General gaming news and discussion

[wjfox]

YouTube commenters were pointing out the frame-rate drop around the 0:34 mark. Looks like it needs optimising.

[erowind]

2001 was an amazing year in gaming. The only loss is that of the dreamcast beginning it’s slow removal from the market.

I’m imagining what games I would miss the most if I were trapped in that year. Mario Sunshine, Half Life 2, Twilight Princess and Halo 2 are big ones.

[wjfox]

I really want this game.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Unhappy GTA fans are review-bombing GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition on Metacritic.

At the time of writing, the trilogy has 2000+ user reviews on the aggregate site. Of the 2054 reviews recorded by PC users on Metacritic, the combined score is a miserable 0.5. It peaks at 1.0 for PS5 players, but otherwise, most other platforms boast a similarly low score.

Rockstar found new, revolutionary, and unprecedented ways to f*ck up what was perhaps THE single most blatant, gift-wrapped success in video game history.
The most embarrassing release since Cyberpunk 2077.

MOTHER OF GOD.

[Yuli Ban]

If everything goes well, I should finally be upgrading my PC to something capable of actually playing video games.

In all seriousness, I'm joining the Master Race soon. i7-12700K processor, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, with an Oculus Quest 2.

Sad thing is, the very first games I'm probably going to play are 2003-era titles like SimCity 4, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Command and Conquer: Generals before I load up anything more demanding. My crappy $650 2013 PC could already crush these games, so I'll be lighting a campfire with an atom bomb.

I especially want to experience Elite: Dangerous and Mirror's Edge in VR.

[wjfox]

If everything goes well, I should finally be upgrading my PC to something capable of actually playing video games.

In all seriousness, I'm joining the Master Race soon. i7 processor, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, with an Oculus Quest 2.

Nice. I have an i7 with RTX 2080. The GPU you're getting is almost 20% more powerful. I'd love to try VR someday.

Sad thing is, the very first games I'm probably going to play are 2003-era titles like SimCity 4, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Command and Conquer: Generals before I load up anything more demanding. My crappy $650 2013 PC could already crush these games, so I'll be lighting a campfire with an atom bomb.

I think you'll enjoy Cities: Skylines more than Sim City 4.

I especially want to experience Elite: Dangerous

I had several years of incredible adventures in that game. The sights, sounds, and overall atmosphere... truly engrossing. It has such an incredible sense of scale, realism, and freedom. Literally an entire 1:1 scale galaxy to explore, and intense combat/trading/missions within the small bubble of human-inhabited systems. A lot of mystery too, as you discover ancient relics, abandoned shipwrecks, alien sites, and whatnot.

Easily the best game I ever played, and I packed 1,500+ hours into it, gradually upgrading to bigger and more capable ships.

Unfortunately, my interest waned greatly in 2019, and I haven't played it since. Instead of improving the exploration side (by far the most exciting aspect IMO), the developers decided to focus on stuff that didn't interest me. For example, they added a mediocre FPS shooter for surface missions. The game engine is capable of such beautiful things, I don't think they realise its potential. I wanted them to add new planetary environments, geological features, rare astronomical phenomena, and so on... to experience more of that feeling of "being in space". But the expansion packs really went downhill, and in the end, I felt I'd experienced all there was to see and do in the game.

But still, definitely worth checking out if you're a first-time player.

Anyway, let me know if/when you're on Steam, and perhaps we can play some games online!

[Yuli Ban]

Aye, I considered a 2070 at first, but figured I'd have no trouble with any title or peripheral with a 3070.

I've been obsessed with trying VR for the sunny side of a decade, as is probably evident from the previous forum. I remember distinctly coming within one single click of buying a Rift devkit 2 back in the summer of 2014 and just barely chose against it. I had mobile VR for a while, but that wasn't as exciting.

I specifically got 32GB of RAM for two games specifically: City: Skylines and Microsoft Flight Simulator. And maybe one other. Very RAM-heavy games. Wasn't that much more expensive than 16GB. I simply have nostalgia for SimCity 4. I've been playing that one since 2004. Skylines looks like a true successor, at least in the details that I liked about it.

And if it's ever feasible, we absolutely could meet up in E:D some day.

The early days of this are mostly going to be spent catching up on other titles I missed, emulation of titles I physically own on old consoles, and modding. Lots of modding. I speak no hyperbole when I say it was mods that enticed me to get a new PC. So many games I had on consoles that I looked towards with envy at the PC versions because of mods.

[Yuli Ban]

[wjfox]

Forza Horizons 5 looks insanely gorgeous.

We're really near photo-realism for some of these latest games...

[Yuli Ban]

Forza Horizons 5 looks insanely gorgeous.

We're really near photo-realism for some of these latest games...

This could be what the Metaverse looks like ten years from now, especially if it's not a Facebook-curated verse.

[Yuli Ban]

Aye, I considered a 2070 at first, but figured I'd have no trouble with any title or peripheral with a 3070.

I've been obsessed with trying VR for the sunny side of a decade, as is probably evident from the previous forum. I remember distinctly coming within one single click of buying a Rift devkit 2 back in the summer of 2014 and just barely chose against it. I had mobile VR for a while, but that wasn't as exciting.

I specifically got 32GB of RAM for two games specifically: City: Skylines and Microsoft Flight Simulator. And maybe one other. Very RAM-heavy games. Wasn't that much more expensive than 16GB. I simply have nostalgia for SimCity 4. I've been playing that one since 2004. Skylines looks like a true successor, at least in the details that I liked about it.

And if it's ever feasible, we absolutely could meet up in E:D some day.

