Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The PC master race tastes dirt again

(Yeah, that's two Arkham Knight-related posts today, but that's what everyone else is talking about anyway, so why not?)

There are few gaming communities more snobby and condescendent than the followers of the almighty PC that can do no wrong (such as there being more games on Steam than any console - don't you DARE mock the exceptional quality control they have, God Newell is perfect!). Now I've mentioned before that they do have some valid points, such as modding, skipping neverending intros (I've specifically brought up the Arkham series before), and so on. But the platform has its issues, and sticking your head into the ground and acting like they don't exist isn't going to make them go away.

Consoles' biggest selling point, and the one that allows them to thrive (defying all logic, members of the Church of the Personal Computer would say), is that no knowledge of hardware is required. Here's your box, now play some games. Of course it comes at the cost of the raw performance a high-end gaming PC can have, but them's the breaks. If you're happy with what your PS4 or Xbox One gets you, and you don't want to bother learning the finer points of PC hardware and just want to play some games, well there you go.

On the developers' side, consoles are also a godsend. You just need to make your game work on two different boxes (three if your game gets a Wii U release, one if you're a first- or second-party developer), and with that you can reach millions and millions of people. PCs are more of a mess, you need to make your game work properly with an astronomical number of different configurations, and every one will respond differently to your game. You need to add many, many, MANY different quality settings to make sure both midrange PCs can run your game at all, and high-end ones can shoot for that holy grail of photorealism. And I can only imagine how much of a PITA it is. No wonder many developers make their games for consoles first and foremost, and PC's almost an afterthought.

Enter Arkham Knight. Now there have been a few calamitous PC launches for games that ran just fine on consoles over the last few years, but this is probably the most high-profile one. Problems are especially noticeable for AMD GPU users, since the Arkham series are made mostly with Nvidia cards in mind. But everyone seems to be having issues regardless, with the worst-case scenario of the game not working properly at the lowest settings with a recent, state-of-the-art graphics card actually coming true.

But the problem is that it seems like it could've been easily avoided. Arkham Origins also had a perilous PC launch, and for whatever inane reason WB decided to entrust Arkham Knight's PC porting process to the exact same company that did AO's. I mean, what were they thinking? Even Sega knew better than to give Big Red Button the mandate of making Fire and Ice.

This extraordinarily bad decision has the same effect as the crumpled masses of broken bones Batman tends to leave behind to gamers who were waiting for this. Just how anticipated was this game? Well, Arkham Origins was NOT made by Rocksteady, and while I found it a pretty good game (if only too similar to Arkham City, and not quite as good either), most people weren't so kind in their assessment. So Rocksteady, the company that made the first two entries in the series such smash hits, returned for one last go. To put it in perspective, it's as if Retro returned to make Metroid Prime 4 after the affront that was Other M (although by not even the most severe standards could AO even come close to being considered as bad as Other M, they're both perceived as obvious weak points in their respective series). And then release comes... and the game doesn't work. Yeah, I'd be pissed too.

But the outraged reaction from PC worshippers has been absolutely hilarious. This saga exposes every last item in the (admittedly somewhat short) list of weaknesses PC has compared to consoles, and they just can't fathom that their platform of choice is anything less than perfect. There's enough salt in there to kill a billion Meat Boys, and the tears are just so delicious.

Mmmm, yummy.

26 comments:

  1. Well as a PC gamer i've been living under a rock for many years playing strategy games and I wonder why people whine about new games when they could just wait

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  2. The PC may have its elitists, but they don't seem perceptibly worse than console elitists to me. Just keep in mind that the ones at fault for this travesty are the ones who did the porting and WB, not the gamers. PC gamers are justifiably angry at this, and not just the elitists.

    This makes me glad I play the Batman games on console, though. Anything first person is PC or bust because mouse-and-keyboard controls obsolete dual analog, but third-person action titles and the like are all console. Sure, you could hook up a gamepad to a PC and even use a TV as a monitor, but that seems like too much of a hassle unless ridiculous resolution means that much to you.

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    1. I'm well aware that the gamers don't deserve this. Hell, I'm angry too that they didn't seem to bother testing things too much (this is after a bajillion delays, too). It's just that some people aren't angry at those people because this is a shitty way to treat gamers, they're angry because the PC's supremacy is being challenged. Can you say misplaced priorities?

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    2. True enough, I hadn't seen those people.

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  3. On the subject, it seems like Batman: Arkham Knight has been pulled off of Steam by the publisher until they work out these issues.

