It’s a new podcast with a fresh faced intern ready to report on all things PC gaming. We talk about extreme women in Mass Effect 2, Dawn of War 2 expansiondalone, the state of Steam and why necrophotography is a fun game mechanic.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Podcasts.
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October 1st, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Good Podcast! I could be somewhat biased.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 am
I’ve had the same problem as your new intern, with my PC shutting down completely (specifically when I’m running games at the highest resolution fullscreen). From everything I’ve found out, its probably the power supply. I’m running an ATI 4850 - which is a bit of a power hog and does get quite hot - on a 550 watt power supply. It seems that an overworked PSU can transfer heat to an already hot card, at least from what I’ve read. I’m getting a new 700 watt PSU, so I’m hoping that should be enough.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:21 am
I’m an extreme woman fan!!!!
That mass effect 2 character reminds me of Tanya from RA. She was a rough sexy soldier which appealed to me alot. I would like to see more of this kind of stuff
Good podcast
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:30 am
I liked Crash Course a lot. Having not played L4D2 yet I can only comment on how crash course differs from the original 4 campaigns.
I didn’t notice the multiple paths through despite playing it twice now - I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled next time I play. I did like the openness of the levels. I felt like they were more difficult, something to do with more cubby-holes and alleyways where more bog standard zombies live and the specials have more place to jump you from.
Boomers gave us problems (moreso than any other campaign IMO) due to them being able to come at you from any direction and finding it more difficult to spot them approaching.
I haven’t played it vs mode yet either - that to me says “PCG L4D event”! Make it happen!
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
For usage data collection, if they’re collecting it anonymously, that’s no problem. Selling the usage statistics of their own system is fine. However, if they include the identity of the users or sell real-life personal information, then that is a different story.
As for Steam support for developer, I think they should vary it depending on what the developers need. If a developer wishes it, it would be nice for Valve to take a higher share of the profit and offer Steam support in exchange. Though I think giving developer full-responsibility was just a business decision on Valve’s side to minimize the risk they take for each game released on steam. If they spent $10k helping launch a game but that game doesn’t make even $1k of profit, valve will lose money. It’s better business if they move all the cost onto the developers.
Too bad that had and will continue to make disasters happen, hurting Steam reputation, and ultimately hurting Valve in the end. Most publishers make profit-centric decisions like those that basically dug their own grave, unless they got lucky and signed guitar hero; hopefully Valve doesn’t go on the same path.
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:52 pm
To the caller with the TF2 competitive play question: GSC is a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) that comes with a free 200 slot server, sounds nice, doesn’t hog bandwidth, and is what I and all my friends use in games. http://getgsc.com
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
@PCG_Erik: X3:TC FTW! We’re not quite up to 2.5 yet but soon. Buggy releases seem to be Egosoft’s MO for some reason. X3:Reunion had the exact same problem on release, they even forgot to add joystick support to the 1.0 release version and had to patch it in later. For the most part though Egosoft also adds content with their patches for free.
October 3rd, 2009 at 3:36 am
few things i hate about steam:
1. You haft to tell everyone what you’re playing.
(I don’t want everyone to know that i’m playing some singleplayer game! I asked Valve support about it and they replied smtng like “you can allways go offline mode”. That’s just stupid! I just hate that it’s so much hassle to play privately. This is the reason I’ve chosen not to buy 1-player games on steam anymore.)
2. 1$ is not 1€
(I know that economy has been whacky lately but thats just wrong)
3. Digital distribution is cheap as pie compared to producing and shipping a retail copy
(That really should reflect on prices. Even a little.)
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:38 am
Nice discussion on Steam. One thing I hate about Steam (that I don’t think has been mentioned yet) is that I need my gaming PC on to download. This can take a loooooong time for very big games (Empire Total War?) so I find myself leaving my PC on all night or all day - and since it’s quite power-hungry I’m not entirely happy with doing that.
However, in addition to my main PC, I do have a NAS box which is on all the time since it has a much lower power consumption, and you can use it as a downloader to download large files (such as game demos etc). It’d be nice if I could download Steam games the same way and then transfer them to my PC over the LAN. This way, my main PC is on for a much shorter period of time.
This could be done either with just a direct download link to an archive containing all the game files, and then I use the NAS software to perform the download, or it could be an app on the NAS itself (many of these things support plugins of various types since they’re just Linux PCs underneath).
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 am
Guys,
My PC CE of Arkham Asylum came in today, and I have a quick question… mouse/keyboard or gamepad?
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 am
Great show as always guys!
You have interesting takes on Subject Zero, and the tone that ME2 is taking, and I wanted to give my take..
I am a long-time sci-fi fan and a Star Trek fan and generally loathe the “pandering to the MTV generation” that is ongoing, but when I saw the trailer, my inner animal roared, “F__K YEAH!” and for a moment, the rest of me was put off, but then I realized that in context it fits.
Remember that this game is going to basically begin with the destruction of the Normandy, and we don’t even know which crew members survive. We know that Shepard is going “off the reservation” and truly becoming a Spectre, and has to find people that he can hire/manipulate to help him do his job. His only concerns are: Are they efficient killers? How well will they follow orders? How good are their connections? How visible and/or controllable are their motivations, vices, etc. so that predicting or preventing the characters’ probable betrayal becomes easier?
The tone here is decidedly DARK.
