Topic: PC Gaming

@Ninfan
Most were ripped from my own collection via a hacked Wii back in the day. But there are some I had to download from the Internet such as Fatal Frame on the Wii with an English fan translation, since it never released outside Japan... Then a few years later after I’d gotten rid of my Wii, I just started downloading the newer games in my collection because it was easier.

Injustice Gods Among Us is free on Steam right now.

Guys, what are some good twin stick shooters for PC? I know the Geometry Wars series.

@JaxonH BTW, I haven't abandoned or ignored your posts here! There's just a tremendous amount of information and links to follow on that

It's a good sales pitch! I think I'm going to have to hang onto that and wait and see where the console prices come in, where the "gotchas" come in, and see if they still do "game sharing" the way it's always worked and do a bit of cost/benefit. And factor in my bad luck..... I'd have to buy two of whatever (always one for me one for another household member) so I have to figure 2 rigs and maintaining them (time/effort/cost) versus 2 (or 4?) consoles, but also factor in Steam/etc allowing only one copy to run at once versus 2 (so far) on the consoles and try to figure out which comes in cheaper. These days customization means little to me....I just don't have time to tweak and tune. It'll probably come down to numbers vs risk. The sheer nerd in me is giddy at looking at this stuff...I had fun with it at the time. But the fun wears out when it stops working or there's incompatibilities, and time spent troubleshooting problems. I get to hunt down miniscule hard to find problems all day every day....I just want to play my games at the end of the day! If I weren't working in a related industry I'd probably enjoy the troubleshooting as a hobby. Once you're paid to do something, it loses its fun I'd love the build, hate the expense, enjoy it if it works, and stream a never ending flow of expletives when it fails. Things may be thrown.

And yet there's the cool part of it. When it does all just "work"....I'm sure there's a mix of being jaded from the past and problems that still linger. (I can't separate any concept of the process from the decade + I spent with it and I have a hard time believing all that magically went away.....especially when I deal all day with those same types of problems in a non-gaming context.)

As for SSDs, yeah, my price knowledge is spotty. I'm frightened to hear about QLC. TLC was bad enough. I swore I'd never touch the stuff with a 100ft pole. I'd rather use spinners. QLC sounds like a nightmare. I only buy SLC and MLC. And I only "stoop" to Samsung if I'm desperate, and only the Pro, not the EVO. I've had odd problems with Pros several times where writes are oddly slow.... Returned one drive and had the same problem with the replacement. Went back to the Intel enterprise grade drives ($$$$$) and the problems went away. BUT I only buy for professional use, and I need absolute unbending reliability and longevity, PLP beyond Samsung's "cache-based PLP", and survival of TONS of massive write cycles at fast speeds. I just balance price with SATA MLC/SLC drives and avoid the NVMe costs. But yea, I think I spent $500 for a 1TB a year or so ago. And that was a ridiculous bargain for one of those. But it's a necessary tool for productivity so I can justify it, kinda. But I hit it with 100+GB transfers constantly and non-stop IO hits, and if it fails or hits a power loss and wasn't safe, I'd be very very hosed with a corrupted encrypted archive. Whole different use case than games.

@NEStalgia
I guess all I can say is, the results speak for themselves. It is 2020, after all. Weve seen how good and easy and streamlined tech has gotten. It really is console like.

Now I'm not saying I dont deal with the occasional issue. But they really occasional, and small fry stuff that isnt a big deal anyways (like taking a bit of research to get Switch Pro permanently paired, not a huge deal, already have PS4 and Xbox and Steam controller, but I eventually got it and now it just works).

I can attest, the Intel CPU with Nvidia GPU combo is problem free.

And I can totally understand wanting the best SSD. But I'd ease those standards for gaming. Once the game is on the SSD, read speed is all that matters. And honestly, even if once in a while you do write 200gb at once and the speed plummets after 70gb, it's not the end of the world. The longevity really isnt an issue. Even with QLC you're getting 5 year warranties and like 600 Terabytes Written on a 4TB SSD. That's writing enough data to fill the entire drive over 150 times!!! That'll never even come CLOSE to happening.

But I get the paranoia. That's why I went TLC, which if done smart you can get for same price as QLC. And the same 5 year warranty and way more TBW. You could write enough data to fill the entire drive, erase, and do it all over again 300 times before failing! And studies show they often last even longer.

