Sometimes I tend to be a bit busy and dislike having to adjust BIOS settings, fan settings, Windows Registry settings, DirectX Settings, Windows Defender settings, antivirus settings, launch settings, Games for Windows settings, publisher activation settings, detail settings, shader settings, sound settings, keyboard settings, and mouse settings.
I like how when I put a disc in a console, it plays.
Sometime I tend to be a bit busy and dislike having to get up from my PC desk, got to the living room, turn on the TV, the receiver, the videogame, the subwoofer, then fishing for the right game disk, then opening the console, putting the disk in the tray, closing it, going back to the couch, spent 3 minutes getting to the right channel out of 43 AV and whatever channels, waiting for the console slow boot, waiting for the loooong load times, pressing fucking start for no good reason, waiting for another load, picking "Load Save", waiting for another long load, watch 25 shitty cutscenes.
I like how when I double click a game shortcut on a PC, it plays.
See, I can write a bunch of useless moronic shit too
Sometimes I tend to be a bit busy and dislike having to adjust BIOS settings, fan settings, Windows Registry settings, DirectX Settings, Windows Defender settings, antivirus settings, launch settings, Games for Windows settings, publisher activation settings, detail settings, shader settings, sound settings, keyboard settings, and mouse settings.
I like how when I put a disc in a console, it plays.
Sometime I tend to be a bit busy and dislike having to get up from my PC desk, got to the living room, turn on the TV, the receiver, the videogame, the subwoofer, then fishing for the right game disk, then opening the console, putting the disk in the tray, closing it, going back to the couch, spent 3 minutes getting to the right channel out of 43 AV and whatever channels, waiting for the console slow boot, waiting for the loooong load times, pressing fucking start for no good reason, waiting for another load, picking "Load Save", waiting for another long load, watch 25 shitty cutscenes.
I like how when I double click a game shortcut on a PC, it plays.
See, I can write a bunch of useless moronic shit too
I approve of this post.
Psh he didn't even mention syncing the universal remote control with every device individually and troubleshooting it when it doesn't work, checking every single cable behind every single piece of furniture to see which one got pulled out very slightly by the cat last night, polishing the HD TV to make sure you can see what you're playing, changing the batteries in the universal remote control because they ran out while you were syncing it, closing the blinds so that the sun isn't shining in your face, angling the TV to the correct gaming angle because you had it set up for watching movies but you watch movies from the couch with your significant other and you game in the gaming chair which is on the other side of the room, waiting forever for the game to install on the console, waiting forever for the console to download an update for the online service before you can log in to see your friends list, having to reject the friend requests from the 8 retards who you played Call of Duty with last night who have all friended you because you made one funny joke and they want to be your bros and talk about smoking weed, replacing the batteries in the controller because they ran out, putting all the old batteries into the battery charger, plugging the battery charger in, writing a sticky note to remind yourself to call your computer-savvy cousin because your computer made funny noises and you don't know how the hell a PC works because you think you have to fiddle with the registry to get TF2 to run, and then once you finally load Fallout 3 it crashes 5 minutes in because you can't download any fan patches to fix the broken shit and you don't care because you can't download any mods to make it fun and it doesn't matter because you have to go work at your 2nd job now because all your games cost $10 more than PC games and you have to pay for DLC that the PC guys get for free and even if they don't get it for free they get mods and you don't so you have to buy DLC to keep things fresh. And if you have a 360 you have to pay for XBOX Live so you need a 3rd job and that takes even more time.
But I guess with PC gaming you have to update your drivers every couple of months which is a real bitch.
TychoCelchuuu on
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
Neither of you are addressing the real issue here:
Getting everyone else in your household the fuck away from your TV. I mean, seriously. You'll need a small mercenary band and 6 copies of The Art of War at a minimum.
Neither of you are addressing the real issue here:
Getting everyone else in your household the fuck away from your TV. I mean, seriously. You'll need a small mercenary band and 6 copies of The Art of War at a minimum.
I mean really. My TV spends it's time cycling between about five different Disney/Pixar movies and the Star Wars films. With some Muppets and Fraggles hanging out around the edges.
