Best [and Worst] of the Past Decade

[A Black Falcon]

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.

So you sort of actually admit it yourself this time? That's good...

That is, yes, console menus are streamlined. Simpler, less complicated, with many fewer options and features. They are simpler, and so are the games. Which you prefer will depend largely on whether you like depth or simplicity more; neither is inherently better than the other.

It's just opinion. For instance, I can't stand the look of PSX-style Square Final Fantasy menus... somehow they just look horribly ugly. Give my any one of those old confusing DOS menus instead, they're better looking. :)

What's not opinion, though, of course, is that the PC games have much more depth on average.

FFT, the console versions of Elder Scrolls, Phantasy Star Online, Fire Emblem series and so on.

FFT: Ah, Japan's favorite kind of depth, the hidden system! I hate that stuff so much... why can't you just TELL ME HOW THE GAME WORKS? Why do I need to use an FAQ if I want to just be able to properly play the game? Western games do not usually do things like that! That kind of "depth" is a kind of depth that I can live without, that's for sure.

Oh, the game's okay, but not great. I got it years ago and stopped playing a few missions in, it just didn't grab me.

Elder Scrolls: Simplified a lot in Morrowind and then even more in Oblivion. Even many Morrowind fans were annoyed by how simple Oblivion was... I don't really like the series in general, but Daggerfall probably is the most impressive one because it has the greatest, most impressive scale.

PSO: Very simple game really. Also, the best (and only complete) version is on the PC.

Fire Emblem: Fantastic series that I love, but they aren't THAT complex... for the most part the games avoid the 'hidden systems' thing, which is good (there are a few elements of it, but pretty much only in the character relationship systems, which aren't that important really). The square-based maps are not as complex as the hex-based maps of PC wargames. Certainly has nothing depth-wise on PC wargames, obviously... but it's a strategy game not a wargame so that's okay. Still, even something like X-Com probably has more depth than this... though I prefer Fire Emblem to X-Com. Having more depth doesn't always make something better. :)

I am waiting for a Civilization on a console,

You didn't like Civilization Revolution? Got some pretty good reviews... it's quite simple of course, as console versions of PC games always are, but if you want a simple little empire-building game it's good, I guess. I'd rather play the real thing myself, and have the actual depth of the PC games...

Civ 1 was also on the SNES of course, though I've never played that version.

PC gaming is like the WiiWare channel or XBLA, its a lot of garage games.

Because there is no licensing requirement for PC games, this is of course true. It is the great strength of the platform.

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.

You've never played OMF then, obviously. It plays nothing like MK. The only real similarity is that they're both fighting games.

I'm not a big fan of the game and never played it all that much, so I'm not sure how I'd compare it to MK... not that I love MK either; those games are entertaining, but as I said if I want an actual great fighting game, I got to Capcom or SNK.

There were indeed a million clones of Mortal Kombat released after that game was such a massive success, but OMF wasn't one of them.

As for the graphics, they were fine for the time on the PC, good solid VGA stuff. Remember that OMF was a shareware game, and shareware games usually had more outdated graphics than retail titles because of their much lower budgets -- 1994 retail PC fighting games looked better than that visually. They weren't better games, though.

Really, you cannot directly compare retail and shareware games, they really were different markets. For instance the first ever PC shareware game with soundblaster music was released in 1990, while retail games had them years earlier. Similarly EGA was common in shareware games until '93 or '94, while retail games had abandoned it years earlier for the superior VGA. Lots of those games were great games anyway, but the graphics and sound were not as sophisticated because of the low budgets and tiny teams.

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.

... Um no, MK was not a low budget game for its time... it did have a small team, but so did all games back then.

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.

Um, yes, FFVII most definitely did redefine the RPG...

As I said last time, the JRPG spun off of early '80s American PC RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry. The thing is, while PC RPGs changed, for instance with Pool of Radiance in the mid '80s and then Fallout and Baldur's Gate in the late '90s, Japanese RPGs took a completely different direction. The combat of most JRPGs has much more in common with Wizardry 1 than any '90s PC RPG. I consider that a bad thing, I like the changes Pool of Radiance and Baldur's Gate made to the genre... but that just never happened in Japan. Wizardry forever it is, there. :(

(I mean, the Wizardry games are amazing, but I prefer Baldur's Gate's style of RPG myself... BG is so deep, complicated, and fascinating, the much simpler and yet insanely difficult style of Wizardry is not as much fun in my opinion.)

