big published reviews don’t mean anything to me and I’m surprised they do to most people. everything is an 8-10 out of 10. how do people not find an issue with that
The only conclusion to make is that the video game industry has matured to a point where only masterpieces are released. Bad games just don’t exist anymore.
I think you can explain much of the lack of lower scores by the fact that the games that would get lower scores are also likely to be ignored by just about any established reviewer.
There are thousands of games released every year that a site like IGN will never review. Would you find it valuable for IGN to scour Steam or the Switch eShop for terrible games just to use more of the score scale?
Find an independent critic you respect and listen to the tenor of why they say a game is good. Or ignore critics and develop your own taste and sense of which studios, directors, artists, composers, or otherwise will compel you to buy a game.
i use word of mouth mostly but its not that all critics are bad, just what seems like most, but if you find that you consistently align with a critics opinion I’d trust them
Exactly, it feels like 50/100 is the baseline and 75/100 is mediocre. 75/100 tells me I have to be a fan of the genre to enjoy it. This rating inflation really shows how dependent reviewers are. This is one of the reasons I like organisations like Stiftung Warentest instead of depending on some biased product comparison blogs.
You may notice that this parallels the american school grading system to a T. Most major gaming review sites and such are done by americans that spent anywhere between 4-10+ years with that being the what grading/reviewing/scoring was done in almost every interaction they ever had past childhood, there’s no wonder it’s the standard here even if it’s changed the scoring paradigm.
Exactly this. 50/100 looks like an F, because that’s what it would be on a school paper. Often we’d even be given points out of a hundred just like that. So giving a 50 to a middling/okay game feels really harsh, vs 70 (aka a C) or 80 (B).
Even gollum, by far the buggiest and most boring AAA game to come out in a few years was given a 64% by pc gamer. At least gamespot was honest and gave them a 2/10
Jeff is ex (old) Gamespot, ex Giantbomb, and the guy who got fired from Gamespot due to external pressure from Eidos after he gave Kane and Lynch a 6 out of 10.
More likely that they know he's probably not going to give it a glowing review, especially after Fallout 4, so he didn't get one. This is something many publishers have historically done. It keeps reviews higher at launch so that people looking at reviews or metacritic scores see more positive information than after the dust settles.
I mean, if you phrase it that way, sure. Just a dude in his spare room. But then again, aside from the fact that he makes probably 20 000 dollar a month alone from his Patreon, almost everyone who is interested in video games knows this man’s name for way over a decade. More like two decades, actually. And while he certainly hasn’t anywhere near the same visibility as he had at Gamespot or Giantbomb, way more of the people who do follow him, actually pay him money directly. Reach alone isn’t what’s important these days. And yet, Jeff still has the potential to influence a lot of people who do not directly give him money. He also has a podcast, he streams and has 170k follower on Twitter. And if he has a very contrarian take on something, it will get noticed. Maybe not as much as 15 years ago but still noticed.
A bit of a ramble, sorry! I guess it triggered some memories of me listening to Giantbomb with him, Ryan, Vinnie, Alex and Brad while going to work or cleaning the house. Bombcast was pretty much the first podcast I regularly listened to.
Yeah, Ive followed Jeff for a long time and he's absolutely not afraid to say a game isn't good, and his tastes can be fickle and particular, if I were a publisher cynically selecting who to send advance codes to to manufacture a good score he would not be one of them.
As a consumer, I love him because he has integrity, likes what he likes, and says what he means, and I even can tell sometimes when he dislikes a game that I'd still like.
I don’t understand the purpose of big company reviewers (for subjective stuff like media at least). If I’m watching a smaller reviewer my goal is figure out their tastes so I can ignore the criticisms that I know don’t bother me, and pay very close attention to where their tastes align with mine. Like if dunky calls a game buggy or slow paced, that’s probably more a positive than a negative, but if he says the controls are clunky, I’ll probably agree. ACG tends to like games that are less mechanically adventious and easy compared to what I like, and we have evry different tastes in storylines, but he’s a really good barometer for sound and graphics.
If kotaku or whatever releases a review it’s really hard for me to understand whose voice I’m getting, so the review is pretty useless, how do I know if the guy calling the game a challenge is that infamous cuphead reviewer or a guy that has been beating dark souls since he was 4.
You’d start loading a game from tape and then you might as well go have dinner with your family because it would be 30 to 60 minutes before you could play.
Or, it could hit a loading error 5 minutes after you walked away and now you have to start all over again…
I bet you'd complain about your new car having roll up windows or no ac. Times have changed and we can do better. Especially with their budget and 6 years. It's pathetic.
