Video Game Thread

[supraman]

It had been 12 years since Diablo 2, AND they had created WoW almost after that. There's also been problems with servers in the past in Star Wars as well, but that wasn't a Blizzard issue. Still, though it made headline news.



How the hell could they not have seen this coming? It's no damn excuse.

Blizz is the only game compay I won't skewer for this stuff. Their games are too good so I forgive a lot (yeah yeah yeah I'm a fucking fanboi and know it)

 

[MassHavoc]

Need to get back to Arkham City and Dead Island... just haven't had the time.



DLC for Arkham may not be worth it (unless they've released something new I haven't heard about) depending on what you're looking for...



Most are just skins or new arenas for the stealth/fighting challenges.

They have a new Harley Quinn expansion coming out... they changed her hair to dark and redid her a bit.



http://www.ign.com/a...t-dlc-should-be





"UPDATE: Warner Bros. has confirmed that Harley Quinn's Revenge will cost 800 Microsoft Points or $9.99 on the PlayStation Network. Also, Robin won't be able to roam the entirety of Arkham City -- just this mission and his previously released challenge maps."

 

[TSD]

Diablo 3: can be beaten in 7 hours.



http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Diablo-Blizzard-PC-Gaming-7-hours-Korea,15649.html#xtor=RSS-998

 

[MassHavoc]

Well they are asian, you have to factor in the conversion rate.

 

[Tater]

Well they are asian, you have to factor in the conversion rate.

... and time zones.

 

[MassHavoc]

If they were on a plane doing this, they could have finished the game before it came out.

 

[The Count Dante]

It had been 12 years since Diablo 2, AND they had created WoW almost after that. There's also been problems with servers in the past in Star Wars as well, but that wasn't a Blizzard issue. Still, though it made headline news.



How the hell could they not have seen this coming? It's no damn excuse.

Naw, it isnt quite as simple as that. Although it all all about money...



Without going too geek, it is easier and cheaper to add bandwidth, servers, load balancers, net gear, circuits, etc. then it is to remove them.



To compare to WoW: At first a server farm handled all chat, auction house, game zones, etc. Only the login server farm was seperated. Now? These have to be seperated and the chat lives alone, auction house lives alone, etc. And while that model is required for a game like WoW, it was not used to start and it would not be thrown into Diablo 3 from the get go.



If it makes you feel any better there is NO online based game that doesnt have issues out of the gate unless it is a game that is establishing the connection as peer-to-peer (like hosting a 1st person shooter game match or like Warcraft/Starcraft matches). But with Blizzard, you can bet your Sword of 1000 Truths they ARE going nuts over there in 18 hour day and in shift to get it stable.



No amount of open beta testing is the same as a full blown release into production. In fact that is true of most of the geek world. Rarely are moves from a 'Development" to a "Production" status completely smooth no matter the amount of testing.

 

[Ymono37]

They have a new Harley Quinn expansion coming out... they changed her hair to dark and redid her a bit.



http://www.ign.com/a...t-dlc-should-be





"UPDATE: Warner Bros. has confirmed that Harley Quinn's Revenge will cost 800 Microsoft Points or $9.99 on the PlayStation Network. Also, Robin won't be able to roam the entirety of Arkham City -- just this mission and his previously released challenge maps."

CAN'T SEE LINK AT WORK!!! Sounds awesome... I'd pony up 10 sheckles for this.



Really glad they're still interested in making DLC for the game - especially for how long it's been out.

 

[MassHavoc]

Yeah that's the thing that drives me nuts, they make games now specifically half assed in order to sell the shit out of post release DLC product and the such, but if a game fails at lunch they further **** the game and don't release anything. Or if it's a really great game they concentrate too much on add-ons and bullshit that nickel and dimes everyone for new weapons and maps, or whatever and by the time that they finish the really import DLC people have moved on.

 

[Pez68]

No one is talking about it because consoles have killed PC gaming. Sure you still have your hard core guys and your LAN party nerds but no casual gamer uses their PC anymore. At the end of the day it's too expensive. Sure the games itself are actually a little cheaper but constantly upgrading your computer to work got old, and then constantly fighting with drivers was even worse. If there was a port onto consoles we'd be talking about it, but the way the game is set up it's pretty impossible on a console, which is fine, and it's going to be a great game, just don't expect it to be genre exploding. It will still sell well because it's the one game that every PC gamer will have to have, then they'll trumpet it because it's a PC only game and it's what the nerd fanboys will do but at the end of the day as good as it is their will always be other games just as good that won't limit to PC gamers.

Huh?

 

[TSD]

No one is talking about it because consoles have killed PC gaming. Sure you still have your hard core guys and your LAN party nerds but no casual gamer uses their PC anymore. At the end of the day it's too expensive. Sure the games itself are actually a little cheaper but constantly upgrading your computer to work got old, and then constantly fighting with drivers was even worse. If there was a port onto consoles we'd be talking about it, but the way the game is set up it's pretty impossible on a console, which is fine, and it's going to be a great game, just don't expect it to be genre exploding. It will still sell well because it's the one game that every PC gamer will have to have, then they'll trumpet it because it's a PC only game and it's what the nerd fanboys will do but at the end of the day as good as it is their will always be other games just as good that won't limit to PC gamers.

