PCGP Episode #193: Thesis-erang
If this episode was a bat-erang it would take down all the weapon carrying baddies and chattering teeth just to deliver this weeks PC Gaming news. Unfortunately, there is a lack of the newsy stuff so instead we dish out the Batman love in thick Venom style doses.
September 26th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Note: this episode was recorded before the apparent* delay of Alpha Protocol into 2010. Dumb ol’ Sega didn’t mention anything about a delay when I was pestering them for a review copy last week…
*still haven’t seen anything official on this, but I don’t doubt it.
September 27th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Now I have to get Batman immediately, damn you guys.
September 27th, 2009 at 7:34 am
It is unfortunate to see another PC game get the “2 Month Bump”, but at least regarding this game, I’m not all sure that I care. The last few Ubisoft games I bought (Far Cry 2, Prince of Persia, H.A.W.X., Rainbow 6: Vegas 2), while impressive from a technical and production level, all left me quite unsatisfied…to the point where I can’t bring myself to buy the original Assassin’s Creed for $5 on Direct2Drive. Hearing about how repetitive the game was just turned me off, especially after playing Prince or Persia and Far Cry 2, which I find to be very reprtitive. I’ve had enough of that, and nothing I’ve seen of AC2 has made me a believer that this will be different. I’ll continue to look at the game, though.
Based on what Even said about his concerns on the more accessible (aka mainstreaming, aka making the game appeal to a broader, console market?) nature of Operation: Flashpoint 2 game, and on comments stated under the last podcast, I don’t always think that being cross platform is for the best. While yes, a fun game is a fun game, there are times when being cross platform means something gets sacrificed. This is not about bad console ports to PC, but when a PC game goes cross platform and loses part of what makes it a PC game. It can be something simple like in F.E.A.R. 2, where the game has no support for a mouse with more that 3 buttons, as well as no lean function. Something a bit more significant might be the Rainbow Six series-gone from being a quite deep tactical experience, to becoming more action game-oriented. Its still a fun game, but at least IMO, no longer feels like the same type of game. I can understand why these things happen, and at times they are for the best, at least commercially. There are still plenty of exclusive titles that are very much PC games, but it might be nice if, especially for the more high profile titles, they all don’t continue to get sacrificed to the altar of multiplatform for the promise of a broader audience.
September 27th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Yeh you do Batman is the best game I’ve played in years. I just wish there was a good multiplayer FPS being launched this year as I’m bored of everything else out there and not interested in COD or L4D2. I would be interested in Planetside 2 if it was being made by someone other than SOE because I’m not giving them my money again.
Damn you Valve where is CS2 and HL3?
What the PC needs is change right at the time where the consoles are aging. I hope it picks up soon or when the new consoles get released we’ll probably lose Blizzard too. I have a bad feeling that their new mmorpg will be consoles aswel and what if Diablo 3 does get ported to console… then we have no exclusive and them games will be dumbed down for the console controls.
So glad Microsoft arn’t buying EA aswel because it’s funny to say this but they’d make all the games 360 exclusive and leave their own platform in the shadows.
Really hoping Google or Apple or even Sony step up their game and create a new OS and properly support the PC. Sony would be nice because they make laptops and desktops and lots of other things in electronics and we’d then see PS3 games too.
September 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Alpha Protocol delayed? Whew, I wanted to grab it but was afraid it would destroy what little game time I have available.
September 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
@ Just Be, you’d want sony to start making a new OS and games for PC? You said at the start of your post that you aren’t going to get planetside 2 because it’s from SOE.
I think that Dragon Age is going to get PC gamer’s game of the year award more from an almost complete lack of competiton than anything else.
September 27th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Guys,
From day one I was calling b.s. on the MS buying EA rumors because it wouldn’t make any business sense for MS to do that… before you all go what-what-what like Eric Cartman’s mom, allow me to explain.
MS is only a software giant as far as windows is concerned. When it comes to gaming, it is more of a hardware giant, with its sole concentration being on the Xbox.
A hardware giant buying a software giant doesn’t make sense now, and it won’t in the future, simply because the software giant makes its trade by vending across all platforms — not just MS ones.
Had these rumors concerned EA and say Activision, I would have been more likely to believe them — though even then it would have have to have been a merger. MS buying EA, would be like General Motors buying Bridgestone (the world’s biggest tyre manufacturers), and then forcing them to make tyres only for their cars.
From what I read, EA would cost MS about 10-12 billion US dollars to buy, and EA, in a good year makes about 1-2 billion in profit. The 1-2 billion EA makes a year, it does so by selling on the PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, GBA, and the Xbox 360.
