Rock, Paper, Shotgun

AbyssUK says:

This news makes me very angry I am on the Internet and I am a man…. that isn’t good for anybody.

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We knew this says:

The game was never announced for the PC. Don’t know why people thought so.

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Joe says:

SIGNED!

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lumpi says:

It might not make any sense to you, but I’d rather see an awesome console game (not owning any current-gen consoles) than a loveless PC port been thrown at us (only to say “Told you so, PC’s dead!” when people refuse to buy the buggy mess). Maybe I’m just in stubborn-mode, I don’t know… :(

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whaleloever says:

+ Tim Schaeuoifer
- Jack Black

50%

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Flowerpot Wang says:

Tim. Sellout? Boo?

I still love him though. But if it comes out not on PC my Manny doll will cry.

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NuZZ says:

@nighthood
SC2, D3… Oh, you must be referring to Blizzard as one of the few developers that give a shit. Truefact ;(.

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phil says:

Petitions never work ( the possibility of Half Life on the dreamcast still hold bitter memories, that had 15k signature f memory serves.)

Forming para-military cells, targeting infrastructure and communications hubs, gaining the endorsement of the military and police, reassuring the CIA you are a regionally stabilising influence, establishing all powerful cabal behind a puppet leader, that is how one gets a game released. Look at Need for Speed: Underground.

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BrokenSymmetry says:

Stop complaining, please. Just play it on your console (I know you have one).

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qrter says:

I don’t know.. I don’t believe online petitions carry much weight (if any) but look how little time it took me to sign this petition anyway..

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Stupoider says:

DOOOUBLE FIIINE!

WHYYY!

Brutal Legend. PC. That’s a must. :( I’ll be sad if it doesn’t happen.

@Nuzz: That does not equal the loss of Brutal Legend from the PC. :(

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Hümmelgümpf says:

@Quests:
“button masher … godhand”
Credibility check failed. God Hand certainly isn’t a button masher. But hey, if a game is all about punching people, it has to be mindless console crap, and there is no way combat may require some thinking, right?

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ulix says:

Cool, thanks for posting the link to the petition, hopefully it’ll gain some momentum. Tell your friends ;)

And I have absolutely no problem with mindless action games on PC, I love my mindless action games, I mean, what are most 1st person shooters? Deep, tactical and strategical experiences? Come on. Racing games? Etc.
Also, some people (like me, poor student) really don’t own a 360 or PS3.

Look at Mass Effect. It has aparrently sold so well on PC as to justify releasing Mass Effect 2 on PC simultaneuosly with its console-counterparts. And just as Bioware’s main fanbase is made of PC gamers, so is Tim Schafer’s.

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oddbob says:

I do!

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Quests says:

@Stupoider:

Sure, but if i played it i couldn’t help but think that so much goodness is a waste for this gameplay, i’d get pissed and bored with the button mashing, which i hate.

I hope most of the pc gamers are like me and prefer slower, less accessible, less glamour games.

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Dominic White says:

This comments thread is evidence enough that PC gamers don’t deserve this game. They’d reject it, like they rejected Devil May Cry 4 for having a combat engine too complex to be played on a keyboard, and refused to accept the existance of gamepads.

You know the drill – Tastatur/Maus Uber Alles.

I started gaming on the PC. CGA monitors and PC speaker audio, games under 100k and processors with double-digit MHZ counts. I have a high-spec gaming PC. I WISH they’d put more of the big-name console titles on the PC as well, so that I could throw more hardware power at them, but they don’t.

And why? Because they get crap reviews, sell badly, and get pirated to hell and back. It’s not worth the time, effort or abuse that they’d inevitably get.

Well done, you lovely insane PC Purist tribe – you’ve driven off Brutal Legend. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.

Me? I’ll be buying it for the 360.

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Hümmelgümpf says:

@Quests:
“in Godhand i suppose you need some skill, reflexes and junk, whatever. You have to mash the RIGHT buttons at the RIGHT time but it’s still a button-masher, ok? Sure you don’t push random buttons, if that’s what you mean.”
Not only me, the entire internet defines button mashers as games where you can close your eyes, push buttons at random, and still be able finish the entire thing. God Hand doesn’t fit this definition, and it’s enough to make it an excellent game. An excellent action game, to be precise, as it doesn’t try to be anything else, and shouldn’t be judged as an adventure game.

“But it’s neither Broken Sword and Steel Panthers, is it?”
No, it’s neither an adventure game, nor a strategy game. So what? You might as well bash a comedy film for not being a drama movie. It makes no sense.

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Dominic White says:

@Quests: To hell with your ‘PC gaming identity’. It’s a myth. Remember the 90s? Back then, the shareware scene was absolutely awash with platformers (such as, I dunno, Duke Nukem, maybe?), scrolling shooters, fighting games and more.

It wasn’t just adventure games, wargames and FPS’s. That’s just the rut the industry drove itself into and the fanboys retroactively glossed over the good old days, rewriting them with their own twisted, grey and mechanical history.

You want a real kick in the nuts? The Wizardry series may have ended on the PC with Wizardry 8, but they’re still releasing new Wizardry games (classic first-person dungeon crawls with brutal difficulty) in Japan, on the PS2. In fact, the whole subgenre there is making a resurgence on consoles, and is nowhere to be seen on the PC.

Your ‘PC gaming identity’ is a joke. An excuse to make you feel less bad when good games pass you over.

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Stupoider says:

@Dominic White: I thought Devil May Cry 4 was just a messy port, which deserved to be rejected.

@Catska: Way to stereotype that the whole PC Gaming playerbase are pirates, yet we love our Valve games that we buy via. Steam.

