This 'PC Master Race' Shit Has To Stop

I'm writing this article in lieu of playing Dark Souls 3 because, like many others, I have beaten the first boss, and the game crashes any time I try to go further. Right now I'm watching a very long update bar which I estimate means I have an hour and a half more of waiting before being able to see if I can progress to Firelink Shrine.

I'm not aware of our PS4 or XBone cousins having any of the same issues.

Not only that! Again like many others I downloaded the, quite frankly excellent, Telltale bundle from the Humble Store last month. It was a package full of top quality games like The Walking Dead, Tales From the Borderlands, and The Wolf Among Us. Want to know something? Not one of them worked straight away. I had to employ a workaround to get them to operate at all. (The short version is: they won't load up in fullscreen mode (the default mode) with the default resolution for some unknown reason. I would simply be staring at a blank screen. By opening it on PC, then streaming to my Macbook I am able to see the game and change the resolution, which fixes the issue). Again, it took me a whole evening of not playing The Walking Dead to get to that point. Now, I'm no tech whizz, I don't work in a technical field at all, and I am therefore very impressed with myself for managing to sort out this issue; it's not something that was suggested on any forum I've seen, I simply stumbled across it on my own, and I therefore think that there must be others out there who are very disappointed by the fact that they still cannot get their games to work.

I am very much a PC fan. The advantages that it has over console make it the clear winner for me. This is the, very persuasive, article from Reddit's PC Master Race sub about why PC gaming is the way forward. However, that is about the only part of that particular subreddit that I'm able to get on board with nowadays.

The PC Master Race label, I think, started as a cheeky jab at console players, much like the ones that they have back at us. However, it now appears to have become more than that, with some PC advocates being completely unable or unwilling to admit that the platform has any flaws. Well, as someone with limited time to play games, I am severely pissed off at not being able to play the game I want to play on one of my very few days off work, and instead having to waste time hunting the internet for workarounds, and downloading massive updates. Sad as I am to admit it: on days like this I kick myself for not just buying a PS4.

There is a general feeling in the PC gaming community that we are treated as second-class citizens compared to the console gamers, who get a version of a game optimised to their machine, which works on day 1 most of the time. Yes, they may have poorer graphics and frame rates, but if it's a choice between an ugly version and a version that doesn't work at all, maybe the ugly one isn't so bad? I agree completely that PC players should have high-quality and reliable games, especially in Triple-A titles which we pay £40+ for, from the moment they're downloaded. However, that's just not the way it is. PC versions of games are prone to bugs that the console players don't have to deal with. It's a major advantage that the console players have, and we PC players apparently just need to bend over and accept it.

Conclusion: PC 'master race' members need to get off their high horses. In theory the PC platform is superior to consoles, but it's far from perfect, and it's occasionally very disappointing indeed. PC gamers' shit stinks too guys.

Review: The Witcher 3

To celebrate my completion of the game's main storyline and expansion pack, I thought I might as well review the game.

For those of you who have been logging on, and the blog statistics page does say that there are a few of you (God knows why, since there are only 6 posts on this so-far terrible blog) The Witcher 3 is the reason why there isn't much content. It's that damn good.

SETTING

In the Witcher 3 you play as medieval monster hunter/jedi Geralt of Rivia. He's a grumbly old bastard who has come to do three things: kill monsters, play cards and fuck sorceresses. Oh, and when he gets tired of doing all of that, he'll occasionally spend some time searching for his 'daughter' Ciri, who he knows is in mortal danger. But it's not like that's something he should be concentrating on. Killing griffins and harpies really does need to stay atop his to-do list.

Aside from the substantial main quest line, there are metric ass-tons of side-quests in this game, many of which are deep, story driven mini masterpieces in and of themselves. Others are as simple as: bring the goat back to the hermit. But even the latter variety tend to be fun. There is also an intriguing collectible card game, Gwent, to be mastered. Think of it as a cross between Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8, and Magic The Gathering (minus the individuals with hygiene issues - you know who you are).

Once you've completed all of the side quests, mastered the card game, and hunted down every monster causing trouble in every village, you should really get on saving Ciri from the aforesaid mortal danger. She is being pursuer by the Wild Hunt: a band of space pirate-knights who want Ciri for her special blood, or something. I'm not 100% sure why they want her, but they do, and one gets the impression that they aren't intending to be super nice to her when they lay their hands on her. So Geralt, when he can be bothered, must find Ciri before the Hunt do, and find some way of defeating them. Given that they appear to be pretty much invincible, Big G really has his work cut out for him.

GAMEPLAY

So who is this Geralt person anyway? As I've alluded to above: he's like a jedi without the lightsaber. He can 'force shove', bend the weak-minded to his will, but unlike a jedi, he can also shoot blasts of fire from his hands, or surround himself with a magic shield to nullify enemy attacks. Additionally Geralt has the power to lay some magical traps on the ground, which as far as I can tell do just about fuck all to 99% of the enemies in the game (top tip: don't spend your ability points on that power). Geralt is armed with a pair of swords: one steel, and one silver. To assist with monster (and sometimes non-monster) slaying, Geralt, as a witcher, has the option of brewing various poisonous oils to apply to his swords, or potions to take himself to tip the balance in any given fight.

