PC gaming has seen sort of a renaissance for the past few years with the rise of Steam which not only made a lot of gamers interested in gaming but also pay for their games. Steam has been a really instrumental thing in making PC gaming attractive to a lot of people to such an extent that people are actually leaving console gaming for PC gaming.
Why? Don’t ask that. Ask, why not? Who loves sub-20 fps framerates anyway? While consoles may have some good exclusives, ultimately some people care more about games running at a good visual fidelity and having solid performance.
This year has been good for PC gaming. We saw a lot of MMOs, and quality ones at that, like Planetside 2 and Guild Wars 2. These MMOs provided hours and hours of excellent gameplay and were easily comparable to big budget AAA games.
Let’s talk a bit about the PC exclusives that were released earlier this year–Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2–both these games are quite similar in their approach and design, one has a higher production value while the other provides a lot more content and is less ambitious when you think about the overall budget. They are priced appropriately too, however, Diablo 3 underwent a lot of criticsm from everyone due to its always-online nature even to play the single-player portion.
It was a good game but certainly not comparable to its illustrious predecessors which are still being played today, well, at least Diablo 2. If you want to know more about the problems that plagued Diablo 2’s launch you can read our editorial here, which was quite vitriolic in nature and written by yours truly.
While most third-party games are available on the PC, some of them like Dragon’s Dogma do not make it, and there was a rumor recently that the PC version was on the cards but was proved wrong. However, we have plenty of games like Resident Evil 6 and Borderlands 2 which made a mark on the platform offering great graphics, while the former bombed, the latter made it as one of the most critically and commercially successful games of all time.
There were also indie games that made their mark this year, and we personally loved like Of Orcs and Men, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, Sine Mora, Awesomenauts and much more. There were also games like Dark Souls which finally made to the platform after a long time, and it’s something people were also clamouring for. The port was poor but the PC wizards did their magic on it and made it one of the best ever, with high resolution, framerates and much more.
There were also games like Sleeping Dogs which received a high resolution texture pack on PC and also games like Assassin’s Creed 3 which really shined on the platform. We loved both the games and scored them really highly. Overall it was the year of MMOs and unique games on Steam that not only dazzled gamers but also made them excited as to what’s to come next year on the platform.
In 2013, there will be a lot of games like Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite, which will no doubt look and run the best on PC, and we will also have games that will be exclusive to the platform, which not only includes new MMOs but the ones from Kickstarter as well.
There’s a lot to look forward to on the PC next year, but one thing is for certain, when the next generation consoles do get announced including their specs showcased, the PC will be ready for them with its GTX 680 and quad core CPUs, to handle whatever third-party games the developers have to throw at it. Maybe, the consoles could blow it away, which would make next generation a highly competitive one.
Overall Performance: B+