This shows you've missed the point and haven't researched the game.
It's all the animation transitions between space and ground. No Man's Sky had fifteen developers and accomplished this years ago. Bethesda is pathetically incompetent.
no mans sky had deep quests and deep conversations with unique characters? and they also used creation engine? i had no idea no mans sky was so brilliant! youve changed my mind!
Bethesda doesn't have deep quests either. The creation engine is a weight around the devs necks. I'm not sure what you're trying to say but you're making my points for me.
Unfortunately most of the folks in gaming media that I follow don’t write or produce proper “reviews” anymore. Reading a review from IGN or Gamespot… I don’t know anything about the reviewer so I take it with a grain of salt. Like with Starfield, I give the same weight to IGN giving it a 7 as I do with some no-name whatever tiny website I never heard of giving it a 9.5
Just have to read through the reviews. If someone docks the game for not letting you fly manually between solar systems like you do in Elite Dangerous then I just have to write-off the negativity because… of-course fucking not, did anyone expect that? With something like, the repeated knocks against the barren nature of the procedural generation leading to repetitive tedious travel - I take that more seriously, because it was something I was hoping they would have addressed when moving that direction. Something like the story sucking or the NPCs having cringey dialogue is completely subjective and means nothing without knowing the reviewer’s tilt.
If someone docks the game for not letting you fly manually between solar systems like you do in Elite Dangerous then I just have to write-off the negativity because… of-course fucking not, did anyone expect that?
I think a lot of people expected that. This is the see-that-mountain-you-can-go-there studio.
That surprises me… each BGS game is extraordinary iteritive over the previous one ever since Morriwind. They’re like 20 years into iteritive design and arguably each iteration, while doing some interesting new things also takes a step or two back. Very obvious looking back over their history. They’re really a one-note-studio.
To all of a sudden expect Starfield would manage to be that revolutionary (to their formula) seems shortsighted. Even the concept of having a fully-realized BGS RPG with a near infinitely open space exploration system seems like an impossible feat. On a technical level, sure, but the space between planets would be empty and desolate… and even expecting an interesting procedurally generated continent is a big ask today, let alone a planet, let alone a solar system, let alone a quarter of a galaxy.
I wasn't expecting it to be revolutionary. I expect Bioware RPGs to be on dozens of finite maps, and I expect BGS games, other than interiors, to be seamless maps. I was expecting procedural generation to cover the difference, and I expected that if No Man's Sky could do it with maybe two dozen employees, BGS probably could too, especially given when the game went into full production. I was not, and still am not, expecting the vast majority of their planets to have something interesting on them just due to how many there are.
I can understand the link between seamless exteriors and the equivalent of what that would mean in the context of a space game for Bethesda, but the technological implications of having a galactic system flight mode and seamless planet to space transitions are both completely new ideas to Bethesda and are also technically complex to implement in a game already knee deep in new tech and systems only from what we'd been shown.
There's a reason things like seamless planet transitions are only something you might be able to expect in recent years. While Bethesda could totally make that happen, it's not where I'd expect them to put their money, or they'd have probably dropped a line showing it off in the pre release footage.
At once, I understand why you might've expected that, but expecting anything not explicitly shown is never a good idea when it comes to tempering expectations.
They showed so much of the game that I was bored before I could sift through anywhere near all of it (not to say I wouldn't enjoy the game, but I know what I'm getting with a Bethesda RPG). I'm not knocking it for having a load screen between space and landing on the planet, but because we've seen that done a handful of times in recent years, as well as expectations set up from their previous games' maps, it makes perfect sense to me to expect that to be in the game.
I think it does make sense to expect that up until you realize how much of a technical undertaking it'd be to do so and whether that payoff seems worth it to them. Seamless transitions seem to me to still be in a category to show off if you have it, so that they didn't should be a red flag, but if you didn't watch all the footage then you wouldn't realize that, which I get, and I dont expect everybody to watch both the showcases like I did, thats probably over an hour of footage.
I can see why you'd expect a similar seamless experience due to their previous maps, but implementing that is completely different due to the style of game and requires new engine features to do so unlike their previous games which were already capable of it since Morrowind. You could expect them to consider doing it, but it wouldn't be a given
Having played the game some last night, the load screens haven’t been what’s bothering me but if I had to complain it’d be for the menu diving. Tab goes back a page and there are 3-4 levels of map, the city you’re in, the planet that’s in, the {system?} that’s in and the galaxy it all resides in. You can travel to any of them so you can directly land in a city on a planet in its galaxy, or just outside one.