We can't seem to change the channel away from CBeebies. Any Brits with children in their house will vouch for the channels mind destroying ability. They have a new beast now, it goes by the name of Zingzillas. *shudders*
But then that's the reason I have my 360 and Wii in my room with the 360 on the monitor right here next to my PC and the Wii no the telly a few feet away. (Its a SDTV hence the reason I have the 360 on the much smaller monitor)
Big Classy on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
The TV usage thing is also a reason why I PC game more than console game, as while my girlfriend is perfectly fine with me gaming she also wants to sometimes watch TV while I'm playing, or she reads a book or plays her own computer. If its TV she wants, if I was a pure console gamer then that would be disruptive.
But I suppose that can apply to any situation where you have multiple people in the house wanting to use the same piece of equipment and its a lot more reasonable to have multiple TVs than multiple computers.
Consoles can usually hook up to PC monitors (and vice versa) so that's not a big deal if you do it right.
PC monitors and TVs aren't really different things at all these days.
At which point you're no longer allowed to claim this mythical "couch" as some sort of advantage from the Gods themselves.
amnesiasoft on
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
Man, I have spent some money on my rocking sound setup. If blood must run through my living room to be pleasured by it, then so help me, my dark work will be done.
The most hilarious thing is how I get fucking migraines when I play games on the couch. Something related to the low res and the arm position. I think. Oh, and the shitty 60Hz refresh rate.
I used to play games on a PC, but now i own a Wii and a PS3. I like the consoles better.
(Only downside for me is that the wii looks crappy on a big HDTV)
Yorro on
Temporary PSN: TjoxYorro
Psn: Tjoyorro
MH3 EU / Yorro (Ill look up number later)
I used to play games on a PC, but now i own a Wii and a PS3. I like the consoles better.
(Only downside for me is that the wii looks crappy on a big HDTV)
I'm flabbergasted by the sheer amount of well crafted argumentation and the pureness of your thought process. Never before has such a finely tuned discourse been laid before my humble eyes. I commend your eloquence, and cherish the huge contribution you have made to this debate.
Why thank you! I have a new girl cutting it these days. She only uses swiss knives, and finishes everything off with a few drops of olive oil. I think it makes a huge difference!
But, to clarify on Farcry, its sequel, and Crysis... I pretty much felt aggressively indifferent to all of them.
Farcry, admittedly, was cool for a bit. Never before that game had a sniped a baddy from that far away before.
But, I just felt like with those games, the graphics were the only thing truly compelling about them. The story did nothing for me, the gameplay was pretty standard shooter fare. Anything interesting in it was pretty much just enabled by the graphics being good enough. Same with Crysis. I mean, save for the graphics, and a few things associated with that funky suit, it was just "This is your objective. Kill shit while you go there! (Repeat)"
I don't mean to sidetrack this discussion, though. I'll just leave it at: I found nothing particularly compelling about any of those games. And that extends to the majority of most modern shooters.
I only mention that because it is significant to the discussion. I'm sure most people would agree that shooters are still best played on a PC. So, if you're really into shooters, it would make a lot of sense to put a lot of emphasis on PC gaming. I'm not anymore, so one of the main advantages of PC gaming is gone for me. Granted, there are RTS games, MMORPGs, and the like. But those, in my experience, aren't nearly as demanding as a modern shooter. So, you can basically play any of them on any newish computer, while consoles can easily serve your other gaming needs.
I guess the point I'm converging on would be that the games themselves should dictate your platform of choice, more than anything else. Whatever you select will be "worth it".
I'm sorry, but Crysis had excellent gameplay... The suit powers were very interesting, and they gave you wide maps to approach the areas however you wanted. Take the little town with the school you had to assault to save the woman: You could do that part 10 times, and try a very different method and geographical approach every time.
Sure, they didn't give you varied objectives, but that's precisely because they didn't want to railroad the player. Telling me "Go from this place to this place" is more than enough, when that allows me to try crazy different ways.
I believe that a person's opinion about Crysis says a lot about the person's creativity and lateral thinking.
Same with Crysis. I mean, save for the graphics, and a few things associated with that funky suit, it was just "This is your objective. Kill shit while you go there! (Repeat)"
Yeah, but that describes pretty much every FPS ever. What made it stand out is the freedom that it gave you in how you decided to get there, and most of that is due to the suit. You can turn invisible and sneak past all the sentries and surgically remove the target, or you can sprint from house to house with super speed shotgunning people in the face, or you can jump over walls and throw people at each other, or you can drive a tank and just bulldoze your way in. For that matter, you can even hop in a boat and attack from the ocean if you really want. Crysis is really the first shooter where I felt like I could do *anything* I wanted, and I must have played through the first half of the game a dozen times.
