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Future of gaming and Windows 8: Consoles step aside, PC is back?!

Windows 8

One of our readers from Europe, Vincenzo, has just sent me this interesting article (translated version here, if you’re like me and have an Italian vocabulary that is limited to the words you picked up from Assassin’s Creed!) talking about bits of code in Windows 8 programming that mentions the Xbox 360.

It is mentioned in the article that there are several possibilities, from the next generation Xbox console running as a branch off main Windows code to native support and/or emulation of Xbox console titles on your Windows-running machine. Having been a PC gamer for as long as I can remember, I must say I am excited! I have never bought or owned a game console before, ever (though of course I haven’t been living under a rock and have used consoles belonging to friends and family, but I still find their controls clunky to use and graphics to be watered down compared to the PC version of game titles)… and what Windows 8 could potentially bring might solidify the fact I may probably never need to get a console anyway.

The folks at Windows 8 Italia also mention that their speculation is based on the fact Microsoft has already brought over their Xbox Live service on their Windows Phone platform and have Kinect SDK out (albeit in beta form) for Windows… so having Xbox Live and/or emulation on Windows would be the next logical step.

The potential demise of consoles in favor of handheld… and now, PC… gaming?! You’d better be ready for it! If you take a couple of steps back and look at the big picture, you’ll see why this all makes sense. PC gaming was quite dominant before things like the Xbox and Playstation came along, but back then, consoles were invented to cater to the mass market. And consoles made gaming accessible, cheaper (in terms of machine investment) and easier (installations and patching supposedly ‘easier’ than on PC, no graphics or resolution settings to tweak) to pick up. PC hardware has also been comparatively expensive versus buying an ‘all in one box’ like a console (though you might also realize PCs are much more versatile and do more than just ‘gaming’). But now…

• Intel is coming out with a much more powerful Ivy Bridge processor line next year along with integrated graphics. This is a good start since if Intel’s Ivy Bridge integrated graphics are powerful enough to drive most ‘real’ games (real games as in stuff like Left4Dead and Crysis 2, not Angry Birds) at low to medium settings at 720p resolution at smooth frame rates (comparable to the ‘console experience’), that simplifies shopping for hardware and picking out a ‘gaming capable’ machine for the average consumer/non-hardcore gamer.
• More and more games that were originally ‘console exclusive’ or ‘console only’ are making their way towards the PC platform. Metal Gear Solid Rising for instance, is the first game in the Metal Gear series in years to be announced for the Xbox and… wait for it… PC platforms! The folks behind LA Noire also recently announced the availability of the game for PC too. And even more recently, I came across an article about the folks at Ubisoft expressing the complexity in developing games for consoles (but who, ironically, release A list games like Assassin’s Creed 4 to 5 months later for PC, after the initial PS3/Xbox debut!)
• And once again, we’re talking about Apple. I’m a big time HP fan but I’m somehow always delighted to hear about the ‘PC gaming love’ being spread to Macs… because there are many young people out there using Macs (If you don’t believe me, go to your local public college and prepare for a surprise!) and it’s always great to give them a taste of gaming (Valve has been doing a great job at encouraging this by releasing many of their PC titles like Left4Dead and Team Fortress for Mac). Who knows? These kids might be impressed by the small sample of games they can run on their MacBook and go out there to grab a HP Pavilion desktop for a better gaming experience at home, versus sitting on their couches running their Playstation/Xbox.
• Windows 8 Interface… and this might be the biggest deal breaker of them all. If Microsoft chooses to go back to supporting PC as THE gaming platform (instead of their Xbox consoles), they might want to do things right and make games almost or just as easy to install, patch and play as on a console. Power users like you and me don’t mind hitting ‘Setup.exe’ and tweaking things like anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and graphics card clock speeds, but the ‘average Joe’ doesn’t want to, or even knows how to. Easy of use! Microsoft’s already done it on Windows Phone, let’s hope they do the same for Windows 8.

And with all that being said, it’ll be great if HP starts gearing up now and getting some high-end gaming machines out there. Some folks would like to see the Blackbird 002 back, some would like to stuff a Z800 Workstation with triple SLI gaming graphics and that AMD announcement from last night is just *hint hint*!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 leak says it’s a sequel!

Find Makarov did NOT result in the revelation of Modern Warfare 3 but now the REAL deal has been exposed and leaked by gaming website, Kotaku!

Remember when we highly let down less than three months ago when the “Find Makarov” teaser that hit the web turned out to be nothing more than someone’s backyard project on making a home video independently-produced movie version of the first Modern Warfare in the Call of Duty series? Yeah, I was too. But then I went on to provide my personal guess on what Modern Warfare 3 would bring: that it would be a sequel and bring in some stuff that will make multiplayer more exciting… and bam, just this morning, Kotaku has managed to get their hands on some leaked images and info of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. And turns out I was right!

Modern Warfare 3 IS going to be a sequel! Sorry, prequel and ‘Ghost’ fans, your dream ain’t happening (I would think a prequel on the character ‘Ghost’ from Modern Warfare 2 would have been quite boring and uninteresting anyway). As with the previous Call of Duty titles, the imminent announcement (probably at E3 2011 next month) and release (in November this year) of Modern Warfare 3 has been hyped up quite a bit with a storyline that takes you all around the world, from India to New York to various places around Europe.

