Saturday, 19 July 2014
Here we can provide you the top pc games for 2014
Action games
1/
Tom Clancy’s The Division
A disease spread on Black Friday decimates the US in five days. As part of the Division, you are tasked with saving what remains. Go up against both AI and other players in Ubisoft’s hugely ambitious third-person shooter MMO. Expect meticulously designed environments courtesy of the promising new Snowdrop engine; expect ludicrous attention to detail (car windshields finally shatter like they should); just don’t expect it to come out any time soon. The Division will be done when it’s done, as Ubisoft’s recently delayed Rainbow Six: Patriots demonstrates.
2/
Watch Dogs
Though in recent years, Ubisoft has been happy to milk the Assassin’s Creed licence until its ruddy teats squeaked, let us not forget that the space-wizards-thru-history mega-franchise was born of huge creative risk: a new IP that cost so much develop that, rumour has it, sales didn’t cover the cost of development until its sequels were on shelves. Now, the same gigantic studio, Ubisoft Montreal, has unveiled Watch Dogs - a game with no smaller a scope than Assassin’s Creed, combining the complex sedition of information warfare with brutish third-person action and, it is suspected, with some sort of clever multiplayer/singleplayer crossover. It’s not only a showcase for the kind of polygon-crunching power the cutting edge PC can generate (finally loosed from the shackles of last-gen cross platform releases) but it also establishes a fiction that Ubisoft hopes will see it through the next decade.
3/
Grand Theft Auto 5
There’s been no confirmation of Rockstar’s next blockbuster for PC, but it would be a world gone topsy-turvy if Grand Theft Auto 5 was marooned on consoles for ever. This isn’t Red Dead Redemption, a game developed by a studio with around three PC credits to its name – this is GTA, a series whose every main instalment has appeared on PC. And it’s developed by Rockstar North, a team that (even including its legacy as DMA Design) has brought all bar seven of its games to PC. And where are the internet petitions to port Walker over from the Amiga, I might ask?
One of the biggest releases of 2013, GTA 5 sees the player take on the role of three different characters trying to make a crust amid the tinseltown glamour and sunbaked squalor of Los Santos. And it’s an ill-gotten crust at that, given the series’ heritage of exuberant criminality: heists, hits and high-speed chases are the order of the day, interspersed with all the leisure activities a high-rolling hoodlum might desire. The game’s online component, GTA Online, lets you do all that but...online, expanding Red Dead Redemption’s brilliant multiplayer to envelop the entirety of Los Santos.
4/
Mirror’s Edge 2
Mirror’s Edge 2 will be an open-world action adventure according to EA Labels president Frank Gibeau, who apparently used the term in the publisher’s E3 analyst call last June. It’ll be a prequel, too, telling the origin story of tattooed heroine Faith, pre-tattoo. The extent of the sandbox is currently unknown - all we’ve seen of the game a short trailer featuring a pair of gloved hands and lots of punching. But the change of direction has the chance to make a cult classic look like a practice run. Not least because Mirror’s Edge 2 runs on Frostbite 2, Battlefield 4’s engine. It particularly excels at physics, so you’ll get your money’s worth in shattering glass and billowing fabric.
"[Producer Sara Jansson] pitched an idea that frankly could only be built on gen four. It’s a stunning concept, and when she came to us we knew we had it. And yes, we've been testing ideas and we've been prototyping stuff, and I'm glad that we waited to get the right idea,” says Patrick Söderlund, executive vice president of the EA Games Label. “I was frankly blown away,” he says.
5/
Mad Max
An open world Mad Max game from the developers of Just Cause? You don't need to be Bolo Santosi to see the value in that. We've barely seen any of it so far, but Mad Max seems to fuse the the go anywhere, grapple-hook anything attitude of the Just Cause series with brutal weaponry, ammo scarcity, added car customisation and a significantly browner colour palette.
6/
Elite: Dangerous
David Braben is finally to make the Elite sequel everyone has been patiently waiting for since Frontier: First Encounters came along in 1995 and didn't work properly. With crowdfunded millions and possibly more from investors, this could be the starbound successor people have longed for. In the months since its rather sparse announcement, Braben and co. have released some promising videos and screenshotsthat indicate they’re on the right track. Between this and Star Citizen, it seems we may be heading for a new golden age of space sims.
ADVENTURE games
1/
Broken Age
Here it is: the monster that started it all. Without the astounding success of Double Fine Adventure's (now Broken Age's) nostalgia-baiting Kickstarter project, we wouldn't be seeing this current deluge of resurrected point-and-click franchises. Broken Age itself comes from names indelibly associated with the LucasArts point-and-click classics of yore - and this heritage was alone was enough for people to throw nearly $3.5 million at the company before a concept was even outlined. Still, one has since taken shape: some sort of girl-meets-boy yarn, stretched across interweaving sci-fi and fantasy realities.