For a little while it was telling me to press R to bring up a system map but I think that’s only in certain situations, so I’ve been pressing tab and selecting map (galaxy) or M for local map (then tab to pull back a menu).
So far there have been other little quirks, like F in scan mode prevents M, L, I, (map, quests, inv) it gets tedious but it’s again, trying to nitpick something that stood out as annoying but doesn’t actually matter? Like, it minorly affects me but then I press F and continue on my way lol.
I’d say a much bigger oversight is quest streamlining. Without too much in specifics, I was captured via “trait” (I assume) at level 5 put into a level 12 situation. My ship couldn’t survive the scenario and I had to pull back to the previous auto save (technically it was 2-3 previous, but only because I tried to win). That situation was also made more annoying due to a bad energy distribution and getting attacked pretty immediately jumping out of hyperdrive, if there was a fight advantage number I’d have been at -7 at least lol.
Rolling back the save was fine though, I didn’t continue that quest and will level up some before going back to it. First time I had to do it though and it was a little jarring since you’d expect the game stealing you to put you in relatively level-appropriate scenarios.
Overall I’ve been enjoying the game though. These gripes are pretty minor overall and I think just a little more information and distance between jumps and being attacked and it was hardly have been an issue. Oh, last thing about information I do wish the shops and certain trade areas had more labeling for like weight or details, I’ve been making a point to not overloot the raw world but even just enemy encounters fill up your weight fast and sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what is taking it all up.
I played it for the later half of yesterday, so maybe 4-6 hours or so? The main story is a little silly but it’s a fine premise so far. People calling it absurd or ridiculous, I just don’t see what they’d want instead? The character creator was actually pretty fun with seemingly fairly varied possibilities. One encounter I’ve come across is a religious cult who are known to openly attack. Well, you can trait to be one of them so hopefully the game plays into that. If it does, I’d say the game is actually going to be quite great. If it does not, then I’d say it’s a Bethesda game that could have a little more depth but is also pretty fleshed out for the early game. Like I said, I’m only a few hours in and I’ve not visited many planets. I’ve been pleased with the choices I have available, the options I have to complete them, and the results of them even if it didn’t succeed the way I had hoped lol. I’ll have to see non-settled planets more before I comment on those.
Tl;Dr there’s some flow issues that I’ve encountered, mostly with how many menus and how often, could do with a little more information in some spots and a little less in others but overall it feels like a prettier space Bethesda game and I’ve been more pleasantly surprised. It’s ran well on a 5800x3D and a 10gb 3080 with everything but motion blur on ultra/native with RT/med. Some areas do feel less smooth, but not choppy or anything like that. Just feels like 165hz vs 60+ variable. That said, with the hardware it’d be a shame if it ran poorly.
I see what you’re getting at, I could see how someone might assume an seamless outer space based on that. As soon as you realize how much of a technical undertaking that is though, it’s easy to assume they wouldn’t go that route and not have blown that horn 2+ years ago as a huge feature. Something like that combined with a BGS RPG would be massive and I can’t imagine a world where a company like BGS or Microsoft would be wanting to keep that a secret until release.
Expecting anything that particularly in-depth without being shown explicit pre-release footage of it is an expectation trap. Bethesda was never going to make a space sim, any space sim features are a bonus and were far from guaranteed.
It’s been probably 10 years or so since I was writing reviews, and I have to say, I never felt pressure to skew a review one way or another.
The biggest heat I got was from fanboys when I had a sneak peek at PAX of Duke Nukem Forever and had to report how shitty it was. “YOU DON’T KNOW!!! YOU DIDN’T PLAY THE WHOLE GAME!!! YOU HACK!!!”
And I was like “Yeah, you’re right, I didn’t play the whole game, I played what their marketing team WANTED me to play and it sucked, you think the parts they DIDN’T want me to play are going to be better?”
Surprise… the game stunk up the joint.
But when it came to reviewing games, I approached every review as if the game were a 10/10, and then as I played I looked for reasons to subtract or add points. The plusses and minuses would balance out and I’d have a final score.
As a former teacher, I used school grades, which is why I think most sites are on a 7-10 scale.
A - 90%+
B - 80%+
C - 70%+
D - 60%+
F - 59% and down.
A game can be bad because it’s a bad game or it can be bad because it’s functionally broken. D is generally the Ralph Wiggum of games, possible to like, but you have to admit it’s pretty bad.