So ya, for gaming I'd just trust the low defective rates on the EVO 860s and trust that 5 year warranty that has you covered. Technology isnt perfect but it really isnt a big issue nowadays.

If you're just using your PC to game. Not for work. Just Steam, Dolphin emulator, etc. You're gonna feel like you're playing a console that just has way more freedom. Yes you'll hit an occasional snag here and there. Yes it requires a bit more setup to get everything going at first (get all controllers properly paired, Bluetooth and wifi settings set up, Steam set to allow controller to work as your mouse when running, Bios to allow wake from sleep by pressing a key, and by extension a button...). But that's like a day or two getting things sorted, and then its literally just grab a controller, press a button, PC comes on. Steam is already running. Big Picture like a console. Launch game. Play game. Access gyro in 15 seconds for any game, and it remembers your config so every time after it automatically applies it. Load any community config from within any game in 15 seconds. Premade configs that are super deluxe, include gyro, in game translucent panels for steam controller touchpads, the works).

You know me. I'm a convenience and console kinda guy. If even I can be sold and do a 180... that should speak volumes.

Now the minute you want to go start installing all kinds of other crap and multitask and start installing 3rd party mods... I cant guarantee you wont hit some snags. But if your PC is treated like a console, specifically for gaming, it will make you feel like you're playing a console.

Also. Steam has offline mode. Pretty sure any other PC could play in offline mode similar to how Switch can go offline so 2 can play same game at once. That said, how often do you truly expect to be playing the exact same game at the exact same time?

@Vinny I haven't played some of these, but off the top of my head:

RUINER
ATOMINE
Nex Machina

Bastion is kinda a twin-stick shooter and is thoroughly excellent.

Furi has heavy bullet-hell/twin-stick shooter elements, but also has melee, parrying, and a few other mechanics, alongside being entirely made up of multi-phase boss fights. Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but it's an exceptional game.

@NEStalgia I have a bit of a different experience, having done most of my PC gaming from a laptop, but once you get used to the few issues that can pop-up (and usually there are guides on Steam or readily available for games with compatibility issues or poor ports, mostly just downloading a patch and extracting or running a program/wizard) it's pretty comfortable. Biggest issue is connecting a DS4 and getting DS4 button prompts to appear for certain games. Other big thing, with a lower end GPU is the initial tinkering to get ideal graphics/framerate. Once those things are settled, it's usually no problem for that specific game.

@SomeBitTripFan Thanks for the recommendations! Out of those I only played Bastion on my Vita a few years ago.

@JaxonH "Also. Steam has offline mode. Pretty sure any other PC could play in offline mode similar to how Switch can go offline so 2 can play same game at once. That said, how often do you truly expect to be playing the exact same game at the exact same time?"

That's the big cost catch. Surprisingly often. Either for online/coop games, or just "BECAUSE RELEASE WEEK!" So I really do have to factor in that long-term cost factor into my calculations. Assuming the consoles don't changes that up....we'll see.

@SomeBitTripFan See, that's how I know I've out of the loop for a long time. The idea of "gaming on a laptop" sounds laughably insane. Like "landing a helicopter on the ocean" kind of laughable. The idea was never possible without spending crazy-money on some top end MSI/Alienware rig, or moderate money and getting kind of crummy performance. After that last big rig I did try to go that route, too. I bought a $1k or so budget MSI "gaming" laptop that burned hotter than a thousand suns, had so-so performance (and was quickly obsolete for new games....) and overheated non-stop, locking the system (just like my stupid towers!) I ended up buying cooling fans to shove under it and everything, but nothing helped much. This was early Win7 era.

It's an avenue I'd consider again if it's really better now (and not absurdly priced compared to towers), but at the same time...at this point, isn't an XBox basically just a gaming laptop without a screen, for less than half the price? No Steam, but so long as the sales all have parity, Microsoft Store is cool too.

@NEStalgia I will say I specifically had to buy a laptop with some kind of graphics card for school and buying a gaming laptop was actually a better alternative than anything the university was offering. Specifically, I bought an Inspiron 7000 Gaming. Bought it about 3 years ago at $1k. I don't play a ton of super-recent current gen games, but can get 1080p/60fps on low-ish settings for Doom and just haven't tinkered with RE2 Remake enough to find what I want to put it at, but it's similarly low-ish. It does get hot on demanding games and I use a ventilated platform to ensure I'm not starving it for air, but it has never had any major problems and it doesn't get hot near the WASD keys. Biggest compromise is that it's 5+ pounds much large, so it's more just a movable computer, screen, and keyboard. I don't know if Dell's non-Alienware lineup has continued to be solid, but beyond a few weird driver issues, I haven't had any trouble with it.

