Was PC gaming ever in its current state?

[Lithan]

Pc gamer... and they almost had to rescind it because so many other places went WTF when they saw it. HL2 got... ~ 60 GOTY awards if I remember right.


edit: LoL go read PcGamer's review. I've never seen a review so clearly bought and paid for. It's "cinematic beginning"... There are few FPS out today with less cinematic beginnings than Crysis had. -Ooop someone's in trouble. Oh look, we're jumping out a plane... havent seen that before... what's that trouble with the landing... we're spread out? How creative. Oh look a turtle. Time to shoot people.- And they Pile praise on the "cliffhanger" ending that even the other 90%+ reviews called a low point of the game.

 

[Lithan]

Originally posted by: Zenoth

You completely misinterpreted my post.

I never compared H-L to Crysis in terms of game-play quality. You made it up.

I compared H-L to Crysis in terms of their potential exclusivity status on the PC platform.

Ahh, I did misunderstand you then. PC's have tons of exclusives in that case... it's just that there arent console owners frustrated that they don't get them.

 

[AzN]

I thought original Half Life 2 wasn't that good however I did like Episode 1 and 2.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: Lithan
You have an unusual taste in games. HL2 won probably 80% of the GOTY awards in 04. It sure wasnt anywhere near as good as the original but it was a very good game.

As I've already said, Crysis isn't bad, but it's not even in the same dimension as Halflife.

HL2 wasn't that good IMO. was crysis better? debatable.. at least in crysis i knew what iw as doing. HL2 was a convenient series of points that you *had* to go to, with no real objective.

now the HL2 episodes.. those were *way* better than HL2, IMO

 

[Lithan]

I actually preferred HL2 to the eps. Ep1 was close though. Ep2 was just too many fights where you gotta use the grav cannon because A: scripted reasons or B: You're in a fight that goes on forever and you've run out of ammo on everything.

I havent played fullon crysis, but It's a 70% or so game judging from the demo
HL2 and eps are 85-90 games.
Halflife was 95+

What do you mean by no real objective though? I never got that sense. Yes it's linear, but for any game that plot driven that will be inevitable. And in a FPS that's actually preferable. It's better then wandering around a huge environment trying to find a trigger that will progress the story after everything is already killed.

My biggest complaint about HL2 was that it was too imbalanced. On hard the Robots were a hell of a battle, because you didnt get enough rockets to take them down and had to rely on grav cannons or just emptying every gun one after the other into them... but the humans were a joke. I dont think I ever took damage from a combine soldier. Bugs were a nice balance. But the story was quality... top notch for a shooter, and the gameplay was great and at times even creative. Maybe I'm missing out on the second half of Crysis, but according to most reviews I'm not (almost all say the 1st half is much better than the second). It's pretty generic. The physics is nice but it really has no use. I'd be more impressed if you could shoot down trees and they'd crash into enemy bases and throw them into disorder allowing you to stealth in and get the jump on them... but I never saw any situation where that was possible. The height of strategy I saw was "look at that with your binocs" or "get grenades to throw at the embedded machine gun". If I get it with a hardware purchase (and I probably will, Crytek started bundling farcry with everything about a year after release), I'm sure I'll play through it. But even though I'm looking for decent games to kill time this summer, I don't plan to buy it.

Anyway, this thread is tangental enough. Let's debate Crysis in it's own thread if ya'll want.

 

[AzN]

70% of the game? You mean less than 1 % of the entire game.

Demo doesn't do Crysis justice. Demo just shows a very limited part of the game. You haven't even played the game yet and you are hating on it. :roll:

 

[BladeVenom]

Was PC gaming ever in its current state?

No, it has never been as big as it is now.

Compare PC vs. consoles in the Atary 2600 days. Console gaming was thousand times more popular than PC gaming.

Compare PC gaming vs. the Nintendo Entertainment System. Console gaming was hundred times more popular than PC gaming.

Now PC gaming is as popular as any individual console. The two most profitable games are World of Warcraft a PC game. The second most profitable game is the Sims which is another PC game.

 

[Lithan]

Azn, is english not your first language? You need to reread that post.
I'm not hating it, I'm just saying that it's not the hands down best game of it's genre ever that Halflife was when it was released.

 

[AzN]

Why cause my handle is Azn?

Are you a racist by any chance trying to race profile me?

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Azn
70% of the game? You mean less than 1 % of the entire game.

Demo doesn't do Crysis justice. Demo just shows a very limited part of the game. You haven't even played the game yet and you are hating on it. :roll:

I'd argue the demo showcases one of the best parts, or best elements. The you vs Korean bits.
Once you hit the aliens it's pretty much downhill from there on out.

 

[AzN]

What? Alien was the best part.

 

[Lithan]

No, because you consistently seem to misunderstand what I post, also your grammar suggests that English isn't your first language.

To clarify, 70% was my rating for Crysis based on the demo, not the amount of the game I felt the demo contained.

Also, the phrase you were looking for is "racially profile" it's a distinction of part of speech that most primary English speakers would be aware of. I don't mean any insult, but you do seem to be very argumentative and a lot of our disagreements seem to be rooted in a gap of communication between us.

 

[AzN]

Oh I understand alright. :laugh:

Your grammar isn't perfect either. :roll: I had it racially profiling prior but I changed it to race profile instead.

Our arguments come from you saying how your 9600gt is best in every stinking post you make and your lack of understanding 3d architecture or PC gaming period. :disgust:

 

[SexyK]

Crysis and HL2 are probably about even overall when you weigh the pros and cons of each. The original HL is in a class of its own that is not comparable, so it's not even worth trying. Of course HL was one of the best games in its genre when released... it basically created it's own genre!

