Anime How much do you hate consoles? (PC master race sentiment)

[Hellraiser]

Voted "hate: other", as this is complicated.

I'm in the modern consoles and console games are almost all worthless camp, just like AAA is nowadays, but otherwise I just don't care about modern consoles as such. Tied to this there is also no notable distinction in the audience anymore between PC and consoles, since all AAA/P2W/GAAS is the same corporate slop made by the few big publishers that survived waves of consolidation on the market, retards on steam are essentially the same lot as the consoletards of old, as they belong to the same group of consumers. There is however a different market segment that replaced console as the primary factor of decline and adjustement to the lowest common denominator in games - the mobile market, although ironically a lot of the worst bullshit (apart horrible touch interfaces) like f2p/microtransactions started on the PC in Asia in the early 2000s when online gaming kicked off there. Anyway here my stance is uniform regardless of platform, big publishers need to be nuked from orbit and their land salted etc.

As for actual gaming time and playing on consoles, I have a roughly 60/40 PC/older console split as I got more heavily into retrogaming in the past few years. The newest ones I own are the PS Vita and PS3. Here especially with the older consoles up to the 32/64bit generation, while game design and tech was primarily pushed forward by novel computer game titles back in those games (now it's all multiplatform cash-maxxing), there's a fair bit of creativity put into a bunch of titles which I like discovering/noticing. Be it some unique hacks or weird technical solutions (for instance, how the tracks are drawn in Road Rash on the Megadrive) to push the hardware to the limit, clever color use/art design or really good music (or interesting technical solutions to music/sound, considering how the hardware worked). There's also more diversity and a whole gallery of now mostly dead/long gone developers and publishers, when the industry was still in the pioneer/start-up phase of experimentation, before consolidation and industry maturity got us to the current age of creative stagnation driven by typical big business and shareholder operations (also known as enshittification). The older console libraries are thus for me in part interesting from a "history of art" point of view.

And of course quite a few of those are still fun to play, even with 0 nostalgia for most of the titles, that is if you are into the particular genres of mostly action games (yes yes, there are also some jrpgs and the obscure strategy games ported from some popular in japan computer etc. in there somewhere as well, hold your horses turboweebs). They're a nice distraction/break from yet another tactical/strategy/management simulation/RPG title on PC, sometimes you just want to race, do snowboard tricks or jump on some platforms.

I'll also add here that I do like my handhelds as they're convenient for travelling, commuting or whenever I need to be on the couch and watch over the kids or something. Shame modern day solutions are bulkier than the PSP or DS were (I'm talking steamdeck and Switch here, not modern emulation handhelds), fitting into a pocket is still an advantage for me.

 

[Thalstarion]

I don't hate them, though I have grown tired of them. They're not what they used to be - a lot of the 'exclusive' titles are pure slop and the golden age, in my opinion, aligned with the PS1/PS2 era when new RPG's released with much greater frequency and weren't riddled with blatant subversive agendas.

I mostly play RPG's and horror games though I am not against dipping into other genres if something manages to catch my eye. I just find that older games, even when accounting for potential jank, tend to be more satisfying and 'gritty' than a lot of the slop produced at present.

There's also certain games that I prefer to sit and play on my sofa rather than at my PC.

I also think there's a bit too much reliance on mods to fix compromised games. I know a lot of gamers who will complain about the likes of KDC2 but still buy it with the intention of modding it to remove the dubious elements - but the developers still end up with money in their pocket.

 

[Falksi]

I don't think consoles need to die, I think they need to return to what they once were - simplified physical-media based plug & play devices which offer an easy-access, bite sized, more popamole focused approach to gaming.

Popamole is never a good thing. It's analogous to braindead. Just so you're aware.

Consoles do need to die. They're worthless shitboxes now. In the 90s they were equally responsible for technology and game design innovation, now only decline. There isn't really anything they can do to catch up to PCs these days either. PCs do it all now. In the 90s it took a Windows PC ages to boot. There were no gaming laptops for portability. Modding was barely a thing, very much in its infancy. No local multiplayer unless LAN. You couldn't plug any USB-head controller in. Emulation wasn't a thing (for the most part). Steam wasn't a thing (and PC games had annoying DRM key codes making second hand purchase a pain in the ass too). Everything has changed and then some. All the many reasons to game on a console like second hand ownership, local multiplayer, fast boot times etc are gone, either because PCs do it now too, or the benefits were abandoned with later console releases. Oh and they used to have great, numerous exclusives but that is hardly the case now also. Consoles are just like PCs now but 4 times shittier and with added artificial restrictions on top like pay to play online. I can't name any upside whatsoever. While PCs have about 15 no-brainer upsides. You can even play classic console games with mods (romhacks) with ease.