I had to give a failing review to Assassin’s Creed Liberty on the Playstation Vita even though I really liked how it looked and it played, because it had a game breaking bug that made your save file unloadable. Ubi took 2 months to fix it, rendering it unplayable for the first two months after launch.
Once it was fixed, I amended the review, but it was plainly unacceptable to release it in a broken state like that.
What was the worst game that comes to mind from your time writing? I used to write album reviews for a metal site years ago and one of our writers got HIM’s latest album at the time. They really just didn’t like the album and I shit you not, the review garnered 1,000+ comments from pissed off fans. It got so out of hand, we had to close comments.
Had to be Duke Nukem Forever. I was talking with one of the devs and I was legit curious as to how their process worked because it had been in hell for so long…
“Were you able to use any of the original assets?”
“Oh, all of them!” He seemed super excited.
To use 14 year old assets and be incredibly proud of that? Eesh.
Oh, and Brink! Brink was so incredibly disappointing. They had this well developed world and a fantastic movement system, solid class based shooter… but then it all fell apart in the actual implementation of it.
I really, really, wanted to like Brink, but it was unplayable.
Say you have a level where the enemy is escorting a VIP and your goal is to eliminate the VIP before they get to the destination.
You roll in, wipe the team, wipe the VIP, then someone respawns, revives the VIP, and you keep going back and forth until the clock runs out.
It didn’t matter how many times you killed the VIP, all that mattered was if they were alive or dead when the clock ran out. Win/lose. Just crap design.
Man, DN4E sat in limbo forever. I remember waiting patiently for it knowing full well it would be a mess, but I didn’t care because I was such a massive Duke Nukem fan. Definitely on my list of bad games but I managed to complete it. It was so dated and clunky.
I vaguely remember Brink and all of the hype absolutely vanishing when it came out. I think I ended up skipping it because of the feedback people had.
Brink... Sigh. I remember that trailer coming out and I watched it like every day for years waiting for it to come. I watched every dev vlog, read every update. For years I was hyped on that. At time of release my buddy and I took the week off of work. We played it for like 3 hours one night and finished it. I remember thinking "there must be a mistake. This can't be it. This isn't the game I've been dreaming about." I never booted it up again after that first night.
It’s a shame, because if someone licensed the IP for, just spitballin’ here… A Fallout/Outer Worlds style game, the bones are there for a REALLY good game.
The assets, art, backstory, it’s all done, it just deserved a better developer. :(
I actually played through it last month and it blew me away. I cannot wait to do a second play through when phantom liberty comes out! It was so so good.
That happened for me too. Great 2077 experience through and through on good hardware with RT+DLSS. Had a couple bugs but nothing unsolvable like a puzzle with some saving involved, and they were things like scanning one thing early stops a scan later. Which is an unintended pretty cool mechanic lol, if only we’d been told it was a mechanic at the time.
Game got even crazier looking in recent updates and with better hardware, but I 100%ed it early and I haven’t done another playthrough since so I’ve been at the endgame through all the updates lol
I ran a gaming store at the time, with rentals. I remember when brink came out and I had the exact same experience when I took it home to try. At least I had no anticipation and didn’t pay anything for it.
The first Brink patch made it quasi-playable, but the damage had already been done.
And even after they fixed it, the AI still stank. They'd just ran back in the exact same path sometimes; to the point that you could just aim at a point and headshot all of them.
I think Brink was game that killed my naive trust in the hype machine. So much anticipation, so much desperation to enjoy it, so much disappointment. From there on I only believed the hyperbole from proven developers but eventually Destiny killed even that. Now I’m a bitter shell of a gamer who lives by the creed, “never pre-order!”
I actually enjoyed the hell out of Destiny, then Destiny 2 fucked everything up, got patched, got better, and then Bungie turned around and went “LOL - story missions? What’s that?” and cut 1/2 the content out of the game. Content I paid for.
No more money for Bungie after that, I’m surprised it’s somehow still going.
I was damn near 1k hours in D1. I think I'm still under 100 in 2, because somehow they managed to make every single map in the entire game a heaping pile of dogshit.
What’s left to decay? It’s dust now. Remember when Eidos used a PR firm to strongarm websites into not publishing reviews of Tomb Raider: Underworld if they were less than an 8/10 till after launch?
“That’s right. We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos.” When asked why, the spokesperson said: “Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.”
That was 15 years ago, and despite the fact that Barrington Harvey went on to lie and pretend they never said that, everybody knew that kind of thing was old hat back then too. Mainstream gaming journalism is a captured industry.
