xbox, playstation hate with a passion thread.

[Wasted_talent]

don't wanna alienate myself here, as these consoles are some popular.
okay, so some good luck came my way and I bought an xbox 360 with all the frills, well kinect.
went to ebay, started buying up loads of games, first person shooters, racing games, anything that had lots of bids on.
They all suck!
40, 50 squid? they devalue in a month, and ebay is the way.
Xbox 1? come on, Playstation whatever.
Okay so they're not all kak, battlefield, COD, some racing games. But there much of a muchness.
Cut to the chase. I bought a really old Ipod touch, the games are free if needbe, or 59 pence. The best controller is the tilt screen.
Just give Galaxy on fire a try. I had other great race games but totaled my ipod with a cydia update.
Ipad 1 now, k it's heavy. But your can even take it too the loo

 

[Masterofllamas]

maybe. games aren't your thing.

I found myself hating consoles too after a while of playing them in my highschool life. but after i was destroying people im mlg tournaments. i hated normal play. and i didnt wanna commit my whole life to gaming. (Actually, this is a lie, my parents just wouldnt let me)

 

[Wasted_talent]

Ta for the reply, I know this forum isn't really one of the big hitters on bluelight.
To be honest, I think it's down to the control, which seems to be pretty much on par with the playstation.
It's become part of peoples lifestyle, and apparently even hardcore terrorist factions have been using them as a way to communicate, so now these comz are monitored also. I turned off the dialogue pretty quick as it was just annoying.
Don't get me wrong, the graphics are amazing and call of duty zombies are my first port of call just to blow off some steam.
But zombies was on the ipod touch, and just felt sooo much better, the flame thrower especially
I be old school though, the spectrum 48k... 48k! rambo, jet set willy would keep me playing for ages. Doom on the pc, actually made me climb a wall onto the first floor, break into my flatmates bedroom via the window in the dark while high on pot.
These new games though; I'm not so sure. After say a month of not playing the xbox, it'll say update, update; and there's no way around it (another bugbear)
I've now completed galaxy on fire, it's cost me 5 pounds; but it's like an old time game called elite; where your can travel around the universe; but on steroids!
It's the controller, not really the games themselves.
I'd love to be good at the online version of battlefield though, fly fighter jet's, drive tanks so on and so forth.
The campaign, great. But on the xbox, with a disc that likes to whizz and make alotta chatter for many monies. Thanks but no thanks.
Minecraft perhaps?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaHS-y_mapQ

 

[PsychedelicSicknes]

buy games in bulk off ebay or CL. just type 360 bulk. i buy 5-10 games at a time and they are WAAAAY cheaper that way. fuck a new $60 game. unless i need the dlc with it.

 

[Wasted_talent]

Thanks PsychedelicSicknes.
Yeah the vast majority of games I've bought have been from ebay 6 months or more after they've first been released.
They really don't hold they're value, especially after the game has been superseded into another guise of what's essentially the same game.
Just can't be bothered with the xbox anymore. I really enjoyed Galaxy on Fire 2 on a tilt screen though, as well as lots of racing games. There's something about a gyroscope as a controller that makes all the difference to me at least.

 

[dopemegently]

The trick is to wait till the games have been out a while, then snap them up from B&M stores (eBay sellers are usually greedy as fuck).
That's why I'm not getting the ps4 till it's been out for a while; at release, you're paying the highest prices of the consoles lifespan and for a small selection of games that'll rapidly become obsolete graphics-wise. Also, for all you know the console could flop big time - it's happened many times. Generally, the only games that hold their value are the highly popular ones, or the limited editions.

 

[ComfortablyNumb95]

trust me the best console is and will always be a good pc

 

[dopemegently]

Yeah I hear you on that, I played a mates pc gaming rig and the graphics were miles better than the current consoles. Only reason I never got into PC gaming is the expense; to play the latest games you need to keep upgrading your set up. So, consoles are pretty limited in comparison, but I guess it's a case of convenience v quality.

