265: Punching the Baby Seal of PC Gaming

[cynik]

Also: while I've only sold a couple photos and wouldn't consider myself a pro, I do have a DSLR and a case of lenses. They all work very well and I've had absolutely no problems with them. Very plug-and-play. Works as intended.

-- Chuck

Well then Chuck, it appears to me that you're not using canon system, hah. It would probably be advisable not to dwell into frontfocus/backfocus issues on a gaming forum. Anyway, your article was a good enough excuse for my little rant, so thanks for this. Nothing beats anonymous yapping how things used to be better in the past, after an annoying day at work.

 

[murphy7801]

Pretty pathetic that were that this gets published and doesn't really have a valid point just a opinion piece that doesn't really illustrate what happens in real life except that the writer is shit with pc's. This also could miss lead people from buying starcraft 2.

Sure. If they're morons.

Trying to say that Chuck's article is pathetic because it's "just an opinion piece" is like saying one of Yahtzee's videos is pathetic for the very same reason. All reviews are opinion pieces. We all have our opinions. One person's opinion shouldn't persuade or dissuade you from taking or not taking a particular course of action.

Rely on your own personal experience, opinions and common sense. While a review might enlighten you to something about a bit of media you were not aware of before reading it, or an opinion piece might inspire you to either write your own in agreement or in argument, what they shouldn't do is define your own perspective on the subject at hand.

My computer isn't that great. But I love PC gaming. I'd own StarCraft 2 if it weren't for the fact that I need to choose between games and warm meals. Chuck's article isn't going to make me club my PC like a baby seal. I respect his opinion, I laughed at his jokes and got his references. But he won't make me turn my back on PC gaming. Why? Because I already decided that I love it.

And while I'd continue that point to say "I'm not a moron," I also play World of Warcraft, so...

Yahtees pieces are comedy mostly and its a review what the hell was the point of this ?
Also I was being sarcastic about star craft no one needs to pay that over priced game.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

At the possible expense of feeding a troll:

Yahtees pieces are comedy mostly and its a review what the hell was the point of this ?

The point of this is that it's what's called "op-ed." It's an opinionated piece of journalism. It's something legitimate writers do for a living. Some will agree with the opinion of the writer. Some will not. The point is that it gets people talking.

Unless, of course, they refuse to engage the work on an intellectual level and just call it 'pathetic' because nobody was talking fast and there was no cute little animation to go along with it. Reading is hard!

Also I was being sarcastic about star craft no one needs to pay that over priced game.

I'm sorry. Did you mean no one needs to pay for it? Or no one needs to play it? I'm unable to truly decipher your intent, here.

 

[twm1709]

I really feel for what you say. I got a ps3 this year and if it were up to me I'd play that 100% of the time. Still, pc games Just too damn cheap and end up a better deal if you don't mind fiddling with the OS a bit.
For instance, Alien Vs Predator (PS3) is $80 in Argentina, while the Pc version DVD is only $25. Too much of a difference even without Steam getting into the argument.
Still, I treasure my Gaming PC a lot. I handpiked every single component, put it all together, installed all that was needed and it kicks @$$ these days. That kind of joy you cant get fro close pattforms, even if I'm a little over that stuff these days.
(Plus: I'm swiftly becoming a PS3 trophy whore, and you don't get it the same way on Steam PC)

 

[Continuity]

Snip

Man up and learn to troubleshoot. Don't read the manual - that way madness lies.

Seriously, simple hardware and OS troubleshooting Will identify if not fix your problem.

 

[murphy7801]

At the possible expense of feeding a troll:

Yahtees pieces are comedy mostly and its a review what the hell was the point of this ?

The point of this is that it's what's called "op-ed." It's an opinionated piece of journalism. It's something legitimate writers do for a living. Some will agree with the opinion of the writer. Some will not. The point is that it gets people talking.

Unless, of course, they refuse to engage the work on an intellectual level and just call it 'pathetic' because nobody was talking fast and there was no cute little animation to go along with it. Reading is hard!

Also I was being sarcastic about star craft no one needs to pay that over priced game.

I'm sorry. Did you mean no one needs to pay for it? Or no one needs to play it? I'm unable to truly decipher your intent, here.

Yes reading is hard when you are dyslexic secondly its not a constructive piece it does really go anywhere the structure is loose. Other thing about the piece is if some started a thread like this they would get put on probation or suspended which seems little hypocritical that this can come to pass. Lastly is there no comprasions that his friends game fine on the pc?. Ah and the price of starcraft in the uk is kinda expensive compared to other pc games.

