Computer Games Issue 160

Cover Story:

• One Game to Rule Them All...: ...and in the darkness, nerf them. Turbine Entertainment tries to take the world of J.R.R. Tolkien online in a massively multiplayer way with The Lord of the Rings: Middle Earth Online. We also look behind the scenes at what's up with developer Turbine.

Featured:

• Old School: GenCon is the ultimate hangout for luddites. Also in news this month: more game-based comic books and coverage of Winter CPL.
• Digital Board-dom: From Carcassonne to Von Manstein's Backhand Blow, opponents await online!
• Give 'em Hellenism: Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots delivers a border push.
• Best of 2003: It's hard to disagree with the idea that 2003 was "The Year of the Port". Behold our Top 10 games of 2003, the five worst, and many other strange and unusual tales from 2003.
• Xboxed In: Deus Ex: Invisible War is over-designed, overly simplified, and under-delivers.
• The Rumble: Ten low-priced gaming rigs slug it out for ultimate king-of-the-hill honors.

Departments:

• Upfront: Steve Bauman vents about late columns, the upsurge in console sales, "PC Games Are Dead!" doomsayers, and those who believe censoring Grand Theft Auto III and similar games will solve all of society's woes.
• Newswire: EverQuest gets a seventh expansion pack, Silent Hill comics are coming, Marvel's bringing some of their classics to the digital format, nobody's sure what will happen to Fallout 3 now that Black Isle Studios no longer exists, and Chuck Palahniuk couldn't care less that Vivendi Universal's turning Fight Club into a video game five years after the film came out.
• Rebound: Letters: folded, spindled and mutilated.
• Mod Squads: Unreal II gets a multiplayer patch, Ghost Master adds new ways to scare folks, the "Wizards Islands" mod for Morrowind is 80% complete, and check out that new cowboy-themed mod for Return to Castle Wolfenstein!
• Applied Game Theory: Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire examine the ups and downs of Star Wars Galaxies.
• Road to Nowhere: Cindy Yans describes her experiences with the interactive, uh, game(?) that is The Journey to Wild Divine.
• View From the Middle: Ken Levine, general manager at Irrational Games, proposes that the only thing we need to get over as game lovers is our fear of the new.
• Out of the Box: Brett Todd explains why more modders are working on brand new titles as opposed to breathing life into older ones.
• Three Finger Salute: Tom Chick's own personal list of best and worst when it comes to the year 2003.

Incoming (aka: Previews):

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Forever Worlds
• Fair Strike
• The Entente: WWI Battlefields
• Battlefield Vietnam
• Hitman: Contracts
• Sacred
• Shadow Vault
• Join Operations
• CSI: Dark Motives
• Perimeter
• PT Boats: Knights of the Sea

Opinion (aka: Reviews):

• Deus Ex: Invisible War (3/5)
• Silent Hill 3 (4/5)
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (5/5; Editor's Choice)
• X2: The Threat (2.5/5)
• Armed and Dangerous (3.5/5)
• Disciples II: Rise of the Elves (4.5/5; Editor's Choice)
• The Simpsons: Hit and Run (4.5/5; Editor's Choice)
• Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark (4.5/5; Editor's Choice)
• PlanetSide: Core Combat (4/5)
• Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon (3.5/5)
• Curse: The Eye of Isis (2/5)
• Horizons: Empires of Istaria (4.5/5; Editor's Choice)
• Pax Romana (3.5/5)
• Star Chamber (3.5/5)
• Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds (3/5)
• Beyond Good & Evil (3.5/5)
• Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (3.5/5)
• Spy Hunter (2/5)
• Time of Defiance (3/5)
• Rugby 2004 (2/5)
• Activision Anthology (3/5)

Hardware:

• Maingear Hardcore FX Wave Master gaming PC (4.5/5; Editor's Choice)
• PCI Express 1.0a cards (4/5)
• NaturalPoint's TrackIR2 (4.5/5; Editor's Choice)

This Months' Demo CD:

• Deus Ex: Invisible War
• Armed and Dangerous
• Pirate Hunter
• Ragnarok Online

Ads (in order of appearance):

• War Times
• Ragnarok Online
• EverQuest II
• Boxxtech Gameboxx gaming PCs
• Battlefield Vietnam
• Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle
• Gangland
• Painkiller
• Far Cry
• City of Heroes
• Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna
• Dark Age of Camelot: Trials of Atlantis
• Ultima X: Odyssey
• EverQuest: Gates of Discord
• Chips & Bits, Inc.
• Computer Games subscription ad
• EarthLink online service
• VoiceGlo VOIP service
• Wars & Warriors: Joan of Arc

Notable Stuff:

• Starting with this issue, Computer Games underwent a newsstand price drop to $4.99 a month. If you wanted to get the version of the magazine with the demo CD included, that became a subscription-only option that would cost you $19.97 for a full year of twelve issues and twelve CDs.
• Notice how few ads there are in this issue compared to past ones? The PC gaming market was in an economic slump in the early 2000's. A lot of what should have been AAA titles wound up being anything but (Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, anyone?), consoles were gaining significant marketing share as developers changed direction to make games based on the simplified architecture of the Xbox which could then be ported to the PC as an afterthought instead of the other way around, and gamers were whiling away the months leading up to the releases of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 by playing any number of MMORPGs which left them little time to do anything else. It was a weird time to be a PC gamer.
• "Lord of the Rings: Middle Earth Online" was in development for three more years following the publication of this feature article. It finally made its debut in 2007 as Middle Earth Online: Shadows of Angmar, eventually transitioned from its subscription-based focus to a free-to-play model. It continues to be updated semi-regularly, and as of February 2020, the servers are still up and running, which is more than can be said of many other MMOs from this time period.
• Is it sad that the top 2 PC games in the "Best of 2003" article are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, both of which are ported from home consoles?
• After seven years in development hell, Master of Orion III emerged, only to be crowned as the worst game of 2003 for its spectacularly underachieving performance.
• Writing of Silent Hill 3, reviewer Steve Bauman says, "It's a convoluted tale that makes almost no sense, yet it's exactly that nonsensical quality that lends it a more hallucinatory feel." I can't help but wonder if maybe this is because Steve never played the first game, which was a PS1 exclusive, because Silent Hill 3 is that game's direct sequel, something PC-only gamers would not have realized, especially if their only other experience with the franchise was Silent Hill 2, which had nothing to do with the first game.
• This quote from Ken Levine on the state of gaming says everything that needs to be said about this particular generation: "Take a look at the PlayStation 2, a product of a mature and successful division of Sony, verses the original PS1, the product of a newborn, struggling, and hungry division of Sony. Think about how many successful franchises and entire genres were spawned on the PS1. 3D fighting games? PS1. Dance/Rhythm Games? PS1. Stealth Games? PS1. Survival Horror Games? PS1. Now think about how many were created this time around. Still thinking?"