Platform circle pc->consoles->pc?

[averybluemonkey]

You're going to have to let us lot know where you buy from!!

Perhaps I slightly exaggerated there, but I've bought 6 titles in the last year across 360 and PSP pre-release or within 1 or 2 weeks of release for sub £20. If you up that to £25 and that goes up to at least ten titles I reckon. Fact is that if you are willing to wait for up to a month after release it's easy to get most games in that price range. At the moment I've just received Section 8 for £22 and have Motorstorm Arctic Edge preordered for £16.

Even with the likes of a Shuttle there's still the problem of using a mouse and keyboard while on a sofa. The only viable option is to use a put up table which is a right pain if you happen to want to share the sofa with someone else and means you can't slouch or get comfortable. With my sofa to use a keyboard and mouse I'd have to perch on the edge, alternatively I could get a chair out of the study but then that requires me to sit closer to the TV and at that range I can't focus on it properly because it's too close.

Then there's the other benefits of being on a system that is pretty immune to hackers and game tools, has all players on an equally competitive footing and actually has a single well integrated community. Just saying that there are some valid reasons for preferring consoles besides just historical preference.

[Matt]

has all players on an equally competitive footing

I'd argue that one all night There can be no fair competition when one person is hosting, they'll always have a huge advantage. Dedicated is the only way to game competitively

PCing on the sofa is certainly not ideal, but it's doable. Now, I'd never play competitively like this as you lose a lot of mouse control, but I have a padded dinner tray, about a foot by 18 inches, on my lap with the wired mouse. Works pretty well, not too uncomfortable. Then I use a Belkin N52 Nostromo resting on the sofa arm as a keypad.

And got the 360->PC adapter for pad games, like Trackmania

Just pointing out that being on a TV does not suddenly mean you can't enjoy PC gaming. You could even use the 360 pad for most single player FPS titles (not online of course, you'd last about a second).

Even better, have a semi decent PC under the TV next to the consoles. Why limit yourself. While the console only gamer is getting excited about a cut down, scaled back version of Crysis, you can play the full thing at a better resolution right now - I just mention Crysis as it's what a lot of people use to evaluate PC games.

I go with whatever platform I feel I'll enjoy the title on the most. My friends mainly being 360 Live based influences my decision a lot, and I almost always get multi-platform FPS titles with strong online play on the 360. But if you want games with a bit more depth, say MMORPG or RTS titles, the PC is the only way to go. Saying that, I play neither of those genres

[Largo]

Aye all the host advantage crap on live is so infuriating, im going to sit for a few weeks and wait to see what these new line of ATI cards perform like hmm

[averybluemonkey]

Never had trouble beating Live hosts in any FPS myself, personally I'd say it's fairer than having someone with a different frame rate or an aimbot, problems I've always found rife in most the PC games I play online.

[Matt]

Cod4 shows just how bad Live network issues are, the killcam ruined the game for me!

You're saying you've never, not once, played a Live game where you've pumped a whole clip into someone's back only for them to turn round, shoot you in the toe, and you drop dead? It's infuriating!

Dedicated is the ONLY way online can be anywhere near competitive / fair.

And aimbots aren't that much of an issue on PC gaming, you probably just came across some good players. I've been kicked from games myself because I was doing too well, it's very easy to accuse someone of cheating just because they're better than you. And framerate doesn't impact the game too much once you get past 60, so drop the detail and hit that framerate

[ezee ryder]

Don't believe the "PCs are expensive!" nonsense. Someone on this very forum has just spent ?320 and walked away with a full PC, minus a screen - Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.66GHz @ 3.00GHz, Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply, 4gb RAM, 500mb HDD, and a GeForce GTS 250 1024mb.

Pretty amazing what you can get for your money these days

That was me!

I thought I was getting a decent price at the time of purchase but looking around after I now realise it was an amazing bargain really. I will be getting back into PC gaming after a good few years now and it will be interesting to see which "console" I will end up playing more.

