PC Gaming = World of Suck

[Mercutio]

I believe the two logins are for Origin and Bioware.

I've been looking for something to run on my new PC, just to see what it can do. It looks like Witcher 3 is the most graphically-intensive title available on GoG.com. Has anyone played those games?

 

[Mercutio]

https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3

 

[sedrosken]

Very interesting. I kind of did the same thing -- except I made the jump directly from a SNES to a Gamecube. I got my brother's old hand-me-downs, but his N64 sadly broke before I could get my hands on it. Now I play a lot of older games, mostly by emulation. I still own (most of) the games I have ROMs for, but the consoles died one way or the next.

 

[Mercutio]

There's a new Unreal Tournament out. It is blissfully free, in that is no-cost software and in being unencumbered by a requirement for Steam/Origin/DRM malware. It looks pretty sweet, too.

 

[CougTek]

I read that it's an early alpha and still buggy as Hell, but promising nonetheless once it'll have mature a bit.

 

[sedrosken]

Might just have to grab this one. Maybe if I turn the settings down far enough it'll run favorably on this laptop!

On another note, I've got a couple months before this happens, but I'm getting a new desktop. I'm not building it specifically for gaming, but that will be a facet of it. I'm going to use an A10-5800K on a MSI A78M-E35 board with 8GB RAM, my SSD, a 1 TB hard drive, a BD-ROM/DVD-RW/CD-RW combo drive, and I'm going to be using the built-in APU graphics hardware. I was pretty skeptical of that sort of setup until I saw it in action, and I'm suitably impressed. The whole build will cost me exactly $375.86 when it's done, including shipping. This is barring any fluctuations in price. But the parts are set in stone, unless a massive price spike causes me to reconsider. I'm getting a used (only technically) Hyper 212 EVO cooler from a friend for free -- he bought it but it wouldn't fit in his case and he got very busy and never sent it back. I figure, you can't go too far wrong for free. If nothing else, the APU is coming boxed and will include a stock cooler that will hold up just fine unless I want to try my hand at overclocking. If I get a discrete Radeon card, supposedly it will automatically CrossFire with the Radeon in the APU. Nifty.

 

[Mercutio]

An A10 is going to give you nothing to complain about, certainly. They're respectable midrange CPUs. I'm not sure about an MSI motherboard vs. Gigabyte or apparently ASrock, but in all probability you'll get a lot of use out of whatever you buy and you may even be in a position to actually upgrade that CPU, something that those of us in Intel-land pretty much never get to do.
--

It kind of looks to me like the trend of the future is ultra-small machines that support streaming from full-functionality big-boy computers. nVidia's Shield devices and Steam Boxes are supposed to work that way. Since consoles are so ridiculously underpowered, we might be in an amusing place where the home desktop gaming PC is used more like a server than anything else. Has anyone actually tried streaming games? I would think the latency would be god-awful.

 

[sedrosken]

The latency would be terrible for me, definitely, seeing how I'm still using an 802.11g router.

 

[Handruin]

I created my UT account and gave it a try. I played a death match game and it worked pretty decent. The graphics looks good so far but there is some need for refinement in the game. Sometimes it stutters and the audio has a bunch of pops and clicks in it. It's early in the game release so I get that those are things that will happen. I can look into setting up a community server for people here if you ever want to hash it out in some death match or CTF.

 

[Mercutio]

I got my ass six different kinds of kicked in all three of the matches I played, but the game definitely looks great.

 

[Mercutio]

It's not exactly PC gaming but I watched it on a PC so whatever.

Wil Wheaton, Aisha "LANA!!!!" Tyler and Overly Attached Girlfriend play Cards Against Humanity.
Not even remotely safe for work.

 

[Handruin]

I watched that the other night and it was a hoot. If you've ever played Cards Against Humanity with a group of people this will feel all too familiar.

 

[Stereodude]

If you've ever played Cards Against Humanity with a group of people this will feel all too familiar.

I did that for the first time on Saturday. It was entertaining.

 

[ddrueding]

That was amazing.

 

[Mercutio]

The sixth expansion set launched Monday, by the way.

We played at my company's holiday party. In most businesses, that would probably violate every HR rule known to man but given the amount of tequila around the table, it was just a good time had by all.

 

[ddrueding]

I have the game and the expansion that was available at launch. My favorite round so far was with my parents.