As for Subject Zero, I don’t think she’s overwrought, and I most certainly don’t think she is very clichéd. A cliché would be to have her resemble Ashley, from the first game, Ruby from that terrible “Wet” game, or many other game heroines, i.e. hot-but-rugged.
I think that any female that can survive in the harshest of outlaw colonies where; there’s no institutional government or police oversight, human trafficking is commonplace, and the ‘rules of society’ boil down to “get yours” and “don’t get killed”, is more likely to become like ‘Zero than like Lara Croft.
She can easily be mistaken for a male, or a child as needs be, she is very aggressive, and her demeanor, her very appearance is like that of a scorpion’s, and screams, “friend or foe, come near me and I will f__king kill you!” –In fact I will be surprised if Bioware doesn’t have her actually say something like that in the game. I think that she would need her brash personality in order to build a reputation that would help her survive and bring her to the attention of clients.
As for Evan’s concern about the contemporary feel, I would’ve agreed with him, but then I remembered that the most of our vulgar gestures and sayings have been around for centuries. –Hell, even the infamous “F” word has been in use for over four hundred years, and most of that time was before the advent of TV or global communication that would have spread it’s popularity. So I doubt that just 160 years from now, that the word would have been forgotten.
Also I think that we the readers/gamers sometimes forget that when dealing with high sci-fi like Star Trek or Mass Effect, our point of view is often from that of the military/government, where there are codes of conduct and protocols for dealing with diplomats and elite citizenry. Yeah, the main characters encounter and deal with the dark side, but their base, home, and immediate relations tend to be from the elite, cultured sectors of society.
These stories are seldom from the point of view of the poor people who can’t afford space travel or any of the “cool” tech that makes sci-fi fun. When they do, it is always a pretext to elevate the character up to the cool level. The stories wouldn’t be epic otherwise.
I am currently replaying Mass Effect PC because I now have a rig that can handle it without compromises and am gearing up for the second chapter, so I am excited to know that the next chapter’s really mixing things up!
AHAHAHAHAHA!! Andy did the same thing I did, capture that audio clip use on my co-workers..
October 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
@Julmuri - 1: What’s so hard about going into offline mode? Going to File -> Go Offline is exactly as much effort as going to File -> Hide What I’m Playing.
2: Yeah, you’re right, but bear in mind that Valve does not set the prices for third-party games on Steam - the publishers do.
3: As long as the lion’s share of PC games are still sold in physical stores, publishers won’t be allowed to sell for lower prices online. If they do, the stores will say “fine, then we won’t carry your game at all” and the publishers lose out on the huge percentage of their sales that would’ve come from them. Blame GameStop (or whoever you have on your side of the pond).
@Pugnate - Mouse and keyboard, no contest. It works perfectly.
October 3rd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
@Julmuri
The reason prices on digital distribution platforms such as Steam aren’t cheaper than brick and mortar stores at launch is that if they were, less people would buy them at places such as GameStop and opt for the cheaper Steam version. Then GameStop would get pissed off and stop selling it altogether.
October 3rd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@Julmari: Also, you don’t even need to go into offline mode. Merely deselect “Automatically Sign Into Friends When I Start Steam”. You’re still in online mode, but your friends won’t know it unless you manually select the Community Tab and contact one of them. You won’t be sending out notifications of the games you’re playing, nor will you receive any.
As for pricing, in addition to what Dan said, I find the constant sales from Steam (and their competitors) provide me with better deals then if I still bought boxed PC games overall.
Additionally, I think a lot of people underestimate the costs associated with the Steam infrastructure. They may not be paying for boxes and manuals, but they’re still responsible for all the aspects the retailer has, including customer support and a billing system in addition to all the community features and client updates that take place. Plus, there are probably some hefty bandwidth and server costs when Valve has to ensure that any user can download (as many times as they want) any game available on their service at any point in time.
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
F@@K games for windows live.
are over. I am also wondering if I should have just stuck to Arkham Asylum on the 360.
Seriously seriously pissed off. My copy of Arkham Asylum came in today. Unfortunately, I found that the PC CE was totally not worth the money, with everything made from the cheapest plastic. I was especially disappointed because I had expected it to at least match Blizzard, considering that it was more expensive than any CE released by them.
Anyway, I have a very stressful life, and Saturdays are like gold to me. To waste 4 hours and several hundred brain cells, in order to get GFWL to work on a weekend night is extremely frustrating.
For the past few hours I have fruitlessly tried to play Arkham Asylum with an online profile, but the GF4Client crashes upon launch without any reason.
Unfortunately, none of the DLC that comes with the CE installs without the GF4Client. I am sure the DLC isn’t worth the effort, but I kept trying, and one hour quickly turned into four.
At this moment, I have tried everything. I have uninstalled and reinstalled about a dozen programs that the message boards suggested were causing interference, including .net components, virus scanners, malware detectors, drivers etc. etc
The worse of it is that according to the internet, tons of people are having the same problem, where the G4FL client crashes within seconds of the flash animation, yet the MS employees are clueless.
I know a lot of people hate Steam, but it has never given me this much grief.
And then there are the G4W message boards. Whenever I try to post something, I am told that I haven’t selected a gamertag, and that I must use the link provided to get one. Unfortunately that link takes me to the XBOX board where I am informed that I have indeed selected a gamertag, YET FOR SOME REASON THE G4W BOARDS DO NOT RECOGNIZE THIS.
Browsing the boards, I have noted that aside from this issue, people are having all sorts of problems with G4W.
