From the Land of PC

By Ryan Treit

The Xbox® has always maintained a cordial relationship with the land of PC. After all, the largest publisher of PC software in the world—Microsoft®—created the Xbox. It stands to reason that a sort of PC mentality would be evident in our favorite black box. The reverse seems true as well, as most of my hardcore PC gamer friends own an Xbox, but no other console. Also, developers that have made their living almost exclusively on the PC have seen fit to give some console love to us Xbox addicts.

Ion Storm gave us Deus Ex: INVISIBLE WAR™ and Thief: Deadly Shadows™, Bioware gave us Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, as well as the upcoming Jade Empire™, Obsidian (with Bioware's help) develop the KOTOR sequel Star Wars® Knights of the Old Republic®: The Sith Lords™, and Bethesda gave us perhaps the largest (literally speaking) RPG of all time with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind®.

While developers who work predominantly with the PC have crafted games either specifically for the Xbox or with the PC and Xbox in mind at the same time, the Xbox is also becoming home to ports of high profile PC games. You may wonder why they choose Microsoft's gaming brain child over others, and the reason is simple. It's the easiest console for a PC developer to switch over to (its architecture and dev tools are similar enough to their PC counterparts for a smooth transition), and, frankly, it's the most powerful console on the market, so it can handle some of the more high-end PC offerings. Allow me to illustrate with a few choice PC ports coming to an Xbox near you.

Hell on Mars
To many, John Carmack is to gaming code what Mozart is to music. He's a genius, a savant, a freak of nature that doesn't just understand his field of expertise, but reinvents it. Carmack doesn't just help to evolve 3-D engines, he shatters them and rebuilds them in his image, or so I'm told. A mere look (let alone a play-through) of the recent DOOM 3™ will help you understand just how far he and the folks at id software can push current technology. Luckily for us, they've chosen to grace the Xbox (and the Xbox alone) with their latest masterpiece. For those of you who remember the original DOOM, you should know that DOOM 3 is a re-imagining of that same story and experience. You still play a space marine who lands at a troubled installation on Mars, and you still explore the depths of the facility until you breach the depths of Hell itself. DOOM 3 may be one of the scariest games ever made, as the power of the Xbox and Carmack's vision have joined together to create a stunning amalgam of beauty, tension, fear, and chaos. Just wait 'til this March to find out for yourself.

Half-Life 2
It's a shade on the dangerous side to mention this port for Xbox with one hundred percent certainty; however, the developer of Half-Life 2, Valve, has confirmed in the past that an Xbox version is in the works. Unfortunately for us, the folks at Valve are tight-lipped about all their projects, so much so that just a month before the game shipped for PC, there still wasn't a solid street date. That said, when Gordon Freeman shows up with crowbar in hand on Xbox, we'll be getting the sequel to the greatest design feat in FPS history. Half-Life and Half-Life 2 might be more accurately described as First Person Adventure games, as platforming, shooting, an engaging sci-fi story, driving, NPC interaction, and a host of other elements make it oh-so-much-more than just a standard FPS.

Sid Meier's …
Pirates! Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title. Sid Meier's Pirates!® is the sequel to one of the most beloved computer games (I had it on the Commodore 64) of all time. Fans have been clamoring for a sequel for years, and our friends on the PC were granted their wish this last November. We Xbox folk will have our crack at it soon enough (this May, hopefully), and when we do, we'll be privy to one of the more addictive game experiences this year. Pirates! isn't about following a story from plot point to plot point; it's about opening up the glory days of privateers and swashbucklers on the Caribbean. It's about letting you live the pirate's life as you see fit. You'll sink, burn, and take ships "a prize", you'll engage in Errol Flynn-like sword fights, you'll plunder towns, find lost treasure, upgrade your ships, make governors' daughters' swoon, locate lost family members, and ally yourself with different nations to earn rank and reward. You're end goal is simple. Retire rich and retire with your family reunited. How you do it, when you do it, and what you do before you do it is up to you.

Far Cry: This Time with Instincts
Ubisoft released an FPS by the name of Far Cry for the PC last year. It was critically acclaimed, and for good reason. Not only did it provide a gripping narrative, great control, and as much action as you could want, but it also did something different. It took the FPS out of the bleak and futuristic environments the genre seems to rely on, and it placed it smack dab in the middle of a gorgeous tropical jungle. Sunlight in a FPS! Who knew it could happen? Well, evidently Ubisoft did, and they pulled it off in style. It seems like a subtle change, but picking your way through a lush jungle and fending off enemies from the bushes is a violent and welcome change from the standard gray and dreary environments we're used to. Xbox owners can look forward to an expanded port called Far Cry: Instincts that's set to ship this March.

This year looks like the year of the PC port, and it couldn't come at a more welcome time. We'll finally be able to see what some of our PC gamer friends are talking about without having to dirty ourselves with something so foul as "mouse and keyboard" control. Woot!

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