PC gaming

Another E3 has come and gone, leaving gamers and journalists equally dizzy with anticipation. We saw dozens upon dozens of titles at the big show but only a few can be called "best of."

We've wracked our brains to bring you the 20 titles we were most excited about in an easy-to-use slideshow. Not sure you agree with us? Make sure to sound off in the comments section below or click on over to see if the title you're most excited about landed in our short runners-up list.

Even though these titles missed our top 20, there's still plenty to look forward to from:… Read more

Last week, Electronic Arts announced its gaming service. Origin on the PC feels familiar, offering a friends list and a digital storefront for EA games, making it essentially a single-publisher competitor to Valve Software's Steam service.

On the mobile front, Origin's launch is murkier. EA launched no standalone mobile Origin app, instead integrating into only its iPhone version of Scrabble. We spoke with Electronic Arts' General Manager and Senior Vice President Chip Lange, who provided us with some insight into EA's strategy for Origin on mobile devices and consoles, and how Origin is different than similar efforts from other publishers.

Q: What can you tell us about EA's plans for Origin on the various mobile devices?

A: EA has always been a platform-agnostic company with the customer at the center. And when you think about the opportunity of creating a platform-agnostic user ID and gaming network [like Origin], those types of opportunities really don't come into play unless you have a couple of things in place.

One is the content deployed across different platforms. Then you need a back end capable of capturing, containing, and utilizing your data across those different platforms. Being able to connect those PC gameplay experiences to a similar, though not identical, game on a mobile device really opens up a number of creative opportunities for us, whether it be for a game like Scrabble or a game like Battlefield or anywhere in between.

It's easy to say that we're creating a store, and that's Origin's focus on the PC right now. On the mobile side it's different. Apple already has a great store. What we're looking to do is get the social component of mobile side activated more quickly and more easily so customers starting can start enjoying it today.… Read more

LOS ANGELES--Another year, another show floor filled with bright lights, thunderous music, and scantily dressed women showing off big-budget studio games. Sometimes it feels like E3 never changes.

Yet, I've been to roughly 10 E3s in my life dating back to the Sega Dreamcast debut, and in my first on-the-show visit in a few years, the landscape has subtly and definitely altered from years past.

So here are my final observations about this year's show.

Everyone wants to be accessible. The … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Look around the halls of E3 2011, and you might notice something strangely similar about many of the most-hyped games on display. There's Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, and Mass Effect 3. BioShock Infinite is the third game in that series, and Skyrim is the third modern/console version of an Elder Scrolls game (technically, it's the fifth game in the series, as there were a couple of prior PC games back in the '90s). We've also spotted Saints Row: the Third, Serious Sam 3, and Ninja Gaiden 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (the third game in that series), and there are probably a few others I've missed.

This collection of third-timers is partially a coincidence, and partly indicative of the industry's addiction to sequels. With production and advertising budgets at or near what Hollywood movie studios have been spending for years, there's a natural, and very understandable, attraction to finding a successful formula and sticking with it.

A trilogy is also a familiar construct from the larger media world that consumers are comfortable with, and the format is useful for putting together a compelling story arc over the course of three films or novels. But while most movies quit after three outings, there's no doubt you'll be seeing a fourth chapter in many of the game franchises above within a year or two. … Read more

For a trade show all about the latest and greatest in interactive entertainment, it's somewhat shocking that many of the most popular video games being played right now are either underrepresented, or not represented at all. We are, of course, speaking about the social and casual games that have audiences larger than almost any traditional console game, and what's more, have managed to tap into the recurring revenue stream of microtransactions that seems to elude so many others.

This is no unintentional oversight. Many attendees of E3, the Game Developers Conference, and other industry events say that games such as Farmville and Cityville are not "real games," and that even mentioning them in the same breath as Halo or Gears of War would be to cheapen the entire medium.

At E3, these kinds of games are woefully underrepresented, despite having in many cases tens of millions of players (MAU, or monthly active users, is the standard metric for social games--the most popular game of this genre, Zynga's CityVille, currently has 90 million monthly active users). If you looks around artfully, however, you can still find a few examples. EA's social/casual subsidiary PlayFish, is here, and has scored with games such as Pet Society and Madden NFL Superstars. At E3, a portion of EA's giant floor space was devoted to The Sims Social, a Facebook version of the popular suburban life simulation game. … Read more

LOS ANGELES--One of the most common questions you hear from nongamers as they watch someone playing a game is some variation on, "Hey, can you go over there?" Usually, that refers to being able to open a door in a building, get in a car on the street, or walk down a winding mountain path going off into infinity. For gamers familiar with the visual language of interactive entertainment, it's a silly question, there are simply places you're meant to go, and places you're not. For a casual observer not as familiar with the limitations of virtual game worlds, it seems like a matter of common sense; if there's a shop in the middle of the street, why can't I open the door and walk in? If there's a car next to me, why can't I drive away in it?

For example, the recent game L.A. Noire addresses the issue with a bit of visual shorthand that makes perfect sense to gamers, but is honestly ridiculous if you stop to think about it: only doors with golden doorknobs can be opened. Everything else is shut tight, essentially facades painted on wooden fronts, like a video game version of a Potemkin village.

Few games dare to deal with the demands of creating a truly open sandbox-style world, which surprises me in a way, as the few times it has been done, it has been done to great success and critical acclaim. The best example is Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, the latest of which, Skyrim, is on display at E3 this week. Like its predecessors, Oblivion (2005) and Morrowind (2002), Skyrim takes on the considerable challenge of letting players inhabit a virtual world so complete that nearly every door can be opened and every computer-controlled character spoken with--a level of interaction many times greater than sandbox-lite games such as Grand Theft Auto (or the previously mentioned L.A. Noire). Perhaps the closest cousin is online games such as Second Life, where the basic rules and building blocks are laid out, and it's up to participants to decide how to use them. … Read more

We've seen mouse sensors based on one laser, two lasers, BlueTracks, and Darkfields. What about a mouse with both a laser and an optical sensor, you ask? Enter Razer's newly announced 4G Dual Sensor System.

According to the Razer press release, the 4G Dual Sensor System "lets you determine the cutoff height for tracking to stop when the mouse is lifted from the surface. This is especially important for gamers who pick up their mice to accommodate wide swiping motions." In addition to height detection, Razer also attributes to its sensor design a new 6,400dpi … Read more

LOS ANGELES--John Carmack is known to PC gamers as the lead programmer behind classics such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. His latest project is Rage, a post-apocalyptic action game coming to PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 later this year. An iOS prequel, called Rage HD, was released last year, redefining what the iPad and iPhone were graphically capable of.

I spoke to Carmack during E3, and here's what he had to say about some of the most pressing current issues for game makers, including the state of PC hardware, the growth of mobile, casual, and social games, and … Read more

Unleashing the surround-sound capabilities of your game console adds an extra dimension to your gameplay, and TubeSurround is exhibiting at E3 again this year to show off its halo-style Tube Sound Headphones.

The technology has been around for years, and the company's Web site is still as indecipherable as ever, but the basic concept is that you wear the halo around your head and two earbuds stretch down and into your ears. Six mini speakers are positioned incrementally around your dome to create an immersive sound environment with a combination of bone induction and traditional audio sources.

Even hard-core … Read more