The early days of this are mostly going to be spent catching up on other titles I missed, emulation of titles I physically own on old consoles, and modding. Lots of modding. I speak no hyperbole when I say it was mods that enticed me to get a new PC. So many games I had on consoles that I looked towards with envy at the PC versions because of mods.

Also wanna say that with a machine this powerful, it'll be a massive leap above what I've been used to.

Little history biscuit of my life: my first two PCs were equivalent, a Dell Dimension 2400 that dates back to 2002 or 2003. I got the first in 2004 and the second in 2005.
512MB of RAM, 40GB HDD, Windows XP, something like 400 MHz processor, just pathetic by modern standards but nice for its time. I don't even think it had a GPU, just integrated graphics. But I had to make that second one last me until 2013. And oof, it was barely able to chug along, even with games from 2003. The first Call of Duty had an absolutely pathetic framerate, and I STILL remember fiddling so often with the settings for Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 to try in vain to make water appear. It just wasn't powerful enough to render water.

Then in 2013 I got this current computer, a $600 HP Pavilion 500, which was obviously better. 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1.5TB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 7560D GPU, fairly modest but it could mostly crush the games I owned. Some slowdowns even on decade-old games when there was a LOT to be rendered on screen, but nothing unplayable. The way I see it, it'd have been the equivalent of a high-end gaming PC circa 2003. It could run some games like GTA 5 respectably. Low detail, low framerate, but not at 10 fps. Using SimCity 4 as a reference, it can run it swimmingly well, but in highly developed cities I've made, the frames do drop tremendously, especially when scrolling. It was like jumping from a Dreamcast to a PS2.5. a PlayStation 2.5 with loads of RAM, mind you. Maybe more like an Xbox 360 in terms of GPU capability, but I'm going to underball it for effect here.

Point is, for their respective times, my first real PC was low-to-lower-mid-range, and my second was lower-end still. Like I said, the Dimension didn't even have a GPU, so it was even weaker by modern standards; the Pavilion having a dedicated GPU made it seem better in comparison than it actually was.

The one I've bought just recently is so ridiculously far ahead of them that it's like jumping from a PS2.5 to a PS5.5. The 3070, I hear, is about 50% more powerful than a PS5. Not to mention that the GPU alone has as much RAM as the Pavilion itself did, and if you combine the GPU with the standard operating RAM, that's 40GB of it, the same amount I had as hard drive space on my first computer had as a whole. Moore's Law, I kiss you, even in your degenerated state.

If I'm not running SimCity 4 at 200fps even when committing screen whiplash in a heavily modded megacity, I'm shipping it back (I mean not seriously, but still).

I shouldn't need to upgrade again for at least another 8 years, by which time I hope my next PC is a VR headset with a BCI. Like a Varjo XR-3 with a Kernel Flux.
Though when the 40-XX line inevitably releases, I might sell my GPU and get that one. Really going to depend on the pricing and the state of the chip shortage.

[wjfox]

Also wanna say that with a machine this powerful, it'll be a massive leap above what I've been used to.

Must admit, I'm quite jealous.

And wow... I just read your earlier post again. I only focused on the GPU, but having checked the 12700K, that's a beast of a CPU as well.

These are the PassMark stats (mine vs yours):

Intel Core i7-9700K = 14,562
Intel Core i7-12700K = 29,688

In other words, more than double the processing power. And 12 cores vs 8 cores for mine.

Well then, enjoy. And if your budget can stretch, don't skimp on the other aspects, e.g. decent SSD (I recommend at least 1TB), a separate HDD with plenty of storage (at least 4TB), efficient cooling, a good motherboard, nice case, ergonomic keyboard, and a "professional" gaming mouse.

Here's the mouse pad I use btw –

[Ozzie guy]

Skyrim has been rereleased again! how many times has it been released now XD.

The anniversary edition adds a lot of content kind of like multiple DLCS. People are critical of the fact that the upgrade is basically just getting 25 or so mods.

[Yuli Ban]

Must admit, I'm quite jealous.

And wow... I just read your earlier post again. I only focused on the GPU, but having checked the 12700K, that's a beast of a CPU as well.

These are the PassMark stats (mine vs yours):

Intel Core i7-9700K = 14,562
Intel Core i7-12700K = 29,688

In other words, more than double the processing power. And 12 cores vs 8 cores for mine.

Well then, enjoy. And if your budget can stretch, don't skimp on the other aspects, e.g. decent SSD (I recommend at least 1TB), a separate HDD with plenty of storage (at least 4TB), efficient cooling, a good motherboard, nice case, ergonomic keyboard, and a "professional" gaming mouse.

Here's the mouse pad I use btw –

Whoops, there was a typo. The processor I have is a i7-12700KF, which lacks an integrated GPU. Which, obviously, means absolutely nothing if I have an actual GPU. In fact, having an iGPU and a GPU together could be a pain if older games I play try defaulting to the iGPU, hence why I went with the KF.

Anyway, I actually have everything you mentioned, down to those exact same numbers, though I do intend on getting some external storage. Anything to make this one last without getting as demoralized.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

Who remembers Mirror's Edge or its reboot, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst?
I loved both games, even if they both had some sizable flaws. But what Catalyst made me want more than anything was an open-world game set in a near-future cityscape. You know, like Cyberpunk 2077, but not broken.
Hey, lookie here, it's a mod that gets rid of the death plain and lets you run around at street level.


Now wait a second, why is street level so detailed? You almost literally never go there, and yet it's fully playable. Did the devs intend on the open world being even bigger at some point? Either way, seeing this in action is at least a quarter of a dream come true. Perfect for some good futuristic role-playing and imagination.
Maybe in the future, some developer will be less cautious and fully realize this kind of city in a more GTA-like style.