I think I've given up on pc gaming?
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So after buying Dark Messiah of Might and Magic which is a fantastic game by the way, I found that I got 3 levels in and it literally locked up my computer with read writes to the hard disk. I even had a radeon x1650 512 card and I could not play the game when 4 enemies came on screen even with lowest quality settings 3fps. This was the last straw in the whole if I buy a pc game maybe it will actually run on my system. I've got an xbox360 and when I buy a game for it I know it will at a very minimum run at 30fps with occasional fps dips. I am officially going to buy Half Life2 Orange Box on xbox360 and see if it can be enjoyed without the aid of a keyboard and mouse. Anyone else doing the same?
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I bought it when it first came out and can't even get past the menu. This time around I'm finding myself drawn towards the wacky console games rather than the 11100th pc fps.. or whatever. I guess i like the bright colours in my old age.
Gav
That's a $200 card. It's low-mid end, what do you expect?
**edit**
After looking at screenies of the game, I don't know why you can't run it faster. It's not an eye-candy game by any means. There may be some other PC issue you're having, which is causing the low fps.
I personally thing pc gaming is far from dead, it just isn't getting the same amount of lovin' that console gaming is currently getting.
erm, upgrade?
That's a $200 card. It's low-mid end, what do you expect?
**edit**
After looking at screenies of the game, I don't know why you can't run it faster. It's not an eye-candy game by any means. There may be some other PC issue you're having, which is causing the low fps.
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I think that is his point exactly. It's some other issue, out of the tons of things that could be wrong.
I kind of agree with you. I used to play CS, UT, and Q3 competitively a long time ago. I was really big into RTS games also. Over the years, I've found myself playing less and less computer games and more and more console games. I played Halo 1 competitively until the scene died from the release of Halo 2. Now I play SSB:M competitively and I'm getting into 3rd strike. I also work part time on top of my other work at a LAN center. It is mostly console with a small set of computers. The only games I see played on the computers are WoW, with the occasionally BF:2142 and RTS. I played Supreme Commander for about 30 minutes until I got sick of my shitty performance, even on the medium settings. The last computer game I actually played was FEAR, then WoW before that. I spent maybe 30 minutes sitting in front of my computer before I got sick of it. Then I'd go sit on my couch and pick from my huge arsenal of games and play for hours.
Maybe I'm biased because I work with computers so I see them every day all the time, but it is so much easier and more relaxing to sit on the couch and play Xbox or something on my HDTV than it is to play on my PC.
Also keeps you from slacking when your supposed to be working
/me waits for PC fanboys bitching
TEXTUREPOCALYPSE
I think someone woke the sleeping giant and told it that the kiddies no longer use the PC to play minesweeper. I think its only appropriate that since MS raped the PC market looking for X-BOX ONLY titles, that they try to restore it. But honestly its too little too late, it flat lined about 2 years ago.
Too bad they didn't think ahead and realize that games drove hardware and OS sales. Opps I guess its true when you burn the fields and salt the earth nothing will really ever grow again.
I also stopped playing games as a hobby when I learned I could make art and stick it in games. That has always held a higher interest above just playing. Sure I played thru GoW with the wife and the Wii gets dragged out almost every day but I don't think I'll ever be into it like I was.
While it's evil from a "MS is taking over the world" perspective i think it will put some life back into the PC market, and it shows that, now that MS has it's fingers securely in the console pie, it's going back to it's roots a bit to support the market that got it started in the games biz.
The console/PC "war" isnt really going to go anywhere imo, since as the console market develops, its basically turning consoles into branded PCs. For devs it makes sense to lean towards console, since piracy is less of an issue, but as consoles become more powerful, they're also becoming more hackable and you end up where you started.
The problem is that the reason your games always work on a console is that it has it's hardware locked in, which means devs have no wiggle room on specs. But that also means that your games will never be capable of more than the console allows, unless of course you make it upgradeable, which is already happening. And then you're in the same boat as you're in for the PC market.