EA’s most profitable franchise by miles is the FIFA football series. This franchise is so profitable in fact, that it continues to sell well even on the PC and does its best on the Sony PS2 and PS3 platforms in Europe.
So the point is that if MS were to make back its money in a reasonable amount of time (more than 7 years is not reasonable to make back 10+ billion, considering inflation), it would be insane to restrict EA to just the 360, but at the same time, you wouldn’t expect MS to allow EA to publish on Sony, right?
One last thing on this subject: EA is valuable because it holds tons of licenses. The bulk of these (due to clauses) would return to their respective franchises, if EA were to suddenly change ownership.
Oh and last year EA lost about 1.5 billion dollars, so that’s one final aspect to consider.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
BTW, when Dan spoke of his passion for slaughtering his Star Trek crew, did anyone else get the eerie image of him standing with a shotgun at the Future Inc. offices?
Regarding [i]Tessellation[/i], anyone remember [i]Truform[/i]? It was hyped as a cool new ATi feature, but was never really taken advantage of. In fact, when applied, it made objects look goofy. I think the [i]Serious Sam[/i] engine was the only to have taken some proper advantage.
Andy, congrats on your card! I hope you enjoy it. Yes, to ATi’s credit, they managed a very hard launch. It is good to see this change, as in the past we had *paper launches* — with supplies taking weeks to get ready.
September 27th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Well I don’t class Sony or SOE as the same thing as until recently Sony and SOE had nothing to do with eachother. Also well SOE is still it’s own structure so all Sony does is looks at the numbers and gets on with their own thing. I don’t like the person in charge of SOE and until he’s gone and someone else is in charge who changes things over there then I wont buy their games again. Where as I’ve never been screwed over as a customer by Sony and someone totally different is in charge there.
September 27th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Trying to make a Roller Coaster in Source but the physics are so crap it doesn’t work so you have to write scripts. The problem is then it feels fake and if you take the car off the tracks then it follows the path in the air lol.
September 27th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
So if i’m wanting to upgrade my videocard (and I want an Nvidia card) I should wait until this generation gets cheap and Nvidia bring out their new cards?
BTW, is is possible to install windows in its own petition and then have a seperate petition where you install games and put personal files so that you can reinstall windows without losing anything?
September 27th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Also, I’m going through and downloading all the old podcasts that I haven’t listened to and would like them to display properly in itunes. I’ve got them in the podcast pane but there are a few information things that you can’t change such as the release date and the description (yes I am going through and copying those descriptions. It’s not that nerdy). Any help?
September 27th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Dowzen: Logan was talking about this earlier (several weeks ago) on the podcast, he said her did a fresh install, no partitioning, and made an image of the drive, as it was, fresh windows install, nothing on it, and backed that up somewhere safe, like an external hard drive or on a secondary hard drive, then whenever he needed that fresh install he just unpacked the image onto his original drive. I’m not sure how he did it exactly perhaps it would be a good idea to look back and find that podcast.
On your original question, however, yes it is possible to install windows to a new partition, then use that partition to recover your system. The only problem is, however, that some games don’t like to be installed to a D:/ or some other drive. your best bet would probably be to make a partition, make a windows backup of a fresh install, then keep that backup on the other partition. whenever you need to go back to the fresh install, load the backup.
September 27th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I install all of my games on a drive other than C - games haven’t had a problem with that in at least 5 years, probably more. I also move my “My Documents” folder to another drive (right-click on it and it will let you change the location). So the only thing I have to back up when I reformat my drive is the User folder to keep all of my preferences. Works great so far.
September 27th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Yeah I should probably get around to doing something like that. My computer’s a dell and when I bought it it had a partition called Recovery which I guess could be like a clean install thingymabob.
September 29th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Well, thats pretty much what it is, instead of issuing restore discs like they did years ago, companies like Dell and HP just put an image of your hard drive on another partition. If you format that partition you will no longer be able to restore your computer to factory settings unless you got a restore disc with your computer as well.
I use a program called Acronis TrueImage to create a similar type of image of my primary partition that’s saved my ass several times. I do install my games to the C: drive though so I have to install whatever I’m playing at the time again if I feel like it though. It doesn’t really bother me that much since I only have to do this about once every six months or so unless something breaks really bad.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:50 am
Frigging hate PCs theres always something going wrong. I got the blue screen :\ stick of ram died… cant afford to replace it I just put over a grand repairing my motorbike.
September 29th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I hate the maintenance on my bike. I would rather spend it on my PC.