I realized the only game I play online is FFXIV, which doesn’t require PS+. I almost never play the “free” games they add to the service, and spend a non-zero amount of time browsing said free games in an effort to find something to play rather than something in my backlog. So I just canceled.
My membership is up in December and I doubt I’ll even notice when it’s gone.
Price rises aren’t welcome and the latest one does seem quite high. However I’ve been paying for plus since I got my PS4 and I’m still ok with it. Considering I maybe buy one game every two years for the price of another triple A game a year I’ve built up quite a library. The hours my partner has put into Spiritfarer, Slay the Spire and Hades indicates it’s still providing good value. Every month we at least check out the new games unless it’s a survival horror.
If I have one complaint it’s since I got off the CoD train as I got older when I do occasionally dip into the free ones via plus I find it very hard to find any online matches. I assume this is because all the hardcore players move pretty quickly to the current iteration leaving the lobbies of the older games empty.
Same here, I set to cancel renew every time I top up and since late ps4 time I don’t even add free games that are remotely interesting so I keep a cleaner library. And then when they announced the hike, I did the review and filter by games acquired via plus, same feeling, I almost never play those games, even though they look somewhat interesting and added them but probably never gonna play them since my primary interest and good backlog will last me long enough for next main games to release. So they will have the same treatment like my humble bundle games. And I also decide to not top up any more.
We're not really headed to a subscription-based future. People like Game Pass, but it has no exclusive content. Nintendo's the only one trying to make a catalog of games exclusive to their service, but they're all retro games, and Nintendo can get bent, because we can all pirate and emulate those games better than Nintendo can rent them to us. They could get be getting some revenue from actually selling those old games to customers in the places they want to play those games, but Nintendo isn't interested in that. If this particular situation gets worse, then I might be worried. There's just too much diversity in the game industry for this to be a threat. There's no central cartel or representative group for games the way there is in movies and music to dictate those markets away from what the customer actually wants. In video games, you can switch to Xbox or, more likely, PC when Sony raises prices. PCs have gotten easier, and they've always been more open, and I think the gaming market has demonstrated that they value the openness.
For the price of 2 games (or 1 and a half if it goes on sale, and it always did before), you can game all year. I’ve had mine for a year now, and not bought a game for it yet (apart from GoW Ragnarok which came bundled with it, and likely BG3 next week).
The top tier is kind of a bust. I picked it up because I thought I might play those PS1/2 games but I haven’t used that at all. There’s plenty of PS4 and 5 games still to play, and you can emulate up to PS3 on PC quite easily if you want to play old stuff. There’s scant few PS1 games anyway. It’s far from comprehensive. They should have done so much better here.
Yeah my kids don’t have gaming PCs (yet?) but have fun playing through a bunch of the plus stuff when they are not on Minecraft or (shudder) Roblox on their tablets.
I don’t have kids but I still find the random assortment of games a value add as I got a lot of games I would have considered anyway, so this was a much cheaper way of playing those games, best is all the random local multiplayer games that I can install for when I have friends over
I don’t think it was a choice. Xbox did it first and that’s why I bought a ps3. Then sony introduced it. Then nintendo. It’s still less expensive than a PC hobby. Consumers don’t have much say in what these companies do or how they operate.
just with the sales and free online/cloudsaves PCs are cheaper in the long run
And mods are an added value, we can even include fanmade patches that fix what developers don't into that added value
Consumers don’t have much say in what these companies do or how they operate.
Yes, they do. Microsoft tried to incorporate Xbox live onto PC and it was a failure because PC consumers didn't bought it
The same goes with paid mods, Valve and Bethesda tried to make people buy mods and it was rejected by the consumer so the have to backtrack.
Consumers have all the power in their wallet they decide what course the companies take. If a company does something that goes against your interests as consumer is as easy as stop giving them money, if you hurt them economically, they'll have to go back to the business model that gave them profits (this works only if the average consumer is intelligent enough to protect their own interest/rights)
Used or loaned games (provided you have libraries offering them in your area) are still a huge benefit for (most, ie physical media “enabled”) consoles.
The subscription model is broken by default, regardless of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, and is only good and cheap until it isn’t anymore.
Agreed that consumers have a say, to some extent, however some are too far “into the ecosystem” to either care or be willing to boycott or make a change that would inconvenience them, so they’d rather give in.
100% agree with that, but even then the sharing of physical media seems like it’s being slowly replaced with sharing digital libraries. PS4 allows a hokey way of sharing libraries between two people, and Steam does offer a similar janky way of sharing libraries between multiple people. With GOG, you should be able to download a standalone installer on a USB and then give that to a friend (which now I think about it, is the PC equivalent of lending your friend the disc lol).
