PC Gamer Issue 75

Features:

• Cover Story - Diablo II: A multi-part feature. The first half is PC Gamer's six-page review of Blizzard's hot new Rogue-like; the second is a strategy guide to help you rend Diablo's head from his body, then defecate into his esophagus.
• State of the PC Union - 98 Reasons Why PC Gaming Still Rules: With the current industry buzz on next-generation consoles and PC development offices going out of business faster than Internet start-ups, it's easy to get a little nervous about the future of PC gaming. Of course, there's nothing to be worried about at all, as evidenced by the 98 reasons why you and your PC are going to continue enjoying the most cutting-edge game experiences for the next several years.

Departments:

• Letter From the Ed.: According to EiC Rob Smith, the rumours of the death of PC gaming have been greatly exaggerated.
• The CD: This month we've got playable demos for Motocross Madness 2, Gunship!, Lemmings Revolution, Warlords Battlecry, Force Commander, and The Time Machine. Plus a non-interactive Halo movie, an EarthLink ISP installer, Microsoft's DirectX 7.0a, and a whole host of patches and add-ons to make the stuff you already own even more fun!
• Eyewitness (News, Previews, and Behind-the-Scenes reports): Looking Glass Studios goes belly-up, an interview with Microsoft's VP of Games Division Ed Fries, a new expansion pack for The Sims, zombies invade Half-Life, a new non-RPG Fallout game, the sights and sounds of E3, some Master of Orion 3 concept art, Quake III is coming, and more!
• Design Lab (Submit a game design, have it critiqued by a real game designer, and maybe win a week's worth of employment at Ion Storm's offices down in Texas): This month's winner: Chris Hope for his submission for Ho Chi Minh Trail, an FPS that puts the player in the boots of an ARNV soldier travelling to Saigon to take out a Viet Cong operative.
• The Hard Stuff (Reviews, Q&A, and other tech talk)
  • 64MB 3dfx VooDoo5 5500 AGP video card
  • 32MB GLADIAC GeForce 2 GTS
  • fUnc Industries sUrface 1030 mouse pad
• Extended Play (Add-Ons, Scenario Discs, Upgrades, and Bug Patches): T. Liam McDonald opines on the best add-on levels to be found in the Thief level-building community.
• The Point After (Sports News and Gossip): Bob Smolka was disappointed that every genre was well-represented at E3 except for sports games.
• The Killing Box (3D Action Gaming, Mods, Deathmatching, Clans, and Trends): Colin Williamson wonders where the male equivalents of sexy female designers like Stevie "KillCreek" Case are, and decides to put together his own all-male revue from the PC Gamer staff.
• Alternate Lives (Adventure and Roleplaying Games, News, and Trends): Michael Wolf just wants to know where all his beloved adventures are this year.
• Desktop General (Wargames, Historical and Military Simulations, and Tactical Combat): William R. Trotter rustled more than the usual number of jimmies with his previous column, and posts a bunch of copy-pasta from Usenet as evidence.
• Sim Column (Driving, Flying, Fighting, Building, Etc...): Andy Mahood mourns the dwindle of flight simulators, and turns his attention to ground-based racing games instead.
• Letters: You wrote 'em, we read 'em, and now we respond to 'em.
• Ad Index
• Backspace: A short interview with John Romero.

Scoops (aka Previews):

• Show-Stoppers: We've returned from the first Electronic Entertainment Expo of the new millennium, and boy have we got the scoop for you! This month's Scoops section is a compilation of all the hottest games that we saw at the show. Get ready to be blown away!
• Halo
• Max Payne
• Sigma (released as Impossible Creatures)
• Hitman: Codename 47
• Commandos 2
• NASCAR Racing 4
• Pool of Radiance II: Ruins of Myth Drannor
• Startopia
• Republic: The Revolution
• Crimson Order (cancelled)
• Battle Isle: The Andosia War
• Rune
• Black & White
• MechWarrior 4
• Tropico
• Sheep
• Escape From Monkey Island
• Battle Realms
• Crimson Skies
• Madden NFL 2001
• Neverwinter Nights

Reviews:

• Diablo II (94%; Editors' Choice; Game of the Month)
• Daikatana (53%)
• Shogun (84%)
• Motocross Madness 2 (87%)
• Allegiance (91%; Editors' Choice)
• Normandy '44 (86%)
• Microsoft Baseball 2001 (41%)
• PGA Championship 2000 (91%; Editors' Choice)
• Codename Eagle (52%)
• Lemmings Revolution (74%)
• Airport Tycoon (62%)
• Martian Gothic: Unification (71%)
• Fly! 2K (63%)
• Innova Disc Golf (19%)
• BreakNeck (53%)