I can only imagine why all the DLC is linked to this atrocious service.
So after four hours, I have started to wonder if my days as a dedicated PC gamer of nearly 20 years (been gaming on the PC since I was
In my 15 years of PC gaming, I have not encountered as many frustrating issues as I have in the past two or three years. I used to buy three to four PC games at full price a month, and up till two years ago, hardly had any issues.
I am starting to feel like it is the paying customer who is expected to take it up the rear end.
Just briefly:
Splinter Cell Double Agent PC: I could not finish the buggy piece of shit because it would develop game stopping bugs at the slightest customization of controls.
Gears of War PC: Its GFWL crap deleted all my save games while I was half way through. It was a waste of $50, since I lost all motivation to restart. In another incident, it gave me more hours of frustration where it wouldn’t allow LAN play despite hours of attempts. Later learned that it was just a huge bug.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory: Had two cd keys instead of one, and both were misprinted, leaving me going crazy for hours.
Prince of Persia PC: Would not work with my $50 Logitech cordless pad simply because the developers were too lazy to implement the most widely used peripheral company on the PC
Bioshock: Bought the stupid game, and it wouldn’t activate for a few days. This was AFTER having to buy another DVD drive since Bioshock’s copy protection somehow rendered it incompatible with what I already had. WTF?
Burnout Paradise: I bought this while I was in Hong Kong. It was perfectly legit and cost me $40. When I left Hong Kong, the game stopped working a few months later… because I WAS IN ANOTHER REGION!
Other games have been equally frustrating. Again, I have been buying full priced PC games for the past 15 years, and never had a problem that wasn’t resolved in a few minutes, and even then it wasn’t too frustrating.
I remember back in the day when Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto were released, and were considered buggy and frustrating. Boy, I would take those “problems” any day compared to the shit I as a legit customer; have to constantly put up today.
What is alarming is that all these incidents have occurred in the past few years. The new gen. of PC games are just getting too frustrating to put up with. Either the developers are just putting in lazy ports, or the games are tied with frustratingly poor third party components like G4WL.
BTW, if anyone has any tips on how to resolve this stupid issue, do let me know.
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
F@@K games for windows live.
Seriously seriously pissed off. My copy of Arkham Asylum came in today. Unfortunately, I found that the PC CE was totally not worth the money, with everything made from the cheapest plastic. I was especially disappointed because I had expected it to at least match Blizzard, considering that it was more expensive than any CE released by them.
Anyway, I have a very stressful life, and Saturdays are like gold to me. To waste 4 hours and several hundred brain cells, in order to get GFWL to work on a weekend night is extremely frustrating.
For the past few hours I have fruitlessly tried to play Arkham Asylum with an online profile, but the GF4Client crashes upon launch without any reason.
Unfortunately, none of the DLC that comes with the CE installs without the GF4Client. I am sure the DLC isn’t worth the effort, but I kept trying, and one hour quickly turned into four.
At this moment, I have tried everything. I have uninstalled and reinstalled about a dozen programs that the message boards suggested were causing interference, including .net components, virus scanners, malware detectors, drivers etc. etc
The worse of it is that according to the internet, tons of people are having the same problem, where the G4FL client crashes within seconds of the flash animation, yet the MS employees are clueless.
I know a lot of people hate Steam, but it has never given me this much grief.
And then there are the G4W message boards. Whenever I try to post something, I am told that I haven’t selected a gamertag, and that I must use the link provided to get one. Unfortunately that link takes me to the XBOX board where I am informed that I have indeed selected a gamertag, YET FOR SOME REASON THE G4W BOARDS DO NOT RECOGNIZE THIS.
B
rowsing the boards, I have noted that aside from this issue, people are having all sorts of problems with G4W.
I can only imagine why all the DLC is linked to this atrocious service.
are over. I am also wondering if I should have just stuck to Arkham Asylum on the 360.
So after four hours, I have started to wonder if my days as a dedicated PC gamer of nearly 20 years (been gaming on the PC since I was
I have not encountered as many frustrating issues as I have in the past two or three years. I used to buy three to four PC games at full price a month, and up till two years ago, hardly had any issues.
I am starting to feel like it is the paying customer who is expected to take it up the rear end.
Just briefly:
Splinter Cell Double Agent PC: I could not finish the buggy piece of shit because it would develop game stopping bugs at the slightest customization of controls.
Gears of War PC: Its GFWL crap deleted all my save games while I was half way through. It was a waste of $50, since I lost all motivation to restart. In another incident, it gave me more hours of frustration where it wouldn’t allow LAN play despite hours of attempts. Later learned that it was just a huge bug.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory: Had two cd keys instead of one, and both were misprinted, leaving me going crazy for hours.
Prince of Persia PC: Would not work with my $50 Logitech cordless pad simply because the developers were too lazy to implement the most widely used peripheral company on the PC
Bioshock: Bought the stupid game, and it wouldn’t activate for a few days. This was AFTER having to buy another DVD drive since Bioshock’s copy protection somehow rendered it incompatible with what I already had. WTF?
Burnout Paradise: I bought this while I was in Hong Kong. It was perfectly legit and cost me $40. When I left Hong Kong, the game stopped working a few months later… because I WAS IN ANOTHER REGION!
Other games have been equally frustrating. Again, I have been buying full priced PC games for the past 15 years, and never had a problem that wasn’t resolved in a few minutes, and even then it wasn’t too frustrating.