Instead, though, of course, JRPGs went in the direction of adding plot and linearity. Final Fantasy IV (II US) and VII are the two most important points in this -- IV in adding set characters instead of ones the player creates themselves, and having a story as you go along, and VII in making everything cinematic.

Did other RPGs exist before then with cutscenes? Yes, of course. But they did not have FFIV and VII's influence and importance.

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,

In your opinion perhaps, though certainly not in reality.

but at the highest end of the spectrum in terms of technology and graphics, especially now.

This has been true since the early '90s, yes. PCs change, while consoles don't. If we go back to the '80s we'd have to expand it from "PC only" to "all computers" to maintain that computer lead over consoles, but if we do so it'd come right back -- the Amiga was first released in 1985 and blew away any console from that time by a vast margin, for example.

There are PC games that cant even run on PS3 because they require more horsepower.

Yes, because technology changes and improves, and PCs do along with it, while consoles stay static until the next machine comes out. It makes programming for consoles much, much easier, but certainly limits what they can do compared to computers.

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?

True.

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.

KI was an arcade game though... arcade games had better graphics than any home console or computer game back then. Only when the arcade market collapsed in the late '90s did that stop being true... but from the '70s until the late '90s, arcade games were not possible at home for years afterwards, the tech in them was so much higher-end and more expensive.

Also, fighting games are not a strength of the PC and never were. The number of retail PC fighting games has always been extremely small. Choosing a genre that you know PCs are bad at and then using that as an example of how they're worse is clever, but won't work because I know that it's not a fair comparison.

I mean, if I said "look for a flight sim on consoles in 1994 with graphics and gameplay as good as that U.S. Navy Fighters video I linked several posts ago", I know you wouldn't be able to find anything, because flight sims on consoles looked worse than that and were simple action games in comparison, detail-wise. You don't care about that and repeatedly bash sim games, but that just helps prove how your entire "case" is based on bias and ignorance, and not on any actual facts. Sim games aren't worse than action games just because they're in a different genre, obviously. :shake: That you keep insulting MMOs and sim games as stupidly as you do just proves again and again how you actually have no case.

I mean, dislike them if you want. Not everyone is going to like every kind of game. But acting like they're somehow bad games for being complex and very time-consuming is just incredibly stupid.

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.

Fighting games have always been very weak on the PC, as I said. I think it's the keyboard thing, fighting games are just terrible on keyboard...

I will say though that the PC does have Street Fighter IV now, and it's a pretty good version. :)

As for racing games go though, that's another one where your anti-sim bias and ignorance of PC gaming history show very strongly. Yes, in recent years the racing genre hasn't been strong on the PC. There are some here and there, but most are just console ports. However, there used to be many racing games on the PC. Sim racers particularly, of course, dominate on PC; the console ones are simplistic and arcadey compared to the PC ones. I mean, I do not like sim racing games at all, but... Gran Turismo is the great sim racer, while it doesn't even have damage modeling? Hah!

I mean, I may not like sim racers myself, but looking at them as they are, it's easy to see the vast gulf between console sim racers and PC sim racers. Console sim racing games have done some catching up in these last few years, but they're still far from equal to PC sims. And there are still some current PC racing sims, even if fewer than there used to be.

As for other kinds of racing games, like the kinds I love myself, there are a lot of great ones on the PC... but as I said, they're mostly older. There were lots of fantastic racing games on the PC back in the '90s. That genres like racing games are dying out on the PC despite how great the genre used to be on the platform really is one of the many signs of how the PC has been retreating back into three or four genres, as I said, and has abandoned so many of the genres that were what made PC gaming great in the first place.

Here are some examples of PC racing games I have loved. Some have console ports, but the PC versions are better in every case, and usually are far better.

Unless noted all of these games were released between 1995 and 2001 or so. That was when the genre was at its best on the PC.

