[Fox]

Mad Max RW, on 20 March 2012 - 02:40 PM, said:

In most cases they're too stupid and young to know when they're being taken advantage of.

According to our society an adult is responsible for his own acts even if he is stupid.

[Mad Max RW]

Calm down. I used my story as just ONE example because it's a common one among longterm PC gamers. I thought that was pretty clear. Probably a better example would be how I exposed tons of people to great games by installing Sim City 2000, Civilization, and Doom 1 on my then school's library computers. At least half of them put down the controllers for good.

Publishers themselves are saying console gamers are too stupid for PCs: http://kotaku.com/58...-think-you-want
....
And this is why I avoid consoles and multiplatform games. There are plenty of studios and more start-ups that cater to my tastes. Amnesia, Miner Wars, Evochron, Grimrock, Gemini Rue, E.Y.E., and now Wasteland 2 to name just a few. All unique and rewarding because they don't suffer from the super short cookie cutter hand holding nonsense that plagues console games today. Fads (consoles) come and go. And so does their audience, which the big publishers seem to forget.

[Kathy]

Mad Max RW, on 21 March 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

Calm down. I used my story as just ONE example because it's a common one among longterm PC gamers. I thought that was pretty clear. Probably a better example would be how I exposed tons of people to great games by installing Sim City 2000, Civilization, and Doom 1 on my then school's library computers. At least half of them put down the controllers for good.

It's interesting you mentioned Doom since for its time it could be called "dumbed down". Although, it was because of a new genre of course.

Quote

Publishers themselves are saying console gamers are too stupid for PCs

Why not just say people are stupid? That's broad enough.

[MusicallyInspired]

Mad Max RW, on 20 March 2012 - 07:30 PM, said:

Sure, but it has to do with the environment. Not everybody can be a PC gamer. The masses go for the quick and easy. Quick and easy is also designed for the stupid. For example, when I was a kid all my friends and all the kids in the neighborhood had a NES and a Gameboy. My dad hated video games, but he worked with computers and loved building them. So while learning from my dad how to build computers he let us buy a game (fond memories of waiting for those Commander Keen episodes flooding back) through one of his tech magazines then made sure we beat it. Not only was I being educated in something useful, but I felt like I was rewarded at the end. Meanwhile everybody else is a spoiled console brat who has no idea what to do when their overpriced out-of-the-box computer breaks down. At that point it's easier to be lazy and stupid than make any effort to change.

Very similar to my upbringing. Though, my dad was into adventure games and that's where I started. We did eventually get access to the Apogee and id stuff, though. Still lightyears better than anything on consoles.

[Martin]

I'm with Ripmaneone. I think your first example is somewhat overzealous, Max. Just because someone doesn't know the ins and outs of computers doesn't make them stupid. I bet you can't strip an engine down in a car and rebuild it yourself. I can. When you have a problem with your car, you take it to a mechanic and have your pants pulled down over the price. You probably also have extra work done because they saw you coming a mile off. They know you don't know anything about cars. Notice I'm not using the word 'stupid'.

I actually built my PC myself, but I don't play games on it. Mostly because all my gaming friends use consoles, so to play with them, I must use one. The inferior graphics etc doesn't really bother me at all, because I'm not that anal about video games. I'll take less pixels, lower framerate etc. I simply don't care, because for me being able to bust it up online with my friends is way more important than the arguably marginal visual and temporal improvement on PC. Sure, Game X would look better on PC. But I'd be playing it alone or with randoms I don't know or care about. On PS3 I can play with people I know and love in real life, and to me that's what counts.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Burnett, on 21 March 2012 - 07:14 AM, said:

It's interesting you mentioned Doom since for its time it could be called "dumbed down". Although, it was because of a new genre of course.

I remember that.
Simply amazing how far we've fallen since then.

[Mad Max RW]

Martin, on 21 March 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

I bet you can't strip an engine down in a car and rebuild it yourself. I can.

