Battleangel | Personal

It’s starting to become dull, pointing out the burning wreck that is the PC gaming scene, but it is also slightly cathartic … and besides I have nothing else to do. So here it goes.

Street Fighter IV, currently the highest scoring game by metascore, should hardly impress anyone. Wish it had been more like the stuff they show in the intro video instead of a visit to the toy store. Stiff, clunky 2D fighting like it’s 1990 but with added useless 3D gloss that brings any modern PC to its knees. Shows you just how redundant fighting games have become since the dawn of 1st and 3rd person 3D shooters. Compared to a fighting game that is actually fun and wont make you fall asleep, like say Devil May Cry 4, this is just bogus. Now, One Must Fall 2097 or Metal Masters, those were real fighting games (in their day).

Another pointless console conversion that I had the misfortune to download was Fuel. Piece of shit racing game with tons of more style than substance. Bring back Carmageddon 1 already. Clutch almost did, and I applaud the effort, even if the game falls flat in any comparison beyond that. As for Sims 3 it goes without saying this is the biggest pile of manure this side of Myspace. Didn’t even have to bother downloading that one. If I wanted a simulated social situation I’d get friends.

And then we have the tons of "retro" games, like Braid, Plants vs. Zombies, Trine etc that have been concocted for digital distribution. Zeno Clash, despite its hideous size, ought to be in this category as well. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but I didn’t find any of these games interesting. Particularly not Zeno Clash and Braid, which were both in my opinion totally retarded. If this is the new face that will save PC gaming (and in some cases work on underpowered netbooks) we can just as well quite before we embarrass ourselves.

The only game that impressed my, despite its many faults, was Mount & Blade. It has two parts that are both equally captivating. There is the strategy side and then there is the 3rd person hack and slash combat part. Reminds me a bit of combat in the classic Die by the Sword. Except you can’t hack body parts off. Wow, I wish that snoozer Empire Total War had a way to resolve battles in 3D hack and slash mode.

Complete and utter fail! Wow, I mean, now we’re getting Direct X 11 with Windows 7, but by the time that has been deployed on both the software and hardware side we’ll all be playing 3D Tetris or something … downloaded from Steam. On our Netbooks. If we’ve not regressed to having the Iphone as the main gaming platform by then. Dark visions of the future indeed.