So any PC games to look forwards too?

[Ghost]

Hello all,

A bit of a difficult question, this one.
All of us have their own tastes when it comes to games what they are looking forwards too.
I could have tried to fill in what games I specifically mean but then the title of the topic would have become to long.

So do any of you know of any upcoming science fiction shooters or RPGs like Planescape Torment that are still in development?

All I have on my list is Half Life 2 Episode 3 which I hope will be announced soon (only for its release date to change again as the date gets nearer)

[Harrison]

Not actually an RPG, but Games Workshop are currently working on an official Bloodbowl game that is schedules for release in 2008, so I'm really looking forward to that one. Chaos League was good, but not official or licensed by GW so to finally have an official game will be good.

Another Games Workshop game, Dawn of War, is getting another expansion pack, Soul Storm, next year too, so I'm looking forward to that one.

[Ghost]

I recently bought the game Tarr Chronicles for a friend of mine, has any of you played it?

I also soon will have NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer.

[Harrison]

I've got NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer, but although I've installed it, I'm still playing through the original game. It seems like a nice expansion, adding quite a few extra hours of gameplay, plus introducing some new character races to the game for you to play. It's also had some good reviews.

Tarr Chronicles is quite a good space shooter, similar in gameplay to old classics like X-Wing or Wing Commander. The graphics are nice, but the game is quite an arcade like space shooter, with only basic piloting and weapons selection commands possible. But for the type of game is good. Just don't expect anything as complex as Freespace, or open like Freelancer or X.

[Sharingan]

Haven't kept in touch with the PC game scene that much lately, but there's one game I'm really looking forward to, and that's the next version of Sim City (not Sim City Societies). That's when they'll (probably) make the transition to full 3D scenery. Rumour has it that development is well underway.

[Harrison]

I've not read anything about the next Sim City. I always love that series.

A couple of games out this month I've been interested in are Hellgate: London and TimeShift. I've played demos of Timeshift throughout its development and it has evolved and changed direction a number of times, but the end result looks like it should be good. And Hellgate should be great multiplayer, as it played a bit like a FPS RPG.

[Ghost]

Hello Sharingan,

I have tried to play Sim City just as I have tried to play the Civilization games, I have plenty of copies of both series, from Classic Sim City to the latest, and from Civ1 (Net Civ I think) to Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword.

I love the concepts behind both game series but I really suck at playing them because I never take the time to truly learn the games.
Often I just want some quick action, that is when I am playing games and not just hanging in front of my PC and just surfing the net.

Somewhere in the beginning when I started to play games I must have made a mistake when I tried to learn strategy games, and I am keep making the same mistakes.


Hello Harrison,

Well my friend was very happy with Tarr Chronicles, he enjoys it a lot and even upgraded his PC in order to play it properly.
Unfortunate the game magazine I usually read is rather negative about the whole game.

I have to say that I am starting to question the independence of said game magazine as you hear more and more often that game publishers extend a lot of control in the game review business to make sure that their games get favourable grades.

Sites like RPGcodex are very negative about sites like Gamespot, Gamespy and others, feeling that these sites are biased and run by people with only a limited experience in the field of gaming, thereby more easily impressed by software which qualities are seriously questionable compared to games in the same genre released years earlier.

I can't say that this is just hate mongering (don't know how to write the exact word) as these people do have a point.

These years I buy a lot less newly released games than years before when almost every month an exciting new game was released.


The Witcher seems to be doing very well.
Fantasy in general doesn't interest me but I have been looking for a Christmas gift for someone, I hope he will like this.

[Harrison]

That is true of many games magazines and it has long been questioned by many. Some Amiga magazines such as Amiga Action were even guilty of this. The biggest issue is when magazines review pre-release code that has been "fixed" especially for the reviewers. Or in some more recent cases some magazines have even reviewed a game without even ever seeing it running.

There are a couple of magazines I do believe and subscribe to. PC Gamer is good for PC games as they definitely tell the truth about the games they review, and will also even admit in a later issue when looking at a game again if their original scores were too high or should have deserved an even higher score. And they are not frightened to give key games an average score, with even the best games often not getting a score over 90%

Another is Edge, as they tend to be over critical of a game, rather than singing it's praises. So when they really do give a game a score of 8 or higher you know it has to be good.

[Sharingan]

Yeah, Sim City (especially part 4) is somewhat of a monster. It's easy enough to pick up and play right away, but to get the most out of it, you really need to spend ages and ages on it. The fun part is continually discovering ways of improving things, be it implementing a brand new public transport system that solves all the traffic problems you've been having, or finding methods of jump-starting languishing commercial growth. The most satisfying thing is seeing a seemingly small decision translate into huge results.

It's kind of daunting to get started on the game though, I agree. Unless you have copious amounts of time, I wouldn't even get started. I used to play SC4 quite a bit, and have built some pretty good cities, but the time it takes to actually get things running is obscene. I've tried getting back into it several times, but always stopped because I just couldn't get myself to learn everything all over again.

Hopefully, SC5 will be just a touch easier to get into. Being able to delegate some tasks to A.I. controlled decisionmakers would be nice, for example.

[Demon Cleaner]

Perhaps the remake of Speedball which will be released soon.