13th March 2010, 11:36 AM
I have played more PC games than you have ABF, I have played more video games than you have period. As i've stated many times, there are awesome PC games to be had. Alone in the Dark and OMF is not among them. You know I love the RTS and RPG games so no, menus do not scare me, but badly produced and cluttered menus annoy the fuck out of me. On consoles, they streamline it so its more palatable but still offering the amount of customization or depth. Good examples here are FFT, the console versions of Elder Scrolls, Phantasy Star Online, Fire Emblem series and so on. I am waiting for a Civilization on a console, I know what's good.
PC gaming is like the WiiWare channel or XBLA, its a lot of garage games. Back in the day, 90's, those games were just krap and regardless of your taste in games, you cannot deny that Killer Instinct is leaps and bounds a better overall game in every department of its production. OMF was a bad version of Mortal Kombat with uninspiring robots, the same shitty music track over and over. It's not a nostalgia-designed game like Cave Story Mega Man 9 where its supposed to look dated and oldskool, it's a throw-away fighting game.
Mortal Kombat was also produced by a couple of guys with a low budget but it's also a better game whether you play it on PC, consoles or the arcade.
I understand you have a soft spot for PC gaming, but you're not being reasonable. Then Grumbler announces to the world that RPG's didn't have cinematics before FF7 and my jaw literally dropped. I guess i'm the only one who thinks RPG's have always had cinematics, including FMV's or in-game graphics. It's ridiculous to think otherwise.
Your points that you're arguing sound asinine to me because they revolve around the idea that PC games are somehow more enlightened and better than anything else and this is simply not true. PC gaming is at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of gameplay and design, but at the highest end of the spectrum in terms of technology and graphics, especially now. There are PC games that cant even run on PS3 because they require more horsepower. That's undeniable, we always look to the PC world to what's next in terms of graphics and new engines, Unreal's engines have been used in so many video games it's pathetic so the entire industry stops to look at what the PC world is doing and what are video game consoles but gaming specific PC's with mild capability to upgrade?
But we're talking about software, I asked for someone to find a game in the same caliber as Killer Instinct on PC and no matter how much you loved that game, it doesn't compete. That's not opinion: The graphics a side, look at the backgrounds, the music, the sound effects, the presentation, the depth, all of these factors trump OMF to pieces. You dont like combo systems, but that's almost entirely the backbone of a fighting game and why fans like them in the first place.
The most fun I ever had on PC was with KOTOR and Civ 3 and 4 these were/are amazing and extremely well done, but look at the mess they're in and no, I wont take your 'PC has a large collection of genres' because the only thing on PC (exclusively) that warrants anything close to survival horror is a game that by the standards set by RE is a complete waste of time. Racing, we have what, Test Drive Unlimited or Flat Out? Compare that to what we can find on consoles. Puzzles, no contest here, the consoles and handhelds have this beaten, I dont just mean Bejeweled and Tetris, either. Fighting? We dont need to go over that again.
Simulators, FPS's, RTS and strat and of course social games like Wow. That is why you go to PC. *nothing* on the consoles compare to Starcraft, Civ and the like. PC FPS may not have the most fun designs, but definitely the prettiest in technical prowess and we're online deathmatching before consoles even had a modem port. The BEST content found in PC FPS comes from the PLAYERS who build their own levels, weapons and etc. The design team just wanted to make a beautiful engine.
Let's look at the highest ranked games on PC right now, these are the games that received the highest scores, the must-haves.
http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?page_...=top_rated
Look at that list. It's all ports of console games to PC. Why is that? It's because the games designed for consoles are more fun, less clunky, streamlined, playtested and built for fun. Most PC exclusive releases dont get that treatment because put quite simply, it wasn't important. What was important was getting the engine out the door to get other devs to buy it and use it and make that money back from the R&D.
Meanwhile, Borderlands is built from pre-existing engines to create a game that offers depth and flair, deeper artistic roots and writing from actual writers, levels designed by actual level designers who have years of experience. Not people who ingeniously make two filters look like realistic plate glass or figured out a ghetto way to make faux real time ray tracing. They're not storytellers or artists, not in the traditional sense. They're technical artists, wizards.
This last decade, we saw developers in America really wake up to storytelling, getting you in-tune with the character and their development. That didn't exist a decade ago, save for a few gems here and there. There is a technical side to telling a story that requires an imagination to power it. Big McLarge Huge has to destroy the aliens or a technical romp through the cockpit of a space ship had no soul, no reason to care and it almost always looked like the highschool drawings on the back of someone's notebook. It just wasn't there, it didn't have what it takes. Japan and to a lesser extent Europe, got it though. And gave us characters to FEEL, stories to get in to and explore, even raise discussion. The art of the PC game design is to use the virtually limitless resources, the art of designing a console game is to engage the player. It took western developers a long time to understand that and with the competition streaming out of Japan they had to evolve or die.
So they hired writers, they commissioned artists. They started getting really fancy, paying a Lockheed/Martin aircraft designer to design their robot enemies or getting a Nasa scientist to come up with realistic weapons that could plausibly exist, but dont. They hired composers and arrangers, they sat down with designers who have schooling in art to understand color coordination and contrasts, texturing and etc not just 'what looks cool'. And suddenly, within the last decade, we have American games that outperform Japanese games by a large margin. Look at Metroid Prime on Gamecube, its arguably better looking than Twilight Princess, Final Fantasy 13 or MGS3 and 50% of that is because of design, not graphics. We improved our craft and that was a direct result of the software created for consoles to push the envelope of entertainment, to bring the emotional tonalities of film in to the interactive stage. PC games STILL dont deliver in that arena.