I remember back in the day when Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto were released, and were considered buggy and frustrating. Boy, I would take those “problems” any day compared to the shit I as a legit customer; have to constantly put up today.
What is alarming is that all these incidents have occurred in the past few years. The new gen. of PC games are just getting too frustrating to put up with. Either the developers are just putting in lazy ports, or the games are tied with frustratingly poor third party components like G4WL.
BTW, if anyone has any tips on how to resolve this stupid issue, do let me know.
Please delete the comment before this one.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:50 am
I love the Steam Hardware survey because it lets developers optimize their games better to the average system. It shows the average pc is…
2 core CPU
2 GB ram
ATI or Nvidia with DX9 and 512mb ram
XP 32bit
Thats the average PC and developers need to stop making games for the tiny amount of people who own 4 cores or have 6gb ram or who have the latest gpus. Thats where Valve and Blizzard have been smart where their games run and look great on any other system.
Also you have to agree to give out this information but I don’t see why you wouldn’t.
October 4th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Also I’d play Batman with a controller if you play in windowed mode. I had endless problems of clicking on my desktop as it allows the mouse to go to the desktop without having to alt-tab outta the game. Thankfully it goes to the menu so you wont die from it but it gets very annoying when in a fight and you keep clicking out of the window.
October 4th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Also I believe that graphics for the PC will not advance anymore until the next generation of consoles get released. We’re seeing a new trend where they have become more CPU heavy like with Left 4 Dead, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red faction and this is because games are now advancing in other ways other than graphics. This is probably due to the consoles GPU’s being bottle necked and now they’re trying to push their multi core CPUs.
I just can’t see a developer releasing another power house of a game like Crysis on the PC until the next round of consoles. It doesn’t make business sense as we’ve seen in the past these games don’t sell well on the PC. Infact the games that sell the best on PC have a great art style but technically arn’t demanding.
So really I can’t see the point in upgrading the 8800 this year as no more games will come out that’ll push it. I’d personally put my money into making sure my ram and CPU are upto the task and then get a new GPU when the prices are right. Specially when if you want to go with Nvidia then DX support for 11 wont come till their next cards so prices will drop.
I recently bought a Core I7 to replace my core 2 duo and it’s done wonders for my FPS in many games where my CPU isn’t at 100% anymore.
October 4th, 2009 at 7:15 am
If you buy an ATI card though don’t throw away your 8800 because you can run it beside the ATI card and use it as a Physx card.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Guys,
My apologies for the massive rant earlier. I actually still love PC gaming, but am just surprised how the level of frustration has increased over the past few years. PC games required some work from time to time in the past, but lately, it has gotten ridiculous. As of yet, I am still unable to find a solution to my G4WL problems, and as a result have gained some more respect for STEAM.
Thankfully I can run the game OK in offline mode, but that means that I can’t activate any of the DLC that came with my CE.
Regarding the podcast, I thought it was quite good. Good job. I also enjoyed listening to the new intern, intern Bell Erik (that’s his new nickname, because I said so.)
Regarding the discussion on Steam, I do agree that it needs to implement “minimum standards” of sorts.
I think the reason Steam doesn’t is because it is more of a online retail thing than anything else. I mean, if you go to a brick & mortar store, you won’t really get any guarantee that you will get a bug free experience with your software.
Similarly, I think Valve considers Steam to be more of a distribution service. On the other hand, when it comes to Xbox Live, the software is distributing on MS’s own hardware platform, so I guess they can afford more control.
At the same time, I don’t think there is anything stopping Valve from implementing higher standards.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I would like to see a few new things for Steam..
- Games have to be released in all Regions. I hate it how we’ve had to wait like a year for EA’s games to come to the UK for no reason what so ever. I also hate it when games are relesed for NA only and Europe still has yet to get alot of games. It’s not good the for the user base and Valve needs to set a standard with it.
- Valve also needs to build up the features for developers that GFWL offers that Steam doesn’t I’m sick of having to use Steam and then installing GFWL and all that aswel. What needs to happen is Valve needs to show more developer support so we get one program per game and not having the GTA 4 mess ever again.
- Steam needs to finally fix that bug thats been around since the new look where Steam minimizes on it’s own and you can’t get it back up again unless you delete the tab and then go to the Icon byt he clock.
- Steam also needs an account manage like Windows Live where I can easily switch between accounts instead of having to sign into one and then sign out and then having to type all my details in again just to be able to use my other accounts.
- Steam needs to support the Iphone so we can buy and play games on Steam that can run on the Iphone aswel as you’re PC like them popcap games.
- The whole store interface needs a new look because right now it’s a mess as it wasn’t really originally designed for this many companies to be on it selling their games.
Finally I want Left 4 Dead to use the same system as all Valve’s other games because with their other games if you want to delete all the maps and crap you’ve taken off the servers you can delete the directory and then just launch the game again. However with Left 4 Dead you have to fiddle about in all the folders because it installs without using the original Source Files and then you have to download the whole 5gb again. I hate to think that they’ll probably make you download another 5GB with Left 4 Dead 2 when they’ll use alot of the same files.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Something that I’d love to see on STEAM? Well I’d love it, if for an additional fee, they ship a retail copy of your purchase to your doorstep. I still like having the manuals, boxes etc.
To the guy who is wondering what card he should upgrade to, I highly recommend the ATi 5850 which just came out, fits this guy’s budget, and consistently beats Nvidia’s GTX285 by at least 10-15%. Plus it supports DX11 and it will only get better with drivers.