 

[ComfortablyNumb95]

actually if yu think about that, the initial expense is indeed greater for a pc but while with the console you have to buy your games unless you want to somehow modify your console (i have no idea how is it done and also you lose your warrant if you do that), with a pc you can download for free pretty much every videogame you want + lots of online games (MMORPG, FPS etc) that aren't available on console.
and with a recent pc with atleast 4/5 gb of RAM you can easily run pretty much every game without upgrading it and stuff..
oh, and also a pc can do tons of stuff a console can't do...
so yeah, you spend more but it's totally worth it and in the long run you may even spend more for a console if you buy all your games

 

[teological]

Yeah I hear you on that, I played a mates pc gaming rig and the graphics were miles better than the current consoles. Only reason I never got into PC gaming is the expense; to play the latest games you need to keep upgrading your set up. So, consoles are pretty limited in comparison, but I guess it's a case of convenience v quality.

You don't really need to keep on upgrading your setup if you know what you are doing in the first place. For example, if you go out and build a strong PC with these 4 components in mind, you can not go wrong.

1) Ensure your power-supply is high-end and MORE than enough for your GPU. Should be able to handle two cards.
2) Ensure your motherboard has ALL RAM slots available and supports OVERCLOCKING of CPU.
3) Make sure your CPU is unlocked and can therefore be overclocked, also buy a cheap aftermarket fan while you are at it.
4) Buy a good MID-range GPU if you are playing at 1080p High to Ultra.

You now have a set-up that will last you about 10 years, with the only part that will need changing is the GPU.

The power supply will be able to handle new GPUs. You can overclock your CPU and keep it cooled so it does not block the power of your new GPU and you can add extra RAM if needed to your motherboard when needed. Add this fact with STEAM sales, and you will be saving money in the long run, not to mention always playing with high to ultra graphics and superior controls/community.

 

[dopemegently]

Yeah? I'm not much of a techie tbh so consoles have always been my first choice ever since getting my very first one: an old Sega Master System-just plug in and play, pretty much.

I hear all the pros of PC gaming, and it's something I'd really like to get into, but right now a high initial investment is just out for me; it's purely a cost thing. How much would a capable rig cost btw?

I did look into getting a purpose built "Alien" computer a while back, but I've heard these aren't so good.

 

[MagickalKat777]

Yeah I hear you on that, I played a mates pc gaming rig and the graphics were miles better than the current consoles. Only reason I never got into PC gaming is the expense; to play the latest games you need to keep upgrading your set up. So, consoles are pretty limited in comparison, but I guess it's a case of convenience v quality.

You sure about that? My laptop that cost me 2500 back in 2009 still plays games from today at an acceptable frame rate and if I choose, I have an upgrade path available to me (albeit at a significant expense).

Its an Alienware M17x R1 with 2 260M GTX cards in SLi, a 2GHz first-generation quadcore (Q9000) overclocked to 2.43GHz (board limitation, CPU will go higher but FSB won't), and 4GB of DDR3-1066.

You just have to buy the right hardware.

I forgot how beastly that machine was until I pulled it out of storage yesterday and set it up as a dedicated emulation gaming machine. It pumps 1080p upscaled PS2 games at a smooth 60FPS on a single video card even with AA on 8x.

My desktop has a Radeon 5830 I bought back in 2010 - FFXIV: ARR works in 1080p on it.

Seriously, the only time you have to constantly upgrade a machine is if you're trying to squeeze out image quality that you aren't likely to notice anyway or if you upgrade your resolution (since that is when graphics take the largest hit, one resolution can be the difference between playable and slow as molasses). nVidia, AMD, and Intel like to convince us that we need more than we do but the truth is, any high end machine is going to match whatever is at the midrange 3-5 years down the line at the rate technology is currently progressing. If you jump on with a 4K system with dual AMD R9 290x's, you won't need to upgrade for a LONG time.

 

[dopemegently]

Yeah, I was always under the impression that parts of the machine would become obsolete with time, making the newer games unplayable - but by the sound of it, you just need to invest in a really capable machine. I actually came close to buying one of those Alienware laptops-I like the idea of a purpose-built gaming machine. I've looked up the prices, and they're actually not too unreasonable. When I do get some £s together, it's either gonna be the PS4 or an Alienware computer. What's the build and design quality like on the alien btw?