It’s not a case of whether we deserve it or not. How exactly are we supposed to deserve it? Do you expect every playerbase to be crystalline in appearance? Every platform has rotten eggs. Stop making generalisations based on the words of a few peeved PC gamers who are annoyed that one of PC gaming’s legends isn’t releasing one of his games on the PC. It’s not up to you to decide who gets what. Releasing the game on the PC can only mean good things because Tim Schafer has a strong following on the PC.

He creates amazing games, and I’d be a fool if I didn’t buy his latest one because it features “button-bashing”.

And seriously folks. Telling the PC gamer crowd that they don’t deserve this game? On RPS? PC Gaming since ….?

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Jonas says:

This game must reach everybody! Sign’d.

Kickass trailer too, hadn’t seen that one before.

“You start a revolution, Lars!”

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Jad says:

The great thing about the PC is that it can be anything you want it to be. Game is better with gamepad? Plug one in. Keyboard and mouse? Duh. Playing inches from a monitor in your basement with the windows closed and the sound up? Scare yourself silly. Connected to your TV and sitting on the couch? Yes, too. (I did this recently, got MAME, and have been having arcade beat-em-up classic nights with my friends every weekend — console-style gaming only now available on a PC) Mod your game into something completely different? Feel free.

To me, the “PC gamer identity” is exactly one of choice. Not limiting your choices, but being able to do anything you want with your system. Hack it, mod it, attach any peripheral you want. Please don’t try to close down my system and turn the PC into another console — the “strategy/MMORPG console”.

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Quests says:

@Dominic White:

Spare me the revisionist nonsense, pc gaming in the early 90′s was mostly(DUH) flight simulators and adventures, the shareware era was the beginning of the end, and in those years it was obviously a sheer minority.

I don’t know about Wizardry, i only played Sierra and Lucas, I don’t care about wanna-be rpgs, just give me Age of Decadence and Cyclopian, and i’ll be fine.

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sfury says:

I’m still hoping it will go the Psychonauts way, but if not I’ve already eyed my buddy’s 360 for stealing :)

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bhlaab says:

Coming to pc is an inevitability, but probably later than the console versions.

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ulix says:

@Tworak
“Also, it’s pretty obvious Microsoft moneyhatted this releas… wait a minute.”

As you said… wait a minute… its coming out on Sony’s PS3…

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Inanimotion says:

Signed!

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Thirith says:

@Quests: Thanks for the brilliant satire you’ve been contributing to this thread. Fantastic parody of a PC snob with a superiority complex. Two thumbs way up!

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Quests says:

Thirith:

Whatever.
If it were for you and other “ooh i want everything for my pc” sell-outs, mature pc gaming would be dead and buried cause you can’t realize that there’s no room for both adventure games and arcade games on pc, but both tend to be flattened to the state of mediocrity, a level meant to be agreeable to “ALL”

And this is not about Brutal Legend anymore, because BL aside from its consoleness it’s still made by a genius, this is about all arcade and console junk coming for PC because too many persons unfortunately have one.

And now for the coup de grace in your face, allow me to quote Mrs. Roberta Williams founder of Sierra Entertainment.

“Back when I got started, which sounds like ancient history, back then the demographics of people who were into computer games, was totally different, in my opinion, than they are today. Back then, computers were more expensive, which made them more exclusive to people who were maybe at a certain income level, or education level. So the people that played computer games 15 years ago were that type of person. They probably didn’t watch television as much, and the instant gratification era hadn’t quite grown the way it has lately. I think in the last 5 or 6 years, the demographics have really changed, now this is my opinion, because computers are less expensive so more people can afford them. More “average” people now feel they should own one”

dig it. ;)

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Tei says:

what is the name of hat nobel prize guy? he wrote a book about translations, he say theres not a such thing as a translation, NOPE, theres recreation. In his book he was poking fun at babelfish, translating a text from english to spanish, to spanish and to german, from german again to english.

and theres this great movie “lost in translation”, so we know the concept: there are things that can’t be translated, and are lost in the process of translation. You have the feell you are losing the core information, and receiving only decoration around that core.

the thing is, you can’t translate a console game to PC, you can create a emulated program, that will work much like it work on the console, but something, the core, the joke, will be lost in translation. and theres more, the PC culture is advanced and giganteous, PEGI list more than 9000 pc games, will some console like xbox360 has like 200 or something. the consoles are in his infancy, but the pc is state of the art. Stuff that was invented here, like the RTS is still progressing, but wen are translated to the console, the poor console guys get a dumbed down version. And wen we get a game from the console, we get also a dumbed down game.

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Yiorgos says:

Oh dear…

mature pc gaming? brainy games? exclusive platform?

Am I mistaken to think that one of the fastest growing markets for pc gaming is the casual one? what with Popcap’s success and all. Don’t think there’s much room for ‘elitism’ in gaming. As long as its fun, give it to us!

And Quests, anyone can quote wikipedia.

Give us Brutal Legend!

Also, that the site is dedicated to PC games doesn’t mean the writers think the format is, or should be considered, superior to others.