The only way a console can ever be good again is if it does something absolutely ground-breaking, like is a dedicated gaming box that opens a portal to gaming worlds that you physically walk into. Your desire to go back to late 80s-early 90s arcade gaming at home aint it lol. Just emulate and romhack those old games there's more than enough to fuck around with.

Popamole is like junk food

Deep games are like fine cuisine

Well rounded people can digest and appreciate both. Both serve a purpose, and there's not a better way to break up a long RPG gaming session than having a quick blast on a popamole game for 20-30 minutes.

 

[NecroLord]

I loathe consoles because they are the main method of Triple A slop propagation.
They are the tools used by the filthy plebeians to degrade and downgrade video gaming.

 

[Azdul]

It'd also be good if the standards bodies could come up with a "boot to installed game" standard for PCs based on a file on a thumb drive that circumvents the OS login screen.

So you'd stick your thumb drive in to your PC, power it on, and it'd immediately run the game exe path specified in the BOOT file in the root directory of the thumb drive, with only a minimal part of the OS booted along with it.

Here is the list of 109 games working this way on IBM PC, last ones from 1987. Most of them true classics, like Pirates, Wizardry, Ikari Warriors. Usually supporting only CGA graphics and PC Speaker.

By the time IBM lost control of PC standard, this approach seemed dead.

Hundreds of companies made their own quirky and beautiful hardware, like Roland MT-32 or Gravis Ultrasound. Or just mostly IBM compatible chips at fraction of the price. And most of it required small piece of software loaded on boot to accept VESA standard, pretend to be Sound Blaster, or Microsoft mouse.

When all hope seemed lost, Terry Davis stepped up. Every game written for TempleOS can boot directly from floppy, HDD or CD, including only minimal parts of OS. I'm pretty sure that is also the case for thumb drives.

You're welcome.

 

[Nutmeg]

It'd also be good if the standards bodies could come up with a "boot to installed game" standard for PCs based on a file on a thumb drive that circumvents the OS login screen.

So you'd stick your thumb drive in to your PC, power it on, and it'd immediately run the game exe path specified in the BOOT file in the root directory of the thumb drive, with only a minimal part of the OS booted along with it.

Here is the list of 109 games working this way on IBM PC, last one from 1986. Most of them true classics, like Pirates, Wizardry, Ikari Warriors. Usually supporting only CGA graphics and PC Speaker.

By the time IBM lost control of PC standard, this approach seemed dead.

Hundreds of companies made their own quirky and beautiful hardware, like Roland MT-32 or Gravis Ultrasound. Or just mostly IBM compatible chips at fraction of the price. And most of it required small piece of software loaded on boot to accept VESA standard, pretend to be Sound Blaster, or Microsoft mouse.

When all hope seemed lost, Terry Davis stepped up. Every game written for TempleOS can boot directly from floppy, HDD or CD, including only minimal parts of OS. I'm pretty sure that is also the case for thumb drives.

You're welcome.

Actually, thinking about it some more, there's no need for UEFI level support or anything like that. Rather, the OS would start booting as usual, but then its boot process would check if there's a thumb drive inserted, and if so, not boot all the way, instead boot just enough to run the program at the path specified in some file (named following some convention) on the thumb drive. This would be easy enough to do with a Linux distro using sysvinit -- at runlevel 1, check if there's a thumb drive plugged in, mount it, check the file, and run whatever's at the path specified and terminate. If something isn't there (the thumb drive, the file) or goes wrong (can't be mounted, is corrupt) at any point, just boot the system up normally instead.

Though I'm a little curios as to how well that would work, I don't think I care enough to actually do the few hours of work to see it through. Well anyway there's an idea for anyone who wants to recreate the home appliance like experience older computers and consoles once offered with a contemporary PC.

 

[Freedos]

I don't hate them, I love lots of console-made games, I had consoles like Megadrive and Playstation and I'm glad having more games of them on pc nowadays.