 

[Nuke_em_05]

/cast fire resistance aura

I think any PC Gamer is aware of these frustrations. The most common defenses I see are; "I've never had a problem" and "tweaking is a part of it, it makes it cool, you learn about computers which is applicable to the real world/employment". To the former, you are a liar. To latter; I want to play games, not be a desktop support specialist. Also, "I play PC games and keep my computer updated to that end" is not exactly icing on your resume. Maybe alongside "bachelor's of CS", but generally that will do on it's own.

That said; I built my own "Crysis box" as they were called at the time. For $1,900 (two year ago). It has a quad core Intel chip at 2.5ghz, 4gb of DDR3 RAM, a 10k rpm hard drive, and an NVIDIA GTX 280. It runs Crysis on full settings like it was minesweeper.

Strangely, due to some sort of bug, I couldn't beat the last boss with full settings. No joke, I had to run the bastard at 800x600 with all the settings at min for it to render a part of the boss that I needed to shoot. WTF?

Most other games don't have problems. Until my GTX 280 overheated due to a driver update (you know, those things we are supposed to do), which essentially turned the fan off. An RMA later, and Riva Tuner (a third party driver control software that I use to override the fan controls to max; as the official drivers/nvidia control console don't support fan control, which is default hard-locked at 35%), it works like a champ again. Also, 64-bit windows doesn't like Riva Tuner, so I have to "allow" it on startup every time. A part of the problem was that the nvidia console and other settings don't actually show core temp. Need third party for that as well.

However, with it all working again, boy do games look super pretty; especially with my 23" 1080p monitor.

Most of my PC problems have come with installing Adobe Video Production suites though. I swear the windows registry was the worst idea in the history of ever.

Yeah, I don't mind tweaking with it, but I can see how others don't have the time or interest. They just want it to work. I think it wouldn't be such a point of contention if tweaking was more of an "opt-in" feature instead of mandatory.

 

[LWS666]

literaly a profesional troll.

if anyone put this up on a forum they'd get banned.

also, oblivion is a rather demanding game so presumably so is FO3 (i have oblivion for PC and FO3 for 360) and crysis is the epitomy of demands.

all i'm saying is look up system specs in future, i do this all the time, i'm sure lots of other people do too.

 

[Jeziah]

Shit, man. What the hell have you done to your residential computers to make them so damn terrible? And hey, if the Sims 3 expansion packs lag you, then you CAN NOT get away with saying you have above-average computer specs. You have old hardware, certainly old software, and it sounds like you've gone and screwed something up deeper than all of that. I understand that you'd get frustrated if this happened to you, but please, never generalize PCs as buggy and crashy. It just aint true.
Hell, anybody's PC crashes more than his 360 red-rings, it's waaaay past time for a replacement. I mean whoa.

 

[Midniqht]

Oh man... easily the funniest article of this week. It rings very true - a strong argument for those who don't want to fandangle a bunch of hardware and installs to get their gaming fix. I personally play both PC and console games, and can relate to all the pros and cons of both sides of the argument. I'm a fence-sitter, if you will. Steam Sales always nab me (in both mind and wallet) and the main reason I continue to play games on PC as well as console is because I have friends and communities on both sides of the world. I happen to have Left 4 Dead 2 for both PC and 360 because I have friends who either play on one or the other and I like to participate with everyone sometimes. Sure, it costs more that way - but *when* it works, I'm usually very satisfied that I put forth the extra time, effort and money.
To me (and this is why I quit this genre of game), MMOs are the worst for installs, patches, crashing and overall headache factors. It seems like every MMO on PC requires patches and punkbuster (or some equivalent) and for you to jump through a pentagram 666 times in order to just get to a log-in prompt.

 

[Snotnarok]

I'm gonna be honest; I only get stuff like this with old games, because I'm running on Windows 7. And it's a pain because they should work, but they don't. Just about everything released before 2008 has problems. So I have the reverse of your problem: my PC loves all the new shiney stuff, but can't stand the classics. I was so angry when I spent £5 on Beyong Good and Evil, just to find that it wouldn't work... well, I could have punched a baby seal, if there had been one there.

There's actually a easy workaround for that if you know someone with a XP computer install it on the XP computer, copy the program files install to your windows 7 machine and it works. If it works on Tie Fighter for Vista 64 then it'll work for you haha.