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Serondal says:

Tei porting a game from console to PC is not like translating something from German to English. For one consoles and PCs use the exact same language so there is no reason the game cant’ be 100% the same. Port a game from Xbox 360, plug in your x-box 360 controller and you have the exact same game, literally and spirtually. Now YOUR pc may not be able to handle the X-box 360 game ported over to Windows Live or what have you ,but that is not the fault of the game that is simply because you can’t afford a better computer (And neiher can I, I’m not bashing you any how I’m really just making up a third character here is as an example)

Any how, there is nothing lost in translation between console and PC or the other way around, there is only bad ports. Ports don’t poorly CAN effect the quality of the ported version of the game. It is best to start off development of the game with all platforms in mind so that they ect get perfected in their own way. A bad example of of PC to console port is Starcraft, the N64 version of this game is HORRIBLE, but now a days we could do much better. X-box 360 is powerful enough to handle any RTS game out, it is just up to the devs to find a GOOD way to control an RTS through a controller. Really an X-Box 360 controller should be able to do anything a mouse and keyboard can do , it is just up to the dev to figure out how to make it feel “right”

BTW PC gaming was founded on mindless action like Nibbles and Tetris, quick moving flashy things that took no learning curve and demanded PERFECTION. The crazy 500 page manual games came later and died out already, they won’t be coming back in any number any time soon I’m afraid. I’ve still got several old flight sim manuals that you could murder someone with easily. That spiral binding is extremly dangerous ; )

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Jad says:

@Quests

Something tells me that your formative game-playing years were in the early nineties. I might be slightly younger, as mine was in the mid-to-late nineties, but its amazing how different our conceptions of what makes a game a “PC game” are.

If you asked me to name the most “PC game” game of all, one that is a “quintessential” PC gaming experience, I’d have a bunch of games to choose from*, but I think I’d answer “Quake”.

Check it: fast-paced, mouse-requiring, made by a small team of passionate brilliant nerds, shareware, graphics better than the contemporary consoles, speed runs, machima; more importantly: free and open over-the-internet multiplayer with tens of thousands of player-run servers all with their own settings and cultures, Quakeworld, Quakespy; most importantly: completely and totally modable (some one made a racing mod for Quake!), thousands of free, player-made maps and skins and total conversions, Team Fortress, still played today, upgraded, public domain.

But I suppose to you Quake is just a button-mashing console game.

* I don’t want this to sound like FPS is the only genre for PCs — I’d include plenty of other games in my “quintessential” list, ones that you’d include too — CivII and XCOM and Monkey Island and Starcraft and Ultima 7 and Falcon 4.0 and Planescape: Torment. But Quake absolutely belongs on that list, too.

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Quests says:

Well yeah, Quake doesn’t quite belong to the “INSTANT GRATIFICATION” era many seem to praise, as Brutal Legend sadly does.

Can’t blame Mr. Schafer for wanting the fatty cash, can we.

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oddbob says:

@Quests: Well, it’s a quote you can use very often, it still doesn’t stand up to any hard evidence. I’m sure bushy Nolan’s figures are probably a bit wonky, but the basic fact remains that when I first started gaming when stuff were but black and white – it was a family thing. A few years in and I’d wake up hoping to grab a blast of Jet Set Willy and I’d be buggered if I could because my dear old Ma, god rest her soul, would be sitting there still having pulled an all nighter on Lords Of Midnight. Folks would gather round consoles and home computers alike and play games, everything from arcade games to adventures to strategy games.

That’s just the way it was.

And we lost that. Because, there’s something innately stupid about the games industry. We narrowed the market down by increasing complexity, increasing the spend, requiring hardware upgrades galore every other game, a myriad of silly factors that are completely unsustainable. And it was bloody stupid.

It’s stupid because it’s excluding people who want to play games but we don’t cater to them well enough, it’s stupid because it stifles growth of the industry, it’s stupid because you end up stuck in a rut and stifling innovation and it’s stupid because it helps no-one whatsoever.

Instead of bringing a constant stream of new people and new games to the table, we pushed them away.

Wonder why casual gaming is on the rise? It’s no threat to your preciouses, fear ye not – it’s a different type of gaming. Perhaps it’s not for you, that’s cool beans – but it’s bringing money in for folks, it’s expanding what we do and what we can do with games.

And dumbing down? What on Earth is dumbing down? How can you dumb down one of the most idiotically stupid hobbies there is? It’s an insanely meaningless phrase. You’re pushing a mouse around and clicking on stuff, you’re moving a virtual avatar around a screen with a joystick. It’s totally dumb already. Yeah, we can complicate this dumb system but what does that achieve or prove? How does being able to push a few objects around an inventory make someone a better or superior person?

Cluefax: It doesn’t.

And the best bit? Gaming can help people lead a better life. A more “normal” life. That’s brilliant stuff and if you want to take that away from people then I dunno, I dunno what kind of person that makes you but I’m sure it’s not a good one.

What do you possibly hope to achieve by keeping your hobby away from people? Playing games doesn’t make you special, advocating a hard line on what can and cannot be made or is acceptable doesn’t make you special! Excluding people from gaming is nothing to be proud of.

And for those of us fighting to bring more people into gaming and to help people be able to play more games it’s nothing but a horrid reminder of how far we’ve still got to go. But man, if you ever needed some extra motivation, folks crying that they want to keep this hobby in a little box where only an elite group of people are allowed to touch it, that’s plenty of motivation.

The sooner we all put this silly prejudice and fighting over which format is deemed the more intelligent behind us, the better. It’s a silly. A big massive silly.

And to anyone arguing “you can’t bring a console game to a PC” what exactly do you think console games are coded on? Magic fairy wings?

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StormTec says:

@Oddbob:

Here here! Words cannot express my complete and utter support for what you say in that post.

@Quests: I don’t know what your beef is with action games. A lot of existing made-for-PC games have what can be construed as “mindless action”.

I don’t see why making games available to a wider audience can be a bad thing. It’s time to get off your ivory towers now, guys because it sounds like there’s a lot of butt-hurt resulting from sitting up there.

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Altemore says:

@Oddbob
Man books are so dumb, it’s just lots of letters arranged alongside each other.
If you think the medium is dumb why do you care for it at all? The fact is there are more and less intelligent games. Yes X-com takes more brain power than say, Tetris. (No disrespect towards Tetris, that’s from another time :))
Gaming is a medium like books and suchlike, and have the same(If not more) capability to be great art. While we’re not quite at the same stage as the other mediums, we have games that are just more intelligent than others, and those are basically the classical PC-games. Brutal Legend doesn’t seem like an intelligent game, more like Rush Hour than Citizen Kane, methinks.

