The Semi-Official PC Gaming Thread

I'm a proud Pc owner.
Don't own a 360 or ps3 or Wii.

Right now i'm between Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Gears of Wars, Assassins Creed, Guitar Hero 3 and Crysis. With some Call of Duty 4 thrown in the mix.

When a game comes to PC or Console, I typically go Console. That said, I grabbed Bioshock for PC. Other than WoW and LOTRO that's the last PC game I've played.

I've been really looking forward to playing The Witcher, and have been holding out for the enhanced edition to get released. Of course with news this morning that it has been delayed, who knows when that will get a turn.

Also, there are rumors that Diablo 3 are going to be announced soon. A big Diablo fan site has been running a countdown that I believe ends next Monday. That will do horrible things to any kind of social life I have created since escaping WoW.

Any opinions on Age Of Empires 3? I saw it with the expansion for cheap at Best Buy, but I still miss AoE2. Age of...Mythology? Whatever it was called, didn't do it for me as much. I missed making the huge castle defenses and watching the enemy break against the walls.

I went through a bit of a PC gaming phase a while back and I still have a bunch of games to go back to if I ever get the urge. Guild Wars was a big one for me and I still go back to it for a few minutes here and there. Titan Quest is one I'd like to go back to eventually and I have Fallout 1 and 2 among others that I'd like to play. Painkiller, F.E.A.R., Farcry, Rise of Legends... there are plenty more. My PC is ok, but a lot of the newer games would probably make it scream or melt.

I'm actually building a brand new computer this weekend (first time, cross your fingers), so I'm about to catch up on a good two years' worth of PC gaming, or at least re-play The Orange Box in awesome-o-vision. I had also been playing LOTRO for a little while on my old computer but my processor curled into the fetal position when I reached Bree.

I heard the US release of The Witcher was censored; I'm pretty sure you can buy the European version on Gogamer.com for anyone interested.

Starcraft 2 coming up is a BIG plus for Pc gamers.

I've seriously gotten back into Lord of the Rings Online after a little time away. I've gone from level 30 to level 35 in about a week, and just now started the series of quests to get my mount. I'm definitely going to give Age of Conan a try -- I'm intrigued by the idea of it being a single-player experience for the first twenty levels, and how you don't pick a class until you're ready to enter the larger game -- and based on what I've seen from a friend who is in the beta, the online Warhammer game looks like a must-try as well.

On the non-MMORPG side, I have The Witcher installed, but I too am waiting for the update to really dive into it. And I've started Hellgate: London two or three times but just can't warm up to it.

I'm also on my second run through Portal and it's every bit as fun as it was the first time.

The thing that kept me from really getting into LOTRO was the lack of a pure caster class, which makes sense from a lore standpoint, but I think kind of hurts gameplay. In WoW my favorite classes were mage and lock, and in most RPG's I tend to make a caster/range DPS class. I do have a hunter I enjoyed, but I think the highest level I ever hit was about 12.

The other problem I have is moving to another MMO (that is so blatantly designed after WoW) and abandoning 3 years of progress 5 epic 70s and tons of friends.

I'm getting back into PC gaming. I became too tired of the fickle nature of consoles and console gamers. I remember the times where I could still log onto a game several years later and still find people playing it.

So far I've got a 24 inch HD monitor. I'm putting together a quad core SLI rig. It should do for a while.

Which MMO is that? Because LOTRO certainly doesn't follow the WoW model, and if anything, Warcraft ripped off Warhammer, not the other way around.

LOTRO > WoW

Easily.

The UI for LOTRO was so damn similar to WoW it bordered on criminal. Not that I really minded, I just didn't get anything from my time with LOTRO that I got from WoW. It just feels like WoW has cast this shadow over all MMO's (for me) that I can't get out from under.