Ha, actually I can. I worked in a garage all through highschool and college to save up enough money for my '69 Camaro. Can't do much with modern cars because they're mostly computerized shit requiring tools and codes only dealerships have access to.

[Martin]

Fair enough, but don't you see my point? There'll be something technical that the next person can do which you cannot. It doesn't make you stupid. If you want to say you can do everything, then I'm going to accuse you of being a jack of all trades, master of none.

[Mad Max RW]

Certainly. I can't build a space ship or speak fluent Chinese. If you handed me a new cell phone I wouldn't have a clue how to use it. But since I regularly use computers and all sorts of machinery it helps tremendously to know how they work. I don't know what kind of skills the average console gamer gains after years of sitting glued in front of the tv.

[Martin]

Perhaps not all console gamers spend all day on their consoles

Seriously - you're being very judgemental. Which I note is quite unlike you.

[Mad Max RW]

I'm not necessarily making a broad assessment of a huge audience of people and setting it in stone for everybody, but this is exactly how the game industry thinks. In a way they are right, because it sells. Maybe that will help people understand why so many franchises turn to crap, big AAA blockbusters are getting shorter/easier, and originality is hard to find.

[Martin]

Mad Max RW, on 22 March 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

I'm not necessarily making a broad assessment of a huge audience of people and setting it in stone for everybody,

Well, that's an extremely 'on the fence' thing to say. Either you are making an assessment of a huge audience or you aren't. Which is it? I say you were, as that's how your post before-last read. If you honestly didn't mean it like that, then choose your words better.

Mad Max RW, on 22 March 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

but this is exactly how the game industry thinks. In a way they are right, because it sells. Maybe that will help people understand why so many franchises turn to crap, big AAA blockbusters are getting shorter/easier, and originality is hard to find.

I see it differently. Old console games used to be long and hard as fuck (excuse the boner reference), as did PC games. I just don't see the 'divide' that you do. PC and console games got shorter and easier at relatively the same pace. I think two things are to blame - 1] As processing power has increased, many more man-hours are required to produce something of the same size. Thus, games have been shrinking as more and more work has had to go into the tiniest of details. 2] As gaming has become more popular, developers have taken to giving people 'experiences' rather than softwares which simply test the users reflexes and memory, etc. Shenmue is an example of this. It's really not difficult at all. It was just a revolutionary experience. Am I stupid for having it as my favourite video game ever?

The market is just wider, now. I don't think you can foot the blame on consoles or console gamers. 'Gamers' now are a very mixed bunch, both on PC and console. In years gone by they were just hardcore nerds, and all male. Again, that was on PC and console. If you look back, you can see things gradually becoming how they are now. These days, the hardcore nerds are outnumbered by normal people. Yesteryear, it was the reverse. This goes for PC and console. So I think the divide you're painting doesn't really exist. I'll also note that I know many PC gamers who don't know the first thing about the innards of a PC, or how to solve a software problem. How does that correlate with your "PC gamers are technically-minded, console gamers are stupid" point-of-view? I seriously think you're wrong on this one, and I've never thought that of you before. I think maybe you've had your head buried in these fora too much or something.

[Mad Max RW]

It probably has to do with the time period I was raised in, before Windows made PC's accessible for everybody. If you didn't know DOS, how to write batch files, and carefully manage memory you might as well pack it up. PC gaming was way more exclusive back then and not many kids had the patience to learn. Each iteration of Windows simplification and advancement of consoles is blurring the divide, which I hate because their goal is for everybody to be playing the same thing on one platform. The lowest common denominator rules. Fear the next generation.

Figures rasmus thorup downvotes me multiple times. The guy has an addiction.

[Tetsuo]

It is a matter of timing. I started out with DOS configuring autoexec, loading TSR's, configuring hi-mem, etc. so I could play games like Doom... and before then I used to play games off of floppies and did a lot of disc swapping.. but if I was born later I would have easily missed out on all that. I still had a lot of friends who played games but they just muddled through it and helped each other out so not everyone figured things out for themselves.