Edit: When I say more intelligent I mean simply involving more brainpower. Maybe I’m alone when I think that there’s a difference between shooting people in the face and making strategic considerations on the placement of your troops, or whatever.
Edit: And aside from strategy of course delicious, delicious ethics :D

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James T says:

I don’t know about Wizardry, i only played Sierra and Lucas

Ahh, so that’s why you’re so deafeningly unqualified.

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Altemore says:

@Bhazor
One could argue that seeing as all those(With the exception of S&M) are japanese, they’re just compensating for the PC not being a major player in their homeland by making “PC” games for consoles.
Really though, you are right, there are interesting games being made that aren’t PC. I personally like the DS and Wii somewhat for their interesting new control methods. Making PC games on consoles though just limits the developer to simpler control schemes, so not much of an idea in that.
And yes you’re inviting more people into the good stuff by first having them accept Wii sports as a gateway drug. But what if they just stay with the shitty stuff, as the industry intends them to?

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apnea says:

You know, oddbob, there were people with all kinds of discourse about TV when the glowing screen came out, and was hinting at becoming popular. Some people were like Quests, talking the ‘high culture’ talk, of bringing something to the masses, of setting the bar at theater-level (the Shakespeare kind) or pushing for mass education and enlightenment.

Then there were those of a more ‘inclusive’ bent, wanting the medium to serve as multifaceted a function as there were users, to deliver content of different calibers and cultures. Oddbob-equivalents.

You know who won? Neither sides. Groupthinked bottomlined commercial programming won. Big Sellable Stupid won. In a big way. My point? You’re part of the big silly. You’re part of the so-called debates, the high-minded inclusive/exclusive dance while narrow interests are driving the soul out of the whole medium.

But don’t worry. We’ll probably get to keep some HBO-equivalent tucked between Nazi-Killing Quick Time Events and Cutesy Fashionables Online.

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oddbob says:

But there’s no narrow interests driving the soul out of the medium as far as I can see, Apnea. Well, unless you count Activision and their excessive legal disclaimers at the bottom of press releases but I just find them funny ;)

We’re at a point in gaming where the choice of gaming is so utterly overwhelmingly diverse, there’s so much passion from developers, so many different genres and niches to explore. I’ve got so much choice across so many formats from experimental art works to completely brainless mong out gaming – yes, on consoles, handhelds and the PC – and that’s showing no signs of waning whatsoever. And I *love* that. It’s ace.

I’m not fighting to win anything in that regard, we’re already bloody well there. We faltered for a while, sure, but we’re getting well out the woods now.

I don’t have to battle for inclusiveness on the terms you’re talking because that’s it, it’s here, it exists, it’s happening right now. Folks are taking games off in all sorts of interesting directions – they’re not going to stop because a few people on the internet can’t accept that things change and should change. And like everything, the gems (sorry, my own personal favourites) will swim in a sea of utter guff but I’m not going to gripe at people if they like something I don’t (unless it’s Rick Dangerous, obviously, but that’s the exception to every rule, no?).

It’s that griping I’m challenging because y’know, people are allowed to like different things. Deep, profound and intelligent != better in all cases but I’m a bit tired of people equating wanting a wide variety of titles, genres and niches to exist with somehow wanting to eliminate intelligent gaming or force it into a corner. They’re not mutually exclusive things, y’know?

There’s nothing wrong with populist stuff. Big, sellable populist stuff. It wouldn’t sell if people didn’t like it. The great thing is, if I don’t want to buy or play that stuff – there’s a myriad of avenues I can explore instead. You too!

In the same way that if you don’t like the pop charts you can venture off the beaten path, I manage quite well for pretty darn good television viewing that suits my tastes by not choosing to watch stuff I don’t enjoy but I’m not going to come down on other people for watching America’s Latest Hero Dog Idol or something, there’s more to movies and books than what’s in the top 10 and so it goes.

The soul is still there, it doesn’t go away. Whilst you’ve got a creative medium, you can’t take that away because people will still create.

And yeah, I’m happy to be a part of this particular big silly.

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James T says:

Another ‘comedy’ epic about how ROCK saves the world from annihilation?

Yeah, I’m, uh, so sick of all those…

(I would be interested to visit an alternate universe where comedy epics about ROCK saving the world from annihilation are their equivalent of the WW2 shooter, mind you…)

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Kieron Gillen says:

Quests: You quoting that bit by Roberta Williams makes me remember this splendid thing OMM wrote mocking her for saying it. OMM remains splendid.

The only thing her paragraph says is that she’s upset her rubbish adventure games didn’t sell any more.

(It doesn’t even make sense as a demographic argument – if her games stopped selling at all, those smarter, richer, whiter people aren’t buying them either. Growing the audience doesn’t disappear subsections of the audience. Those people didn’t stop owning a PC because the poorer kids down the block got one)

Of course, there’s the alternative history of PC gaming, where you count all those C64s and Spectrums as personal computers. Much of what RPS is about celebrating that lineage too, and trying to explain the stuffy 1993-1998-era of what PC gaming is, is a lie, a fraction of a greater, wider truth.

And man, this thread got serious for a deliberately silly post. Interestink.

KG

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MultiVaC says:

Sometimes I feel like RPS comments threads are the largest enclave of self-hating PC gamers on the entire internet. One guy makes a stupid comment (on the internet of all places!) and all of the sudden it’s “OMG PC gamers are so elitist! Master Race! Master Race! WE DESERVE TO BE IGNORED!” It seems like these comments are split between rabid console haters and people who refuse to admit that the industry is frequently giving us the short end of the stick. But I guess that’s the first law of the internets, there is never a middle ground.

