Topic: PC Gaming

@Ralizah
Steam Deck is like Steam on PC where you can configure pretty much anything to have gyro controls, right?

And yes. Exactly like on PC. And all the community configs make it easy to find something with gyro if needed. But most of the time I just use the default template, hit the Steam button and push right on D-pad to access Controller Settings diagram, and from there you can easily toggle gyro on, and then hit the gyro settings icon to tell it "Activate with Left Trigger Soft Pull" or "When Thumb Is on Right Analog or Right Track Pad" or "Always On", however you want it.

As long as the game accepts mouse input simultaneously with controller input, you're good. Which, most games do. Works in just about every game I have installed that needs it. Though I do recall encountering some games on my desktop that didn't, so they are out there. But ya, super easy to activate, and just below the "Use Gyro" box there's a box for enabling the 4 back buttons, which I always do. Defaults to 4 face buttons which is nice- can play a game without your thumb leaving the analog. But sometimes I'll throw one or both shoulder bumpers on there, just because they're easier to hit than the shoulder bumpers.

They've really made Deck a user-friendly experience. They've locked out most of the complicated settings and just dumbed it down to a level most of us can easily grasp, and made it super easy to access and change.

This is pretty much where I am at with it, too. I contemplated preordering one, but it is pretty clear now it is in the wild that the Deck is a good piece of kit for a first go, but that is about it. Ergonomics, materials, battery life, usability etc all clearly have room for iteration. I have no idea how many years away it might be until they do a new version, but I feel like I can wait.

There aren’t really many games at all right now on PC, that aren’t on the Switch (that I would want to play in a handheld context, I mean). I guess if I didn’t own a PC I’d feel differently about it, but I do, so here we are.

Especially as, based on what I’ve read about it, just because I have a game on Steam I want to play handheld, it isn’t just necessarily guaranteed to work on the Deck. And this isn’t just trying to play big triple AAA games on the Deck, some games even small indies just don’t work. Or even if it can, you might have to do a lot of fiddling both in the Deck’s device settings and the game settings too. That sorta sounds like a nightmare to me just to play a game in handheld, but maybe it has more value to others.

It took me til 4 in the morning, but I finally got PrimeHack working on Deck. With gyro aiming. Finally a legit way of playing Metroid Prime Trilogy on handheld.

It wouldn't recognize the controller it was supposed to so I had to assign a Default Keyboard Mouse config, then manually assign buttons in the Dolphin menu. It was a serious pain I won't get into.

But it works now.

Only thing is, the mouse cursor shows on screen and I can't make it disappear, even despite having the setting checked to never show the cursor. But its locked to the center with the aiming reticule so, eh. I can live with it.

But wow. The game plays seriously well with proper dual analog and gyro. We definitely need a remaster of this. But until that day comes, at least I have a fallback plan now.

Got my PC yesterday. I can't wait to use it for Roblox and Tetris.

I did it! I did it! Metroid Prime Trilogy dream has been fulfilled!

Mouse cursor is gone! All I did was change Audio backend from Pulse to the middle option (there's No Audio, a middle option, and Pulse, I changed to the middle). But it fixed it!

The settings had an option to show the mouse cursor and it was set to "Never", but I also toggled that on and off so maybe that was it.

Either way, it's FLAWLESS now. Full-screen, no mouse cursor, dual analog movement and aiming with a solid sensitivity, and gyro activated when thumb is on the analog. It feels SO good! Now I can play through this whole Trilogy with modern sensibilities.

Could add some texture packs too. Maybe I will. But honestly I think it looks fine. And I want top notch performance at 720p. Texture packs could laden it with performance issues.

@HotGoomba
What kind of PC?

If you only bought for stuff like Roblox and Tetris I suppose you don't need anything that expensive. Unless you got something high end to future proof

@JaxonH I was half kidding with that comment, but also not really.

You see, this PC is actually VR capable and that's what I plan on using the PC for.