Moto Racer (also on PSX)
Moto Racer 2 (also on PSX) (exceptional game...)
The Need for Speed (also on 3DO, PSX, Saturn)
Need for Speed 2 (also on PSX)
Need for Speed: High Stakes (also on PSX)
Wipeout XL (also on PSX, Saturn (JP/EU only))
Extreme-G 2 (also on N64)
MegaRace 2
MegaRace 3 (also on PS2)
Carmageddon
Pod (one of my favorite racing games of all time)
Motorhead (also on PSX)
Death Rally
Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament (also on GB, GG (EU only), Genesis (EU only), GBC)
Screamer
Screamer 2
Whiplash
DethKarz
Wacky Wheels (1994 release)
Powerslide
Drome Racers (also on GC, PS2, Xbox)
Rollcage (also on PSX)
Rollcage Stage II (aka Death Track Racing) (also on PSX)


Puzzle games -- actually, PCs dominate the puzzle game genre today, perhaps even more so than they used to. I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but it's the truth. PopCap games has been wildly successful with things such as Peggle; there are console versions of the games, but the PC versions are the focus, and they are incredibly popular. Online and retail puzzle games have a huge audience, including many women who don't play other kinds of games. No console puzzle games remotely compare in popularity, and PCs win a dominating victory in terms of variety and number of titles as well. The puzzle genre is one of the strongest on the PC today, thanks to how popular casual-focused puzzle games are. This is true for pretty much any kind of puzzle game.

Simulators, FPS's, RTS and strat and of course social games like Wow. That is why you go to PC.

Now true, but as that list of good to great 1994 games proves, it certainly did not used to be -- all of those genres were indeed big back then too (though FPSes were just in their infancy), but there were many other genres as well which were every bit as important.

*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.

Commented on below.

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.

First, that list there is just for games from the past six months by default. Of course most are also on consoles! That's my whole POINT, that PC games aren't often exclusives anymore, and are designed for consoles first now, while they didn't used to be!

Even just in that LAST SIX MONTHS ONLY list though, what do we find... many games that are indeed on both PC and consoles, and some that are exclusives.

If you didn't know, from the first page of that list these games are PC only:
Napoleon: Total War
The Sims 3: World Adventures
Football Manager 2010
Europa Universalis III: Heir to the Throne

Also Dragon Age, while also on consoles, was designed for the PC first and foremost, and is far better on PC than consoles by all reviews.

The rest of the titles are also on consoles, I believe.


If we look at a more useful list there though and look at Gamespot's all-time list though, we see a more accurate picture...

9.6: Diablo (PC first)
9.5: Grand Prix II (PC only), Unreal Tournament (PC first), Command & Conquer: Red Alert (PC first), World of Warcraft (PC only), World in Conflict (PC only), The Orange Box (PC first), Crysis (PC only), Dragon Age: Origins (designed primarily for PC).
9.4 (the ones listed at least): Civilization IV (PC only), Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC only), FreeSpace 2 (PC only), NASCAR Racing 3 (PC only), Half-Life (PC first), Battlezone (1998 PC game) (PC only)

Kind of an odd selection, I guess Gamestop doesn't like adventure games that much or something... oh well. It mostly makes my point, at least. Because, not one game in that list is a port of a console game. Only one game even had a console version that came out on the same day, and that is the newest game in the list, Dragon Age: Origins... and even there the console version is a simplified, somewhat neutered version of the PC original.

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.

... PC games have bad writing? Seirously? ANd I return to me "you CAN'T be serious" point from my last post... PC games... worse writing...



It's the exact other way around! But GR said that already, so I don't need to repeat him.

This last decade, we saw developers in America really wake up to storytelling,

This last decade, we had the good Western game writers all move over from the PC to consoles. That is what you're seeing. Play the games on GR's list of PC games with good stories if you need any proof.

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.

Certainly did. You obviously weren't playing the right games. Which is odd, considering how many had that.

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.

You're describing the plot of your average American console game there, right? Because that's what it sounds like to me... some PC games too, sure, but more console.

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.[quote]

Europe has indeed done a good job of this in the past decade, with the rise of the European adventure game. Of course almost all of those are on PC, aside from Quantic Dream's stuff, but there are a lot of them now, and adventure games as a genre have generally had more focus on story and characters than any other genre. They better, given that story, characters, and puzzles are the entire game; there is no running around shooting people scenes in most of them to distract people away from the lame plot and characters.

America used to do good adventure games too, though, back in the '80s and '90s... it's just this last decade where the genre pretty much entirely died here.

[quote]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.

... Sorry, I can't think of anything serious to say to such an absurd statement that I haven't said already severla times...

No games will be successful if they don't engage the player. That is just as true for PC games as console. And they did that.

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.