Everything else in the gameplay was designed to reinforce this freedom. The weapons customization option is the best in any game that I've ever seen. And where most FPSs cheat to increase the difficulty level, Crysis on hardest somehow became way more fun. Instead of bullshit like your weapons doing less damage, the enemy soldiers start speaking in Korean, your HUD disappears (which increases the importance of ironsights and laser sights), and the enemy actually becomes somewhat more intelligent. I still haven't run into a shooter that has handled open-world gameplay half as well as Crysis.
I'm sorry, but Crysis had excellent gameplay... The suit powers were very interesting, and they gave you wide maps to approach the areas however you wanted. Take the little town with the school you had to assault to save the woman: You could do that part 10 times, and try a very different method and geographical approach every time.
Sure, they didn't give you varied objectives, but that's precisely because they didn't want to railroad the player. Telling me "Go from this place to this place" is more than enough, when that allows me to try crazy different ways.
I believe that a person's opinion about Crysis says a lot about the person's creativity and lateral thinking.
People who don't enjoy the exact same thing in a game as you do aren't creative and think in boxes? Thanks...
A person's opinion of Crysis just speaks for what they look for in a game... or where they'd rather apply their creativity. I don't care about killing a group of baddies from different angles, or by different means. Looking at my recent gaming history, what I seem to enjoy most in a game is a good story with interesting characters. Most recent games from Bioware really do this well, I think. The action itself is only a small component of the experience, for me. I enjoy interacting with all the different characters, and watching the story unfold differently as a result. When I played Mass Effect, I felt as attached to that story and its characters as I did after reading a good book.
Don't confuse my opinion of these games as a statement of fact. I just didn't enjoy them. They're lacking in elements I typically enjoy in games. That doesn't make them bad. And that doesn't diminish your enjoyment of them. I mean, look at the online shooter genre. That's ridiculously popular these days. And I don't care for them at all. Some people enjoy the challenge associated with them. Pitting your clicky twitchy skills and tactics against other real people. It's just not what I look for in a game. I don't look down on it. It just doesn't interest me (anymore).
Edit: Actually, I want to expand on this a bit more. I've noticed that there are two types of gamers that apply to this situation. There are people who play a game once or twice, and then are done with it (me). Then there are people who play a game several times through, doing exactly as you said. Experimenting. Completely mastering it. There's a reason games like starcraft are still as popular as they are. They cater very well to this group of people. They manage to remain interesting to them for a really damn long time. I have friends who still play starcraft constantly, and enjoy it as much as I would a brand new game I'd never played before. I can see how Crysis would have that sort of appeal. But I'm more of an escapist gamer. A game to me is basically interchangeable with a book or a movie. I prefer to channel my creativity towards other things, like writing music, or towards my more career-oriented puzzles (geology).
Whatever Far Cry's flaws were, and there were many, the river level more than made up for them. Any level that lets you alternate, at whim, between quietly picking through the jungle and hauling ass upriver on a speedboat is doing it right. In fact, pretty much any section that went "you are here, your objective is way the hell over here, get there any way you can" is aces by me.
Crysis was at its best in basically the same circumstances, though it gave you a much bigger set of tools for the job. I can't say I routinely go back for repeat playthroughs on either game, and they were frustratingly hard at times, but they're still some of the most fun I've had with shooters to date. Crytek is good people, and if they want to push the envelope graphically, I say let 'em; they've proven they're not a company to short the gameplay in the process.
Oh so your issue with Crysis was with its story, not with its gameplay.
Carry on, then. I actually enjoy both types of games, but for me, a game with a horrendous story and excellent gameplay is an excellent game, while a game with an amazing story and horrendous gameplay is a terrible game.
shadydentist on
Steam & GT
GT: Tanky the Tank
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
Criticizing Far Cry/Crysis for the story is like criticizing Ninja Gaiden for its story. Or Planescape: Torment for its combat. I mean, no shit it's not great, but that's not why you play those games. It exists to give context to the part that makes it worth experiencing.
