[PC Game] Rage

Status
Not open for further replies.
The problem seems to be the lack of ability to graphically tweak the game outside of file tweaks. I would rather play a functional game with semi-solid graphics then a resource stuttering hog with dynamic shadows and realistic particles. From what I heard, you can't even utilize V-Sync. If people could tweak down the graphics to an "acceptable" level to give them a consistent experience without items vanishing, I don't think we would have many complaints. The fact the game requires certain tweaks, drivers, and other things, and can only be run at the full graphic setting with only the ability to alter resolution and anti-aliasing, is going to paint a bad picture, regardless of how good the game itself may be.
 
D

Disconnected

Silly PC users ;D
I keed!
Oh to have those days back before patches. When you know quality preceeded assigned release dates and quarterly earnings... ahhh I live to dream.

Consolitis.

Lots of this this year.
Jay, In your view how is poor quality PC games is the result of 'consolitis' as you call it?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Jay, In your view how is poor quality PC games is the result of 'consolitis' as you call it?
Can I answer for him?

It's because game design is now habitually "dumbed down" for the benefit of lesser gaming platforms that many developers think that kinda crap flies on PC as well. It's why so many FPSes these days are glorified hallway shooters - consoles couldn't handle an actual, old school open level FPS done at the detail level demanded by today's videophiles. And rather than develop two separate products, often enough it's just cheaper and more profitable to turn bend the PC's superior power to simply emulating the lesser hardware of the console, so the same product can be sold on it.
 
It's because game design is now habitually "dumbed down" for the benefit of lesser gaming platforms that many developers think that kinda crap flies on PC as well. It's why so many FPSes these days are glorified hallway shooters - consoles couldn't handle an actual, old school open level FPS done at the detail level demanded by today's videophiles. And rather than develop two separate products, often enough it's just cheaper and more profitable to turn bend the PC's superior power to simply emulating the lesser hardware of the console, so the same product can be sold on it.
This also goes to other areas of the game, like the interface is often designed for usage with a controller and not a mouse, making it awkward when played on a PC.

BioWare was kind enough to alter the interface for the PC version of Mass Effect 1 to better work on PCs with a mouse, but if they decided to skip out on that like a few companies are doing these days, the interface would have been horrid once ported over.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
This also goes to other areas of the game, like the interface is often designed for usage with a controller and not a mouse, making it awkward when played on a PC.

BioWare was kind enough to alter the interface for the PC version of Mass Effect 1 to better work on PCs with a mouse, but if they decided to skip out on that like a few companies are doing these days, the interface would have been horrid once ported over.
Yeah, that kinda stuff drives me nuts. It was very obvious in the Overlord series of games, for example... every time you had to "sweep your minions" over something, it was clear the game's control dynamic was created with thumbstick controllers in mind.
 
D

Disconnected

Yes but does game design actually affect performance? Not the pathing and event triggers of a level but the graphical handling which is the major complaint.
My understanding in this case would be that they are designing this tech beyond the console's ability, utilizing PC power. If it were designed for consoles, would the look and performance not be easily matched for any PC?

p.s. I agree that so many are hallway shooters leading cutscene to cutscene.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Yes but does game design actually affect performance? Not the pathing and event triggers of a level but the graphical handling which is the major complaint.
My understanding in this case would be that they are designing this tech beyond the console's ability, utilizing PC power. If it were designed for consoles, would the look and performance not be easily matched for any PC?

p.s. I agree that so many are hallway shooters leading cutscene to cutscene.
The problem is, if you use the same textures on PC that you did on Console, it very often looks like garbage. However, most developers *start* with the console development, as they need it to be leaner and more custom-tailored to the console to try to avoid performance issues. Then, rather than recode the source for efficiency on PC, they just put a wrapper around it - basically turning your PC into a one-game-only console emulator, then they slap on the higher resolution textures. I remember the first time I found them doing this was on the PC version of Final Fantasy 7. Or they may not go that far, rather just recompile the same code with a different compiler, without worrying about fine tuning all that much.... which usually also exacerbates the issues brought on by larger textures than the game was originally written for. Then, to add insult to the mix, they keep the console "options" interface, not letting PC players tweak things like the level of anti aliasing, anisotropic filtering, post-processing effects, etc that they want. Different players think different things look good (I for one like very low AA, very high aniso, almost no post processing, and triple-buffered vsync). Gets very frustrating when there isn't an "advanced" or "custom" option in the graphics settings.. just a slider that goes LOW-NORMAL-HIGH, if even that.
 
