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Saboteur Launch Plagued By Problems With ATI Cards
An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."
Sounds like they've been sabotaged.
Like the surgeon general of gaming telling you to stay away if you have ATI...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Eve Online just introduced a new graphical problem (which actually results in a CPU spike too) in the latest expansion (Dominion) that's causing problems with a lot of ATI cards.
This is why I go with nVidia: my card may be slower than your ATI and I may have paid more for it, but I'll have driver updates twice a week that almost universally work flawlessly. Never had any luck at all with ATI's drivers for any product.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
It's Nvidia!
On a serious note, 29% to 63% market share is not even close to "nearly equal".
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
I tested Saboteur across all platforms and, of all the titles I tested, the Pandemic devs were more open to fix issues than any development studio i've had experience with. Unfortunately the 360 and PS3 versions were much more thoroughly tested (we're talking a few weeks a piece). This was because 4 days into Saboteur PC testing (of which 4 of 5 testing stations were nVidia, btw) EA (the publisher and last end-tester before final submission) laid off 2000 people, which included almost all North American testers (essentially cutting the amount of testers globally by half).
The bottom line is this: the company's agenda is to release the product on a set day, and regardless of the quality of the product it WILL be out that day. You may see street dates pushed ahead a few months in advance but people test until a week or two until it hits the shelf, and if issues arise during the final hour most times the bugs will be swept under the table until one day they may get patched (if enough people bitch). It's sad that first day patches are not only considered acceptable, but are the norm these days.
Console gaming does avoid most of the hardware problems of the PC side, and is fine for some kinds of games such as sports. However, it mostly sucks for game types like first person shooters and strategy games. If you are into the latter types, then you don't have much of a choice but a PC.
The studio is being retired; there's no value in having the product work at launch. If it takes them a month to get the patch out, so be it, people will blame (the now defunct) Pandemic, and people will continue to buy EA games. If they ever revive the Pandemic name (why? what notable titles have they made? Dark Rein comes to mind, if only because my buddy was obsessed with Dark Rein 2 for so long in high school) nobody will remember this flop in 5-10 years time. The only flop anyone ever remembers is Duke Nukem Forever. I doubt most geeks could tell you the name of the rouge iD developer who made his own FPS (which failed miserably), or what the name of his game was. In two years nobody will remember the "Pandemic studios Pandemic of 2009".
moox. for a new generation.
This is the second game in just the past two weeks to suffer MAJOR headaches with ATI video cards... CCP's EVE-Online Dominion expansion has also been plagued by ATI-related video problems, artifacts, and outright crashing.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
Consoles could be fine for all types of gaming if the manufactures allowed for full keyboard and mouse support on their systems.
I don't know about angles, but it's fear that gives men wings. -Max Payne
I friend of mine bought it, back then. And it hat not one, not two, not three, but four points in the loading of the game, where it could crash. Which means that pretty much everyone got into one.
And then, on all nVidia cards, all triangles were messed up. With one of the 3 points of each triangle being wayy off in its position, moving all over the screen. Like a ton of spikes.
There was not a single comment from Rockstar. Let alone a patch.
And now for the funny part: I loaded it of bittorrent, and as always, I went to gamecopyworld.com, to look for a crack.
They not only had more than one working crack. No. They hay patches for every single of those four crash points, *and* the nVidia bug!
I couldn’t hold back to laugh at him. ^^
With GTA 4 it was not much better. Right from the start, the input lag was around 3 seconds! The intro was full of weird graphical errors. And the game still runs slow as hell, even on computers that have the power to run a game with those weak graphics and physics twice or thrice!
18 fps at 1024x786 with a Radeon 4850? Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me??
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Couldn't agree with you more. Sadly they don't, so PC for me.
...about the games they're going to spend money on, and then find out too late that it has problems (ie, after they've paid for it).
Gamers need to get over that urgent, gripping need they have to rush out and buy a new game the second it is released. They've become too complacent and accustomed to game developers not releasing demos, and - sadly - this has become the status quo. Instead of a demo being something that absolutely has to happen before people even glance at your game, publishers have figured out that they can release some PRs, screenshots, and trailers, and slap anything in a box and it will /still/ sell enough to justify doing it that way.
Once they've gotten your money, it's basically too late (unless you have the energy to go and demand a refund).
BE A DISCRIMINATING GAMER. Read reviews. Try demos, and if they don't have one post on their forums asking where their demo is. Check out their forums and see what people are complaining about. It's all about knowledge.
Further, anyone that has touched an EA game in the last 10 years should know by now that they make games based on a deadline. Unless a game is catastrophically not ready, then it will be shipped and shelved, and any problems will get fixed later (maybe). They make a lot of great games, but a good rule of thumb is to only buy them after it's been out for a month and they've fixed all the critical bugs (a good rule for PC games in general).
Note: I'm not trying to justify shitty development practices. Far from it. I'm trying to make sure people understand the most effective way to vote on this stuff is with their feet - don't buy broken video games.
Yes and no...
You're more specifically talking about PC-style FPS games and strategies, with PC-style game mechanics and UIs - one which revolve around pointing at things.
There are different game mechanics possible...though not used for the most part because of hybridization of gaming market brought mostly by Microsoft - since devtools, code, assets are almost the same it's "sensible" for publishers to create hybrid kind of games, not exploiting the strengths of both platforms.
One that hath name thou can not otter
From a non-biased GAMER who's still sees both sides, I would say consoles (as an experience) today suck!
Consoles today are basically the worst of the PC world and the worst of the old console world.
Consoles used to be about highly polished games that the developers (not the artists & marketing) put a lot of work into. Now a days with the net connection, most games deliver as betas (like the PCs), and then after 2 updates become... ok. The graphics are better, but the controls, storylines, action, and overall game play has gone down the crapper. We have games that are cross platform on the PSP, Xbox360, and PS3! So those games basically cater to the lowest common denominator of all three and not take advantage of any specifics. Xbox360 ports to the PS3 look like crap (I am looking at you EA)!
The worst of the console world... the price tag. Cause its on a "console," there is a huge upfront price tag. And with the net connection, you get the rest of the game delivered via additional charges! There is also the bombardment of marketing (which I think is the major reason for the price tags) that drone on and on about the latest upcoming game that is either a sequel or must have new concept. Which of course rarely lives up to the hype. Not to mention, we mostly lose that big benefit of consoles... local coop play. With the net, every bloody stupid game wants you to connect to some random 12 year old to play what should be local coop, or a rip off of counterstrike.
All consoles today are: locked down, controlled, 2 year old proprietary hardware... PCs! The only advantage is the massive number of games made for it (cause its a great way to lock in customers).
It's not like EA is any stranger to releasing games with major issues that prevent a large chunk of their customers from playing them. EA is a huge company, and not every subdivision has people who type with their fingers. Many of them lick the keyboard.
Patches? What patches? In order to release the patch you would actually have to have the developers to write it and since EA shut down Pandemic studios and fired its 200 employees shortly before they released the game... well you can draw the conclusions on whether there will be any patches any time soon.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Anybody who claims that consoles "just work" obviously haven't tried loading Borderlands on PS3 - it takes 3 hours to download and install all the patches to make it work... besides, playing a first person shooter on a console is like eating soup with fork - sure you can do it, but it's awkward as hell and will take you forever to get used to. And once consoles do everything the PC's can do - they will just become PC's and then the point is moot anyways.
John Romero and his e-p33n.
Luckily there are not only some good console games still being released, but there's also little hassle generally with running older games.
But nice to see that some other people also see roots of the problems (on both consoles and PCs...) in similar way to mine. Unfortunately I almost lost hope for the situation to improve, with so many people simply pointing fingers at "teh evil consoles". It's almost like publishers are playing them, with convenient scapegoat that people swallow, not seeing incompetence and greed of publishing houses.
BTW, DLCs came from PCs - they was called expansions in the past.
One that hath name thou can not otter
This is offset by PC games being cheaper to buy. A$10 cheaper in fact. Lets look at Modern Warfare 2 shall we, Xbox 36 = A$119, PS3 = A$119,PC = A$99. OK that's A$20 dollars cheaper but I'll argue at A$10 because I'm nice.
I buy two games a month, that's A$540 off the cost of my A$2000 gaming rig over two years. So that reduces the cost of the rig to A$1460. The cost of a PS3 is still $600, a new HDTV is A$1000. The price of a PS3 when I built my gaming rig in Feb was A$999. A$2000 is a top of the line gaming rig, Phenom II 955BE with a Geforce 985
This is of course ignoring digital distribution. I can pick up steam and Impulse games for A$50 easily.
Beyond price there's usefulness. After the Xbox 360 is superseded the Xbox 360 is useless, my PC can be re-rolled into a word processing/email machine.