Crytek's game's aren't just great because they give you a lot of ways to kill mans. They're great because they allow for full freedom of execution (excluding the parts that don't, which are less great). They give you the ability to scout and plan, and it's very rare that a modern shooter trusts the player with something that fundamental.
Criticizing Far Cry/Crysis for the story is like criticizing Ninja Gaiden for its story. Or Planescape: Torment for its combat. I mean, no shit it's not great, but that's not why you play those games. It exists to give context to the part that makes it worth experiencing.
Crytek's game's aren't just great because they give you a lot of ways to kill mans. They're great because they allow for full freedom of execution (excluding the parts that don't, which are less great). They give you the ability to scout and plan, and it's very rare that a modern shooter trusts the player with something that fundamental.
Yeah, pretty much this. They're generic action movie plots, you know more or less what's going to happen the second anybody starts talking. Granted, it'd be nice to have an above-average script and more rounded characters, but in an action game that's kind of a secondary requirement for me. Gimme a good enough reason to shoot some dudes and make the actual shooting of dudes fun and you've got yourself a sale. Obviously, this varies across genres; less forgiving of a bad story in an RPG, and so on.
It's all a matter of opinion and preferences. I'm fine leaving it at that.
Which, again, I think should dictate one's choice of gaming platform. Use whatever platform has a lot of games you want to play available for it. PC gaming isn't the bug-infested nightmare it used to be, back in the days of Windows 98. As much time as I could spend criticizing Windows 7, I have to admit: Once you get it working (which seems to be a process varying in annoyance, from person to person), it works exponentially more reliably and easily than those older versions of Windows did. So, I don't think the old "PC gaming requires you to be a computer expert" argument carries nearly as much weight now as it used to.
The TV sharing argument a few posts back is also an amusing one. I definitely know how it feels. For most of my life, my family has only had one TV in the house. And, I vividly remember wanting to play some Sonic 2 on my old Genesis, but I couldn't because my dad wanted to watch some sporting event I couldn't care less about. I'm pretty sure those experiences were huge contributors in driving me to PC gaming in the first place. Though, again, I think that argument isn't all that valid anymore. You can hook any current console up to basically any reasonably modern computer monitor. And monitors are dirt cheap these days anyway.
And this all just made me realize: It's ridiculously easy, and a lot cheaper to be a gamer these days.
I'm sorry, but Crysis had excellent gameplay... The suit powers were very interesting, and they gave you wide maps to approach the areas however you wanted. Take the little town with the school you had to assault to save the woman: You could do that part 10 times, and try a very different method and geographical approach every time.
Sure, they didn't give you varied objectives, but that's precisely because they didn't want to railroad the player. Telling me "Go from this place to this place" is more than enough, when that allows me to try crazy different ways.
I believe that a person's opinion about Crysis says a lot about the person's creativity and lateral thinking.
People who don't enjoy the exact same thing in a game as you do aren't creative and think in boxes? Thanks...
A person's opinion of Crysis just speaks for what they look for in a game... or where they'd rather apply their creativity. I don't care about killing a group of baddies from different angles, or by different means. Looking at my recent gaming history, what I seem to enjoy most in a game is a good story with interesting characters. Most recent games from Bioware really do this well, I think. The action itself is only a small component of the experience, for me. I enjoy interacting with all the different characters, and watching the story unfold differently as a result. When I played Mass Effect, I felt as attached to that story and its characters as I did after reading a good book.
Don't confuse my opinion of these games as a statement of fact. I just didn't enjoy them. They're lacking in elements I typically enjoy in games. That doesn't make them bad. And that doesn't diminish your enjoyment of them. I mean, look at the online shooter genre. That's ridiculously popular these days. And I don't care for them at all. Some people enjoy the challenge associated with them. Pitting your clicky twitchy skills and tactics against other real people. It's just not what I look for in a game. I don't look down on it. It just doesn't interest me (anymore).
Edit: Actually, I want to expand on this a bit more. I've noticed that there are two types of gamers that apply to this situation. There are people who play a game once or twice, and then are done with it (me). Then there are people who play a game several times through, doing exactly as you said. Experimenting. Completely mastering it. There's a reason games like starcraft are still as popular as they are. They cater very well to this group of people. They manage to remain interesting to them for a really damn long time. I have friends who still play starcraft constantly, and enjoy it as much as I would a brand new game I'd never played before. I can see how Crysis would have that sort of appeal. But I'm more of an escapist gamer. A game to me is basically interchangeable with a book or a movie. I prefer to channel my creativity towards other things, like writing music, or towards my more career-oriented puzzles (geology).
