Like most people I have a PC and console. Both do their thing well. I only game on the PC for Eve Online, and the Total War series. No console has anything even close to either game. But PC gaming has always been hit and miss- and the simplicity of slapping a disk into a machine meant just for it ultimately wins my trust. Simply- I've bought too many games for PC that won't work, or mess up something else up even if my machine is way over the requirements. With consoles, it's plug and play. If I were more of a computer guy, I might be able to eventually fix any issue with a PC game, but it's much easier to slap a disk in a dedicated console.
For the vast majority of games the ease of consoles wins out for me. But consoles just have never had the horsepower to run true strategy games like Total War, true sims like combat flight sims, or be able to run the really deep games.
PC's still also dominate the MMO market, which can't be understated. Social gaming is increasingly the trend and PC's have a jump on consoles for them.
@CharlesBurns @TheLamaKnows Yes, I own both. But since you already admit to not having played both, by all means feel free to correct those that have....what could make more sense?
Let's see, rubber band physics, limited number of events and vehicles, horrible obsession with being trendy..........yeah, so very different than Grid. Only someone still years from getting their real driver's license thinks there is much difference in how the games play. Bouncing off guardrails with no damage, going from dead last to first in 500 feet because of the rubber band....pick any title of any arcade race game and insert it instead of Grid if it bothers you. Won't change the fact that it's just another arcadey racer aimed at the zit-cream crowd over fans of actual cars and realistic racing. There's nothing wrong with arcade racers other than repetition, but Forza just implies something other than cartoony racing. Like if the next CoD only had target ranges for shooting and instead became a gardening sim. People would have the same complaint- it's just not what that game title 'is'.
Horizon is an okay time killer, just like all arcade racers. I don't dislike Horizon per se. But as a fan of Forza, it's just a waste of the title Forza. It's a matter of truth in advertising I guess.
I was protecting UN food convoys in Somalia in 1993. Went to Kosovo in 1998 to deal with the ethnic cleansing there. Handed out humanitarian rations between mortar attacks, how about you?
Don't assume everyone here is 12 and living in mom's basement. I have time for games and commenting on them because I'm a disabled vet. That's why topics like violence and modern military shooters interest me. This is also why I'm largely dismissive of gamers- I've little interest in the opinions of people wholly removed from that which they spout on about. I'm equally dismissive of politicos trying to blame games for violence for the exact same reason. The shoe fits equally well on both feet.
Our society is so utterly safe and removed from even the slightest threat that we both obsess over simulating those threats, then in the next breath invent a real danger from being exposed to the simulation. It strikes me just how worthless and pathetic little johnny must be if he's damaged by simulations of what little haaji sees every day for real. People exposed to actual hardship tend to seek only to escape from it. I doubt you'd find much interest in a 'starvation simulator' in Ethiopia. But in the west, you can bet there would be an audience.
I was protecting UN food convoys in Somalia in 1993. Went to Kosovo in 1998 to deal with the ethnic cleansing there. Handed out humanitarian rations between mortar attacks, how about you?
Don't assume everyone here is 12 and living in mom's basement. I have time for games and commenting on them because I'm a disabled vet. That's why topics like violence and modern military shooters interest me. This is also why I'm largely dismissive of gamers- I've little interest in the opinions of people wholly removed from that which they spout on about. I'm equally dismissive of politicos trying to blame games for violence for the exact same reason. The shoe fits equally well on both feet.
Our society is so utterly safe and removed from even the slightest threat that we both obsess over simulating those threats, then in the next breath invent a real danger from being exposed to the simulation. It strikes me just how worthless and pathetic little johnny must be if he's damaged by simulations of what little haaji sees every day for real. People exposed to actual hardship tend to seek only to escape from it. I doubt you'd find much interest in a 'starvation simulator' in Ethiopia. But in the west, you can bet there would be an audience.
@kartelas Well yes, I was guarding UN food convoys in Somalia in 1993. I was deployed to Kosovo in 1998 to put a stop to the mass rape and to protect UN inspectors uncovering mass graves. I've handed out humanitarian rations between mortar attacks, how about you?