Yes but does game design actually affect performance? Not the pathing and event triggers of a level but the graphical handling which is the major complaint.
My understanding in this case would be that they are designing this tech beyond the console's ability, utilizing PC power. If it were designed for consoles, would the look and performance not be easily matched for any PC?

p.s. I agree that so many are hallway shooters leading cutscene to cutscene.
It can. While the 360 has an interface similar to DirectX making it rather easy to port games back and forth, it has the advantage of having a very stable hardware platform and thus stable drivers. The PC is a moving target.
 
What is Consolitis?

It is an affliction in which a PC game exhibit the characteristic of a game made for console gaming. Such as :
  • clumsy and frustrating user interfaces
  • super-large fonts
  • extremely poor visual quality, low texture resolutions, low polygon counts by current generation standards that match console limits and not PC limits.
  • poor control not optimized for the keyboard/mouse control scheme (in some cases, controls that cannot even be remapped or specific keys cannot be used)
  • horrible handling of saving games
  • lack of advanced options (change resolutions, audio settings, graphic quality, etc.)
  • simplified game mechanics
  • terrible video performance not taking advantage of the latest PC technologies
  • no support for mods, and no editors for customization... etc.
This is by no means the complete list but most of the common issues that come to mind...

It is largely the result of a lazy or hurried port from a console game to the PC and is a sad trend that seems to be picking up steam rather than fading away. Developers/publishers just want to get a game out quickly, within budget, to start reaping additional revenues with promises of patches and DLC that cost extra money to the scammed customer base.

Publishers especially love games made for multiple formats; PS3, Xbox360, Wii and the PC. This is favored for the multiple revenue streams, boosting their investor confidence. While all the console are "generally" suited for their respective units it is the PC users that get the ugly end of the stick in most cases.

IMO? Stop treating PC gamers as a minority and an afterthought and respect our joy for gaming and we’ll reward you with loyalty as long as you give us great games to play. If not, I'll reward you otherwise and you won't make a penny off of me.

Hope this answers your question

If you support my views, click Like on this post and don't buy shitty console ports.
 
Warning late stage signs of consolitis may include displaying console button icons when explaining actions to take. When this happens your game is already past the point of no return, and we offer our condolences.
 
Or a sudden command to press RT when you're in a long ass, non skippable cutscene and if you fail to press the button in a set amount of time or you press the wrong key on your keyboard, you will automatically die and be forced to watch the same motherfucking cutscene for 5 minutes and repeat the fucken progress.
 
Well, lets see. You have a brand new state of the art graphics engine that has never seen the light of day before. You're running AMD, in xfire.

And it has bugs.

And you're surprised?
I don't mean just on me (I turned off crosdsfire and still no deal on my part by the way). They got it silky smooth on consoles and again, it looks great, until you turn left or right. That texture pop-in is pure OG Xbox shitty.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
"You can choose to design a game around the specs of a high-end PC and make console versions that fail to hit the design point, or design around the specs of the consoles and have a high-end PC provide incremental quality improvements," Carmack replied. "We chose the latter."

John Carmack - slave to consolitis.

I remember fondly when John ROMERO was the ID douchebag.
 
It worked fine on our computer. The one in the back room, by the toilets. The one we make ugly Bill work on.

HEY UGLY BILL, IS THE GAME WORKING ON PC?
 
Yeah, I uninstalled. Even after going through the rigamarole of disabling (manually in the xml fucking file) functions of the Catalyst Control Panel, installing game specific drivers, making my own config file, reading through dozens of people's different configurations and finding the options that best suited my computer, applying those configurations, adding about 12 different + commands to the shortcut and the game still has texture loading issues? Fuck you Id, fuck you for not bothering to even check to see if this piece of shit fucking engine even worked on AMD cards (which by the way, there are more of in more computers than Nvidia cards).

I know it doesn't mean anything because I didn't actually buy the game (and thank fuck for that) but this is why people don't buy shit on PC. This is why I won't be going near anything you make again.

Bethesda has one more shot with Skyrim (and I sure as shit am not buying before I check it out beforehand now) before they go into the Bioware pile. Id can suck a dick. Head back to irrelevancy assholes.

--I literally just read this aloud in a dramatic reading style. Super whiny.

- This is about what it looked like for me. FUN!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top