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Brulleks says:

@James T

I wasn’t necessarily referring to games…

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James T says:

Brulleks: That doesn’t swell the ranks much.

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Wulf says:

Oh, and I forgot this…

In Brulleks defense, there aren’t many games which undertake that theme, but there are loads of movies which try something along those lines, using comedy and electric guitarists to save the Universe. Bill & Ted, anyone? This list actually includes the really rather good Rock & Rule, and alongside Rock & Rule, Brutal Legend looks… meh.

Seriously, watch Rock & Rule and then set it alongside the Brutal Legend trailer. I would’ve preferred a Rock & Rule game.

So… I admit that most of my disinterest is because it just looks like a basic medieval World with Jack Black. If they’d picked someone who had more of a real tie to metal and they had them romping around the Electric Castle, or if perhaps you could build up a cast of playable characters defined by metal ballads, then I would’ve been excited. But this really does strike me as unimaginative.

It seems like it’s calling itself metal just to try and look different, when really it’s just a comedy action game in a medieval setting with a few metal-ish elements poorly tacked on.

Sorry.

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Hümmelgümpf says:

@Wulf:
Uhh… Because Torment didn’t explore any themes that philosophy is actually concerned with? “What can change the nature of a man?” is not a philosophical problem (I’d go even further and say that it’s not a problem at all), “What is the nature of a man?” is. Asking interesting questions doesn’t equal being philosophical.

At least we’re not arguing whether MGS or Braid have philosophy.

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Hümmelgümpf says:

@Quests:
There are two ways to explain why Sierra’s later games didn’t sell as well as the early ones had:
1. Suddenly all Sierra fans caught a mysterious disease and died.
2. Sierra’s later games sucked donkey balls.
I wonder which one looks more realistic.

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Quests says:

Subject 706:

If programmers try to appeal to those persons, there must be a reason, a market research that reveals that persons are keen to buy that product.

So, since the desirable result is finding that PC gamers are OLD folks(average age increase), and prefer steelbrained games:

-No action games on pc would mean that eventually all action kids will decide to buy a console and leave pcworld, so that we get rid of the flat mass and remain with exteremely polarized SLICES of market. Wouldn’t that be agreeable? Isn’t the flattening of tastes always bad?

But anyway, so you’re saying that PC has big enuff shoulders and it welcomes everything… it’s not really true cause flight simulations practically disappeared in the last years and are now slowly getting back to life, and the same goes for graphic adventures. But we’re talking about the triple A market, here, not the marvellous INDIE market, which we have to be ever thankful of, because they saved PC. So you can’t say triple-A PC market is fine because of the indie market, you give it a merit it doesn’t deserve, triple -A market SUCKS because of the invasion of action-games from console.

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Quests says:

Hümmelgümpf: I can manipulate facts too you know :)
Sierra games weren’t quality games because of the boycotting from the sierra bigwigs, and because PC market was already invaded by action-dongheads.

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Quests says:

I never played Qfg5(trying to find time to start the 3rd) but GK3 is a renown masterpiece(to most)

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Quests says:

Lol no, wait.
Oblivion is a renown masterpiece only to idiots, i devised a poll myself on a forum to proove that whoever liked Oblivion didn’t play/know Ultima7, it was a 4 answers poll “yes(liked OB) no(didn’t play U7)” and the other combinations… the people that voted “yes and no”(most) voted themselves idiots unawares, it was hilarious.

But GK3 esteemers are not douches, i guarantee.

But even admitting that Gk3 was bad, adventures weren’t dead at all, they were better than ever and showing evolutionary steps(like The Last Express by Prince of Persia’s Jordan Mechner), it was just a problem with the audience, after the first 3d games it was radically different, more average minded, wanted more action and less thinking.

So to recap all, BL not coming on PC might help this platform in getting back to its old niche identity.

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Quests says:

Naturally we refer to Vanilla Oblivion, not a game modded enuff to completely cover up the horrible pile of dung Bethesda made, that insipid, boring, disgustingly bugged game.

Oblivion symbolizes what’s wrong with gaming today: mostly appearance, “immersive” and “realistic” combat that makes kids go “whoooa I feel sooo like im there”

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Dominic White says:

It’s amazing how this thread has transmuted slowly into PC Fundamentalists/Puritans vs Reality. It’s also very sad, as I grew up a PC-exclusive gamer (I am almost 26 now, and my first console was a Sega Saturn in roughly the final year of its shelf-life) to think that these people believe that they represent the system and/or (god forbid) me.

I just wish such dinosaurs would do us all a favour and just quietly fossilize, out of sight and out of mind and let me enjoy the system which (as others have pointed out) should be celebrating the HIGHEST variety of gaming software, due to its flexibility, not the least due to fanboys scaring off developers.

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oddbob says:

Apnea, I think we do have a fundamental 10-1 difference of opinion on things because I’m sorta not seeing what you’re seeing. I think you also (very kindly I might add) really overstate the Indie scenes contributions a tad. I’ll come back to that in a mo though.

I don’t really see all modern games looking the same at all. When you’ve got stuff like Demigod standing shoulder to shoulder with Prototype, Left4Dead and [insert random example from the past couple of weeks of featured posts on here alone]. If we look to consoles we’ve got Katamari sitting there alongside Halo and so on.

The indie scene might mix it all up a tad but like the mainstream, there’s just as much shit (probably more so, actually) and I say that both as an indie dev and someone who promotes a subsection of the indie scene and loves the wild variety of stuff that gets churned out. It’s likely feeling more disproportionate to some because we can bang out a game in a day, a week or a month or whatever and you can’t really do that with major stuff. I’d be a big fat hairy liar if I tried to pretend that it was all quality stuff though :)

To drift back to the TV discussion a bit. I’d be hard pressed to narrow it down to 100 great things for a Channel 4 Saturday night voxpopfest covering 50 Years Of Television, never mind as small a number as 12 or 15. Christ, I’d probably hit around half that with the Beeb’s Xmas Ghost Stories alone.