Not everyone that posts here is 12 and in their mothers basement. I have so much time for games because I'm a disabled US Army vet. That's why topics on violence, military shooters, and the like interest me. Because while the masses of gamers like to squawk about such topics, by and large they are wholly removed from such topics in real life.
I think Spec Ops the Line illustrates my view on gamers and their 'issues' pretty well. If that's a fairly dismal view then so be it. The truth always hurts someone.
For the vast majority of human existence there hasn't been fictionalized, 'safe' exposure to death, disease, and violence. It was REAL. It's only in wealthy, stable countries with time and safety enough to play video games at all, that has the sheer blind arrogance to create a crisis out of fiction. To me, this whole topic is just rich people (rich enough for say, food, electricity, gaming devices, and no roaming death squads at the door) inventing problems in the face of luxury.
Given a distinct lack of starvation, poverty, and widespread death- we can only obsess over PRETENDING to experience it. Most people would be happy to not have to visit the third world or mistakenly shoot civilians. But given luxury and freedom from that world, the most popular forms of entertainment obsess over exactly that.
The day I care about the impact of fiction on people, while ignoring that the reality that fiction is portraying- will never come. Little Johnny in the burbs that can't handle his CoD is a sad distraction to feign concern for, so we can ignore all the Little Haaji's out there actually living in poverty, starvation and dodging death squads. It's always about us, the impact of pretending to live, in our living rooms, like real people do everyday- still about us.
Just waiting for the comments blaming all those real people in the third world for being violent to begin with, which is why our games turned out violent. We'll find a way to pass the buck even further down the line. We're so good at it.
@loanstar744 @TheLamaKnows Thanks. I used to actually race MX/SX and it always stood out to me the total lack of good MX games. Given the huge popularity of supercross, it's weird that we've never really seen an MX game with all the licensing and product placement you see in pretty much every other type of sports game.
Even pretty niche forms of racing get simulation level games, NASCAR, F1, Outlaws, heck- there is not one but TWO games for Superbike racing series- far more niche than motocross. Yet no one even makes the arcade style MX games like ATV versus, much less realistic ones. Just seems odd that so many very niche sports see hyper-realistic games while something so popular as MX was completely abandoned just as MX/SX really took off.
It's a guilty pleasure. I love the overall game, it's a blast and the variations on demo derby keep it fresh. But it's most certainly an arcade game, with almost nothing to speak of for realism. There are only a few cars in the game, with virtually no discernible difference between them on the track. They all feel pretty much the same.
Where this game lost me was in it's foregoing any semblance of realism with rubber-band racing physics and the dreaded boost button. Boost buttons belong on kid's games. They are the final nail in the coffin for my decision to return the rental rather than buy.
Quite a bit of fun but not terribly engaging. The stunt competitions and block breaking games are my least favorite, arcade physics makes precision driving impossible. The simple racing parts are great, but become highly repetitive.
It seems to be about on par with the arcade style MX games like the MX vs ATV series.
I think the Obama Administration needs to fund a $25mil study to determine whether agricultural simulators lead to increased incidents of children becoming farmers.
In all sports games, the only mode that I care much about is Career, as I enjoy building up a player and even enjoy NOT being awesome right away. This is the one mode that hasn't received an update since the last game play update. For all EA games especially, it's an annual cash grab and they put as absolutely little into each game as humanly possible. There is no sense of pride in the work done at EA anymore.
This is why I still play NHL 11- too much invested in that game to start over for absolutely nothing. Roster updates? Doesn't matter with CPU trading anyway. The gameplay in Madden, NHL, Tiger Woods, (again, pretty much anything EA makes) hasn't altered in a decade. All they can be bothered to do is crap out some pointless niche minigame mode that will appeal to all of a dozen people.
People bash CoD for being more of the same every year, but at least it's nearly perfect for what it does. All the EA titles have been slipping, getting worse each year. Madden is so buggy that it's virtually broken in my opinion, and I simply quit the series at NFL 11.
Trading card games, obscure stars in modern teams, blah blah blah-- it's all smoke and mirrors to hide from the fact that most sports games come out each year with about a month worth of work done to them, and still sell millions of copies at full retail price.
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