General gaming discussion

Grumpypants

pixelburp wrote: »

The "objective review" is a myth. And even if some professional writer took it upon themselves to write an objective review, it'd be the dryest read imaginable, every perceived nuance of the game stripped away into asinine abstracts. The whole point of a game is to make you feel - empowered, exhilarated, scared, etc - you can't review a medium inherently built upon feeling from an objective point of view. That's literally contradictory.

Objective just means you report on the actual game as it's own piece if work.

If you had two games about blue Aliens that are both 10/10. Reviewing one at 10 and the second at 7 because you are bored of blue aliens tells me nothing about the second game.


I like Digital Foundry's stuff and that is rarely opinion based. It is facts like mechanics and perfrmance fps, colour, and texture load in times.

They might talk about how good something looks or plays but that is still in the objective review sphere.

gimli2112

I hadn't realised HZD has just been released on PC. I'd nearly buy a PC just to see it run. Almost universally positive reviewer scores on metacritic for those of us into that kind of thing.

Retr0gamer

gimli2112 wrote: »

I hadn't realised HZD has just been released on PC. I'd nearly buy a PC just to see it run. Almost universally positive reviewer scores on metacritic for those of us into that kind of thing.

It's getting about the same response as before on PS4 and it seems the engine is working beautifully on PC just like Death Stranding. Got to hand it to Guerrilla, they know how to make an amazingly well optimised engine.

I'll probably pick it up cheap myself as I can see the 60 FPS making the game a joy to control.

gizmo

Grumpypants wrote: »

Objective just means you report on the actual game as it's own piece if work.

If you had two games about blue Aliens that are both 10/10. Reviewing one at 10 and the second at 7 because you are bored of blue aliens tells me nothing about the second game.


I like Digital Foundry's stuff and that is rarely opinion based. It is facts like mechanics and perfrmance fps, colour, and texture load in times.

They might talk about how good something looks or plays but that is still in the objective review sphere.

That's a pretty subjective view of objectivity in reviews :pac:

How far would you take that reasoning as a matter of interest? Wouldn't referring to previous titles in a series or competitors in the genre be quite important in discussing the merits of a particular title?

earthwormjack

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's getting about the same response as before on PS4 and it seems the engine is working beautifully on PC just like Death Stranding. Got to hand it to Guerrilla, they know how to make an amazingly well optimised engine.

I'll probably pick it up cheap myself as I can see the 60 FPS making the game a joy to control.

From reading around it's apparently a poor attempt at a PC port, and definitely not performing well enough for some of the hardware it's running on. Which is a shame if true.

Thecageyone

earthwormjack wrote: »

From reading around it's apparently a poor attempt at a PC port, and definitely not performing well enough for some of the hardware it's running on. Which is a shame if true.

That is a shame if the case, I just watched some streamers play it on twitch earlier and it looked pretty sweet. but then I can't compare it to the ps4 vers as I've never played it.

Think I'll wait for a sale on this one either way,

gimli2112

just watched a couple of streams, the cutscene looked awful but the gameplay seemed a good deal better than on the Pro, with the higher fps, I guess.

Potential-Monke

I feel like I should start feeling sorry for you PC heads. Ye seem to be rarely happy with ports, and spend a lot of time figuring out the best settings for your own set up. I wanted to check the performance on PC so I read the first article that popped up, it's IGN but I've no idea how good/bad they are at this stuff: https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

I understood about 30% of what they were talking about, and it really looks like you need to do a lot of fiddling to get this game to run the way you want it to, and that is also very arbitrary. To be honest, it looks like a pain in the hole to play this on PC. Keep yer elitism, I'll still with my plug and play console and be very happy with what it offers.

one armed dwarf

It's not elitism, sometimes a game gets a bad port. eg, a 200 euro GPU being outperformed by base PS4, that isn't usual for PC.

Most games these days are pretty stress free,just set a preset and maybe set a framerate target and have it adjust the resolution itself.

CastorTroy

I see that Fast & Furious Crossroads game released today. Who noticed?

earthwormjack

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I feel like I should start feeling sorry for you PC heads. Ye seem to be rarely happy with ports, and spend a lot of time figuring out the best settings for your own set up. I wanted to check the performance on PC so I read the first article that popped up, it's IGN but I've no idea how good/bad they are at this stuff: https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

I understood about 30% of what they were talking about, and it really looks like you need to do a lot of fiddling to get this game to run the way you want it to, and that is also very arbitrary. To be honest, it looks like a pain in the hole to play this on PC. Keep yer elitism, I'll still with my plug and play console and be very happy with what it offers.