 

[MagickalKat777]

Yeah, I was always under the impression that parts of the machine would become obsolete with time, making the newer games unplayable - but by the sound of it, you just need to invest in a really capable machine. I actually came close to buying one of those Alienware laptops-I like the idea of a purpose-built gaming machine. I've looked up the prices, and they're actually not too unreasonable. When I do get some £s together, it's either gonna be the PS4 or an Alienware computer. What's the build and design quality like on the alien btw?

My M17x has been through hell... I've knocked it off the desk, spilled things on it (not on the keyboard... that I know of), left it sitting where the intake was covered on the bottom and it overheated and shut down... all kinds of things. I had to replace one GPU fan and I broke the optical drive (which I don't use anyway). Other than that, its still kicking. With that said, Alienware laptops are made by Dell now. I got mine right when Dell bought them and it has a Dell BIOS. They all have quirks but at the same time so does everything else. I think gamers bitch too much personally although I will tell you that the M17x R1 that I have had some serious issues and it took over a year before Dellienware fixed them... One was an issue where the system would just throttle out of nowhere... you would have 60FPS and be throttled to 15-20FPS for a good 30 seconds to a minute before it would go back to full speed. That was fixed in a BIOS update almost 2 years after it was released. The second problem was that when the system was under a heavy load, the sound would stutter. I can't remember how long it took them to fix that. 6 months? A year? And the other big issue which was actually nVidia's fault, not Dell's, is that the nVidia "Verde" notebook reference drivers would cause the system to blue screen. What was eventually found out by members of the community is that Dell limited the bus in the M17x to PCIe 8x in both single and dual card configurations however the 260M GTX is a PCIe 16x card. The drivers would try to push the envelope past 8x and it would bluescreen if they couldn't. The fix was to turn off Gen2 support. It has a cost of around 5% or so in games, not really noticeable. Dell isn't always a bad thing either... Especially if you are in your warranty. Alienware tech actually sent me a free drive carriage for the 2nd hard drive bay and when I had track pad issues, instead of just making me ship it to them or take it in or have someone come out, they walked me through how to take apart the laptop and re-seat the ribbon cable. That fixed my track pad and saved me a trip and was included in my warranty.

The Alienware 17 has great feedback. The Alienware 18 has issues. Once again its a case of a new model like it was with mine. The Alienware 17 is no slouch however its a single GPU solution. If you are okay with a single graphics card, the ASUS Republic of Gamers G750JH is a much better choice - http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/ASUS_ROG_G750JH/

For dual GPUs though, the Alienware 18 is the current king (and likely will remain the king for the foreseeable future because its a tank, its bigger than my M17x which I already thought was huge) or you can get an M17x R3 refurb from Dell Outlet.

Oh and NOTHING beats the wow factor of an Alienware. Especially when you set up an animated keyboard. Those lights are programmable... Mine are only blue because I had to reinstall the Command Center app and it reset them. I had a fade (there's 4 sections on mine) from blue to purple to pink to green and my Alienware logo, alien head on top, speakers, power button, and track pad were all yellow. I never messed with the animated keyboard functionality but saw some demos and it was pretty cool. That was back then... Now I would really like to see what they can do :D

Not my video but this is the exact laptop I have currently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5bcu3TqzVI

 

[dopemegently]

Theŷ do look very impressive (I saw some pics of your laptop with the blue lights - tres cool), and I defiantly need something tough and durable. It's not something I'm able to afford for a good while, but when I do get into pc gaming, it's the alien I'll go for. How is it for emulators btw?

I did hear a lot of bitching about the alien line that put me off at first, but these were hardcore technophiles willing to pour thousands and thousands into gaming rigs; I just need something really good out the box.

 

[MagickalKat777]

Theŷ do look very impressive (I saw some pics of your laptop with the blue lights - tres cool), and I defiantly need something tough and durable. It's not something I'm able to afford for a good while, but when I do get into pc gaming, it's the alien I'll go for. How is it for emulators btw?

