Doom 3

[OB1]

Actually, PCs and consoles have been around for about the same amount of time. So it stands to reason that they should have similar curves from the early games to the current ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer

You're really stretching. My car also has a computer in it, but I don't consider that another platform. We're talking about personal computers (that's what PC stands for, believe it or not) and home consoles.

Another flawed attempt to save a failed point, OB1.

First, hunting games didn't sell at all to the hardcore. This is not true for strategy games like the ones you are talking about.

Second, I was not including games like The Sims, SimCity, Roller Coaster Tycoon, or Zoo Tycoon (the casual simulation titles that show up in the four lists from '02 to '04) in the RTS category. As you say, they are casual games, in addition to being sim titles and not strategy games (it's a fine line, but the line can be discovered by looking at each title.).

And third... you say that lots of people buy Microsoft RTSes who don't buy other games. This is equally true for FPSes and flight sims, you know -- look at Halo or Microsoft Flight Simulator! The 'Microsoft' name on the box does seem to draw in more buyers and it probably did help along the Age of Empires/Age of Mythology titles a little bit... but definitely not to the extent where the game could by any definition be called "casual". Age of Empires is quite definitely a deep, complex hardcore strategy title.

Now come on, can't you just admit that RTSes are equal in sales and popularity to FPSes? The lists make it so obvious!

Now you're changing your previous point! First it's "RTSs are close to FPSs in terms of sales" and now they're equal?

Amazing.

I've played it a little and yes, SMB is a massive improvement in the genre. Really redefined the genre, etc. But it didn't create a new subgenre of platformers... it just redefined and innovated the genre as it existed. So yes, it is revolutionary. But no, it did not create a new subgenre.

Right, and I suppose Mario 64 didn't either because Bubsy 3D was released before it, even though the two titles play nothing alike?

With a fundamental change as great as SMB's, a change that is far greater than any two PC games in the same genre that you can mention, to deny that it created a new genre shows incredible bias and ignorance on this subject. I know people who would throw stones at you for making such insanely idiotic comments.

I am quite certain that there have not been dozens of platformers on consoles I don't have that created new subgenres, or even made massive innovations that changed the genre for good... there are a few, sure, but "dozens"? No way. Absolutely not.

I'm not saying that each game created a new sub genre, genius. I'm saying there are dozens of terrific platformers you never played that either created a new sub genre, took the genre to new heights, or were simply innovative.

And you're very dumb if you think that all innovation "changes the genre for good". Games like Deus Ex are really innovative yet we still see the same crappy shooters. It did not change the genre.

Yes, it is. But like with Donkey Kong '94 and the puzzle-platformer, Viewtiful Joe didn't create that subgenre... that's what I was saying.

It was just an example that I thought you would be familiar with.

Oh, how about action/platformers like Contra or Metal Slug? They have some platform jumping in between all the gunfire, after all...

What about them?

You're not thinking. Limited releases of 'niche' titles happen ALL THE TIME. How about Ogre Battle, Ogre Battle 64, Harvest Moon, etc... just about everything Atlus releases...

Those titles are guaranteed sales because like you said they target a niche market. We were talking about weird Japanese games that publishers have taken risks on that failed to do well, and made them forever cautious about releasing similar titles.

The PC version of Rayman 2 was dramatically cheaper than the N64 version, had vastly better graphics (especially considering that I didn't have an expansion pack yet), and I had a Sidewinder gamepad so I thought that that would be fine... and indeed it worked quite well, that game didn't have many problems running on a d-pad. (as for Rogue Squadron, I got that a year before I got my N64.)

No, I don't agree with your assessment here. TC does not have many hardcore PC gamers! It just does not! It has hardcore console gamers, some of which also play PC games, with only a few exceptions! So it is NOT a good place to look for a sample of if PC gamers have gamepads or joysticks. Not at all. Go to some PC gaming forum, or a forum with lots of PC gamers... THAT would be an appropriate place. Not one with a bare handful at best of not-all-hardcore PC gamers...

What you are doing is like going to the PC Gamer (magazine) forums, asking who has consoles, and taking the results to be a good sampling of which consoles console gamers own. It's silly.

