My masterrace-console is a suckbox.

CrypticCat

Shared on Sun, 07/26/2015 - 02:13

I believe that if you do a hobby, you have to do it right. There's no sense in doing gaming and then restrict yourself to one system. My pet-system is still the 360 though, even if I sold off most of the games I bought for it over the years. My gaming-corner includes a 360, the nerfed Xbone which became a pretty good console because of the nerfs, a PS3 which became pretty awesome near the end of it's cycle, a PS4 which absolutely destroys the Xbone in what if offers through PSN, a PS-Vita for the remote-play as you haven't experienced gaming until you play Dragon Age Inquisition through Remote-Play and spin to noobs that the game is running natively on it (lol) and a PC with enough power to remotely control a Space-shuttle to Mars.

While my PC is a true exponent of Masterrace-dickery, from a high-end I7 processor, high-end Nvidia to 32Gb memory, it is also the weakest gamebox known to man. Since last 2013 until now, whatever remotely triple-A released on it was a total clusterfuck of day-one patches that wrecked more than what they were meant to address. Games that were absolute dreams on consoles where nightmares filled with bullshit on the PC. Even the console-version of the Sims 3 was superior to the PC-version and then we're even talking about a PC-conversion and not the other way around as is the case with the bulk of triple-A releases nowadays.

The most famous example of that is Arkham Knight, a game that was taken off the market for PCs with no clear date on when it will return. On my PS4, it's as of now the best game of 2015 for me. (Though Fallout4 will probably destroy it, free from platform considerations.) Though the game itself is a generic fighter which left me wondering why I was Batman while I just as easily could have been Nathan Drake or Lara Croft for all the difference that would have made, it is a marvel of game-engineering otherwise. There isn't much that Rocksteady didn't get right there.

On the PC, B-roll games like Euro Truck Simulator 2 absolutely steal the show, though if you truly want hassle-free you're looking at indie offerings in the pixel-art department. Latest gems are 'Guild of Dungeoneers' and 'Holy Potatoes!', both of which games utilizing a mere fraction of the power my PC is able to put out, as both games wouldn't be misplaced in a browser-game environment.

With both the PS4 and the Xbone now offering those pixal-art indie-games too, proudly owning a Masterrace-box is more becoming a pageant for who is the biggest douchebag playing browser-games than running games that actually showcase the ludricous power a PC can put on the tarmac. Makes you wonder of who the peasants really are, huh?

Comments

badmin's picture
Submitted by badmin on Mon, 07/27/2015 - 02:28

Can't really agree since my experience on the PC has single handedly bested any console release thus far.  If for only performance alone my 6 year old PC absolutely destroys the poor quality of the console.  This by itself really makes me sigh at the "next gen" labels tossed out during the systems release.  

I do agree Batman was a cluster fuck, but that should really be a comment on how console dev ruins PC games.  The dev cycle system is broken and needs to be fixed.  PC games are consistently dumb down do to console limitations.  Case in point Batman was handed down to a completely undermanned company and given completely unrealistic timeline to deliver on.  This had nothing to do with it being on the PC and 100% everything to do with how PC games are now developed for AAA.  Games are ported, graphics are lowers, corners are cut. 

On the PSN side, can't say I've really seen the value of my PS4 either.  At the moment I think I've turned it on about 5 times where the overall offering of the Xbox One keeps the system on daily with every type of media I have in my house (including some gaming).  I do always like to hear about other peoples perspectives on this type of stuff though.  It always makes me wonder if there is something I'm missing.  

CrypticCat's picture
Submitted by CrypticCat on Mon, 07/27/2015 - 04:23

There was a time when the divide between the consoles and the PC was clear. If you wanted complex games, you went PC and if you wanted uncomplicated games, you went consoles. A game like Outlander on the Genesis was totally impossible technology-wise on the PC, which was at the time mainly static-screen with very simple sprite-animation. Doom on PC was released later than Outlander on the Genesis. Outlander had to be top-down on the Super-Famicom, because the Starfox-chip didn't exist yet!

I don't believe that games are dumbed down. They're created smarter and have as much timewasting removed as possible. Shadows of Mordor and Arkham Knight for instance grow in complexity the further you go into the game and are paced so that you're never overwhelmed. Towards the end of the game you're able to string together combos that you would not be able to pull off if all those options were dumped on you from the get-go.

The Last of Us requires you to evaluate the battlefield so that you can turn it to your advantage. The decision to engage or to avoid are, apart from plot-situations, left up to you. Item management is a constant conumdrum between what you want, what you need and what you think you'll need later on. It's not a dumbed down game at all. In fact, efficiency-runs on Grounded-difficulty will really take it out of you.

Arkham-Knight on PC is not Rocksteady's fault. Warner Bross outsourced the conversion to a small studio and gave them six weeks to do it. Other Arkham-games where converted by Rocksteady themselves. The state of Arkham-Knight on the PC is a management-decision, and is not some cynical conspiracy to twarth the masterrace by them.

I like consolegames because they usually offer a good experience with easy to grasp mechanics and streamlining only made possible by the mere fact that controllers exist. Inquisition is notably a better experience on the PS4 than it is on the PC, where mis-clicking and not registering keyboard-strokes make the game unnecessarily aggrivating to play. Graphically, the two versions don't differ much too. The extra options to sweeten the graphics up are nice, but from playing the demo I really couldn't say that deciding to go with the PS4 was a mistake. And do three extra NPCs on PC you can't interact with in Val Royoaux really make all the difference?

