[General Battuta]

i very much doubt that anyone playing the game in 1999 had less fun than you did playing it in 2011

i just replayed alpha centauri recently and it was one of the most fun game experiences i've ever had

And if had updated graphics and interface, you would have had even more fun!

no, i really doubt that

[Davros]

"i'm sorry i don't recall being able to play smash on my pc with a bunch of people jumping around a loft in a big common room"

and that disproves that higher resolution and better sound/graphics increases the enjoyment of a game how exactly ?

[headdie]

Its a simple case of sometimes PC's are best and sometimes Consoles are best, both have their advantages and disadvantages end of.

on performance what has been forgotten is that consoles are on a significantly longer development cycle than PCs and usually when a console is first released it will generally be on par with a high end PC (though admittedly not normally the bleeding edge though there have been exceptions) then 5 years later the next console is released, but because of the pace of PC development there will be a noticeable difference a year after a console's release

[Turambar]

I guess I can't get drunk and play Rock Band with friends on PC.

If i could, i totally would though.  Make  that Asus Xonar D2X work!

[TrashMan]

i argued they didn't matter to the enjoyment you could derive

i've had as much fun playing smash with four people on a ****ing Wii as i have playing crysis wars on my home-built uber-PC at lan parties

fun is not in the anti-aliased gigahurtzels

OBJECTION.

1. "Enjoyment" is not a viable metric. Not to mention that enjoyment depends on many variables and personal tastes.

2. In good company almost anything is fun. You and your friends can fling poo at eachother and have a gay old time, but that doesn't make poo-fligning "tuh best thing evar". In order for a multiplayer game to suck, one must REALLY f*** it up (or it must be populated by morons who ruin your fun). Ergo, muliplayer games are harder to rate based on the "fun" factor alone.

3. We're discussing the merits of platforms themselves, not the games on them. Games can be considered accesories. The only reliable metric for such comparisons are mesaurable, undeniable ones. If car A has better gas consumption, is faster and has more space, it doesn't matter if you prefer car B due ot aesthetic reason. Car B is superior in all the metrics that matter.

[General Battuta]

"i'm sorry i don't recall being able to play smash on my pc with a bunch of people jumping around a loft in a big common room"

and that disproves that higher resolution and better sound/graphics increases the enjoyment of a game how exactly ?

it proves the point that the non-fanatics in this thread have been making the whole time, which is that they all have their strengths and weaknesses and it's up to individuals to decide what they want

anyone who has to settle for one is deprived (possibly also poor)

trashman

you are wrong

[Davros]

I guess I can't get drunk and play Rock Band with friends on PC.

you do realise if your going down the road of you cant play game x on a pc you are going to lose very badly

as far as I know the 360 only has 1293 games (including all the xbox arcade type games)
the ps3 has 736
and the wii has 978

while the pc has a magnitude more than the 3 systems combined

[headdie]

I guess I can't get drunk and play Rock Band with friends on PC.

you do realise if your going down the road of you cant play game x on a pc you are going to lose very badly

as far as I know the 360 only has 1293 games (including all the xbox arcade type games)
the ps3 has 736
and the wii has 978

while the pc has a magnitude more than the 3 systems combined

now divide those number by the length of time in years the systems have been released and do the same for the PC remembering the pc has been running since the 80s

[Ghostavo]

To be honest, the only console right now that has considerable strong points compared to a PC is the Wii.

The other two tried so hard to be a media center/console/kitchen sink, that they are basically limited PCs, while the Wii just tried to be a console and its games don't usually intersect with the PC's main genres. Also helps that Nintendo's exclusive titles seem to me to be much better as a whole than the other consoles' exclusives.

I guess I can't get drunk and play Rock Band with friends on PC.

you do realise if your going down the road of you cant play game x on a pc you are going to lose very badly

as far as I know the 360 only has 1293 games (including all the xbox arcade type games)
the ps3 has 736
and the wii has 978

while the pc has a magnitude more than the 3 systems combined

now divide those number by the length of time in years the systems have been released and do the same for the PC remembering the pc has been running since the 80s

A PC has a much greater number of titles released for it, even using that metric. But to be honest, number of games is not really a good metric to judge a platform.

[StarSlayer]

Batutta> "Take us into orbit, Mr. Malsteen, we've seen enough" 

[Davros]

they all have their strengths and weaknesses and it's up to individuals to decide what they want

and when you add up all their strengths and weaknesses they all come out exactly the same
every advantage that one system has is exactly countered by a different advantage another system has. sorry I dont agree

[Davros]

. But to be honest, number of games is not really a good metric to judge a platform.