Oh yeah, and do you really know who at TC has a joystick for their PC? I don't think anyone's ever asked. After all, your game thread was about gamepads, not joysticks, and I really do think that joysticks are more common on PC than gamepads. I know more people with joysticks for their PC than gamepads. As I said, lots of people have at least a basic joystick. Mech games and flight sims are (or were) fairly popular and you NEED a joystick to play any game in either of those genres. Also, some computers have came with joysticks; we got one included with our p90 when we got it in 1995. So yes, joysticks are common.

If that was true then why didn't Ubi Soft spend the time and effort into making good dual analog support for the PC port of BG&E? It definitely would have sold better with decent controls, right? I wish you were right, but the numbers don't add up.

It could have worked okay. Not perfectly perhaps, but okay. The problem is that they didn't optimize the controls for the PC... the game could work fine with keyboard and mouse. Just redo the entire control scheme and the way the character controls to be more like a FPS... think Heretic 2, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Jedi Knight (third-person mode), etc. Get rid of idiotic things like how you need the mouse in some menus and the keyboard in others. Don't have places where you have to use the mouse as a single-axis control (where up/down on the mouse does nothing) by redesigning the way those parts work. Etc. If the game had been designed specifically for PC, it could have worked fine. There is nothing about the action/adventure genre that inherently makes it impossible to play on a gamepad if the game is from the beginning designed to run on one.

Yeah exactly, you can't play a 3d action/adventure game on the PC unless it controls like a damned FPS. That's my point.

NES and N64, yes. SNES and Dual Shock? As I said in that reply, I would just consider those enhancements of what already existed. They didn't do nearly as much to dramatically change gaming. One analog stick was the big change... two was just an enhancement of what was already there. So two big changes. Compared to one (the addition of the mouse) to PCs. So yes, it's more. Oh joy.

SNES: Shoulder buttons. Put to usethe index fingers which were never used before. That was a huge revolution in gameplay design, though you may think nothing of it. Before that gamepads only used the thumbs! That's it! The shoulder buttons opened up many possibilities. One of Nintendo's greatest contributions to gaming, definitely.

Dual Shock: Two analogue sticks. Imagine Pikmin without two analogue sticks. Wouldn't be possible. You'd have to move the cursor with the face buttons, which would have made play very clunky and a pain in the ass to do. It also made the FPS work exceptionally well on a console. Same thing goes for space shooters (Colony Wars for the PSX... only possible with two sticks), games like Katamari Damashii, and camera control for 3D games that much easier to do. It wasn't as revolutionary as the shoulder button, but it made 3d gaming that much easier to do and opened up new gameplay possibilities because of that.

You repeat yourself over and over but it doesn't make what you are saying any closer to the truth. Also, this is confusing. Why do I keep listing genres and you keep ignoring my lists? It is very strange.


-Strategy, PC -- RTS (Warcraft, C&C), 3d space RTS (Homeworld), TBS grand strategy (HoMM, Civilization, Warlords), turn-based tactical strategy (Jagged Alliance, X-Com), 4X (MOO, Star Control), God Games (Populous, Black & White), etc.

-Strategy, Console -- RTS: Not nearly as good or effective. Playable, but either dramatically simplified or somewhat simplified and resolution issues can be a problem. Exclusives show this -- Ogre Battle 64, WarLocked, etc. TBS: Same as RTS in effectiveness. Only help is that with the slower pace you have more time to work with the system so it works okay -- Advance Wars, etc. 4X, God Games: virtually nonexistant. What consoles do have is their kind of tactical turn-based strategy games -- Shining Force, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc. They work on consoles the same way as Advance Wars and Fire Emblem: by the fact that because they are turn-based, the slower-to-use gamepad interface isn't as big of a problem as it would be if the games were realtime. And by being simpler than comparitive PC games.

-Simulation games -- building/management sims (A-Train, Railroad Tycoon), city-building (SimCity, Caesar, Immortal Cities), business sims (Transport Tycoon, The Corporate Machine), sports management sims (Out Of The Park Baseball, Championship Manager), people management sims (The Sims), etc.

None of these work well on consoles because they are so focused on things that require mice like lots of dialogue boxes and menus... they have been translated to consoles but never with anywhere near the effectiveness of on PC.

-RPGs -- first-person RPGs (strategic combat) (Wizardry series, Might & Magic series, Dragon Wars), first-person RPGs (action-combat) (The Elder Scrolls series, Ultima Underworld) third-person-isometric RPGs (Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Temple of Elemental Evil), hybrid RPGs (first-person view, isometric or top-down combat) (Eye of the Beholder series, Betrayal at Krondor), console-style (isometric with a seperate menu-based battle screen -- but played, effectively, on keyboard) (Anachronox, Septerra Core), action/RPG (Diablo, Dungeon Siege, etc), MMORPG (WoW, Everquest), etc.