What there is on offer on PC is for the greater part trash. A quick look on Steam shows this. I think that the current state of PC-gaming is mainly due to people who look down on consoles, yet want console-stuff on their PCs. For that to really work, conversions must become a thing of the past and games have to be developed in simultane. One team developes the console-version, another the PC version. That's the only way to get triple-A on PCs that aren't nightmarish.

KnightofRedemption's picture
Submitted by KnightofRedemption on Mon, 07/27/2015 - 09:39

To compare PC with console is not to compare like with like, compare consoles with consoles and PC's with PC's. You wanna talk console cluster fucks? The recent ones have had their fair share, remember the Xmas debacle? Next gen? I don't think so. The Xbone release was beyond a joke. Simple switch on and play? Okay this is their advantage and why I have one or two or three, but even that seems to usually involve everything wanting to update every five mins these days....Not that I turn 'em on much. PC is where I spend most my time, maybe as a racer it colours my view. After all we get all the racing peripherals that work even when we change or update our PC, we get more titles, and I would argue better titles. Some things are better on consoles others are better on PC, so it is, so it has always been. 

CrypticCat's picture
Submitted by CrypticCat on Mon, 07/27/2015 - 14:57

Next gen is just a marketing line no one should fall for anymore. I see the seven year cycle not different from upgrading my PC. The fact that backwards compatibility is an issue also is lost upon me. There's very little I want to keep and what I keep I hardly play anymore if at all and so is better off culled too.

Gaming is consumerism and by the time I'm done with a game, some other game is waiting to take it's place. The only game I really can't let go is Rockband and I'm looking forward to the Xbone-release of it later this year. My song-library will be transferred to the new game too, so there's ample stuff there to keep my Xbone alive until it is no longer relevant, somewhere in the 2020's. It's all good.

I think that PC can be compared to Consoles. It has games, multiplayer, friendlists, game-environments, voice-chat and internet-access via a browser, just like consoles. Playing a game on a PC is no different than playing a game on console, apart from the fact that the experience in general is better on the consoles. We're talking convenience, loadingspeed and ease of use. PCs just fall short on those areas, next to delivering games that need a year of patches before they're done.

Quantity means nothing if quality is absent.

badmin's picture
Submitted by badmin on Mon, 07/27/2015 - 22:20

Still haven't really seen any valid points though.  I have to kind of scratch my head when you say consoles load faster as well.  I boot off a cheap SSD on my PC and load times are instant.  We're talking boot in 4-5 seconds or less. Convenience is also subjective.  I still down, load up steam and go.  My library is in one place and unlike consoles I can swap between my console controller or keyboard.  

CrypticCat's picture
Submitted by CrypticCat on Tue, 07/28/2015 - 03:00

Maybe that's because I'm not trying to convince anyone. I'm just talking about my disappointment with the PC. Console convenience is measurable though. Cold-booting my Xbone is about a minute faster than cold-booting my PC, and with the Xbone's tile-system I'm playing a game on my Xbone before my PC is even done loading everything it needs to load. PS4 is a little slower than my XBone, but that's because the PS4 loves its splashscreens, lol. But conversely, the only time I power down my PC is when MS has critical updates for Windows and a restart is required. Waking my PC up is much faster than booting my Xbone up.

My main disappointment with the PC-platform is in what's on offer. There are more titles on the PC compared to the paltry number of titles on the current-gen consoles, but the bulk isn't worth buying unless you can never have enough survival/crafting games. Those games don't even challenge the hardware and when they do, they're badly coded; not because they're developed to make full use of PC-capability.

The Order 1886 isn't a high-point in gameplay for instance, but no one can deny that it doesn't showcase the PS4's power with stuff PC-gamers probably won't see in their games for a year or two more, provided PC-publishers even want to allocate resources to have it happen in their games in the first place.

I think it should be turned around. Give me a good reason to own a PC over a PS4 and an Android Tablet.

Sherb's picture
Submitted by Sherb on Tue, 07/28/2015 - 12:40

I see advantages with both.  For me it's been PC for the past 3 years or so.  I was predominantly console for the longest time, but as my gaming interests changed, so did my hardware.  It all stemmed from wanting a more realistic racing experience.  There are simulators on the PC that offered what I was looking for...not so on the console.  Once I had the hardware in place for racing these new sims, I started looking at some of my other gaming options, and found a gem for me with Guild Wars 2, Diablo 3 (was not available on console originally), Wildstar (currently on hiatus) and the latest incarnation of WoW.  Options that are just not available on consoles.

 

As for backwards compatibility on consoles...for gamers looking forward to the new games I will agree that it shouldn't be a huge decision factor.  For some like me however, it is and was.  When my PS3 (original big case issue) finally bit the bullet 4 or 5 months ago I opted to go with another PS3 instead of upgrading to the new PS4 or Xbone.  Why?  90% of my current gaming is done on the PC.  The primary use of my PS3 is for the BlueRay player.  Plus the stack of PS3 games I still own (and play on occasion).  I didn't really foresee purchasing many new console games, so a replacement PS3 at half the cost of the current gen consoles made better financial sense at the time (and still does).  

 

Does that mean I'll never purchase a current-gen console?  No.  Will I?  Maybe, maybe not.  As of now, I haven't seen any releases or personal benefits to justify the cost of a new console.  For me right now I'd rather put that money towards my next tower build.

 

In a perfect world we'd all have enough money to have one of everything so we could play what we want, when we want.  Until then, it's up to each individual to weigh the pros & cons of each system to determine which route is the best fit for their current play/lifestyle.

 

Ok, I'm done jabbering.  cheeky

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