Nvidia is about to release a monster itself, which is a bit of a CPU/GPU hybrid designed to challenge Intel’s own upcoming GPGPU Larabee scheduled for early next year.
Nvidia’s card will be a monster, and looks to be quite a bit more powerful than ATi’s offering. It seems that it won’t be out till early next year because of some yield issues, but you never know.
You can be sure that Nvidia’s offerings will be more expensive.
Oh and Intel’s Larabee is apparently also faster than a GTX285, so there are a couple of interesting new technologies on the horizon.
That being said, if you need a new video card, you can’t go wrong with either the 5850 or the 5870, especially at those amazing prices.
I am myself a 8800GTX owner, and am only holding out because I like the PhysX tech.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Then buy the 5870 and use the 8800 as a physx card running along side it. Then you’ll have physx and none of the FPS penalty by running it and still able to use an ATI card.
So far it’s looking like Intel’s Larabee is another half arsed attempt for them to get into the GPU market. However I think it’ll be more for laptops and lower end PCs and will not replace the CPU + GPU combo that we have high end.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:45 am
@Just Be - If you’re running an ATI card as your primary graphics card, you cannot run PhysX by putting an Nvidia card in the secondary slot. Both must be Nvidia cards.
Also, Valve doesn’t decide what games are released in what regions. That decision is entirely up to the publishers.
As for supporting the iPhone, Apple routinely rejects applications that duplicate functionality of Apple apps. Steam would almost certainly be seen as duplicating the functionality of the Apple App store - and Apple has zero incentive to allow other parties to make money selling games on their platform when they can have it all to themselves.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Dan has a good point, it would be like Microsoft allowing Steam on xbox 360, not just the games, but the entire Steam service.
The un-synchronized launch dates are like that for ALL platforms with MANY publishers, it’s not valve’s fault. Global launches are becoming more common, but they aren’t quite the norm yet.
I’m trying to get more performance out of my ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 1gb on my laptop, any suggestions? I know I should be able to run games at similar (or better) graphics quality as my desktop (Nvidia 8600GT 512 mb) at similar frame rates, but it just isn’t working very well. My laptop is ahead of the desktop on every other piece of hardware, and yet it still performs way worse than the desktop does.
Laptop:
Windows 7 RC 64bit
2.0 ghz intel centrino2 dual core processor
4gb physical RAM (ddr2 I think)
ATI mobility Radeon HD 4670 (1gb)
desktop
windows XP media center SP3 32bit
3.0 ghz Pentium IV hyperthreaded processor
4gb physical RAM (ddr2)
Nvidia (evga branded) 8600 GT (512 mb)
a few years ago I had heard of alternative drivers (IE: unofficial ones) that performed better than standard ones on ATI cards, all my drivers are up to date on both systems, but I’m wondering if there’s another way to make my laptop work better. I’m sick of getting 15fps in games my desktop can run at 60 easy.
I know laptop hardware in general isn’t as good as desktop hardware of the same caliber, but is it really this bad?
October 4th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
It used to work where you set the Nvidia card to being a physics card… did Nvidia disable that? If so Nvidia fucking suck.
Just googled it and saw this on Sept 25th…
There is a rather lively discussion in our forums about NVIDIA’s recent decision to disable PhysX when an ATI card is present in your system.
LAMEEEEE
Oh well Ati will come out with their own and then both will be completly useless cause then Developers will have to support both and that’ll cause even more work for them.
October 4th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
@Pugnate (first post)
I’ve been using keyboard/mouse controls for Batman and they work wonderfully. The only awkward thing is using the scroll wheel key, which most games don’t make you use. Be sure to look at the full keyboard controls list if you run into an enemy that you can’t just straight punch to death, like I did.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:15 am
I’ve been avoiding all Mass Effect 2 coverage, but it’s been hard to avoid talk of this latest trailer on Twitter and podcasts. It doesn’t really discourage me… I doubt it will be so weird within the context of the game. I think EA must have gotten a 3-for-1 deal on Brutal Legend, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect 2 advertising.
Also (since the topic was briefly discussed on this show), I recently wrote an article about supporting Steam competitors, if anyone’s interested: http://downloadablesuicide.com/2009/09/25/digital-consumerism-promoting-rational-choices/
October 5th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Just saw that Modern Warfare 2 is pushed back about 14 days on the PC. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…
October 5th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Just as a reminder for older games check out GOG.com first before buying on steam. GOG is not perfect but they at least put significant effort into testing older games on the PC-xp/vista platform.
Valve/steam just doesn’t care most of the time if something doesn’t run. They just point their finger at the devs and of course most of the time publishers really don’t care, so they point it back at valve. Both already have your money and you bascially have no consumer rights.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:17 am
A quick warning the ATI 5870 is a BIG board - like 10.5-10.75 inches. So make sure it fits in your case. The 5850 a little shorter like 9.5-9.75. I am not sure the exact number, but do you research before buying.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Delayed on PC
October 5th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Interesting how all these cross platform games are getting tiny delays on the PC. I am thinking it is because of piracy, as they probably want to avoid losing console sales to the Day 1 pirates.
BTW, Arkham Asylum is splendid, and worth every penny. I still can’t get GFWL to work properly, but at least I am online.
