E3 2011: Six PC games dominating the show

Posted 06/08/2011 at 5:27pm | by Owen Hill, PC Gamer

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It’s easy for PC gamers to get disheartened at E3. As Tim mentioned to John Carmack yesterday, we don’t have our own conference to look forward to. The Xbots, PS3-cool-kids, and Nint-infants/oldies each have a few hours dedicated to them each year.

And silly as the conferences are, it makes me sad that we haven’t got one. Give a console gamer a live stream and they’ll instantly start developing new memes based on how crap the presenters of the conference are. The presenters themselves will stroke the rounded edges of their new hardware and talk about “expanding demographics” until a montage kicks in.

Our conferences would be about our infinite storage, ludicrous resolutions, and cutting-edge tech. Our memes would be photoshopped better, and our hardware pointier and more dangerous-looking. But most of all, our conference would be about games. Here’s what I’d stick in our first montage. Remember, there’s still plenty of E3 we haven’t written about yet.

Battlefield 3

By now you’ve read our preview and watched the trailer. Trust us, Battlefield 3 is a PC game through and through. Tim was surrounded by intimidated faces when we settled down for yesterday’s hands on. Why? Because they’d never experienced the true sensitivity of WASD. They’d never popped a man’s head with the left mouse button.

Let’s talk basics – DICE are showing off the PC build because it’s spectacular. No-one has seen the console versions yet. We’ve got eight minutes of in-game single player action. Expect a beta in September, and the full game October 25.

Fary Cry 3

This deserves your PC’s power. Far Cry 3 combines the glorious jungles of the original Far Cry with the massive open world of the second game. The hint of an anti-aliased foliage with bloom edging in all over the place has already got my PC grunting. Graham has already seen the damn thing running too. Read his preview here. We’ve also got in-game footage to share. We’ll have more on Far Cry 3 before the conference is over.

Trackmania: Canyons

Trackmania is a wonderful thing. It’s easy to think of PC gamer’s favourite sandbox as a budget release, but Canyons screams AAA from the start of the trailer. Click up there to see Tim interviewing one of the devs live on the show floor, here for a brand-new trailer, and here for our preview.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I know how excited you are about Skyrim. Just like us, you want news, previews, screenshots and interviews. So that’s what we’re giving you. Also, you may not know, but when Tom Francis looks at the trailer of an unreleased game, things go a bit Neo and the Matrix. Read his in-depth analysis of the latest footage if you don’t believe me.

Hitman Absolution

The man in black is back. Eidos are so excited about Hitman that they flew Tim to an island, and made him listen to a woman singing before they’d let him write his preview. Then they showed him how Agent 47 smashes bongs over people’s heads. According to Tim, Absolution is “A step above what we’ve come to expect from Hitman.” You can check out the latest teaser trailer here and Tom’s What we want from Hitman: Absolution piece here.

Rage

There’s something reassuringly frank about the way Id’s John Carmack spoke to us yesterday. We might not understand a lot of it, but Carmack said it. Listen. Rage is packed to the brim with “megatextures” – sounds like a PC game to us. We know it will look, and (if we’re being cheeky) control better on PC. We’ll have more on Rage in the next few days.

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