It sounds much worse than it is. Generally, there's very little fiddling to be done with any PC port and all the options are there to squeeze out every last frame if that's what your into. Nowadays it's just about as plug and play as a console with the odd, rare exception.

Usually the worst PC ports still play and look the same as there console counterparts anyway, so it isn't usually a huge deal. Horizon just needed a couple of extra months dev time.

johnny_ultimate

A quick pop in to the menus will usually get you where you need with PC. A few ones are a bit more complex - say toying around with the Ray-tracing options in something like Control - but 9/10 times it’s a painless process: far superior performance to consoles with only minimal tinkering depending on your setup. If you’re really fussy you can tweak away to your heart’s content - but presets will usually get most players 90% of the way to where they want to be.

PC gaming is honestly fairly straightforward these days if you have a half decent rig.

Are there bad PC ports? Sure. But there are bad console ports too - arguably far more with significant performance issues, and where you’ll be entirely reliant on developers to sort out the problems (whereas on PC someone will usually have a quick fix within days if something is majorly awry). Shouldn’t happen in either case in an ideal world, of course, but the reality of development suggests it will continue to be the case.

pixelburp

The way I look at it, PC graphics settings are no different to character creators in a RPG. If you want you can spend ages tinkering with every last slider to make the hero/graphics look just as you please. But there are also quick settings that do the job in a minute or so, it all comes down to how much effort you prefer.

Retr0gamer

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I feel like I should start feeling sorry for you PC heads. Ye seem to be rarely happy with ports, and spend a lot of time figuring out the best settings for your own set up. I wanted to check the performance on PC so I read the first article that popped up, it's IGN but I've no idea how good/bad they are at this stuff: https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

I understood about 30% of what they were talking about, and it really looks like you need to do a lot of fiddling to get this game to run the way you want it to, and that is also very arbitrary. To be honest, it looks like a pain in the hole to play this on PC. Keep yer elitism, I'll still with my plug and play console and be very happy with what it offers.

From the Digital Foundry article the port seems to work well it's just some of the top end settings are resource drains. They change very minor things above console levels but they are barely noticeable but are serious resource hogs. I think the issue with Horizon is people bumping the settings up to highest and getting annoyed it runs so poorly. Stuff like the clouds are massive resource drains but setting it to medium gives the same effect as on a PS4 Pro.

But Mostly PC gaming is very stress free. Most games get great ports and honestly fiddling with graphics options isn't that difficult especially with presets now and it's actually.... kind of fun to see what everything does.

one armed dwarf

Well there's also some base performance issues outside of that tho, the game stutters during cutscene transitions and when using items. It seems to have graphical errors on Nvidia cards. As mentioned the GTX 1060 struggles to keep up with base PS4 when it usually trounces PS4 Pro.

Death Stranding was on the same engine and ran very smooth in comparison (had almost no graphic options tho)

Retr0gamer

I hadn't seen the cutscene stuff but you are right.

Strange to see a half arsed port like that after Death Stranding was so great.

Thecageyone

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I feel like I should start feeling sorry for you PC heads. Ye seem to be rarely happy with ports, and spend a lot of time figuring out the best settings for your own set up. I wanted to check the performance on PC so I read the first article that popped up, it's IGN but I've no idea how good/bad they are at this stuff: https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

I understood about 30% of what they were talking about, and it really looks like you need to do a lot of fiddling to get this game to run the way you want it to, and that is also very arbitrary. To be honest, it looks like a pain in the hole to play this on PC. Keep yer elitism, I'll still with my plug and play console and be very happy with what it offers.

I've not had to do any such thing on any games I've played on PC, usually it's about 2 minutes checking settings on first play. I don't have anything fancy, got a decent cpu [Ryzen 2600x] and an ok gpu [GTX 1660] and I can run pretty much any game on all high to ultra settings depending - I only play in 1080p and if I can get 60fps I'm good [my monitor is only 60hz] All I know is when I run The Witcher III it looks much better on my rig than it does on a ps4, and I've not touched any settings since day 1 where I just cranked up pretty much everything and switched off that dumb 'Nvidia hair' crap

I play console too, reckon many PC owners have a console on side, I don't know where this 'elitism' thing hails from.

gimli2112

Thecageyone wrote: »

I don't know where this 'elitism' thing hails from.

The internet, probably specifically Reddit and people's belief if you don't like the things I like, you're wrong.

Thecageyone

gimli2112 wrote: »

The internet, probably specifically Reddit and people's belief if you don't like the things I like, you're wrong.