It's actually from a relative who didn't want it anymore and it's an Alienware Aurora R9 or something with an i7 9th gen and RTX 2080 Super. Personally wouldn't have chosen Alienware, but hey I'm not complaining.

@HotGoomba
Oh right on. That's a pretty good PC actually. I have an i9 with RTX 2080 ti, so it's very comparable to my own setup.

Should be able to do 4k 60fps on high settings for 95% of games. Only AAA games from the last 2 years onward may struggle to hit a full 60, but for those you can just bump it down to 1440p 60fps on high settings and be good for many years to come.

On the other hand, is the 2080 VRR capable? I know my 2080 ti wasn't originally VRR capable, but they patched it in. Just not sure if that was only for the 2080 ti and 2090 or if that actually included the base 2080 also.

If it is VRR compatible, and you have a VRR-compatible screen, you can do 4k 60fps high settings across the board, and VRR will ensure you never notice a frame drop. That's why VRR is so important to have. Whereas you may need to upgrade to a 3xxx or 4xxx series card to ensure you hit that full 60 at 4k across the board, with VRR you don't have to.

Even if you bought it for VR, you can still get a Steam library going and enjoy the benefits of gyro aiming for basically any game. Makes going back to PS/Xbox for those titles very difficult after experiencing them with proper aiming. Especially since you can play both Xbox and PS 1st party titles on Steam now. Gears 5, Halo Infinite, God of War, Spiderman, Uncharted... it's all on Steam. With more on the way.

@JaxonH Don't have a compatible monitor unfortunately, but I assume that the 2080 Super has VRR. Don't have a 4K monitor anyways.

I also might start to prioritize PC more, especially over Xbox since they're so similar now. The prices of PCs and my origins on consoles always turned me off from getting a gaming PC, but I'm glad I know people who don't do bull on their PCs.

All I need to do now is to replace the default-ass Dell keyboard.

@HotGoomba there is a lot of misinformation about the cost and ease of use when it comes to PC gaming, mostly spread around by people who don’t even play games on PC.

Sure, you may struggle to build a PC comparable to say a Series X for the same price, but a PC is going to last you longer than a console is (when it comes to getting the most out of your games, I mean). You could argue hardware is always ticking down, PC or console, but you tend to find stuff in a PC is far more future proofed than a console is,

Plus the ability to slowly upgrade pieces of your PC, rather than needing to buy an entire new machine say every six years or whatever (less if you are a mid version refresh person which is generally just not necessary with a PC), it evens out cost wise. That isn’t to say there isn’t some absurd pricing of parts, or scalpers or other such things, but this isn’t unique to PC gaming, and the same saviness one would use to get a console for a reasonable price can be applied to PC parts.

What helps the cost even further long term is PC gaming doesn’t lock you into costly ecosystems like you are on PlayStation and Nintendo (less so with Xbox thanks to Gamepass). You are likely to find deep, deep, discounts on PC games very quickly. It is something I really struggled with when I got my Switch a couple of years ago and saw five plus year old games still being sold for 60 quid because they were first party and knew I had no choice but to pay the prices. They would maybe getting like a 20 percent discount as part of some legendary once in a lifetime sale, when on PC I can go to a legal 3rd party key seller and get that discount like a month after release on PC, and by six months I can probably get a discount three times that.

The Switch has definitely carved a niche for itself due to it’s hybrid nature, but I don’t really understand people who choose consoles like PS5s or Xboxes over a PC. When they first came out and promised a target of 60 fps and 4K I did kinda get it, because you probably aren’t going to get a 4K 60fps PC for around 500 quid, but we are already only two years into the cycle of these consoles, when they are still making games for past generations, which aren’t delivering on a 4K 60 fps target. If you got the money for a PS5 and you got 70 quid spare every time you wanna play a new game, just get a PC. I guess I get it if you’re deeply entrenched in an ecosystem and all your friends are there, but everything else is just hooey.