Just quickly glancing at the TV schedule for this week and well, I don’t have the time to fit in all the stuff I want to take a peek at. From documentaries on James Brown to catching up with The Daily Show, I’ve got plenty to keep me going – neither of those plucked out of my backside examples qualify into any sort of tickbox based “well, it sells” marketing decision based television unless you’re really cynical.

Essentially, I’m *really* struggling to see this potential drift into homogeneous mulch you’re predicting.

“And the old bilge about “it sells so we can’t do anything about it” hasn’t cut it as a media argument since the 50s”

I don’t want to do anything about it, that’s sorta my key point. I like the fact that this stuff exists and don’t have a problem with it. I loveses me some pop music, I loveses me some wild throwaway television and I loveses me some throwaway games. The last thing I want is a universe where media is dominated by some sort of cultural worth by diktat, I’m a human, I have different moods and tastes and I like having them all catered for. I like the fact that other people are catered for too.

I don’t have a problem with stuff I don’t like being popular and equally don’t have a problem with liking popular stuff.

It’s a total non issue for me and I truly believe that whilst you have creative people creating stuff, you’re never going to reach the disaster scenario of everything being some sort of marketing based hell.

Whilst I’ll happily concur that we should continually strive for better quality, more quality, we should also continually strive to keep on doing what we’re doing and that’s catering to the mainstream and niches alike.

We’re no closer than we’ve ever been before to falling into marketing mulch and we’re not likely to be either, IMO.

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Stupoider says:

Maaan, Quests. You don’t even want this genre on the PC? I’ve never met anyone who would hate a genre that much to deny anyone from playing it.

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Quests says:

Dominic White:

Im sorry but that’s entirely utopical. The system’s variety isn’t due to software companies at all, if it were for them we’d just rot out of Bioshocks. It’s only thanks to corageous and nostalgic dinosaur-like indie houses that this variety exists, and indie houses constantly fight for some market and hate the massified market. Can you explain me why did the Vampyre story developers rise from their tombs only now?

The market that you so much praise literally strangled simulations and adventures for many years, until the blessed indie movement.

If there is such a great balance of videogames, how come the last Indiana Jones games were Tomb Raider clones and not adventures?

And what about the superb Vault D. Weller? Do you think he praises the market’s dumbing down?

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Bhazor says:

Reply to Quests

I think you’ve confused indie with the ds.

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Doug F says:

Quests, I’m disappointed in you. You started this thread off as a top-quality troll, but faced with people who actually know what they’re talking about you’ve been losing your composure, and letting the mask slip as you flail about, trying to drive home any point you think might work, and missing them all.

I will still be linking your blog to a few of my friends though – that is some top-notch pseudo-intellectual BS, and entertaining as hell to read.

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apnea says:

@oddbob

Yeah, well, agree to disagree and all that. Just adding that in no way was I intending to grumble about other people’s niches being catered to and not mine. That was not my point if you’d reread what I wrote. Apart from that rhetorical twist you kept on making, I think that was a useful outlining of boundaries.

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Dot says:

What the hell? Who would EVER want to play Devil May Cry with keyboard or mouse? This is exactly the kind of mindset that will keep PC gaming a shrinking niche for the few elitists left who won’t play a game unless it is wrapped in a bunch of frustrating bullshit that strokes their ego. Congrats, you successfully mapped 50 keys to be able to play this RTS which hasn’t changed since 1995, you really are superior to those lowly console gamers. /smug

DMC4 was pretty much the most perfect port you could ever hope for, it still sold poorly and was pirated to hell (sven from capcom even said so on the capcom blog). They put alot of work into making PC specific features and having excellent plug and play gamepad support. But of course this isn’t enough for the PC elitist master race, who would rather keep playing the same games they have for the past 15 years than accept that game design has moved on to the consoles.

I’ve played DMC4 on a 360 gamepad, you won’t believe but PC games are supposed to have workable keyboard and mouse controls. Do they bundle DMC4 with a gamepad? No, they do not. Ergo, it should be expected Kb/M would be workable.

You can go on about ‘game design moving on’ and other such horrific nonsense involving mostly games that have always been console-specific, but the fact remains: if you want to make a game that sells on the PC, you’re supposed to at least support the most basic, most common control scheme PCs have. For DMC4, it’d be easy as pie too, say, for Dante, F1-F6 for weapon selection, 1-5 for style selection, mid click and scroll for lock on, LMB for attack, RMB for style attack, mouse rotation for camera, obviously and so on and so forth.

It’s not ideal, but it at least is workable. I’ve completed Psychonauts with Kb/M once, not ideal either but, hey, I didn’t have a gamepad at the time, what can I do? But instead, Capcom chose an absolutely idiotic scheme which was a direct gamepad to keyboard remap, and well, there they go-half the reviewers complained and most of the PC gamers took it to heart and decided to not buy it.

So to sum up, DMC4 was released on a platform with an audience that generally doesn’t care about the genre because it always had few PC entries, without workable Kb/M controls, and it wasn’t on any digital distribution. Argh, those god damned PC Elitists ruining everything again! At least I give Capcom props for how well their engine behaves on a variety of PCs.

Let’s do an experiment, make Hearts of Iron: 360 Edition, make it so that you’d have to buy a kb/m adapter for it, and make it a full retail release. Your bets on how much that would ‘sell’ presumably due to ‘Console Elitists’?
That said, I’ll still be buying Resident Evil 5 on release because I don’t believe it’s possible to screw up controls in a shooter game, on the PC, but it doesn’t excuse Capcom from their own previous stupidity you want to blame upon people who choose to game on PCs.