The one major major plus that the PC market has going for it, is that you need zero permissions to develop a title, giving you full creative freedom. The whole MS branding thing may jeopardize that, depending on what it entails, although i doubt they'd want to put too much controls on it since thats the best thing it has going for it.
anyway yeah, so im sure there was a point in there somewhere.
I dont think there is a fix for it.
With Crysis, Unreal 3, Quake Wars, and Team Fortress 2 all (supposedly) coming out this year, I think I'll be gaming on my pc for quite awhile yet.
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QFT. My addiction to PC games is for Editors and Mods. Plus high res instead of wasting money on HDTV. But I'll play a console FPS once more are on the Wii, just for fun. I enjoy consoles more for 2-player and party games.
You can solve all your trouble by not buying crappy games as soon as they're released. Plus, I hear Q1,2 and 3 run very smoothly these days.
For all the keyboard \mouse fanatics, myself included. Check this out. http://www.splitfish.com/
the edge fx, or frag fx or whatever is coming to PS3 and 360 right away and has had some favorable previews from the gaming press.
Nintendo is for homos, Sony is ROCKHARD. YEAH.
Lay off the drama, would you?
So HoMM is a buggy piece of shit (but actually quite enjoyable, aside from that), live with it. You read up on games you buy for a console, don't you? Then do a little research on how bug-ridden something is before you buy it, and your problem's semi-solved.
I say semi-solved because pc-gaming will never be as easy as console-gaming (installing on open hardware vs. running off a disc on a unified platform), but certain genres just work better on certain platforms.
PC gaming is entering a time i'd like to call
TEXTUREPOCALYPSE
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You'd better send the bloody Lotus back quick then eh mate?!
Seriously though, the pc market is a really weird beast. It drives 3D graphics technology, yet the quality from many developers is piss poor. The id's and the blizzards are the exception, not the rule. Creatively its pretty stale, and something definitely happened since MS started nicking all the decent pc titles for 360 exclusives. But any talk of the market in jeapordy is pretty much nonsense when you look at the global revenue generated from people playing mmo's. Basically, what Pea said. Some genres suit certain platforms better than others. You choose your gaming platform based on the kinds of games you like to play.
Mostly because we live under a rock for 5 - 10 years at a time
PC gaming isn't dead, although devs and publishers are getting more vocal about the flaws of PC gaming. There is less profit to be had, because piracy is easier, compatibility issues are less etc etc. And why not go multi platform, we need profits to fund multi million dollar game projects! But PC gaming is far from dead, I love Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Stalker, Titan Quest and Guild Wars to name a few, and the release calendar for PC games I'd argue is just as strong as any console. You are going to upgrade your PC occasionally anyways to help with game art right? Well guess what, plenty of awesome games can be played on that machine, and you'll have to avoid the occasional buggy release (that's what the reviews are for, silly).
So after buying Halo123whatever which is a fantastic game by the way, I found that I got 3 levels in and it was literally impossible to aim on my console with those shitty joypads. I even had the newest sixaxis wireless *bling* *bling* controllers and I could not survive in the the game when 4 enemies came on screen even on the lowest difficulty settings with auto aim. This was the last straw in the whole if I buy a console game maybe it will actually be playable for once. I've also got an PC and when I buy a game for it I know it will at a very minimum have decent controls with occasional customization. I am officially going to buy Half Life2 Orange Box on PC and see if it can be enjoyed with the aid of a keyboard and mouse. Anyone else doing the same?
*end of parody*
-buy the game (for $50). Excited to get home and play it
-get home, start installing the game which takes maybe 20 minutes depending the number of disks, etc.
-Game doesn't work. Download and install the newest drivers for my graphics and sound cards. Download any game patches and install those. Fiddle with the game settings. This takes an hour to an hour and a half.
-Lets say this gets the game to at least start, but I havn't upgraded my graphics card in the last 6 months and so the game runs like crap.