Like the old chestnut of games being more complicated to run on a PC, sure you may run into more complications than you would on a console, but generally issues run from people trying to run old or incompatible titles that wouldn’t work on a console for the same reason. Or because a game has a known issue, which needs to be fixed by the dev, like it would on a console. For the rare times there is something wrong, Google exists, and whatever the solution is, it won’t be a fraction of the complexity you’ve probably been told to expect by console only fearmongerers. And on the off chance it is that complicated, generally if you purchase from Steam or something like that, you are going to have a much easier time getting a refund than you would if you tried to get one from Sony’s store for example.

All you're really missing out on is Nintendo, especially now with Xbox and Playstation games coming to Steam, there's not much point in having those consoles. Of course, the initial cost is substantial, but once that's out of the way, it's free sailing from there. Offers everything consoles don't, including forever backward compatibility, free online, mods consoles dream of, plus other tweaks you can get into, using any controller you want.
Nintendo is the only one I've felt compelled to keep buying consoles from over the years, because their in-house exclusives are just plain worth it.
Welcome to the world of PC gaming! Like JaxonH said, it's very hard to go back once you get into it.

@Pizzamorg @HotGoomba
The other thing about PCs is that they aren't locked down. If some component dies on a console then you're kinda out of luck. If you want to upgrade a console you have to wait for a hardware revision and buy the entire thing again. If you want a hardware feature you have to hope they include it. And for PCs when you build a new one you can choose to carry over some components (i.e. I'll upgrade my GPU later or keep my case)

Same deal with the software. I generally build myself a new PC every 5 years or so although I did break that rule this year buy building a second PC exclusively as a TV/VR gaming PC. So right now I have three PCs that have some value. A 2014 build with an i5-4560 and 16GB of DDR3, a 2019 build with a Ryzen 3600X, a crappy Radeon paperweight I emergency brought when my R9 285 died and 32GB of DDR4 and a 2021 build with an i3-10105F, 16GB DDR4 and a 1660Ti. The 10th Gen i3 I use for games, the old i5 I'm currently not using but I intend to at some point turn it into a Plex server. The Ryzen I use for work (so it has a lot of bloat just from that), ripping BluRays and some strategy games

Compare that to my Wii U which once the Switch launched it found itself in a box

@skywake
That's true.

But it's never been a selling point for me personally. I bought a pre-built, and got it in a smaller sized desktop case to keep a small footprint. And my 2080 ti barely, and I mean barely, fits inside. The newer GPUs would never fit in this case. And I'm not into tearing it all down to swap cases. So my plan is, use it until I can't get 1440p 60fps anymore, and then do a full console-like upgrade buying a new pre-built of whatever is out at the time. RTX 7xxx or 8xxx series cards, probably.

My last PC was home built, and I remember upgrading the GPU to an AMD 5600X, and it kept shutting off. Had all kinds of problems. Sent it back, and that's when I bought a pre-built. Just don't have the time or patience for dealing with that sort of thing at this point in my life. I prefer the simplicity of a single large jump every 5 years or so. Longer if I can stretch it.

But it's definitely an option some can take advantage of. And is certainly cheaper. If you have a larger case where any GPU can fit, and you're not changing from Nvidia to AMD (which is what I did- on my next PC I may get full sized so I can buy new Nvidia GPUs to upgrade, since at least that is fairly simple), it's a great way to prolong longevity.

It's that gyro aiming though. And getting PS/Xbox games with gyro all on one system. That's what makes PC so great. I was never into mods even in the slightest, so that too just isn't a factor for me. But gyro aiming? That is worth climbing mountains for.

@HotGoomba
Are you hooking up to a monitor or your TV? I don't have a monitor. Never liked sitting at a desk to game. My PC is connected directly to my 4KTV like all my other consoles. And that TV has VRR. As long as you use an HDMI 2.1 cable and activate it you'll be good.

Unless you're gaming at a desk with a monitor, which it sounds like you are.

If so, are you actually going to use a keyboard and mouse? Or just game with a controller (tbh I got a lapboard all set up for KB/M in the recliner while gaming on the TV, even got an Azeron Cyborg, but I never use it- typically just grab a Switch Pro Controller or Dualsense).