Honestly, I can't give another MMO an honest shot, because I'll compare it to WoW and there is no way it will stand up to it. Hell, even Vanilla WoW destroys TBC WoW. I had so much fun, with so many people I now call friends, in Vanilla WoW raiding that I am looking to recapture that feeling.

I'm sure LOTRO is a damn fine game, I definitely enjoyed my time with it, but I was looking for something that wasn't there and set myself up to be dissapointed. I am looking forward to the new superhero MMO from the CoH guys though.

Champions is coming out, and hopefully it will revitalize the superhero MMO. It's from the creators of City of Heroes/Villans.

So maybe it will get me playing a MMO for a while again.

Here's a link on gametrailers for Champions: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/6284.html

Champions, that's the name of it, thanks Billylove. Perhaps I will re-visit LOTRO while I'm on vacation next month. It's obviously a good game, with a lot of cool things implemented (I love breaking out of the intro area and seeing the Wraith). I just need to give it a fair shake.

Wait, did we play CoH? I remember several of the Chewers forming a super group. My main character was Ender of Worlds. I capped at level 41 and promptly quit after that due to it turning into a social game once everyone reached 40+. Pissed me off, because I wanted to see the end game missions.

And hey, the next LOTRO update is adding fishing!

I've been playing PC games since as far back as I can remember (early 80's) and as far as I'm concerned, it's my first love. I'll almost always try and pick a game up for the PC before switching to xbox 360 or PS3.

Here's a decent list of games I've picked up for the PC over the last year or so that are worth checking out.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
This one is a lot of fun, has a high replay value also, then again I've always loved the Call of Duty series.

World in Conflict
Strategy
Man, this game was a real gem of a find. At first I thought it would be another C&C\Starcraft rip off but it had a real good fleshed out story line and it was flexable enough to create some great strategies in game. If you ever played ground control II, it's a lot like that (which is another fantastic game).
High replay value if you like killing them damned commies!

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

A little more updated version of the classic, the story line really drives this one. They pull in some lesser known tv actors for the parts (six from BS:G, Sawyer from Lost). You gotta play the campaigns all the way through to unlock the alien campaign.

Also the add on for it was pretty fun: Kane's War, which sort of takes place before, during and after Tiberium Wars.

Kane's war has some decent replay value, as it has "global conquest" however C&C3:TW, not so much.


Hellgate: London

It was OK, if the whole game would have been more like the one level that was pitch black and you needed a flashlight, it would have been fantastic. Overall once you get past a certain level, it's just a cakewalk and the cakewalk starts halfway through the game. Zero replay value.
(Think Doom 3 feel).


Medieval II: Total War: \ Kingdoms
(Strategy)
This game was all sorts of fun, trying to conquer the world takes time and effort, not to be taken lightly! decent replay value, if you've had a long enough break after completing it. If you're not familiar with the total war series, you should! You have the option of 'simulating battles' and pray you win, or going to a battlefield and controlling armies. This game can take you a year to beat depending on your play style, enjoying it the whole time.

That's all the games I can remember playing on my PC in the last year, there have been some others but I either don't remember them or they weren't worth mentioning. There have been some fun console games but that's for another thread.

It's possible. I had another name of the boards that time devoured from when I originally posted here, and I did join a couple supergroups. I don't even remember my character on there, just that he was a terrible Wolverine bootleg.

All I ever used to do on my old PC was play the original Red Alert. Then I progressed to Total Annihilation.

I did enjoy, and am now currently re-enjoying STALKER.

Then someone told me to try out Bioshock and my Radeon X800XT tripped out and died a horrible death.

I bought a new rig, played the absolutely soulless Crysis and nearly gave up on PC gaming, only to find Supreme Commander recently... simply wonderous.

I can see how that could kill the fun. I've usually moved on to another game or two by the time I replay a game so the 'tricks' have escaped my memory a little bit. Also I always up the play level to the highest my second time through. Like for example, the scene where you go back in time and are a sniper. You have to fend off a horde of hostiles while the chopper comes in by the ferris wheel, that scene is fucking hard.