That's what I originally set it up for... Emulation. I've got Suikoden III, one of the most demanding games in PCSX2, running with 4x native upscaling in DirectX 10. It runs at a steady 60 FPS unless you enter battles. I don't even think the most modern machine around could keep up with the Emotion Engine demands of Suikoden III, especially considering that the EE only uses one core. There's a multicore hack but it doesn't seem to cross over two cores looking at system resource usage. The bottleneck is the EE with that game since turning down the graphics settings doesn't increase speed at all. With that said, the slow down is a small price to pay for full upscaling of a game that was originally 512x448 on the PS2 to 1920x1080 on a PC. It only affects battles and extremely large cities.

Outside of that, it handles everything I throw at it. I haven't tried PPSSPP yet but considering that performs well on the Dell laptop whose built-in GPU is somewhere around 10 times slower, I'm not concerned.

I did hear a lot of bitching about the alien line that put me off at first, but these were hardcore technophiles willing to pour thousands and thousands into gaming rigs; I just need something really good out the box.

Well no laptop is perfect. Trust me, I've had a few. The MacBook Pro was an overheating nightmare (first unibody release), my Toshiba... that thing went to the service center for overheating not once, not twice, but three times before I said fuck it and bought the Alienware. I never have sent the Alienware in for servicing. For one, anything that needed to be done, I just grabbed the service manual and did it myself. The entire laptop is user serviceable. Alienware tech support will even walk you through how to disassemble the machine to do something like clean the fans. Its all covered by your warranty unlike other companies where so much as removing the back from your machine can void your warranty which means any problems have to be addressed either by shipping the laptop to them or going to a service center they pick out. Not to mention that Dell has home support after you do a remote diagnostic.

Everything in my M17x can be upgraded. Dell actually used the same chassis for a whole second generation of the M17x (the R2) which means that if I really wanted to, I could gut the whole thing and replace it with all new parts. It would be more expensive than just buying a new machine unless I found one on eBay that was for parts and it happened to be a busted video card or something but still, the option is there.

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the Alienware and even with all the abuse its been through, its still running. The thing you have to keep in mind is that these laptops tend to use desktop class parts squeezed into a laptop chassis. This creates an unnatural environment and issues are bound to be present if you push the system. Here's the thing with these machines - use them as they came out of the box unless you are prepared to spend hours or even days tweaking things. They work great out of the box but when you start adding in foreign elements, problems can happen. For example, a lot of people, myself included, threw a fit about the stock Vista install and wiped the machine and did a clean install just to find out that things didn't work. Well it came with a driver install DVD that you're supposed to use but everyone knew better. Come to find out, there's a specific order the different driver components have to be installed in or things don't work or the system goes unstable. The community came together and figured it out and now there is a list of drivers and the order to install them for both Vista and Windows 7 and the problem has been solved.

The thing is that the problem wouldn't have existed in the first place if we had all left well enough alone and used the machine as it came. Out of the box, my M17x had 0 issues. It was when I upgraded to Windows 7 and changed drivers that things went south. Alienware tries to cater to two different crowds at the same time - the performance enthusiast/overclocker and the gamer. The problem is that these machines are pushed to the limits out of the box but they still come with bells and whistles to push them even further. People expect that they'll be able to squeeze more performance out of them because the tools are there or that they'll be able to change the operating system to the latest and greatest (Windows 8 and 8.1 STILL don't function properly on the M17x R1 even though older laptops and desktops are able to run them both just fine) and then complain when they realize that the system has limitations. Everyone suddenly forgets that these machines are still laptops at the end of the day and they're tied to the electric and heat constraints that laptops have. The power really is the biggest issue. You've got 300+ watts worth of muscle running through an external power supply that is able to provide slightly less than that at max capacity.

It should go without saying but if you want the most tweakability, the most flexibility, and the most upgradability then you should build a desktop. But if you're looking for a great out of the box laptop experience with the ability to make upgrades later on, you can't beat an Alienware.

 

[One Thousand Words]

PC gaming is for geeks with no real life friends.

You can't beat four controllers around a lounge while a fifth person is skinning up spliffs.

