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As 2009 comes to a close we see the usual rush for Christmas release which floods market with some really nice titles. However I am starting to notice a few subtle changes in gaming world, first of all let me talk about Dragon Age: Origins which is the first game in recent memory that is both multiplatform and was not designed with the "lowest common denominator" approach.
"OK, so what is the lowest common denominator approach?" I telepathically know you're thinking...Well it's simple, when you build 1 game to fit multiple platforms the least capable of all the platform becomes the primary development platform, this means few changes have to be made between each platform resulting in a cheaper overall development, unfortunately it also means that superior platforms like the PC suffer all the constraints of the consoles.
Along come Bioware and develop Dragon Age, a spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate, a game that has its roots deep in PC gaming. They make a smart move and actually put the PC first in the development process, and it shows, the game is absolutely excellent from start to finish, my personal first play through was 67.7 hours! It's such a massive relief to see a studio actually make good use of the PC platform for once and simply port it down to the console where the console restrictions only affect the console itself. A recent poll on the [H]ardocp forums show 40%+ of gamers vote Dragon Age as PC GOTY (Game Of The Year) which is about 4x more than anything else with games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 only getting about 10%
Next on the list has to be Dirt 2, I recently upgraded to a ATI 5970 video card and got Dirt 2 as a free coupon, this was a great addition for me since I really loved the original, especially with a decent force feedback wheel. Dirt 2 was delayed on the PC compared to the console release; the primary reason for this was to add DirectX 11 support. After playing this game in 2560x1600 with 4xAA and 16xAF with all settings set to ultra I'm really blown away, the extra time they took to polish the game for the PC has really proved time well spent, if you want some high resolution screenshots of this game in action check this thread. I think we're reaching that time in a consoles lifespan where the lack of graphical capabilities can no longer be ignored, developers who want to add newer features and nicer effects are willing to actually spend some time on a platform where this is possible, hopefully this will encourage other developers to follow suit.
I also have to put a mention in for the slightly older Need for Speed: Shift, this is franchise that EA is still beating to death and up until the most recent instalment the PC versions have been lacking in the "standards" department, obviously this franchise is another victim of lowest common denominator development. Every new iteration was similar, with the same problems with resolution, widescreen, AA and AF support. Surprisingly EA fixed all of these problems with their latest instalment as if they'd made a checklist and simply gone through and systematically fixed everything. In fact NFS:S gets a perfect score on PCGamingStandards! So kudos to EA.
I know some of you may not care about the consoles intrusion on to PC, but this is an important topic, for example the lack of dedicated servers in CoD:MW2 is a direct consequence of consolization being simply accepted by PC gamers, this is perhaps the most significant sacrifice developers have made to the PC version of a multiplatform game, and we can't stand for this kind of stupidity.
-Princess_Frosty
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