PC

A tale of two platforms

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No mods were involved to make Nazeem gay.

I had an unexpected conversation with a co-worker this morning, he had to ask me if I have ever played a game called “Skyrim”. :trollface: I wouldn’t expect him to know as we belong to two different platform worlds, me on PC and him on Playstation. He originally played the game on PS3, therefore it wouldn’t make sense for him to know that I’ve ever played it.

What my Skyrim character and I have in common: We both exist to amaze and disappoint you, also we have really great hair.

Things got really interesting when I introduced my character to him (via screenshots I have saved on my kindle), and the first thine he says is “Ohhh you play on PC”. Then he wanted to know what level I was, then he told me about how his brother’s level is up in the hundreds. Then out of nowhere he gave me an interesting opinion; the console version is better because it forces you to play the correct way… I thought that was an odd way to word it, especially considering this is a single player game that can be played in any way they choose. I even pointed that out, yet he felt that the PC version gave people an unfair advantage because mods and cheats. What took his brother forever to accomplish could be done on PC in just a few keystrokes according to him after two days play. I mean I tried to imagine this from his perspective, and all I could think of was someone at gun point telling him to mod his game or else. :rick:

YOU WILL INSTALL THE NIGEL THORNBERRY MOD OR DIE TRYING GOD DAMMIT

At the time of writing this I have over 800 hours clocked on Skyrim, and many times I’ve had to start over due to corrupted saves. I remember trying to play it as vanilla as possible when I first started and couldn’t really get hooked into it (damn TF2 and L4D2 kept getting in the way!). Then when listening to two friends of mine go on about it forever (you know who you are) I decided to do a little mod searching before making a fresh character. One thing lead to another and that’s how I ended up with my character, an eternity of dreams and nightmares surrounding it, and more than a few people thinking I put my face in the game for some weird reason. :melon:

Clearly I have the superior game.

To me Skyrim is a personal journey, even without mods there are so many ways to play, to find yourself or a character of your own creation to explore, and modding is just another layer on top of some nice vanilla ice cream. Somehow my lore unfriendly setup couldn’t save me from reading all kinds of books and absorbing knowledge like one of my favorite Daedric princes. Who knew that by becoming a cyborg ninja with dragon wings and a pogo hammer I would get wrapped up in this game for hundreds of hours and multiple lunch breaks? Meanwhile there are people that think mods only cheapen the experience and claim that if you install more than X amount of mods you shouldn’t even play… While I lean towards PC, and probably always will, I’m not going to attack someone for playing the same game on another platform. I know I’m not going to change their mind, and I know they’re going to be happy playing it the way they want to. He can have his dragonborn and I can have mine. :happy:

Though for shits and giggles I wonder what would happen if I introduced him to gamerpoop…

Current impressions of the DMC1 PC Port

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Not the very best at hide and seek…

One of the games I wanted to get for my new old PS3 was actually an HD Collection of the Devil May Cry games, but literally the day I was looking on Ebay for them I heard news from one of the sites I follow that a PC release was planned. Now that it’s here I’ve taken the time to finally play it… outside of an emulator. :trollface:

I’m making a faithful attempt to play them in the proper order, and so far I’m noticing some bugs compared to playing it in an emulator. In the start of the first level there is an ambient soundloop of the wind off the ocean, and it cuts out for a moment before it restarts which it isn’t too big of a deal, but it kinda (and I hate being one of those people) breaks my immersion. How come the sound is better in PCSX2 than in this port? I don’t see how this could have been overlooked when porting it over. Another small gripe I have is with the screen resolution, because apparently in 2018 some companies still feel that 1080p is the biggest resolution necessary. Fortunately this can be fixed easily by editing a text file.

Of course it doesn’t break the game for me, but like I said it’s pretty annoying. I’m hoping for Capcom to patch these issues or wait for the fan community to work on the fixes and higher resolution textures, as the textures in game are not in HD and upscaled instead.