"I didn't like/enjoy/have fun with Crysis" is a perfectly valid opinion. It's 100% subjective and no one can argue with that.
"Crysis has bad/shitty/zero gameplay and is just a tech demo" is a hell lot more objective, and it's completely wrong too.
I don't like soccer games, that doesn't mean they're bad/lacking in gameplay. That just means I don't like them.
You don't have to like the options that Crysis gave you, sure, but that's not the game's fault. It's a great game, (and PES11 is probably a great soccer game), it's just not for you. And by that you can derive the conclusions you derived yourself.
Oh so your issue with Crysis was with its story, not with its gameplay.
Carry on, then. I actually enjoy both types of games, but for me, a game with a horrendous story and excellent gameplay is an excellent game, while a game with an amazing story and horrendous gameplay is a terrible game.
I have to offer up the Soul Reaver series as a counterexample to your 2nd opinion. Have you played those, by chance?
Yeah okay but aside from wanking over an FPS, is there actually a cost justification to be made there? For me gaming is something I can also do on my laptop, whose existence is justified by the fact that it can record 16 tracks of audio simultaneously and edit RAW images with ten second delays between moving a slider and seeing the screen update.
I wouldn't have bought it for Civ alone, though. And that's really the one game type that really doesn't exist elsewhere, aside from MMOs which are not so much games. You can argue about FPSes being better with KBAM but you still have them on consoles. Considering that a PC that could effectively run Crysis is gonna be around a thousand bucks after all is said and done, is that a more worthwhile investment than buying all three consoles and a netbook to use for Internet access and word processing?
Is KBAM really worth that?
Assuming that you have no other demands to place upon your computer that can't be handled by a decent netbook, I don't see how you can make the claim that Crysis justifies the expense. Or Civ, for that matter.
Pheezer on
IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Yeah okay but aside from wanking over an FPS, is there actually a cost justification to be made there? For me gaming is something I can also do on my laptop, whose existence is justified by the fact that it can record 16 tracks of audio simultaneously and edit RAW images with ten second delays between moving a slider and seeing the screen update.
I wouldn't have bought it for Civ alone, though. And that's really the one game type that really doesn't exist elsewhere, aside from MMOs which are not so much games. You can argue about FPSes being better with KBAM but you still have them on consoles. Considering that a PC that could effectively run Crysis is gonna be around a thousand bucks after all is said and done, is that a more worthwhile investment than buying all three consoles and a netbook to use for Internet access and word processing?
Is KBAM really worth that?
Assuming that you have no other demands to place upon your computer that can't be handled by a decent netbook, I don't see how you can make the claim that Crysis justifies the expense. Or Civ, for that matter.
You definitely have a point. Netbooks and ultra-cheap computers in general do change things a bit. I'll stick with what I originally said, though. If you need a DESKTOP computer anyway, then I see no harm in putting it together with a bit of insight to make it a capable gaming computer. All it really takes is selecting a gaming-grade video card, which needn't be very expensive. I'm not really familiar with how Crysis runs on today's hardware, but even if it still puts quality computers to shame, I'd say games like that are in the minority. A computer that perhaps can't run Crysis flawlessly can still probably run damn near everything else very well.
Now, if one introduces netbooks and laptops with completely useless gpus, things do get a bit more complicated. I guess it really just depends on how much you're into shooters/rts/whatever works well on a PC. I can only answer that for myself.
Considering that a PC that could effectively run Crysis is gonna be around a thousand bucks after all is said and done
This is far from the truth
Is KBAM really worth that?
Yes
Maybe in 2007.
Maybe if you were being a silly goose and ini tweaking it past maximum settings at a ridiculous resolution and maxing AA, but I upgraded for $600 the Christmas after it came out and was able to run it, and everything but GTA4 and SR2 since, perfectly well.
I used to play games on a PC, but now i own a Wii and a PS3. I like the consoles better.