 

[chuckwendig]

Shit, man. What the hell have you done to your residential computers to make them so damn terrible? And hey, if the Sims 3 expansion packs lag you, then you CAN NOT get away with saying you have above-average computer specs. You have old hardware, certainly old software, and it sounds like you've gone and screwed something up deeper than all of that. I understand that you'd get frustrated if this happened to you, but please, never generalize PCs as buggy and crashy. It just aint true.
Hell, anybody's PC crashes more than his 360 red-rings, it's waaaay past time for a replacement. I mean whoa.

Computer's a year old. Maybe not even. Crysis, which as noted does work most of the time, rocks it at a very high resolution -- smoother than gooseshit on a glass window.

When I open Photoshop CS4, it's "blink-and-it's-ready."

System's not old, nor is it clunky.

Perhaps my PC is a rara avis in terms of PC games. Though it appears not.

-- Chuck

 

[TheSkaAssassin]

Thirty seconds into the brew-time on your coffee-maker the device instead sprays hot java on your balls, searing them to the corduroy. You don't like that? Not a fan?

I made the mistake of taking a large gulp of water whilst reading this. What little water not on my laptop screen is still lodged in my nose. and it huuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrtttttsssssssss.

 

[cynik]

Which reminds me - in the late nineties online communities were somewhat divided between two method of communication - IRC and early web based chats. Chats were simple as they can be, IRC had it's configs, command lines (different for every server network) and other inconviniances. We, the people of IRC used to believe that chatrooms were for idiots, because we, the pros, had to have some dose of knowledge. And boy, we were proud of that. Maybe that's the way to go with pc gaming? "I managed to start xxxx on my PC, behold!". I've seen that attitude in windows mobile communities just before iphone came in...

 

[Reliq]

Id have to look later im at work right now. But im still running XP since vista was fairly new and not standard on computers when I got mine. But it still runs wow so im happy with it and my laptop can run pretty much anything.

Mmm, you bought it already built, isn't that right?
That normally isn't such an issue, but I always recommend building up your own computer, as it lets you customize it with your price range and normally it's cheaper than buying an already built one. But still it's no slouch either.

I tend to build my own computers, specially because the last time I bought one already built, it was lacking the Graphic Card socket.

HP actually has one on the market like that A desktop with built in graphics and missing the pci-e slot. There is space for it on the MB though, so you can solder one on if you want. but still, talk about doing anything for profit. Its just a damn plastic slot

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The real value of the PC platform in the gaming industry is its lack of restrictions compared to first-party console publishers.

Not to mention console makers and publishers would probably shit themselves if the PC modding communities moved over and started pulling things apart to see if they could change or add things.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Maybe that's the way to go with pc gaming?

What, turn it into a smug, self-satisfied, elitist circle jerk? (more so than some people seem determined to already turn it into one)

That, sir, is the day I buy a console. A console with motion control.

 

[ScorpSt]

I haven't read through all the comments, so don't shoot me if someone's already said this, but playing games on a pre-built PC is not the best way to go. Buying a computer from Dell is like paying Best Buy $50 to install your batteries. Yeah, it's easier for you, but it's an absolute rip-off.

I built a high-quality gaming (and LAN portable) PC 1 1/2 years ago and only spent about $1,000. I know it seems like a daunting task but here's my timeline: I spent 3 days doing the research on what parts to get. When the parts came, I spent one afternoon putting them together. The next afternoon, I installed my software. Then I was done.

A second note: if a game uses "Games For Windows Live", and you have an Xbox 360, don't buy it for the PC. GFWL just seems like a concentrated effort to make people hate playing games on their PC. I've been lucky as the two GFWL games I've played (GTAIV & Batman:AA) haven't had any problems on my PC. Or it may not be luck. It may be because, as I built the PC myself, I know exactly what it can and can't do. That's why I've never even attempted to play Crisis.

 

[cynik]

Maybe that's the way to go with pc gaming?

What, turn it into a smug, self-satisfied, elitist circle jerk? (more so than some people seem determined to already turn it into one)

That, sir, is the day I buy a console. A console with motion control.

Mate, I've been given that nickname for a reason, no worries, just a funny idea I had. Imagine dragonball styled circle jerks, PC elites, those above them would be super sayan (if I rememember the term correctly). Besides it doesn't have to be evil - on xda-developers forums people spend a lot of time trying to launch apps on devices that have never been intended to do so, for example windows 95 on a phone. And there be such glory when they succeed...