But hype isn’t good enough when the previous title released in 2009, Modern Warfare 2 (read our review of Modern Warfare 2 here), had an extremely short 4 hour single player campaign and severely underwhelming multiplayer mode in terms of balance and support for PC gamers (lack of dedicated servers, no character ‘leaning’, no console menu, mods or proper gameroom administration controls that are a PC platform staple, are among the massive, disappointing regressions of Modern Warfare 2 from the original Modern Warfare). Here’s to hoping that Modern Warfare 3 will restore the features and functions in multiplayer that made Modern Warfare 1 so popular back in the day in 2007… and that with these new locations set around the globe, will have a story line that’s more than 4 hours (a solid 7 to 8 hours would be more like it).

I was also somewhat right about Modern Warfare 3 sporting new multiplayer features, but so far from the news, nothing revolutionary at all has been revealed (or looks to be added). Rather, Modern Warfare 3′s developers appear to have chosen to pull a leaf out of Treyarch’s book (Treyarch made 2008′s Call of Duty: World at War and 2010′s Call of Duty: Black Ops) by introducing a ‘survival mode’ of sorts, whereby you and your teammates hold back hordes of enemies for as long as possible. That wasn’t exactly Treyarch’s original idea either… it appears from the recent introduction of their new map pack for Black Ops that the folks at Activision (or their developers, at least) have been ‘highly inspired’ (to put it in a nice way) by multiplayer features that were popularized by Valve’s Left4Dead series.

It is currently unknown if Modern Warfare 3 will sport a new gaming engine, but it looks like they’re trying to milk as much as possible out of that IW Engine 4.0 (used on Modern Warfare 2) and leaked graphics of the game seem to support that, since the image ‘style’ is similar to that of previous games. Will we see DirectX 11 and PhysX support and more realistic environments in the final game when it comes out this fall 2011? We will just have to see, but judging from history, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that at all!

Let’s hope Activision doesn’t forget gamers on the PC platform and deprive them on features like they did the last two times, while making what is dubbed by the media and public as ’2011′s biggest game’, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3!

Call of Duty map pack: Call of the Dead, inspired by L4D?!

Call of Duty Black Ops new map pack

I was just reading through emails the other day and I saw something that caught my eye “Call of the Dead”. I was excited for a split second, thinking either Treyarch or somebody at Activision had finally decided they would come up with a zombie game of their own, a little late to the ‘hey zombie games are fun’ trend revived by Valve’s Left4Dead but not too shabby considering the other horror themed titles coming out this year; Silent Hill: Downpour and possibly the next Resident Evil. But so much for getting all excited about that… turns out Call of the Dead is nothing more than a DLC/map pack for Treyarch’s 2010 Call of Duty: Black Ops.

This new map pack taps on the ‘zombie survival mode’ in the multiplayer section of COD: Black Ops, which is nothing too exciting. But am I the only one who thinks someone making this map pack was a little too over-inspired by Valve’s Left4Dead? The characters say it all: Robert Englund bears an uncanny resemblance to Bill, Michael Rooker looks like he was inspired by Francis (complete with the leather jacket), Sarah Michelle Gellar is the mandatory ‘we must have a female character somewhere’ like Zoey, except with tighter and less clothes and well Danny Trejo, he doesn’t look like anybody from Left4Dead so I guess that’s kinda original.

Well, in my opinion, what Activision needs isn’t a map pack for a ‘last year title’ game but better support for the PC platform! Let’s hope for a better Call of Duty (I can see gamers going “oh gosh not ANOTHER Call of Duty” already) this November! And just a heads up, Activision, since you already have the thought of a ‘people vs zombies’ map pack in mind, how about making a full-blown zombie horror game instead? I’d love to see a competitor to the ever-replayable and awesome Left4Dead series… either that or I’ll wait till Valve comes out with Left4Dead 3 in something like 2014!

Video: Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed on HP EliteBook

It’s Thursday evening (and already Friday morning for some), and that can only mean one thing – the weekends are almost here, yet again. And what a better way to unwind than with a little Shift 2: Unleashed. This time I decided to do a little video of Need For Speed’s second game in their “Shift” racing-sim family… and what’s better than racing a black Lamborghini around a race track at over 200 MPH? Well, how about the sight of said racing Lamborghini in action on a stunning DreamColor display! Special credit to the EliteBook 8740w for making a cameo here =) . And once again, be sure to check out the video on YouTube in Full HD!

I ran Shift 2 at native 1920 x 1200 and mostly high graphics settings. And yes, I kinda suck at driving here since I was trying to prevent the camera from falling off the side of the couch. But the multiple key-mashing there is not a mistake, it’s to pump the brakes when doing corners on the race track!

Crysis 2 chase scene video posted; review to come

I’ve just posted a video that I made earlier this week of one of my favorite parts from the newly released Crysis 2: the freeway chase scene. My EliteBook has been cranking away hard at two big game titles all week long: Crysis 2 and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. So far, I’m loving both, though I am highly annoyed that this third iteration of Assassin’s Creed still has yet to take advantage of 16:10 display ratios (yup, those black bars at the top and bottom that letterbox the screen are still present!). I’ve had the chance to playtest Crysis 2 extensively for a while now, and I expect a full write-up and in-depth review of the game to be online tomorrow. Stay tuned!