I get the point about PC-focused franchises changed to be more controller-friendly being so despised, I don't like it, and I partially miss some graphical powerhouse for PC like first Crytek FPS games. But that's a different story, the solution would be adapting the game nicely to every platform.

This and I hate the "pay to play online" (fortunately pc gamers are safe from this out of mmorpgs).

 

[Unkillable Cat]

'Hate' is too strong an emotional term for what I feel towards consoles.

I recognize that in the beginning consoles were the vanguard of innovation in audio/video technology, so they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

I recognize that also in the beginning there were too many of them. The Crash of '83 fixed that.

I recognize that consoles can thrive and do perfectly fine by offering their own unique approach on gameplay, something that other platforms (especially the home computer) cannot offer.

But the problem quickly arose when, in the aftermath of the Crash of '83, consoles entered the market with not only more exclusivity, but mandated exclusivity on top of that. This forced exclusivity appears to have done more harm to gaming than good, especially long-term.

Finally I recognize that with the arrival of the X-Box, consoles pretty much stopped trying being special and became a restricted, limited, retarded method of playing PC games.

I'm a big fan of the PlayStation 2 and will happily champion it as the last proper console released. Because it offered both exclusive titles, and unique approaches to playing them. It lived a good life well into the PS3-years, which should tell people something about how great it was, and how bad the PS3 was.

That said, the only console I've ever owned was a Game Boy, and I dropped that before the mid-90s. As it was a handheld it is already quite exclusive compared to what home computers offer, so I'm not bothered with it in that regard. But it IS a very limited piece of hardware, and I have a very hard time recommending any game on it, save for Tetris. Being able to play Tetris on the go, in a simple manner, is such a winning move for people to train up and maintain good hand-eye coordination and quick thinking, that I strongly recommend it to everyone over the age of 50. This is why I've since purchased a Game Boy Color and a GB Boy Color - to allow my father to be able to keep playing Tetris.

Now, to address a few points brought up in the thread:

XBox was introduced in 2001 (November 15), so 2002 is where the decline started

Not quite accurate. The XBox was first announced in 1998, and right away then decline started to trickle in, to the point that when the console actually reached stores there was plenty decline going on already.

The reason PC games stopped being sold in big boxes around the turn of the century and every game on every system was being sold in a DVD-case by 2002? Microsoft pushing it during the development of the XBox. That's a huge change that affected a competing market to the XBox.

Can you name some PC games with actually "complex gameplay"? Most only look complex until you learn that you can ignore 95% of the options they give when it comes to overcoming the trivial challenges they throw your way, and thus they all boil down to incredibly simple brain dead games where the only difficulty is the initial learning curve of figuring out all the shit you can ignore.

A possible contender would be Omnitrend's 'Universe'-trilogy of games.

At their core they're space exploration games along the likes of 'Elite' and 'Sundog: Frozen Legacy', but much more in-depth.

A bit too much, possibly.

In 1989 I read a submitted letter in a gaming magazine where someone was asking for help trying to beat Universe 2, but no one the player had talked to even knew the game existed. Neither did the columnist at the magazine, but he printed the letter anyway and hoped for a reply. It took a few months, but it worked out for everyone involved.

There are probably more complex games out there than that.

Japanese devs being stuck on consoles is part of the problem. Imagine what kind of games we could have gotten if Japan had adopted the PC platform.

They did, in a way.

The Japs developed their own line of personal home computers, and games were released for those platforms. The problem there, however, is the exact same you that you describe - the Japanese devs were stuck. Not with the platform, but in their minds. I've tried to get a feel for what kind of games were released on Japanese home computers, and they ultimately seem to boil down into three categories; combat strategy simulators, games involving scantily-clad women whose tits often become visible, and ports of Western games. Either there wasn't a market there for anything else, or Japanese devs outright refused to think outside of their little boxes. Very few games from these platforms found their way to western computers, and it was the arrival of Windows 95 with its extended Kanji-support that heralded the end for Japanese home computers.

To date I've yet to find a single game on any of the Japanese home computers that I would describe as unique or special - music aside. Some of them have kickin' chiptunes.

But like i said, the issue for me is console players themselves, the most offensive part about them being their total ignorance of anything else outside their console world. If you spend any time on the internet at large at all, it feels like PC gaming has never existed. 99% of the time games come up anywhere, on a youtube video, a Twitter post etc, it's always consoletard shit. Best RPG of all time? It's always Zelda, or Chrono Trigger. Like, every time.