(Only downside for me is that the wii looks crappy on a big HDTV)
I'm flabbergasted by the sheer amount of well crafted argumentation and the pureness of your thought process. Never before has such a finely tuned discourse been laid before my humble eyes. I commend your eloquence, and cherish the huge contribution you have made to this debate.
That's a lot of uncalled-for sarcasm. Dude didn't say anything worth jumping down his throat over.
Posts
Except for the Crysis comment, yeah.
Crysis has awesome gameplay, well the first two thirds of it anyway.
(Queue up twenty pages of arguing about Crysis.)
That game was pretty mindblowing in '04. Nobody had really let you have that kind of freedom in a shooter before.
edit: Deus Ex doesn't count. That game is so much more.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I approve of this post.
Psh he didn't even mention syncing the universal remote control with every device individually and troubleshooting it when it doesn't work, checking every single cable behind every single piece of furniture to see which one got pulled out very slightly by the cat last night, polishing the HD TV to make sure you can see what you're playing, changing the batteries in the universal remote control because they ran out while you were syncing it, closing the blinds so that the sun isn't shining in your face, angling the TV to the correct gaming angle because you had it set up for watching movies but you watch movies from the couch with your significant other and you game in the gaming chair which is on the other side of the room, waiting forever for the game to install on the console, waiting forever for the console to download an update for the online service before you can log in to see your friends list, having to reject the friend requests from the 8 retards who you played Call of Duty with last night who have all friended you because you made one funny joke and they want to be your bros and talk about smoking weed, replacing the batteries in the controller because they ran out, putting all the old batteries into the battery charger, plugging the battery charger in, writing a sticky note to remind yourself to call your computer-savvy cousin because your computer made funny noises and you don't know how the hell a PC works because you think you have to fiddle with the registry to get TF2 to run, and then once you finally load Fallout 3 it crashes 5 minutes in because you can't download any fan patches to fix the broken shit and you don't care because you can't download any mods to make it fun and it doesn't matter because you have to go work at your 2nd job now because all your games cost $10 more than PC games and you have to pay for DLC that the PC guys get for free and even if they don't get it for free they get mods and you don't so you have to buy DLC to keep things fresh. And if you have a 360 you have to pay for XBOX Live so you need a 3rd job and that takes even more time.
But I guess with PC gaming you have to update your drivers every couple of months which is a real bitch.
Getting everyone else in your household the fuck away from your TV. I mean, seriously. You'll need a small mercenary band and 6 copies of The Art of War at a minimum.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I mean really. My TV spends it's time cycling between about five different Disney/Pixar movies and the Star Wars films. With some Muppets and Fraggles hanging out around the edges.
But then that's the reason I have my 360 and Wii in my room with the 360 on the monitor right here next to my PC and the Wii no the telly a few feet away. (Its a SDTV hence the reason I have the 360 on the much smaller monitor)
But I suppose that can apply to any situation where you have multiple people in the house wanting to use the same piece of equipment and its a lot more reasonable to have multiple TVs than multiple computers.
PC monitors and TVs aren't really different things at all these days.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Liar
everyone knows PCs can only have interlaced 14" EGA monitors.
"PS3s don't work on monitors...my brother tried it"
I explained that my monitor had an HDMI port, and he just looked confused.
(Only downside for me is that the wii looks crappy on a big HDTV)
Psn: Tjoyorro
MH3 EU / Yorro (Ill look up number later)
They don't make VGA adapters for ps3?
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
I'm flabbergasted by the sheer amount of well crafted argumentation and the pureness of your thought process. Never before has such a finely tuned discourse been laid before my humble eyes. I commend your eloquence, and cherish the huge contribution you have made to this debate.
Why thank you! I have a new girl cutting it these days. She only uses swiss knives, and finishes everything off with a few drops of olive oil. I think it makes a huge difference!
But, to clarify on Farcry, its sequel, and Crysis... I pretty much felt aggressively indifferent to all of them.
Farcry, admittedly, was cool for a bit. Never before that game had a sniped a baddy from that far away before.
But, I just felt like with those games, the graphics were the only thing truly compelling about them. The story did nothing for me, the gameplay was pretty standard shooter fare. Anything interesting in it was pretty much just enabled by the graphics being good enough. Same with Crysis. I mean, save for the graphics, and a few things associated with that funky suit, it was just "This is your objective. Kill shit while you go there! (Repeat)"
I don't mean to sidetrack this discussion, though. I'll just leave it at: I found nothing particularly compelling about any of those games. And that extends to the majority of most modern shooters.