And yes Dan and Josh, the controls are pretty good on the PC. Actually I am surprised how well this game has been ported to the PC. It is as polished as a cross platform title can be.
I hope it sells well on the PC.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
@Andy B.: Well, Activision already had injury ($60 for PC version). It was only a matter of time before they added insult…
@tacitus: While I don’t think it so much as Valve “doesn’t care” if a game runs (honestly, its hard enough trying to contact them to get your game on Steam in the first place), I don’t think it would hurt for them to have some kind of basic certification for a game to be released on Steam. I think that is probably the one good thing to come out of GFW (at least on paper).
October 5th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
@ tacitus, you don’t lose your rights as a consumer just because you buy a game through steam. I’m pretty sure (at least here in NZ) that stores can’t enforce their no return policy because it’s a breach of the consumer guarantees act (which also allows you to take back products after their warranty expires). I don’t know if there’s something similar in the states but I would suspect if you emailed steam and explained your problems with a game they would revoke your copy and give you a refund. I mean what are you going to do, the files that you download are useless without a steam account with that game on it.
Also, if anyone here has Crimson Skies and has had the garbled text error, you can get a patch here, http://timeslip.chorrol.com/
October 5th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Rock Paper has a good writeup on the MW2 delay:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/05/angrytank-time-codmw2-pc-delayed/
October 5th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
All delaying it does is cause poor sales on the PC because people buy it on consoles instead and it’s not good for the advertising for the PC version, though theres little to no advertising for this version. You’d think Infinity Ward would use PC graphics on their adverts and really push the PC because by advertising it you only increase the sales and awareness of the PC as a viable gaming platform. The Pirates are gonna download it if they have to wait weeks or months… this just increases lower sales and it’s sad. I mean if you advertise it for PC and say also on 360 and PS3 then the casuals will buy it on the console because they know its there. However a few people might go “oh the PC version looks better I’m getting it there”.
Just saddens me but in the end all this is pointless in life.
October 5th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
There’s actually still no official word yet on the rumored MW2 delay. For all we know it’s only in certain territories (like in the UK, where this “rumour” originated). Let’s wait until it’s confirmed before busting out the pitchforks, shall we?
October 5th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
@Lord_Uber_Dowzen
Unfortuneately in the US, there are no consumer guarantees about software, particularly games. Now, there are rumors that steam will give you refunds, but its in the”noblesse oblige” sort of arbitrary way. In their defense only rarely can you get game refunds of any kind in most if not all stores.
October 5th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
It looks like that business with PhysX getting disabled when a Radeon card is installed has been turned over. A patch was released to fix it:
http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22190
October 6th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Nvidia’s GT300 should launch in 2-3 months:
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15812/1/
October 6th, 2009 at 7:14 am
Thats good to know about Physx because you buy an Nividia card to use for Physx and then they screw you over by turning the function off out of spite to ATI… nice to know they patched it working again.
Left 4 Dead 2 turned out to be the most preordered game for Valve of all time. So I guess all them boycotters went and preordered it anyways. I understand the boycotters though because we all want Valve to keep their quality and releasing Left 4 Dead 2 less than a year later is odd and will make Left 4 Dead pointless so it’s a shame.
I just hope Valve merge both games together if you own them and bring the Left 4 Dead 2 functionality to the original. Then it’ll make it more of an expansion for the PC and it’ll feel better than having it a complete stand alone game.
I was mainly pissed off about Left 4 Dead 2 because I wanted Episode 3 and thought it was too soon for a second Left 4 Dead. Valve have learnt from this though I hope and will have Left 4 Dead games of the future as a two year cycle. People seem to accept a 2 year cycle but quickly get fedup with a yearly one.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:37 am
As I understand it, people at valve are pretty much free to work on what they want, much of the team loved Left 4 Dead and wanted to improve on the original, thus the sequel was born. Have no doubt Half Life 3/episode 3 are in development as well, Valve would be idiots not to have someone working on it, but Left 4Dead was such a big hit with it’s own developers that they really wanted to get on the second one right away.
Perhaps we will see more of a gap if there is another Left 4 Dead title coming, but I think they’ll give into the community and try to pump out EP3/Half Life 3/Portal 2 more quickly
October 6th, 2009 at 10:52 am
This is interesting:
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2009/10/02/news_2F00_batmanarkhamasylumtidbits.aspx
Apparently, they toyed with the idea of making Batman:Arkham Asylum a rhythm action game…
Combat went through three distinct revisions – the first one being a full rhythm action game! The second one was prototyped in 2D, which popped up whenever you got into a fight, and involved colored circles bashing into each other. This actually formed the basis of the final system.
Thank god they put that idea in the asylum! (OK that was pretty bad)
October 6th, 2009 at 10:53 am
This has nothing to do with PC gaming, but if any of you have ever watched the “Jetsons” as kids, then you must see this:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1921405
October 6th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
OMG, I just went to the L4D2 Boycott group. They really thought that they’d come across as rational while having a picture of a zombie giving you the finger?
October 6th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Well isn’t the cover of L4D2 giving you 2 fingers?
October 6th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Yeah, i know but Valve isn’t boycotting L4D2.
October 6th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
…is two fingers an obscene gesture now?
October 6th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
is in some european countries, Dan
Putting up two fingers was a gesture for showing off in the middle ages when crossbows were first invented, as one had to use their first two fingers to load it and pull the trigger. When an enemy was captured, then released, his first two fingers were cut off, and people would show them their fingers as a teasing or rude gesture. This practice carried over into modern day Europe, though it doesn’t mean as much as it once did, much like the finger in the US. It is still rude, but it isn’t as bad as it once was.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
@ Dan S, Duh!