Here's what confuses me though, above everything else really: Here you are saying that last decade, Western games on consoles got better. Okay, we all agree on that point. I am saying that at the same time, Western PC games, and American PC games in particular, almost entirely vanished, replaced with multiplatform titles also on consoles. That the reason for that improvement in their console games was because of the move over from the PC. IT explains everything you're describing here pretty much perfectly... and yet you deny it with crazy claims about PC games that have not even the slightest connection to the reality of how computer gaems were in the '80s and '90s, which is the period I'm actually talking about! It's kind of bizarre really... we both agree on the end result, pretty much. Why do you deny the cause?

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.

As I said before, the key people behind Metroid Prime had also made the Turok games on the N64 -- games I would definitely say had amazingly well designed worlds. Of course Metroid Prime went even beyond that, thanks to the greater capabilities of the system they were now on and Nintendo's influence which seems to improve the work of any developer they work with (versus games made by those same people without Nintendo's help), but the core of it was already there in their older works.

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.

Interesting point here, but a lot of that is just because technology now made it possible, not because of anything else. Games by everyone changed, not just American ones.

Do you understand it now?

Not when you're still so deep in denial, no. :)

I...wow. Seriously? Okay, yeah, I think you could make that point for a few high profile games from Epic and even id, but that simply is not the case for most exclusive PC games then or now. It's patently absurd to argue otherwise!

id is the only company anyone could say this about without lying through their teeth.

I'd probably buy it if you'd said Half-Life 2, but BORDERLANDS? Dude.

But Half-Life 2 is a PC game, so it disproves his case. :p

No, it wasn't some fluke that there were PC exclusives during the 90's that had good writing, characters, cutscenes, and stories.

Yes, the much higher average writing quality of PC games definitely is one of the best things they have over console games. That some of those great writers or companies with histories of making games with actual good plots moved over to consoles is one of the elements of the 'move to consoles' that I was referring to when I said that. Western console games have much better writing now than the used to because of that influence. Before the early '00s, they were far, far behind that.

As for Japanese games, it's partially the fact that they have to be translated I'm sure, but they don't often hit that level of quality of writing either, that's for sure! The great PC RPGs and adventure games really stood out for how great their writing and plot design so often were. That list of yours there sure proves that, for anyone who's played some of the games. :)

(I must admit I never really played Realms of the Haunting, I remember seeing screenshots of it and thinking "oh, just another FPS" and then ignoring it because I didn't like those games much... only later did I learn that I was wrong of course, but as I'm not a horror fan either, generally...)

Alone in the Dark predates Resident Evil by four years, it would be pretty shocking if RE didn't advance that formula.

Not liking horror probably is part of why I've never cared that much for survival horror games in general, really. I mean, I have a few -- RE2 for N64, RE0 for GC, AitD1 for PC, several for Dreamcast, etc -- but there's not one game on that list that I've played for more than a few hours, or wanted to play much more of... I don't know, I do enjoy adventure games, but somehow though I kind of think that I should like them or something, they just never hold my interest.

Eternal Darkness would be the obvious exception, except it's not really survival horror. :)

The first part of that is the reason why FPSs on the PC are so great: a creative community that releases free updates. The second part is a bit out there, though. Unreal Tournament was way ahead of console FPSs when it first came out, and games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, and System Shock certainly disprove that PC developers only care about awesome engines.

Absolutely right -- community features are a very important part of PC gaming, and something that makes it stand out and above console gaming in many ways. I mean, console games can be great, but when you're done that's it. On the PC, the great games have editors and fan communities, as well as good online multiplayer of some kind, and they can last for years. Console games have somewhat closed this gap in recent years, but still editing and modding features particularly are very limited or nonexistent in most console games, making multiplatform games with them decidedly better on the PC as a result.

As you say though that doesn't mean that the actual games don't matter. Some people TREAT them that way, like people who never play the single player campaign of a game, but the stuff made by the developers is usually not just throwaway stuff made as spacers until the community makes better stuff... if you do that, how can you be guaranteed that a community develops at all? I mean, as I said above id can get away with that (some would say that Quake III was exactly that, though it was popular and succesful as it was), but just about anyone else... no. Epic perhaps could, but put in great single player modes anyway... you didn't need any mods to make Unreal Tournament a truly exceptional game. (I usually don't like FPSes that much, but UT is a great game...)