 

[Mercutio]

If you buy the Holiday Season sets, one of the bonuses is a printed white card with your real name on it. The second year I bought, I got a card that says "(Mercutio's) Butt."
It's not quite as much a trump card as "Bees?" or "Bigger, Blacker Dick" but it's still my favorite.

 

[Chewy509]

I know it's EA game... but still worth a watch...

 

[Handruin]

I've had fun with the earlier Battlefront games but even with this looking as decent as it might, EA will likely stop me from buying it.

 

[Mercutio]

Game Engine footage is crucially NOT in-game footage. That's gorgeous and I bet machinima folks will love it, but the actual game will probably be artificially limited to 720p with only four moving characters on the screen because consoles suck.

 

[Handruin]

I agree. I'm aware of the same and in reality they'll likely target console and port to PC later which means a possible delayed release and less than optimized options and controls.

This is also somewhat relevant with the release of GTA V on the PC (which was of course many months after its release on consoles).

 

[Chewy509]

Game Engine footage is crucially NOT in-game footage.

Certainly aware of that, but knowing that cut-scenes are capable of being made to that quality, it may only be a few years until we get in-game quality like that... But I guess that's just me dreaming, since we all know consoles will keep gfx quality stagnated for a number of years since they can't push the polygons required. (which in itself is why AMD is still relevant today with their APUs, since the current gen consoles are using derivatives of those same APUs).

 

[Chewy509]

H, very funny!

As a side, note: Installed Steam on my son's laptop and purchased Lego: Marvel Super Heroes and Lego: The Movie game for hime, and admittedly the process was very straight forward. The only downside was downloading 8G of game files (which took a few hours as I throttled the download speed for QoS reasons). For a digital distribution system, they seem to have got it right!

 

[Handruin]

H, very funny!

As a side, note: Installed Steam on my son's laptop and purchased Lego: Marvel Super Heroes and Lego: The Movie game for hime, and admittedly the process was very straight forward. The only downside was downloading 8G of game files (which took a few hours as I throttled the download speed for QoS reasons). For a digital distribution system, they seem to have got it right!

I agree. I didn't like the idea of Steam when it first released but honestly they have done it right. You'll never convince Mercutio though. I understand his concerns but given the frequency of Steam sales, I've rarely purchased a full-priced title and the majority of the games I've purchased usually fall into the $10 and under category with many cases being a multi-pack.

If you ever participate in LAN parties (which i still do) coordinating game play with friends has been super easy because the games all get patched to the right level and joining games is easily managed through Steam. Their download speeds have almost always been super fast for me. I realize it's possible Valve may some day close shop or sell out and we'll get a nice be "told you so" the aforementioned non-supporter but right now I'm playing the games at inexpensive prices with very minimal frustration. Sure, I'm not planning for the long-term future of owning my games but I'm living and enjoying the hear and now with friends and it has brought a lot of great times and memories.

 

[Chewy509]

Oh the days of going to a LAN, and spending the first 1-2 hours reinstalling/updating to ensure everyone was on the same installation/patch level... Fun times (note: sarcasm).

But about the only games I'm playing at the moment are the Lego themed ones, eg Lego: City Undercover (a real cool game for Wii U), Lego: Marvel Super Heroes and about to start the Lego: The Movie game tonight... The only adult game I've played recently is Doom3: BFG Edn...But only get to play about 2hrs a week on that one...

 

[snowhiker]

"DirectX 12 Video Crosses the Uncanny Valley" from Blue's News. Watch the video.

 

[Chewy509]

Hi Guys,

My son has seen trailers for Portal on Youtube, and was wondering despite having a teen rating, are there any issues for the younger players? Just trying to work out why it has a Teen rating, rather than a more general G rating since it's a puzzle game? The youtube clips I've seen don't point to anything to deserve that rating.

I know I can get the demo free on Stream to try it, but before doing that would like everyone's opinion on suitability for younger players. (7-9yr old).

Otherwise to follow up, we've completed Lego Batman 1, Lego the Movie game, and about half way through Lego Marvel super heroes. Also he is quite good at playing Minetest (a FOSS minecraft clone), so gaming ability for a younger player is quite good. (he has few issues with the WASD/mouse control, or using a gamepad).

 

[Mercutio]

The reason for the warning is the (very funny and intensely passive-aggressive) in game commentary from the AI in the game. It wants you dead. DEAD. Not alive any more.
I'd expect even a seven year old to handle it just fine but I can see how some people would object to kids hearing that, but frankly it's just a free lesson in snarking that every teen needs.