Again, Japanese devs and managers living in boxes inside their heads, spreading those boxes on to the weak-minded.

THAT'S the core problem with console players in general: They're weak-minded. They look at a computer and those three brain cells sharing that skull space cower away and hide in terror. But those three brain cells can work together to operate a console and a joypad somehow. And thus the walls of ignorance are built.

Have you read the stories about what Japanese music composers and sound engineers had to do to get a job in the gaming industry? It was that old Catch 22 - you can't get a job in the sector without past experience, which you can't get without having held a job there. (Not to mention the proper musical education.) For the miraculous few who did get jobs, they had to contend with hard work hours, incomplete in-house audio design software that they were banned to share outside of the company, and strict time tables - all to compose ~35-second musical loops because storage space was in short supply.

Meanwhile Western composers working on C-64s and Amigas freely shared their audio design software, and constantly worked to improve them. They also had vast creative freedom. While Koji Kondo was busy cobbling together the music for Legend of Zelda, Rob Hubbard was composing a 17-minute epic masterpiece for a beat-em'up, and Ben Daglish snuck a 9-minute demo into a side-scrolling SHMUP, seemingly just for shits and giggles. When composer legend Nobuo Uematsu dared put a 17-minute endboss fight tune into Final Fantasy 6 in 1994 (followed up by a 12-minute endgame tune) the Japs thought he'd gone mad and was walking off the plantation - when in truth he was merely walking in footsteps laid down eight years earlier.

The Japanese in general are very big on exclusivity and keeping things separate. In regards to emulation, I think it's the X68000-scene rather than the other Jap home computer platforms, where they've put together a sizeable and near-complete collection of emulated software and games... but outright refuse to share it with anyone outside of their little group of enthusiasts. Boggles my mind, that one.

 

[Machocruz]

I'm not a headcase, so I don't hate inanimate objects. But absolutely no reason to own a console anymore unless you're a retro player playing a 6th generation or earlier console, on a CRT most preferably. But modern day console gamers at large though will continue to be ignorant and the lowest common denominator, and thus ignorance, laziness, dishonesty, revisionism and overall suck assnes will continue to reign over this hobby. They still think Oblivion is a top tier RPG, need I say anything else?

 

[Ryzer]

I still would like to know what nintendo games from the last 15 years are top quality and worth going out of my way for? I am aware of none. Not to say there isn't any. Genuine question.

Easy. Mario Galaxy 1-2, Zelda Twilight princess, Zelda Breath of the wilds, Metroid prime 2-3, Kid Icarus, Fire Emblem Wii and Switch, Monster Hunter 1-2.

 

[Hellraiser]

I still would like to know what nintendo games from the last 15 years are top quality and worth going out of my way for? I am aware of none. Not to say there isn't any. Genuine question.

Easy. Mario Galaxy 1-2, Zelda Twilight princess, Zelda Breath of the wilds, Metroid prime 2-3, Kid Icarus, Fire Emblem Wii and Switch, Monster Hunter 1-2.

Release Date: Canada August 27, 2007, United States August 27, 2007, Australia November 8, 2007.

Metroid Prime 3 is almost 20 years old. Twilight Princess? One year older. 15 years ago it was 2010 not 2005

 

[DJOGamer PT]

How much do you hate consoles?​

Not at all
There's plenty of great videogames (especially within the Action genre) that would've never existed if not for consoles

I do however think that since the 8th generation of consoles (PS4/XBone/Wii U) they've lost alot of their practicality (endless updates, no more backwards compatibility, cumbersome online services, pricier hardware and software), which was further accentuated by PC gaming becoming substantially more accessible and specifically the PlayStaion and XBox lost most of their identity
Nintendo, for all their bullshit, do try to keep fresh and focus on the "fun" of play, and this was what helped them preserve their character and marketshare all this time - but now that the Steam Deck exists, imo even if Valve never outsells them, at the end of the day the Deck is the more interesting and powerful portable device

 

[Ash]

I don't think consoles need to die, I think they need to return to what they once were - simplified physical-media based plug & play devices which offer an easy-access, bite sized, more popamole focused approach to gaming.

Popamole is never a good thing. It's analogous to braindead. Just so you're aware.