Other than those gripes DMC1 still remains to be quite fun, and is definitely a better port than their first PC port ever of DMC3 they did, this is at least playable out of the box compared to the early days of Japanese ports. I’m sure with some modding it’ll turn out fine. :melon:

From Phantom Pain to Phantomile

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I’ve been playing Klonoa for the past couple days; Made it to the moon kingdom, I can tell that level is going to take a lot of patience to get through the damn vision. I’ve attempted it a couple times today and kept dying endlessly. Best to take a break and head onto another game. I even tried playing the Wii version and my hands seem to be fatigued. Here’s a comparison of the two versions:

I’m not sure which version I like better to be honest. I like the style of the PS1 version, but at the same time I like the updated graphics on the Wii version… Then again I also like the hybrid 3D with sprites for the Playstation version. Plus the pre-rendered cutscenes… something about them seems more magical. Then again pre-rendered cutscenes from that era were fun to watch, look at the original Tomb Raiders. 😛

And oh god… If you ever play this game do NOT use the english version. Switch it to Phantomese or Japanese, you’ll be doing your ears and mind a favor.

A new Resident of Evil.

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resident

With Halloween coming up I decided it would be a potentially fun idea to try out some Resident Evil titles. I never had the chance to back in the days of the PS1 and interactions with sunlight, and the closest I ever got to playing was over at a friends house when I was a kid. I played some of the remastered original and had a bit of fun, though I found the save mechanic to be annoying. I feel like I’m playing a memory game, like Old Maid… minus the cards and plus the zombies that want to eat me. What kept me going was the puzzle aspect and multiple areas to explore. Multiple possibilities seem to keep me well invested in a game, especially with all of the “What if’s” and “Did I forget to check the bathtub for dead people” questions that I ask myself regularly. I also tried a bit of Resident Evil 0 which seems to have a similar mechanic to RE1, but didn’t get too far as of yet.

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I’ve found that RE0 and 1 so far work far better with a controller, playing them with a keyboard and mouse is 50 shades of awkward when you don’t use the mouse for anything other than the two buttons. I’m sure if I played around a bit I could bind all the buttons to the keyboard, but a that point you might as well say screw it and fall back in your chair with a controller. I will say that both games did put my Steam Controller’s rumble emulation to a good test.

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Then I got sucked into Resident Evil 5 which takes some of it’s ideas from the original game, but has a different feel to it. That one I have no issue playing with a keyboard and mouse, and I’m fairly sure I could get it to work with the Steam Controller too. My only gripe is the turning in that game, it nearly induces vomiting… though that might just be the mulled wine I bathed in this evening.

For the hell of it I decided to lookup the original version. God… I forgot how horrible the voice acting was! I also noticed there is a PC version of the original… And some other research shows that some of the other games were released for PC as well. I guess if I ever feel the itch to play them I’ll have the option. Though depending on how the games function it might be easier to run the games through an emulator instead.

Late Night Open Thread

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For the first day of my vacation I mostly stayed in out of the cold weather playing mostly Hard Reset Redux and Shadow Warrior 2. I guess it was a Flying Wild Hog day. 😛 I did notice with the new patch to SW2 I had to place all of my accumulated skill points. And of course at the end of the night I had to turn to my go to game for absolute relaxation:

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The new and improved Skyrim is slated to release in just a few days. I’m thinking I’ll download it, but I won’t invest much time into it until I know most or all of my mods will work in it. Speaking of mods has anyone seen this for the console versions? Mod limits of 1 GB for PS4 and 5 GB for XBone? Of course with the PS4 version the mods are limited to vanilla assets only. Wow, Microsoft actually did something appealing for a change?

Of course on PC we won’t have this problem. After reading the article though I did have to take a look at my Skyrim install, it’s a nice 49 GB in size. The joys of not being held back by a console ecosystem. 😛

Halo 5 is coming to Windows… kinda

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Yep, not the entirety of Halo 5 but it’s forge.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re bringing this same spirit of creation and collaboration to the PC later this year with Forge – Halo 5: Guardians Edition for Windows 10. Best of all? It will be absolutely free. In addition to the evolutions already present in the mode on Xbox One, Forge – Halo 5: Guardians Edition for Windows 10 will include some exciting new features designed specifically with PC users in mind, including:

  • Keyboard & Mouse Support – For the first time ever, Forgers will have the option of using a keyboard & mouse allowing for more precision control than ever before.
  • Increased Resolution – Support for multiple resolutions including 4k.
  • Test and Play with Friends – Enlist the help of Friends to help build, test, and play your Forge creations on Windows 10.

