The difference between PC and Console FPS games.
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You mean that console FPSs don't have super-human turning, and are therefore inferior just like real life?TrevHead said:I like both PC and console games and imo PC games generally provide a richer gaming experience. The only problem with PC is that many games are console exclusive.
As other have said a M&K for some genres really is the best method over a pad. Just like a stearing wheel is better for racing games, the problem is that console games are designed with the wheel in mind but never the m&k.
This is a shame as a M&K FPS is very different from a control pad FPS.
Here is a video of Serious Sam 2 HD
And This is Painkiller
Notice how there are lots of baddies onscreen to shoot at. Where the player must destroy the baddies asap while constantly moving backwards and sidewards to dodge the baddies and to herd them into a group to take them out in one go. In many ways a good PC FPS is like the 2D twinstick shooter genre in the way the player must be always moving around the screen and been dynamic.
Geometry Wars 2 vid, notice how the player experly runs rings around the enemy. A good PC FPS plays just the same.
The problem with console / control pad gaming is that it cant match the mouse and keyboard for the speed and acuracy even with auto aim, So that to accomadate the slower controls developers have decreased the number of baddies onscreen at one time to just 2 or 3 so the player doesnt get overwhelmed.
The only time most modern FPS games put lots of baddies onscreen are on-rails shooting gallery sections where the player is manning a helicopter rail gun and can esily spray the area in front of him with bullets, and because control pad gamers dont move or look 360 degrees as much as M+K enemies tend to be usually infront of the player, this also has an effect on level design making it more linear in nature.
While more slower paced tactical shooters like modern warfare 2 do suit the control pad a little better, it still isnt as good as M+K imo. Plus the PC has real head tracking like Track IR
Track IR in Arma2 (fastforward to 4 mins to see how in plays in game)
So when PC gamers are talking about console dumbing down not all of us are been elitist jerks many of us actually have a real point to make. Now hopefully you guys on the console FPS side will understand some points in what PC gamers are driving at. The Duke Nuken Forever game is a perfect example of console dumbing down, sure it looks nice and is fun but it would of been so much better if designed with the PC / mouse and keyboard in mind
Anyone care to tell me how the hell I embed YT videos on this site? EDIT thx Glademaster
Um.... You realize that the first games were made on and for PC as consoles were not dreamed up until after arcade games...plexxiss said:
The argument isn't that consoles or pcs get a different lot of games, as a matter of fact the issue involved is that we get most of the same games. Because of this some level design choices are being made that some people do not agree with.
Yes you are correct in that those games been available for console. However the fact remains that moving, aiming and turning 180 degrees is much easier and intuitive with M+K than it is with a pad. And because pad players are less inclined to play in such an advanced style developers are dumbing down the games to accommodate them.Durananrananrananran said:
Im sorry if im been a tad condescending, Im merly pointing out the differences in playstyles. I state m+k is better then pad as a fact because thats what it really is, just as a steering wheel is best for racing games. That doesnt mean that other ppl who play with a pad and prefer that method are in any way wrong or lesser gamers for doing so.
Look at it from another perspective, many core console gamers will agree that even they too are been marginalised in some ways due to the high growth of casual / non gamers. Just look at all the tacked on waggle games on the wii and facebook integration.
You have a real point there.Danceofmasks said:
(this is a bit long winded so I apologize in advance) When I started playing shmups I played with an analog stick rather than a dpad / arcade stick. And even though it was still shit for tap dodging, I manage to play most types of bullet hells even managing to 1CC the first loop of Dodonpachi. This was due to the stick I was using been very loose so I could get some degree of precision if I used as light a touch os possible.
When I was forced to replace the pad, The new pad had too much tension on the stick forcing me to be heavy handed which was no good for playing shmups. I bought another pad which was the same before I moved on to using Dpads, Ill add that dpads are of generally shitty build quality for most modern pads as well, only useful for weapon selection and not for actually playing 2D games
Actually I've been on both PC and consoles since I was little. My first FPS games were Blakestone, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Doom, etc, all on PC. I currently have a pretty sick desktop too.TrevHead said:I half think you might be trolling me, but ill take you seriously. With the way you namedrop Goldeneye im lead to believe that you are a console player not PC. If so the the reason you think old pre Halo FPS games are rubbish is because you havnt played any good ones, just the sub standard PC ports that every blue moon was ported to console. In a way you could call those pre Halo FPS games as been dumbed down for PCWolfram01 said:
Now imagine if every new game was like that, you would be pissed aswell, and we would be seeing threads with Console gamers moaning how PC is destroying gaming
As for you opinion on the precision of analog stick as more precise as a mouse, then you must be using a really crappy mouse. Plus the reason gamers still use a keyboard with the mouse rather then an analog stick, the reason is the need for buttons as the mouse only has 2 or 3.
