whatever your beliefs you could find something that has enough flair for you on the PC (unless you are the one who doesn't know what flair is) and even if you can't, you can at least find some great games for great entertainment and after all, isn't that the most important thing?

My goodness... what a reply, Gonti!

You're something else...

T'was a good reply though... thanks!

The Game wrote:
> My goodness... what a reply, Gonti!

You're something else...

T'was a good
> reply though... thanks!

I am something else... Gronti! Hehe. Anyway thank you for umm, thanking me! What I wonder is what else you think I am.

Gront, I'm impressed. How long did that reply take?


I seem quite happy with the PC games that I have at the moment, but when I look at the games, I see each game having it's own kind of flair.

Oh a reasonable amount of time. I wasn't really paying attention. Thanks anyway, good to make an impression.

Flair is a matter of opinion overall anyway, so it's hard to pinpoint. Plus is flair only that which is quick and flashy or can slow but fun have flair too? Like Strategy games compared to FPSs.