If you want a similar "challenge" to playing DOS games back in the day BTW try running windows games on other systems via WINE. I was telling a friend it's not so bad to me given my past pc gaming experience.

[Martin]

Mad Max RW, on 22 March 2012 - 12:27 PM, said:

It probably has to do with the time period I was raised in, before Windows made PC's accessible for everybody. If you didn't know DOS, how to write batch files, and carefully manage memory you might as well pack it up.

I think you're on the button, there. We had an Atari ST when I was a lad. I remember putting more RAM in (up to a massive 1MB from 512kb!) so we could play Street Fighter II on it. In that machine, RAM modules had to be soldered to the PCB. I nearly fucked the whole machine up unsoldering the previous module. Boy I was one relieved child when it actually booted up. I was convinced I'd ruined it!

[Mr.Deviance]

Mother fuckers did it again...
Martin, how is it that everytime you show up in a topic, I notice it suddenly becoming about consoles and your attempts to defend them against anything anybody that has to say bad stuff about them or against Pc users?
I am not accusing you of derailing this topic that I made here, since it has gotten so derailed that I've actually lost interested in fully reading it anymore.
I just bothered to read the latest posts on the second page and all I see is console vs pc war again.
This topic is made by pc gamers for pc gamers and it debates a news piece made by Gearbox, that guess what, it's also dedicated STRICTLY to Pc gamers.
So how in the fuck did consoles make their way into this topic again?
And most importantly, how in the fuck did a pc vs console war start here?
Console fanboys or Pc fanboys, one thing is for sure. Some of you here don't seem to be capable of containing your posts to the main idea of the topic you are posting in.

[Mad Max RW]

Martin, on 22 March 2012 - 05:37 PM, said:

I think you're on the button, there. We had an Atari ST when I was a lad. I remember putting more RAM in (up to a massive 1MB from 512kb!) so we could play Street Fighter II on it. In that machine, RAM modules had to be soldered to the PCB. I nearly fucked the whole machine up unsoldering the previous module. Boy I was one relieved child when it actually booted up. I was convinced I'd ruined it!

Haha, I did that exact same thing but with Mortal Kombat. What I remember most was how expensive RAM was back then. It was like gold. The game actually ran better and played better (especially with a joystick) than the arcade counterpart.

[Kathy]

Mr.Deviance, on 22 March 2012 - 05:48 PM, said:

So how in the fuck did consoles make their way into this topic again?

By stating that console gamers are stupid?
http://forums.duke4....post__p__123849

[trustn0!]

And to bring us back to our original topic lets not forget this little piece of news that popped up on Eurogamer
http://www.eurogamer...-gtx-680-review

Quote

According to NVIDIA, TXAA is set to be included in the next-gen Unreal Engine 4, Crytek is also going to support it, plus we can expect it crop up in a number of titles with EVE Onlive and Borderlands 2 already confirmed.

So then

Whos willing to bet that this is going to be another Arkham City where those extra bells and whistles will have to be patched in order to work properly?
Arkham City mind you was actually a very good version marred by shit perfomance while under DX11 that had to be patched in order to function correctly even though they delayed the damn thing for a whole month in order to have it in

[MusicallyInspired]

Martin, on 21 March 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

I actually built my PC myself, but I don't play games on it. Mostly because all my gaming friends use consoles, so to play with them, I must use one. The inferior graphics etc doesn't really bother me at all, because I'm not that anal about video games. I'll take less pixels, lower framerate etc. I simply don't care, because for me being able to bust it up online with my friends is way more important than the arguably marginal visual and temporal improvement on PC. Sure, Game X would look better on PC. But I'd be playing it alone or with randoms I don't know or care about. On PS3 I can play with people I know and love in real life, and to me that's what counts.

To me, gaming is not about playing with other people. I don't and never have considered it the main attraction. It's a bonus. It's extremely limited compared to what you can do in a single player scenario. Also, nobody I know ever seems to be interested in the games I play that are multiplayer anyway so there's no point.