There's also the question of graphics, As FarCry 2 proved the PC is still the superior graphics machine. I also get flash games for free, a superior control system, cheaper add-on packs and strategy games. In fact I just bought the latest add-on for Sins of a Solar Empire for US$10.
PC gaming is only more expensive for those who do not know the real costs.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I've got a bunch of old N64 and SNES cart (yes, spot the fanboy*) but why I cant play these in my Wii. Yet I can play Mean streets and Martian Memorandum on my new gaming PC. Not a problem via DOSBOX, I can also run Half Life 1 and System Shock 2 without a problem on XP.
* - Yes I still have an N64 and SNES, although the SNES was not my first one.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A game I worked on that was released in March was developed on XP-32. All the workstations at my new job are brand new Vista-64 machines.
I think it's more of a case of not wanting to change the version of Windows running on the dev machines mid-project, or even at all.
QA should have tried it on Vista / ATI though, so despite the possibility of the Saboteur devs not being on Vista themselves this should have been noticed.
Yes, that's what sets a First Person Shooter is.
I remember playing GoldenEye on the N64, a decent enough game but not equal to Half Life in any way. It had the option to turn auto aim off and it quickly became impossible to play on the easiest settings. It did make for an interesting multi player match though, lasted 5 times as long because no one could hit anything.
FPS's on consoles all use auto aim to compensate for the lack of finesse in a console controller. This is also why you cant have strategy games.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm not blaming QA btw, it's just as likely that they did find the bug but it was swept under the rug due to being "a crash that affects a small minority of customers and would be very difficult to fix" by people in charge.
There's a lot of games that can't be run on DOSbox (well, perhaps on a ridiculously overpowered PC), don't run well on modern OSes and look much better with 3D acceleration (meaning VMs aren't optimal). The only way to sensibly play them is to maintain some old machine...
HL1 is not a typical game. SS2 does have problems on current OSes/GFX drivers.
Consoles...yeah, you must also "maintain" some old one, but if one breaks another is easy to find for the time window I'm talking about.
One that hath name thou can not otter
How sad that you got modded troll when what you say is true.
I've been playing The Saboteur on my XBox for a week now without any problems, despite being a PC gamer for years I switched to the 360 in 2006 and have never looked back. The key drivers have been no fucking around with drivers and stuff to make things even work, and also no real serious issues with cheating. Sure you get people exploit game glitches but at least there are no aimbots, radar or anything stupid and game destroying like that.
I have tried PC gaming since 2006 on multiple occasions, but it's just not as good and I end up back on my 360. Shit like Crysis ran like crap even on a £1500 PC and still didn't look as good as games like Gears of War 2. Then there's the fact you have to deal with DRM shit from the likes of Steam and on EA games.
Contrary to popular belief amongst PC gamers, FPS and even RTS games are just as fun with console controls, I always figured I'd never play an RTS on the 360 because I thought it wouldn't be as good without a mouse, but it's just not true, when you get used to using a console controller it's just as easy. Some games, like Overlord for example actually worked better on the console in terms of controls than they did on the PC. In terms of RTS games I complete C&C3 and RA3 on hardest difficulty on the 360 no problem and find no issue playing online either.
The issue is for PC gaming that it's getting worse rather than better too- if I buy a 360 retail game I can still sell it on second hand, I can't even do that now if I buy a game in a shop for the PC and have to activate it on Steam. Some issues are the fault of the platform- the PC's openness is the reason it's easier to cheat and cheat more spectacularly, whilst others are the fault of game developers- i.e. DRM, and other problems again are half developer, half platform fault- i.e. bugs like this caused by hardware with millions of combinations of different configurations to cater to and developers not catering to them.
Yes, that's what sets a First Person Shooter is.
No.
Descent 3 is also regarded as FPS game. Yet it doesn't use pointing mechanics (as a matter of fact, there was a clone of it for PS1; DualShock worked beautifully). For another example - there were melee combat FPS games for PC. But it's hard to argue that such game with Wii-like control wouldn't be great (well, assuming the game generally is ok...). Another example are lightgun games - totally different kind of "pointing", also FPS (yes, there are lightgun games which aren't on rails)
GoldenEye is exactly the bad example - it was using mouse mechanics on non-mouse controller. You just don't know any other. But the short list above shows they do exist.
Similarly strategies -, you can have them, there are lots of Japanese ones with long tradition (spanning to SNES times usually). Their devs know for a long time that pointing UI simply won't do. But there is a good working alternative - nested menus.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yes, that's how primitive* PC trends are destroying good console gaming for some time.
*walking, inherently a 2D thing, in a 3D game? (oh, right, the simplistic control scheme can't handle more, not efficiently) Game mechanics determined by showing off shiny GFX and players falling to it?
(yes, such pointless "argument" can go both ways)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Sorry, I've tracked my spending. At least for me, moving games to the living room has been way, way cheaper. I never pay full price for the games, though.
But...but...(lips trembling)...but I thought we were the wild?
/** runs sobbing **/
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Yes, that's how primitive* PC trends are destroying good console gaming for some time.
*walking, inherently a 2D thing, in a 3D game?
How primitive indeed! Ever since I realized we live in a 3D universe, I've only traveled by jet pack and pogo stick. Why let that third dimension go to waste by walking or driving around in 2D?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Contrary to popular belief amongst PC gamers, FPS and even RTS games are just as fun with console controls
You say that as if PC gamers hold those beliefs mistakenly and have never actually tried it.
I have. It isn't fun. For instance, Halo 2 only became fun for me after I bought a SmartJoy Frag (keyboard+mouse adapter for Xbox), and even then, it wasn't as fun as Halo 1 was on PC.
In terms of RTS games I complete C&C3 and RA3 on hardest difficulty on the 360 no problem and find no issue playing online either.
Playing online against other console players, right?
Ever wonder why games that are released on both console and PC rarely have cross-platform multiplayer?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
There's a lot of games that can't be run on DOSbox...
And there are a lot of games that CAN be run on a modern system. Just for a laugh, I tried one of the oldest games taht I could find in my collection under Windows 7 (beta). It is Microsoft Fury 3, released in 1995 (before the N64). It played perfectly! The game never came with an option to change the resolution of the game, so it looked better when playing it in a window rather than full screen.
I have tried some older ones under DOSBox before, but they were non-action ones so they didn't really stress the system. So at least you have SOME chance that a game that old will play on a new PC system.
Also, it should be pointed out to the GP that you can still play some old SNES and N64 games on the Wii using Virtual Console. But this requires that you buy the games again, which annoys me when I still have the original in my hands. At least there is no hassle having to transfer the games from the old catridges.
Uuuuhhhh...you DO know that the same argument applies to a PC, right? Cost of a 2 port KVM switch? Around $10 at Newegg. Cost of a Win2K era PC? Under $30 but can usually be had for free at places like Freecycle or just watching your local curbs. Being able to run Redneck Rampage under actual DOS? Priceless baby, priceless.
I am sitting here looking at an old 733Mhz SFF Office box that came with XP that a local company was tossing, throw in a Geforce FX5200 Lo Pro and it makes a great Win9x/WinXP dual boot for old games that don't run correctly on modern OSes (like MechWarrior 3 and the bouncing APC bug) and the cost for the whole smash was $24 for a 4 port KVM. Considering how shitty some of the older consoles were, like the 3 NES (those early flip loaders sucked!), 4 Sega CDs, and 4 PS1s I went through before finally moving to PC for good, finding a decent running console for older games can be expensive or damned near impossible.
Comparing the 16 years I've been PC gaming (93-current) to the 18 years I spent console gaming (77-95) I'd have to say with the exclusion of the damned near impossible to kill woodgrain VCS that I've had less hassle overall with the PC. Of course I'm not stupid enough to try to surf on my gamer box so I don't have to deal with AV, firewall, or any of the other FPS sucking crap, so that may be why I've had better luck. Every customer I've dealt with that had serious problems with PC gaming were trying to do everything on a single box and just weighing the poor things down. I tell them to pick up a cheap PC for use as a "netbox" along with a KVM and save the gamer rig for gaming. They always come back talking about how much "nicer" everything works now,LOL! Like having over a dozen programs running at startup isn't gonna effect performance!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"You say that as if PC gamers hold those beliefs mistakenly and have never actually tried it."
You say that as if I wasn't a PC gamer who knows first hand that if you give it a chance and get used to the controller just like you had to with mouse and keyboard originally then there is absolutely no issue. This is mirrored by the fact there are so many console players playing online now, enough to dwarf the PC playing population in just about every dual platform multiplayer game- because it's just not a problem, or at very least not enough of a problem to be unable to outweigh the rampant cheating issue on the PC.
