Videogames Thread: Steaming Ahead

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

But the point is that you can get all the gamepass/ xbox exclusives on PC as well, at most they will be timed exclusives. If you want to maximize your gaming library options, then PC+PS5+Switch make the most sense. And yeah, the graphical fidelity and performance on the PS5 is slightly higher than in the Xbox for many games. 

[Werthead]

One of the best things about having a gaming PC is now being able to play some Horizon Zero Dawn, log out and immediately switch over to playing Halo. Whilst giggling slightly.

Of course, a decent gaming PC now costs more than an Xbox X + PS5 combined, which kinda defeats that advantage, but still.

[Kalbear]

45 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

But the point is that you can get all the gamepass/ xbox exclusives on PC as well, at most they will be timed exclusives.

But you can't get all the xbox 360/xbox (classic) games, and more importantly it'll cost you probably twice as much to get a gaming PC that runs at the same level as that xbox. Also, not all games are on Game Pass and PC vs Xbox; there are contractual differences from time to time. There's also, famously, a whole lot of games on the PC that have terribad PC ports that work great on consoles.

But, yeah - if you can spend that on a PC and are comfortable using that PC in your living room with your kids to play games? Cool beans, go for it. If you are alone and you only use one device to play games and don't mind the occasional miss of a XBox game? By all means, PC is fine. Fine with doing all the maintenance and updates of Windows? PC is fine. But that isn't everyone's requirement

My point was simply there are reasonable reasons to make the choice of going Xbox over PC. The biggest one, IMO, is price + ease of use. 

45 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

And yeah, the graphical fidelity and performance on the PS5 is slightly higher than in the Xbox for many games. 

Similarly it's higher on the Xbox compared to the PS5 for many games too. (apparently most of the EA sports games are better on XBox per Digital Foundry). One way or another that is not the reason you should decide to go for a console. The differences are incredibly small and only really matter for the absolute fanbois to gush over and proclaim the one true console, or whatever. This isn't close to the behavior of the Xbox 1 vs the PS4, or the PS3 vs the 360. 

[Fez]

Speaking of Gamepass, I just played a neat little game on it called Jusant. It's the first game I've played that made climbing an actual engaging activity (which is good, because it's the only real mechanism in the game). It took about 5 hours, and was generally a pleasant, neat experience throughout. It's not really that difficult, and it's impossible to die (you can have to re-do short bits of climbing but that's the only challenge you can face). So in some senses it's basically a walking simulator with a bit more going on. Not sure if it'd be worth the $25 (I think) that it's on Steam, but definitely the kind of game that makes gamepass shine.

[Fez]

And speaking of the problems of PC gaming, I think I've encountered one. My secondary SSD (which is 6 years old) appears to have suddenly and completely died overnight. It's no longer recognized by my PC at all, not showing up in device manager, disk management, or BIOS. Question for those more knowledge than me:

If I've confirmed that the motherboard port is still good, the SATA cable is still good, and the power supply connector is still good (I was able to test all them with a third drive), is there any other issue I could be facing besides it being that the SSD has died? 

[Luzifer's right hand]

12 hours ago, Fez said:

Speaking of Gamepass, I just played a neat little game on it called Jusant. It's the first game I've played that made climbing an actual engaging activity (which is good, because it's the only real mechanism in the game). It took about 5 hours, and was generally a pleasant, neat experience throughout. It's not really that difficult, and it's impossible to die (you can have to re-do short bits of climbing but that's the only challenge you can face). So in some senses it's basically a walking simulator with a bit more going on. Not sure if it'd be worth the $25 (I think) that it's on Steam, but definitely the kind of game that makes gamepass shine.

I gave up on gamepass quickly because language selection for games was a nightmare on PC. Only worked in some case by changing region and system language but stopped working again after windows updates. I just stopped using it despite having done the cheap upgrade thing with upgrading a gold membership to gamepass ultimate and I still had more than a year left when I stopped bothering.

[Darryk]

Blizzard announced a new WoW expansion, Wow Cataclysm Classic, and a Diablo IV expansion.

They also announced a mobile game but I told my brother that wouldn't go down well.

[Corvinus85]

Finished the main story of Jedi Survivor. Like its predecessor, I liked the story and combat mechanics. I don't like the save and respawn mechanics, and most side quests have superficial rewards, so I didn't do many of them. Despite the gorgeous environments, too much finger-twisting is required during a playthrough, so extra exploration is often just too tedious. 

