Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Proving that Consoles are throttling Game Potential
Options
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,205 CMod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 27917
There's a fair amount of PC games that have, would or indeed will 'downgrade' well
I was just playing Nidghogg for the first time there, and first thing I had to do was plug in my PS3 controller into my laptop because a keyboard would be inadequate indeed for such a fast paced 2D brawler. It will be right at home on consoles when it arrives later this year, especially since it's so local multiplayer focused. Same sort of deal with Jamestown, Gone Home, Rogue Legacy and others that are on the way. Now granted these aren't the most graphically intensive games, but they are some of the most celebrated games to have originated on PC over the last few years - with good cause: they're illustrative of the ambitious and exciting games that come out on PC every other day thanks to the freedom offered by the format. And there's no reason why they won't be just as good when they're ported over (and Rogue Legacy and Jamestown will be better with a controller as default 
). It's only a good thing that more people will get to experience these superb games now, no dumbing down required. There's already been the likes of Outlast, Don't Starve, even smartly optimised versions of Minecraft.
PC gaming is so much more than the graphics card bleeding uber sims, and happily for everyone there's a whole load that are portable between formats without any significant compromise.0 -
Advertisement
-
johnny_ultimate wrote: »There's a fair amount of PC games that have, would or indeed will 'downgrade' well I was just playing Nidghogg for the first time there, and first thing I had to do was plug in my PS3 controller into my laptop because a keyboard would be inadequate indeed for such a fast paced 2D brawler. It will be right at home on consoles when it arrives later this year, especially since it's so local multiplayer focused. Same sort of deal with Jamestown, Gone Home, Rogue Legacy and others that are on the way. Now granted these aren't the most graphically intensive games, but they are some of the most celebrated games to have originated on PC over the last few years - with good cause: they're illustrative of the ambitious and exciting games that come out on PC every other day thanks to the freedom offered by the format. And there's no reason why they won't be just as good when they're ported over (and Rogue Legacy and Jamestown will be better with a controller as default ). It's only a good thing that more people will get to experience these superb games now, no dumbing down required. There's already been the likes of Outlast, Don't Starve, even smartly optimised versions of Minecraft.
PC gaming is so much more than the graphics card bleeding uber sims, and happily for everyone there's a whole load that are portable between formats without any significant compromise.
Sure but almost every game you mention there, except for the oddball in every sense of the word Minecraft, are not trying to be mass market games, they're niche genre titles not being handled by any of the big publishers. I apologise for loose language but I was mainly thinking of AAA/large publishers bringing franchises over, it tends to be a bit problematic (exceptions exist obviously but I'm *not* trying to make a PC vs Console argument as much as publishers bringing something from the more niche to the more mass media platform argument that we unfortunately see in almost all the creative arts when moving between more specialist and more mass market media).
That's a load of PC native games that are (or would work well as) best played with a controller that would transfer seamlessly but as soon as you've an FPS where you're aiming with a controller rather than a mouse you start having issues with level and game design as each controller lends itself more to different directions (not necessarily good or bad, just different and mutually antagonistic, if you limit the amount of jumping/vertical "space" in an FPS shooter to minimise the amount of aiming that needs to be doing outside of the normal visual plane in front of a character you're making a game that'll probably play well on console but feel gimped on PC, and vice versa). Conversely you can take a complex turn based game like XCOM and transition is pretty smoothly to console because the turn based element works well with a controller.
The thing with XCOM is though, it was meant to be cross platform from the start and they went through the design phase knowing this (separate teams for the GUI/control scheme for PC and Console, rather than trying to make a single one fit both and messing up the experience for all or one side), this can work well if done properly. Some "always meant to be" cross platform titles don't seem to suffer too much for it other than graphical fidelity. The problems crop up in games that came out originally designed around having a mouse and keyboard and then trying to shove and a square peg into a round hole and make it work with controllers. You need to make some major alterations to some kinds of games to make this work and this can often alienate the original franchise's support base, similar to what happened with the theme/design changes from Dead Space to Dead Space 3 (you normally see the bitching about PC->Console here rather than the other way around because I can (and do) use a controller with some games because the mouse and keyboard suck with them but a console owner can't pull the same trick to get around a badly optimised for controller interface). The second set of issues come from streamlining/simplifying a game to make it more mass market, which is nothing unique to PC -> Console conversions and can happen within a platform too if a publisher/developer decides to chase the mass market crowd with the next title after more than expected success with the previous one or whatever.
PS: Insomnia is a **** ** ** * **** :P0 -
Advertisement