Gaming computer review

How does the saying go? “One man’s poison is another man’s wine,” isn’t it? Since we’re PC gamers, we don’t go much for wine—unless, you know, it’s carbonated or spelled with an “h.” So, let’s rephrase the expression. How about this: One man’s Doom is another man’s Daikatana. Yeah, that’s better. Cozy up to the bar while we tell you how we really feel about this pastime of ours—the first round’s on us.

Hero

Overrated: Duke Nukem

A good soldier never dies, but somehow this lameass still lingers. The only redeeming quality of this ’roid freak was stealing the good lines from the Evil Dead movies.

Underrated: Roger Wilco D

What ever happened to games with an actual sense of humor? This unassuming space janitor cleaned house in the Space Quest series, and we’d take him over Duke any day.

Game Feature

Overrated: Eye Candy A

People come in here all the time and gush about all the graphical wonders in a game they’re working on. See that smoke billow?!? Notice how the water ripples?!? Did you count the zits on the developer’s face?!? With all this focus on the glory of texture mapping and level of detail, we humbly ask, “When the hell will you guys quit with the damn tech demo and get on with the actual game?”

Underrated: Intelligent A.I.

We play games to avoid the real world (or, to be more specific, the other dumb-ass editors here). Notice the irony, then, when the A.I. of in-game enemies is two steps shy of the short bus. Mugging someone in Deus Ex: Invisible War results in the victim looking around and wondering where the noise is coming from. In the real world, clubbing Darren in the back of the head results in him getting pissed and looking for the person who took his digital camera.

Release Dates

Overrated: Winter

Everybody is so busy racing to get buggy, half-assed games out for the Christmas rush, all the good ones get lost. Case in point: Beyond Good & Evil. We think the only people who bought this game are the developers’ parents—and that’s a crime.

Underrated: Summer

C’mon—ship some titles in the summertime. If KOTOR for PC had shipped in June (like the Xbox version, cough, cough), people would’ve scooped it up.

Mod

Overrated: Counter-Strike B

No disrespect, but isn’t Counter-Strike getting a little long in the tooth? You’ve got a mod on a 6-year-old game, and yet it’s still being used for tournaments around the world. Here’s hoping a major revamp is coming out when Half-Life 2 ships.

Underrated: Desert Combat

Battlefield’s preeminent mod is so good, it actually clowns a bunch of sorry full games that you’d buy at retail prices. The levels are smartly designed, it has a fresh assembly of vehicles and weapons to deal damage with, and most importantly, it was made in this millennium.

Game Company

Overrated: Gearbox

How did these people hypnotize the game industry into giving them more work? After seeing Gearbox excrete 007: NightFire and bungle Halo for PC, we think the company has blackmail pictures of key people with sheep. Don’t race a game out the door if it isn’t ready.

Underrated: Monolith A

Microsoft shouldn’t be the only company in Washington that gets all the attention. Monolith has put together some of the more truly inventive games we’ve seen, including No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2, and Tron 2.0. Hell, we might even care about The Matrix Online game Monolith is developing. It’s gotta be better than the last two movies.

Gaming Controversy

Overrated: Violence

Seriously, we never want to have to write about this again. Ever. It’s old. It’s done. And it was never more than a crock to begin with. No, it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world if game developers exercised some prudence, restraint, and maturity now and then. But blaming society’s ills on videogames is a weak and hypocritical way to avoid facing a more serious problem: lousy parenting.

Underrated: Piracy

You want to know what’s really going to kill this industry? It’s not pressure from politicians or uptight parental groups. It’s the constant, increasing theft and piracy of game code. These folks work hard to make your games, people. Don’t screw ’em over. Pay for your games. If developers don’t make money, they don’t have jobs. If they don’t have jobs, you don’t have games. Then what are we supposed to do? Go outside? Pay attention to our families? Don’t let this nightmare come true.

Annoying Multi-Player Tactic

Overrated: Camping

“CAMPER! y00 sux0rs!” Give it a rest already! Multiplayer games have changed since those straight-up deathmatch days; some specific modes actually involve strategic squatting. And if you know where that damn camper is, just kill him. Stop complaining already, ya noob.

Underrated: Frag Stealing

You’ve whittled an opponent down to his last shred of health. Suddenly, some fool pops out and finishes the kill. Then the punk shoots you in the head. ARGH! More games should have an “assist” score for partial kills. Plus, more hatred should be wrought upon those thieving fraggers.

Gamer Stereotype

Overrated: Basement- Dwelling Loser

Not all gamers live in mommy’s basement, eating Cheetos and reeking of sock sweat. Some of them have enough money from their programming jobs to live in their own geek palaces filled with swords and cloaks.

Underrated: Online Woman Over 40

An interesting bit of new data reveals that women over 40 make up one of the fastest-growing populations of computer gamers. First, it’s Yahoo Backgammon. Next, it’s PopCap’s Zuma or The Sims. These are the gateway drugs to full geekdom. We salute you ladies, brave champions of gaming! Send photos.

CGW Hall of Fame Game

Overrated: Tomb Raider

So maybe in retrospect, it really was just the breasts. Whadd’ya gonna do? They were 3D, they were big…they were breasts. Nuff said.

Underrated: Crusader: No Remorse

Crusader: No Remorse is among the greatest action games ever made, with a then-revolutionary use of isometric perspective and fully destructible environments. This near-forgotten classic is in serious need of a revival.

Genre

Overrated: MMORPGS

The shrill, high-maintenance girlfriend of games, MMOs seem sexy at first, but in the end demand too much of your time, offer few rewards, deal constant setbacks, and are a steady drain on your wallet. We haven’t played one we weren’t ultimately grateful to break up with.

Underrated: Puzzle Games

The reliable booty call of games, a good puzzle game can break up the grinding workday with a quick nooner or keep you up all night long with its simple, uncomplicated delights. Perfect for when you just can’t work up the commitment for a more demanding game.

Story

Overrated: Halo

Master Chief. Cortana the A.I. Space marines. All the pretensions of a grand epic, but in the end, what really happened? You ran around a giant donut weapon. All sorts of bad stuff happened. Chief is tough. Cortana is snappy. Marines get killed. That just about covers it.

Underrated: Anachronox

Anachronox gets far too little credit for its witty space-adventure tale of a wide, mismatched cast that humorously subverts old clich¨¦s. It’s the story of a loser detective, a back-talking robot, and a squat, smelly guy. It was set up to have a sequel…which, unfortunately, is not gonna happen.

Bad Game

Overrated: Daikatana

Whine all you want about the robot frogs, the unimaginative levels and weapons, and an entire generation’s worth of delays—at least it actually ran when it shipped. A terrible game to be sure, but without the antistar cachet of John “Suck It Down” Romero and the towering hubris of Ion Storm, Daikatana is just another eminently forgettable shooter.

Underrated: Trespasser

Was it the Sponge World physics engine that made it suck so very, very hard? The health meter heart tattoo that actually forced you to glance down and check out your character’s heaving bosoms? Was it the insanely awkward extended character arm, the torturous 1-frame-per-lifetime framerates, or the near-constant stacking of those terribly spongy crates? Answer: all of that and then some. In the end, Trespasser is simply the most incompetently slapped together nonpaintball PC game in history, and one that doesn’t get near the infamy it is due.

CGW Star Rating

Overrated: Black & White

We were wowed early by the lifelike creatures and the graphics—but because it was the one time we didn’t finish the game before writing the review, we let the designer’s pedigree and our early impressions lead us into making a huge, five-star mistake. Never again.

Underrated: Baldur’s Gate