September 29th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I just remembered a few games had problems with non-C installs, good to know that’s a thing of the past.
September 29th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
@Just Be
If you hate PCs, then stop using them, or QUIT FUCKING COMPLAINING ALL THE GOD DAMN TIME.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I didn’t get a recovery disc but I did like get a vista disc and a drivers disc etc.
Exciting, we just got a full tsunami warning here in NZ.
September 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
@Lord_Uber_Dowzen
The “vista disc” is probably the recovery disc.
September 29th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
thing is spending money on my PC makes me feel like I’m wasting my life where as spending it on my Bike makes me feel free and I’m doing something lol.
September 29th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Dan - so when you want to clean off Windows you can literally reformat C: and reload Windows, and all your docs and games stay intact because you have them on D:? I was wondering about issues like games needing registry settings that presumably get zapped when Windows gets reloaded, or games installing stuff into Windows directories. And do you try to keep Windows patches saved somewhere? Or just use Windows update to grab them again?
September 29th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
@Just be– Get out. I’m not joking around, get out now. If you are going to do nothing but complain then say you want to spend money on your motorcycle instead of PC gaming then don’t tell us, go tell motorcyclists. We don’t want to hear it.
go play a console
September 30th, 2009 at 5:55 am
lol nerd rage.
The new Left 4 Dead DLC was shit I feel sorry for people who paid for it on the 360. It’s obvious they only started making it after all the Left 4 Dead 2 complaints it’s like how they put a black coop character in Resident Evil 5 cause of all the people shouting Racists!
September 30th, 2009 at 10:01 am
@Murdocj - My docs and some saved games remain intact on my D: drive, yeah. But you do have to reinstall your games because of the registry issues - that’s one reason I like Steam so much, since all you have to do is reinstall Steam to the same directory and everything just works. And yes, I do usually just reconnect to Windows Update for all the patches.
@Just Be - So you’re calling Valve outright liars (they’ve stated repeatedly that they were working on Crash Course since before the announcement of L4D2) because you don’t like the DLC to a game you don’t like? Really?
And actually, Ride isn’t nerd-raging. He’s just frustrated with your constant negativity in posts about hating Left 4 Dead, Half-Life episodes, the Source engine, Call of Duty, The Dark Knight, StarCraft, StarCraft 2, real-time strategy in general, SOE, BioWare, Borderlands, the diversity of graphics card and CPU options and spending money on your PC - which, arguably, are a much better fit for the definition of “Nerd Rage” in my book. Try being a little more positive.
September 30th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
@Just Be
Uh, no. Sheva Alomar (your black sidekick) was in Resident Evil 5 long before the racism accusations. I also don’t believe that Valve made Crash Course in response to the L4D 2 boycotters
September 30th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
You Go Dan!
September 30th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
You’re falling into his trap. Pull out now.
September 30th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Nice communist star logo you got there! Why the hell not use the communist open source Aotuv Vorbis 5.7 at 32 kbps or if you really want to be speech grade….Speex 1.2 at 24 Kbps. Your mp3 files are huge! Vorbis is the ‘Firefox audio format’ to stupid people not me. Damn you! Or maybe 20 Kbps heaacv2.
http://mediacoder.hq.com
http://rarewares.org
September 30th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Yes!
Dead Space 2 in the works.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/103/1030158p1.html
Dan: this website’s slowness is almost unbearable. Please fix. Thanx.
September 30th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
My problem with Dead Space (although to be fair I didn’t play it) was doesn’t it kinda lose some of the immersiveness being third person?
I have noticed that the mp3s are kinda large and they didn’t use to be although the podcast sound quality is much better and less tinny now.
September 30th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
I just use a program called SUPER(it’s free and does tons of other stuff too BTW) to downgrade the quality a bit for putting on my Zune and keep the original too though it’s starting to take up quite a bit of space on my hard drive.
September 30th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Thank you, Dan!
@ Stryc9 Super is the way to go! (Zune not so much, but I’ll let it slide
the new Zune HD looks pretty slick… now just give me a MSC Zune HD and I would love microsoft forever) besides, Super works amazingly well on all kinds of video too
@ dowzen I was noticing this too, nice of them to boost the quality a bit. I only listen to the podcast whilst at my computer, then I delete them after. They’re not terrible if you do it that way.
Also, didn’t comment on this before, but I was wondering if anyone else has seen a slight increase of better PC-tailored games (from the multiplatform ring) lately? it seems more and more companies are realizing that PCs don’t work like Consoles and they need different UIs to match. Sometimes is more of just a control thing, but other times (Like Dragon age, apparently) it’s a full overhaul. For awhile we were seeing just terrible console ports one after another, now it seems the flood of terrible PC versions is subsiding somewhat, although there always will be one or two bad console-to-pc ports out there.
