Just wanted to let you guys know, in case you are interested in participating in the Sneak Peek event that starts February 28, I have some keys that I'm handing out over on my blog:

City of Steam Sneak Peek Key Giveaway

"PC gaming is finished" is something that we hear every few years.

It's true that PC gaming does not pull in the same big numbers that the consoles do, but it's still a very large market, and the rise of services like Steam has also made piracy a smaller issue.

Additionally there are whole game genres that just work very poorly on consoles (Think of trying to play Total War games on an Xbox?) which means that even if the mass market sellers like CoD become more console focused, there are still plenty of games that will be developed either exclusively for the PC or with the PC as the premier platform.

Finally it's worth considering that the indie gaming scene has a much easier time putting their games out on the PC, as they don't have to go through all the red tape that is required to get your game out on Xbox or Playstation.

Oh, and as you mention yourself, the whole MMO scene is still very much centered around the PC's.

So in short there is no reason to worry about the survivability of the PC as a gaming machine. It will continue to be a viable platform that presents some unique opportunities that you cannot easily replicate on a console.

While I *did* play the original Jagged Alliance, I never got to far into it, so I think I can almost qualify as a non-Jagged Alliance player.

I actually just finished writing up my feelings about the demo over on my blog:

Impressions of Jagged Alliance: Back in Action Demo

The TL;DR version is basically that I found it incredibly tough going to get into the demo. The tutorial does a poor job of preparing you for the actual demo mission and I found the game incredibly unforgiving and requiring an insane amount of micro management in order to not get brutally murdered by a hail of hot lead every thirty seconds.

I was just wondering if anyone has tried the new Jagged Alliance game "Back in Action" or the demo?

I quite liked the first game way back in the day so I downloaded the demo and gave it a spin earlier today.

Wow, either I've gotten really old, crap at games and completely spoiled by casual friendly games or this is one of the most unforgiving games that's been made in a while.

I wrote up an impressions post over at my blog if you wanna read my full tirade of bile and animosity towards this sadistic digital monster, but I just wanted to hear if I'm the only one that found the game (or the demo at least) to be incredibly hard to get into?

It seems likely that we'll get Warcraft 4 eventually, but Blizzard's RTS team is hard at work on the remaining two installments of Starcraft 2, so I doubt we'll see Warcraft 4 before 2016 at the earliest.

Also I doubt Titan will be out in 2014, given how long it generally takes from Blizzard show's off a game for the first time and until it is actually released. But we can always hope, I guess.

Played WoW from it's 2004 launch and until January 2011. Was quite a ride.

Also played Anarchy online for around 3 years, which was a really cool game back in the day.

Glad to see that this game is getting more buzz :)

Sadly I don't think it is, no.

SWTOR is probably the most polished MMO I've played since WoW and I really enjoyed having a story to play through as I was leveling my character.

Ultimately I think SWTOR will fail to be "the next big thing" because of a two factors:

1) The endgame content is pretty much the same as any other modern theme park MMO out there (Raid/Dungeons/Daily Quests/PvP Battlegrounds ad nauseum)

2) While the story content is fairly engaging, the story is spread so thin that if you want to level up alts you'll be spending a crap ton of time doing the same quests you've already seen before. This has pretty much killed off my motivation to level my alt Sith Warrior that is now sitting at level 16.

On my blog I've made a longer post about my problems with SWTOR:

Why SWTOR is ultimately a disappointment

If you can't hold the attention of people with your endgame and you're not making it enjoyable enough to make alts then how will you keep people playing and paying?

I think WoW is doomed to experience a long and slow decline as well, but there are people with so much invested in that game that I think it will still be a successful and profitable game long after EA has pulled the plug on SWTOR.

It's not really "F2P". Like Kh1ndjal said, WoW already has this same model where you can play a limited number of levels for free.

It's more like a limited free demo of the game, really.

RIFT is probably not doing great but from what I read and hear it's fairly popular as MMO's go at the moment so I don't think this is a move that's being made from a position of weakness. But going forward I find it hard to see how RIFT is going to make itself relevant in a world with Guild Wars 2.

If I enjoy steampunk but dislike browser based games, will I enjoy this?

GummiRaccoon