If you use a Switch Pro controller, you'll want a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle. Specifically BT4.0. Which is an older spec, but it's the only one Switch Pro works properly with. They sell the dongles for like $10 on Amazon.

@JaxonH
Even so, you can still repurpose hardware. My i5 went from 8GB to 16GB of DDR3, then from the R9 285 to that cheap Radeon when the 285 died. My Ryzen build went from that cheap Radeon card to a 1660Ti and then later 16GB of DDR4 to 32GB of faster memory when COVID hit and I needed to WFH. I've also dropped in a BluRay drive that can rip UHD discs. And when I built my VR/HTPC the 1660Ti was moved across and the 16GB of DDR was reused. And my main machine still has a 1TB HDD I've had for a good decade

I honestly don't think I've ever bothered with a CPU upgrade to be fair. And usually I've waited too long for RAM to carry. But storage and GPUs? There's some flexibility in not having to upgrade them on the same cycle. Eg probably a couple of years from now I expect I'll upgrade my 1660Ti to whatever mid range card at the time is. And I can do that without having to build an entirely new PC

But probably more importantly, that old hardware can be put to work for some other task

Oh wow I got a lot of notifications. It's gonna take a bit to read them all but I can't wait to see what everyone said.

Alright I read it all. Thank you everyone. Replying time.

@Pizzamorg @Cotillion @skywake I grew up with console gaming, which is why I stayed with it for YEARS, but me enjoying my Oculus Quest 2, my Xbox Series S becoming a room decoration after I got bored of it, and my PS5 being used like twice a month, I decided to finally get a PC. The price of games rising wasn't actually my reason, but I did realize that I claimed multiple games through bundles on Humble and Itch.io and deals on Epic Games Store, plus Game Pass, so those were a deciding factor. And I did notice after I decided to get the PC but before I actually got it that games on the Oculus store (for the Quest, not Rift) were generally more expensive than on Steam, especially with the winter sales for both platforms. I probably wouldn't have gotten a gaming PC if it wasn't my obsession with VR growing for nearing a decade, but now that I have one, I'm considering changing up my gaming environment, and taking advantage of PC gaming's strengths like modding and emulations of older games from a company that'll probably DMCA me if I say their name.

Since I have almost no reason to keep it, I'll probably just sell or get rid of my Series S next year, or at least keep it in storage for entirety, my PS5 I will keep though since I still plan on playing PlayStation exclusives on it, at least for the time being, and I'm not completely counting out the PSVR2 yet, and I could never abandon Nintendo. They could release the Virtual Boy 2 and I'd still buy it.

And I have noticed the nice bonus of PCs never truly becoming paperweights. I have two laptops that I currently have, one barely kicking that I may put Linux on to pump some life back into it, and another a modular laptop that I love (Framework Laptop if you're wondering). Meanwhile my PS4 Pro has been rotting in a plastic bin ever since I got my PS5, my 3DS I barely use, the Wii I still have hooked up but rarely play on, and the Wii U.

Can't say for certain I'll have multiple PCs or not, but we'll see.

@JaxonH Funny enough, modding was actually a huge factor into my PC path. I just downloaded and bought Skyrim VR, and I probably would have never bought it if it wasn't for the mods. Better to get a PC for Skyrim than to buy the PSVR version an cry. Another game that's big with mod support is Bonelab, which I do hope to use to make some of my own abominations. I don't need a PC to play Bonelab, but that seems to be the best experience compared to Quest.

Didn't consider gyro aiming, but I assume that'll be a big plus. I expect to use a controller for most games on PC though. My PC controller is an 8bitdo Switch controller I already had that was easy to connect to the PC thanks to the connector switch at the back.

And I do expect to at least attempt to upgrade my own PC. Hopefully LTT mentally prepared me for the upcoming doom. Gonna have to get a new computer case though because ew, Dell.