Besides a good keyboard is very precise, ild argue that its more precise than an analog stick, considering many Touhou / bullet hell shmup players use the keyboard. Infact the best western player of Dodonpachi (the French shmupper Prometius) is a keyboard player. However most shmup players wont touch an analog stick with a 10ft barge poll, even those who are stuanch Console gamers.
Regardless of that false assumption, my point was simply that the old gameplay style of throwing a lot of ennemies at the player who have simple straight line pathing is pathetically simplistic. Now that AI can hide in cover or run around and surround you, going back to that old style would appear silly.
And as for controls, I clearly said a thumbstick is more precise than WASD but NOT more precise than a mouse.
I agree that PC gives you more precision, but I honestly think the importance of this thing is kind of overstated. Metroid Prime has an even worse control scheme, and is a better (single-player) game that 99% of shooters on either platform. Precision =/= good game design haha.
I've never played Serious Sam, but I did watch the video. I think that's a poor example. I've been playing console FPSs for years and I started with Wolfenstein, Doom and Duke on the PC. Bulletstorm, Call of Duty, Halo and even Goldeneye had a whole lot of enemies bearing down on you at once. Most of them would stop long enough to shoot at you instead of chasing you with a giant sword, as in the Painkiller vid you showed, but you still had to contend with a whole lot of enemies at once. So I don't accept your assertion that console games only pit you against a small handful of enemies at a time.TrevHead said:
The controllers for console games are created for one singular purpose, while the mouse/keyboard interface is adapted from one use to another: controlling a character in a video game. The two main advantages of the mouse/keyboard setup are a shit ton of hotkeys, which in my opinion are really only necessary in RPGs and real-time strategy games where you have to combine potions, powers, equipment and spells and control a whole lot of characters at once, and a super-human turning/aiming ability. It is dead-on precise, but it isn't at all realistic. That's not an inherently negative or positive thing, it's simply different. So let's take a look at those differences.
While it can certainly be fun to rapidly draw some enemies into a corner and take them down that way, it's far from realistic. In real life battles, be it an ancient one with swords or a modern day skirmish in Afghanistan or Libya, individual soldiers didn't/don't chase each other around in circles, getting in the way of their comrads armed with swords or guns. They work as a unit and use tactics, and they don't fire rocket launchers at you from twelve paces. The fact that console FPSs have two classes of speed-prohibitively sluggish and realistic-doesn't keep them from being fun and employing strategy to take down waves of enemies in the case of the latter. Not every developer has figured out a good solution to the problem of sprinting, but there are plenty of games that provide a fun challenge in taking down enemies or avoiding them while completing objectives. Let's take a look at a non-FPS and my favorite stealth franchise, Splinter Cell. The entire interface of the Splinter Cell games is unwieldy for running and gunning, by design. If you miss an enemy and invite a shitstorm of whizzing bullets, you're supposed to do what the military calls Regroup and Reacquire: move to another position to find cover, possibly use your gadgets or the environment to distract/deceive the enemy, then aim once more and pull the trigger. It's not pleasing in the same sense as, say, Contra, where you're killing literally dozens of enemies at a time with your infinite ammo weapons while running and jumping with superhuman acrobatics, but it is every bit as fulfilling, because every shot fired, especially the ones that connect, matter more. When there are fewer rounds to fire, fewer opportunities to fire them and fewer required to take down an enemy, that one shot that connects is far more visceral. This principal carries over console FPSs, where you can be as precise but not as (unrealistically) fast as their PC counterparts. Many of these modern shooters are cover-based, which makes them that more realistic (I am of course being relative, here) and requires strategy and timing. Even the old school Goldeneye on the N64 allowed for multiple approaches to taking down the enemy. You could sneak around and constantly backtrack and take alternate routes to divide and conquer, taking the enemies by surprise, or you could run in with guns blazing, which was almost certain to spell doom but also required to unlock some of the goodies.