On the ending of the story

Spoiler

Bode being a Jedi who then falls to the dark side was a bit of a left field move. I could see his treason coming before it happened, but I didn't expect him to be a secret Jedi. While I do appreciate that the game didn't shy away from killing off  Jedi characters (and Cere vs. Vader was great) I wish Bode had been redeemed at the end and turned back to the light and actually survive. If Anakin can be redeemed, Bode could have been, too. A tragic story for the character in the end.

 

[Rhom]

14 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Blizzard announced a new WoW expansion, Wow Cataclysm Classic, and a Diablo IV expansion.

They also announced a mobile game but I told my brother that wouldn't go down well.

I was interested by your post so I pulled up Battle.net and saw this on D4:

Quote

Vessel of Hatred continues the grim tale that began in Diablo IV, as you learn the fate of the prime evil Mephisto and his demonic plans for Sanctuary. To do that, you’ll be visiting a region new to Diablo IV, known by the locals as Nahantu. With this continuation of the campaign’s story comes new ways to play, new evils to vanquish, and a brand-new Class never before seen in the Diablo universe. Vessel of Hatred releases late next year, and we can’t wait to share more about it with you next summer.

So still no Paladin type. 

[Argonath Diver]

A streamer I watch mentioned this year-old D4 art last night:

The current playable characters are highlighted, as is a shield-and-spear wielding warrior with glowing eyes and angelic wings. Since no literal angels in the series are depicted with a face (Tyrael's face only showing once he chose mortality), speculation is that it's some sort of dark Templar sort of deal.

[Arakasi]

There was some leaks that seem to be mostly true and the class named in the leaks was called Spiritborn. So perhaps a shamanistic type of class.

Anyway lots of good news for the next few weeks (new event to challenge 100s, malignant rings. Xmas event) and for S3 (gauntlet mode tied in with leaderboards).

[Caligula_K3]

On 11/3/2023 at 10:48 AM, Rhom said:

Legit question... why would you get an XBox?

Any exclusive game on the XBox is also available on the PC.

To buy a gaming PC is now very, very expensive, and life ain't cheap these days. I also have a lot of trouble gaming at a computer after spending most of my days working at one. Plus @Kalbear points to other reasons I don't want to deal with PC gaming.

Between X Box Series S and PS5, I ultimately went for Series S because it was the cheapest option, by a good amount. It gives me access to lots of current gen and last gen games I've wanted to play, and Gamepass is a pretty good deal that also lets me try out many games I'd otherwise skip over. Finally, and this was a harder choice, between Microsoft owned studios (especially Bethesda/Obsidian games and Sony games), I probably give a small edge to the former.

As for graphical differences between one versus the other... I really don't care. My Switch has been my pretty much only gaming device for the last 5 years, aside from my laptop that could run some old games. 

Anyway, I'm happy with my purchase. Between the XBox, Gamepass, and my Switch, I have way more games I want to play than time. If I had more money to spend on video games, maybe I'd have made a different choice.

Edit: but obviously the real reason is that I wanted to re-play Banjo Tooie. Can your PS5s and fancy PCs play that? I don't think so.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Caligula_K3

[Kalbear]

8 hours ago, Fez said:

And speaking of the problems of PC gaming, I think I've encountered one. My secondary SSD (which is 6 years old) appears to have suddenly and completely died overnight. It's no longer recognized by my PC at all, not showing up in device manager, disk management, or BIOS. Question for those more knowledge than me:

If I've confirmed that the motherboard port is still good, the SATA cable is still good, and the power supply connector is still good (I was able to test all them with a third drive), is there any other issue I could be facing besides it being that the SSD has died? 

Nope, you're pretty much guaranteed that it's that drive. And if it's not even being recognized as a device the recovery options on it are poor.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

. I also have a lot of trouble gaming at a computer after spending most of my days working at one.

Yeah, it depends on your PC set-up I guess, but I have the same issue with not wanting to sit at the PC after work. I like to play strategy games and there a ton of them I never get around to playing for this reason. Last time I did that for any length of time was Total War Rome 2. It's a lot easier to relax and decompress with the Xbox.

I was pretty happy when they put out console editions of some Paradox strategy games. Stellaris is incredibly addicting. I'm hoping for a console Medieval 2: Total War someday.