You can watch the whole game on Youtube if you'd like. I did.

 

[ddrueding]

Merc nailed it. Very fun, though some of the puzzles can be maddening if you don't see it the way they see it.

 

[Chewy509]

Thanks for the feedback, i'll give the demo a play tonight (if he's been good today).

 

[Clocker]

I got Witcher 3 free with my GPU through GOG Galaxy. I have never played a game like this before but I am definitely enjoying it. I use an XBOX 360 controller plugged into my PC. I'm using a GTX970 and running it at 1920x1080 with just about all the eye candy turned on. It is a beautiful game & fun to play. It does have it's weakneses. I would say the review below is spot on.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...nt-review-hunting-fiends-for-fun-and-forever/

 

[ddrueding]

I got Witcher 3 free with my GPU through GOG Galaxy. I have never played a game like this before but I am definitely enjoying it. I use an XBOX 360 controller plugged into my PC. I'm using a GTX970 and running it at 1920x1080 with just about all the eye candy turned on. It is a beautiful game & fun to play. It does have it's weakneses. I would say the review below is spot on.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...nt-review-hunting-fiends-for-fun-and-forever/

I was thinking of trying it out just to see some eye-candy on the crazy rig at home (none of the games I'm into at the moment would be called "pretty"). I was thinking of this or GTA V.

 

[ddrueding]

Turns out the Titan X was eligible for the Witcher 3 promo as well. Can't figure out how to get two keys for the two GPUs, but one should work for now.

 

[ddrueding]

Not particularly impressed with Witcher 3. Both the graphics and the UI seem considerably behind Skyrim, which shipped 4 years ago? Home1 runs it just fine @4k with everything maxed, but it just isn't that pretty.

 

[Mercutio]

Blame consoles. Gamepads require terrible, terrible UIs.

Also, just as a point of clarification, are you talking about Skyrim as it was launched or Skyrim with the crap ton of mods and updated texture packs that everyone who still plays Skyrim has?

 

[ddrueding]

As it launched. I'll need to look into the mods/texture packs/etc, as that could make the game amazing. It's been years since I played through that game.

The characters themselves are far more detailed than Skyrim was, but the world itself just isn't as pretty.

 

[Handruin]

If you find some fun mods for Skyrim I'd love to know which ones you tried. I own the game but I've only played less than an hour of it. I bet if I start now with all the mods it'll be a pretty amazing game.

 

[sedrosken]

I love Shadow of Mordor. I have a family member who has it on PS4 that was my first experience with it, and it was amaze-balls on that. I got it for my PS3 and had to wait for about four hours for it to download a 1.2GB update (we have 3mb/s down 768k/s up DSL and I limit my speeds so as not to completely ruin the experience for others, still better than HughesNet) because they released it broken on PS3. Now that it's patched, it still isn't quite as good as it was on PS4, and the load times are garbage, but it's fundamentally still the same game, if still hard to start out in.

But this isn't about console games, is it?

GTA5 actually runs on my Core 2 Quad decently, provided everything's at low. I was inspired after seeing people run it on Core 2 Duos with surprisingly high FPS rates.

Also, I also would like to know about Skyrim mods you guys like. I haven't found anything I like more than the base game, if only because my PC barely runs that at High so long as I completely disable shadows (glad to, they're downright ugly in this game on my card).

 

[Mercutio]

There are posts on Imgur pretty much every day that are full of ridiculous screenshots and descriptions like "This is my sorry-ass old PC running these 182 Skyrim Mods. And it's an A4 with a GTX550 and 2GB RAM!" And then someone else will come along a half hour later with "And here's what it's like on [basically dd's game PC] with 787 mods installed!" and another 1500 screenshots. And then everyone says Ha Ha Ha #PCMASTERRACE.

Which, granted, I agree with entirely but then I also want to smack anyone who adds hash tags to things that are not Twitter.

Anyway what I pretty much understand about Bethesda games is that they're deeply shitty in every possible way but after modders work on them for a couple years and finish their products, they get to be pretty nice.

 

[ddrueding]

Re-downloading Skyrim from Steam and just subbed every "pretty" mod in the top two pages and the "Hi-res texture pack" DLC. I'll try to get a review put together in the next few days.