Turning back to PC gaming?

[VR46]

Great topic from start to finish, just read every post with interest; any other demo's/games that "you" would class as essential (after HL2, D3, Far Cry etc)

cheers,

[Ish]

About those tridgens. What's so annoying is that they're too powerful. Two b**ch slaps and those pricks kill you even if you have full health and full armor as you unload your rifle on them.

Exactly. They gave the game an unbalanced feel and sucked some of the fun out of it for me.

If I could have worked out a decent strategy for dealing with them then perhaps it would have been better. But I didn't.

[marcus]

Christ, Im still loving this game, at times it has even eclipsed HL2. What gets me is the difficulty of the thing, I died about 10 times trying to infiltrate a enemy encampment by taking out the snipers, crawling through the jungle and going in guns blazing, but even though I normally would of been frustrated by this I just had to go back and try again. Maybe anything that looks as lush as Far Cry draws you to it in this way. Ive encountered a few monsters and they seem to be a right bitch, not looking forward to the later levels you guys are on about as it sounds like a nightmare.

[PeteJ]

I gave up on the PC market soon after Valve ruined TFC and other Half Life mods, the final straw for me in the PC market was Mafia, which was a stupid buggy pile of crap. After an hour trying to do the first level without it crashing, I sold my PC and bought a laptop - a non-gaming laptop. Also bought all the next-gen consoles and never regretted my action.

Recently though I've been looking at the PC market and getting a bit green. Then, a few weeks ago, my brother splashed out on a tasty new machine. Far Cry looked stunning...I had to have one. So last weekend I spent a small fortune on a wizzy new Shuttle..and I can't wait for it all to arrive

I shall probably get Far Cry, HL2, Doom3 and UT2004 to beign with. Great stuff

[Valken]

PRetty good choice of first titles... I've pretty much finished building a new A64 based system myself so I'm enjoying the newness of playing PC game with everything on full

I got HL2, Farcry and Pirates... only have the Doom 3 demo atm.

I'm getting a bit annoyed with HL2... some of the later stages are a pain and an update messed it up for me a little.

I much prefer Farcry to be honest... despite essentiall being linear it feels much less like a collection of set pieces and the atmosphere and AI are pretty stunning.

Doom 3 is pretty scary **** too. Gonna pick up the full version once I'm done with HL2 (gonna try and complete it this weekend before the next error borks it on me again)

[PeteJ]

That's the one thing about PC's that I'm fearing - drivers, crashes and patches. I'll probably just download 3DMark 2005 to begin with and then install drivers etc and if what difference it makes.

Or I may just install HL2 and lock myself in a room for a few days

[Concept]

Just to echo sentiments here, I've fallen back in love with PC gaming. 2004 was one of the platform's best years in a long, long time, and the likes of Darwinia, Fear, Stalker and the following Half-Life 2 expansion pack (probably featuring Alyx), bode well for things to come in the future.

I suppose it helps that Half-Life 2 completely rocked my world and reaffirmed by passion in videogaming again.

Like Marcus and PeteJ, I walked away from PC gaming in the late ninties, and only picked up my new rig last year after existing on a complete antique. I also jumped from a landline connection to broadband at the same time, so my ability to function online with the new technology brought an extra dimension to the upgrade.

I've been tentatively slowly working my way back into the frame after some time out PC gaming wise, and I'm delighted to find what I've discovered. The scene is in very rude health indeed.

[Concept]

That's the one thing about PC's that I'm fearing - drivers, crashes and patches. I'll probably just download 3DMark 2005 to begin with and then install drivers etc and if what difference it makes.

Or I may just install HL2 and lock myself in a room for a few days

I can tell you now, although you won't experience the teething troubles many of us experienced with Half-Life 2 upon release (one of the benefits of arriving to the party late), watch yourself with Steam. It can be unpredictable.

Thankfully Half-Life 2 is a slice of gaming heaven. There's no two ways about it. You mentioned yourself in the Resident Evil 4 thread that both games are examples of next generation gaming, and believe me, they are.

What they do, and how they do it, is produced with the utmost quality. Half-Life 2 is jaw dropping if you enter into the experience without being in a cynical mind, or promising yourself the hype was nothing.

Because in my view, the game did live up to what it promised.

[Valken]

That's the one thing about PC's that I'm fearing - drivers, crashes and patches. I'll probably just download 3DMark 2005 to begin with and then install drivers etc and if what difference it makes.

Or I may just install HL2 and lock myself in a room for a few days

Yeah, it's a disappointing when it all falls over but things it's really an exception rather than a rule.

[Concept]

Oh, yeah, and I've recently decided to try playing Far Cry again based on this thread. You're all right - It is better than I originally gave it credit for. I still think the narrative and the character art is naff (like a Channel 5 movie), but the gameplay and the environments more than make up for it. Lovely stuff.

[marcus]

That's the one thing about PC's that I'm fearing - drivers, crashes and patches. I'll probably just download 3DMark 2005 to begin with and then install drivers etc and if what difference it makes.

Or I may just install HL2 and lock myself in a room for a few days

Be careful as I found it so easy to fall into the trap of trying to squeeze every last drop of performance out of my new PC. Sure get the latest drivers (DNA Drivers are very good for your card, and have built in options for games like FC, Doom etc), but you will find despite 3dMark the best test you can do is with your own eyes when you actually play a game, as thats where it matters. On your spec everything out now will be lovely, at high detail, so I wouldnt bother too much about trying to optimize to the level I did of overclocking components and so on. Maybe a few years down the line when your PC is becoming old hat its worth a look at that stuff, but not in the near future anyways.

[marcus]

Slightly deviating, but what forthcoming PC games have we got to look forward to which will push modern day systems like how FC etc does?

Ive been messing about on Painkiller, and that looks very nice, but its hard work as its just mayhem and keeps wearing my mouse fingers out >_<

[Concept]

Yup. My advice is to enjoy what you have. When I picked up Doom III, I spoiled the game due to testing all kinds of drivers and trying to improve frame rates by a few marginal seconds, and when you're repeating the same sections over and over first time through, it takes away from the immersion.

I made sure not to do the same with Half-Life 2. It's very easy to lose yourself in diverting your attention to the technical aspects, but you have to remember 3DMark 05 (which runs its tests slow on even the highest PCs) isn't a true reflection of in-game performance.

[Concept]

Slightly deviating, but what forthcoming PC games have we got to look forward to which will push modern day systems like how FC etc does?

Ive been messing about on Painkiller, and that looks very nice, but its hard work as its just mayhem and keeps wearing my mouse fingers out >_<

Fear and Stalker. Download a few demos of the latter and you'll see it looks absolutely mind blowing. It's a first-person non-linear adventure that's open ended and allows you to trade and hunt in a fictional take on chernobyl. To be honest, it looks amazing, although there are questions over its moral ethics.

People also rate Fear, but the trailer I saw of it didn't look that special. I'll still be keeping an eye on it though.

I think the next big advancement graphically for gaming on a technical level will be Unreal 3, which looks out of this world from the shots and tech trailer I've seen. It's not due out until 2006 though, and Epic have said that high-end PCs now will be low-spec for the game by the time it comes out. :/

[Valken]

WIth the likes of Source, The Doom 3 engine and CryEngine I think we're now as cose to the start of a current PC generation as you can get.

Basically it's the best time to get a high specced machine IMO as a result since those three engines are what'll be powering games for a year or two.