"Ever wonder why games that are released on both console and PC rarely have cross-platform multiplayer?"
Not really, it's primarily because XBox live requires a specific networking model and unless the developers are willing to use Live for Windows it wont work, if you want to develop say a Mac or Linux version too then this option is out the window. But then, games like Shadowrun that had PC vs. XBox multiplayer worked fine and XBox players were certainly at no disadvantage, you really couldn't tell if you were playing against another XBox or a PC player from the XBox and vice versa.
If it was for any other reason than the networking models/licensing issues as you suggest then there'd be more PS3 vs. XBox 360 multiplayer games as console vs. console wouldn't have the disadvantage you claim exists, but currently there is none.
Console gaming is fine for most, but for those of us who care, PC gaming will always be far superior. My main reason: user created mods. These will never be easy to create on consoles and will never proliferate the same way we have seen on the PC. Mods extend the shelf-life of a game by several years at the very least. Just look at Half-Life, Doom, Quake, or more recently, Oblivion and Fallout 3. You can completely customize and alter your gaming experience to the point that the game feels completely new. This is not even to mention the increased graphical horsepower you get with a PC -- I have played GTA4 on PC and on PS3, and there is absolutely no comparison. The improvement is actually great enough that it makes it easier to see what you are doing and actually makes it easier and more enjoyable to play the game. There is still a place for PC gaming, and I hope that the game companies will continue to see it (though the chances of this seem slim).
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Popular != good -- Miley Cyrus is massively popular...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Not to nitpick, but VirtualBox recently added support for 3D acceleration inside of a VM. I have not yet, had the chance to try it out, though I think I will tonight now that it is on my mind...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The game is playable (low FPS) with ATI cards if you revert the processor to single core, either through task manager / process affinity, or right at boot with (e.g.) the msconfig utility.
Of course, you're better off exercising some patience and waiting until a proper fix comes out than running with a crippled game. The game isn't exactly *gorgeous*, but running at 800X600 and all settings at minimum is a surefire way to sabotage the experience
You're right, consoles never have these issues...
You didn't hear about Ghost Recon for the PS3 that was unplayable until the patch came out 1+ month later?
If it really is a driver issue, then I think that the problem lies with a lack of communication between the game industry and the video card industry.
~Syberz
ZOMG! EA shipped a game that was not ready for prime time! OH NOES!!!! Give me a break. The day EA ships something that doesn't suck it'll be a vacuum cleaner. I quit giving them my money a long time ago after waiting months if not years for them to fix crap that should never have shipped that way. Oh, and for the apologists: The shipped that crap hugely broken without caring about their customers. And you want the customers to "understand" how difficult life is for poor little EA games? Get a life. I'll give a shit about their problems in the gaming industry just as soon as they show an iota of concern for their customers. We don't owe them shit other than the profit (that BTW they already got from thousands of users for their broke-dick product).
Mods are fine, but you know what happens. Some folks buy games, mod them and then play that game pretty much exclusively and buy no other games for 5 years. Game developers make no money from those people.
Besides, there comes a point when there's plenty of content in the main game itself and that it doesn't "need" mods to extend gameplay. Sure, a competitve FPS can use more maps, but really, how much more stuff does Fallout 3 and Oblivion need. I put 189 hours into Fallout 3 and still didn't go everywhere. Some of us adults with lives want to finish games in a reasonable timespan.
You say that as if I wasn't a PC gamer who knows first hand that if you give it a chance and get used to the controller just like you had to with mouse and keyboard originally then there is absolutely no issue.
Believe me, I've spent as much time with the gamepad as it took me to get used to the mouse and keyboard, and I'm not alone. The gamepad still feels like playing in quicksand.
Maybe you're an exception. Or maybe you were just never very good with the mouse and keyboard, so you don't notice a difference.
This is mirrored by the fact there are so many console players playing online now, enough to dwarf the PC playing population in just about every dual platform multiplayer game- because it's just not a problem, or at very least not enough of a problem to be unable to outweigh the rampant cheating issue on the PC.
The reason it's "just not a problem" is that they all have the same handicap.
And don't kid yourself about "rampant cheating". Few people choose consoles because of cheating; they do it because they want to play from the couch, or save a few bucks, or play with their console-owning friends, or avoid the hassle of drivers and OS upgrades. Personally, I've seen more cheating on console games than PC games, thanks to the fact that they're hosted on other players' consoles instead of impartial third-party servers.
But then, games like Shadowrun that had PC vs. XBox multiplayer worked fine and XBox players were certainly at no disadvantage, you really couldn't tell if you were playing against another XBox or a PC player from the XBox and vice versa.
I suppose you think that had nothing to do with the weak PC controls, the gamepad aiming assistance, and the fact that Shadowrun de-emphasizes quick aiming in favor of other skills anyway?
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In the case of Oblivion and Fallout 3, I found lots of mods that, instead of adding content, simply improved what was already there. There are a great many mods for both of these games to drastically increase texture quality, or to re-balance certain aspects of the game to make it more enjoyable.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Has anyone even considered the possibility that the blame here lies with Microsoft or ATI? It bothers me how most Windows users blame an application when a library or driver is at fault. Just because only one app crashes doesn't mean that app is broken. If MS says some_rare_function() works, and it really causes one game to crash on particular systems, that's MS's fault.
Sony does, though it's up to the developer if they implement it. Surprisingly, more PS2 FPS's than PS3 FPS's support mouse aiming, and one such game, Deus Ex, does not mention such support anywhere on the box or in the manual. One good thing is that any game that uses the PS3's on screen keyboard for entering text (like Oblivion does for naming spells and items) also supports USB (or bluetooth) keyboard input.
Bethesda games are playable with out modding the hell out of them?
Your post is 100% troll I have no idea why people are marking it Insightful or arguing in your favor. The backwards compatibility is being phased out, PS3 lost the backwards compatibility shortly after launch. It's because both MS and Sony quickly realized that if their systems aren't backwards compatible they can get people to repurchase the game that they already own.
You might want to brush up on the design goals of DX10, IIRC the only real graphical improvement was something to do with shadows (blame Nvidia for that). Everything else that they did was cleaning up the API, its much nicer to program in.
Super Mario Galaxy?
"Believe me, I've spent as much time with the gamepad as it took me to get used to the mouse and keyboard, and I'm not alone. The gamepad still feels like playing in quicksand.
Maybe you're an exception. Or maybe you were just never very good with the mouse and keyboard, so you don't notice a difference."
On the contrary, I'm far from the exception, as I pointed out, multiplayer PC gamers are by far a minority nowadays like for like.
"The reason it's "just not a problem" is that they all have the same handicap."
What handicap? The difficulty of games isn't any less on a console, multiplayer isn't any less competitive even when put up against PC players, the game isn't any less fun or playable.
"Personally, I've seen more cheating on console games than PC games, thanks to the fact that they're hosted on other players' consoles instead of impartial third-party servers."
and
"I suppose you think that had nothing to do with the weak PC controls, the gamepad aiming assistance, and the fact that Shadowrun de-emphasizes quick aiming in favor of other skills anyway?"
Oh I see, it's now down to outright lies? Your earlier point about games being hosted on peoples consoles making them more vulnerable shows a complete lack of understanding about how the most serious of cheats work, the difference between using cheats on the closed architecture of consoles vs. the open architecture of PCs and in fact a lack of understanding about client/server computing in general- hint: aimbots, wallhacks, radar, model hacks are all client side cheats, who the host is is entirely irrelevant. Of course, that's before you even go in to the problems of getting such cheats onto a console in the first place, which, in terms of code changes like aimbot, radars and so forth no one has actually yet successfully managed to do on the 360, Wii or PS3 but yet are already rampant even on Call of Duty: MW2 despite it having only been out a few weeks on the PC. Do Slashdot a favour, don't waste people's time commenting on things you demonstrate with your comment that you have absolutely no understanding of, either that, or stop trying to use ignorance to push your false argument- it doesn't work for the simple fact that what you said is transparently extremely nonsensical.
Regarding Shadowrun, pretty much everything you said was bs so I wont waste time covering it in detail, but basically the PC controls were no different to any other PC FPS and your comments about aiming assistance and aiming being unimportant run completely contradictory to each other. Shadowrun had no less shooting emphasis than most other FPS games over the last 15 years. Even as far back as more simple FPS games like Quake the likes of rocket jumping, powerups and so forth were important to do well.
