The real point of this thread is.. I think id should do a reboot/sequel to Q3 to take advantage of modern hardware. At least something with the same physics and balance of weaponry. Yeah, I know there was Quake 4, but that was a step BACKWARDS in terms of multiplayer. Imagine the old maps and mods with modern graphics. Or maybe not the same maps, but the same system at least. We'd have a HUGE mapping/modding community again. Defrag, Freeze Tag, Insta, etc.. You don't see that kind of flexibility in gaming anymore.

The communities.. well there isn't much of one anymore. It used to be so cozy chillin' in CTF1 with familiar faces. Nowdays, you can barely choose what server you want because of the matchmaker. You might as well play against bots in modern games because that's as connected as you are with your peers. Quake Live DID lay heavier emphasis on community, but it barely improved on anything else and it lacked the flexibility.

Imagine a commercial for the new Q3; it would be like any of the other thousands of epic frag movies and it would end with a long-distance midair rox shot. I think it would have a ton of appeal to modern gamers. It just needs the right exposure.

The whole reason I thought of this thread is because I noticed how COD has almost the exact same formula in each of its entries. Sure, there's not much improvement, but hey; it's the same proven formula. If you don't like the pace of MW3, got back to MW2.. or MW1.. or WAW.. or BO.. or COD2. It's the same thing, just tweaked a bit with slightly different graphics. If Q3's formula was proven successful, why ditch it? The physics and balance of weaponry was impeccable. Just navigating effectively (strafing) was a art of its own.

I still hold the opinion that the best multiplayer game ever made was Q3.

1. FF7. It's been a long ass time since I played it, but it's still roughly engraved into my mind. Amazing game.

2. Halo. Not the ship intro, but the outdoor intro. It's gotten a little old now, but it was breathtaking at first.

3. GTA3. When I first saw it on PS2 I was astonished at the graphics and that techno music just pulls you in and sets that first impression.

No doubt, the CELL is an interesting architecture, but let's see those theories in practice. There's two sides of the coin to consider: hardware potential and ease of development under the platform. It seems that some developers have stressed the difficulty of understanding the CELL, which may explain why the PS3 ports tend to be inferior. I'm sure that under the right conditions, the CELL has amazing potential, but the window for being "under the right condition" is just too small. It's important that developers not have such a difficult time developing under a platform or else you'll end up with bad ports and a smaller library of games in comparison to the competition.

If Sony keeps the CELL, they better focus more on the software development side of things this time around. Sometimes the more complex platform can drag you down.

Edit: It's important that 3RD PARTY devs can easily utilize the platform. Of course 1st party devs will create great looking smooth games.

That actually makes ALOT of sense... the unzipping part. Well it makes sense why the games are so huge yet the PC counterparts are usually under 10gb. It still doesn't makes since WHY they use such an inefficient codec. Use x264 or something for video and OGG or FLAC for audio. For textures, PNG I guess. I mean c'mon, we've had these lossless formats for years now on PC. To take up 40gb of space is ridiculous.

I guess they're taking the same path as the original DVD format did. You could fill the whole 4.7gb disk to the brim with a 2 hour movie, yet rip an Xvid copy with equivalent quality @ only 700mb, small enough to fill a CD.

My guess is that the devs are using the excess of space as a crutch because forcing the system to decode compressed files will result in unacceptable performance? They obviously don't mind the increase of bandwidth as opposed to an increase in CPU utilization. It's like running a 1080p uncompressed movie vs. a highly compressed x264 1080p movie. The uncompressed footage will be handicapped by the hard drive's bandwidth while the x264 footage will heavily utilized the CPU instead.

I won't linger on too long about this... Whatever reason they chose to use uncompressed files, I'm sure it was for a good reason, but you'd think that today's CPU architectures would have erradicated any practical advantages of uncompressed files vs. lossless compressed files. Even audiophiles know better than to use the WAV format. They use FLAC.

I agree to an extent on both sides. Games that are initially released on console sometimes have performance issues; GTA4 being one of the best examples of this. At the same time, if you have a powerful enough system, you can sometimes overcome a badly-coded port. Still, you shouldn't need a $400 CPU for smooth gameplay.

I own an Xbox 360 but I havn't touched it ever since I upgraded my PC. As someone pointed out earlier, you can install games via an online marketplace.. though that's not really a valid advantage IMO since the same can be done on consoles.

