Christmas Gift Games December 23, 2002 Jakub Wojnarowicz

Hardware

Page:: ( 1 / 5 )

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

What kind of l33t hardware would this gamer want? Well, upon consideration, it was a surprise to me that the piece that impressed me most in the past year offered most of its benefits on the desktop. The 9700 Pro is revolutionary. The All-in-Wonder version is extremely tempting, but I suspect until Doom III comes out, I just won’t feel the need to upgrade. On the other hand, in recent months I’ve felt an acute irritation with desktop performance. Lo and behold, came the new King of the Hill, like a knight in shining armor to rescue me from my multi-tasking woes. If anybody is going to get me a piece of hardware for Christmas, that’s going to be it!

King of the Hill

For the past two years, Intel and AMD have been exchanging top spots quicker than a poker cheat changes cards. With only two exceptions, the lead has changed every month or so. Both involved what has now become a staple of the industry, the paper launch. The first occurred when Intel’s Pentium III line was running out of steam but the Pentium 4 wasn’t ready. Now, we see the opposite scenario, as AMD’s current Athlons are on their last legs while they await the launch of the 64.

The launch of the 3.06GHz P4, in addition to cementing Intel’s performance lead, was also the introduction of the killer desktop performance feature – Hyper-Threading. At a time when hardware has so outpaced games that people are running the latest titles on two-year-old computers, Intel needed a new way to sell chips. Since gaming didn’t need a boost, what about the desktop? Sure, you can run all the Photoshop filters in a fraction of a second, and you no longer have to leave the computer running two straight nights to finish rendering for your animation class. But can you do all that, listen to your MP3s, watch your movies and maybe even play a game? Not unless you had a very expensive Xeon gig going, or an Athlon MP box (which have unfortunately been lagging quite a bit in the clock speed wars.)

Hyper-Threading

With the mainstream adoption of the NT platform in the shape of Windows XP, simultaneous multiprocessing (SMP) on the mass market became feasible. AMD dabbled in it with some success using the Athlon MP, but the extra costs and complexities involved with a multi-chip solution have scared off many potential buyers. By including simultaneous multi-threading on the 3.06 and all future chips by default, Intel is removing all choice in the matter from the buyer’s hands. Since the average mainstream user is completely clueless about computer hardware and would be inclined to buy a 2.0GHz P4 over an Athlon XP 2400 because the ‘megahurts are higher’, we’re siding with Intel on the decision to cram it down their throats. It’s for the best, really.

What does Hyper-Threading mean for the rest of us? More efficient computers. A common knock on the Windows platform since the days of the Amiga has been its horrible multi-tasking ability. While it’s gotten significantly better over the years, multi-tasking really needs multiple processors to work properly. A single processor has been historically extremely inefficient. Though it could do task X in twenty seconds and task Y in 30 seconds, doing them both at the same time, it might take 90 seconds. Hyper-Threading may not be as great as having two processors, but it’s a lot simpler and provides a convenient solution.

Oh, and if you can afford a 3.06GHz chip, there’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be packaged in this yummy Shuttle SS51G. So maybe it’s a little too big to be a stocking stuffer, but not by much!

Honorable mentions

This isn’t so much an honorable mention as a wistful sigh. Athlon MP 2400s were just announced. If they had a faster solution available, I’d be hard-pressed to put the Pentium 4 3.06GHz as my hardware gift of the year. The price of the P4 is ridiculous to the point that a real SMP solution is just as financially feasible. For sheer geek bragging value, it’s hard to beat a SMP setup, though mommy and daddy would probably feel more comfortable with a single-chip solution.

Speaking of geek bragging rights, we have two geek award favorites in the graphics department. The first is the deathly quiet Sapphire 9700 Pro Ultimate. A 9700 Pro card without active cooling? Completely silent, and it looks damn sweet in that show case of yours? Can you beat that?

Maybe the Abit Siluro 4200 OTES can. Going in a completely different direction, it attempts the fanciest active cooling we’ve seen yet on a video card. In a bit of irony, the Siluro and the Sapphire 9700 both use the same basic technology, but with vastly different intentions. Both of them are proof that there’s some honest-to-goodness innovation still left in the industry.



SIDEBAR: Brandon is a machine! Not human. For a little 9500 overclocking article, he tested six video cards, not counting the overclocked 9500! We need a Brandon Appreciation Day - BAD. We’ll play Michael Jackson all day.

Indiana Jones Games

Page:: ( 2 / 5 )

The unexpected

There are a few great indie games that come out of the blue every year. We made some effort in the past few months to cover some of them, to, sadly, disappointing results (‘this reporter, for one, puts the blame squarely on you, the reader!’ –my best impression of Kent Brockman). Still, two we reviewed recently both scored top marks and would serve as excellent gifts.

We’re going to war

Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin is quite possibly the most accurate tactical combat war sim ever. It is definitely the most impressive wargame we’ve had the opportunity to play with in years. CMBB covers the entire eastern front, from Finland to Romania, Berlin to Stalingrad. Every unit, no matter how obscure, somehow founds its way into the game. There are Hungarian assault guns and French-built Romanian tanks. The game even models the Brinell hardness numbers of armor on vehicles, as well as the general quality. Early-war Russian tanks had poor armor, as did late-war German ones. Everything from the mundane (like a shell’s trajectory) to the unexpected (artillery strike delays) finds a place in the game model. If you know a war buff and want to surprise them this year, this is the game to get.