I can buy the argument about how some people don't get on with console controllers because it is quite subjective, however I would still argue it's simply because despite what they say, they've never owned a console and/or spent much time giving it a chance, I say this because it's been the case with many of my PC playing friends who have used the same arguments until they give it a go and got used to it. What I don't buy are when people still playing PC games defend it so vigorously that they have to resort to straw men arguments and outright lies as you have- what's the concern exactly? If you really really don't get on with a console fine, but again, the majority of gamers nowadays do, you don't have to start rabidly spouting lies to try and defend it, or is it a deep seated concern of yours that you'll soon have no one to play with because you're one of the few who can't/wont switch to consoles? Really, if it was fine then the market would support it, but the PC gaming market simply is shrinking for most games, it's as simple as that- MMOs and relatively simple casual games are about the only growth areas, although even casual games are seeing an equivalent growth level on consoles because it's a growing market in general.
I never mentioned the PS3.
I never mentioned DX10.
I did, however, state, that a common architecture and hardware abstraction layer between console generations would alleviate the backwards compatibility issue.
I never said this had already been done.
That's what's insightful about my post and trollish about yours; though it seems you were successful in turning the tides against me this time, I've got karma to burn so I can afford to speak both the truth and my honest opinion.
How's your karma lately?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Ok, so you go on to bitch about poor game quality on consoles. Ok, you have a point; it's just ironic that you're making that point in a comment thread on an article about a shit quality PC game.
This happens on both sides of the fence, friend. Are you sure you haven't gained maybe just a little bias and not realized it?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes, and if console makers started using similar architectures between console generations and abstracting the hardware, you could stop having to maintain your old consoles when you upgrade.
Why aren't we writing letters demanding this?
It's the one advantage PC gaming offers.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Your first point is a problem with software, not hardware, which occurs on both sides of the fence.
As for your second point, modern consoles (PS3, X_Box 360, hell even the PS2) support a keyboard and mouse. A standard keyboard and mouse, like you use on your computer. Try using one sometime; if your game supports it, it's just like playing on a PC, only faster and smoother since you don't have your AV and all the stuff it didn't catch running in the background and the game was designed for that system. If it doesn't work, well, we're back to software issues, which happen on both sides of the fence.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I said PC gaming sucked.
I said console gaming was too expensive.
Further, once the x-Box 360 is discontinued, I'm fairly sure all the old games will still play and it won't magically stop begin able to stream and play video across the LAN. Media center PC, anyone?
Certainly not useless.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
SS2 runs fine on current OSes.
So now you've paid for a PC, which you still use for PC things, AND a console, which you can only use for movies/games. You do know that you can plug a PC in to your TV right? the one in your living room?
But you pay full price for the console, right?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
BTW, DLCs came from PCs - they was called expansions in the past.
That is the origin, but today, they are a totally different beast. In the past, an expansion on the PC was huge, and an expansion equivalent on the console was a totally new game.
Today, even a plot twist becomes a "sequel". And things that developers though were nice, but couldn't make the deadline, are DLCs. Obviously we don't need to discuss the wallet gouging prices.
I look at most of today's game companies and all I see are the kernels of the RIAA, and MPAA hovering over a different format.
Even better, modern consoles support keyboard and mouse, for those who just can't wrap their head (or hands) around using a controller for an FPS or RTS.
The problem is that not all (as in very few) developers bother to code it into their games; which is sad, especially for games being released on both sides of the fence. If you're coding it in on one side, why take the time to rip that code out on the other?
Start writing angry letters to game developers and demand keyboard and mouse support in your console games!
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Games released on console and PC rarely have CPMP because console users would rage every time some aimbot-wielding PC gamer cheated their way to the top.
Why this doesn't seem to bother most PC gamers is beyond me. All I can think of is, maybe, they all use aimbots and hacks like a bunch of "daddy, don't take off my training wheels" assholes.
I know, personally, when I did play a few games on the PC, I stayed away from bots and hacks because they took away from the experience of kicking your pansy ass with my own two hands.
That's the appeal of console gaming.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Games were ALWAYS shitty on PCs when first released (except before the days of the internet). It was something that gamers were used to. But patches came out quick and fast. By patch 2, it was an awesome game.
Today, consoles have adopted this practice. As I said, today's consoles are basically limited, proprietary, locked down versions of their PC counterparts. The difference, we are still being charged the arm and leg that consoles used to charge for "high quality games". ie: The worst of both worlds.
It's not subjective. It's the laws of fucking physics. When playing l4d2 on the PC, I can see behind me and in front of me AT THE SAME TIME. That's right. In between shotgun blasts, before it's even possible to fire again, I'm able to fully rotate my character 180 degrees, see what's there (and melee if necessary), and then whip back around to shoot the next zombie. This is IMPOSSIBLE on a console. If you crank sensitivity high enough so that a quick tip of the stick makes you do an about face, then in order to make a headshot at 10 meters you'll have to move the stick less than 1% from center. Using a console controller is like keyboard-turning in WoW. Most high-end players actually unbind their turn keys. Having a maximum turn rate MAKES YOU WORSE. I don't see what's so hard to understand about this.
Yet GoldeneEye 007 is one of the best FPS games ever.
Popular != good =/> popular = bad
Further that by emphasizing the fact that lack of custom maps has nothing to do with consoles and everything to do with developers not coding it in.
Once developers start including (or offering as a download) map editors for consoles, that will be a moot point.
Mods, though? Really? Mods? Seriously? Ok, some of them have been pretty damn good, but yeah, it's unlikely that developers will ever allow them on consoles, for precisely the reasons you state.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
For another example - there were melee combat FPS games for PC.
Ah yes, First-Person Stabbers.
Did I say consoles never have these issues? Nope.
Sorry to burn your strawman at the stake.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes, but on your console, your AV and all the shit it doesn't notice, are all running in the background, degrading your performance.
Plus, we're ignoring that some games are actually better with a controller and, unless you have the specific controller the game was designed around, you're not getting the optimal experience.
There are arguments on both sides, but I still see more weight behind arguments for console gaming.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
DLC's came from PC's, but they used to be in fact expansions. Now games are thought up, developed, and then things are taken off and sold later as DLC. That idea originates from the console market.
I never said that jackass -- I love GoldenEye -- I am just pointing out that it is retarded to suggest that because A is more popular than B that B is likely better than A.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Indeed, the daily experience, which is the simplest to emulate and apparently the only acceptable to PC players, happens on more or less 2S plane.
Gamers on other platforms can handle more than mimicking daily activities, though.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Well...yes, that's what I'm talking about. Some games have problems, some don't; and you're on your own to waste time figuring this out if it's a less popular one.
Consoles OTOH...every game works with compatible system. Every TV has required input. And...that's pretty much it.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yeah, keep telling that to yourself...
Console games almost never had any kind of expansions (the few instances were more or less separate, full games). OTOH expanding the gameplay/story/etc. of a game is a concept that has a long tradition on the PC.
What does it matter that the pricing structure changed? It's a case of publisher, not platform.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yup, me too. My general rule is six months, in fact. I just bought Fallout 3 GOTY, for example.
NWN is an awesome game, but I can understand why someone who got the original buggy release returned it.
I'm especially leery of Bioware first releases, especially because of NWN...it's why I'm waiting to buy Dragon Age for another few months.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You're forgetting about patches, small mods...
Yes, they were mostly free in the past, but the idea is the same. Milking gamers for them is a matter of people like Activision CEO, not because of the mechanism itself.
One that hath name thou can not otter
But you're describing more or less what I'm talking about.
a) also cheap / free aftermarket console sitting mostly in a drawer. All compatible games work, all TVs work, small, quiet, uses little power. That's it.
b) getting KVM switch (we're moving to DVI btw; doing this properly is a bigger problem than you think)...and place for another box...maintaining it a bit...keeping up with noise possibly (PCs from that time generally disregarded silence)...remembering how to actually maintain/fix things or getting some games to work at all. All this during time when I'm either doing other things or playing.
(how did you manage to kill so many consoles?...I've never had any die on me. And we're talking here also about 15-year old Russian clone of NES)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Oh, does it support Glide? (yes, wrappers...another part in the puzzle; "so, what is causing this? drivers in host? VM? Interaction with wrappers?")
Does it support some other obscure 3D API from the beginning of 3D hardware era?
One that hath name thou can not otter
So your argument is that a console is better because it can play 0% of old games, when a PC can only play 80% of them.
If you don't want to waste your time trying out old titles, then don't do it. You are not obliged to play old games on new PCs. If you have a relatively recent PC then just buy games from the last 5 years. How is that any different from what you are saying about consoles?
Just consider it a bonus that a game from 14 years ago might work too. And I'm talking games for DOS, Windows and virtually ALL of the older consoles (using emulators). That would be impossible on a console (excluding the games that have been re-released as I mentioned before).
But quite simply, if you don't want to take the chance, don't play old games and you are still no worse off than if you owned a console.