Console RPGs -- Consoles have effective versions of the first-person strategic RPGs (though only older ones (which are most of them); newer ones get more complex and go beyond the limitations of gamepads.), first-person action-combat RPGs (though they also have similar titles that are third-person -- Fable, for instance)), and of course console-style. The other types would not (or do not) translate well at all to consoles. Other types only/mostly on consoles -- action-RPG titles like Secret of Mana. Game structure just like a standard console RPG but with mash-the-buttons combat and those couple of cardgame/RPGs, however they are different from normal console RPGs. Obviously the console RPG genre is very strong.

The question, though, is on which platform RPGs work better overall. I would say that the PC is that platform. Why? RPGs are by nature very complex games. The more complex control systems of the PC benefit a game like most kinds of RPGs. They have lots of menus (easier to navigate with a mouse), simple controls which don't benefit as much as other games from dpads or analog sticks when compared to keyboard movement. Obviously RPGs work on consoles as well, but they work on PC better.

-Wargames -- Classic turn-based (Steel Panthers, Panzer General, The Operational Art of War), real-time (Gettysburg, Waterloo), phased/turnbased (tell units what to do and then watch what they do for a while until you get another turn to make more orders) (Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord), etc.

These exist once in a long while on consoles, in the classic turn-based form usually (from companies like Koei). It doesn't work nearly as well, like with strategy and simulation games.

-Adventure games -- text-based (interactive fiction) (Zork, Adventure), graphical with text input and direct character control (Hugo, King's Quest), mouse-click control with graphical input (Sam & Max, Monkey Island), puzzle-adventure (Myst, Timelapse), modern direct-control adventure titles (this is the one subgenre of adventure games that is designed to run best on gamepads) (Grim Fandango, Broken Sword III, etc), etc.

Other than that last category, again these games do not work well at all. They are either reliant on keyboard input -- irreproducable on consoles -- or on mice, for which a analog stick or dpad is a bad replacement for. Consoles don't have many traditional adventure games. They do have the survival horror subcategory, mixed with more action and less traditional adventure game elements than PC survival horror titles (such as the first survival horror/adventure title, Alone in the Dark), and adapted to console controls to a degree that it definitely works better on gamepad, though.

-Card, board, and puzzle games -- boardgame conversions (Monopoly, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Chessmaster), card games (Hoyle, online poker places), puzzle games (Bust-A-Move, Tetris), etc.

Card and board games can be made to work on consoles but are simpler and easier on PC with mice. Puzzle games are the opposite -- they can be played on keyboard but are definitely better with a gamepad.

-First-person games -- shooters (Doom, Quake), 'sneaker' (Theif, Theif 2), FPS/RPG (System Shock), etc.

Work on consoles, of course, especially the plain shooters (System Shock is a quite complex game and would be tough to get working on consoles I think). But control is more precice and accurate on PC and works better for the genre (not mentioning complexity, an arguement you wouldn't listen to).

-First/Third-person games -- Action (Jedi Knight, Heretic 2, Armed and Dangerous), beat 'em up (Oni), ... uh i don't know, third-person action/adventure? (Giants: Citizen Kabuto for instance), etc.

These games are often released for consoles as well, and they probably work okay there too. They just work equally well on PC as long as the developer has tried at all (looking at you, BG&E!).

Ok first of all, this isn't about the different kinds of genres on the two different platforms. Again you have failed to understand what I said. I'm talking about how well each platforms' games work on each other's systems.

Strategy: Starcraft worked perfectly fine on the N64. Sorry, but you're wrong about this.


RPGs: Morrowind and KOTOR prove yet another point of yours wrong. Both work exceptionally well on a console, and both are PC RPGs.


Wargames: C&C worked great on even the PSX's non-analog controller.


Adventure games: You nuts? Monkey Island 4 worked wonderfully on the PS2!

Card, board, and puzzle games: Um.... ... you do realize that--never mind. It's probably best to not let you know... :screwy:

First-person games: All done, really well, on consoles. I don't exactly know what you're trying to say here...

First/Third-person games: PC third-person action games control like FPSs. 'Nuff said.