I do have to say about that photo of the L4D2 Boycotters at valve “My eyes, the goggles do nothing!”
October 7th, 2009 at 1:50 am
“US court says software is owned, not licensed”
http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=10421
That’s pretty interesting.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:18 am
I still can’t believe Valve sent the boycotters over though like why? I’m all for expressing your feelings to Valve so hopefully they listen to the fans and that. However I dunno looking at the page and reading what they have to say, they just come off as morons to me. Like my personal feelings towards Left 4 Dead is I’m angry because I don’t want it to kill off the original that I paid for. My simple solution would be on Steam to merge the two games together if you own both of them, so it feels more like an addon. However the boycott page just takes it to the extreme and unreasonable.
I personally want Valve to be focusing on their next Engine because theres too much thats dated in Source. I’ve really noticed it compared to Cry Engine 2 and Unreal Engine 3 when mapping in them. Also Source doesn’t handle Dynamic lighting well and I hate the poor draw distance.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Look like MW2 delay is all but confirmed from the mouth of IW themselves. Bestbuy is now sending out notices that the game is delayed on PC. On the official forum, almost 200 pages dedicated to this, and still no official response. You would think IW would have come out and squashed this rumor immediately. It’s blown up over here at the boards:
http://www.infinityward.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=114522
Oh well. My only issue with a delay is that the SP campaign is surely to get spoiled from podcasts and gaming sites etc.. and that really does suck. It’s really amazing that IW wouldn’t come out and make a statement by now…
October 7th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
@ Just Be, I don’t think that L4D2 will kill L4D1. I consider that kinda like saying Half-Life 2 is made obsolete by Episode 1 and that episode 1 in turn is made obsolete by episode 2. Think about it. If Half-Life 2 was designed to be an online co-op experience would you never play Half-Life 2 again?
As far as I can tell, the two games have different campaigns and L4D2 has no features you couldn’t do without in L4D1. Plus you’ll always be able to play L4D1 with the hardcore boycotters.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Yeh but releasing L4D2 is like releasing L4D 1.5 where everything is improved so whats the point playing the old game again? Specially when people port the maps and stuff over. People will just not login to L4D again as everyones moved to the 2nd. HL2 is a great single player story experience and L4D doesn’t have any of that it’s just a bunch of repetitive maps everyones bored of now. What I’m pissed off about is spending all that money expecting Valve would release content like they did for TF2 and then they made that content into a second game…
Also something else that has pissed me off is Draon Age Day 1 DLC…. like wtf? They say they do DLC as extra content for what they didn’t have time to put in release. Well they clearly had time to put it in the release version and just trying to milk the players.
Bioware have gone to shit anyways since they made console games.
Kotor was a buggy mess of a port
Jade Empire sucked
Mass Effect sucked
All their DLC has been crap so far
Like go back to the days when your games were good.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Vavle haven’t as far as i’m aware said they won’t be doing more content for L4D1. And anyway I’d rather Valve put the new stuff in a new engine and have it be better than them putting it in the original and being average.
Isn’t Dragon Age Day 1 DLC the stone prisoner which everyone who buys dragon age new gets for free. I maybe wrong but that’s what I thought.
I’m currently replaying Kotor for the third time (with awesome widescreen patch) and am yet to encounter any bugs. Jade Empire might not be the greatest game ever but it has a really good plot. Mass Effect is my personal #4 game of all time, so don’t diss it.
Are you saying Dragon Age (which *everyone* has said is awesome) is not going to be a return to Bioware older games because they’re releasing DLC on the day it comes out. That’s just weird.
October 7th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
@Just Be - You’ve made it clear you don’t like Left 4 Dead anyway, so why do you care how many of them Valve releases or how many people are still playing Left 4 Dead 1?
As for the DLC, as Lord Uber Dowzen says, the Day 1 DLC for Dragon Age is intended as an incentive to buy the game new rather than used, so everyone who buys it at retail gets it for free. And even if it wasn’t free, what does it matter as long as the game that you get for your $50 is good?
And seriously - KOTOR and Mass Effect are great games. I wasn’t wild about Jade Empire myself, though I’m not prepared to say that it sucked, only that it didn’t appeal to me personally.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Actually I checked it up and there are 3 DLCs for Dragon Age. The stone Prisoner, The Blood armour (also for Mass Effect 2) and The Wardens Keep. The Wardens Keep is the only one you have to pay for and it’s only US$7.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:23 am
I care because I loved Valve in the past and just don’t want them to go in this direction. It’s the same reason why people boycott L4D2 because they care about what Valve are doing to their name. I personally have 4 Steam accounts each one I bought the complete Valve packs from the past and bought their latest games. Back in the day I bought Half-Life and then when they released Counter Strike it came with Half-Life. So I ended up buying Half-Life several times and spent lots of time and money with Valve games. They’re the reason I got hardcore in PC gaming and I personally feel very invested in the company and I don’t want them to go to shit like everyone else has done.
For example I loved Half-Life 2 it was an Epic but they’ve stained the Half-Life name with the two half arsed Episodes that noone cared about. I mean Episode two got ignored because of TF2 and Portal and I thought that was no way to treat Half-Life… package it up in this bundle and let it get over shadowed. They didn’t even put any effort into making great trailers for it like they did with TF2. To me it should always be that Epic FPS for the PC that everyone talks about that pushes new boundries.