Milking gamers for them is a matter of people like Activision CEO, not because of the mechanism itself.
Oh I completely agree. I don't blame the developers or scriptwriters at all. The blame rests on the layers of management that has encompassed the core team. Today, games are more about flash and flare than content. Even the term "content" has been changed to mean intellectual property rather than gameplay. Its more about how much a movie or franchise is leveraged than delivering a value added product.
On point one, IF you know what you are doing, then its moot as there are many solutions such as multicore processors, external firewalls, etc. But as the general public doesn't know what "Press any key" means, I concede that point to you.
As for controllers... they used to be great when you could actually assign the buttons. Today, there are a few preset profiles, most of which suck or are useless. I am a southpaw, but not one southpaw profile fits me. I would rather go with the general or legacy profile.
But, my PS3 controller works fine with my PC, and it is completely customizable. I rather like this solution... a standardized controller for a PC.
I will admit that consoles would mostly win out if they weren't so locked down and crippled. I want to use my PS3, maybe not as a full blow PC, but atleast the browser should be good. And why shouldn't I be allowed to play media off a usb HD? Its like having a sports car that can take me to the grocery store, but is locked down to 20mph if I go anywhere else. Its frustrating to say the least.
Yet all you did was raise the point that something being popular doesn't mean it's good, and provided Miley Cyrus as an example.
Your implications were clear.
0%?...
Anyway, you fail to see that with consoles there's less "chance" to "waste time" with trying out old titles. The machine is either immediately working or not. If it's working, you pop in a game and off you go.
It's also easier to keep old consoles, stacked in some drawer most of the time.
As for playing games from 14 years ago on current consoles...well, while that's not what I was talking about, it is doable in some cases. Even 15 years (PS1 debuted 15 years ago). BTW, you will still have problems especially with PC games from around 12 years ago (think DOS Glide games)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Keeping with the theme... ;)
And it also came largely from PCs! In the past consoles where a stable, unchanging platform for games running always at 30+ FPS. Yes, the devs would show off their skills at later stage of console life, but this stage also had refined gameplay (well, there was a stage with focus only on "shiny!", the first gen games; but most sensible people would play previous console then, with very refined gameplay and getting the last juices out of the system)
A little over a decade ago, when the race of 3D accelerators came, PC publishers started to emphasize shiny GFX above all else. And the disease spread to consoles. Needlessly overpowered, expensive systems. And "shiny" so important that games are left to run at 20fps...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Because being able to instantly turn 180 degrees somehow makes the game better, more skillful, and more fun?
I suppose you think aimbots make a game better too because it means you can instantly snap on to a target? Or is the fact they're not part of the game by default somehow different?
Sorry, what has that illogical, stupid little quirk in the PC version of the game got to do with PC gaming somehow offering superior controls?
Really, is that all PC gaming has to offer now? the ability to still bind stupid stuff like that? Is that really what the benefits of PC gaming has dropped to? The relative instability of PC gaming (as show by tfa), the mass cheating, the DRM, the often much lower framerates, and often poorer graphics are all no problem because you can still bind the ability to turn 180 degrees instantly?
Wow, I think I'll go back to PC gaming right away.
Wait, so the game should be pushed back so that the people who *don't* have any problems can't play it either?
Given that a patch'll probably be out post haste, I don't understand that "logic". I live in the UK, so in the past I've had to wait for games that my friends across the pond are already playing, and it sucks. Hell, I imported MechWarrior 4. A *PC game*. I wasn't going to pirate if I could avoid it. I'm really disappointed if the community's viewpoint is quite so bitter as to deny other gamers.
Do you see what I did there?
"I suppose you think aimbots make a game better too because i means you can instantly snap on to a target? Or is the fac they're not part of the game by default somehow different?"
Hate to break it to you, but this is exactly what most consoles do, precisely because their controllers are so gimp for FPS'. Manual accuracy is not a 'stupid little quirk'.
Fucking kids these days.
I was the quintessential early adopter. Bought nearly every console I had on release day, if I didn't manage to talk one of my buds that worked at a local store to let me get one early. Despite what most folks think, consoles are usually pretty shitty quality wise until you get to at LEAST Rev 2, usually Rev 3. The first gen top loading NES were prone to loading troubles, and the springs failed quickly. And the first gen PS1 was a total POS! I wouldn't be surprised if the failure rate for the first gen PS1 was as bad as the first X360, they simply swept it under the rug and got Rev 2 and 3 out the door ASAP. But the CD drives in the first gens were real hunks of shit.
And as for noise? Those older boxes weren't space heaters like we have today. Frankly it is VERY easy to run one fanless or with a single large low rev fan to cool the whole smash. I replaced the fans on the CPU and FX5200 with passive coolers (I think I paid like $35 for the set off Amazon) And now it is so quiet I actually forget it is on and turn it off when I mean to switch it on.
And they have digital KVM switches I do believe, although I'll probably just use an adapter when my 22 in flat panel shows up as I have too many older machines that don't use digital outs. But a single KVM with keyboard hotkeys is certainly a LOT less messy than trying to keep a bunch of old consoles wired up into your entertainment center IMHO. Unless you have an entertainment center that covers a wall they quickly become cluttered and nasty looking. With the KVM all you see is an extra box in the corner, much nicer to look at IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well, then we're in totally different kinds of market. I always wait quite a long time before jumping on next generation (hell, I still haven't touched X360/PS3/Wii), not only because of cost (and, it seems, reliability problems that you mention), but also because 1st gen games are mostly about "shiny", while the previous system still gets new games with refined gameplay and which soak everything from the console GFX-wise (PS2 is still getting big titles in 2010...)
Yes, you can silence old boxes of course...with some waste of time instead of actually playing games; that's why I'm talking about here (no passive / big & slow fan options to be found, you have to build them; noisy and failure prone HDD; a need to unclog the insides of PSU; and frankly - I hardly remember how I was setting up/tweaking those machines back then)
Digital KVMs are quite a bit more expensive. The only reasonable option IMHO is to have a monitor with two independent inputs.
And again...drawers are fine to keep consoles in them. Who says they all have to be constantly wired to the TV?
One that hath name thou can not otter
http://xkcd.com/606/
Why this doesn't seem to bother most PC gamers is beyond me. All I can think of is, maybe, they all use aimbots and hacks like a bunch of "daddy, don't take off my training wheels" assholes.
Speaking only for myself, aimbots and hacks don't bother me because I only on VAC servers.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
What handicap? The difficulty of games isn't any less on a console, multiplayer isn't any less competitive even when put up against PC players, the game isn't any less fun or playable.
Sorry - I meant "handicap" in the other sense. Console players are handicapped with sluggish and inaccurate controls.
As for console games not being any less fun or playable... well, as I said, I beg to differ. I found Halo to be fun on PC, and not fun on Xbox. I found Halo 2 to be mostly fun on an Xbox when I was able to play with keyboad and mouse, not fun when I had to use the gamepad. And like I said, that wasn't due to a lack of time spent getting used to the controls.
Maybe if I had pressed on for much, much longer than it took me to get used to a mouse and keyboard, I would've reached the same level of comfort that you seem to have. But you know, life is short. It didn't take me more than a few weeks to get the hang of using a mouse and keyboard; why should I invest months or years in practicing with a gamepad, when all the games I want are on PC anyway (and when they're cross-platform, like TF2, the PC versions are always better)?
Your earlier point about games being hosted on peoples consoles making them more vulnerable shows a complete lack of understanding about how the most serious of cheats work, the difference between using cheats on the closed architecture of consoles vs. the open architecture of PCs and in fact a lack of understanding about client/server computing in general- hint: aimbots, wallhacks, radar, model hacks are all client side cheats, who the host is is entirely irrelevant.
Meanwhile, you ignore the problems of peer-hosted games: the host has zero lag, which gives him an advantage whether he's trying to cheat or not, and the host can push his router's standby button to freeze all the other players while he runs around and slaughters them. (And of course, if he has a modded console, he can do much worse things.)
I've actually seen that happen. I have not, however, seen anyone use these PC hacks you complain about. Maybe it's because I only play on VAC servers.
Regarding Shadowrun, pretty much everything you said was bs so I wont waste time covering it in detail, but basically the PC controls were no different to any other PC FPS
"IGN AU: Let's start off with the issues we had with the PC controls. We play a lot of online PC shooters, and the biggest issue we found with the PC Shadowrun controls is that they feel fairly sloppy and imprecise compared to other PC shooters. This is due to the larger crosshair size and wide bullet spread. Obviously this is a way to counteract the inaccuracy of the 360 control pad relative to a mouse and keyboard. Is there a better solution that you can think of that would give the PC controls the same tight feeling found in other PC shooters?"
and your comments about aiming assistance and aiming being unimportant run completely contradictory to each other.