Of course I do come across it, even on camera forums with the whole Sony vs Nikon Vs Canon etc, grown men arguing over camera gear can get very sad [Team Fuji here btw ]

I just ignore it for the most part, never understood it, just use whatever suits and enjoy. Same with the console Vs Pc, and even console vs console - end of the day if you're having fun with what you got why be bitter about what others use?

Penn

gimli2112 wrote: »

The internet, probably specifically Reddit and people's belief if you don't like the things I like, you're wrong.

Yeah, good thing that doesn't happen here.

Also, Cuphead sucks.

dudeeile

Thecageyone wrote: »

[Team Fuji here btw ]

Pentax yo

PopePalpatine

Thecageyone wrote: »

Of course I do come across it, even on camera forums with the whole Sony vs Nikon Vs Canon etc, grown men arguing over camera gear can get very sad [Team Fuji here btw ]

I'm on Team Whoever-Did-GT4's-Photo-Mode. :pac:

Potential-Monke

I'll be honest, I haven't played a proper AAA PC game in years because my GPU is just not good enough any more. And when I was playing back then, I was struggling to get some games to play right. You need a certain knowledge about what options affect what, what anti-alisaing is, and what the 2X, or 4XXX, or whatever else terms they use these days. It's not straight forward enough just yet to compare it to the handy plug and play of consoles, but does sound like it's getting there.

I've intentions of picking up a decent GPU and more RAM in the coming months (I have a i5 3570k, which is still apparently a really, really good CPU), just because I pay for Games Pass on PC, and I really want to play Forza Horizon as it just looks fun. I also don't want to be one of those people who suddenly has games in 60fps or higher and can't play the console games any more because I'll always be a console player at heart.

But there is still definitely elitism in the pc vs console space. Not so much as there used to be, but it's definitely still there.

Retr0gamer

Penn wrote: »

Yeah, good thing that doesn't happen here.

Also, Cuphead sucks.

Get off my forum.

Retr0gamer

I actually think a lot of the so called elitism is instigated by the console crowd talking about PC elitism or how difficult PC gaming is and PC players defending it.

gimli2112

There's villains on both sides of the debate. People get too defensive either way.

JimBurnley

gimli2112 wrote: »

There's villains on both sides of the debate. People get too defensive either way.

Oh no we don't

Greyfox

gimli2112 wrote: »

There's villains on both sides of the debate.

True, anybody who says one is better than the other is an idiot, both have there advantages and disadvantages. You can say which you prefer but that's just you, not everyone is going to like the same games as you.

Robert ninja

I don't even think it's a proper comparison anyway. Consoles are dedicated media hubs with gaming. PCs are... whatever you want really. For me personally, although there's dozens of reasons I game only on a computer (and not even one running windows), probably the single biggest reason is backwards compatability. I simply do not care much for modern games although I'm not a nostalgia or retro freak, either. I just play whatever the hell I want and don't care what year it released. I'm replaying Dead Rising 2 OTR, Far Cry 2 along with old DOS games as well as some of the latest AAA or free to play titles like Warframe. Being able to jump around like this all while using the exact same keyboard and mouse and no subscription fees... wouldn't have it any other way.

_CreeD_

Increased options equals increased complexity. The fact that I can reconfigure the options within a PC game to match my current rig is a fantastic freedom. I don't have to do it, I can simply load it up and run at default just as I do with my console games. If I choose to invest in higher end hardware and the game has options to tune it effectively to match that is my choice, not a requirement. If you find the thoughts of tuning a game for your current, and therefor having options for future hardware a problem then stay on console. There's no issue there. But don't exaggerate things to where you think the effort required on PC even remotely eclipses the benefits over time. You can play any cross platform game on a mid range PC out of the box that will look as good and perform aswell or better than the same on a console, barring developer utter incompetence. You can then usually upgrade that game in place by upgrading your own hardware, no remaster or dev involvement again as long as they were forward looking in their engine tech.
Tuning 10-20 COMMON graphical options is not rocket science. There's this thing called google for anything you don't understand if you really want to min/max your experience. If you don't fine, stick to the same PC, or console, love the game and keep breathing.

And since it was brought up earlier as an example. Having played Horizon Zero Dawn on both the original PS4 and the Pro the PC version blows them away regardless of day-one issues. It took me all of 5 mins of tinkering of those 10 or so common graphic options to get a beautiful 4k experience at twice the best framerate I'd played it on before and with much better fidelity. That doesn't demean the fact that a 400 buck console that runs it within I guess 70% the quality a 2.5k pc does is lost, it just means that the best experience is absolutely my PC version.