  • Build on Windows 10 and Publish to Xbox One – Experiences built on Windows 10 can be published to and played on Xbox One, opening the doors for countless new experiences to be enjoyed by players all over the world.

Wow! You mean a keyboard and mouse have more precision than a controller? Wow, congrats Microsoft… It only took you guys over a decade and a half to figure that one out but, better late than never right?

It’s a good thing I’m not really interested in the Halo series, because once again they’re making Halo an exclusive to the Windows 10 platform. Much like when Halo was released during the Vista era in an attempt to convince users to upgrade from XP. Sorry, but El Dewrito kinda already beat you guys. Plus it’s not limited by what version of Windows you run. 😛 Watch, Microsoft will probably come along and find some way to remove them from the face of the earth…

Gaben wants everyone to play nice… together on all platforms

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pc gaming master race
Gabe reaching out to the other platforms

It doesn’t surprise me that Gabe Newell would want PC and Console to play with one another:

It’s a dream that Valve honcho Gabe Newell seems to share. A member of the PCMasterrace subreddit by the name of Eternifity sent the Gaben an email asking him to “open the gates for cross-play gaming.” The benefits of doing so, he said, would include increased community sizes, fewer platform-exclusive games, and increased freedom of choice when purchasing a gaming system. “Opening up multi-platform multiplayer gaming is the next step to a better gaming community,” he wrote.

This has been evident since Portal 2 where PC, Mac and PS3 users could play together. Still, it would be interesting to see how well that would play out.

Today I defused a console war between two co-workers of mine… by declaring myself the winner.

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One of my co-workers came in to buy the new Tom Clancy game for his XBox One, and my boss is a PS4 user. He started trolling him about how PS4 is the superior platform. So I raised my hand and said “You both lose, PC Master Race FTW” and they couldn’t argue. :v Although my boss for some reason thought PC Gaming wasn’t popular. Which is true, it isn’t popular…. among people who don’t know how to mod. You know, console users.

I also heard today about a guy my father knows. He built him a high end PC for video rendering a couple years back. i5 2500k processor and I can’t remember what type of GPU… but I know it’s an NVidia, a powerful one. He happens to also like playing Skyrim… on console. That was a lot for me to take in first thing in the morning while eating my breakfast. Turns out his reasoning was because he didn’t like the idea of using a keyboard and mouse instead of a controller. And modding? That’s really hard too because apparently you have to use torrents. Yeah I don’t know what he’s smoking either. Sure isn’t what I’ve been smoking.

420yoloswag

I can understand someone playing Skyrim on a console if they couldn’t afford a PC to play it on, but when you have an extremely beefy expensive build and continue to resort to the console version because a keyboard and a mouse are too hard that is just astonishing. Mind blowing, simply mind blowing.

Let the butthurt begin: XBox Live will be free for PC gamers on Windows 10

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Yep, that’s not a typo. Microsoft is making XBox Live a free thing for Windows 10 users.

Now, it may seem unfair that the XBox users have to pay and PC gamers don’t. However they did make the mistake choice of buying the console all ready and willing. Whereas on PC you have to pick and choose the best hardware for your gaming experience instead of just getting it all in one box. Hell even choosing between GPU’s, processors, ram etc takes more thought than choosing between the XBox One or the PS4. Microsoft also has to apologize for the horror that was Windows 8 by luring people to Windows 10 with Direct X 12 and “Hey! We’re finally thinking about you PC Gamers! So here’s some free XBox Live!”

Of course I have no intention of using XBox Live let alone jumping to Windows 10 on launch day. I’ll do what I’ve always done and let the others beat the hell out of it until I find a reason to upgrade. In the meantime Win 7 and Linux are the way to go for what I do.