The 2007 Review - a Year of PC Gaming
2007: A Year in PC Gaming, cont.July could have been an utterly unforgettable month had it not been for the release of Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword and Attack on Pearl Harbor: the former showing how developers should really be doing expansion packs, and the latter proving that you don't need megabucks licences and DX10 graphics to make an enjoyable game. The biggest surprise of all, this month, was that the invitation-only E3 Business & Media Summit (the phoenix from the ashes of the free-for-all E3 fest) was not only really busy, but also had plenty of announcements and gossip. With a bit of luck, some kind publisher will invite us for 2008... hint, hint!  2K Games' BioShock Instead of what should have been the traditional Q4 carpet-bombing of game releases by publishers, August was a bit of a damp squib when it came to new games. Fortunately, all was saved thanks to the efforts of 2K Games and BioShock. Just to make sure you're up-to-date on the details, it was actually Irrational Games (creators of System Shock 2) who made it, but they're wholly owned by 2K Games, which in turn is a subsidiary of Take Two (remember them, from earlier in the year?). Anyway, the publishers made quite a meal out of the game's release, especially for the people buying it via Steam - the infamous SecuROM copy protection system initially limited the number of installs to a mere handful, not to mention borking PCs too. The developers also forgot to ensure that whilst it's great for a game to have an awesome start and finish, the middle bit is just as important too. An entire article could be written about the amount of unfulfilled promise BioShock has but let's just leave at that, as fundamentally, it's a cracking game. The effects this all had on Take Two, though, have yet to be seen. For YouGamers, the hot potato for August was the Games Convention, held in Leipzig. Not only was it popular with the public, it was great for us too, as we got to meet a lot of publishers and developers face-to-face; this helped to break the ice in some cases, and make up for past issues! EA, Sierra, Codemasters, Activision, Akella, Techland, Funcom, Eidos, Frogster, and many more, were absolute stars! Where the previous month was empty, September was jam-packed to the rafters with new titles, all vying for your money and time. Medal of Honor: Airborne looked great, but lasted all of 3 minutes; Stranglehold needed a hell of PC just to run but was worth it; World in Conflict showed us that strategy games were brilliant; the beta for Team Fortress 2 was so good, Valve could have shipped it there and then; and the demo of Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars proved that their previous beta really were betas, and not just poor promos. Valve also launched their Steam Community thingy this month, which surprised everyone by being good... unlike most gamerz-online tools.  Atari's The Witcher The games continued to churn out in October: Neverwinter Nights 2 was expanded with Mask of the Betrayer, Valve gave us an Orange Box, comprising of all the Half-Life 2 games, as well as Team Fortress 2 and the utterly fantastic Portal. Who cares that the cake was a lie? It was a huge success! Age of Empires III also picked up an expansion pack, as did Flight Simulator X; sadly the fun was spoilt by offerings such as Clive Barker's Jericho and Hellgate: London, the latter being the biggest case of disappointmentitis since the launch of DirectX 10. Much was also rescued by The Witcher, even if it did treat women like they were "collector's" items. Amongst the news melee of trailers and reviews came the unexpected news that EA were acquiring BioWare and Pandemic Studios - you'd think that the makers of numerous fine RPGs were doing just fine as they were, but at the end of the day, there's a business to be run, and EA had the dosh! But as surprising as that was, it was nothing compared to the announcement that Bungie were leaving Microsoft to become independent again, afters seven years of being Microsoft's Halo whipping boys. November was just as busy; some games were woohoo!, some were meh, some were ewwww. Crytek tried to convince us with Crysis that DirectX 10 was the mutt's nuts but a neat bit of config tweaking proved that DirectX 9 was still mightily capable, and on current hardware, quite a bit faster. At least the game itself was pretty spiffy. Shame the same can't be said about SimCity Societies and Empire Earth III - titles with good heritages but stuffed due to poor direction changes. It's not as if the console haters could blame them for being cross-platform releases, as only PC gamers were given the chance to suffer them. Mind you, they got their teeth well and truly stuck into Unreal Tournament 3! Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, though, was a perfect lesson in how to really do a multiplatform game.  Midway's Unreal Tournament 3 Finishing the year was the biggest surprise of them all - Vivendi signing a deal with Activision, creating a new company (revoltingly called Activision Blizzard), controlled by Activision. The media giant holds a major share in the group but along with Take Two's fiscal predicaments, it was a clear sign that video game publishing isn't all that it's cracked up to be, these days. Development costs unsurprisingly continued to grow in 2007, as did the sales revenues for video gaming as a whole, but PC gaming is a bit unsettled at the moment. Sure, MMORPGs like WoW have vast numbers of players, all generating income, but most MMOs don't require brand-new, top-end PCs, the likes of which Crysis utterly demand. All in all, 2007 was a great year in PC gaming, and it's easy to be fickle and forget this; gamers frequently change their likes and dislikes, especially when a hot new title is released. Fortunately there is a common view of all these games, so let's have a peek at how they all turned out in our reviews!
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