Er, no. Without aiming assistance, you'd never hit anyone because it's hard to actually get the crosshair where you want it with a gamepad. Even with assistance, you don't have the same precision that you do with a mouse - the game nudges your crosshair toward the spot where you probably want it to go, but you still don't have the same degree of control. That lack of control is less of a problem in Shadowrun because Shadowrun explicitly does not rely as much on accurate aiming (see quote below).
Shadowrun had no less shooting emphasis than most other FPS games over the last 15 years.
"Mitch Gitelman: There's two things to think of. One is the whole 360 vs PC control balance thing - that's only one part of it. The other is that weapon accuracy is like that so that you can do some of the other things in Shadowrun that are so much fun.
If you tighten up the controls and that accuracy, combat
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Uh... Descent started out on PC. This isn't a PC vs. console issue. Look at the popular console FPSes: they're about soldiers walking around in realistic environments with gravity, just like the popular PC FPSes. Not because they're being held down by The PC Man (most console games are not available on PC), but because that's what people want to play.
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Started and died out. Similarly to most PC sim-style games, actually.
On consoles OTOH...there is still a sizable number of popular games in which you move in full 3D.
(yes, this is all tongue-in cheek obviously, directed mostly at people who blame all that is bad in the world on consoles...not knowing them at all in reality; seeing only what they want to see)
BTW, "classic" FPS games became popular on consoles only starting with first Xbox. Yes, obviously there is some demand for them (with that I'm fine TBH, as long as I have many other great games).
But the root cause might be simply, mentioned by me previously, that it appears "sensible" for publishers to launch such games on both kinds of systems (majority of "classic" FPS games are, contrary to what you claim, multiplatform). The code/devtools/assets are almost the same (those are not ports, in either direction! There is no porting effort present). And since on PCs mouselook is one of the very few natural control options...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Actually SS2 runs fine on my Geforce 285, the only problem I've had was with the AMD multi-core timing bug with my Athnon X2 and this was solved by setting the sshock.exe process to use one core. But then again the timing bug affected many XP games as well that ran fine under my Athlon64.
Maintain == extra cost. I've owned a NES, SNES, N64, XBOX (not 360) and Wii. Although I've never used the Xbox for gaming really (got Halo free with it but also have Halo on PC), I bought it so I could mod it into a cheap media centre. So ignoring the Xbox I would still have to maintain 4 consoles in order to use the games I've already paid for.
At least on a PC if my old DOS games wont play in Windows 7 I have at least two options, 1. install DOSBOX or install DOS. Same for XP, Win95/98 and so on.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Buying the games again is bit of a kick in the teeth when I have these cartridges well enough preserved from my youth. Same with Mean Streets (purchased in 1992) I still have the original floppy disks.
Having the old HW around is good sometimes as every now and then people just give me carts they've found when cleaning out their houses.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I got the PC version of DAO and it appears to be working fine so far. I'm even using mods from dragonagenexus.com, the same guy who did the TESNexus and Falloutnexus websites.
I would still advise you to wait anyway because the mods are still very basic and you'll likely get the current crop of DLC content bundled for free in a GOTY edition.
Agreed. The appeal of console gaming is some hypothetical extreme example that has no basis in reality.
I find cheating actually quite rare in the competitive PC games I've played online. In fact, I think the cheating false positive is a lot more destructive to the PC gaming experience than cheating itself is. When stupid or extremely immature players (most of the gaming populace) are faced with the fact that a player may be better at a game than he/she is, they tend toward the more favorable answer to themselves that the person must have had some unfair advantage.
I have had this happen to me countless times in Counter-Strike where some player who has been playing on K-Mart speakers for 4 years thinks I'm wall hacking because I use his footsteps to locate and kill him from around a corner. Or extrapolate his movement path and shoot him through a wall with an AWP. I obviously can't do it every time, but the more times you try, the better you get at it, the better chance you have at scoring a hit, and hey sometimes you just get lucky. These types of things are super common for even casual players. Yet I, and I'm sure many others, are constantly getting banned by stupid server administrators for 'hacking'.
Not to mention that hacks are probably likely to be infected/repackaged with all kinds of bad things, and can get your key permanently disabled. They also ruin the challenge of a game and prevent you from actually improving, which are usually the main reasons people play competitive games for a reasonable length of time.
Wow, way to totally miss my point, but still rescue your post from the bowels of troll hell by pointing out that cheats take the challenge out of the game.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So long as the hardware is still working, which isn't good considering the problems the Xbox 360's had already.
Once the HW dies then everything magically stops working. However on PC's I can still utilise my old games and programs from 1993 on my current PC even though the hardware and operating environment has been out of date for 16 years.
Yes there are things like the Virtual Console but I don't really want to have to buy the same game again, especially if I've got the original cartridge.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
So you use an emulator?
Cartridge-era games are among the only games ever designed for console play that are actually comfortably playable on a PC.
When I do get that gaming itch, I usually whip out Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario Bros. because those games don't suck on a PC.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Your post had no point other than to spew pointless exaggerated nonsense, and inform everyone that you in your righteous splendor do not partake in the evil that is hacking.
Alright, we're impressed and eternally grateful if that's what you were hoping for.
Console games rarely allow for devices that are not shipped inside the box.
That's not really true, as actually evidenced by the number of different kinds of controllers for consoles (steering wheels, Negcon, G-con, Namco Arcade Stick, Rockband controllers)
On PCs game is either tailored only for a mouse (which results in horrible game mechanics when ported almost without changes to console; heck, it isn't even playable with standard nowadays on PCs touchpad) or...the only other widely available & used on PC non-standard kind of controller, that I'm aware of, is steering wheel. Nothing else.
(yes, I don't treat joypads as non-standard ;p And most PC gamers I know claimed their keyboard is just as good, if not better..usually just before their asses being handed on a platter by me in some competitive single-machine multiplayer game)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Look at games about five years ago: the games are well-made (mostly) and if there are expansion packs, it's actually more content.
Now look at more modern games, fallout 3 being a prime example. You oay €60 for about 6 hours of gameplay, and then you need to buy extra packs to get what the game was supposed to be.
Basically, every game's idea is just broken into parts before you even buy it. THAT has only started since the xbox marketplace and its alternatives became popular.
Yeah, I've seen that, but five years is a bit much.
Hell, with five years, you end up playing games on the wrong OS! (Unless you lag there, also.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well, that's not the only reason I'm waiting. I do have a game budget that has to fill back up, too.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Or Steam...
This is not a case of platform. It's the making of publishers.
Accidentally, you give some credence to my claim that Microsoft is responsible for muddling the waters, nullifying the strengths of both kinds of platforms.
PS. Also, by saying that the games of 5 years ago were universally well made you simply display a bad case of selective memory. There was always crap. You simply don't remember it that much.
Claims like yours were made since the beginning of recorded history (whether about youth, arts generally, morality...whatever). They were always rubbish. In few decades you will remember current day as "Golden Age of Gaming"
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You totally ignore other important factors.
Less pervasive DRM for example, one not relying on keys and/or authentication.
Meaning one important thing...it is much more realistic to resale console games, or even buy them used outright (and resale is also an option in the latter case of course, if you don't feel like keeping the game; usually you can do it at around the same or even slightly higher price, meaning that the cost of such consoles games is better then ZERO)
Console gaming is dirt cheap. Getting a console and a laptop for work - still cheaper.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I might have confused SS2 with some other big & great game (Thief possibly?), in which there are massive artifacts due to deficiencies of current Nv drivers. Anyway the point isn't about one specific game (hey, its worshipers will find a way if they still play it) but that you must expect issues if you're looking into familiarizing yourself with old games regularly.
Sure, maintaining is "extra cost", but the point was that it's comparatively less problematic than doing similarly with some old PC. Certainly much less time consuming.
And what would you do with some DOS game that your computer is unable (speed wise) to run in DOSbox? DOS Glide game? (or some even more obscure GFX API) There are no options to run those optimally except on old hardware. Either way includes more hassle than "get console from the drawer, plug it in, play"
One that hath name thou can not otter
"As for console games not being any less fun or playable... well, as I said, I beg to differ. I found Halo to be fun on PC, and not fun on Xbox. I found Halo 2 to be mostly fun on an Xbox when I was able to play with keyboad and mouse, not fun when I had to use the gamepad. And like I said, that wasn't due to a lack of time spent getting used to the controls."
I'll admit I never played on the original XBox, maybe it was that console that's the issue. Have you tried playing since on the 360?