Add you to the long list of people who have said PC gaming is dead since like 2000. PC gaming will never be dead, there will always be enough enthusiasts to keep games getting released to PC. i.e. if PC gaming was dead i would have bought more than 5 games for my PS3 over the course of its life, 3 of which were NHL installments. and there are still plenty PC exclusives.



add to that, I havent "needed" to upgrade my PC in going on 4 years. ( I did get ONE video card upgrade, but that was personal choice, I didnt need it). The only reason you would consistently need to upgrade your PC ever 1-2 years is if you needed the latest cutting edge graphics set to ridiculous with every game you play. New PC games now, are pushing better graphics than the as of yet unreleased next gen consoles can even dream of and they arent even out yet. Unlike consoles PC players can adjust their graphics, if a PC gamer is fine with Console level graphics, they can easily get the life of a console out of their rig.



"constantly upgrading" your PC is a fallacy. You only have to constantly upgrade if you constantly want to be on the very cutting edge. Whereas console gamers simply have no option. As I said, I recently upgraded my video card in like January. after about 4 years of hassle free gaming on my current system and I still have no need to upgrade anything else.





and you who had so many issues with New vegas, while i never had so much as a crash on the PC version? Consoles are becoming subject just as much as PC gamers to the "quirks" of PC gaming because they are essentially trying to turn consoles into PC's with a hardware standard.



For the record, i built my current rig for the price of a launch day ps3 or 360.



Theres plenty of PC gamers on this forum. Bubble, Supra, me, Dante, I think Kotl, CLwolf obviously since he was looking forward to diablo. and this is a hockey forum and look at the amount of pc gamers. COmpare that to the other gamers in this thread who dont pc game, and just those posters I mentioned make of a big chunk of the people that post in this thread.

 

[supraman]

The one advantage of PCs over consoles is you can upgrade in increments, sure the overall cost might be higher than a console and the startup price is steep but the upgrades can be done over years. Like the box I have, one day I'll upgrade from 16 GB of memory to 32. I'll also one day drop a Nvidia 680 GTX into it and sell my SLi 470 GTXs to someone for like 50 bucks. My sound card is ancient but does the job nicely.



You could even upgrade a crappy store bought PC over time and I'm not talking about a store bought gaming rig. I'm talking about a piece of crap PC. You'd start with a new case. Then new motherboard and from there the options are wide open

 

[MassHavoc]

I would venture to bet that most PC games have a console but not the other way around. Yeah sounds like a head scratcher but I"m just saying. I don't hate PC gaming but it's been going down hill. I never said it was dead, I just said it got killed... figuratively as in numbers wise. The only thing really giving it a foothold is the big MMOs like WoW and exclusives like Diablo 3 that just doesn't translate to consoles.





ohh,, and shut up fanboys. haha

 

[supraman]

I would venture to bet that most PC games have a console but not the other way around. Yeah sounds like a head scratcher but I"m just saying. I don't hate PC gaming but it's been going down hill. I never said it was dead, I just said it got killed... figuratively as in numbers wise. The only thing really giving it a foothold is the big MMOs like WoW and exclusives like Diablo 3 that just doesn't translate to consoles.





ohh,, and shut up fanboys. haha

There are plenty of games that are PC exclusive.

 

[MassHavoc]

That's what I just said.

 

[TSD]

There are plenty of games that are PC exclusive.

He was saying essentially there are "more" console exclusives in comparrison to PC. Which is undeniably true, but how many of them are worth a damn?



Red Dead Redemption and the NHL Series are the only PS3 games I own, I cant get on the PC (If it hasnt already im pretty sure red dead will get released to PC as all the GTA games have). As far as NHL I dont think sports games were ever a "huge" money maker in the PC arena and EA sabotaged the franchise as it was. Of course PC gamers picked up 09 for console, NHL for PC in 09 hadnt changed visually since NHL 02. If you are using that as a test for a declining market for NHL on PC, thats just stupid, the product on the PC was Archaic compared to console and its sad considering, the PC could run that engine in full HD, not that shit texture, clone face mode during gameplay on the console.



Any games that are really good that dont come out for PC, are usually specifically a PS3 or Xbox exclusive too and arent available on the other console.

 

[supraman]

He was saying essentially there are "more" console exclusives in comparrison to PC. Which is undeniably true, but how many of them are worth a damn?



Red Dead Redemption and the NHL Series are the only PS3 games I own, I cant get on the PC (If it hasnt already im pretty sure red dead will get released to PC as all the GTA games have). As far as NHL I dont think sports games were ever a "huge" money maker in the PC arena and EA sabotaged the franchise as it was. Of course PC gamers picked up 09 for console, NHL for PC in 09 hadnt changed visually since NHL 02. If you are using that as a test for a declining market for NHL on PC, thats just stupid, the product on the PC was Archaic compared to console and its sad considering, the PC could run that engine in full HD, not that shit texture, clone face mode during gameplay on the console.