Strategy:

• Diablo II
• Daikatana
• Cheater's Corner:
  • Daikatana
  • Aliens vs. Predator Gold
  • Starlancer
  • Codename: Eagle
  • Imperium Galactica II: Alliances

Ads (in order of appearance):

• Diablo II
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura
• Star Trek: New Worlds
• Deus Ex
• The Settlers III: Ultimate Collection
• Heat.net online gaming network
• American McGee's Alice
• Dark Reign 2
• Motocross Madness 2
• Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force
• Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy
• Tribes 2
• Age of Empires II: The Conquerors expansion
• EarthLink internet service provider
• BreakNeck
• EBWorld.com online store
• Legends of Might and Magic
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
• NetRaceLive.com online game site
• Logitech Wingman Force Feedback mouse
• Age of Sail II
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Covert Ops Essentials
• MTV Sports: Skateboarding
• Zeus: Master of Olympus
• Socket online service
• Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim
• Homeworld: Cataclysm
• Wizards & Warriors
• Babbages / GameStop / Software Etc mini-catalogue
• PC Gamer subscription card
• Jetfighter IV: Fortress America
• NASCAR Racing 4
• InterAct Hammerhead FX control pad
• Sim City 3000 Unlimited
• 3dfx VooDoo 5 graphics card
• Yamaha YST-MS30 speakers
• Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400 audio system
• D-Link 10/100Mb Fast Ethernet Network
• KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child
• Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition RPG books
• Alienware gaming PCs
• Bang: Gunship Elite
• S3 Diamond Viper II 3D card
• TradeDemon.com online marketplace
• Harpoon 4
• Star Trek: Klingon Academy
• Dogs of War
• Revolution magazine
• PCGameReview.com / VideoGameReview.com websites
• Battle Isle: The Andosia War
• Shogun: Total War
• Chips & Bits ad
• Submarine Titans
• BlueByte.com ad
• Imagine media network ad
• DailyRader.com ad
• Recruitment and Educational Opportunities section
• Aberdeen, Inc. motherboards
• Dell PCs
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer sound card and Cambridge SoundWorks FPS2000 Digital speakers

Interesting Stuff:

• Despite devoting three pages to previewing it, E3 hype that was through the roof, and an estimated delivery date of the 2000 holiday season, Microsoft pulled the rug out from under every PC gamer by buying developer Bungie and converting Halo into a first-party launch exclusive for their Xbox. PC enthusiasts would eventually get to play Halo...in October of 2003, three years after this feature was written and after console gamers had been kicking each other's asses in multi-player mode for two years.
• Jason Jones, one of the lead designers on Halo, bragged: "We think we have a story that is so good you could write a book about it and sell it as a sci-fi novel." Turns out, he wasn't kidding: there have been more than half a dozen novels and short story collections written about and based on the Halo universe.
• Most of the games featured in Scoops failed to hit their release date targets, assuming they got released at all. Not uncommon in the world of game development, but some games like Republic: The Revolution shipped more than two years later than expected.
• While many games touted the strengths of their artificial intelligence, Sheep is one of the few sims to capitalize on "artificial stupidity", used to hilariously frustrate players who expect their sheep to cooperate every time they scream orders.
• Speaking of long development times, "Starship Troopers" the film came out in 1997. Development quickly began on the game, but technical and financial difficulties kept pushing back its release date. It was cancelled and picked up several times over the years, most notably by Hasbro Interactive who turned it from an FPS into a real-time strategy title. Developer Strangelite finally managed to push it out the door in October of 2005 after. Needless to say, eight years after the film with which it was supposed to tie-in, no one cared, and Strangelite closed its doors shortly after the game's release.
• Lucy Clarkson made her first official appearance at E3 as the live-action model for Lara Croft this year, taking over the job from Lara Weller. She'd hold the job for two years until being replaced by Jill de Jong in 2002. Yes, this is important...why do you ask?
• You guys seriously interviewed Ed Fries, one of the people responsible for depriving your target audience of Halo, about the future of PC gaming? 
• Reviewer Colin Williamson writes of Daikatana in his review: "As it stands, the release of Daikatana signals nothing more than the end of an era in fandom." These are the truest words ever uttered about this game.
• Wonder how much InterAct had to pay Seth Green to stump for their PC peripherals...
• Maybe the reason sports games are so under-represented on the PC is because a company's console versions of said sports titles tend to out-sell their PC counterparts by a factor of five-or-six to one? Just a thought.
• The strategy section for Diablo II, while fine when playing version 1.0, is so obsolete at this point as to be laughable.
• John Romero, at this point, had been waiting five years to play Chrono Cross.