I only mention that because it is significant to the discussion. I'm sure most people would agree that shooters are still best played on a PC. So, if you're really into shooters, it would make a lot of sense to put a lot of emphasis on PC gaming. I'm not anymore, so one of the main advantages of PC gaming is gone for me. Granted, there are RTS games, MMORPGs, and the like. But those, in my experience, aren't nearly as demanding as a modern shooter. So, you can basically play any of them on any newish computer, while consoles can easily serve your other gaming needs.
I guess the point I'm converging on would be that the games themselves should dictate your platform of choice, more than anything else. Whatever you select will be "worth it".
Sure, they didn't give you varied objectives, but that's precisely because they didn't want to railroad the player. Telling me "Go from this place to this place" is more than enough, when that allows me to try crazy different ways.
I believe that a person's opinion about Crysis says a lot about the person's creativity and lateral thinking.
Yeah, but that describes pretty much every FPS ever. What made it stand out is the freedom that it gave you in how you decided to get there, and most of that is due to the suit. You can turn invisible and sneak past all the sentries and surgically remove the target, or you can sprint from house to house with super speed shotgunning people in the face, or you can jump over walls and throw people at each other, or you can drive a tank and just bulldoze your way in. For that matter, you can even hop in a boat and attack from the ocean if you really want. Crysis is really the first shooter where I felt like I could do *anything* I wanted, and I must have played through the first half of the game a dozen times.
Everything else in the gameplay was designed to reinforce this freedom. The weapons customization option is the best in any game that I've ever seen. And where most FPSs cheat to increase the difficulty level, Crysis on hardest somehow became way more fun. Instead of bullshit like your weapons doing less damage, the enemy soldiers start speaking in Korean, your HUD disappears (which increases the importance of ironsights and laser sights), and the enemy actually becomes somewhat more intelligent. I still haven't run into a shooter that has handled open-world gameplay half as well as Crysis.
/end Crysis rant.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
People who don't enjoy the exact same thing in a game as you do aren't creative and think in boxes? Thanks...
A person's opinion of Crysis just speaks for what they look for in a game... or where they'd rather apply their creativity. I don't care about killing a group of baddies from different angles, or by different means. Looking at my recent gaming history, what I seem to enjoy most in a game is a good story with interesting characters. Most recent games from Bioware really do this well, I think. The action itself is only a small component of the experience, for me. I enjoy interacting with all the different characters, and watching the story unfold differently as a result. When I played Mass Effect, I felt as attached to that story and its characters as I did after reading a good book.
Don't confuse my opinion of these games as a statement of fact. I just didn't enjoy them. They're lacking in elements I typically enjoy in games. That doesn't make them bad. And that doesn't diminish your enjoyment of them. I mean, look at the online shooter genre. That's ridiculously popular these days. And I don't care for them at all. Some people enjoy the challenge associated with them. Pitting your clicky twitchy skills and tactics against other real people. It's just not what I look for in a game. I don't look down on it. It just doesn't interest me (anymore).
Edit: Actually, I want to expand on this a bit more. I've noticed that there are two types of gamers that apply to this situation. There are people who play a game once or twice, and then are done with it (me). Then there are people who play a game several times through, doing exactly as you said. Experimenting. Completely mastering it. There's a reason games like starcraft are still as popular as they are. They cater very well to this group of people. They manage to remain interesting to them for a really damn long time. I have friends who still play starcraft constantly, and enjoy it as much as I would a brand new game I'd never played before. I can see how Crysis would have that sort of appeal. But I'm more of an escapist gamer. A game to me is basically interchangeable with a book or a movie. I prefer to channel my creativity towards other things, like writing music, or towards my more career-oriented puzzles (geology).
Crysis was at its best in basically the same circumstances, though it gave you a much bigger set of tools for the job. I can't say I routinely go back for repeat playthroughs on either game, and they were frustratingly hard at times, but they're still some of the most fun I've had with shooters to date. Crytek is good people, and if they want to push the envelope graphically, I say let 'em; they've proven they're not a company to short the gameplay in the process.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
You throw a fireball and it FLATTENS A GODDAMN HOUSE.