"Meanwhile, you ignore the problems of peer-hosted games: the host has zero lag, which gives him an advantage whether he's trying to cheat or not"
This is really a non-issue because the host is randomly selected with no way to game that as it's decided by a central server and not by the players. Everyone with a reasonable connection gets a turn at hosting, but furthermore a lot of games do a lot to mitigate this by adding a virtual lag comparative to the average of the rest of the players so if the average ping is 50ms they'll add a 50ms lag such that in practice it's not really noticable.
"and the host can push his router's standby button to freeze all the other players while he runs around and slaughters them."
Never played a console game online where this is possible, it certainly doesn't work on the 360 because if you do that your Live connection will drop and you'll get booted out the game yourself.
"(And of course, if he has a modded console, he can do much worse things.)"
It's certainly true, but as yet no mod for the 360 (or PS3 that I'm aware) allows for serious cheats. The 360 bans were because of modified models because stupidly Microsoft didn't put any checks on game content by default- only the executable. As the check on the executable has yet to be bypassed it means that so far the 360 has been immune to more serious cheats like aimbot and radar, I believe the PS3 is the same. There are also repercussions for 360 people who do use hacked consoles or controllers in that the consoles get kicked off of Live too- none of these points can be said of the PC. In fact, Microsoft even gave suspensions to people exploiting the recent javelin glitch in CoD:MW2 which was a game exploit and affected all versions of the game, afaik they are also the only ones who have been able to do this.
"I've actually seen that happen. I have not, however, seen anyone use these PC hacks you complain about. Maybe it's because I only play on VAC servers."
Even VAC is defeatable. On the PC you have access to read/write areas of memory as you wish, even if network transport is encrypted it has to be decrypted by the client for it to work with it so no matter what VAC does it is defeatable, it can at best make it harder to cheat, or catch old cheats when it gets updated, but it can do nothing in the long run to prevent cheating. This has always been the issue with PB too- ultimately they can at best delay the inevitable and catch people who use old cheats post update but even smart cheats can mitigate this by detecting changes to VAC/PB and then disable cheats until the cheat too has been patched for the update.
"Er, no. Without aiming assistance, you'd never hit anyone because it's hard to actually get the crosshair where you want it with a gamepad."
You do realise most online console shooters don't even have any aiming assistance in multiplayer right? It's primarily used in single player and even then can be disabled.
Regarding Shadowrun, the IGN comments don't make sense, whilst some weapons have a lot of spread like shotguns, there are plenty of precision weapons also, the PC version didn't add any delay onto mouse movement or anything, but then, using IGN as a source is like using The Christian Daily as evidence that god exists. IGN's reviews are entirely based on how many perks the company in question gives the reviewer as is the case unfortunately with most online review sites nowadays.
"My concern is that you're basically insulting everyone who finds a gamepad unus
It's certainly disgraceful that this game should be released in this state, given than around half of PC gamers use ATI cards. That said, I find it a little unfair to single out this game or even EA for the problems. Yes, most EA titles are highly buggy upon release (I was fuming about the problems with ATI cards and Sims 3), but I don't think many other publishers do much of a better job. Most games released over the past 10 years on the PC have been highly buggy. Just off hand I can name Sims 3, The Golden Compass, LA Rush, GTA 4, GTA San Andreas, Kane and Lynch.
Developers and publishers will tell you that this tendency towards more bugginess is a result of the more complex development procedure arising from the games themselves becoming more and more complex. This is, of course, utter tripe. They will also tell you that the wide variety of PC configurations makes it impossible to cater for all. While there may be some truth to this, there is absolutely no excuse for bugs arising from highly common hardware or logic errors in the game.
The reason that console games are less buggy than their PC counterparts is simple - money. Tight deadlines and budget constraints mean that developers and publishers are not sufficiently inclined to release a game on the PC with proper testing because they know that they will be able to subsequently release a patch to address the inevitable uproar. The consequences for releasing a buggy game on consoles are much more severe. On consoles like the PS2, GameCube and XBox, this would have meant a full-scale recall. And not every PS3 or XBox 360 gamer has an internet connection. Remember the farce that was Need for Speed Undercover on PS3...?
I'll admit I never played on the original XBox, maybe it was that console that's the issue. Have you tried playing since on the 360?
Sure have. I haven't noticed any difference in the controls. Halo 3, TF2, and L4D/L4D2 are as awkward on the 360 as Halo 1 and 2 were on the Xbox. Of those, TF2 is the worst because it has no aim assistance: Valve realized the mistake and added it in for the L4D games.
This is really a non-issue because the host is randomly selected with no way to game that as it's decided by a central server and not by the players.
That doesn't make it a non-issue, it just means you can't cheat in every match.
Never played a console game online where this is possible, it certainly doesn't work on the 360 because if you do that your Live connection will drop and you'll get booted out the game yourself.
Well, it certainly was possible on Halo 2. As for the 360, I doubt they'll drop you if your connection goes down for just a few seconds at a time (which is how the cheat works) - otherwise the game would be unplayable on wifi or any other connection that isn't 100% reliable.
Even VAC is defeatable. On the PC you have access to read/write areas of memory as you wish, even if network transport is encrypted it has to be decrypted by the client for it to work with it so no matter what VAC does it is defeatable, it can at best make it harder to cheat, or catch old cheats when it gets updated, but it can do nothing in the long run to prevent cheating.
The same is true of console games, of course. In the long run, the game maker has no control over what people do at home with their own hardware. What matters is how easily and commonly exploited the games are in practice, and so far, the only cheating I've seen in VAC games has been in-game exploits.
You do realise most online console shooters don't even have any aiming assistance in multiplayer right? It's primarily used in single player and even then can be disabled.
I don't know about "most" games, but the Halo, COD, and L4D games certainly do have aiming assistance in multiplayer.
Regarding Shadowrun, the IGN comments don't make sense
IGN is hardly the only source for those opinions. Even the developers confirmed that the PC controls were tweaked for balance against the 360. For instance, the reticle blur during quick turns mainly affects PC users, who are used to being able to aim quickly without being punished for it. Whether that falls into the category of "they nerfed the PC controls" or "the game isn't about quick aiming" is arguable, but either way, the game is specifically designed to erase the disadvantage of using a gamepad.
The issue is that the majority of online gamers now actually play with a gamepad
The majority of television watchers use standard-definition TV sets. Does that mean HDTV isn't better quality?
most arguments against the gamepad and console playing as you've mentioned in this post and previous posts are simply not even true
Er.. just because you deny them doesn't make them not true. ;)
so it strongly suggests those holding out against console gaming are doing so not because they couldn't get used to it but because they have some pre-defined hate for console gaming.
Well, I hope you now realize that assumption is false. If I had some pre-defined hate for console gaming, I wouldn't have spent hundreds of dollars on an Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox Live subscription, and I wouldn't have bothered sending my 360 back four times when it got the RROD.
(Turns out it was the power supply, not the console. Once they figured that out, they didn't want to ship a new power supply until I paid to ship the old one back, even though they shipped the console back and forth and paid f
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"Well, it certainly was possible on Halo 2. As for the 360, I doubt they'll drop you if your connection goes down for just a few seconds at a time (which is how the cheat works) - otherwise the game would be unplayable on wifi or any other connection that isn't 100% reliable."
That's not how wifi works, it doesn't just randomly drop or become unstable unless the hardware itself is fault in which case yes, you would get disconnected. When a connection becomes weak it doesn't send any less data back and forth to the client, what changes is the proportion of usable data to the proportion of redundant data for error checking and correcting, this has the effect of making the wifi connection speed appear slower, so for example if you have a wifi connection of 54mbps that means you're transmitting/receiving say, 54mbps of usable data along with 6mbps of data for error checking/correcting, when you move away from the access point and your speed drops to 10mbps you're still receiving 60mbps or whatever of data overall, but 50mbps of that is for error checking/correcting. There is no inherent instability in wifi in this respect, which is why it's not an issue to play over wifi whilst Microsoft retain strict limits on safely connected clients.
"The same is true of console games, of course. In the long run, the game maker has no control over what people do at home with their own hardware. What matters is how easily and commonly exploited the games are in practice, and so far, the only cheating I've seen in VAC games has been in-game exploits."
You keep repeating this but I'm not sure you really understand the console hardware. It's absolutely not possible to read/write the memory of modern consoles unless you get access to an execution environment where you can execute your own code (outside the limited sandbox of say, XNA). No one has managed to do this on the 360 since a hack about 4 years ago which was quickly made obsolete with a patch and has never been replicated since. Even though the hardware is in people's homes, and is theoretically hence possible to hack, it's not practically possible to crack because we don't have people with electron microscopes sat around their houses, clusters of supercomputers to crack encryption keys that are embedded in hardware you'd need a lab like those at DARPA or Intel to get into. This is why despite the console having been out since 2005, no such hack has yet been successful- all hacks have depended on detectable modifications to DVD drive firmwares and similar. In contrast, on the PC, all you need is a debugger, knowledge of assembly and a little time- that makes a hell of a difference in the practicality of attacking the two systems.