Wondering how long it will be until people go “remember when we used to share discs with each other?”
Oh absolutely, I know I’m already part of a minority when I favour physical over digital media.
We’re likely seeing the last (or, more realistically, second to last?) generation of consoles with physical media as an option and that’s a bummer…
GOG is great on the PC side of things, but as someone with a Steam Deck as their only PC, it isn’t always the best option (some games have been giving me a headache or end up straight up not working - eg I’ve had to rebuy Gris because the GOG version would show a white screen with any version of Proton I tried, while the Steam version was perfectly fine).
just with the sales and free online/cloudsaves PCs are cheaper in the long run
This may be true, but then i think this is just annother example of how it is more expensive to be poor. Even if PCs are cheaper in the long run, it’s hard to scrounge up the $1000+ upfront to buy a worthwhile PC if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck. Over 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. If you are living that way, it’s much easier to come up with the $300-500 for a console (in the US, that’s an average tax refund amount), and then the $15 a month for gamepass/PS plus. And don’t tell me you can buy a lowend PC for that price - any PC you buy for $500 is gonna play games worse than the comparable console.
In cases where our only power is in our wallet, people with bigger wallets will be the only ones with actual power.
It’s not common sense, that’s a common false judgement applied to people with less means - it’s a value judgement and diminishes their struggle. This is a reminder to be nice on our instance.
I'm not rich, I know what I'm talking about. When I'm going to spend money I have to look the best way to spend it, which is the best "invest". Being wasteful is an luxury I personally can't afford.
Fantastic, I’m great you have that going for you. I’m letting you know that making value judgements on other poor people for being poor is not okay. Don’t do that on Beehaw.
I told you that you need to change your behavior and all you’ve done is attempt to argue with me rather than understand why your behavior was not acceptable. You’re getting a 7 day ban so you can have time to think this over.
Only if you plan on either never paying for an online sub for the console or paying for an online sub for less than 5 years on the console, and also take into consideration that a PC can both game and be a computer you can use for other things.
A gaming PC has a higher upfront cost, but it’s a better long-term value. Let’s say you buy a PS5 for $500, and then pay for 5 years of PS+ for the old price, $60. That’s $800 for a friggin console already, but let’s also consider that most people either have a laptop or a tablet for doing computer-related tasks. Reasonable people would pay probably somewhere in the $400-$600 range, but let’s give the console a chance and say we got a $400 laptop. That’s $1200 now.
Using that $1200 as a budget, you can get a computer with a 4060ti, a 12th gen i5, a 1TB NVME SSD, and 16GB RAM for around $1100. Note that, say, 5 years down the line from buying this PC, you can just swap in and out parts as you want and be able to sell old parts for some money back, so staying up-to-date to play whatever current games can be cheaper too depending on the part prices.
Also anecdotally parts seem to be lasting much longer than they used to. Maybe I’m just playing fewer games, maybe I care about graphics less, or maybe there actually is a technical reason but in the early 00s when I first started building computers I was essentially forced to upgrade about every 2 or 3 years but now I’m still running on my 7 year old desktop with a 1070 – I was going to upgrade the graphics card but the crypto mining boom priced me out and lo and behold I’m still able to play whatever I want with nary a difficulty. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 runs just fine, with a little chugging.
The percentage of the industry that can afford to push modern graphics to their limit has only shrunk over time as the development time required to make games that taxing has increased. That's why most of what you play isn't particularly high-spec.
Ok. Logitech G203 for $20 and a Redragon K552 for $45 - a tiny bit cheaper than a PS5 controller which retails at $70 before tax.
Windows you can literally get for free from Microsoft directly. You’re basically paying a license to get rid of the “Activate Windows” bit and to be able to change wallpapers, but functionally you can play games and do computer things with an unactivated Windows license. You can also opt to play on Linux instead since Steam offers Proton with their Linux version, and you can also use WINE for games that won’t run on Proton. Linux is also free.
If you want a mouse with a good sensor for competitive games and a linear switch mechanical keyboard with NKRO, those are generally the two best entry-level options. Rechargeable wireless mice can be a bit pricey, which is why I’m assuming you used a vague descriptor of “quality” and specifically mentioned it just for the sake of being arbitrarily on par with what a PS5 offers. But if you want a good budget option for a wireless gaming mouse, you can with a Logitch G305 for around $50.
