A yuh, I got past the intro/night time stuff this morning AND turned up the detail. It’s a pretty damn impressive game.
I’m used to Doom/Quake/BioShock/DeadSpace/SplinterCell which I can’t really play before dusk here, the house is too bright, crysis started out that way.
As far as the upgradability issue, I don’t generally upgrade computers piecemeal. Sure, I’ll throw extra RAM and disks in, but only after they’ve reached End of Life pricing. (like I said,I got the 9800 for $125, and that’s because it’s replaced by the GTS 250 at $150 and they’re nearly the same card.
While you can bulk upgrade features on the PC, the console forces the game developer to use more of it as time goes on…you CAN’T upgrade the box, they have a 5 to 10 year lifespan, if you want to compete, you code to the hardware as best as you can.
But at the same time, when a game is available for the PC, Xbox, PS3, and Wii…it’s going to look nearly the same on all platforms.
PC is a superior gaming system, IMHO, for the following reasons:
It is a upgradeable. This gives you options. The game that comes out a year after you build your rig can be played at a good level of detail with your current gear, or if you want to, you can upgrade and get a much more immersive playing experience. This also means you can always pick up older titles and enjoy them with more bells and whistles on that you did 5 years ago before your last upgrade.
It can be cheaper than console gaming. Why? Everyone has a PC and most can be upgraded to decent gaming rigs (just like the OP’s) for less than or on par with what a console costs). If you’re going to upgrade your rig or you’re getting a PC, you can again, spend less that you would spend on a console and have a rig that will do all the PC stuff you want to do, only better, AND have access to gaming. Combine this with the fact that PC games are cheaper at release, benefit from competitive prices from online retailers (Left 4 dead is still $57 for xbox 360 and will likely continue to be over $50 for a while yet), my cousin got her copy from steam for $24.99 on a weekend sale).
Multiplayer communities thrive on the PC and tend to last much longer than on any single console game.
Modding communities extend and enhance the game play for many games. Playing Oblivion on PC now is not only cheaper than picking it up for xbox 360 or Ps3, it is a completely different experience. Not just different, but also a LOT better. From mods than enhance the immersiveness of the world, the graphics, and the gameplay to other mods that offer extra content such as new guilds and quests, it’s just a 10x better game on the PC. and the same is true for most games. I’ve gone back to play 8 year old games simply because the community around them had developed interesting mods for them.
I disagree. Even on titles that come out on multiple platforms the PC version will usually:
Perform better. Just look at comparative reviews. This is almost always on the list of differences. You will almost always see the following in such reviews (or something like it): “The PC version of the game does not suffer from the frame rate drops and performance issues of -insert console here-”.
We usually get better graphics from the developers, either in the form of more geometry, more post processing effects, higher resolution textures.
Most PC gamers will have hardware much superior to anything on the consoles. So we get better graphics on the level of better performance, but also in terms of higher resolutions and more image quality filters (anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering).
Finally, although this is not true for all titles certainly, we tend to get either DLC for free or some sort of gameplay enhancements. Just take a look at Mass effect on the PC vs on the consoles. Arguably it plays on the PC much more like what the dev team had intended.
I think what you get out of it relies on what you put into it. If you’re gung-ho into PC gaming, 1,3 and 4 are a bonus. I’m not going to fall into the ‘It’s not a priority for me, so it must not be important’ logical fallacy that comes out of these debates. I’ve found that all games get cheap over time. I’m a patient guy and would rather pay $20 for two AAA games that are a year old, than pre-ordering the same games before release.
I did that with BioShock, Prey, and Mass Effect. For $50, I got $180 worth of gameplay happiness. OR rather, I played BioShock all the way through, probably won’t play Prey all the way through, and may get back to Mass Effect.
I’ve also found that I tend to shy away from online communities for the reasons I’ve mentioned above, but also because: I don’t have the time to dedicate to online gaming. In one month period, I’ll get in maybe 8 hours of gameplay. It was different before the kids, and I’ve had a hard time justifying xbox live before netflix streaming came along.
Netflix streaming, another thing you can do on PC, and has been available there for years before it came to xbox
On my PC I can actually download titles in the background from Netflix allowing me to watch them at their full bitrate whenever I want without hogging my bandwidth when it’s needed or getting the “sorry we interrupted your stream” message from Netflix.
Also, absolutely I agree with multi-player communities. There are only a few titles where I enjoy that sort of thing. Left 4 dead for one. But my main gaming is done single player, and that’s where those modding communities come in to play.
It’s because it’s nighttime in the demo when you first parachute (sorta) onto the island. As you make your way around, the Sun will start to come up, give it some time.
The demo is the first level right up until you locate the frozen boat out of water.
So, what are you guys all thinking about this whole OnLive thing, that proposes to simply stream the games’ output via high speed broadband, and collects the player’s input? If it works as advertised, it’d basically do away with the need for upgrading and buying new consoles (or buying consoles at all), so you could basically always play all the latest games on highest settings, independent of the hardware on your end.
OP, I forgot to mention: in Crysis, when you first land and once you get your HUD online and everything, put the flashlight on your rifle and check that out. Yeah, it makes the bad guys spot you easier, but man…does that look realistic, swinging that light around, or what?
Seriously: buy Crysis (I found a copy on Ebay for just over $15) and buy yourself Fallout 3, and if your gaming time is as limited as you say it is, you won’t need another game again for months. Especially from Fallout 3. It’s not just a game, it’s a committment! And it’s awesome!
Yeah OnLive would definitely kill consoles and high end PC gaming overnight.
The thing is though, I’m convinced it’s bullshit. It’s not going to work because it can’t work.
There are three huge issues that need to be resolved. They claim they have, but if that’s true they have solved problems that the best minds in the field have not yet solved.