The graphics and mods are probably the biggest advantages. With graphics, you get what you pay for.. If you're willing to dish out on a heftier GPU, you'll be able to far surpass the graphics of console games. The Mods are really the deal-breaker because they add immensly to the replay value, which is the most important factor of any game IMO. There's some games that have survived soley on their mod community, take Quake 3 for instance, which is an FPS that had a mod called "defrag," a mode dedicated to the exploitation of the game's physics. You wouldn't believe how dedicated the community was, creating thousands of maps and videos for that mod alone..

Now I'm not saying that all PC games will reach that pinnacle of replay value, but there's always the potential for it. Left for Dead 2 has done quite nicely in this area aswell. I can play a new campaign every day and the other players are smart enough to know how to manually download it and join the server. Half-life Deathmatch, same story.

You'll never see that for console systems. Instead you'll see "stimulus packages" that you have to pay for. I guess it balances out really. If you play on console, you pay for the extra content. You play on PC and you pay for the hardware.

I will agree that many console games run smooooth as a mug.. but they lack in visuals. Take Black Ops on Xbox 360 for instance. I don't think it ever dipped under 60fps, but the textures looked equivalent to PS2 textures. Good lighting and effects, but horrible textures underneath.

Now the multiplayer community is quite an imporant factor to consider. In my experience, multiplayer prevails in quantity on consoles. It's much easier to jump into the action on console when you're looking for a match. On PC, the number of players is often much smaller... but the experience is of a higher quality. You don't play along 10 year olds AS MUCH as you do on consoles. Still, it's nice to have such a huge player base like you do on consoles.

At the end of the day, I still prefer PC for replay value and the better sense of community that lacks in console gaming.

Graphics aren't really a straight "advantage" per se because you get what you pay for. "Potential for improved graphics" is more of the advantage. Can you build a $200 computer that looks as good and smooth as an Xbox 360 on all games? Probably not. Consoles are superior in value but PC is superior in the experience. I can't stress that enough.. It's like Xbox 360 vs. PS3... In practice, they're roughly the same except Blu-Ray.. BUT YOU PAYED FOR THE BLU-RAY!

Yeah, I always felt that way with most movie-games with the exception of Spiderman. Now that I think about it, they probably did a good job on it because it was based on the comic (though I've never read the comic). I remember when I first played the demo on the original xbox at Circuit City, I was astonished by the graphics and gameplay. Afterwards, I ended up playing both the first and second games in the series, but never bothered with the third as it didn't seem to fit the original style anymore, rather it just tried to immitate the movie. I imagine a spiderman game with the realism of GTA4 would be a nice successor for the series.

Looks like a good deal. I wasn't too crazy about quad cores, but it's never a bad idea for future-proofing, I suppose. The benches look nice, too, along with the clock speed. Lots of headroom.

I've decided to start a new budget gaming PC project. Since I don't really need a quad core (most games aren't optimized for it anyway and they run at lower speeds and higher prices), I've figured I would go for one of AMD's black edition CPUs. I'm not very familiar with Intel's CPUs (the last one I had was a 700mhz Celeron) and I've always used AMD, but I've noticed that the Intels tend to have quite good performance even at lower clocks according to benchmarks... I guess nowadays neither the number of cores nor the clock speed clearly indicate performance...

I've always held back on the CPU in the past, but evidently, it causes a bottleneck.

My current 2.2ghz Athlon X2 +4800 is a bit laggy in allot of games @ 1080p and the mobo that it sits on is AM2, so it's not very upgradable and offers no overclockability. I believe that it's the 2.2ghz holding back my framerates (especially in GTA4, I get like 10fps), as my 9800GT should be able to handle it.

So now I'm starting from scratch. I'll throw in my old 9800GT to save a few bucks.

Basically, I'd just like input on what type of CPU to get for no more than... $150, I suppose. That will indicate which mobo I'll get.

Well if it's linksys now and it wasn't before, it means the router was reset. You no longer have any security settings and anyone can crawl into your network. Just go to 192.168.1.1, type admin for password and go into security settings.

By the looks of of it, that file you mentioned was supposed to run at the startup, but it wan't found... If it's a virus, that's a good thing.Just go to MSCONFIG, then startup. Uncheck everything. Then go to services, make sure "hide windows services" is checked, then uncheck everything above. See how it turns out. If you want those little tray icons to come up at boot-time, then check it in the startup tab. I doubt you have to reformat unless it's really corrupted your system files.