pc-gamer posts

For once, today was actually a bit slow on the news side. We've been getting used to tons of stuff being announced every day.

• Don't forget that the first trailer for the live action web series Dragon Age Redemption will be shown on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon talk show later tonight at 12:35 am Eastern time.
• Steam users can finally pre-order Bulletstorm before its release on February 22.
• PC Gamer has given its picks for the 100 best PC games of all time.
• Game Informer chats with rapper Ice-T about his gaming habits.
• EVE Online has just updated with its latest patch for the space-based MMO.
• City Interactive announced that Sniper: Ghost Warrior has now sold over a million copies.

The non-profit group the PC Gaming Alliance has now appointed a new person to head the organization. Today the PCGA revealed that Matt Ployhar has been appointed as its new President. Ployhar's day job is at at Intel where he serves as a strategic planner for the company's Software and Solutions Group. In a message on the organization's web site (in PDF format) Ployhar states that he is "very committed and passionate about growing the relationships necessary within our industry and community leaders to ensure the continued momentum and success of PC Gaming worldwide."

Ployhar succeeds Randy Stude who has served as the PCGA's President since the organization was formed back in 2008. Today's announcement states that Stude will still be an "active member and contributor" to the PCGA.

Last month, developer Cryptic Studios co-founder Jack Emmert was quoted as saying, "We've got plenty of other games under wraps." Now the new print issue of PC Gamer magazine may have revealed a little more about one of those unannounced games.

The new December 2010 dated issue (the one with the Guild Wars 2 cover story) reports via The Spy rumor column that Cryptic maybe working on a dinosaur-themed MMO game.That's pretty much all the info the column had to say on the project although if true it sounds like a game that's very different from Cryptic's previous titles. Cryptic is currently working on the non-MMO game Neverwinter for release in late 2011.

It's been a little bit of a slow news day. Will things pick up tomorrow or will we have to start reporting news about Lindsay Lohan? Stay tuned:

• NyXQuest: Kindred Spirits is now available on Steam along with a demo for the platformer.
• Steam also has some puzzle games on sale including Everyday Genius: SquareLogic for just $2.50 and Turba for $4.99.
• Steam also has Rig N Roll on sale this week for $12.50.
• The free-to-play MMO King of Kings 3 is now officially live.
• PC Gamer's next print magazine cover story is on Guild Wars 2.

Even though the Labor Day holiday is over everyone still seems to be recovering from PAX Prime 2010. And we have the Tokyo Game Show coming up next week which, while its mostly about console games, could yield a few game announcements as well.

• The historical RTS game Theatre of War 2: Korea from 1C Company is now titled Theatre of War 3: Korea. We don't know why.
• A new Garry's Mod update is now available via Steam.
• Speaking of which, you can check out what Garry of Garry's Mod thinks about Mafia II.
• And speaking of which you can now purchase the original Mafia from Steam for $9.99.
• You can also get the acclaimed indie game VVVVVV from Steam for both PC and Mac with a 10 percent discount to $4.49.
• Want to play older Direct Draw games like the old Wing Commander titles in Windows 7? This man has a solution.
• Could South Korea ban access to all games that don't get a rating from the government? Maybe.
• Check out this podcast recording of the PAX Prime 2010 panel The Five Wonders of PC Gaming.

The US only has one print magazine dedicated to PC gaming; that's PC Gamer. In the UK there were two but now there is only one and ironically it's also PC Gamer. As we reported earlier this summer PC Zone magazine has now come to its end due to a decision by its owner Future Publishing. It's 225th and now final issue was released to UK newsstands last week and it should also pop up in select US outlets.

The final issue has a 12 page retrospective of the mag that first started back in 1993. It also contains a ton of farewell messages from major PC game developers like Irrational's Ken Levine, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, BioWare's Greg Zeschuk, former Infinity Ward (and now Respawn's) Vince Zampella and Gearbox's Randy Pitchford. Epic Games' president Mike Capps states, "For years, PC Zone was literally the only games magazine I read." That pretty much how we feel, too.

Earlier today we reported that PC Gamer's web site had advised gamers not to purchase Stardock's just released turn-based strategy game Elemental: War of Magic due to a large amount of issues in the boxed retail version of the game. Big Download contacted Stardock CEO Brad Wardell for his response to PC Gamer's comments on the game.

In regard to the game itself needing a "day 0" patch to deal with a number of issues, Wardell tells us via email, "Elemental's release day was yesterday. August 24th. This has been known by the press for months. Virtually all games today, when released have the player update to the "day 0" version. And any journalist knows this. Unfortunately, some of the retailers broke the street date. We're a small company, we don't have the clout at retail to keep retailers from breaking street dates sometimes. So we were left with either having our beta group and pre-order customers get stuck waiting while others just went to the store or bought it OR release what was available, the gold version."

Wardell added, "Admittedly, that gold version was not as solid as we had hoped. But the day 0 version, the version of the game that was released on the official release day, is solid. It's a good game. It's easily the finest game I've ever worked on (and I designed GalCiv)."

Check after the jump for Wardell's response to what he called an "out of context" quote on Elemental's forums that PC Gamer highlighted in its article on the game

Update: Wardell has now posted up a formal response to PC Gamer's article on the Elemental web site.

While we have yet to actually play Elemental: War of Magic here at Big Download we knew that Stardock's turn-based strategy game would get a "day 0" patch that would fix a number of issues with the title that were discovered after the game went gold. However it looks like some gamers are still having issues with the game. In fact PC Gamer's web site is now recommending that PC gamers "stay away from the game for now."

While PC Gamer does feel that "Stardock will fix Elemental" it adds that in its opinion "putting junk like this in a box and charging money for it is not okay, however rapidly you try and patch it afterwards." Meanwhile, as spotted on Rock Paper Shotgun, Stardock's press release from August 2008 announcing its much hyped "Gamer's Bill of Rights" has been removed from Stardock's web site. We have emailed Stardock CEO Brad Wardell to get some comments on both Elemental's launch and on the status of the Gamer's Bill of Rights.

Update: As pointed out by a comment on our site, the Gamer's Bill of Rights has its own web site that's still live.

It wasn't too long ago that there were a number of print magazines that were specifically made for PC gamers. Computer Gaming World (later to morph into Games For Windows Magazine) Computer Games Magazine (previously known as Strategy Plus) and PC Accelerator are just some of the PC gaming print mags that have come and gone. The only PC gaming specific magazine still standing in the US is Future US's PC Gamer.

Now Amazon.com is having a sale of all of Future's US gaming magazines, including PC Gamer. For a limited time you can get a one year subscription to the magazine (which comes with a demo DVD) for just $5. If you already have a subscription to the magazine you can extend it by another year for $5 as well. That's about half the cost of one issue of the print mag. It's not totally free but for $5 it's a lot of good reading material for very little money.

It's always interesting to see how game journalists picks for the good PC games compare with the regular gamers. This past week the UK edition of PC Gamer magazine revealed both the readers and their own editorial picks for the 100 best PC games of all time.

The team at the magazine picked Ion Storm's classic sci-fi shooter-RPG Deus Ex as the best PC game ever made, followed by a trio of Valve-developed games (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life) in the number two, three and four spots. The poll for readers gave the number one spot to Half-Life 2, followed by Fallout 3, EVE Online and Deus Ex. There were definately some fan-run efforts to put certain games on the readers poll list (Wurm Online in the number 20 spot? We don't think so) but overall its a solid look at the best PC games have to offer.