Consoles do need to die. They're worthless shitboxes now. In the 90s they were equally responsible for technology and game design innovation, now only decline. There isn't really anything they can do to catch up to PCs these days either. PCs do it all now. In the 90s it took a Windows PC ages to boot. There were no gaming laptops for portability. Modding was barely a thing, very much in its infancy. No local multiplayer unless LAN. You couldn't plug any USB-head controller in. Emulation wasn't a thing (for the most part). Steam wasn't a thing (and PC games had annoying DRM key codes making second hand purchase a pain in the ass too). Everything has changed and then some. All the many reasons to game on a console like second hand ownership, local multiplayer, fast boot times etc are gone, either because PCs do it now too, or the benefits were abandoned with later console releases. Oh and they used to have great, numerous exclusives but that is hardly the case now also. Consoles are just like PCs now but 4 times shittier and with added artificial restrictions on top like pay to play online. I can't name any upside whatsoever. While PCs have about 15 no-brainer upsides. You can even play classic console games with mods (romhacks) with ease.

The only way a console can ever be good again is if it does something absolutely ground-breaking, like is a dedicated gaming box that opens a portal to gaming worlds that you physically walk into. Your desire to go back to late 80s-early 90s arcade gaming at home aint it lol. Just emulate and romhack those old games there's more than enough to fuck around with.

Popamole is like junk food

Deep games are like fine cuisine

Well rounded people can digest and appreciate both. Both serve a purpose, and there's not a better way to break up a long RPG gaming session than having a quick blast on a popamole game for 20-30 minutes.

No. You're misunderstanding the definition of popamole. It's a play on words and the game whack-a-mole, which is one of the most braindead games of all time, just whacking moles as they pop-up. Only a child or severely underdeveloped mind can enjoy this for more than 10 seconds. Popamole was coined after all the third person shooters of the late 2000s/early 2010s, which were almost comparable to the game whack-a-mole. The games largely consisted of shooting enemies as they popped up alongside zero real challenge thanks to things like regen health + hiding behind cover, as well as checkpoints every minute.

Now compare this to a simple classic arcade game like Time Crisis - similar concept, but no regen health, hiding behind cover doesn't allow you to still observe every threat in view and pre-emptively line up your crosshair, and it's genuinely tough.
You idolize simple arcade games like Time Crisis (...for some reason), which while basic and without much depth or longevity, still have value and genuine skill involved. Not to mention the lightgun and pedal gimmick. Popamole on the other hand has NO value and is for braindead retards. While Time Crisis and arcade gaming in general isn't far from popamole (whack-a-mole is found in arcades after all), the difference is still rather significant. I can't play popamole, I'm not a drooling idiot. But I can appreciate most arcade games from time to time. Especially when their intended playtime is very short; reflective of their depth. Those shitty third person shooters were 3-10 hours lol.

 

[MASLV]

The modern Playstation just doesnt have any games. Hate is a strong fword though.

 

[JarlFrank]

For turn based games, there is no difference between HIDs (Human Input Devices). It really doesn't matter if you use a keyboard, keyboard and mouse, arcade stick or controller. The game is turn based, you can enter your inputs at your leisure.

Every time I play a turn based tactical RPG designed for console, with controller as the primary input method, I go insane from how cumbersome it is to control.
Examples: playing Tactics Ogre and Fire Emblem through an emulator, or playing a Tactics Ogre inspired SRPG like Fell Seal.

It's so cumbersome having to go through all these menus with keyboard only - and not even keyboard shortcuts like in 1980s PC RPGs, where you could just hit (A) for attack, but you have to scroll through a list of options with the arrow keys and hit space or enter to confirm. Including movement.

Just clicking on shit with a mouse is so much more comfortable for these kinds of games.

In something more simple, like a Wizardry clone, the mouse is also far superior, as is the keyboard which lets you use hotkeys to select any option with a single keystroke, rather than having to scroll through menu options.

The only reason turn based games are acceptable to play with a controller is that they don't give you any time pressure, so a cumbersome interface won't make you any less effective at playing the game. It just makes the experience more tedious.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I don't hate consoles. I think PC games generally always had more potential but was not fulfilled most of the times due to having to multiplatform games to consoles and PC's. Consoles today aren't as big as a step down as they used to be. I think with Xbox one and PS4 you could finally have bigger and more intricate levels in games with the more ram. It was rough during the Xbox & ps2 / Xbox360 and PS3 days with them and level design.