Also Mass Effect and Kotor arn’t great games. Everyone goes on about Bioware like they’re amazing and yet everything since they moved to Consoles has sucked. KoToR was a horrible bug ridden port to PC with horrible controls and poor camera control and some of the worst combat I’ve come across. It had poor level design where you hit a load screen every 30 seconds and just felt so linear and so small. The side quests which were few and far between were all boring aswel. It just stank of an xbox dumbed down RPG ported to PC. Everyone hated it when it was released like some crappy console RPG and for some reason they look back with their rose tinted glasses because it’s Bioware and Star Wars. Frigging what good has come outta Star Wars since Episode 5? As soon as Ewoks came into Episode 6 it’s like thats Star Wars ruined.
Then as for Mass Effect it had no gameplay. Like all I did was run from point a to point b to talk to people. Where was the fun gameplay? The animations were stiff and again the level design was poor and low detail, nothing interesting in the levels. Just felt as pre generated as Halo level design with the copy and paste corridor design. Frigging elevators everywhere aswel which got on my nerves cause everyother Unreal Engine 3 game can instantly load up a next zone but they make me sit in an elevator for 30 seconds. The story was piss poor and predictable, very badly written, uninteresting and cheesy. I mean the whole sex scene for example was so pathetic and you were just cringing at how that was played out. If thats how relationships worked in real life then I’d rather shoot myself.
Again there were no side quests worth doing and every place you went to felt lifeless and dead. After you got past the citadel you had to go to 3 or 4 planets which were the same thing. You land and drive about with the worst controlling vehicle of all time around a linear path of the most unfun combat to get to a base. Once you are there you kill everything and go to the objective to where you get picked up. Maybe there was a cliche choice scene which like all Bioware games it’s like Black or White… no grey and no real choice.
If I’m playing Oblivion for example theres so many kool ways to do side quests thats how I feel how choice should be done. It’s really open ended on how you go about doing things because it’s like a sandbox, you’re only restricted by the games rules. I mean in a Bioware game I’d have to choose to kill or save but in a Bethesda game I could end up killing them both and taking all their stuff.
I swear though review sites over rate games because they’re in competition with other sites and they need the publishers to send them exclusives their way for traffic so they get paid. Same with mags if you slag off a game then they wont send you any info or exclusives. So they over rate every game with this stupid 7 - 10 scale of 7 being crap and 8 being ok and 9 being good and 10 being must play.
So all you get is people rating all these games a 9 or whatever because they feel like they have to. Grand Theft Auto 4 got 9s and 10s all round and it’s like did you play this game? So many problems I can list for that game I dunno where to start. Sure it was a good game but it isn’t a perfect 10 outta 10. The story going to shit after you move off the first island is just one of the big downers. How about there being no SDK for the PC version? How bad the combat is? Maybe how in San Andreas you could do all these sports and have fun but in GTA 4 if you saw a driving range or a skate park you couldn’t do anything with it?
$7 too much releasing DLC at the launch of a game aswel. However Bioware put me off Mass Effect and Dragon age with their latest trailers for them. THIS IS THE NEW SHITTTTTTT.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:19 am
I didn’t like Mass Effect or KOTOR games, I tried to play them but they just arent my thing. But you can’t just say they arent great games or that they are bad games, I didn’t like them and thats fine. Tons of people don’t like Behesda because of their blocky ass character movements and the fact that Oblivion looks like Fallout and so on.
October 8th, 2009 at 10:59 am
@Just Be
Okay, we get it, you don’t like games. Go take your medicine and sit in your rocking chair.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Just Be…I was sorta with you on the Valve stuff
But Mass Effect and KOTOR aren’t great games? Bioware isn’t a great dev. team?
I think you need to stop mixing those crazy pills with that loony drink.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I can’t wait for Dragon Age, and I don’t care about the DLC stuff. I mean, who cares?
I was one of the guys who was pretty upset about L4D2, and still think it is a suspect title to say the least… but I do not understand all this ruckus about the Dragon Age DLC.
If you buy the game now, or two years later, you will still gain access to the DLC… so WHO CARES?
Would you haters rather they try this, or ram in some intrusive DRM?
I really don’t understand the internet sometimes.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
@ Just Be,
1) You completely lost me when you spelt cool with a “k”.
2) Mass Effect is awesome because of the fun combat, the choices you have to make and the fact that it almost feels like you’re in a Battlestar Galactica episode.
3) I played Neverwinter Nights for the first time recently. I loved it but I thought the level design etc was really kinda dull and repetitive especially compared to Kotor and Mass Effect.
4) So what you’re saying is Valve should have made two really crap games to bundle with Episode 2 so that is looked much better compared to them? I’d just like to reinforce this, you’re complaining that they gave you three fantastic games for the cost of one full priced games (5 if you include Episode 1 and Half-Life 2).
5) Just out of interest, why have you got 4 steam accounts?
6) Actually, what you were saying about Mass Effect being go from point A to point B and talk to someone and then go kill some things was pretty much the problem I had with Oblivion. I loved that game, but I thought that there weren’t enough ways to win the quests.
7) Finally, game jounalists do not give games good scores so that developers keep on sending them games. If that was the case then every single game that came out would get a high score which is just not true.
Done. I call it the anti-rant.