No, the levels are more linear because the developers think the only way to mass market their products is to literally dumb them down for mass consumption. See eponymous Prince of Persia for more on this. The developer bragged that it's "easier to be a bad-ass" in this game in which you literally cannot die. There's too much emphasis on pretty graphics and scripted events. I call it post-Metal Gear Solid syndrome. In many franchises, the games are slowly becoming interactive movies. This has nothing to do with the limitations of consoles, though I'm sure it affects PC games when it comes to ports because PC games (aside from Farmville, et al) are usually more "hardcore" in that they don't have a sturdy tutorial system and assume you're already a master of the genre so they don't focus so much on marketing.Joccaren said:
Well considering that Consoles are in essence limitations on development and hardware for the sake of making things easier for the gamer (and sometimes the developer), I don't think the PC gaming elitist position is without justification.Mr. Omega said:
I think the point is being missed here. What you are arguing is actually old vs. new games, not PC vs. console games. Both Serious Sam 2 and Painkiller came out for the Xbox as well as the PC. Putting fewer enemies in front of the player isn't caused by a gamepad's inherent inferiority (as you say) to the mouse and keyboard, but rather because modern shooters are shifting away from the "tons of health-health bar" system to the "less health-regenerating health" system. Players would be overwhelmed because they do not have enough max health to handle ten or so enemies at once, not because controllers are less accurate.TrevHead said:
Well, some people seem to forget that there is no control scheme that's perfect for everyone.
I like moving with 2 joysticks and 16 buttons, and find it more efficient than mouse control. That doesn't however mean that any control scheme is better for everyone, and I don't think anybody is "wrong" by preferring a different control scheme, frankly it's the fact that people assume their opinions are somehow "right" that's annoying.
I like moving with 2 joysticks and 16 buttons, and find it more efficient than mouse control. That doesn't however mean that any control scheme is better for everyone, and I don't think anybody is "wrong" by preferring a different control scheme, frankly it's the fact that people assume their opinions are somehow "right" that's annoying.
Huh. The OP seems to suggest a very limited approach to what FPS games "should be." Everything should be circle strafing? Not that I dislike circle strafing, but really?
It's also wrong to suggest that consoles are incapable of that sort of approach. Yes, many modern console shooters don't do it, but that's more because of current industry standards ("old versus new" design) than actual limitations. I mean, look at the original Halo; once you get into the hang of it, Flood combat in that game can make for amazing strafe fighting. And it can often involve a heck of a lot more enemy AI than you show in the videos you posted.
It's also wrong to suggest that consoles are incapable of that sort of approach. Yes, many modern console shooters don't do it, but that's more because of current industry standards ("old versus new" design) than actual limitations. I mean, look at the original Halo; once you get into the hang of it, Flood combat in that game can make for amazing strafe fighting. And it can often involve a heck of a lot more enemy AI than you show in the videos you posted.
Oh God, I just love the internet. Please point out to me where I ever said, "Keyboards and mouses (I suppose it's mouses when you're talking about the tool) are bad". Please, I'll give you a minute.Wolfy2449 said:
I didn't say they were bad, I said they were bland, boring, and utilitarian. Yes, yes, and yes all perfectly reasonable opinions to have about a slab of keys better suited to typing memos than playing games, and a tool whose main purpose is to interact with GUIs. It's not like I said they were Satan's own torture devices for kittens. You can play games well on them. They multitask. I said that I liked controllers better. I like the feel and the ergonomics better than any keyboard (and no, I'm not shelling out money for an ergonomic keyboard, I can type just fine on a regular one).
Sure, click and drag is good for RTSs but I managed to complete the whole of Command & Conquer 4 with an Xbox 360 remote just fine. It's a bit of a learning curve but soon I was selecting units and making groups just as well as I ever did.
I don't refute that if you empirically tested the speeds of mouses and keyboards against controllers the former would win every time, but you know what? It doesn't matter to me, I get along fine, and I'd still rather have a controller. It allows for better immersion as far as I'm concerned. Everyone's allowed to pick their poison, and I never said they shouldn't. It was totally what I thought.
But of course you realise that's a pointless assertion, as WASD is never (these days) used without a mouse, they are two parts of the same control system, you cant separate them.Wolfram01 said:
Also, WASD is more precise than a thumb stick, a thumb stick gives you a greater range of movement which is exactly what you don't want when strafing (which is what WASD is used for), you want precision straight lines as supplied by the digital input of a keyboard... combined with mouse look gives you all the control fidelity you could need.
Further, there is something to be said for having three fingers on 4 buttons vs 1 thumb on a stick, 3 fingers will give you much snappier and precise instantaneous control, rather than having to roll your thumb around.
Exactly.zehydra said:
From a technical perspective, there is not a single thing a console can do that a PC cannot.
However, it's a combination of the refusal for some console players to accept this fact, and the fact that too many PC gamers are flaunting it like assholes that gave rise to the "PC gamer = elitist" trope.
Combine that with the fact that the Big Three and the mainstream Publishers keep treating the PC market as second-rate (due to economic and control-related reasons), and you have an unwinnable scenario that has no painless solution; only more shitty flame wars, fanboy whining and compromises that ultimately make the situation worse.