Steve's Picks: The stories of 2004 - #5

I already gave my opinion on the games of 2004 in this article last month. Rather than rehash the same concept, I figured I'd cover what I felt were the biggest news stories, events, or trends of the year in the gaming world.

I've thought long and hard about the choices of story of the year. Especially trying to think back earlier in the year. Overall though, most of what I've chosen isn't specific to a particular time of year.

Number 5, however, is probably my least controversial choice.

I belong to a clan. It's basically a group of guys (and a couple of gals) who want to game with mature, sensible people who don't insist on acting and writing like a 10 year old who was dropped on their head repeatedly as a baby. Calling it a clan is probably a misnomer, but it's the best word for it.

One thread of discussion that keeps cropping up is system upgrading, specifically graphics cards. To run the latest games, you obviously need decent hardware. My system is two years old. Do I plan on upgrading soon? Aside from maybe shoving more ram in the system, no, I don't. I'm tired of the constant upgrade cycle. The next generation of graphics cards come along before the current ones have been exploited to anywhere near their full potential, and game developers giggle with glee, and immediately hurl themselves on the new hardware, abandoning the older, and not even remotely pushed to the limit, hardware. I'm sick of it. That's the one area where consoles will always beat the PC. Console hardware is always exploited to the maximum.

How many more FPS titles do I really need? I have UT2K4. It's fantastic. I don't care about Doom 3. (Though I did try it, and, amazingly, it ran really well on my system.) I do care about Half-Life 2, but Steam as a method of copy protection and content distribution bothers me for a variety of reasons I'll go into some other time, maybe.

So what is the hardcore gamer to do when everyone is galloping forward, and for whatever reason, personal choice or financial, you aren't? Text based gaming. That's right. I know plenty of people my age that immediately go "EW! TEXT!??!" when I say how much I love text sims. But then these people didn't really come to gaming until around the time of Doom, or in some cases, Quake, so their philosophy of gaming is firmly entrenched in the eye candy department. They were never around for an era where graphics were, basically, crap.

I, on the other hand, was lucky enough to grow up with a Dad who was interested in video games. (And would kick my ass regularly at Space Invaders on the Atari 2600.) I've been gaming since the Pong days, which makes me feel incredibly old. However, due to the era in which I became obsessed with games, I've never had the "games must have good graphics" link created in my head. Maybe that's why I'll play anything, regardless of graphics. I don't know. Maybe a broken synapse somewhere. Whatever.

In 2004, with ATI and Nvidia slugging it out for graphical dominance. With Half-Life 2 sending buyers into a frenzy of hardware upgrading. With Doom 3 pushing the limits. With the never ending push for better graphics, it's refreshing to see that text based gaming is alive and well. Specifically in the sports simulation world. Actually, it's thriving.

Do you like baseball? Chances are, sadly, you answered no to that question. Which is a shame. As far as sports go, baseball is by far the best game to simulate with text. "Oh, but you've got to have pretty pictures!" Why? People used to gather around the radio to listen to baseball all the time. People used to stand outside stadiums just to watch the scoreboard. It's not like reading the results on screen is any different than opening a newspaper and doing the same.

Out of the Park Baseball is the king of baseball sims, and reached it's sixth iteration this year. It's relatively cheap. A measly $20 US. You can replay any baseball season in history. You can create your own universe. The game isn't perfect. But it's damn close. Plus there is a huge community built around creating additions to the game, ranging from simple team logos and fictional player pictures, right the way through to hardcore database applications that process all the details and generate reams and reams of stats pages detailing every aspect of your league. The next version of the game will be released through Sports Interactive, the minds behind the king of text based gaming. More on them later.

Not prepared to pay for something that doesn't dazzle you with eye candy? Price not quite low enough? Try Puresim Baseball. How about $10? $5? Nope... At the time of writing, Puresim costs nothing. Nada. Zip. Squat. In an attempt to generate more interest in the game, at the current time of writing, the game is free, and will be for the duration of the beta release I believe. Don't let the word "beta" put you off. This is not the usual buggy, unstable beta crap you've come to expect. The game works just fine. Runs nicely. Has never crashed (for me at least). Plus it has a few tweaks and features that even the aforementioned behemoth of baseball games, Out of the Park, doesn't have. The price is right, so give it a try. If you hate it, fine. At least you tried.

Baseball lives on numbers and stats. That's what makes it the perfect sport to simulate in a text based environment. Both games keep records of everything, so if you have the disk space, you can keep track of everything indefinitely, even keeping individual game logs, which obviously, taking the Major's as an example, that's 32 teams playing 162 games each... That's a LOT of game logs, but if you want them, you've got them.

Baseball not your thing? How about boxing then? Title Bout Championship Boxing was one of my games of 2004. (Even though technically it came out in late 2003.) Thousands of fighters, with a load more you can download from fansites, both real and fictional. Match any fighters against any fighter. Even shove a bantamweight against Tyson in his prime and giggle at the carnage. Create your own universe. Make boxers fight a hundred times in a row. Create your own alphabet title. The game tracks boxers records, bout history etc... If you have the hard disk space, like the baseball sims, you can save every bout that's fought and go back and view it later. The sequel is currently in development, and is shaping up to be even nicer, with better history tracking, both on title histories and individual bouts, as well as more stats for the fighters, and a reworked engine for the bouts.

Of course I can't mention text based gaming without bringing forth the grandfather of them all. Not the first text based sim, but certainly the game that pushed the field forward.

I've been playing the Championship Manager series since the first Commodore Amiga version way back in the early 90's. I've played every version since, with varying levels of addiction. The game, developed by Sports Interactive, is considered the pinnacle of football (soccer to you North American types) management. The game has always delivered an incredily immersive experience. However, you have to get past your preconceived notions that a good game has to have cutting edge graphics. The game is routinely one of the biggest sellers in Europe. Though please note, the game is now FOOTBALL MANAGER. There was some contract issue with the prior publishers, Eidos, and inexplicably in a move only lawyers would understand, Eidos wound up with the Championship Manager name. So prior to this year, the legendary game was called Championship Manager. Now it's Football Manager, with Eidos putting out their own title called Championship Manager. Still with me?

The only real issue with Football Manager over the other titles I've mentioned is in the US and Canada, you'll most likely have to import the game, as there's no distribution there as far as I'm aware. The other titles can all be bought online.

This is just a very small example of the text based gaming that thrives out there in a graphics obsessed world. The joy is that with no over the top graphics engine to deal with, the system specs required to run the games are generally a lot lower. Some people turn their nose up at text based sports sims with derogatory remarks like "it's just a spreadsheet". I feel sorry for those people. Their imagination has been crippled by the need to SEE something happen using the latest graphics engine, rather than see it portrayed another way. That's a real shame, as there's a whole world of titles out there that offer staggering depth and replayability, that are simply dismissed due to the fact they don't require the latest drivers from ATI or Nvidia.

Nothing I say will make the majority of people change their opinion on text based gaming, but if I've converted just one person here; one person who downloads and tries any of the titles I've mentioned here and goes "You know, this text based thing is okay!", then my work here is done.

I'll be back later with more of my countdown of 2004.