The worst moments in PC gaming

Speaking of the experience index, I'm still wondering how my 4.4Ghz Sandy Bridge i7 (with hyperthreading off) only scores a 7.6.

For me, the worst gaming moment ever was probably "finishing" Dreamfall. "What? The f*ck?"

Second-worst moment: UBIsoft's always-on DRM. They've shipped a bunch of games I wanted to buy.

Malor wrote:

For me, the worst gaming moment ever was probably "finishing" Dreamfall. "What? The f*ck?"

Regardless of platform (TLJ Dreamfall was on xbox as well wasn't it?) it should be a crime to start a story arc without a firm plan to complete it in a timely manner.

TempestBlayze wrote:

Every damn time a menue says "Press Start" on a PC games menue screen.

Try Batman Arkham Asylum. Three times start

At the time, the thought of having to log into Steam to play MY games was not a direction I wanted to see.

Refusing to vote "yes" to kick someone out of a L4D Versus Mode multiplayer game, so they decide to kick you for it; and the guy you refused to kick votes "yes" to kick you.

I'd have to say my worst moments were every time I put in a sequel to a beloved game and found that they'd stripped out everything great about the original, and essentially rebranded something unrelated for the marketing value. Not only did I not get the sequel I'd expected, but it ensures I pretty much NEVER will. Dragon Age II is something now, and it is not the sequel to Dragon Age. It's pretty good and there are things I like about it, but it's very different, and THAT is what Dragon Age II is. If Dragon Age III is closer to the original it'll be another major shift.

Oblivion was another major disappointment for me. Sure it ran better than Morrowind, but Morrowind was a TES game and Oblivion was basically Lord of the Rings. It's like they had this great opportunity and spent it delivering an experience we had all had before a thousand times. A good experience, sure, but a very safe one.

Of course that works both ways. Descent: Freespace was much better than any of the Descent games, and clearly very different. In that case, I almost feel like the Descent name detracts from it.

You know, maybe I'll just leave it at that. My worst moments are when some PR hack decides to slap a beloved name on a game where it has absolutely no business. I imagine the new X-Com and Deus Ex games will both show this to be true, no matter how good they are on their own merits.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I'd have to say my worst moments were every time I put in a sequel to a beloved game and found that they'd stripped out everything great about the original, and essentially rebranded something unrelated for the marketing value.

Without going into the specific examples (and putting up the signal to turn this into a bioware thread), I agree.

It's often a difficult thing to unpick though, as rarely does one thing change in isolation. In the case of the-game-I-won't-name-but-I'm-alt-tabbed-out-of-right-now, I think it's just a few decisions from being as good as the original, but those few decisions make such a difference.

edit: There is a counterpoint to that. Games are a big business now, and because games have big budgets they need to get big sales too. I can sympathise with the suits who sign the cheques asking for changes for wider appeal, etc, when the market for the original wasn't large enough to support the company. I'm less in favour of driving companies off a cliff if you can avoid it, than I am of not-brilliant games.

Yeah, I understand that games need to turn profits and that the suits have a tough job to do. On the other hand, I don't game for them. I don't game so they can build up a stable of easily recognizable titles to fund future development. I game for me.

''Hey, Vigilante 8 sells pretty well on consoles. I have an Idea!''

IMAGE(http://images-mediawiki-sites.thefullwiki.org/06/3/4/7/0038422101855600.png)

Rezzy wrote:

The moment we started running full-screen games INSIDE of Windows.
Sure, it's handy to be able to tab out and check that e-mail... but gaming has suffered in my opinion.

Also, cars are way worse ever since they got starter motors and rubber tires.

The death of Origin, the death of Microprose, the death of commercially viable Adventure games; the lull in RPGs from Betrayal at Krondor to Fallout 1; Star Control 3.

Oh man, Star Control 3. Puppets? Really?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Oh man, Star Control 3. Puppets? Really?

Haha... yeah. It was especially lame how they had a puppet for the human.

gewy wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Oh man, Star Control 3. Puppets? Really?

Haha... yeah. It was especially lame how they had a puppet for the human.

I just read the plot of the game on Wikipedia. Amazing.

I just realised that we're probably missing something really obvious...

IMAGE(http://www.pixelhunt.com.au/home/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/blue.jpg)

Gah, I HATE blue! D:

I hated that Mark Rothko RTS game.

Pretendbeard wrote:

I just realised that we're probably missing something really obvious...

IMAGE(http://www.pixelhunt.com.au/home/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/blue.jpg)

Somethimes I think I could get that confused with the fallout load screen since I see the 2 together so much.

Wembley wrote:
Scratched wrote:
TempestBlayze wrote:

Every damn time a menue says "Press Start" on a PC games menue screen.

You know what I find funny? Deus Ex is held up as one of the great PC games, and you had to press a button to get the menu (although it didn't prompt you). Just off the top of my head, that goes along with Unreal, UT99, Quake, and Quake 2.

