warreni

Nothing is a generational leap forward if you want to come at it from a PC perspective.  There are new major PC components every year. You could keep shopping things that are 1-2 years old or 3-5 years old, forever. 

 

1440p G-sync displays are from 2015.  Do you have one of those yet?

There are new components, but I'm not really drilling down to a level of detail that granular--I don't believe. Aren't we basically talking about the following three items? Faster processor, SSD, and 2xxx cards? That's not tech that is as new as 1 or 2 years old, is it?

Nope. I'm rockin' a GTX1060 at 1080p. Refresh rate? I have absolutely no idea.

I don't own RTX either (not yet), but 10xx cards can at least enable RTX now. Yeah, it runs terrible - but videos really won't do it justice entirely until you see it running. It needs to be seen, in person, running in a game to be believed; it looks amazing.

 

 

Fair enough. I didn't even know that was an option with my hardware.

There are two pretty good reasons to buy a PS5 and one really good one. 

 

The first reason is if you just really want to play the exclusives.  For some people, Demon's Souls alone is worth buying a PS5.  Exclusives are why I have a Switch and a PS4 but no XBOX.  I had mild interest in the XBOX early on before stuff like Forza started coming to PC, then I had zero reason to want one.  And then it comes down to whether whatever exclusives you want are worth the cost of the new system. 

 

I wouldn't have bought a PS5 at launch (or wouldn't have kept it at least, considering what they are selling for) if I had a Pro to use with my new TV but I didn't so it meant a couple of neat exclusives to play at launch plus a backlog of PS4 games that will look way better.  I basically upgraded my PS4.  And that is the second good reason to get one - you have a 4K tv but do not have a PS4 Pro.  

 

The best reason is that it is new and shiny.  When Smeagol sees the beautiful gold ring and craves it and  he strangles Deagol for it, that is how you should feel buying new tech.   Just instead of Smeagol and Deagol it is Warren and a stranger from Craigslist and presumably the police after they find a man strangled in front of a Denny's at one in the  morning.

Having a new tv has even made me start using it for its original intended purpose again.  I am currently watching The Grand Tour and then going to watch The Expanse, I have watched a very small amount of tv for years though so I am open to other suggestions of things I can find on Prime, Netflix or Hulu that are from the last decade or so.  I think Person of Interest is the only series I have watched from beginning to end that is even remotely recent.  

Well, I do have a PS4 Pro, so if I follow your logic, I wouldn't have much of a need to get a PS5 at the moment.

I do agree with folks who are saying MS has few to no exclusives of any value, but I think there's a reason for that beyond that they . . . just don't have any. Sure, Microsoft has been buying and bringing in-house a number of development studios in the last few years, but none of them have cranked out much in the way of amazing new titles yet. But I think that Microsoft's strategy revolves around the idea of getting people to buy Game Pass subs at this point more than trying to out-software Sony. And it could work.

I defy you to produce any evidence that I've ever left any corpses in front of a Denny's.

If you're watching The Grand Tour, I'm assuming you've seen all of old-school Top Gear. If not, you should go check that out.

 

None of which is to say anyone needs a next gen console (or a next gen GPU) right now.  Of course not.  It's the start of the cycle and everyone's still going to cater to last gen customers who make up the majority of the market.  But I keep hearing the same two ray tracing comments (no games / what's it even do) and think the new console generation sort of makes them moot.  With millions of new ray tracing capable machines, you're going to see a lot more ray tracing in games and more effective/creative use for it.

It's an interesting point, and I tend to agree that having a huge base of machines capable of utilizing it will make it more common, but IMO, it's still just ray-tracing, which, as I understand the matter, just basically means you make some slightly-fancier lighting in your games. That's hardly revolutionary in terms of graphics. It's why I come back to the idea of why you'd bother upgrading just for the sake of this. It's not like we're suddenly going to completely photorealistic images. This is. . . a tweak, at best. I'd argue (and I think I have) that what this next-generation really represents is a fairy modest set of enhancements to the current-gen technology, which means that calling it "next-gen" is frankly a bit overblown. 

I know this is the wrong forum for it, but, what the heck, if Neuro's posting his vag pix and we're getting pages of MysterD-style rants about bleeding-edge video-card tech that is so bleedingly-edgy that it bleeds actual blood that include actual rants by MysterD, there's got to be room for some OT stuff here. 

What's the argument for getting a "next-gen" console? I'm really not seeing it. I own a PS4 and an Xbone, which is probably one more console than I need at this point, but what is the real, palpable difference between one of these machines and its successor?