[rasmus thorup]

I kinda feel the same way. If i could just play crash team racing with someone who has skills then i would be so happy. Probably won't ever happen

[Martin]

MusicallyInspired, on 23 March 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

To me, gaming is not about playing with other people. I don't and never have considered it the main attraction. It's a bonus. It's extremely limited compared to what you can do in a single player scenario. Also, nobody I know ever seems to be interested in the games I play that are multiplayer anyway so there's no point.

Fair play. To me, multiplayer is the main attraction. Consoles were a lot more multiplayer-friendly back in the day. You could struggle to have two people trying to play Street Fighter II on one keyboard, or a couple of those crappy joysticks on PCs (or PC-like system such as Atari ST and Amiga). Or you could have a SNES and it was just perfect. I guess I come from a point-of-view where, although I started on PC-like systems, I quickly became an arcade kid. Arcades were awesome for multiplayer, and the PCs back then just weren't really equipped for more than one user at a time. You could buy special hardware extensions I suppose, but they were expensive and often just not as good anyway.

I remember one of my friends was big into PCs after everyone else had graduated to a SNES or Mega Drive. It was him who showed me Doom. It was awesome, but when it came to multiplayer you had to get an expensive modem (internet was not the norm back then, at least where I come from), and it was just laggy and pretty crap anyway. Single-player Doom was awesome, but I craved multiplayer that was accessible for me and everyone I know. David had this one guy in Canada he played Doom with, and to be honest it just seemed boring. Two silent green sprites killing each other, with plenty of lag. I know all great things have small beginnings, and it was those early net-enabled games that pave the way for what we have today. I just much-preferred playing with people I knew in the same room. The choice between stale text-interaction on Doom multiplayer and the barrel of laughs we had giving each other cock knocks for cheating on Mario Kart was a simple one for me. There was just no comparison.

Then came GoldenEye, which revolutionised living room multiplayer. I think that probably sealed the deal, for me. Before all we really had was fighters and racing games to play with each other, but now we had an awesome FPS which four of us could play in one room, one machine, one copy of the game. You got a 'cock knock' (basically punching the person in the balls) if you were caught screen-seeking. An easy way to spot it was if someone ran into your sniper scope and immediately back-peddled out. They got one in the nuts for that.

I used to also love long single-player experiences when I was a kid, and from time to time still do today. Just nowhere near as often. As an adult, I prefer going out and living life than sitting in playing a computer games on my own. Me and the gang still hit it up on PS3 online (as we all have lives now), and for us the machine serves other purposes, like being a good Blu-ray player and general media centre for our families to use. Sometimes I'll play an old single-player game that I had when I was young (like FFVII recently). Not many new ones entice me, though.

[MusicallyInspired]

Don't get me wrong, I have all the consoles. Well, most of them. And have had great experiences with console multiplayer and even PC multiplayer. But gaming to me was always a personal thing first and foremost. Probably because I was brought up playing single player adventure games by Sierra and LucasArts and Apogee action platformers with all kinds of puzzles etc. Thought-provoking games that weren't all reflex that required a lot of time. Games to me aren't momentary distractions from life. Yes, I have a life. Married with two kids and a full time job as well as music obligations and hobbies on the side, all that not counting spending time with friends and all that. Games to me aren't something where you sit down with a friend and have at it for 10 to 20 minutes and then drop it (aka toys). They're as rewarding for putting time into as any book, movie, concert, play, or TV show is.

I guess my best vision of multiplayer when I was a kid was sitting down with a friend trying to figure out how to beat King's Quest 5 or Day of the Tentacle. Or Myst. I had a stint in my mid teenage years where I was all Nintendo and played tons of Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, F-Zero and all that. But I always still came back to my Turok and Legend of Zelda at the end of the day as the best experiences. Traditional multiplayer to me is just so shallow and lifeless compared to some other stuff that's out there. Luckily some multiplayer experiences are changing things up and becoming interesting like Portal 2. Also that new game on the PS3 called Journey looks very interesting.