I should correct on Steam sharing. If you're playing any game in your library, unless in online mode, a friend can't play any other game in your library. It's also limited to 5 other accounts. If sharing is something you plan on doing often, Steam isn't going to be very kind to you.

Wow, Cyberpunk 2077 looks so good .... Anyone seen the live stream or catch up with it since?

Can’t say Cyberpunk looks quite as good as Witcher 3... technically it looks amazing, and it does look amazing too, just in general. But I think this setting just isn’t my flavor as much as the Witcher 3 world. But the first person will allow for gyro aiming, and that I can do.

But just because I don’t think it looks quite as good as TW3, doesn’t mean I don’t think it still loois fabulous. And it’s gonna play like a boss on PC with a Steam Controller and gyro.

How do you guys feel about the RGB lighting trend? I don't have any acessories with RGB lights, I don't hate them but I wouldn't pay more to have them.

Well, I have the keyboard & mouse that light up, @Vinny .... Prefer not to have that around the actual PC, personally, so I chose a simple black cased one

@Vinny
Love RGB. If you‘ve got a nice PC, may as well have it look slick.

Don’t really care about accessories, but my PC has 6 RGB fans that change colors, and my RAM sticks glow different colors and my water pump glows different colors.

i hate it. it has become difficult to find products that dont have RGBs. everything has RGBs nowadays. my mouse has RGBs in it. i didnt want them but i couldnt find a better alternative in that price range.
my case only has some blue light at the front though. not RGBs thankfully. and my keyboard has some blueish backlight which is super useful.

Major sale, grabbed all kinds of stuff.

I hate it when games don’t allow a mouse to connect at same time as controller, because properly mapping Gyro needs to be as a mouse input. Mouse-like joystick is an... ok, alternative, but it’s definitely not preferable. Call of Duty WWII has to use Mouse Joystick, fyi.

But Borderlands 3? That takes mouse input for gyro. It feels just as slick as Borderlands 2 and Pre-Sequel on Switch. Love it when games nail it like that.

Then there’s games like Deus Ex Human Revolution and Remnant From the Ashes that accept mouse input for Gyro, but for some reason stutter when moving the analogs while aiming with gyro at the same time. Which means leaving it always on is not really an option. Which is OK because these games work better when you only have it activated when zooming in anyways, but it does mean the minor restriction of not moving while zoomed in. Which is fine I guess.

That Panzer Dragoon remake for PC still hasn't come out yet, it seems?

Horizon Zero Dawn has gone up for pre-purchase.... 7th August release

Horizon with gyro. Finally will be able to properly enjoy the game. Coming off Zelda it was tough going to Horizon with pure sticks. Already preordered on Steam.

I think the other thing that put me off was how cinematized they made it. It’s a running theme for PlayStation focused games. They just love to make the camera zoomed up behind the character to show you all that “super cool high level graphical fidelity“ of the sword on their back or the bow they’re carrying... ugh. Final Fantasy VII is even more ridiculous. Not only do they do that very same thing but then they spontaneously take control away from the player as you’re playing the game so that you can’t turn the camera or run, all in the name of “look how good the graphics looks from this angle as he walks for 17 miles!”. Can’t stand it. So many games that would otherwise be amazing yet I just throw the controller in rage because I CANNOT STAND when they do that crap. Perfectly good games ruined by catering to a fanbase that apparently prefers glitz over gameplay. Or maybe the devs just think they do... No, that’s not it. People eat it up and I don’t see a single complaint about it from reviewers or gamers. Apparently people love that stuff. I can’t stand it. I absolutely LOATHE zoomed in cameras behind backs to pander to the glitz and glamour crowd (first thing I did in MH World was go into settings and change the gosh darn zoomed in camera to FAR), but taking control away from the player, repeatedly, without going into a cutscene so you EXPECT to be able to turn a camera or run, but you can’t, then 20 seconds later you can, then 2 minutes later you can’t... it just tests my patience to the limits.