I also don't know what I'm talking about most of the times.

Thanks,
Pooper

 

[Lucumo]

I recognize that in the beginning consoles were the vanguard of innovation in audio/video technology, so they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

The reason PC games stopped being sold in big boxes around the turn of the century and every game on every system was being sold in a DVD-case by 2002? Microsoft pushing it during the development of the XBox. That's a huge change that affected a competing market to the XBox.

The Japs developed their own line of personal home computers, and games were released for those platforms. The problem there, however, is the exact same you that you describe - the Japanese devs were stuck. Not with the platform, but in their minds. I've tried to get a feel for what kind of games were released on Japanese home computers, and they ultimately seem to boil down into three categories; combat strategy simulators, games involving scantily-clad women whose tits often become visible, and ports of Western games. Either there wasn't a market there for anything else, or Japanese devs outright refused to think outside of their little boxes. Very few games from these platforms found their way to western computers, and it was the arrival of Windows 95 with its extended Kanji-support that heralded the end for Japanese home computers.

To date I've yet to find a single game on any of the Japanese home computers that I would describe as unique or special - music aside. Some of them have kickin' chiptunes.

Hm? Arcades were the vanguard of innovation until PCs took over. No clue where you are getting consoles from.

There were lots of PC games being sold in big boxes in 2002 and later.

Japanese had lots of different genres on their home computers and also during the Win 95/98 era. The arrival of the PS2 is what drastically reduced the Japanese computer market. Until 2000/2001 it was very much still thriving.

 

[JarlFrank]

I think with Xbox one and PS4 you could finally have bigger and more intricate levels in games with the more ram.

Yes, there is a noticeable improvement with that console generation, a great example is Dishonored 1 (smaller levels, segmented by loading screens) vs Dishonored 2 (larger levels, no loading screens).

 

[Ash]

I think with Xbox one and PS4 you could finally have bigger and more intricate levels in games with the more ram.

Yes, there is a noticeable improvement with that console generation, a great example is Dishonored 1 (smaller levels, segmented by loading screens) vs Dishonored 2 (larger levels, no loading screens).

Big open games with minimal loading have existed on consoles since the beginning. Play more games! This ignorance disqualifies you from genuine discussion.

The problem was the autistic level of graphics focus games were receiving in the 2000s which made games ridiculously small....on ALL platforms. See Doom 3 for example, which was PC-first only later ported to consoles. Meanwhile the consoles at the time had minimal issue handling something huge like GTA: San Andreas...because the graphics weren't autistic decline PC dev level.

Still scapegoating consoles for PC dev sellout decline. Sad! If they wanted to, they could have made the greatest games of all time when they abandoned PC. The relevance of the target platform is very minimal*. But they didn't, they went full sellout.

*You demonstrate that perfectly well with your prior post actually. Menus take longer to scroll in those particular console games you played, otherwise no difference on the actual gameplay. Big. Fucking. Deal.

I also don't know what I'm talking about most of the times.

That's OK, most don't. It's annoying but if everyone is annoying and ignorant then it's just...normal. Consoles are slightly inferior PCs performance-wise, averaging around a mid-tier PC when they're in their heydey/timeframe of relevance. That doesn't mean the games have to dumb, shit, tiny, garbage. Absolutely absurd failure of logic. Shitty xbox360 could have ran Crysis if they were to simply...tone down some graphics settings and some extra optimization (just like a mid-tier PC can't run with max settings). Well, Xbox3shitty and Gaystation3 did run Crysis 2 and 3.

People don't know gaming, only have exposure to one branch of it, and instead of fixing that they go on forums and talk nonsense. Not true gamers.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

The only console I ever owned was a Pegasus, which was a NES clone. I liked some of its games, compared to an Amstrad computer, which I also owned at the time, the controls were often smoother (thanks to better game design and I'm assuming hardware, not because of physical controllers) and the sound was usually better. Did I like the games more though? Not really. Some were better, some were not. After that I moved to PC and never went back, though at that time consoles were very rare around here, so it felt like a natural progression.