-I can upgrade my graphics card for $250, and install it, and download the newest drivers for that. Shopping, transit and install time is maybe 3 hours, if I can find the card I want locally.
-Enjoy the game (if it's good and not totally buggy)
So every time I buy a PC game I am looking at maybe 5 hours of work and paying as much as $300 to just get it to run correctly. For a game that may not even be fun.
I used to not think it was a big deal to spend a couple hours to get a game working, but I am pretty damned busy these days. I have maybe 30 minutes or an hour to play and that is it.
It also seems that the number of A list titles that take advantage of a PCs strengths are getting fewer and fewer. Sure, FPS is still a little bit better on PC, but they are pretty much the exact same games as you can play on console. If you like RTS, you are fine-- but games with deep interaction are few and far between these days. I'd bet money that Bioshock is going to have some kind of dumbed down interface designed for the console ports. Point and click adventure are pretty much dead. Turn based strategy games haven't gotten the A-list treatment in ages. Maybe some of the "American Style" RPGs that come out are okay, but I can't remember any of them getting any buzz since the first Neverwinter Nights or maybe Gothic 2...
It's true that the year or so after the new consoles come out is always a slump for the computer game industry, and made worse right this moment by the release of Vista (Gaming during the switch to Win 95 was a nightmare). Maybe things will get better.
On the other hand, things are already getting better-- there are tons of small flash games out there. The whole casual market for PC games is doing well as are the MMORPGs. I guess the reason I don't play PC games much any more isn't so much that the platform is dying, but that it is changing. Changing to provide games to people with a lot of time and very little skill-- ultimately those games are boring to me.
*beware parody ahead*
So after buying Halo123whatever which is a fantastic game by the way, I found that I got 3 levels in and it was literally impossible to aim on my console with those shitty joypads. I even had the newest sixaxis wireless *bling* *bling* controllers and I could not survive in the the game when 4 enemies came on screen even on the lowest difficulty settings with auto aim. This was the last straw in the whole if I buy a console game maybe it will actually be playable for once. I've also got an PC and when I buy a game for it I know it will at a very minimum have decent controls with occasional customization. I am officially going to buy Half Life2 Orange Box on PC and see if it can be enjoyed with the aid of a keyboard and mouse. Anyone else doing the same?
*end of parody*
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You're comparing someone complaining about not being able to play a buggy game to someone complaining about the difficulty of a console game? And just because you can't aim with a controller doesn't mean others can't. From years of using a mouse/kb and years of using an Xbox controller I can tell you that they both work extremely well once you get used to them. I think I may even prefer a controller now.
And just because you can't aim with a controller doesn't mean others can't. From years of using a mouse/kb and years of using an Xbox controller I can tell you that they both work extremely well once you get used to them. I think I may even prefer a controller now.
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Controlling FPS games with a controller became somewhat bareable since they basicly dumbed down these game on consoles to a point where there is more or less a auto aim system. It has nothing to to with "getting used to", it is just pysically impossible to aim as precise as with a mouse.
I agree though that after "getting used to it" FPS console games can be somewhat enjoyable with a joypad, if you turn off your brain. (or the game is basicly a interactive movie anyways).
But other games like RTS are absolutly impossible to control with a joypad.
What it boils down to is, that games have to be dumbed down to be playable on consoles, and especially competitive multiplayer is absolutle no fun when you are so hold back by a inadequate controlling solution.
@Suprore: Buy a quality mouse for crist sake, I have used optical mice for years and basicly only swapped them out because they became to dirty
A cheap 3rd party joypad wouldn't hold long either, and I had 2 broken original dreamcast controllers, but only one broken optical mouse so far (which still worked pretty fine, only the wheel was borked).
Edit:
Buying a PC game today:
1. Go to store, choose game look at the back of Box
2. System fits recommended system requirements yes/no
3. Buy yes/no
4. Go home & install (20min max); Surf the net with the install in the background.
5. if "Games on Windows" Game everything is auto configured correctly, if not 1min of configuration is usually enough.