That's my view, anyway. Everyone views things differently. But that's why I consider single player a vastly superior experience than multiplayer. I can spend time with friends playing a game of pool, cards, air hockey, or basketball anytime and it'd be funner than a console multiplayer game. To me single player is where it's always at.

[Tetsuo]

So now it's single player experiences vs multiplayer eh? Well it's not like it's an all or nothing sort of thing like you have to have only one thing or the other. This goes for playing games or any other thing you may choose to do with your spare time. You don't have to spend all your time inside playing games or out "living life".

But everyone has different tastes and priorities.

In my opinion multiplayer games especially of the split screen variety don't tend to have the same kind of well crafted stories or experience that single player games have.... and even if they did there's no telling what others may do to ruin the mood or not cooperate breaking it. When I think about it crafted story experiences aren't compatible with people screaming in your ear all the time or running off doing whatever they want.

About split screen vs net play... Personally I prefer each person to have their own screen rather than divvy up and have to get a smaller piece of the pie so to speak. Makes it more like a virtual reality experience in a way to have your own view.... although I don't deny there's a certain camaraderie of being in the same room.. sitting on the same sofa.

Also to be honest sometimes I'd prefer text chat on screen rather than have to hear others voices or have them in your face while playing a game. Sometimes stuff like that breaks the immersion like you could be playing a game where you want a certain mood and suddenly hear some snot nosed punk with a squeaky voice yell obscenities. But don't get me wrong I'm not saying "in the same room" multiplayer is invalid. Just that it's not the be all end all of multiplayer.... and this is from someone who used to play at the arcade all the time.

BTW, these days it's easier than ever to play PC games however way you want it especially with stuff like HDMI connectors and USB ports. Some FPS games are even supporting split screen on PC if that's what floats your boat.

[MusicallyInspired]

Like most of the Serious Sam series (including BFE). Sadly not the HD remakes, though.

[Danukem]

I just got Borderlands today, off of steam, GOTY edition with all the DLCs included. I followed the link in the first post and could not find the letter they wrote about Borderlands 2. Was it removed?

At any rate, I like the game so far, for the most part. I don't understand what all the fuss is about with regard to it being a crappy port of a console game. EDIT: For example, all key bindings are easily remappable. Then again, I am playing a version that has already been patched many times, so maybe those shortcomings have been fixed.

I can see how it might become boring before I finish it. There's a huge world with a lot of very similar missions, player movement is pretty slow, and you have to spend a lot of time dealing with inventory. The game is a mix of realism and anti-realism which does not always work. When it does work, it's a blast, though. I notice that people saying it was boring had only come to that conclusion after playing it for a whole week or replaying the game from the beginning. If I can get a week of entertainment out of this, I'll feel that I got my money's worth.

In order to avoid getting bored before I complete the game, I'm going to avoid doing any sidequests from now on unless I'm getting my ass kicked and need the money/XP to survive. I'm also going to ignore enemies that I don't have to kill, spent as little time as possible making inventory decisions, and in general take the quickest approach that I can. The game does not seem to reward real exploration, anyway, since if you reach an area that you have no missions for, you can't do anything useful there.

[Sebastian]

Sweet, I love the cloth bit.

http://kotaku.com/58...idias-gpu-physx

[Mr.Deviance]

Sebastian, on 02 April 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

Sweet, I love the cloth bit.

http://kotaku.com/58...idias-gpu-physx

It's really nothing new.
It's been in physx games since many years now.
They always present the same physx features as being new over and over again, every time a new game comes equipped with physx particle enhancements.
The fun that can be had shooting cloth in an fps game, can only last for a few minutes before it becomes boring and uninteresting...

[rasmus thorup]

It's a cool effect which should come up now and then while you play. Standing and shooting clothes is weird.

[trustn0!]

Its effective if its implemented properly

Still
Ripping up cloth is always nice
I aint gonna bitch about extra stuff
So long as it works properly