Saturday, July 29, 2006

urgo2 daily PC game talk

When's the last time you hunkered down and bought a new PC? For me it's been a while, and the forthcoming release of the Windows Vista operating system makes me feel like that's going to be the last straw before I bite the bullet. Somehow the thought of upgrading the OS on my current system seems scarier than just getting a new machine outright.
Vista seems like it'll be an interesting update to XP if nothing else. In our ongoing series of features exploring what Vista's going to mean to you as a game player, we've taken a look at some of the free games that will be bundled with the new OS, and compared them with their counterparts on XP where applicable. The new addition I'm most excited about is none other than chess, or Chess Titans to be specific. Unfortunately the game won't be bundled with the basic version of Vista for whatever reason, though. Somehow I doubt a chess game will be the tipping point for people looking to pay up for a more-expensive version of Vista, but who knows?
The summer doldrums mean PC gaming news and reviews have been relatively slow lately, but we've still got some choice bits for you to consider. For instance, check out our recent Q&A with a representative of the team working on Star Trek: Legacy, a tactical combat game that's going to tie together all of the different Star Trek TV series and their signature ships. I'm sure a lot of us have been feeling a little empty inside what with no Star Trek series currently on the air, so a game like Legacy could really fill that void. I still have fond memories of Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force, which is the last great Star Trek game that stands out in my memory (Bridge Commander was cool, too), so I'm all set for another.
In other news, you may have heard Blizzard's latest announcement about the forthcoming World of Warcraft expansion: Basically it's going to allow character classes that were previously restricted to one faction or the other (alliance and horde) to now be accessible to the other faction's new race. That means your new blood elf character (the new horde race) may choose to be a paladin, a class that only alliance characters can play at present. I'm the Blizzard guys thought this through from top to bottom before announcing it, though I have to wonder whether it'll make for undue numbers of blood elf paladins and draenai shamans running around. Or maybe some of the novelty will wear off. At any rate, design changes to World of Warcraft affect so many millions of players that it almost feels like real-world politics, reading about stuff like this.

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