I don't think it's automatically a bad thing, just a choice a developer has to make correctly for their game, it's just that it's in MS guidelines for their console games that the player has to press a button and be prompted to do so that I think it's seen as "a console thing". I'd like to see the movies on start up for the publisher/developer/middleware/legal notices gone, and that's often used on consoles to cover for loading, but that's just "a way things are done" now.

Sure, but where's the start button on my keyboard? I can never find it.

It's not the Pause button?

Pretendbeard wrote:

I just realised that we're probably missing something really obvious...

IMAGE(http://www.pixelhunt.com.au/home/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/blue.jpg)

I don't know what you're talking about. As soon as the Guardian's face comes out of that screen, we're re-witnessing one of PC gaming's greatest intros.

wordsmythe wrote:

I don't know what you're talking about. As soon as the Guardian's face comes out of that screen, we're re-witnessing one of PC gaming's greatest intros.

Here's a better one:
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/XZd0D.jpg)

For me, in PC gaming, it was Microprose closing

We are scaling back, but add on cards. You needed a good video card, an additional 3d card, sound card, network card, etc. Then balance upgrading in 3 years. I really hope the processor and ram future is close. Gimme 80 cores and a TB of fast memory.

Scratched wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I don't know what you're talking about. As soon as the Guardian's face comes out of that screen, we're re-witnessing one of PC gaming's greatest intros.

Here's a better one:
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/XZd0D.jpg)

That one also showed up as part of the game. Proprietary memory managers, woo!

I once got Doom 2 on the 32X to blue-screen. First time I played it! I'm talented.

Seeing as the Crysis2 graphics whore patch is out, can I name Crysis (1) as a bad thing for PC gaming? The stigma that that game was representative of PC gaming was really bad, and the phrase "but can it run crysis?" still haunts hardware discussions. As much as it was a e-peen benchmark from a tech-demo company, I think it was a pretty poor experience and wasn't exactly efficient from a smoothness-of-gameplay perspective.

Scratched wrote:

Seeing as the Crysis2 graphics whore patch is out, can I name Crysis (1) as a bad thing for PC gaming? The stigma that that game was representative of PC gaming was really bad, and the phrase "but can it run crysis?" still haunts hardware discussions. As much as it was a e-peen benchmark from a tech-demo company, I think it was a pretty poor experience and wasn't exactly efficient from a smoothness-of-gameplay perspective.

I tend to agree. For all its accolades, the gameplay for the entire second half of Crysis was a very stale "on rails" shooter. I hated it. It kind of focused the debate of graphics versus gameplay in my mind.

Nevin73 wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Seeing as the Crysis2 graphics whore patch is out, can I name Crysis (1) as a bad thing for PC gaming? The stigma that that game was representative of PC gaming was really bad, and the phrase "but can it run crysis?" still haunts hardware discussions. As much as it was a e-peen benchmark from a tech-demo company, I think it was a pretty poor experience and wasn't exactly efficient from a smoothness-of-gameplay perspective.

I tend to agree. For all its accolades, the gameplay for the entire second half of Crysis was a very stale "on rails" shooter. I hated it. It kind of focused the debate of graphics versus gameplay in my mind.

Playing some more C2 tonight, I still think Crytek are a tech company who begrudgingly make games. They're selling their engine though, and spreading out with other studios so they've got to be doing something right. I just know that Crysis3 is going to take another 4 years and be another tech mountain to climb before they're done, rather than mastering their current tech and building off C2.

Nevin73 wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Seeing as the Crysis2 graphics whore patch is out, can I name Crysis (1) as a bad thing for PC gaming? The stigma that that game was representative of PC gaming was really bad, and the phrase "but can it run crysis?" still haunts hardware discussions. As much as it was a e-peen benchmark from a tech-demo company, I think it was a pretty poor experience and wasn't exactly efficient from a smoothness-of-gameplay perspective.

I tend to agree. For all its accolades, the gameplay for the entire second half of Crysis was a very stale "on rails" shooter. I hated it. It kind of focused the debate of graphics versus gameplay in my mind.

Ever get the feeling that the person(s) responsible for the story got canned about 1/2 way though development.

Every time I replay that game now I always quit at the part where the aliens come out to play.

mcdonis wrote:

Ever get the feeling that the person(s) responsible for the story got canned about 1/2 way though development.

You've just reminded me of Black Isle's Lionheart. First half of the game is beautifully done, with character interactions approaching those in Fallout games and Planescape Torment, all wrapped up in a very interesting alternate universe. Then there is a moment where you leave England and instead of having 15 different quests in your log you only have one at a time which is always a variation on "go there and kill that guy" so the game suddenly becomes a badly made hack-and-slash action RPG with a combat system which was not designed for the type and badly balanced gameplay. Funnily enough, it was around that time in development that Interplay changed management and the new head honcho decided to shift Black Isle into making Baldur's Gate branded action RPGs for consoles.

Concave wrote:
gewy wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Oh man, Star Control 3. Puppets? Really?

Haha... yeah. It was especially lame how they had a puppet for the human.

I just read the plot of the game on Wikipedia. Amazing.

Was the Wikipedia article vandalized? Am I reading this right? The Precursors were almost wiped out because they made themselves too delicious?