Vista Games … Worth The Wait?

Kristin Kalning of MSNBC brings up an interesting point in her latest article. Are the Vista games truly worth waiting for?

Vista shipped six months ago, but new titles for it and DirectX 10 have been slow in coming.

Microsoft says the crop of upcoming games will knock gamers’ socks off. Here’s a sampling of some of the games already out for the new platform — and the ones due out sometime this year.

She lists ten games that Microsoft claims will “knock your socks off”. It’s really up to you guys to decide whether or not these titles were worth the long and painful wait. I have listed the 10 PC games below she mentioned with my own opinions.

• Halo 2 – I can’t really get excited about a 3 year old port that is about to die in the console world in 2 months when Halo 3 comes out. I think this is a case of too little, too late.
• Shadowrun- I’m not sure how the sales are going on the PC end, but I can say it’s rare to find a Vista player in an online match from the Xbox 360 side of things.
• Flight Simulator X – This one was definitely worth the wait.
• Lost Planet – A great game probably worth the wait, but I wonder how many people who are PC gamers already have it on Xbox 360.
• Age of Conan – This looks like an awesome MMO, and I firmly believe that the best MMOs are on PC. I don’t think that will change for many years.
• BioShock – BioShock may be a great game for the PC. I think the modding community could make the PC version have a longer shelf life.
• Company of Heroes – It’s been out a while and most people who played it have loved the game.
• Hellgate: London – It’s from the Diablo crew, so I have to trust that it will be a decent RPG. I haven’t had an in depth look at the game though, sot here’s no telling.
• World In Conflict – This title releases for the PC around the same time as the consoles, so I think the close release gap should make this more attractive.
• Crysis – Critics claim this will be the most mind blowing Vista release yet. I guess we’ll find out in a couple months. I am definitely looking forward to the game as I truly believe this will be one of the first that starts pushing DirectX 10 closer to it’s standards.

All in all, it’s really about personal opinion when it comes to debating whether to wait for the PC release or go with the console version. Sometimes console players have to wait for PC games to be ported. It has always been my opinion that RTS and MMO RPG games belong on the computer. There’s nothing wrong with playing them on a console, but honestly the consoles cannot completely handle those types of games just yet. A perfect example would have to be Oblivion. I’ll add that Oblivion is one of my all-time favorite Xbox 360 titles, but it really would have been better on the PC. I do not think developers are at the stage where they are able to properly push the 360, Wii or PS3 to it’s limits without causing slow downs in game-play.