25 November 2008

PC gaming still has a thing to say

First, Bethesda’s announcement of a free “Garden of Eden Creation Kit” (which I know is a clever name from reading about the history of past Fallout games) that will let owners of the PC version of Fallout 3 “[build] landscapes, towns, and locations [along with] writing dialogue, creating characters, weapons, creatures, and more.” Not that the concept is new (I needn’t tell you that the modding community is pretty strong… and wasn’t there something similar for Oblivion already?), but it’s enough to make some gamers regret buying the console version (in which case, they should probably have known better from the start).

gametrailers.com

Second, a demonstration video of GTA IV PC’s video editor, which seems quite full-featured and streamlined (the only drawback being that I don’t think you can record more than 30 or 40 seconds of footage at a time — from everything I read, you can’t just say “start recording now,” but only save a buffer to disk, which is more appropriate for FPS post-game debriefing than a machinima creation engine).

There are going to be a lot of “home movies” taking place in Liberty City next year. And I’m wishing so very hard right now I had a PC. A good one. (Although I’ve been disappointed by the few editor-made videos Rockstar released last week; the graphics don’t seem any better than the console at all.)