 

[MagickalKat777]

PC gaming is for geeks with no real life friends.

You can't beat four controllers around a lounge while a fifth person is skinning up spliffs.

Ever heard of a LAN party? And you're not limited to just four. You can have 20 people at a LAN party if you want.

I think you've forgotten that gaming started on the PC... Consoles are neutered expensive PCs with expensive custom hardware and expensive custom software to match. Nothing more, nothing less. Consoles are specialized for gaming and thus suck at anything else while PCs are all-purpose machines that can be pushed in any direction that you want. Graphically, nothing current or future is ever likely to surpass the PC because of the flexibility.

Both the Xbox One and the PS4 are passed in the graphics department by a cheap ATi Radeon 7850 card. They go for around 150 bucks. So while the graphics on the new consoles are an improvement over the last generation, they still have nothing on PC graphics.

The processor performance in the PS4 and One sounds impressive on paper but the numbers actually pan out to be far less impressive. A 3rd generation Core i5 quad core handily whips both consoles in multicore performance.

RAM wise, the PS4 uses GDDR5 which the PC can't currently match. That's one sticking point but RAM speed is hardly the bottleneck these days, especially since modern graphics cards use GDDR5 and that's where the heavy lifting tends to go on - the graphics card.

The only thing the console has on the PC is portability and exclusive games. Eventually all consoles end up being emulated by the PC anyway with more bells and whistles than the initial console ever would have been dreamed of being capable of. Yeah it takes years for consoles to be cracked for emulation (generally 8-10 years seems to be the average) but the point is that if developers would port their games from the start, emulation wouldn't be necessary. It goes back to the very point of this thread - these games are lucrative to game developers because the console gamer has been conditioned to pay 50, 60, 70 or even 80 bucks for a game they are going to play for 20 hours and then never play again. PC gamers aren't as likely to pay that much for a game which is why the MMO model has been so successful in PC gaming - gamers are willing to pay a subscription as long as the game is quality, the content is continually updated, etc.

 

[One Thousand Words]

What does LAN stand for? Lamo's and Nerds?

 

[What 23]

I had gone to PC from Quake 1, learning how to build/upgrade to a decent rig (big deal to my parents but building a computer is easy), just so I could play GLQuake. Running into Quake was an accident. I somehow installed a demo on my parents computer, without realizing it.

I don't know... I think that computer lasted until college, and with little upgrading- I forget, still played games really well. Well enough.

Then my friends began playing GTA 3, so I got a PS2. Then I saw them playing Halo. I wasn't entirely impressed having seen better graphics on PC, or not seeing it as any big innovation, but then I fell in love. It was good fun playing with friends, stoned. Then Live came out and that was cool.

I guess for me I like just being able to play, and on a standard. PC is much more of an investment, and customizable. Each has their draw. And at this point I don't really care about graphics, as much. It could be age. It could simply be that the graphics get the job done well enough.

I have been back and fourth a few times, and have often enjoyed both around the same time.

I'm definitely more accurate with a mouse though, and do get annoyed with the innaccuracy of controllers. Actually not so annoyed. I misplaced that. When I started to play on a monitor instead of a television that sluggish controller feeling went away for a lot of part. It only began when I changed to an HD TV, and years later I found out HD sets have major input lag. Old CRTs have none. Now I use one specifically designed for gaming. But even those have lag. So in ways I liked videogames better back in the day. StarCraft. Quake. Non HD XBOX. Instantaneous transfer. But... we got "more advanced".

Ever heard of a LAN party? And you're not limited to just four. You can have 20 people at a LAN party if you want.

All very cool, but a lot of coordination, investment, and work. That needs 20 (or x number of) rigs, wires everywhere, power consumption, space. And then clean-up. A box/console needs one. Just less planning. More spontaneous and casual. It fits into the living room.

Though, I guess one could set a PC up in the living room, and play casually on one monitor with multiple controllers, or one passed around.
I use the same monitor for my PC and XBOX. Its just not done like that seemingly. Most PC games are only set up for multiplayer online or LAN, or at least were. Consoles offer more hang out social options, being aimed at the living room environment.