 

[CP5670]

Crysis looked pretty good to me from the demo, purely as a game. If it's anything like Far Cry, I'll like it a lot. However, the engine seems to be poorly optimized from what I've seen in the demo. Sure, it looks spectacular on high or very high, but less so on low or medium, and it still doesn't run that well. I'm waiting to upgrade my video card before getting it so I can play at full settings (which will be whenever the GT200 comes out).

As for HL2, that was possibly the single worst FPS I've played in the last five or six years (the only comparable one is Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and even that was a good game at its core that was brought down by bugs). It had a few good ideas, but was plagued by some truly atrocious level design that made most of it a chore to play through for me. I didn't bother with the expansions.

 

[AzN]

Even at medium it's one of the best looking games to date.

 

[CP5670]

The demo didn't look like that impressive to me. Looking in Google throws up this or this for example, which looks like Far Cry with a higher draw distance. Granted, that still looks pretty good today, but it's nothing like the game on high or very high and the performance is still poor.

 

[AzN]

come on farcry? I played farcry recently. Maybe Crysis at low settings.

 

[CP5670]

Far Cry with all the content updates and the HDR (with properly adjusted parameters; the default ones are too high) still looks quite good. You wouldn't think that the game is four years old.

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: CP5670
Far Cry with all the content updates and the HDR (with properly adjusted parameters; the default ones are too high) still looks quite good. You wouldn't think that the game is four years old.

Looking at Crysis from screenshots kind of defeats the purpose. When you take into account the fact that you can shoot a forest apart in a gun fight. Sure, it's a pretty game, but it's functionally pretty also. Nothing in Farcry compares to how the caves look on high though, nothing.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

It's always been this like. People are jsut overdramatising because consoles are finally beginning to act like mini pc's

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: skace
Looking at Crysis from screenshots kind of defeats the purpose. When you take into account the fact that you can shoot a forest apart in a gun fight. Sure, it's a pretty game, but it's functionally pretty also. Nothing in Farcry compares to how the caves look on high though, nothing.

This is good to see, and stuff like this is why I think I'll like this game a lot, but it's not a graphical feature at all and certainly does not justify the kind of performance you get on lowered settings.

You're probably right about the caves, especially as FC's indoor portions are showing their age more than the outdoor parts. Of course, the framerate is supposed to be even worse in that part of the game.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: Lonyo
... but for things like Crysis, which came out on the PC first anyway, porting it to consoles 6 months+ later isn't really something to care about.

Yeah, and the opposite is true too, and I can wait for GTA IV to come out for PC.

I honestly don't care about "exclusives," I just care what good games come out for PC period.

Yes, the ports coming 6+ months later for a console are not a problem for PC gaming at all. Conversely, I don't mind that games like Gears of War, Halo 2 (although the Vista exclusive thing was just idiotic), etc coming out for the PC several months after their console debuts. This is one of the reasons I don't have a XBox 360. For the most part every good game on the 360 gets a port over to the PC eventually or a simultaneous release on both platforms. Heck, I can even play the good majority of 360 ports with my XBox 360 USB controller. Not to mention the price of a PC game isn't locked at $60 for a new release. Typically, I bargain hunt for even new PC games, and I tend to get anything I'm interested in getting for sub-$30 prices.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Randum
i seem to think that during the release of ps2, i felt like it was ignored for a while but quickly rebounded?? Whenever they started to require 3d cards, it left a lot of people in the dust, but then picked up...
just remember, pc gaming is the one console world those developers wanted.....one single platform...right?

Single platform? Myriad of video cards, drivers revisions for said video cards, sound cards, input devices, OS, service packs for OS, etc.

I think the single platform the game makers are envisioning is a set hardware spec PC, laden with so much hardware and software DRM it would make your head spin.

 

[Magnulus]

The "golden age" of PC gaming was in the 90's. Consoles could simply not compete with PC's at all in the types of games, and the costs for content artists was still relatively low. Hardware was limited but so were peoples expectations. I believe the "Golden Age" for the PC began with PC clones (cheaper prices), VGA video cards and the Soundblaster soundcard in the early 90's- before that systems like the Commoder 64 and Amiga were actually better and cheaper gaming machines- X-Wing and Wing Commander were probably some of the first seminal "golden age" PC games. It ended some time around 2001 when consoles started becomming much more powerful. Deus Ex was perhaps the last "golden age" PC action game.

Now we see alot of cross platform games but not all CP games are the same. On the PC Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and 2 were very different games from the XBox 360 versions. The only things they shared similar were some artistic resources (and the graphics were actually inferior on the PC version, but they were different games in the feel- the console version was less "simulation" type play).

The real limitations for PC gaming, and indeed all gaming, now days is that the hardware and tools just aren't good enough to do every single game idea. In the "Golden Age" of PC gaming they got around the hardware limitations by various means and gaming conventions- gamers just learned that you couldn't just pull out a chainsaw and rip open a door, you had to find the yellow key card. That enemies were as dumb as bricks and only scary because they had no fear and came in large groups, and so on. When we get past all these hardware limitations it is really going to open up the possibilities. The big hurdles left in gaming are physics and AI. Graphics are flattening out in how much better they can get, they are certainly convincing enough as is, but physics and AI are still lacking in many games. Another barrier is the economics of games: PC gaming hardware is still too expensive, especially in the US with a declining standard of living: consoles will have an edge here with their more closed hardware. In Europe and Asia, piracy is a bigger threat, since it is difficult to protect PC software from piracy.