Gears of War PC

[Flybye]

My Love/Hate relationship with GoW :rolleyes:

Ok, I'm playing it at 1920x1200 at 2x AA. This looks BEAUTIFUL!!! It's like watching all your old VHS movies again but on Hi-Def.

It's a total shame that:
1) Several cut scenes are cut scenes rendered with old hardware. a.k.a. Epic got lazy and didn't bother creating new cut scenes.
2) There is a crap load of ammo. Umm...HELLO? We are using mice here. And..umm..I tend not to miss as much as I used to with the 360 controller. Why did you still leave me 20tons of ammo in every corner?
3) You need Windoze Dead in order for your buddy to connect to you. Oh pleaze.

One thing I DID notice, though, is that killing people in Hardcore feels like Insane on the console. It STILL doesn't matter as we have precise control over the aiming.

Ok, it has enough eye candy for me to play it, regardless of these issues. Will the perfect game ever come out for us?

I think I've lost hope on PC gaming. Everything seems to be "Let's make a kick ass console game while the PC gamers with the better hardware take the back burner."

I think the same as what occurred with BioShock is going to have to happen with GoW. Someone is going to have to create a patch in order to make the game intensely more difficult as I feel even Insane will not be enough.


One little screen shot. :) Oops, someone got lazy with the texturing of those sky lights. LOL. :P
Gears of War Pic (http://itsflybye.com/public/images/games/GoW/1.jpg)

[unacceptable_risk]

Theres just so many reasons for a developer to go with console. They get a set of fixed paramaters to work with, it would be like designing a game knowing everyone has exactly the same PC with the same graphics and sound card in it. And to top it off, they don't end up with forums full of ppl wingeing about patches lol.

As a PC only gamer, I think its sad. But I can see how this is going to be an increasing trend.

[Flybye]

I've been banned by their forums. LOL.

It's rather amazing how these work over there.

1) Deleted threads with on reason
2) Banned for offering subjective advice in an adult manner.

I mean, WTF. The Gears of War game has been POORLY ported over to PC. I have a REALLY sour taste in my mouth about Epic, and am tempted to quit gaming all around if this is our future. Console games horribly ported to PC. As it is, a lot of us have gripes about the UT3 demo, but can't make our final decision about the game till 11/19.

[unacceptable_risk]

Oh I hear ya.. Poorly ported console games for PC suck the most. And that includes some recent and big name games too. I will not give codemasters another cent ever, over this very issue.

[Flybye]

Here are some more nice pics :)

Pic 1 (http://itsflybye.com/public/images/games/GoW/1.jpg)
Pic 2 (http://itsflybye.com/public/images/games/GoW/2.jpg)
Pic 3 (http://itsflybye.com/public/images/games/GoW/3.jpg)
Pic 4 (http://itsflybye.com/public/images/games/GoW/4.jpg)

[Kill-Switch]

You know I'm actually on the fence about the look of GoW (and sadly UT3). The whole look is dark and gritty with a limited pallet ... and it's classed as super realistic. I like it, but what's with everything being damn shiny? I think quite a few recent games (HL2) suffer from this, you run down a street and the roads seem to shine. The games producers say it's realistic and real off technical terms about shaders, lighting and all that ... but it still looks shiny. I walked down my street the other day and the concrete didn't shine as it does in games.

[Synthohol]

The games producers say it's realistic and real off technical terms about shaders, lighting and all that ... but it still looks shiny. I walked down my street the other day and the concrete didn't shine as it does in games.
you weren't carrying a Bio-Shock rifle either, that makes everything look better on the street.

[Flybye]

I've actually read a lot of discussions on this.

A lot of people complained about it in BioShock, but most came to the realization that BioShock is in an extremely damp environment. And almost everywhere you go there is ocean water leaking in.

UT3 and GoW do tend to over do it a little. And yes, the Shader is what controls the reflectivity amount while the specularity map of each texture is what controls the amount of light that bounces off.

I think it simply comes down to 1 thing....laziness. Suade, leather, plastics, glass, metals..ALL of these have their own amount of reflectivity amounts and even within each material they will also have different reflectivity amounts. Just look at metals, you know gold reflects differently than iron, iron is more gritty, highly polished platinum will look different than highly polished aluminum, etc. Each of these shaders take time to program and take a lot of computing power. This is why you are beginning to see video cards with X shader speed. If you think about it, just sitting in your room looking around at all the different reflection types of every object in your room, you could probably count over 50.