As for the OS stuff, that’s a good point, and it’s true - if you’re talking about 5 or so years ago. Once Steam said “hey, we’re integrating Proton into our Linux version of Steam”, it’s been leaps and bounds in improvements for Linux gaming. By the way, fun fact: the PS4 used FreeBSD for the system’s OS which is based off Unix - and surprise, Linux is also based off Unix. Wouldn’t be surprised if the PS5 OS is also based on FreeBSD.
How is that a bad faith argument? The PS5 Controller is not entry level quality. It’s not my problem equivalent PC peripherals are expensive. My Razer Viper Wireless cost $150 and the build quality is just slightly worse than a Dual Sense. It’s built to be lighter weight so that’s understandable. But it’s twice the cost, and that doesn’t include a keyboard. I tried the G305 and didn’t care for the build quality personally. Equivalent wireless keyboards with the quality control of Sony are $80-$100 too. I’d probably cheap out on the keyboard before the mouse, but every keyboard I’ve used under $85 had Quality control issues from switches stop functioning to buggy software (Anne Pro II), and Wireless was terrible on all of them.
I’ve heard issues dealing with multiplayer and anti-cheat as recently as this summer, so it’s nice to see it’s better, but until games are officially supported with no third party patches or workarounds, I don’t count it.
PS5 is FreeBSD based, so yes it’s Unix-like. But that doesn’t mean anything. MacOS is also Unix-Like and it’s terrible for gaming. It all comes down to support. At the end of the day I don’t want to have to deal with drivers, or configurations to play a game. I want to press a button, and start gaming. For me personally Consoles are going to win that war 95% of the time. But I’m dumb. I spent almost 3 times the cost of a PS5 on a Graphics card last year for some reason.
The PS5 Controller is not entry level quality. It’s not my problem equivalent PC peripherals are expensive.
You’re right - it’s the only entry in at that price point. If you just want a wireless PS5 controller, you either pay Sony $70… or you pay an approved 3rd-party retailer $150+ at minimum for a non-Sony controller. So it’s comes out the same as the Viper Wireless you mentioned.
My Razer Viper Wireless cost $150 and the build quality is just slightly worse than a Dual Sense. It’s built to be lighter weight so that’s understandable. But it’s twice the cost, and that doesn’t include a keyboard. I tried the G305 and didn’t care for the build quality personally.
How the fuck can you compare build qualities between a controller and a mouse?? Like, how do you actually do that? You’re comparing apples to oranges here at best, and at worst you’re doing a strawman argument by cherry-picking things that support your point. You also prove that enjoying build quality is subjective - I personally loved the G305 mouse and how it felt in my hand, and I have used stuff like the Viper Wireless and Glorious Model O. But you what the best mouse I have used to date is? The CoolerMaster MM720, which is a $30 wired mouse. The consumer have choices at different price points when it comes to gaming peripherals, and you are right that they can be crazy expensive at the top end - but don’t pretend $180 controllers don’t exist, either, and don’t try to conflate high-price point items as being good, because you can easily get a good quality mouse with bells and whistles in the $60-$80 space.
Equivalent wireless keyboards with the quality control of Sony are $80-$100 too. I’d probably cheap out on the keyboard before the mouse, but every keyboard I’ve used under $85 had Quality control issues from switches stop functioning to buggy software (Anne Pro II), and Wireless was terrible on all of them.
That I will give you, but you’re also deliberately shopping in the $40 range for stuff like the Anne Pro II Keyboard you mentioned. I can say every PS5 controller I used under $70 was awful, but that doesn’t mean much once I mention I was buying $20 controllers.
I’ve heard issues dealing with multiplayer and anti-cheat as recently as this summer, so it’s nice to see it’s better, but until games are officially supported with no third party patches or workarounds, I don’t count it.
Anti-cheat has also been on consoles for decades now - not as bad as PC to your point, but once again don’t act like consoles don’t experience the issue either, especially when stuff like Xim exists.
PS5 is FreeBSD based, so yes it’s Unix-like. But that doesn’t mean anything. MacOS is also Unix-Like and it’s terrible for gaming. It all comes down to support.
Good point, forgot Macs exist tbh lol. It is also only one OS that doesn’t have good gaming support, but honestly it’s a toss-up. Linux has gotten some really good support though.
At the end of the day I don’t want to have to deal with drivers, or configurations to play a game. I want to press a button, and start gaming. For me personally Consoles are going to win that war 95% of the time.