Here's how I see it:

• The new machines have fast SSDs. Okay. PCs have had them for ages, obviously, but the internal drives of the current consoles aren't THAT slow. Yes, I know YouTube is flooded with videos whose premise is "look, my new PS5 loaded a game before I got home and was even thinking about playing it, whereas my PS4 would actually make me wait two minutes after I decided to play a game to be ready," but do people really care about that sort of thing? 
• The new machines have fancier graphics. Yep, you can do the sort of ray-tracing and tomfoolery of the sort that you can do with newish Radeon and RTX cards in a PC. Most games still don't seem to make use of this technology, and honestly, how much is it going to enhance your gameplay experience when they do? 
• Haptic feedback? Folks seem to be orgasming over the new DualSense controller and saying silly things like, "you can feel it when raindrops are falling on your character (BJ Thomas)'s head." Current-gen controllers have haptic feedback or what the old-school crowd used to call "rumble." People used to turn it off because it drained controller batteries like everyone owned stock in Energizer. It's a largely annoying feature that primarily serves to tell the player, "Uh-oh, something serious is happening now." But mostly we don't need to be told that because we have senses other than touch to provide that information to us. 
• New games? Most of the new games that are coming out are cross-generation experiences, so that's no argument for selling your current system either. This isn't an accident. It would be dumb of Sony and Microsoft to stop supporting their massive current user base to cater only to the early-adopters. 

The new systems cost about as much as the current-gen consoles with only incremental changes in performance and quality, so I don't actually see a point to buying a new PS5 or Xbox Triple X. (It's a different conversation, but why can't Microsoft come up with a consistent and not earth-shatteringly stupid naming convention for its consoles--it's not that bloody difficult!) In my view, the PS4 is good for playing games that Sony isn't releasing on PCs (which used to be a lot) and the Xbone is good for playing stuff I'm too lazy to play sitting at a computer (which is getting to be more the older I get) and as a media center. 

There, that's my 2p. Prove me wrong (but I counted and it was definitely two). 

Got me a new vidya game at Walmart for $19.88.

 

 

So. . . that's great and all, but why is there a little girl crying on the cover of your game? Did you do something horrible to her or is this a social commentary on all of the orphans you'll be creating with your turn-based slaughter?

Why don't they come to their senses? 
They been out riding fences for too long now?

Oh, you know that they've got their reasons. 

I have so many mixed emotions right now.

I never imagined 45 could make my wildest dreams come true.

Can I talk about my fetish if it involves cheap games and pizza?

Only if it's this:

Who is the resident expert on televisions?  Need to buy my mom one during Black Friday.  Nothing amazing like the $1,000+ OLED or QLED or whatever, but a solid 50" or so 4K LED.  There was one from Walmart that was a brand I never heard of but I'm thinking something like LG or Samsung is worth the extra bucks.

 

Uh... also... Steam Holiday Sale will suck.

 

/keeping on topic

Yeah that was the brand I think was on sale yesterday for like $148.  I have no issues spending a bit more for a more notable brand.  There's a Vizio 50" 4K UHD LED Quantum whatever that means up now for $298.

That's funny. . . I was not going to provide you with any constructive or useful advice, but then you said the V-word. Vizio TVs are hot garbage. I'd avoid that at all costs.

How dare you slander Kameo for the xbox 360!

Look, dude, this is the wrong forum to be discussing your fetishes. 

I Since it's reveal, it's been collectively shit on

Look, dude, this is the wrong forum to be discussing your fetishes.

 

This news also explains why I've seen a lot lately on Twitch/Youtube the the 30 second ad of some girl opening up a pack of gum at the computer before she goes to play Avengers.

Look, dude, this is the wrong forum to be discussing your fetishes. 

I can't believe that the mesh of boring repetitive gameplay, microtransactions, spreading "exclusive" content across every platform, Mountain Dew variety and Dorito bag, and character models that look like the Dollar General equivalent of the MCU personalities somehow failed to capture everyone's wallets.
 

Honestly, I think folks could probably forgive everything except for the first two items and more particularly the first one. Unlike most people, I'm more of an SP guy than anything else, so when I got stuck in the campaign, I was done. But I read plenty of reviews where people said the endgame content was just replaying story missions with different parameters. I never really got to a point where I equipped new armor bits and gemgaws on more than two of the team members, but at that point in the game, they all felt a bit same-y in terms of the actual combat mechanics. My main criticism of the game, and this is pretty much entirely my fault for not paying attention, is that the gameplay was not "Spider-Man but with other Avengers in it too"; it was more like X-Men Legends II with much wonkier controls. 