6. Play and enjoy short loading times and often no diskswapping
Buying a Console game today:
1. Go to store, choose game for system
2. Buy yes/no; shell out $20 more than for a PC game
3. Go home & put disk in
4. Wait
5. Wait some more
6. Be annoyed about long loading times
7. Play dumbed down game with shitty controls
8. Be annoyed about long loading times every time you play the game
9. Be annoyed about searching for disk every time you want to play the game
10.Wonder if you arn't waisting much more time than you did on the PC
Controller's more convenient, for sure. Mice tend to break and wear down. Mine right now is inconsistant and pretty much impossible to aim in videogames on. My Ps2, two xbox, two x360, four gamecube, three n64, and two snes controllers, though, have all always worked great.
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Sorry to double post. Just like to say that my experience is the exact opposite. I've been using the same mouse for the past 5 and a half years, still works as good as when I bought it. Every console controller I've had (not many) has ended up getting sticky buttons, loose analogue stick, etc...
My friends controllers (far more) have fared very similarly.
Not saying PC's are better, but what you said was just not true. Mice tend to last longer and fare better, (Except ball mice. They just suck. But if you are using one in this day and age you don't even deserve a computer) atleast in my experience, suppose there is the chance it sort of mediates overall.
1. My comment was about pc gaming in general not Dark Messiah, that was just the last straw in the years of upgrading my pc every time I bought a new game so I could actually play it at medium settings.
2. My system specs meet and in some areas exceed the requirements on the back of the box for Dark Messiah.
3. More than half of the pc games listed so far as must have titles are all coming to xbox360, including TF2, I'm sure you'll see Quake Wars there as well.
4. The original comment was I'm sick of wasting time and money and not being able to play the pc game I buy so I'm going to get half life2 orange box which is episode1, 2, TF2, Portal all on one disc and see if I can enjoy that type of game using a controller instead of mouse and keyboard which sounds insane but I'll give it a try.
5. I have already enjoyed Ghost Recon, Gears of War, and Rainbow Six on 360 with no auto aim and all the gameplay was great.
Buying a console game today:
1. Go to store, choose game for system
2. Buy yes/no; shell out $20 more than for a PC game and save 500 dollars more not having to upgrade your graphics card on the spot.
3. Go home & put disk in
4. Wait, 40 minutes and 3-6 dics later to install a pc game, then get the patch then restart windows, then wait for the game to load.
5. Wait some more for games like bf2142 to load.
6. Be annoyed about long loading times in every pc game I've played in the last 2 years, especially half life2, bf2.
7. Play dumbed down game with shitty controls I wouldn't really call the ai in Rainbow Six Vegas dummied down and I'm yet to see any context sensitive controls in pc titles?
8. Be annoyed about long loading times every time you play the game especially when the pc game crashes and you have to wait for the huge ram dump before you can even restart the game or move the mouse.
9. Be annoyed about searching for disk every time you want
to play the game yes that is fucking annoying that I have to put the disc in my pc every time I want to play, Quake, BF2, Prey or any other pc product made in the last 5 years.
10. Wonder if you arn't waisting much more time than you did on the xbox360, and wonder why some ps2 games look better than high spec pc games.
I think Rainbow Six Vegas runs amazing on my 360 and looks good. Runs good on my laptop as well if I don't run it at max res and crazy detail. Sure it doesn't look as sweet as with all the detail turned up but I don't care. I'm just trying to blast terrorist brains all over the wall.
Hell if you go to the gaming comps and watch a lot of them are playing with graphics turned way down so they can get the frames way up.
Who knows... Let the debate continue.
You cant really argue that Console games are more of a hastle to deal with. Consoles are designed to play games, and the games you buy are designed to play on every console. Makes no sense, really.