Which is a completely valid point - but that’s not the point you were making initially. Since you said right off that bat:
Need to add a good quality mouse and keyboard to your numbers at minimum. Consoles come with controllers. Should also add a $99 Windows license too.
You made it a point to talk about the price of the computer versus a console, not the ease of use of it.
I spent almost 3 times the cost of a PS5 on a Graphics card last year for some reason.
Because you deliberately chose to spend that much on a GPU that outperforms a PS5 in graphical power? I bought a $400 GPU that slightly beats the PS5 out a couple of years back, so that’s moot.
How is that a bad faith argument?
Because I’m dumb and I just learned what “bad faith” actually means lol. My apologies on that, it was the wrong usage - “cherry-picking” is literally the word I should have used.
So it’s comes out the same as the Viper Wireless you mentioned.
No, it comes with the console. So to be fair, just subtract $70 from the cost of the PS5 = $330 for the Digital Version
How the fuck can you compare build qualities between a controller and a mouse
Easy, the Plastic and Switches on the Razer feel cheaper / more brittle. There is more flex to it when squeezed. The charging dock connectors are less reliable. To be fair, the mouse did come with a dock with my model, I think it may be a bit cheaper without it.
you can easily get a good quality mouse with bells and whistles in the $60-$80 space.
You absolutely can, but you didn’t include anything originally and that’s why I made a point of bringing it up.
you’re also deliberately shopping in the $40 range for stuff like the Anne Pro II Keyboard
I paid $90 for in in late 2019. Assuming that’s not a counterfeit listing (Official site lists it for $90 with $10 off but OOO). The macros and software customization is incredible… when it works. Bluetooth was worthless, I had repeated key presses from time to time, and the config kept getting erased randomly when I would unplug it.
Anti-cheat has also been on consoles for decades now
I meant anti-cheat preventing the game from working. I stopped playing competitive a long time ago.
Linux has gotten some really good support though.
Subjective I guess. ProtonDB still lists a lot of games with issues. Not a lot are natively supported by the devs.
You made it a point to talk about the price of the computer versus a console, not the ease of use of it.
Yea I did, and the Ease of use is tied to the cost through the Windows license or lack there of. In all of these comparisons the PC side neglects to include the cost of Keyboards, Mice, and Windows.
Because you deliberately chose to spend that much on a GPU that outperforms a PS5 in graphical power? I bought a $400 GPU that slightly beats the PS5 out a couple of years back, so that’s moot.
That’s the entire cost of a PS5, and a few years back an equivalent SSD was $200.
cherry picking
That’s basically my original point. You can’t leave out a mouse and keyboard.
I used an Xbox controller for years yes. Now I use an 8bitdo with gyros. I don’t play fps games. But yes I do have a wireless m+kb for games that are better with them.
You know, you see thus argument every so often online. I’ve had an excellent and subscription free Linux gaming experience over the last three years. If you enjoy console gaming and getting nickel and dimed for increasingly shitty online services then power to you
Considering piracy equivalent to hardware theft is just intellectually dishonest. In a lot of ways, but relevant to this discussion is that piracy is way less risky, so more people do it. If you try to steal a PS5 from a store I’d go as far to say you’d probably get caught and jailed. With piracy you almost definitely won’t get caught.
I think this debate can get lost in the numbers when it’s more about the user. For some people that upfront cost is going to make sense, for others it won’t. The math isn’t the hard part. Specifically though, a PC hobby isn’t exactly a cheap hobby.
Gaming in general isn’t a cheap hobby. You can get a 320$ steam deck, dock it and plug it into an old monitor add a cheap KB and mouse and you are PC gaming. Or you can spend 3,200$ on a top of the line rig. Its whatever you want to make of it. I wouldnt say its more expensive than console gaming, but you can make it one and you will get a better experience for it. Either way personally I would consider PC the best option by a fairly large margin.
Well, I’m still using my $200 laptop from 7 years ago for my basic computer needs. And that doesn’t seem like it’s going to change soon. Also, someone who buys a gaming PC is likely going to have a cheap laptop to do their basic computer stuff still.
Also, I get my subscription for $40 on sale, mostly for the games and discounts. So it really just pays for itself in the games I get from it.
I think you’re vastly underestimating how cheap most computers are; consumer laptops are around $300-500 median, that’s what most people use. And those laptops don’t game. The enthusiast computer market, while larger than its ever been, is still a ridiculously small percentage of computers sold.
Really unfortunate. There was such missed potential in Awesomenauts, imo. Despite them being an indie team I really think they could have taken the game so far. They had the passion but just made too many mistakes along the way.
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