"I don't know about "most" games, but the Halo, COD, and L4D games certainly do have aiming assistance in multiplayer."
CoD: MW2 certainly doesn't and I'm pretty sure MW and CoD5 didn't either. I've been playing MW2 quite a lot lately including last night, not sure about Left 4 Dead though, not played it in ages because it was shit. Halo 3 does, but can be disabled if you prefer to free aim which I do because you can play better when going for headshots and such. Games like Flashpoint and GRAW/GRAW2 don't, these are also good examples because they require precision aiming- Flashpoint in fact requires you to use the rangefinder on your sights to aim just above the head of targets at long range to make the round arc down onto them and again this works just fine with a console controller with no assistance and with typical sway you get looking down scopes on some games. So even a game that requires a massive amount of near pixel precision aiming doesn't come off as a problem on a console gamepad which again is evidence that the supposed disadvantages of accuracy and aiming of a gamepad are imagined, not real.
"The majority of television watchers use standard-definition TV sets. Does that mean HDTV isn't better quality?"
This is another straw man argument, pretty much everyone had an SDTV before HDTV came along to be ad
That's not how wifi works, it doesn't just randomly drop or become unstable unless the hardware itself is fault in which case yes, you would get disconnected.
I guess you don't own a microwave oven. ;)
When a connection becomes weak it doesn't send any less data back and forth to the client, what changes is the proportion of usable data to the proportion of redundant data for error checking and correcting, this has the effect of making the wifi connection speed appear slower, so for example if you have a wifi connection of 54mbps that means you're transmitting/receiving say, 54mbps of usable data along with 6mbps of data for error checking/correcting, when you move away from the access point and your speed drops to 10mbps you're still receiving 60mbps or whatever of data overall, but 50mbps of that is for error checking/correcting.
Er, that's not really how wifi works... it steps down to different transmission schemes when the signal/noise ratio gets too low.
But that's beside the point, because the console and the Live service don't care about the physical details of your connection. What they notice is that when your connection is interrupted (say, you turn on the microwave), packets start getting lost. Packet loss has the effect, at the TCP level, of making the connection slower, but that's because the sender's buffer fills up while it's retransmitting the old packets that were dropped. Xbox Live can't tell whether you've put your router on standby for a few seconds, or whether you're experiencing radio interference that causes all of Live's packets to be dropped for a few seconds, or whether some router anywhere in between is temporarily overloaded.
In fact, I just tried it myself: after pressing the standby button, it took 2-3 minutes before I was signed out of Live.
It's absolutely not possible to read/write the memory of modern consoles unless you get access to an execution environment where you can execute your own code (outside the limited sandbox of say, XNA).
So it's a good thing consoles are never vulnerable to buffer overflows and other expoits that let you run your own code, right? Oh wait, they are. That's how the Xbox, PSP, and Wii softmods work.
Maybe the 360 isn't vulnerable, but all we can really say is that none have been found yet.
This is why despite the console having been out since 2005, no such hack has yet been successful- all hacks have depended on detectable modifications to DVD drive firmwares and similar.
There's no inherent reason why a firmware mod would have to be detectable. The console can only check the drive's firmware by going through the drive. If the drive has been modified to lie about the contents of its own firmware, what's the console going to do about that?
CoD: MW2 certainly doesn't [have auto-aim in multiplayer] and I'm pretty sure MW and CoD5 didn't either.
COD 4 did, and from what I can tell, so do World at War and Modern Warfare 2. Maybe it's subtle enough that you don't notice it, but it's helping you nonetheless.
This is another straw man argument, pretty much everyone had an SDTV before HDTV came along
I'm not sure you know the difference between strawman and analogy.
How did a faulty power supply cause an RROD when the power supply is external and RROD represents an internal hardware fault?
RROD indicates a "general hardware failure". After several weeks,
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What do you think a modulation scheme is? It's merely an error detection/correction algorithm- my example was extremely simplified yes, but your link reaffirms exactly what I said. My example was based on the underlying math of data transmission on which just about all (or in fact all?) data transmission is based. It just becomes more relevant on communication methods like wifi which have higher levels of noise than say, fibre optics.
No, you're mistaking the trusted link for the live notification sign out here- a better test is to try it in CoD:MW2 or similar, and (assuming you can even tell you're the host) you'll see host migration when you plug back in. Note that I'm not saying a bit of packet loss causes this, but packet loss for any usable amount of time (i.e. enough to be exploitable) absolutely does cause this. This is my point regarding intermittent wifi- either your wifi is so bad that you get periods of around one second or more (which is a really really long time in computing terms) and you do get dropped, or the packet loss is merely intermittent and you get a slower, but still stable system which doesn't cause this.
Yes that's certainly true, but you have to be able to built 360 binary blocks, and get access to an execution environment to be able to exploit the buffer overflow in the first place. With code signing this would take some doing, and as you state, it's something that hasn't been managed yet and something that is easily fixable from software and detectable regardless- again, you can't say the same about the PC.
This is certainly true on the PC platform as it depends on standardised specifications. The same can't be said of custom hardware like consoles- there is custom hardware for example whereby you have a separate chip that can read the actual direct memory contents of the firmware and return the checksum bypassing the firmware. This means the checksum of the firmware is always returned independently of the firmware and again, you'd need some pretty high end (again- DARPA/Intel type labs) equipment to be able to defeat that. I don't know if this is the exact method Microsoft use in the 360, but presumably it's something similar as they haven't failed to detect modified firmware yet.
These forum posts don't really provide much useful information but they may be right. One thing's for sure though it's not the default multiplayer option as I've never played with it, it's not mere subtlety because it's on by default in single player and I did play through the single player campaign with it- it's easy to tell when it's there. If it does exist in multiplayer and is off by default, then that doesn't seem to make any difference over those that use it either, as I don't struggle to do well in game. Perhaps somewhat ironically, years of playing on the PC still gives me a competitive advantage when playing on the 360- even with a switch of co
Oh I see, so you were merely speculating and putting forth that speculation as fact? There are plenty of console gamers who would disagree with you.
I was doing what you did when you claimed "if you give it a chance and get used to the controller just like you had to with mouse and keyboard originally then there is absolutely no issue". Were you speculating, or were you extrapolating from your own experience and the experience of others? As you know, there are plenty of gamers who disagree with you too.
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Unlike you I have an understanding of the subject.
PC gaming does not depend on DRM, there is no forced component, it is a third party add on that is entirely optional. The point is that the hardware DRM for consoles is enforced on every single game, for any game that does not have a disk requires online activation.
Please get your facts straight in the future.
Hmmm.. this does not happen on consoles? I think not. There are plenty of abandoned console games. In fact all console games are abandoned as soon as the hardware gets too old. At least with the decent abandoned PC games you get a community that fixes it, take a look at Evil Planet for Evil Genius or Armada Fleet Command for an ancient Win98 game called Birth of the Federation. I'm certain there are support communities out there I've never heard of.
You are thick aren't you, I've already said this is their stated goal on all platforms that's why 2nd hand sales are used as part of the piracy statistics. The only difference is that they are trying to kill 2nd hand PC sales on the software but attempting to kill 2nd hand Console sales by going after retailers. This is due to the fact it's cheaper to harass retailers then it is to pay MS to monitor you. Also remember that there is reigion coding on the Xbox meaning I cant import games from Asia or the US and expect it to work in Australia, PC games do not have this restriction.
Now I know you don't understand the meaning of pervasive. Here it is.
Hmmm... PC DRM is an easily defeated optional component, console DRM is a difficult to defeat mandatory component. This makes console DRM both more pervasive and more invasive.
How, your post was full of logical inconsistencies and half truths? at least point out the bits that were wrong and provide evidence to back it up.
Here's the brilliant part, I can have a floppy drive on a modern PC if I want to. If you must know I'm a sysadmin, every now and then I have to read a floppy at work thus I have a USB floppy drive. There are two types of fools in this world, the first says it is new therefore good and the second says it is old therefore good, you have just proven you are the first type of fool.
I said demonstrate this, find me an example of being able to sell an old game at above retail. Your entire point hinges on this. Otherwise it costs you.
Yes it does
So you not only propose buying used games but you also think that you can resell those games for a greater price. Basic economic theory says this cannot be done, you are proposing that retailers not only make no profit on used games but actually take a loss on buying them back off you.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.