*sigh* I think you lost track of what you were trying to do here... that or you had no idea what I said. Or both.

Let's look at those genres then.

-Platformers -- on PC these usually either optimize game mechanics for keyboard (like Commander Keen) or recommend gamepad use. Both approaches work, but the genre has faded with the death of the shareware market and the dominance of 3d platformers. Probably not enough people buy big 3d platformers for PC for publishers to feel it's worth it. A few still are, however, and they recommend gamepads. This genre is better on consoles, though it can be done on PC in some circumstances.

Dude... again... I'm talking about playing them with a mouse and keyboard!

-Racing games -- Arcadish racing games are definitely better with a gamepad. Simulation racing games, however, are best on PC with a racing wheel peripheral. Only the simplest are decent on keyboard.

Yes! That's exactly right!

I swear, if your mother isn't an alcoholic then I don't know what the deal is!

-Music genre -- it'd work fine on PC if they made a footpad controller for PC. Otherwise it'd be just like playing the genre on a gamepad -- stupid. So if it's gamepad vs. keyboard I'd call them equal here. :)

Wrong, because dance games come with dance pads on consoles, which does not make them add-on peripherals.

-"Action games that do NOT control just like a FPS (i.e. Mark of Kri, DMC)" -- yeah, those control better on gamepads, as I said. This isn't a seperate genre, though, just another part of the same genre that brings us the FPS and the third-person action games which DO control like FPSes. Or side-scrolling titles like Metal Slug. So overall, the genre is one that works well on both control systems depending on which kind of action game the game is.

Mark of Kri would literally be impossible to do with a kb&m. Same goes for DMC.

-"Adventure games that do NOT control just like a FPS (i.e. ICO, Zelda)" -- you mean action-adventures (or probably puzzle-adventure for ICO), of course. 'Adventure' is a different genre. :) Or action-adventure-RPG, in many cases. But yes, that subgenre does work better on consoles. Of course, there are ways to make third-person action-adventure titles work great on PC (more FPS-like controls), just like there are ways to make them work on consoles, so I'd say that in the action-adventure field it can work both ways. Perhaps it does work a little better on gamepads, but the genre is not totally hopeless on keyboard -- see games like Redguard, Quest for Glory, King's Quest VIII, and probably Tomb Raider... so it's not an utterly dominating victory for the consoles.

There is no genre simply called the "Adventure genre". There are different types of adventure games. Zelda is an action-adventure, ICO is a puzzle-adventure, and Grim Fandango is a graphic-adventure.

"-Any type of game that reguires three-dimensional movement and separate behind-the-character camera control (that includes some of the above examples, as well as a game like Pikmin which requires analog movement for the characters as well as for the camera/selector thingy, or a game like Zone of the Enders)
-Any type of game that requires the use of two analog sticks (like Katamari Damashii, for one)

Those last four examples cover dozens of different genres alone, just so you know. That's a pretty big fucking list considering how many games are included there. And I'm sure I've forgotten some stuff."

Those last two bullet-list items are the same thing -- "Games which use two different analog-stick controls at the same time." That would include games which can be made to work just fine, like FPSes, in addition to games where having analog control on both axes is truly really important... though there is never a case where a game MUST always have analog controls. Digital can always sub in even if it isn't as good... how much that matters depends wholely on the game. For some it matters a lot and for others it doesn't. In many games the added precision on one of the axes, the one decided to be more important for analog controls, makes up for the reduced precision of digital control on the other. That's not always true, of course, and with some kinds of control setups keyboard will never work as well, which is why we have gamepads... but as I've been saying all along there are just as many ways in how controls are used and applied into games in which keyboards are a better choice than gamepads as there are ways that gamepads work better than keyboards!

... okay, so these last two replies combined (it's really one reply) is maybe too long. But once I'd started on it and gotten partway I wasn't going to leave it unfinished... and I was trying to be reasonably complete in the list.

You've obviously never played KD or ZOE if you think they could be played on a kb&m.



And on that note, I am finished with this thread! It is not worth all of the time that I put into these replies, especially when I cannot teach you anything. So just continue to believe all of the falsities that you cling to so hard. You are only hurting youself by not wanting to know the actual truth. You can reply to this, but know that I will not look at your reply.

Happy valentine's day, btw. Expect to share all future valentine's days the same exact way that you do now. Unless, of course, you learn to stop being such a douche bag. Just a suggestion.