[NemesiS]

I wouldn't say i agree with OP about the cycle of PC gaming coming back round again tho as tbh, its never been away. Its just taken more of a back seat to the console explosion of the last couple of decades.

Consoles have had an incredible renaissance period for the last 15 years or so especially since the MD and SNES and the general gaming market has grown and gone from strength to strength because of this.

You can't really compare PC gaming to Console gaming either as they are two hugely different beasts. Even playing the same genre FPS/Strategy/Whatever on a console and a PC is a massively different gaming experience.

Personally i prefer the PC versions of almost all games quite simply because i am playing it as the developers intended me to play it. Full speed, full res. But then again i still wouldn't get rid of my consoles for casual gaming and exclusives to their respective systems, they can't be beaten. Resi/Mario/Zelda/MGS/etc are suited perfectly to console gaming and would just be plain odd to play on a PC.

[Largo]

I wouldn't say i agree with OP about the cycle of PC gaming coming back round again tho as tbh, its never been away. Its just taken more of a back seat to the console explosion of the last couple of decades.

Sorry i ment that the 'consoles -> pc' was more of a personal thing im noticing in my system choices, rather than whats happening in the industry etc.

[averybluemonkey]

Cod4 shows just how bad Live network issues are, the killcam ruined the game for me!

You're saying you've never, not once, played a Live game where you've pumped a whole clip into someone's back only for them to turn round, shoot you in the toe, and you drop dead? It's infuriating!


Dedicated is the ONLY way online can be anywhere near competitive / fair.

You really can't make a blanket statement like that. First of all there are many genres where host advantage isn't an issue, I'd say only shooters and fighters really matter, even then it's not universal - take Left 4 Dead for example, lag has little impact on that game. Secondly whether there is a host advantage is entirely down to the specific netcode the game uses as there are a number of different ways of implementing things. So take Gears of War 2, I have loads of lag problems in that as you describe above. But then I've played other games which have higher player counts where there have been zero problems at all. CoD4 never had a problem with at all, always top of the leaderboards regardless of host.

The vast majority of XBox Live shooters I have had no problems with host advantage the only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head right now being Gears of War 1 and 2.

Regardless, there's a bunch of console games now that have dedicated servers anyway if that's your thing.

And aimbots aren't that much of an issue on PC gaming, you probably just came across some good players. I've been kicked from games myself because I was doing too well, it's very easy to accuse someone of cheating just because they're better than you. And framerate doesn't impact the game too much once you get past 60, so drop the detail and hit that framerate

I used to get kicked for the same reasons too and no they weren't good players that I accused of hacking. There are obvious giveaways to aimbotting, I've actually used the tools myself so I knew what to look for. It's infuriating and gamebreaking. The very fact that most people can't tell the difference between good players and cheaters just goes to show how bad the system can be. I'll never go back to that.

I'd rather spend the few hundred pounds it would cost for a new PC on my game budget, should last a few years .

[Matt]

You really can't make a blanket statement like that. First of all there are many genres where host advantage isn't an issue, I'd say only shooters and fighters really matter, even then it's not universal - take Left 4 Dead for example, lag has little impact on that game.

You do know L4D on the 360 has dedicated servers right?



Seriously, if you've never encountered latency issues with CoD4 on Live, you're either extremely lucky, always hosting, or insane.

You should give PC gaming another go. There are truly very few aimbot players. It's no where near as bad as the CoD issue of rapid fire pistols with hacked pads issue, for example. Firstly, games get patched much quicker on the PC - exploit appears, a good dev will have a patch out within a week to fix it. Probably sooner. Secondly, the higher "buy-in" for PC gaming, plus the prerequisite of some technical skills, tends to ensure, how can I put this gently, a more mature gamer. I have never, ever encountered a PC gamer on a mic screaming racist, homophobic comments at everyone.

More mature gamers equals less hacking / exploiting. Of course it still goes on, but not to the extent I've seen it on consoles.

If you like console gaming online more than PC gaming online, more power to you. Still, there can be no real grounded debate though that Dedicated servers offer the best, fairer environments.