Oh and my monitor is a 1080p 165hz display, so VRR support is unlikely to impossible. I did think about connecting the PC to TV, but it only has displayports, and besides I wanted to feel like a true gamer. I think I do actually like the monitor more than my TV for my PC and Switch though.

Other than not looking forward to having to figure out what the hell an AMD Radeon RX12345 is, I'm looking forward to this new world of gaming.

_{^{I'm gonna go play Microsoft Solitaire now.}}

Thanks to recent sales, some new PC games, along with where I bought them on sale...

Blake Stone: Planet Strike (GOG) - a classic FPS using the Wolfenstein 3D engine. You play as Blake Stone, an special agent assigned to stop the evil Dr. Goldfire from making mutants and taking over the galaxy. It reminds me of James Bond, but in space, and made improvements over the Wolf 3D engine, like ceiling and floor rendering, an automap, and lighting. Plus you can use a teleporter to teleport back to previous levels to find ammo or health pick ups.

Panzer Dragoon Remake (GOG) - Panzer Dragoon is one of those Sega games I haven't played. So far I'm liking it. It reminds me of Star Fox, it's a rail shooter, unlike Star Fox, I can turn the camera to the sides and back to shoot at enemies behind me. This game has some of the most beautiful graphics I've seen in a game. I just got to an episode that opened with one of the most beautiful looking enviorments I've seen. I love it so far.

Mortal Kombat XL (Steam) - I mostly have experience with the classic Mortal Kombat games, so this is my first foray into modern MK. Plugged in my game pad, and gave it a go, and beat one of the towers as Sub-Zero. Enjoying this one so far, haven't started the story mode yet, just did a few free fights against the CPU, and the tower, because I mostly played the classic MK games. Also, loved how Sub-Zero's fatality move used the same button combo as MK1, nice nod there.

@Sunsy
I played Panzer Dragoon on Switch for a bit but lost interest. It just wasn't as fun to control as Starfox. I hear the sequel is way better though.

@HotGoomba
If you're into all that I'm surprised it took you this long to actually get a PC.

Not sure how Steam detects the 8bitdo. You really want a controller that detects as either a Switch Pro Controller or PS4/PS5 controller, since Steam Input allows mapping mouse to gyro on those controllers. If it thinks it's an Xbox controller, or any other X-input controller, it thinks there's no gyroscope and locks that feature out. THE absolute best part of PC gaming, imo, is Steam. I don't use Epic Game Store- don't care how many free games they give away. The experience is horrible. Only Steam allows mapping gyro easily and completely customizing controls with mode shifts, toggles, etc.

The best-kept secret of Steam, is Steam Input. Be sure to enable Steam Overlay in settings from desktop mode, or play from Big Picture Mode (which is ideal for gaming). If you launch a game from Big Picture Mode in Steam, simply pressing the big fat Home button on your controller pulls up Steam Input menu, with a diagram of your controller and all the mappings. From there you can click the gyroscope symbol and select "As Mouse" to map the mouse to the gyroscope. Then in the gyroscope settings, tell it to either be "Always On" or "Activate when holding Left Trigger Soft Pull", however you like it. Done and done. Most games allow mouse control simultaneously with a controller, but there are some that don't (eh hem, cough cough Call of Duty). For those the only option is mapping everything to keyboard and mouse inputs, which is a pain.

THANKFULLY, the best kept secret of Steam Input is "Community Configs", where users all around the world set up the controls, often with gyro, and share it for you to use, all accessible from within the Steam Input menu. So you can just select "Browse Configs", select the Community tab, and look for one that says it has gyro aiming. Try a few out until you find one you like, then roll with it. You can always make small modifications to it afterward, like if the gyro sensitivity is too high you can turn it down.

So even when games don't allow mouse + controller, you can usually count on at least one person painstakingly crafting a control scheme to use gyro so you don't have to.

It's a game changer when you finally have access to modern aiming input methods for all your games.

@JaxonH Wow, thanks for the tip!

@JaxonH That's fine. I wish I could play the sequel, I'm liking the game so far. It feels good to finally play something from this series.