High Quality shaders are still very new, and we are also seeing games which are filling up an entire dual layer DVD. As we begin to use such media as Blu-Ray for more capacity, have faster machines, and mature more into what is really "realistic," shaders will REALLY make our gaming worlds come alive. :)

I even just had this discussion with A Star Wars X3 mod. Many like the "shininess" but I told him "Look at the movies. All the ships are very dirty and grimy. Nothing looks like it came out of the shipyard 2 days ago. And now we have been using different shaders with the game in order to make the ships look more realistic.

[Nut]

I've been banned by their forums. LOL.



So what exactly got you banned?

I haven't been on their forums that actively but did see some of your posts on the UT3 section.

[Flybye]

By far, the LARGEST argument with UT3 and GoW is that the games feel too consolized on the PC. In other words, The PC game was simply not given the necessary time it requires in order to tweak it for PC gaming.

e.g.:
1) Improper balance of ammo.
2) Console type interface
3) Lack of specific PC information
etc.

A HUGE example would be BioShock. Many say this game was FAR too easy. Why? TOO much ammo. Console controllers will never be as accurate as a mouse. Hence the requirement for more ammo. Same for GoW. Can't really comment on UT3 since no one has played the campaign version of the game. But it is very obvious they did not tweak GoW for PC play. And a LOT of people complain about that.

So why did I get banned? Someone asked a question about Epic PC games, and I replied something like "We are sorry. Now only builds console games with the occasional port to PC." And they banned me for trolling LOL. Mind you, I had almost 300 informational posts as I'm sure you may have read. One silly reply and, without a warning, they instantly banned me.

That is another problem people have with the Epic forums. They seem to be run by 10yr olds. Threads are automatically deleted with no reason as to why, people get banned for the stupidest things with no warning what so ever. I've been almost tempted not to buy any more epic games.

One time I even opened a thread on suggestions on how to run a forum without irritating the people that have spent a good amount of funds in their software. It was a very diplomatic and unbiased thread giving good advice, and many were chiming in agreeing with me. That got deleted :rolleyes:

[DCMan]

How about those of us with dynamic IPs start loads of threads like that, and if the user/ip gets banned, just get a new ip and user and get posting again... they'll then have to ban blocks of ips and it'll only be a matter of (quite alot of) time before they'll ban the whole internet!! (maybe a little over ambitious to say the WHOLE internet, but you see where i'm going with this... ;))

[Flybye]

Hehe. Well, I was lucky they didn't IP ban me since I have a static IP address. Of course, I have ways around that, too ;) but hardly worth the effort.

[Nut]

I totally see your point on the way the games have developed and ported over to PC. To me the UT3 demo seems more of a dumbed down version of what could have been. Mainly new maps, nerfed game play and nerfed weapons. After giving time with the demo and reading the feedback on the UT3 forums, gives me second thoughts on purchasing the game. Granted I loved UT from 99-2004 but seems the game just doesn't play like it used to and many gamers who've played it since then think the same thing. Seems more like a map pack with everything nerfed to play with a game pad on a PS3 or XBox. I guess Epic just doesn't pay attention anymore to people who will plunk down HUNDREDS of dollars just to play UT in all its glory. I was even thinking of buying new video cards just to run everything high details with a respectable framerate. Granted the demo and my current config (after much research and tweaking the ini files and drivers) offered good frame rates of 60-100fps with full detals @ 1600x1200. But seems they only want the console crowd and they can have them, without me of course.

Granted I've seen better maps from user mods in ut2004, not to mention better gameplay. Maybe I'll wait for UT2010! Of course by then it will be ported from a cell phone game :)

[Flybye]

While UT3, so far, seems to be a disappointment, I am not worried.

In my ONS community, we already have a team ready to mod it to death in case Warfare does not give us the satisfaction we deserve and in case ONS has been completly removed.

If you haven't found it already, there already exists a 3rd party server viewer that someone put together for the UT3 demo displaying pings, list of players, teams, and so fourth.

As long as the hardcore players continue to exist, we WILL make UT3 perfect for us. :D