[averybluemonkey]

My point though is that Left 4 Dead doesn't need them. The nature of the versus mode is such that minor lag doesn't really play into it so while it doeshave dedicated servers it would work perfectly well without them.

I found plenty of homophobia going on in PC gaming, just it was done in the chat window rather than with a mic, Counterstrike was utterly ridiculous in this regard. Exploiting can take longer to fix on consoles but the only hacking possible is with modified hardware like controllers. If you try and run software assists and scripts like can happen on the PC then you need a modded machine which will result in a pretty fast ban.

The moment you introduce an ethernet cable you have lag. Dedicated servers don't always give advantages, for example if you had a game where damage dealt was handled entirely on the local machine and then merely reported to the host then dedicated servers wouldn't offer you any gains. This wouldn't be a great approach mind but if you go for a combination of distributed computing and traditional client server approaches the host advantage can be seriously minimised. Dedicated servers may fix the host advantage problem but it's a brute force approach that then does little to help the situation of players with laggy connections screwing over people near them.

And seriously never had problems on COD4 but then I stopped playing it a couple of months after it's release so maybe things have changed?

[Matt]

The latency issue isn't specific to Cod4, you can see it in all the Cod games simply because the killcam shows you the server side of the battle, which is often quite different to your experience. There is a world of difference between these game on console (only played them on the 360, can't comment on PS3) where you have a player hosting, and on the PC where it's Dedicated. You know I'm an advocate of dedicated servers

I can't imagine any game has ever had the damage calculated client side. I think an issue these days is shooting; back in the day, it was server based. Yes, there was a delay when you shot, but you knew that bullet / rocket / whatever had been approved and actually existed in the server's gameworld; so if it hit someone, it actually hit. These days, shooting is client side, and it causes a lot of issues where you're shooting, but it may take say 0.1, 0.2 of a second until you are actually shooting / able to cause damage. It's smoke and mirrors, giving the illusion that you're firing but actually aren't. It's like client side movement prediction.

Gears seems a weird combination of both methods. The weapons are client side, if you will, but the shotgun I'm sure is server side.

At least, that's what I think is going on with the current slate of online games. It's been a long time since I was involved in this kind of stuff.

A player with a laggy connection, on a dedicated server, wouldn't give other players a problem if the netcode was solid enough. As ridiculous as it sounds, there are some people online who do seem to benefit from some strange connection issue that I can't work out. I'm not knocking Live, genuinely I'm not, I'm going by my online experience with two guys I know on Live. One is renowned within out small gaming circle as having approximately twice as much "health" as any other player. It's bizarre - you shoot him and shoot him, and it takes twice as many onscreen "hits" as the other players until he's dead. It's not because he's a fantastic player, impossible to hit and he dodges and dives. I'm talking straight ahead shooting. It's not just in one game, it's in all. If he's against me, I have to keep tabs on him more than anyone else as it's a real problem. The other chap has about a third more "health" than the rest of us. I can't see how this happens, there's no logic behind it that I can fathom, but it's always the same, every game, every night! It causes great amusement

Maybe a mod could branch this off into a general online / dedicated / host / latency type thread? It's an interesting topic, worth discussing - especially with someone who knows what they're talking about! I get tired of people confusing Lag with Latency.

[Concrete donkey]

I often switch my focus between different machines. Late 2007 to early 2009 was the time of the 360 where I barely looked at anything else. The Wii was before that and the 360 again before the Wii. Sometimes I'd go off games for a while and read a lot or catch up on tv shows. Oddly enough I've yet to be hooked on my PS3 though I'm sure that'll happen next year with games like FFXIII and Hard Rain coming out.

Now with a gaming PC that finally works in the house it's all I want to play. Currently I'm hooked on Fallout 3 again (having played it on 360 before) and messing around with all the different mods people have made for it. Oblivion and Civ IV was before that. So yeah I go through cycles but it's not limited to consoles in general and PC though.