Do you understand it now?
PC gaming is like the WiiWare channel or XBLA, its a lot of garage games. Back in the day, 90's, those games were just krap and regardless of your taste in games, you cannot deny that Killer Instinct is leaps and bounds a better overall game in every department of its production. OMF was a bad version of Mortal Kombat with uninspiring robots, the same shitty music track over and over. It's not a nostalgia-designed game like Cave Story Mega Man 9 where its supposed to look dated and oldskool, it's a throw-away fighting game.
Mortal Kombat was also produced by a couple of guys with a low budget but it's also a better game whether you play it on PC, consoles or the arcade.
I understand you have a soft spot for PC gaming, but you're not being reasonable. Then Grumbler announces to the world that RPG's didn't have cinematics before FF7 and my jaw literally dropped. I guess i'm the only one who thinks RPG's have always had cinematics, including FMV's or in-game graphics. It's ridiculous to think otherwise.
Your points that you're arguing sound asinine to me because they revolve around the idea that PC games are somehow more enlightened and better than anything else and this is simply not true. PC gaming is at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of gameplay and design, but at the highest end of the spectrum in terms of technology and graphics, especially now. There are PC games that cant even run on PS3 because they require more horsepower. That's undeniable, we always look to the PC world to what's next in terms of graphics and new engines, Unreal's engines have been used in so many video games it's pathetic so the entire industry stops to look at what the PC world is doing and what are video game consoles but gaming specific PC's with mild capability to upgrade?
But we're talking about software, I asked for someone to find a game in the same caliber as Killer Instinct on PC and no matter how much you loved that game, it doesn't compete. That's not opinion: The graphics a side, look at the backgrounds, the music, the sound effects, the presentation, the depth, all of these factors trump OMF to pieces. You dont like combo systems, but that's almost entirely the backbone of a fighting game and why fans like them in the first place.
The most fun I ever had on PC was with KOTOR and Civ 3 and 4 these were/are amazing and extremely well done, but look at the mess they're in and no, I wont take your 'PC has a large collection of genres' because the only thing on PC (exclusively) that warrants anything close to survival horror is a game that by the standards set by RE is a complete waste of time. Racing, we have what, Test Drive Unlimited or Flat Out? Compare that to what we can find on consoles. Puzzles, no contest here, the consoles and handhelds have this beaten, I dont just mean Bejeweled and Tetris, either. Fighting? We dont need to go over that again.
Simulators, FPS's, RTS and strat and of course social games like Wow. That is why you go to PC. *nothing* on the consoles compare to Starcraft, Civ and the like. PC FPS may not have the most fun designs, but definitely the prettiest in technical prowess and we're online deathmatching before consoles even had a modem port. The BEST content found in PC FPS comes from the PLAYERS who build their own levels, weapons and etc. The design team just wanted to make a beautiful engine.
Let's look at the highest ranked games on PC right now, these are the games that received the highest scores, the must-haves.
http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?page_...=top_rated
Look at that list. It's all ports of console games to PC. Why is that? It's because the games designed for consoles are more fun, less clunky, streamlined, playtested and built for fun. Most PC exclusive releases dont get that treatment because put quite simply, it wasn't important. What was important was getting the engine out the door to get other devs to buy it and use it and make that money back from the R&D.
Meanwhile, Borderlands is built from pre-existing engines to create a game that offers depth and flair, deeper artistic roots and writing from actual writers, levels designed by actual level designers who have years of experience. Not people who ingeniously make two filters look like realistic plate glass or figured out a ghetto way to make faux real time ray tracing. They're not storytellers or artists, not in the traditional sense. They're technical artists, wizards.
This last decade, we saw developers in America really wake up to storytelling, getting you in-tune with the character and their development. That didn't exist a decade ago, save for a few gems here and there. There is a technical side to telling a story that requires an imagination to power it. Big McLarge Huge has to destroy the aliens or a technical romp through the cockpit of a space ship had no soul, no reason to care and it almost always looked like the highschool drawings on the back of someone's notebook. It just wasn't there, it didn't have what it takes. Japan and to a lesser extent Europe, got it though. And gave us characters to FEEL, stories to get in to and explore, even raise discussion. The art of the PC game design is to use the virtually limitless resources, the art of designing a console game is to engage the player. It took western developers a long time to understand that and with the competition streaming out of Japan they had to evolve or die.
So they hired writers, they commissioned artists. They started getting really fancy, paying a Lockheed/Martin aircraft designer to design their robot enemies or getting a Nasa scientist to come up with realistic weapons that could plausibly exist, but dont. They hired composers and arrangers, they sat down with designers who have schooling in art to understand color coordination and contrasts, texturing and etc not just 'what looks cool'. And suddenly, within the last decade, we have American games that outperform Japanese games by a large margin. Look at Metroid Prime on Gamecube, its arguably better looking than Twilight Princess, Final Fantasy 13 or MGS3 and 50% of that is because of design, not graphics. We improved our craft and that was a direct result of the software created for consoles to push the envelope of entertainment, to bring the emotional tonalities of film in to the interactive stage. PC games STILL dont deliver in that arena.
Do you understand it now?