If you bought a PC for gaming your gonna pay 5X as much to play the latests games, and the range is undoubtedly shallower. Almost every Xbox title is good quality, but for every Crisis there are 30 shit amatuerish games. And then theres Xbox/PS3 exclusives.
And loading times, bah! You musnt have heard of GTA. PC's are WAAAY less stable than consoles, you can add the time every gamer has to reboot his computer, download drivers and find out why games arent working to your loading time.
Really the only real advantages PC's have as a gamer is how easy piracy is, and if you already own a high-end PC for work you might not need to upgrade and you can play your new game on medium specs.
Any PC gamer who doesnt play consoles because they think PC's are better are pissing into the wind, and were all laughing at your urine-covered face
*Cant wait for flamewars
Heres a list of why I love PC games
1. Mouse and Keyboard combo. I dont think I need to explain
2. Game selection. I read reviews of all games, consoles and PC, and I almost always gravitiate toward the games being released on the PC. Why? They're made with different types of gamers in mind. Often times you will find far more in-depth, complex games in the PC market compared to the large part of the console market's rather superficial titles. Just looking at a few games on my desk I see: Arcanum, HL2, Black and White, and Savage
3.Multiplayer: The competetive multiplayer player base for PC gaming is huge. Consoles can't even compare, although that might change in the future with the new generation of consoles. However, its just not the player base, its the games themselves that promote competetive multiplayer.
4. online support/patches/user created content/customizability/mods. enough said. Perhaps the xbox360 will help shift the balance on this someday.
5. Indie Games. Fuck yea I love indie developers and their little games. When the hell am I gonna get to play gems like Armadillo Run on the PS3?
6. My computer can be upgraded. If I fall behind a bit on system specs, I just add some more ram or grab a new video card.
7. I've got dual screens bitch! Supreme Commander kicks ass!
8. I just love all the badass PC games coming out!!!
I tried not to be too negative in most of that because the truth is, I still love consoles too. I was just playing the wii earlier today and had a great time. The fact of the matter though is that it's very rare that there is a console game thats coming out that I'm more excited about than a PC game.
Any PC gamer who doesnt play consoles because they think PC's are better are pissing into the wind, and were all laughing at your urine-covered face
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Hate to be pedantic here but on a performance level pc's can of course have the potential to be *far* superior to the lastest and greatest console and one can therefore provide good argument that that could constitute 'better'.
I'm not really sure why golden showers entered the argument, but as far as Im concerned, there simply *is* no argument. You choose your main platform on the kind of games you like to play. There is no 'better'. Besides, I'm pretty confident that most people that posted in this thread play both console and pc games. To turn this into a 'them and us' is all just a little bit too internet for my tastes. By the way, it's 'you're', not 'your'.
Fair enough about mods though
Controller's more convenient, for sure. Mice tend to break and wear down. Mine right now is inconsistant and pretty much impossible to aim in videogames on. My Ps2, two xbox, two x360, four gamecube, three n64, and two snes controllers, though, have all always worked great.
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Don't buy a shitty mouse. I've had my Logitech mouse for many years without any complaints. On the other hand, N64 controllers had the joystick which was known for wearing out. I've owned several broken PS2 controllers with buttons that stopped functioning. I order a couple Logitech PS2 controllers and they work very well. I've played on a brand new Xbox360 controller that had a crappy joystick. Aiming in Quake was impossible.
1) We already talked about how MS raped the PC market in order to steal focus away from Sony and Nintendo.
2) Major PC manufactures fucked over just about ever customer that ever bought one of their systems, by selling systems with an Intel intergraded "extreme" graphics chipset.
5 years in the trenches of GT/Atari's tech support and 90% of what I had to tell people was "sorry you bought a branded PC without specifically asking for a non crappy video card, you'll need to upgrade and by that I mean, buy a real computer if you want to play XYZ game". To which I would hear "But this is a top of the line computer I bought it last month, you can't be telling me its out of date already!?" We aren't talking about just high end titles like UT but even games like Dora the Explorer turned a lot of people away.