In the meanwhile, please, don’t restrain yourself and add some more ignorant comments about RTSes, keys, and what-have-you. I’ll be here to listen.

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Dominic White says:

I once tried to play a flight sim with keyboard and mouse. That didn’t last long.

Clearly the game was broken and crap because it doesn’t use keyboard and mouse, because keyboard and mouse keyboard and mouse keyboard and mouse keyboard and mouse keyboard and mouse keyboard and mouse keyboard and mouse etc etc ad nauseum.

Or perhaps we can be grown-ups, and realise that the PC is a modular system, where different games might demand different control setups, and that the almighty fucking KB/M setup isn’t gods gift to gaming after all – it’s just one of many possible configurations that has its strengths and weaknesses.

As for the other way round, the PS2/PS3 have USB ports, and they accept standard mice/keyboards for certain games. The 360 even lets you plug in a standard keyboard for MMOs and typing messages.

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oddbob says:

FWIW, I agree entirely. Both developers* and the public’s attitude to using appropriate control set ups (and in so, so many cases allowing a variety of control set ups) is generally grim in the PC space. Using 16 keys and a mouse to replace a simple-ish system like a joypad is a madness and generally an uncomfortable one at that. Of course, you could argue that using 16 buttons is a madness also :)

Perhaps there is a point in that if we bundled joypads with a shop built system then there might be a shift in that attitude, but it seems a bit odd that given the not exactly small expense of a PC to not go that £20 extra and get a decent pad instead of demanding all developers fudge a control scheme for the sake of keeping the peace.

At the moment we’ve got a scenario where regardless of how useful it is, mouse and keyboard is deemed king. I know of portals that insist on mouse control for games no matter how inappropriate it may be (it’s allegedly accessible, I’d beg to differ if it’s broken) and given there’s so many complaints over broken controls in ports precisely due to this issue, perhaps it’s we that should adapt our expectations a tad?

I dunno, in the meantime and given it’s a pipe dream – the best that can be expected is to offer configurable controls as standard and give people the choice of how to play. Sadly, the easier option is to just not try and I’d guess that it’s one of many reasons we don’t actually see that many ports.

Badly mapped controls aren’t a solely PC-centric problem though. Try playing any of the old arcade games designed for digital sticks on the 360 with an analogue pad. Ouchie. Game design break central.

*if I hear “but it’s innovative” one more time from a dev as an excuse for cumbersome or broken controls, I swear I’ll shed a little tear. This isn’t a solely PC game issue, mind you!

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Quests says:

@Doug F:

Harumpf!

Eh… there’s no such a thing as bad publicity, they say. And yeah well one starts trolling so one gets ppl’s attention, then one just discusses friendly. That’s uhm my policy.

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Quests says:

@Rubeck:
“Imagine that the total amount of PC gamers in the universe is 100. Out of those 100, only 4 like adventure games and old-school hardcore rpgs, while everyone else is strictly an action, FPS or casual gamer. Naturally, developers and publishers alike will tend to prefer working on action games, because adventures will at best sell only 4 copies and that’s not enough to make a decent profit. But, if we somehow magically banished all the action, casual and FPS games from the PC market, the developers would not start creating adventures and old-school RPGs left and right, they would simply leave the PC market and work exclusively with consoles. After all, the number of adventure fans is STILL only 4″

This is actually an interesting point and pretty much the core of the whole Brutal Legend subject.
I suggest we keep around these lines.
Does everyone think that scenario is true?

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Dominic White says:

Given that DMC4 inherently requires multiple control inputs that would make a keyboard shit itself and just fail to register any of them, yes, it is inherently unsuitable for keyboard play.

It is a game that uses five relative analogue axes (revving Neros sword-engine is mapped to an analogue trigger), a D-pad, and 11 buttons on top of that, many of which have to be used simultaneously. Unless you can find a way of mapping that effectively to mouse (two absolute analogue axes, lets assume two buttons) and a keyboard (no analogue, many buttons but only 2-3 can be reliably pressed at once), then be my guest.

Whatever you come up with, it will be completely unplayable, unless you somehow redesign the entire gameplay structure to match, which isn’t the point of a port.

It is exactly the same as a flight sim being unplayable with keyboard – you WILL fly straight into the ground because you’ve not got the right hardware. This is not because the game is bad, and this is not because the developers are lazy. It’s because you’re trying to fly a fucking plane with four digital buttons.

Enough with this retarded Keboard & Mouse Uber Alles stupidity. It is one of many possible control configurations, and there are MANY things that it is crap for.

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...hmm... says:

your just bitter because no wrestling games ever come out on pc.

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Dot says:

This is ridiculous. Games come out on console that are better played with a peripheral like fighting games with a stick, or flight sim games with a flight stick, yet you don’t see consolers complaining that the optimal control method isn’t the one bundled with the system. Guess what, most people actually use different keyboard and mice than what came with their system, if they did at all. It’s not some standard (which the PC has never had, in anything) that all games need to adhere to.

I don’t think you understand the difference between ‘workable’ and ‘ideal’. Because outside the 360′s d-pad, every fighting game, every Ace Combat game I’ve played on a console(the PS2 mostly), the basic, default controller used worked fine. Yes, an arcade stick is always better, but the fact is: the basic gamepad controls in them do not compare to DMC4′s basic keyboard controls which are pretty much unworkable.

Wow, this would be terrible. Never design games please.

Yet it’s still better than what Capcom envisioned for DMC4. Do us all a favor, and go tell them to never design games then, or, maybe, is it just fine to do it to me because you have nothing better to do than shield Capcom from people pointing out their obvious stupidity?

