Good GRIEF, the games coming out are insane!

Let me assure you, foks - we are on the verge of an absolutely stunning and amazing epoch for pc (and yes, console) gaming experience. This is truly a watershed moment for the history of video entertainment. Forget the past "buzzwords" of dynamic lighting, or mega-textured pixels. What is about to be unleashed upon us will begin to utterly blow our minds, and these experiences will be manifested in the likes of "emergent gameplay", and "real-word physics".

First, a nowhere-near-complete list of some of the heavy-hitter games about to rock our world: "Universe at War", "Bioshock", "Project Offset", "Alan Wake", "Hellgate: London", "Crysis", "Half-Life 2: Episode 2", Medal of Honor: Airborne", and others. Every single game on this list will present a vehicle for jaw-dropping graphics, many utilizing the new DirectX 10 platform from Microsoft. But that is only the first course, fellow gamers - and oh, the main meal will be a high-caloric, gut-busting feast that will attempt to satiate our rapacity for what PC Gamer describes as "Gaming Goodness". Will they succeed? Let's check out the two main ingredients.

"Real-world physics" - physics within the gaming world are relatively new, but more and more prevalent these past few years. The "Havok Engine" is synonymous with "gaming physics", and has been employed in games like "Max Payne", "Company of Heroes", "Half-Life 2", "F.E.A.R.", and "Company of Heroes". Essentially, it allows for units or material in the game to fly about, fall, bounce, and blow-up like we'd expect their real-world counterpart to do. In the past, you'd be playing a "deathmatch" game, unload a shotgun into a crate (because you're too slow and missed your intended target, dumb*ss), and nada - the crate would just take the punishment, because it wasn't interactive. With current in-game physics, if it's been coded correctly, the crate may move, splinter and break, or even explode; and thus it is for other similar items, such as doors, windows, paint cans, etc.

But we're still in the infancy, folks. With present-day companies like Physix Ageia offering stand-alone physics cards to render thousands of particles on-screen with physics (compared to the current standard of hundreds), or with the upcoming plans to make use of multi-core CPU's to handle phycial explosions in game, expect the world of phyics to balloon to epic proprortions in current and planned games. Think about it - as PC Gamer recently pondered in their physics article, why worry if an armored truck is speeding its way towards you in the game? Shoot out its tires, and watch it careen and roll of the road - problem solved. What if your enemy is hiding behind a wall, within a locked room? Blow up the wall, and topple him. This type of new thinking and execution that physics will allow us to do in games will utterly change the entire way levels are designed, and games are played.

And speaking of the way games are played, the second technology that I'm the most stoked about: "Emergent gameplay" (EM). Essentially summed up, EM is a specific design employed within a game, where a whole bunch of open-ended options, items, situations, and combinations will be presented and available, thereby allowing an unprecedented and near-infinite array of unscripted outcomes. In short, EM really means that game-play will be incredibly dynamic, open-ended and evolving, allowing for all manner of permutations within the game, and be completely surprising to both gamer and developer alike. By allowing things within a game to become combined to produce a newly minted item, outcome, etc. instead of being scripted, the replay value alone in a game will be highly laudible, but the REAL treasure, at least in my mind, will be what truly develops within the game, thrusting you the gamer into a world far more realistic than ever before. What happens if you combine this item with this item in this manner, and then utilize it in this way? Outcomes that will often be completely surprising to even the developers of the game is what will occur, and what a compelling idea that is. Where a monster or enemy was in this level, the next time, they might not be; where this weapon will perhaps cause this damage or this event to occur, perhaps by employing something entirely different, and not "meant originally", one may discover how to avoid an enemy altogether, thus altering the story, and evoking unintended consequences, good, bad, or indifferent. EM will be a new way to play, every time, and I couldn't be more excited.

Just like in "real life" - each day is a new manifest, unfolding before us unscripted, where anything can, and often does, happen. How will you react to the next "uncripted event"? What each of us does have a cause-and-effect directive - just like in our upcoming, gloriously beautiful games.

Sign me up!