The computer companies paper thin defense:
"If they had just asked we would have gladly charged them 4x what the card really costs and installed it for them, we even asked what they wanted to do with the computer and made sure we sold them the lowest hardware at the highest price."
People buying a computer for the first time trust the company to sell thru the hype which they wont do. The people working the phones don't know the hardware as well as they pretend to. Even the "high end" hardware is junk. People buy a computer at first so the kids can do homework, bank online and maybe surf the web. Playing games is a silly notion when you buy a serious piece of educational equipment for the family. They quickly learn that the computer doesn't do much other than sit there unless you play games. Besides after all they are just simple games, right? And I have a new Dell! Oh noes it no run =/ WHY DELL WHY!
That first conversation with the computer company rep must go something like when the kid in "The Christmas Story" goes to see Santa and freezes. Santa hurriedly says "how about a football little boy?" and the kid idly nods and mutters foot-ball... then Santa steps on his face. yeah it goes like that but instead of Santa you're talking to someone from India pretending to be from Indiana.
When it should go something like this:
Rep: You are going to play games on this computer.
Customer: No I thought I would just let the kids type up their papers maybe surf that web thing.
Rep: That wasn't a question, I said you are going to play games on this computer. Would you like to sign up for our 2 year plan of disappointment, heart ache and debt? I mean since you're in denial that you might express an interest in the rows and rows of games next to the 3 edutainment titles on the store shelf, you'll want to take the lowest end system we have and finance it so you end up paying more than the highest end system we make?
Customer: ...
Rep: I'll put the good video card in. With any luck in 5 years you'll come to realize we are selling you a piece of crap, instead of the 6mo it normally takes if we don't put it in.
The only thing that has kept people from banding together and filing a class action lawsuit is the tiny bit of shame they feel when they would have to admit to someone else they didn't know enough about technology to not get ripped off.
I also really love my keyboard and mouse. It's much more accurate than a controller, even if a controller usually is a bit more intuitive.
I'm not brushing off consoles altogether, but I don't think there's a reason to do so for PCs, either. Everyone who says that "PC gaming is doomed" have been doing so for the past five years, and I haven't seen any real decline in the industry thus far.
And just for JKMakowka because you're being a prick about the whole thread.
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Should I make that my new sig??? Questions over questions
Always a pleasure to spice up a discussion
This thread is getting dumb.
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Any PC gamer who doesnt play consoles because they think PC's are better are pissing into the wind, and were all laughing at your urine-covered face
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Hate to be pedantic here but on a performance level pc's can of course have the potential to be *far* superior to the lastest and greatest console and one can therefore provide good argument that that could constitute 'better'.
I'm not really sure why golden showers entered the argument, but as far as Im concerned, there simply *is* no argument. You choose your main platform on the kind of games you like to play. There is no 'better'. Besides, I'm pretty confident that most people that posted in this thread play both console and pc games. To turn this into a 'them and us' is all just a little bit too internet for my tastes. By the way, it's 'you're', not 'your'.
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hehe an eloquent brit full of resolve is policing the grammar, you coudnt make it up even if you tried
oh daz, i dont know why you bother
Anyways, Im not saying I like PC or console games better. They are in fact distinctly different, despite the fact that they play nearly the same games. The experience is different, and I enjoy both. Sometimes I agree, PC gaming is a hassle, and I'd rather just sit on my couch with a controller in hand and beat a game. Other times, I'm ready to kick some ass with a mouse and keyboard, I go through phases...
Though I will say, I tend to like online multiplayer on the PC, for reasons such as being able to record demos (gonna change with halo3 though), being able to type to players AND use voice communication, be able to surf servers quickly and easily, as well as the community is normally older than 6.
and with my xbox360, or Wii, I have some GREAT times when I have friends over to play, awesome multiplayer action, where when they piss you off, you can smack them in RL! But I find my 360 best for doing the single-player hoohaa