2/
The Walking Dead: Season Two
The first series redefined how Telltale approach their licensed adventures. With the second, they're upping the ante: bringing more tales from the dark heart of post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden America, this time from the perspective of the small but capable Clementine. After a first season spent teaching, protecting and caring for Clem, the creators have removed the middleman, putting the player directly in control of her fight for survival. Expect an affecting mix of heart and horror along the way.
3/
The Wolf Among Us
The Wolf Among Us is an episodic series of adventure games based on the universe depicted in Vertigo’s Fables comic book series. Fairytale characters carve out a hard life Manhattan, camouflaged by magical human personas called ‘glamours’. You play as the current sheriff of Fabletown, Big Bad Wolf, a man feared and respected for the dark old days he spent blowing down houses and trying to eat Little Red Riding Hood. There’s a mysterious and terrifying murder, of course, and soon enough you’re investigating your friends, and digging through age-old fairytale relationships. It’s rendered beautifully in a stark noir style, and got off to a thrilling start with episode one in October.
4/
Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse – Episode 2
Revolution's Kickstarter-funded adventure aims to make up for the mostly dire third and fourth games, which injected nonsense block puzzles and stealth elements into the celebrated mystery-'em-ups. By all accounts, it seems to have done a pretty good job, though of course we won't know the full extent until the game's globe-hopping story is concluded this January. Like most good things, The Serpent's Curse begins with a spot of pizza and light murder, before George and Nico – surely one of the best couples in gaming – reunite to investigate another ancient conspiracy.
5/
Dreamfall Chapters
Much-loved adventure series The Longest Journey is to have at least one more chapter, coming from series creator Ragnar Tornquist and his new studio at Red Thread Games. Zoe Castillo, protagonist of Dreamfall, returns to the twin worlds of Stark (futuristic) and Arcadia (medieval fantasy) to, among other things, stop the evil Azardi empire from harvesting dreams. Mmm, dreams. The Longest Journey star April Ryan will appear in some form too, along with rogue Azardi soldier Kian Alvane. We know little more about it than that, but depending on your point of view, expect unique/tedious puzzles and philosophical/soporific dialogue from strong/Buffy women in their pyjamas/underwear.
strategy games
1/
Galactic Civilizations 3
One of the greatest 4X games of all time finally gets a follow-up, and this one comes with a 64-bit OS requirement. Hopefully that extra memory will go towards enhancing GalCiv 2’s extraordinary and slightly scary AI, which operated on a complexity such that you could write books about it, as former PC Gamer writer Tom Francis discovered when he wrote an entire goddamn book about it. Even if Stardock simply bring some extra eye-candy to the complex galactic politics of the second game, that’s reason enough to build some new spacecraft take over the universe again.
2/
Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void
Do you remember the past? When Blizzard announced they were splitting Starcraft 2 into three games and the internet went ballistic, claiming they were 'gouging' gamers and we should all put off buying SC2 to spite those money-hungry beggars? Then Starcraft 2 came out, was rather good, and all was forgotten. The second and last of the announced expansions, Legacy of the Void, focuses on the Protoss for its single-player campaign, it features Zeratul as its protagonist, and it will of course include additional units - and that's about all that’s known at this point in time. While the story and cinematic sequences are apparently finished, Blizzard have said that the campaign needs more work, so who knows when this belated expansion pack will finally arrive?
3/
Planetary Annihilation
A spectacular proof-of-concept trailer secured this RTS a massive Kickstarter windfall, now all Uber Entertainment want to do is make it. The band is made up of some former Supreme Commander developers, and you can see that powerfully in the art style and the concept, which has giant commander robots building robot armies with nano-bots. In Supreme Commander you couldn’t colonise a planet, build a huge cannon and then shoot another planet, however, or attach rocket thrusters to a moon and crash it into the enemy. It’s that ridiculous but brilliant dream that has motivated PA’s thousands of backers. Early builds were released to backers in 2013, and development continues in earnes
4/
Heroes of the Storm
With Dota 2, Valve successfully released a sequel to a mod of Blizzard’s Warcraft, and have since been treading an interesting legal line with its hero design ever since. Both companies have successfully avoided being drawn into a disastrous copyright showdown, and at Blizzcon in 2013, Blizzard finally revealed the revamped vision for their long-awaited lane pusher. Unsurprisingly, it seems very keen to distinguish itself from its rivals. Heroes of the Storm places emphasis on speed and accessibility. Staple DotA technique, last-hitting, is gone, and there will be multiple map layouts with varying objectives. The cast is pulled from all corners of Blizzard’s catalogue, which means you get to be Jim Raynor and shoot Diablo in the face.
5/
Prison Architect
When you think about it, it's strange that there haven't been many prison management games up until now. It's like a hotel sim, except every so often one of your guests draws a shiv and starts a fight in the showers. In Prison Architect you have to account for violent inmates, stop the smuggling of illicit materials and, perhaps, rehabilitate and release those that have behaved well, all by sketching out buildings, placing facilities and managing your guards. Prison Architect is now in early access, and has easily some of the most entertaining patch notes of all time. “Prisoners who were on the toilet when they got released would stay on the toilet forever. This is now fixed.” Dark