And while I'm on the subject of upgrades and armor and crap like that. . . these systems are getting annoyingly complex. I guess you can ignore them to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how hard a game is, but I remember playing God of War I and II on the PS3 and you could basically upgrade Kratos's Chaos Blades to do more damage, et cetera, and boost his health and defense and in the new God of War game, he has three weapons (including his fancy arm-shield) plus his son's bow, ranged and melee trees for everything except the bow, skills associated with each weapon, gem slots for everything, three different kinds of armor, talismans, et cetera (all of which have items that have four levels of rarity), all of which affect Kratos's SIX different stats. It all feels a bit excessive. Maybe I'm just old, I don't know.  Grrr. 

May God have mercy on my soul... I'm playing AssCreed Origins and AssCreed Odyssey back to back.... And Jeff Bezos just dropped his AssCreed: Angry Norsepeople at my door
..
 

They're fun (Odyssey and Origins), but, yeah, be prepared to be stuck in that world for months to come. . .  (and Origins is better). 

RE: Yakuza. I keep thinking I might like these games, but I spent a number of hours in 0, got to the point where the main character meets a mysterious patron and the story just sort-of peters out and I was left running around doing random things because I had no idea what else to do. There are open worlds and then there are just worlds where there's a bunch of pointless sh*t to do that isn't enjoyable or meaningful, and this seems to fall squarely into the latter category. I get that maybe the story picks up later, but it does feel as though the game doesn't respect my time. I have 6 and both Kiwamis backlogged at this point, but I don't know whether I want to start any of them if they're all as disjointed as 0. 

Finally got back into God of War. Waiting on Miles Morales to turn up at my door and I'll probably start that as soon as I finish wreaking havoc in the world of Norse mythology. Spider-Man was way more fun that it had any right to be--sort of like how Jurnee Smollett is way more gorgeous than any one human has any right to be.

reminder: Activision-Blizzard.

 

Aclitivision Blizzard Made $1.2 Billion From Microtransactions In Just Three Months. 

 

representing 61.5% of their profits over that time period. 

So, this is your way of saying that it doesn't matter whether Biden or Trump is our next president, because ActiBlizz is running the table?

Interesting analysis.

But can it run Crysis (original) or Crysis Remastered?

At least as well as an XT-based PC-compatible, yes. 

You think your Commodore 64 is really neato

What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?

I am immune to your WeirdAling. 

Welcome back, IATCG. You piece of garbage.

 

Is a Commodore 64 just two Commodore 32's multiplied by themselves?

No, it's one of those VIC-20s squared. 

(or half of a Commodore 128.)

I remember pulling the CGA graphics card out of my PC XT and installing my first VGA card to drive a 14" monitor that I ordered from the cheapest random retailer through the computer trader catalog. I later learned how lucky I was to have just happened on one of the few VGA cards that worked in the XT I had. Oh and the whine from that monitor still haunts me.

I've spent the better part of the day building my kid a PC out of my spare parts housed in a super sweet classic case from 2006, and I've come to learn that people might consider this case retro? Kids today...

Check it out. She sure is beautiful coffee:

https://www.amazon.c...w/d/B000KMT3CO/

Hah! My Commodore 64 had superior graphics to your XT-based PC, sucka. 

Why would this trigger you?

 

This is what I like to refer to as "business casual."

My buddy was all excited to start playing Baldur's Gate III last night.  "$60 for an unfinished game lol" I said to him.   He then started the game up, texted me back, and said that it was so broken that he couldn't get past the intro cutscene. 

 

Yeah I don't pay $60 to be a Bethesda beta tester.  Divinity 2 had bugs that made many quests unfinishable and a few that even broke your save file during its first 1-2 years, until the definitive edition came out. 

No bugs for me so far. I only have a few hours under my belt.

Hmmmm...

 

If that's the case, then maybe Version 1.0 (which it due out by end of next year, since the game's still not complete right now) could be 150GB or so?

 

I dunno. [shrug]

Sure, that's possible, in which case I may have to free up some space on my HDD. It would actually make sense because we already know that the full campaign is not available at the moment, but 150Gb at "EA launch" isn't accurate.

 

Baldur's Gate III's HDD space requirements has been changed to now require 150GB of HDD space:

https://www.pcgamesn...-3/storage-size

 

This is fake news. I just finished downloading it. Steam reserved 83 Gb of space but the download was actually 59.