 

Edited November 4, 2023 by Martell Spy

[Werthead]

On 11/3/2023 at 9:00 PM, Kalbear said:

But, yeah - if you can spend that on a PC and are comfortable using that PC in your living room with your kids to play games? Cool beans, go for it. If you are alone and you only use one device to play games and don't mind the occasional miss of a XBox game? By all means, PC is fine. Fine with doing all the maintenance and updates of Windows? PC is fine. But that isn't everyone's requirement

This was an odd comment Maintenance and updates of Windows is...clicking YES when it asks to install updates and then never, ever thinking about it again (until the next time months later). It's no harder than when your PS5 or XBX/S needs to run an update.

I do think the arguments for buying a gaming PC are tougher now than they've been for quite some time (since the "is PC gaming about to die?" phase circa 2006-08, until Steam finally exploded and saved the day), mainly due to cost. If you want a no-problem 60fps 4K gaming PC, then you are limited to the higher-end 40xx series or hoping that developers do a really good job with DLSS implementation and rolling with a 4060/ti, which is not outrageously expensive but getting on for that PS5/XBX combined price bracket. And even then the 40xx series putting shitty amounts of memory in their cards remains a big problem for optimisation.

[Werthead]

1 minute ago, Martell Spy said:

Yeah, it depends on your PC set-up I guess, but I have the same issue with not wanting to sit at the PC after work. I like to play strategy games and there a ton of them I never get around to playing for this reason. Last time I did that for any length of time was Total War Rome 2. It's a lot easier to relax and decompress with the Xbox.

I was pretty happy when they put out console editions of some Paradox strategy games. Stellaris is incredibly addicting. I'm hoping for a console Medieval 2: Total War someday.

(standard reminder that pretty much all smart TVs or smart-add-ons for TVs allow you to stream PC games to your TV with zero issue whatsoever)

Medieval 2: Total War Remastered is on mobile right now, and will (probably) head to PC later on. It is odd they didn't try to bring Rome Remastered and some of the other games to consoles, as the technical issues they've reported with the Warhammer trilogy wouldn't be as much of an issue, and if you can play the game on a mobile phone you should be able to run it on console (plus you can issue orders when paused in every game, which makes it much easier).

[Kalbear]

Just now, Werthead said:

This was an odd comment Maintenance and updates of Windows is...clicking YES when it asks to install updates and then never, ever thinking about it again (until the next time months later). It's no harder than when your PS5 or XBX/S needs to run an update.

That hasn't been my experience maintaining 5 PCs in my house. Between various hardware flavors and failures, having to get certain mod loaders and scripts running, figuring out how to download certain games, steam corruption of folders, different graphic card updates (and how sometimes those updates will hose one game and make another one fine), setting up different accounts with different permissions for the family members...it's not just saying 'yes'. 

Maybe I should have been clearer and said maintenance and updates of windows pcs. Windows itself usually isn't too bad as long as your hardware is reasonably standard (though we had a fucking mess of a time with a couple of drawing devices) but all the other stuff adds up. Heck, just account management across multiple people isn't awesome. That probably isn't a big deal if you only have one person, I suppose.

 

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

with a couple of drawing devices

Do tell.

Wacoms or one of the competitors out of China now that their pen patent ran out? Been considering getting one myself.

[felice]

9 hours ago, Fez said:

If I've confirmed that the motherboard port is still good, the SATA cable is still good, and the power supply connector is still good (I was able to test all them with a third drive), is there any other issue I could be facing besides it being that the SSD has died? 

It could be the connection between cable and SSD? I had trouble getting my last SSD detected - tried multiple SATA and power cables that worked fine with other devices, but replacing the SSD with a different brand didn't help. What did solve it was pushing the cable in with an unreasonable amount of force. It wasn't going in noticeably further, but the BIOS has been reliably detecting it since then

[Kalbear]

31 minutes ago, Ran said:

Do tell.

Wacoms or one of the competitors out of China now that their pen patent ran out? Been considering getting one myself.

It was a Wacom for the first one, and then some other one later. Both were kind of horrible. Both were very particular about which usb port they plugged into, and neither used the same port. The second device would also just...stop being registered after like 6 hours.

Haven't had any problem with the surface studio 2 I have or the surface pro, so it's not entirely windows - but it was not fun.