I once tried to play a flight sim with keyboard and mouse. That didn’t last long.

Devil May Cry 4 isn’t either a flight sim nor are most flight sims deliberately made unplayable with the most basic control setup the system has.

It is a game that uses five relative analogue axes (revving Neros sword-engine is mapped to an analogue trigger), a D-pad, and 11 buttons on top of that, many of which have to be used simultaneously. Unless you can find a way of mapping that effectively to mouse (two absolute analogue axes, lets assume two buttons) and a keyboard (no analogue, many buttons but only 2-3 can be reliably pressed at once), then be my guest.

Have you actually ever played DMC4 yourself? Because you’re making it sound so complicated while most combos are a factor of two buttons total plus whether you’re locked on or not. And revving up the sword amounts to press-hold-release-at-peak-repeat. You don’t need to have analog input for it. In other words, you’re bringing up total bullshit to make seem like mapping 16 keys plus WASD to a keyboard is something that has never before been attempted.

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catska says:

Hogan just dropped an atomic leg drop of truth all over this site.

‘I don’t think you understand the difference between ‘workable’ and ‘ideal’. Because outside the 360’s d-pad, every fighting game, every Ace Combat game I’ve played on a console(the PS2 mostly), the basic, default controller used worked fine.’

Try playing Steel Battallion for the Xbox without its gigantic mech sim controller addon. Games have had different control methods for ages now, I don’t see how this is somehow a problem. Even Ace Combat was sold alongside a 360 Flight Stick. Forza and Gran Turismo also have their own Steering Wheel peripherals.

You want to know the reason why most games work on an average controller? It’s because controllers were made for video games. A Keyboard was NOT.

‘It is a game that uses five relative analogue axes (revving Neros sword-engine is mapped to an analogue trigger), a D-pad, and 11 buttons on top of that, many of which have to be used simultaneously.’

Can you elaborate on this? I know there is 3 different analogue controls (left stick, right stick, trigger for Nero’s sword), where are the others and what do they control?

‘And revving up the sword amounts to press-hold-release-at-peak-repeat. You don’t need to have analog input for it. ‘

Wrong, the instant rev function is controlled by an analogue trigger like if it were an acceleration pedal, it requires absolutely precise timing to get it perfected.

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Bhazor says:

“Reply to dot
360 controllers cost £30. You expected capcom to bundle that free with a £25 game? Or perhaps spend tens of thousands on inventing a controller with the same complexity? Not to mention the fact it was sold through Steam which despite its many pros does not excel at materialising peripherals into my home.

Also, yes your proposed system was terrible. Apart from anything else it *feels* better on a controller.

Reply to Quests

OK, you’ve contradicted yourself enough that I really can’t argue with you anymore.”

Is what I was going to say. But Hogan’s Bodyslam has rendered further debate meaningless. Well played that man.

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Dominic White says:

@catska – Two axes (X & Y) on each stick, so two for movement, two for camera, one for revving – that makes five. The PS3/360 pads each have 6 analogue axes each (two of them being triggers), and the PS3 has tilt sensing as well, adding another couple.

As mentioned, as good as mouse/keyboard is for FPS’s and RTS’s, it has a grand total of two analogue axes to play with.

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Dominic White says:

So, Dot. Are you in favour of reviewers panning flight sims for playing badly with mouse/keyboard if they don’t bundle a fully-featured flightstick in with the package? Because if not, then you’ve just completely invalidated your own argument.

Some games just don’t work with M/KB, period. Accept this. Live with it. Deal with the fact that sometimes – just sometimes – you might have to use a different controller. This is not because the developers are lazy and out to ruin the purity of the PC platform, it’s because the game just doesn’t work right with any other control setup.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to rage about how badly Dawn of War 2 plays with a steering wheel.

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ulix says:

How really really stupid this argument has become.
I already feel sorry for myself for hinting at my petition…

Apart from being sorry I completely agree with Dominic’s standpoint and seriously think anyone who doesn’t is eaither stupid or refusing to see some basic sense…

Sad, sad…

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Dot says:

Some games just don’t work with M/KB, period. Accept this. Live with it. Deal with the fact that sometimes – just sometimes – you might have to use a different controller. This is not because the developers are lazy and out to ruin the purity of the PC platform, it’s because the game just doesn’t work right with any other control setup.

What does this have to do with what I said? I have a 360 gamepad for games like this because I play quite a few racing games too. It still doesn’t make it ok to neglect people who do not. PC is all about the choice. Some people may choose not to buy a peripheral they don’t need for a single game. Capcom seemed to forget about that. They’re not lazy? Tell me why then instead of trying to at least slightly rectify the problem in a way I suggested, they just left the controls in such an awful shape instead?

Say, let’s imagine that Resident Evil 5 PC gets stricken by random unlikely chance and somehow emerges with no mouse aiming(again, it’s just an example because I’m pretty certain RE5 PC will have proper PC shooter controls and a generally great port), full gamepad support though. Your logic dictates that it’s ok, because you can always just buy a gamepad and so on and so forth, but here’s the thing: there is no logic, you’re just being absurd and are trying to blame people who have nothing to do with the problem instead of its source. And it doesn’t even have to do with PC shooter controls being better by principle, it’s just about the fact that PC games need to have proper Kb/M controls no matter the game and if they don’t, they should be panned by reviewers.

Oh, and just FYI, I actually have played IL Sturmovik with Kb/M. It’s workable, more than I would imagine DMC4 Kb/M controls are(never tried them, again, because I just used a gamepad).

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There was a point somewhere... says:

Quests, somebody dumbed down your email address. :(
(tehe, sorry)

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Ryx says:

am I the only one who wants that rock and roll version of Dr. Feelgood?

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