September 30th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Say what you will or at least other people will about the Zune, but other than that stupid leap year bug(which only affected the 30s and is fixed now), and a few minor annoyances with the software I’ve never had any problems with my Zune not letting me do what I want with it.
Sure it doesn’t support a lot of video codecs but that’s what Super is for, it converts directly to Zune format and it actually works now. I would love a Zune HD but they are bit much pricewise as far as I’m concerned right now.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:03 am
@ Ride, Well technically Dragon Age is being designed for the PC and then being reworked to be playable on consoles, but yes you’re right. I bought Burnout Paradise recently and it’s just awesome on PC.
October 1st, 2009 at 7:10 am
http://us.gamespot.com/news/6230743.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;2
No announce of Dead Space 2 for PC… can someone at PC Gamer ask them if it’s coming for PC or we being denied yet another title?
October 1st, 2009 at 10:18 am
To anyone with Unreal Tournament 3, an interesting mod was released recently, Renegade X:
http://www.fileplanet.com/204585/200000/fileinfo/Renegade-X
or if you no likey Fileplanet:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/renegade-x/news/renegade-x-035-beta-released
Basically a recreation of Command & Conquer: Renegade, specifically the multiplayer mode. Might be worth checking out.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:24 am
@Stryc9 Oh yes, Zunes are very nice, I had a Zune 8gb for about 6 months or so, then it died. I would like the whole Zune thing except for a few major annoyances
1) the Zune software is REQUIRED, no Drag/Drop capability at all, it won’t even show up as a separate drive or a media device without system modifications.
2) No OGG Vorbis/FLAC support. Over half my collection I have ripped as FLAC, I had to transcode it all to MP3, which took forever, my Cowon D2 handles FLAC and OGG just fine
3) The Zune Software automatically retags your whole collection (even when you tell it not to) I STILL have tags that are messed up because of it.
I would love to be using my Zune still, because that would mean I wouldn’t have wasted my money on it. Six months in and now it won’t apply firmware. The software just hangs. I had to low-level format it because the software was showing my music as being “space reserved by other computers” instead of music. so I had a 5.2gb full zune 8gb that wanted to resync all the same music again.
I have a proposition, let’s make an MP3 player with .AVI (XviD, DivX, Mpeg-4 plus AC3 audio) .WMV .FLV .OGG .FLAC .MP3 .WMA (DRM and lossless, as well as normal) .WAV .M4A .AAC support with TV-out, MSC/MTP modes, and a proprietary software that isn’t required, but is still useful… so… Compatibility plugin for Foobar2000. oh and a standard microUSB connection, none of that proprietary cable stuff… Also, native 16:9 widescreen resolution and capacitive touch screen…
I can hope can’t I?
aaaaaanyway… I have to limit myself in way of getting games this holiday season, Right now I’m thinking Assassin’s Creed II (if it isn’t as repetitive as the first one), F.E.A.R. 2, or Dragon Age. I’ve never played a Dragon Age game before, but I keep hearing how awesome it will be so… I don’t know what to pick! I’m also open to suggestions, old games, or new, that I should try to get a hold of (steam is preferred) Any suggestions?
October 1st, 2009 at 10:52 am
Why do people bother making UT3 mods? Noone even plays it :\ Make a mod on Source or something people actually bought.
I hate mp3s that require software these days it’s so annoying I just want the ability to drop it into the hard drive to make my life easier. Frigging why I don’t buy an Iphone cause it requires Apple software and their formats. For me all my music is in FLAC aswel now so I need something that supports that.
Did anyone see this Gameswipe on BBC 4? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjFiTd2nmI4
It’s pretty funny and I know it’s a show for people who have never played games before but the guy knows his stuff. The guy who complains about having to unlock songs he’s paid for on Rockband speaks the truth tbh, I hate having to do that too. You buy a game and you’re excited to play a song or a character in a fighting game and frigging you have to unlock it. When you have friends over and you just bought a game and that hits you then it ruins everything.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
@ Ride, For me definitely Dragon Age. I am so looking forward to that game that I’ve pre ordered the collectors edition and I’m trying hard not to get the stratedgy guide with lore and interviews etc.
October 1st, 2009 at 8:24 pm
is the podcast coming tonight?
October 1st, 2009 at 9:22 pm
It was recorded today. When Andy has time, it’ll be posted.