Hence the smiley

[headdie]

they all have their strengths and weaknesses and it's up to individuals to decide what they want

and when you add up all their strengths and weaknesses they all come out exactly the same
every advantage that one system has is exactly countered by a different advantage another system has. sorry I dont agree

How did you manage to agree with Battuta and then say

sorry I dont agree

[General Battuta]

Batutta> "Take us into orbit, Mr. Malsteen, we've seen enough"

that was such a good cutscene

[Davros]

I agree with battuta that they all have different strengths and weaknesses, but I disagree that that makes the equal

[Flipside]

The thing is, the birth of MMO's like Warcraft have kind of blurred the gaming boundary between PC and console when it comes to the reasons people buy them.

[BloodEagle]

This thread is expanding at a ridiculous rate.  It will soon encompass the known Internetz. 

Half-Life was the first game to really do a good job of telling its story through events in the gameplay (using heavy scripting) rather than delivering expositional lumps like Doom level screens or Marathon's (excellent) terminals.

Which was part of what I consider to be the ('seemingly' seamless) level-handling.  That being said, there was no real story.  There were many insignificant events which had no impact on anything outside of being the red key-card.

Honestly, the only real parts of the 'story' (from what I remember) were: Explosion - > Generic Scientist No 4. tells you to get out - > Ant-Lion-Manticore-Thing - > Spec Ops Soldiers come to kill you - > Save some scientists - > Go to the fifth-dimension-thing and kill the boss - > Be the train.  You were completely railroaded on a quest to reach the finish line, where nothing you did felt like it actually mattered.

And there was no character development.  Hell, there were no main characters in the entire game.  G-Man came the closest, but still failed.

The fact that you learn more about what happened in HL1 from HL2 should be telling enough.

[Mongoose]

Video is relevant and has all the arguments required to end this discussion.

Okay, I lol'd.

trashman

you are wrong

I lol'd harder.

The thing I really love about the whole PC-fanboi argument is how Crysis is held up as some shining Holy Grail of game development, in a vain attempt to cover up the whole e-peen benchmark thing.  I mean, yeah, I'm sure it's a fairly fun title, but it's Vaguely Sci-Fi Shooter #57.  It's not exactly breaking some stunning new ground.  I've been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and sent a postcard.

(Also, I generally agree with BloodEagle.  Half-Life had far more "oh hey this area is just here because it's a game" environments and situations than its sequel did.)

[headdie]

Video is relevant and has all the arguments required to end this discussion.

Okay, I lol'd.

trashman

you are wrong

I lol'd harder.

The thing I really love about the whole PC-fanboi argument is how Crysis is held up as some shining Holy Grail of game development, in a vain attempt to cover up the whole e-peen benchmark thing.  I mean, yeah, I'm sure it's a fairly fun title, but it's Vaguely Sci-Fi Shooter #57.  It's not exactly breaking some stunning new ground.  I've been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and sent a postcard.

(Also, I generally agree with BloodEagle.  Half-Life had far more "oh hey this area is just here because it's a game" environments and situations than its sequel did.)

biggest lol is that Crysis is very console friendly in it's setup

[General Battuta]

This thread is expanding at a ridiculous rate.  It will soon encompass the known Internetz. 

Half-Life was the first game to really do a good job of telling its story through events in the gameplay (using heavy scripting) rather than delivering expositional lumps like Doom level screens or Marathon's (excellent) terminals.

Which was part of what I consider to be the ('seemingly' seamless) level-handling.  That being said, there was no real story.  There were many insignificant events which had no impact on anything outside of being the red key-card.

Honestly, the only real parts of the 'story' (from what I remember) were: Explosion - > Generic Scientist No 4. tells you to get out - > Ant-Lion-Manticore-Thing - > Spec Ops Soldiers come to kill you - > Save some scientists - > Go to the fifth-dimension-thing and kill the boss - > Be the train.  You were completely railroaded on a quest to reach the finish line, where nothing you did felt like it actually mattered.

And there was no character development.  Hell, there were no main characters in the entire game.  G-Man came the closest, but still failed.

The fact that you learn more about what happened in HL1 from HL2 should be telling enough.

Right, but the point of Half Life 1 was that you were in a big dumb action movie, whereas Half Life 2 was about being in a really atmospheric Eastern Bloc post-Soviet action movie.