Since then I've been pretty far removed from the console game market, I don't really know what console "generations" are, when I hear about console wars, the picture in my mind is that the US accidentally dropped some old consoles as aid for a tribe of jungle pygmies who fashioned the controllers into crude weapons and fought a rival weeaboo tribe who was supported by Japan. I don't care if a game is console exclusive. There are so many PC games that I don't have the time to play, that if the environments were totally separate I would hardly notice.

Of course the problem is that consoles intruded into PC game design, because many games are now developed for multiple platforms or ported later with baggage of their initial design, which naturally drags the game down to the lowest common denominator. The biggest issue for me comes down to UI and controls because controllers suck and UIs designed for controllers are fundamentally shit.

I never understood how controllers survived to this day as a main input device on any platform. They're probably better for fighting games? Though fighting games are still completely playable with a keyboard, and if you really want to, you can use a controller with your PC, same as you could use a specialized gimmick controller for a specific game, like a steering wheel for a racing game. Consoles are not needed for games utilizing special controllers, if these controllers even need to exist in the first place. Maybe they're better for that kind of console action games where you run around with a sword and kill 1000s of Chinamen? I don't know what these are called. They're not better for platformers, but they function well for them. They're not better for turn-based games, every action takes much longer without mouse and keyboard. They're horrible for FPS, RTS and anything else that requires precise aiming in real time, and they're absolute shit for navigating menus.

I've played some multiplatform/console games ported to PC over the years, and I liked a few of them (New Vegas, Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 4, Nier: Automata, Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection), but they’re good despite being designed with the limitations of consoles and controller-centric UI and controls in mind, and I can’t think of a single thing about them that would’ve been worse off if they had been made for PC from ground-up.

And I'm sure I missed out on many cool old games that are locked to consoles, though emulation exists if I ever wanted to play them, mostly JRPGs and turn-based tactics games, maybe some 2D platformers, but I can live with it. I tried FF7 once and I didn't like it, while it was praised as the best game ever by weebs and game journalists, so that turned me off from delving into JRPG sub-genre for good.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Hm? Arcades were the vanguard of innovation until PCs took over. No clue where you are getting consoles from.

Oh that's simple: I consider arcades to be (oversized) consoles.

I apologize for not mentioning that somewhere, that's on me.

There were lots of PC games being sold in big boxes in 2002 and later.

It took longer for them to disappear in the US, but over here in Europe they disappeared almost overnight.

Japanese had lots of different genres on their home computers and also during the Win 95/98 era.

Like I said, I'm trying to get a feel for it, I'm sadly no expert on the topic. I'm not afraid to admit that I may be wrong on this.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Can you name some PC games with actually "complex gameplay"? Most only look complex until you learn that you can ignore 95% of the options they give when it comes to overcoming the trivial challenges they throw your way, and thus they all boil down to incredibly simple brain dead games where the only difficulty is the initial learning curve of figuring out all the shit you can ignore.

Factorio, DCS World, Underrail, Silent Hunter (pick any), SWAT 4

 

[Ryzer]

Can you name some PC games with actually "complex gameplay"? Most only look complex until you learn that you can ignore 95% of the options they give when it comes to overcoming the trivial challenges they throw your way, and thus they all boil down to incredibly simple brain dead games where the only difficulty is the initial learning curve of figuring out all the shit you can ignore.

Factorio, DCS World, Underrail, Silent Hunter (pick any), SWAT 4

Factorio is available on consoles.

DCS World -> Star Fox / Ace Combat

Underrail? Lol

Swat 4 -> Socom

 

[Ol' Willy]

For turn based games, there is no difference between HIDs (Human Input Devices). It really doesn't matter if you use a keyboard, keyboard and mouse, arcade stick or controller. The game is turn based, you can enter your inputs at your leisure.

UI really matters, mouse/keybind oriented TB games are ten times more comfortable to play than with the shitty 10 button controller

 

[Ol' Willy]

No. You're misunderstanding the definition of popamole. It's a play on words and the game whack-a-mole, which is one of the most braindead games of all time, just whacking moles as they pop-up. Only a child or severely underdeveloped mind can enjoy this for more than 10 seconds. Popamole was coined after all the third person shooters of the late 2000s/early 2010s, which were almost comparable to the game whack-a-mole. The games largely consisted of shooting enemies as they popped up alongside zero real challenge thanks to things like regen health + hiding behind cover, as well as checkpoints every minute.

I hope you are aware that it were japs and consoles who first introduced sticky cover popamole?