I heard too many horror stories about Bioshock on the PC (bad installs, crashes, DRM, you name it) so I went the 360 route on that one, but for the most part, if a game is available on console and PC, I'll go the PC route. I just don't enjoy playing shooters with a game controller -- I've gotten too used to the mouse-and-arrow-keys method over the years.

Bioshock played just dandy on Pc for me. And it was a beautiful thing.

I can't get used to the 360 control for shooters either. I need my mouse.
I am with RSV2 now and the amount of headshots those terrorists are getting is insanely fun.

Bioshock required a certain level of pixel shader - think it was 3.0, which pretty much completely alienated a whole bunch of people with perfectly acceptable hardware.

The high-end AGP Radeons for example were pretty badly hit.

I'd quite happily accept an upgrade situation if it were for the stuff Crysis 2 was doing - but people have been able to adapt portions of the game to run under 2.0 conditions and it looks identical. It was pretty much a sham.

Still, I had to upgrade after it killed my card and it runs beautifully now. My situation was pretty extreme though.

So I booted up the PC to load up some LOTRO and maybe play with ya'll on there...and I get a BSOD after checking on some friends in WoW. I have no desire to spend time fixing the problem, and surely don't want to pay to fix it if I need a new HDD, with GTA4 coming soon to take up my time. Mark me emo.

Currently I'm working my way through Stalker, and I finally got Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and Dawn of War: Soulstorm, so I have to play those.

After I finish Stalker I'm going to allow myself to buy Crysis, and I'm sorely tempted to replay just about every game I have (including BioShock, oddly) since I just bought myself a 37" Samsung HDTV for use as a PC monitor as my birthday present to myself. Half-Life 2 + Episodes looks fucking incredible this size. As does the Crysis beta demo at max detail 1080p, but the framerate is barely playable even by my low framerate standards (anything over 24fps average is gravy to me).

And someday I probably ought to finish Oblivion, but I just can't be arsed right now.

I've never owned a single console, but I've been a pc gamer all my life. My current pc is a piece of shit so Audiosurf is the only new game I've played this year. I just finished the 1991 Dynamix adventure Heart of China. It's one of the best adventure games I've played in a while and I highly recommend it to any fans of the genre. Currently I'm playing Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within, which I've wanted to play ever since it came out in 1995. Jesus, that's 13 years ago!

What I want from this thread is an instruction guide as to how to run PC games from the 90s without resorting to Dosbox or bootdisk shenanigans. Or, if need be, a way to actually make those processes work.

Thanks in advance.

I'm currently putting together a new rig and I'm considering going Vista 64bit. I've heard success and failure equally. However, I'm wondering about gaming with 64 bit. Do most games run well? I would assume if it's Windows Vista certified it will run fine. Am I correct in that assumption?

How about XP 64? Trap?

Multiple operating systems is the way to go if you want to game and still have Vista.

I absolutely love Vista 32, haven't had a single problem with it, and directx 10 games look great.

So nyah.

Again, I'm getting a mixed bag of recommends for and against it. I can grab a few copies from work, tests them out with the 3 days before activation thing and probably go from there.

Yeah, I've heard the same, actually. And I'm hoping that as various drivers and whatnot are tweaked Vista will overtake XP, game-performance-wise, but for now I'll take the trade-off with better DX10 visuals.

Image it and give it a shot.

At least for my benefit.

I know the feeling. The only reason I made the leap to Vista myself was my old machine conked out and I upgraded to a sleek new SLI rig.

Same here. I'm not building weak machine. So far I'm going to have SLI, quad core, and DDR3.

Will an SGI Altix ICE 8200 with the standard RAM alottment allow me to run Crysis on max settings?

You have to sacrifice babies to run Crysis at max settings.

I can run it on max settings on my rig (sans AA), but it does get choppy in some places. But I'm not not one of those guys who demands 60+ frames per second.