Carry on, then. I actually enjoy both types of games, but for me, a game with a horrendous story and excellent gameplay is an excellent game, while a game with an amazing story and horrendous gameplay is a terrible game.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Crytek's game's aren't just great because they give you a lot of ways to kill mans. They're great because they allow for full freedom of execution (excluding the parts that don't, which are less great). They give you the ability to scout and plan, and it's very rare that a modern shooter trusts the player with something that fundamental.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Yeah, pretty much this. They're generic action movie plots, you know more or less what's going to happen the second anybody starts talking. Granted, it'd be nice to have an above-average script and more rounded characters, but in an action game that's kind of a secondary requirement for me. Gimme a good enough reason to shoot some dudes and make the actual shooting of dudes fun and you've got yourself a sale. Obviously, this varies across genres; less forgiving of a bad story in an RPG, and so on.
That said, that scene in Warhead where Psycho
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Which, again, I think should dictate one's choice of gaming platform. Use whatever platform has a lot of games you want to play available for it. PC gaming isn't the bug-infested nightmare it used to be, back in the days of Windows 98. As much time as I could spend criticizing Windows 7, I have to admit: Once you get it working (which seems to be a process varying in annoyance, from person to person), it works exponentially more reliably and easily than those older versions of Windows did. So, I don't think the old "PC gaming requires you to be a computer expert" argument carries nearly as much weight now as it used to.
The TV sharing argument a few posts back is also an amusing one. I definitely know how it feels. For most of my life, my family has only had one TV in the house. And, I vividly remember wanting to play some Sonic 2 on my old Genesis, but I couldn't because my dad wanted to watch some sporting event I couldn't care less about. I'm pretty sure those experiences were huge contributors in driving me to PC gaming in the first place. Though, again, I think that argument isn't all that valid anymore. You can hook any current console up to basically any reasonably modern computer monitor. And monitors are dirt cheap these days anyway.
And this all just made me realize: It's ridiculously easy, and a lot cheaper to be a gamer these days.
"I didn't like/enjoy/have fun with Crysis" is a perfectly valid opinion. It's 100% subjective and no one can argue with that.
"Crysis has bad/shitty/zero gameplay and is just a tech demo" is a hell lot more objective, and it's completely wrong too.
I don't like soccer games, that doesn't mean they're bad/lacking in gameplay. That just means I don't like them.
You don't have to like the options that Crysis gave you, sure, but that's not the game's fault. It's a great game, (and PES11 is probably a great soccer game), it's just not for you. And by that you can derive the conclusions you derived yourself.
I wouldn't have bought it for Civ alone, though. And that's really the one game type that really doesn't exist elsewhere, aside from MMOs which are not so much games. You can argue about FPSes being better with KBAM but you still have them on consoles. Considering that a PC that could effectively run Crysis is gonna be around a thousand bucks after all is said and done, is that a more worthwhile investment than buying all three consoles and a netbook to use for Internet access and word processing?
Is KBAM really worth that?
Assuming that you have no other demands to place upon your computer that can't be handled by a decent netbook, I don't see how you can make the claim that Crysis justifies the expense. Or Civ, for that matter.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
This is far from the truth
Yes
Maybe in 2007.
You definitely have a point. Netbooks and ultra-cheap computers in general do change things a bit. I'll stick with what I originally said, though. If you need a DESKTOP computer anyway, then I see no harm in putting it together with a bit of insight to make it a capable gaming computer. All it really takes is selecting a gaming-grade video card, which needn't be very expensive. I'm not really familiar with how Crysis runs on today's hardware, but even if it still puts quality computers to shame, I'd say games like that are in the minority. A computer that perhaps can't run Crysis flawlessly can still probably run damn near everything else very well.
Now, if one introduces netbooks and laptops with completely useless gpus, things do get a bit more complicated. I guess it really just depends on how much you're into shooters/rts/whatever works well on a PC. I can only answer that for myself.
Maybe if you were being a silly goose and ini tweaking it past maximum settings at a ridiculous resolution and maxing AA, but I upgraded for $600 the Christmas after it came out and was able to run it, and everything but GTA4 and SR2 since, perfectly well.
That's a lot of uncalled-for sarcasm. Dude didn't say anything worth jumping down his throat over.