The Metroid Zero Mission Countdown Thread

[A Black Falcon]

Considering that ABF only plays games pre-Y2K anyway, it's probably best that he stick with a CRT. For consistency's sake.

Yeah, I know, I've only played like 1100 hours of circa-2004/05 Guild Wars since it came out... and 2002's Warcraft III is only like probably my most played game ever... etc...

I know I don't have many PC games from the past three or four years or so, or didn't until all those sales online last year, but still...

Since those sales on D2D and Steam last year and a few boxed pickups, I picked up Drakensang, NWN2: Storm of Zehir (got original NWN2 and MotB in '07), Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (boxed), Psychonauts, Outrun 2006, Shattered Horizon, Mirror's Edge, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, World in Conflict Gold, Supreme Commander Gold, and a few more...

I just don't think that playing older games is any less valid -- particularly when they're older games I've never played before or haven't played that much before, as is true with most of the games in this thread!

Still though, I am currently playing Knights in the Nightmare on my DS, and it's a stunningly amazing game, certainly the best game I've played so far that was released in 2009. Exceptional, exceptional stuff.

As someone who has worked with graphics engineers and studios who need the best image reproduction possible, CRT's are the only option. They provide the best black levels, best contrast ratios, best color reproduction and over all best picture quality. It's funny, but LCD's and plasma's actually haven't caught up to direct-view (tube) television picture quality. If you've ever seen 1080p on a CRT 30"+ then you know exactly what I mean.

I'm obviously not someone who cares THAT much about graphics, but I have used this computer with an LCD before -- a nothing-special 17" one -- and I definitely noticed the problems, such as the lack of a real black, the ghosting, the lack of options to really change the screen shape (fix that odd resolution issue where there's a giant black space at the bottom of the screen by just moving over the screen, resizing it, and shaping it to fit! Oh wait, you can't do that in an LCD! Too bad, you're stuck!). It did not exactly make me want an LCD monitor, to say the least. :) LCDs are smaller, but if you directly compare image quality on an LCD to a CRT, the CRT does clearly look better, due to the reasons you explain there.

As I said, the only thing I like about LCDs are that those giant ones are huge... I've known some people at school over the past few years who had large LCD monitors for their PCs. Older games like Starcraft looked horrible on them, but newer stuff like World in Conflict or SupCom look awesome...

It would definitely take some time to get used to the widescreen format, and I'm definitely not convinced that widescreen is better than standard 4:3 for PC games (I don't really think it is, I think), but I'm sure I probably would eventually.

So yeah, ideally I'd have one of each, for each kind of game. Unfortunately those large monitors are pretty expensive, so for now it's not an option.