Video encoding. they claim they can provide 720p video @60 fps over a 5 Mbit line encoded in real time obvisouly. This is frankly incredible. It’s a truly remarkable statement. Which is why I don’t believe it. It either looks like crap or it’s not 720p @60 fps.
Latency. This is a big issue. You need some miracle technology to allow the average broadband user to be able to play a game with the same responsiveness as when he plays it locally on his PC. I’m not buying this either. MAYBE it possible in best case scenarios, but in the real world? No way.
computing power. Think about it. What kind of rig do you need to run Crysis at 720p with all the bells and whistles on? Now add the computing power required to compress and stream the data and handle all the overhead. Now multiply that requirement for EVERY SINGLE PLAYER.
Imagine that. Crysis 2 comes out and (being conservative) a million people want to play it. The cost of the hardware, the bandwidth, the data centers, etc would be staggering.
Online is just too good to be true IMHO.
There is also another issue: For your average console gamer 720p sounds great. But as a PC gamer, I haven’t played a game at 720p since the late 90’s. That kind of resolution is not good enough for PC gamers.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the keyboard angle yet.
IMO, game controllers suck. Keyboard + mouse is superior in every way.
Except, of course, in the fookin’ games that they design for console & PC and they don’t change the controls for the keyboard. It sucks to have 100+ keys but only have about 7 of them actually do anything because the designers didn’t want to do the very-minimal work to make it possible to map keys to functions.
My Xbox is hooked up to my TV. My PC isn’t (Granted, I don’t have Xbox live, but my point is that would be a key difference for me if I actually cared about it)
Don’t forget that compatibility is a big issue not just for newer games but older ones too. For the former you get the fun of making sure your computer is new enough for it. For the latter, well, you hope your OS decides to be nice. Playing older games on a new OS can be difficult, assuming it works at all. With consoles, it’s not a problem–either you have one that’s backwards compatible, or you can find an older one cheap. We have console games here that are over 10 years old that we can still play without a hitch. Any of my PC games that are that old are going to be hit or miss on if I can get them working right. Being able to pick up an old favourite game without having to futz around with installation or OS settings extends the life of console games well past that of PC games for me.
I’m similarly sceptical of their claims, but they’re apparently throwing it out for beta later this year, so then we’ll see if it works or crashes and burns – I probably wouldn’t want to buy stock from them just yet, though.
I think it’s not impossible to solve this issue, though – if they used some form of distributed computing approach, they could take advantage of the combined processing power of all their clients, while only a few of them would be playing. Such networks are even today faster than the fastest supercomputers (Folding@home is currently operating at something like 5 petaflops, while IBM’s current star roadrunner clocks in at around 1.5 pflops), so if that power were shared, this might easily average out to more than one high end system per player.
I’ve got no idea about the other issues, though, and in particular the latency thing seems a difficult obstacle to overcome – it’s no fun playing a game where you’re killed three times before you can shoot back once.
I don’t see how this would work. That type of distributed computing approach works well for very complex, very parallel computations like protein folding, but the results are not instantaneous.
You can’t offload all of that 3d rasterization to the clients and expect 60 fps with anything resembling a reasonable latency. That computer power MUST reside on the data centers I think. Which again, would cost a butt load of money to build and then support.
It would be equivalent to the dope forums having an exclusive multi-core, multi gpu, many hard drive server for EACH ONE OF US. You would get your own server, I would get my own server, etc. Could the Chicago reader afford such a thing? Could anyone?
Yeah, I could dig out my NES, hook it up to my HDTV and play some Zelda. It would look butt-ugly though. Alternatively I could turn on my PC, download an emulator/rom and play Zelda with post-processing effects. I’m not sure about the legality of that (if you own the game, it’s ok?) but I think it’s the better option.
For the most part, you’re right, especially in FPS type games where you can use the mouse to “look around” rather than having to use two thumbs on two little analog sticks.
Some games are better with console controllers though, like sports games.
I believe it is legal if you own the game. And I forgot about emulators! Another plus for PC!
There’s also other services coming out for classic gaming. Good old games for example, wraps up old games in a custom dos box guaranteed to work on modern OS’s. And some can be had for under $5.
I agree. I would never play FIFA 09 with mouse and keyboard. Also, racing games I find are better with a controller than with mouse and keyboard. And they are the type of game that I prefer to play from my couch instead of say Left 4 dead or Neverwinter nights, where I want to be close to the monitor and engaged in the immersion.
Lucky for me I’m a PC gamer so I have both of those options available to me
I play Left for dead with mouse and keyboard, because, lets’ face it, I couldn’t touch Senor Beef with a controller!
But I play GRID from my couch and with a wireless xbox360 controller on my PC.
I’m exactly the same way. I know that I can use my PC with my HDTV LCD, but I don’t feel like dragging the tower downstairs and setting all that up!
Some games are meant for the couch and TV…some are better in front of a monitor.
And I have a couple little boys, too, and for two or more player games (with the player actually present!) the computer is out. Consoles have their place, and they are fun and better at a couple things, but I still like PC gaming much better overall. Especially late at night when it’s just me.
The modding community is where it is at. Have you guys seen some of the crazy stuff they’ve modded into Fallout 3? Sure, DLC is nice, but it just doesn’t compare to the sheer amount of great stuff put out by the community.
I have nothing against consoles, but I really like the extra potential options that come with PC gaming. Plus, I absolutely hate using a controller for first person control. It’s an entirely personal preference, but it kills a lot of console games for me.
I think most people fall into the console + PC gamer really. With one exception, most people I know who consider themselves console gamers play PC games. The other exception is me, who plays PC games exclusively and doesn’t own a console.