Multiplayer tactics

Shattered Galaxy is one of the most underappreciated titles out there. Although it’s been on the market for over a year, people still resist giving it a chance. Speaking from experience, a big part of the reason is the unfamiliar concept. It took Rory, the reviewer who last covered it, over a week to convince me into trying it. SG sounded so weird, with only 6-12 units per player, and 15 players per side, that something spoke to me and said “nah, this has to suck, they can’t pull it off.” Boy, was I wrong. Some key parts of the game are just well, let’s not mince words - ghetto. The graphics and the missing sound effects are as disappointing as anything we’ve ever encountered. Yet within sixty seconds of stepping on the battlefield, they’re completely forgotten. Like Pontifex or Tetris, this is a game that doesn’t just rise above its technical shortcomings, it makes you forget them completely.




SIDEBAR: Brandon isn’t just a machine, he’s insane. I seriously think he worked all weekend for the ATI Catalyst 3.0 review. Actually, he even admitted so in the news comments.

RTS	Page:: ( 3 / 5 )

WowCraft

Is there such a Blizzard title that fails to sell gabillions of copies through pre-orders alone? Or one that doesn't bring the internet to its knees for the first week of its release, as battle.net gets flooded with a horde of new gamers?

In a word: nope. WarCraft 3, like Diablo II and WarCraft 2 and Diablo, is a must-have game for any self-respecting gamer. Admittedly, after a few months of playing the game I came to the conclusion that I scored it too high. The multiplayer was polished but not as fun as StarCraft. And as we all know, the singleplayer campaign is as much fun as being the grade school kid in a wheelchair who stumbles into the middle of a high school dodgeball match. Briefly, thoughts of leaving WC3 off the list before I remembered that I’d played it day-in, day-out for months online. How many games can claim to have that kind of an effect on anybody?

Of course, WarCraft 3 isn’t necessarily the perfect gift. After all, most people already have it.

Norse vengeance

Age of Mythology is Ensemble’s best game yet. Since it’s not as popular as WarCraft, you’re more likely to fill someone’s need by dropping this bundle of joy under the Christmas tree. Ensemble Studios addressed some major complaints with Age of Kings by releasing this, specifically adding more variety to the civilizations. The Norse are as distinct from the Egyptians as they are from the Greeks. With three major gods per civilization to fine-tune your experience, Age of Mythology offers perhaps the first balanced racial customization on the market. The new Ensemble Online matchmaking service is as easy to use as battle.net and offers more and more easily accessible statistics.

The biggest, though least-noticed improvement over Age of Kings are the graphics. This is the first time we’ve ever seen 3D that looks so detailed and smooth, it could be mistaken for 2D. At the moment the most legitimate challenger to Blizzard’s RTS crown is Ensemble and this is their premier title. Although it lacks that spectacular feeling that we award an editor’s choice for, it is the most solid title on this list.



SIDEBAR: This article was supposed to be short.

RPGs & Action

Page:: ( 4 / 5 )

Winter time

Neverwinter Nights is easily the most ambitious RPG ever. Though its singleplayer campaign disappointed, it was still a worthwhile experience. At the time the game was released, the best had not yet come. BioWare took a huge gamble by focusing their efforts on Neverwinter’s toolkit and community – and it paid off. There are more quality modules out there now than you can shake a stick at. Some, like The Witch’s Wake, are official BioWare releases. Yet the most famous are community-created mods like the odd Penultima or the fully-featured Elegia Eternum.

Neverwinter could very well be the Half-Life of RPGs. If the mods and modules keep being created by the community, the game’s shelf life may very well be measured in years. What Valve’s official Team Fortress Classic mod did for Half-Life, Witch’s Wake may do for Neverwinter.

Of course, the singleplayer is only half the appeal of the game. Neverwinter can provide the ultimate LAN party experience for RPG buffs. The real key is in finding a good DM to run the game, especially if it’s an open module which isn’t completely scripted

Get your motor runnin’

Grand. Theft. Auto. 3.

Does this game need an introduction? Let’s just say if a male relative of yours doesn’t have a PlayStation 2, you should get him this game on PC so he stops having a reason to go out and buy that PS2.



SIDEBAR: Our meta code for articles has the link to the next page called ‘trans’. Brings to mind the glory days of transformers.

FPS	Page:: ( 5 / 5 )

At last we shall reveal ourselves to the Jedi

Jedi Knight 2 was the ultimate singleplayer Star Wars experience. Despite all the trust that Raven Software had built up with me over the years, I feared they might not be able to pull off a Jedi Knight game. Whereas the first Jedi Knight suffered from a primitive graphics engine, there was no such knock on this Quake III-powered beauty.

Never mind that, what has always made a great Jedi Knight game is the gameplay. Force powers are back and better than ever, giving the player ridiculous abilities at his fingertips. The flair with which the powers and lightsaber combat are integrated into the game are truly unreal. Lightsaber duels are the big draw of the game, as Kyle engages in mortal combat with an assortment of dark Jedi.

The expansive levels and intricate puzzles that are a part of JK tradition make a triumphant return. Whether fighting in Cloud City on Bespin or crawling in the ducts of an Imperial base, JK2 never manages to completely immerse the player The game is really the most under-rated titles of the year, failing to make as big a splash as it deserved mostly due to marketing.

The Fields of Mars

Battlefield 1942 had the staff at FiringSquad by the balls from the day the demo hit web servers. Using the game’s inherent strengths, a brilliant marketing campaign put it on front pages everywhere as QuakeCon attendees forgot about Quake when the multiplayer demo was released. Word-of-mouth and press coverage piqued everyone’s imagination.

Although BF1942 didn’t quite live up to the expectations we had based on the demo, and perhaps we were a little burned out on World War 2 games, it, along with the seminal Medal of Honor our two best online shooters of the year. Medal of Honor has a pretty damn sweet singleplayer game too, except for the @#$ing snipers.


SIDEBAR: Happy Holidays, people! We hope you get all these goodies and more!