    Off the subjext: Nintendo's critics are hypocrytes. Tamadotchi life comes out and doesn't allow same sex relationships, gets criticised. Fire Emblem Fates comes along, Nintendo announces same sex marriages will be possible in the game, gets criticised. WTF?

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    1. The same people who don't want gay marriage in FE and the peopel who did in Tamadotchi aren't the same people though...

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    2. Steam must've been going apeshit over all the refunds they had to give out.

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  4. Why would anybody want to play those games on a PC anyways?

    The only genre PC does better than consoles is first person shooters or any first person game.

    Every other genre you're better off playing on a console.

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    1. At best it depends on the game. Games like the Elder Scrolls you MUST play on a PC, because of unofficial patches and console commands to get around glitches if nothing else.

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    2. Well yeah but I'm mostly referring to how shitty aiming is with an analog stick. The only shooter I have played on a console where you can actually reliably aim at a target is Splatoon. It's still not as good as a keyboard and mouse but it's still a hell of a lot better than an analog stick.

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    3. Yeah. If Nintendo had kept with the times, motion controls could have potentially become standard in console shooters. Heck, I do know someone who owns both a Wii and an Xbox 360 who actually enjoys playing CoD on the former much more, but had to move on to the latter simply because of how deserted the servers were... He couldn't possibly have been the only one to have those preferences, Nintendo just didn't acknowledge the opportunity when they could.

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    4. I can't imagine trying to play a MOBA on a console.

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    5. It's really all down to what kind of game you're playing, there's no universal solution. Motion controls may have worked for shooters, but they sure as hell didn't work for Zelda.

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  5. I managed to get an astonishingly good deal on an Arkham Knight Steam Code, so I bought it day one. It crashed my computer twice simply by installing. I didn't even have to boot it up and it kicked my computer in the teeth.
    Can't really be mad, as I got it for £15 and I have other games to play, but still, that is really embarrassing for Rocksteady.

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  6. Baby steps, but we are very slowly moving forward as a species. VEEEEEEERY slowly: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/26/417717613/supreme-court-rules-all-states-must-allow-same-sex-marriages

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    1. Depends on your point of view, really. The actual ceremony of marriage itself is still an unnecessary luxury which proves that humanity can't let go of their old and useless traditions.
      But having their union officially recognized by the law is neat at the very least.

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    2. If I were any more of a masochist, I'd tune into Fox News just to see if they call it a worse tragedy than 9/11.

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    3. As I said, baby steps. Though it is funny to imagine Fox News whining about it...

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    4. I actually did go to Fox's website (in incognito mode, because I don't want someone to see that in my history among the porn) just to see the fireworks. Commenters are surprisingly split, but it makes sense since even conservatives have a large portion that support gay rights. The dissenters are REALLY dissenting, though, with the typical talk of hellfire and natural disasters and such.

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    5. This calls for a shot!...(drinks tears) Tastes like resistance to change and butt-hurt! JoshScorcher reference fits this scenario...

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    6. Also, with talk of hellfire, am I the only one that thinks of the song from Hunchback of Notre Dame? Fox News is as hypocritical as Frollo while being 1% less fun to hate...

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    7. I'm really in the "I don't gave two fucks" camp
      Okay they can get married, I mean couldn't they before go to a church that permits them and have a festival
      I guess it's symbolic but i'm really more apatehic about this

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    8. The symbolic thing is one step towards them being more accepted in society. And again, it is funny to imagine Fox News going on about how we are straying from the proper path or something...

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    9. Not really, I mean it's been legal for years, just not marriage cert. from the government (which is mostly for other legal stuff like in courts)

      Plus you don't know if the reaction of this by Christians (such as my self) will be really against it, it's only been a day so we can't be sure

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    10. Uh, no, it hasn't been legal for years. The certificate isn't just symbolic, and gay people couldn't get marriage benefits or anything. But perhaps most importantly, being allowed to get married means gay people are no longer being treated as second-class citizens in this particular area.

      We also know the reactions Christians would have, because they've been displaying it for years. Most Christians are fine with it, but particular subsets of bigoted people are calling it the end of the world. Those Christians will be looked upon as the hateful people they are by history.

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    11. Until yesterday, it was kind of like how it was technically legal for black people to vote after the Civil War, but it took until the 60's for them to actually be able to vote. Sadly, those Christians that whine are the ones that make headlines...

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