The East Wing Podcast

Originally, these articles were written on GaxOnline.com which is closing its doors. I am reposting them here for your enjoyment. Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment.

Is anyone else tired of hearing terrestrial TV stations like G4 saying PC gaming is dead? This really upsets me for a number of reasons.

First, it assumes that every time some console comes out, I not only have the financial resources to rush out and buy that console, but that I’ll buy every next gen conosle that is out there so I don’t miss out on all the rad games!

Second, it assumes that all the rad games coming out are only on consoles!

F That!

PC Gaming is never going to die and here’s why. Advances in game architecture and technology are always, ALWAYS going to happen on the PC first becuause it is a hell of a lot cheaper to test new designs in the PC market than it is to develop an entirely new console.

Consoles like the PS3, XBOX 360, and the Wii grow stale hardware-wise after a year. There is only so much development into hardware that you can put forth before you have to release something and hope that technology doesn’t advance too far before your system is obsolete once again.

All the real development that eventually makes it to consoles is done in the PC market. PC gamers are at the forefront of the best gaming technology out there. For example, my game rig in its current state is a Pentium Core 2 duo E6750 with 8GB system memory and dual Geforce 7600 GT video cards in SLI mode. And Sony has the balls to say their PS3 is the only system on the planet that can run the games that have been developed for it? That’s only because they are ignoring the PC market. My system can chew and spew anything Drake’s fortune can throw at it.

I ate up Crysis on full res without a hitch. And that game, IMHO is way too short. Maybe the developers figured on massive graphic lag to slow the game down and make it artifically last longer.

Normally I’m not this heated about a subject such as this, but after watching all the E3 press and seeing all the G4 broadcasts, I got really irritated.

The only games that are coming out in the near future that interest me at all are Fallout 3, Spore and Mirror’s Edge and Diablo 3 whever that date is confirmed. Everything else is the same old first person rehash crap. Are there no studios out there willing to risk anything anymore? Telltale Games has some interesting IP but it’s webisodic in nature.

Gone are the creative days of interesting IPs like “Day of the Tentacle” or “Thief 3″. What do I have to look forward to that isn’t the same old FPS or mediocre MMO that won’t last a month on the open market. As of today the only MMO I still pay for is Everquest 2. WoW never grabbed me because I hate the graphics and City of Heroes, while an interesting concept completely failed for me in the final beta. Star Wars Galaxies was great in beta 4 and then they ruined it on release.

KOTOR MMO has so much promise, yet so much up against it. Help me, Bioware, you’re my only hope.

I’m enjoying Mass Effect but I still feel like it’s a bit hollow and thin and clearly aimed at the console/add crowd. Repetetive tasks, much like were found in Assassin’s creed are abundant and they even left the “achievement” system in on the PC. Achievements are completely irrelevant on the PC.

So, if any of you game developers are out there listening or reading this, why don’t you get in touch with the PC gaming community and get a pulse on what is going on. We don’t need second hand ports from consoles. We need interesting, original IPs that challenge us, tell a great story and have great graphics to boot, is that so much to ask for? Hell, I still play Diablo 2 on a regular basis and that game has none of the bells and whistles these modern games do, but at the end of the day, it’s fun and challenging and doesn’t talk to me like i’m a 7 year old.

Is anyone else sick of seeing a video game for practically every movie that comes out these days? Nearly every single one of these games is garbage. It’s primarily the summer blockbusters that piss me off the most. Iron Man was a great movie. For an IP that is relatively unpopular, Marvel succeeded in making it not just another super hero movie.

Iron Man (Tony Stark) has a quality and sass about him that you love and hate at the same time. He’s a complete ego maniac and a jerk and yet it works for him and you love him for that.

How do you translate that into a game? Simple, you don’t. We don’t need some lame game that was 18 months in development and looks like it was built using some off the shelf video game construction kit.

They did this with Transformers last summer. Fun, leave your brain at the door, smash em up movie…but we don’t need a video game that “fills in the cracks” of the story. Not if you’re going to slap some bad control system on top of a terrible physics engine. I don’t need it and neither does anyone else.

Sure, 8 year old kids love these games but that doesn’t make them good. I’ll tell you right now, my kid is never ever going to get any of these games because I can’t sit there listening to the bad dialogue, horrible sound effects and watch atrocious graphics on my HDTV, I just can’t do it.

Here’s another one…Wall-E the game, how about Ratatouille or Pirates of the Caribbean? Why? Why would I want to play these?

The companies that put these games out should be ashamed of themselves. They are killing the young minds of future game developers who are going to grow up thinking these games are ok to make and they aren’t.

I’m thankful for those companies brave enough to create all new IPs and not just stick to one genre either. Bioware, Ubisoft, Bethesda, NCSoft, Blizzard…these companies are all braving new waters with nearly every game they put out and most of them are quality titles.

I plead with game developers to stop making shovelware…think of the children! Do it for them!

It’s time for me to chew and spew another FPS. This time I’ve set my sights and calibrated my equipment on Medal of Honor Airborne for the PC.

I prefer FPS games on the PC because I still think a keyboard and mouse out maneuver a two stick controller any day of the week. That being said, MOHA feels way too much like a console port for it to be really enjoyable.

