Game reviews: Say It Loud: Interoperability!

When it comes to video gaming, I was a PC-only man for years. Console games seemed somehow more superficial than their computer counterparts – all flash, no bang. But I eventually gave up gaming on computers, becoming sick to the teeth of continually having to upgrade my system to deal with the latest version of a game that turned out to be not all that different from the previous one.

The decision to switch was made easier by the increasing sophistication of console gaming. Sony’s PlayStation 2 and, later, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 offered graphics and gameplay approaching or on a par with what was being offered in PC land, but without the hassles associated with running a computer.

But now the boundaries between PC and console gaming are becoming blurred. Microsoft’s recently launched Live Anywhere offers interoperability across a select number of Xbox 360 and Windows Vista games. Originally announced at last year’s E3 gaming conference, Live Anywhere is more a concept than a service and brings together Microsoft’s two areas of market dominance. Through Windows, Microsoft already rules the PC operating system roost, and the company’s Xbox 360 is at this point winning the war of the hi-def consoles, so it was a natural progression to integrate the platforms.

Other than letting you play against gamers regardless of whether they’re on a console or PC, the advantage of Live Anywhere is that it enables Xbox Live members to retain their gamertags, achievements, and all those other little things that Xbox gamers love to brag about.

The first game to offer Vista/Xbox interoperablility is Shadowrun, a genre-hopping shooter that mixes fantasy-style sword’n'sorcery with sci-fi tech elements. Designed primarily as an online multiplayer game, Shadowrun makes for an unsurprisingly dull single player experience, which is not helped by complex controls and limited game play options. So while I liked the idea of cross-platform gaming, I wasn’t going to upgrade simply to play Shadowrun against pimply kids who would inevitably hand me my butt the second I logged on.

Fortunately, the wonderful chaps at Playtech (www.playtech.co.nz) came to the party, loaning me one of their dedicated gaming machines with tonnes of RAM, a quality video card and an enormous 22-inch Samsung monitor suited to my purposes. Never before had such a machine sat at my fingertips.

I logged on. Within seconds I had my butt handed to me by what were probably pimply kids, though I prefer to think that they were actually fighter pilots using Shadowrun as a training tool.

Whatever the skills of my opponents – and frankly, they were all better at this game than I was – it was impossible to tell whether they were sitting in front of a PC or sitting in front of a plasma. Indeed, the only way to tell was by checking on the server. This was interesting, because perceived wisdom has always held that players using a mouse and keyboard will beat those with an Xbox controller every time. Not so. In fact it was discovered during beta testing that Xboxers were by and large better at first-person shooters than PC-wielding combatants; and in an interview conducted by gamesfirst.com with Shadowrun engineer Bill Gross, it was revealed that the game required tweaks to even things up between the two groups.

Clever that may be, but Shadowrun is not the best game with which to highlight the new technology – it’s still kinda dull, no matter which platform you’re using. But Live Anywhere points to a genuinely intriguing future, one which, as a Microsoft exec put it, is “platform agnostic”. Hell, it may even give you a reason to upgrade your computer.

Richard Betts