Any games that are really good that dont come out for PC, are usually specifically a PS3 or Xbox exclusive too and arent available on the other console.

It isn't true. The only way it might tilt in console favor is sports game but even then I doubt it. There are entire genres that don't see consoles while every single console genre can be played on PC. Consoles only have the sports genre and that is if you exclude Football Manager and the racing games.



Practically all the shooters for console are either released for PC as well or ported over to PC. But you look at just the Total War series, Civ series, and simcity series and they are all PC.



Saying PC gaming is dead is like saying Catholicism is dead. Basically it comes down to consoles having their "niche" where they excel and PCs have their "niche" where they excel.



Sports games on PCs work just fine (actually the NHL menus would load a **** load faster for fucks sake it is slow, terribly coded UI) but the era of buying controllers for PCs is dead. Shame too since the usb interface makes it easy as hell.



The problem with PCs is you have to know a bit about them. You have to know what certain things do and the average joe blow just lacks enough knowledge to get it. Whereas consoles are practically stupid proof, you plug them in, you put the disc in and you play.

 

[LordKOTL]

Add you to the long list of people who have said PC gaming is dead since like 2000. PC gaming will never be dead, there will always be enough enthusiasts to keep games getting released to PC. i.e. if PC gaming was dead i would have bought more than 5 games for my PS3 over the course of its life, 3 of which were NHL installments. and there are still plenty PC exclusives.



add to that, I havent "needed" to upgrade my PC in going on 4 years. ( I did get ONE video card upgrade, but that was personal choice, I didnt need it). The only reason you would consistently need to upgrade your PC ever 1-2 years is if you needed the latest cutting edge graphics set to ridiculous with every game you play. New PC games now, are pushing better graphics than the as of yet unreleased next gen consoles can even dream of and they arent even out yet. Unlike consoles PC players can adjust their graphics, if a PC gamer is fine with Console level graphics, they can easily get the life of a console out of their rig.



"constantly upgrading" your PC is a fallacy. You only have to constantly upgrade if you constantly want to be on the very cutting edge. Whereas console gamers simply have no option. As I said, I recently upgraded my video card in like January. after about 4 years of hassle free gaming on my current system and I still have no need to upgrade anything else.





and you who had so many issues with New vegas, while i never had so much as a crash on the PC version? Consoles are becoming subject just as much as PC gamers to the "quirks" of PC gaming because they are essentially trying to turn consoles into PC's with a hardware standard.



For the record, i built my current rig for the price of a launch day ps3 or 360.



Theres plenty of PC gamers on this forum. Bubble, Supra, me, Dante, I think Kotl, CLwolf obviously since he was looking forward to diablo. and this is a hockey forum and look at the amount of pc gamers. COmpare that to the other gamers in this thread who dont pc game, and just those posters I mentioned make of a big chunk of the people that post in this thread.

Yep. Given the choice between console and PC 99.9% of the time I will chose PC. Consoles in general to me are like TiVo or WebTV--dumbed-down architecture with limited scalability meant to appease the masses for ease-of-use. PC's are capable of so much more but require you to be tinkers, and in many cases it's worth it.



The only way I buy a console game over a PC game is if it's an exclusive to a specific console (Anything Zelda), anything specific to consoles because of nazi business practices by the developers that refuse to release it on PC (NHL franchise/Blur), or if in the long run it wouldn't matter the implementation of the graphics or control scheme and I just rely on cost (Street Fighter IV). Everything else I will get on the PC.

 

[supraman]

Yeah I don't always get the PC version of something...actually off the top of my head only the Batman games are the ones I got for the console over PC well and the GTA series but that is because the PC version is always six months late.

 

[TSD]

Yeah I don't always get the PC version of something...actually off the top of my head only the Batman games are the ones I got for the console over PC well and the GTA series but that is because the PC version is always six months late.

Yeah GTA I dont really care what platform I get it for. If I dont have a hankering to get it on launch, I'll probably get it on PC. GTAIV looked amazing on the PC, but I still used an xbox controller to play it as I found it difficult to drive with the mouse and keyboard.



and yes the God awful waiting on NHL on the console. Fucking takes like an hour to sim a season too. On PC I could sim 10 seasons in like 5 minutes.



They better put better processors and more memory in the goddamn new consoles. Bad enough the video technology rumored to be going into them is already 1 generation behind, at least they will have DX11 I guess. I heard the new Playstation is getting a radeon 6xxxx chip, dont know whats going into xbox.



I might get xbox instead of PS this time around if it 1. comes with an HDD 2. Comes with wireless support. 3. Free online play 4. Blu-ray



Even with that. Alot of Xbox exclusives also ship for Windows (i.e. ME1) since I game on the PC, my options are superior if I go with PS.