First of all, the manual is complete garbage and only marginally explains how to play…not that I read them anyway…however the game itself in the “tutorial” doesn’t even explain much. You start off jumping out of a plane…fine. It’s about the Airborne battalions in WWII (yes, another WWII game, I can hear you groaning) and you play PFC Boyd Travers (who comes up with these sucky ass names?).

Your goals are to jump out of planes into enemy territory near the green smoke markers. To land you have to point in the direction you want to move and use the WASD keys to nudge your chute in that direction, then when close to the ground hit the space bar. Fine. No Problem. Wrong.

Half the time, you miss and “botch” your landing which only means you take your gear off 5 seconds slower. In reality you would have a broken leg, be backhanded like a 2 bit whore by your CO and sent packing with a badge of shame on your sleeve. Land outside of that green smoke and expect to become the enemy’s bitch. Enemy fire is incredibly accurate unlike yours (because you have to “unlock” accuracy). Apparently, they didn’t equip soldiers in WWII with everything they needed until they proved their worth. You know, you gotta kill a lot of people before your gun will work better, soldier. We can’t just be giving every soldier adequate weaponry, we have to save it for the 31337 soldiers!

I can only assume this is EA’s attempt at implementing some kind of RPG like experience, a la Call of Duty 4′s multiplayer online matches. The problem is, it doesn’t help the gameplay. Sure once you have all the bells and whistles things smooth out a little but in conjunction with the already sparse instructions on how to play the game, for example: holding space bar makes you hold your breath…I guess I’m supposed to remember this from the last crappy MoH game I played 2 years ago…whatever!

I’ve been 2 feet away from an italian or german soldier and missed with my Thompson. I don’t think so! Add to this the fact that enemy soldiers are somehow clairvoyant when you are sniping and move just as you squeeze the trigger…and they can always see you on every rooftop no matter where you are. I really hate AI like this. Doom 3 had the same problem. Picture this: It’s night, there’s no lights, you are crouched on a roof (because you can’t go prone in the game! duh!) in the shadows, line up your sights just right…and bap bap bap! Enemy bullets are whizzing right by you…then hitting you, and then your snipe misses because you’ve recoiled from being hit. Fuck that!

There’s no night vision here…this isn’t modern warfare, where’s my sniper advantage? Do I have to unlock it by sniping? It’s retarded.

I’m going to regret slugging through this thing but now its become a mission. I have to beat the game. I have to show that AI who’s bitch it is. I really had hoped that EA had gotten this one right, but I think they should just stick to sports and racing games. That’s become their bread and butter and they do it just fine.

The MoH games are officially dead as far as I’m concerned. EA took what worked great in MoH: Allied Assault and killed it in Pacific Assault and has now bludgened and buried the franchise with this latest installment.

There’s 3 games way better than this if you want good WWII FPS’s. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood and Call of Duty 3. Far superior game play and way more interesting storylines.

For the past few weeks I’ve been engrossed in Assassin’s Creed. I primarily play games on the PC and the only console I own is a PS2. So far I have no plans on dropping that mad cash on a next-gen console. It’s hard enough to play rock band with a 1 year old always trying to grab the sticks from you, let alone dedicate time to playing on a console.

Gaming for me takes place now between 8pm and midnight when everyone else in the house is asleep and I can sit in the dark staring at my glowing screen. Assassin’s Creed has been widely held as a great game by most people I talk to. I was excited therefore when the game arrived on the PC and I could finally experience what so many others had before me.

First off, the graphics are really amazing. I love the look of the game with that washed out pale color scheme and the variety of weapons is nice. Right away though I had several complaints. Although the control scheme isn’t bad, it’s not great either. When in a fight with multiple attackers (which happens too frequently IMO), often I wouldn’t be able to counter moves because the combination of mouse/keyboard clicks was confusing. The directions are also really bad (hold button 0 and press shift). Um, where’s button 0 on the mouse? Oh they mean the right mouse button. Look, if you are going to port a game to the PC, at least have the foresight to rewrite the text for the target platform.

The stealth modes are decent, yet slow and one of the most annoying things are the women begging you for money. Everytime I would be running away from one and try to climb a ladder or facade, I’d get a rock thrown at me and fall. WTF? I can dodge swords and fend of 6 people at a time but can’t take a silly rock to the back?

The biggest complaint I have though is the repetition. The story line is interesting enough to want to get to the next part but the tedium of climbing viewpoints to reveal the other objectives is an exercise in boredom. It would be one thing if you only had to do it one per city but 9, 10 times for each section of each city? Please.

At first I was trying to be stealthy and not stir up trouble but now I’ve realized it really doesn’t matter how many guards you kill, there’s always more to be found and there’s no punishment for killing every single one you see. Now I just lay waste to every guard I come across using my stealth wrist blade.

I’m not quite finished, I have one more assasination to go. All in all, it’s an ok game but I wouldn’t say it’s a great game. Too much repetition and not very creative puzzle solving to get to areas you need to finish assassination tasks. Getting there basically involves climbing structures, hopping over rooftops and climbing more structures until you find a way in.

3 stars out of 5.