The number of monsters in this game is huge. Each has its own style of attacking which has to be learned and overcome. Geralt is not as nimble as, for example, the nameless main characters in the Dark Souls games, but the combat system is not a million miles off. It's all a matter of knowing when to block, when to attack, when to use magic, or when to GTFO altogether, taking into account the fact that your character is a brawler, not an acrobat.

The alchemy and crafting  are both quite deep, but straightforward systems. Although it must be said, while the oils are useful to exploit the weaknesses of a category of enemies, and do make a difference, I only used 2 potions my entire play through: the one that makes your magic/stamina bar refill more quickly, and the one that allows you to see in the dark. I never paid much attention to the rest, and managed to complete the game without too much trouble. There never really appears to be any monster that requires a particular potion to be brewed to be beaten, which is surprising given that one of the trailers suggested exactly this. 

LOOKS

Very pretty. 

At launch there was some bitter disappointment from the PC crowd, because the visuals are limited to the levels of the PS4 and Xbox One. Where the PC still has the advantage though is in the frame rates, which I understand suffer quite badly on the consoles, whereas PCs can maintain a decent rate no matter how many characters are on screen.

Speaking of characters: I recall having to cross a very busy bridge in the game and thinking "there are more NPCs on this one bridge than there are in the whole of Skyrim." It's a fairly obvious point, but makes the game world feel authentic. I didn't often enter a town or village and think 'where are all the people?', unless of course they had all been eaten by a monster, but that's a different story altogether. 

The world has been crafted lovingly, with mind-boggling levels of detail. Everything looks fantastic and realistic. While it might not have been the huge step up that gamers were expecting from footage shown prior to the game's release, the game world is still beautiful.

The regions that make up the game world are vast. There are details, quests, and mini-missions like treasure hunts, guarded loot, and monster nests to be cleared in every corner of the map. However, at the end of the main quest, and having completed every secondary quest I could find, there were still several large chunks of the map that were unexplored for me. I had really expected to be sent to all four corners of the map, and see everything that had been created. Alas no. Perhaps a few more quests, or some re-tweaking of existing ones would leave the player at the end of the game feeling like he/she had seen absolutely everything on their journey.

THE NOT-SO GOOD BITS

This was originally part of my conclusion, but I want to bury it in the middle so that the conclusion is clear that this is an awesome game (aw, spoiled my own conclusion), and I don't want these very minor negatives to give off the wrong vibes. If these were anything that I thought should give rise to serious thought about whether or not to buy the game, I would have kept them in the conclusion, but they are not. Finish reading this review, then buy this damn game.

As I said at the outset: I spent 90 hours in this game. I enjoyed almost all of them. A few quests felt distinctly like filler. And towards the end of the game the monster contracts became a very formulaic. One was a big letdown. I don't want to spoil anything, but the game made it seem as if this contract was going to be an epic battle against an iconic fantasy monster. It was a high-ish level quest, so I got the feeling that this was perhaps to be the pinnacle of the monster hunts, but in the end it really wasn't what it had been made out to be.

HOW DOES THE RIG RUN IT?

As I alluded to in my earliest posts: this game was the reason I decided to buy and build a new PC. I have the game installed on my SSD along with the OS. It takes seconds to load, get to main menu, and start playing. I estimate that I can go from launching the game, to controlling Geralt within 30 seconds, which is pretty quick in my book. I'm sure there are people out there with rigs far better than mine who wouldn't piss on a game with a 30 second startup time if it was on fire, but this isn't Top Rig, it's Reasonable Rig. The load times at startup, when changing region, and after death, are all pretty fair. The load screens are like an animated storyboard with a narrator explaining the player's position in the game. In terms of loading time, normally I have to wait a few seconds, and listen to the narrator's blurb (which at some points I've heard a hundred times before), but I tend to be able to skip past the narration after the game's loading has completed, so I don't have to listen to the whole thing over and over again. 

I experience an odd quirk with the graphics for the first few minutes after entering the game. If Geralt is moving quickly too soon after I start, the graphics stutter a little. This is only for the first few minutes. I have no idea what the technical reason for this is, but I imagine the graphics card like my car's engine, which needs a few minutes to heat up before it will run optimally. That's probably not right, but it doesn't stop me from making struggling engine noises at my rig.

One thing that does drive me batshit mad though is that the game will occasionally minimise itself and I'm returned to the Steam Big Picture menu. The thing that occurs to me is that this rarely happens on consoles. I've gotten used to it, but if I'm in the middle of a fight, or something tense is happening in the story, it's very jarring to be pulled out of the game. I don't know what the cause of this is. Sometimes it's because my copy of Windows hasn't been verified yet (I assure you it's a legitimate copy!) and Microsoft feel the need to remind me every so often that I may be the victim of software counterfeiting. So that one is on me. Other times it happens for no reason. I don't have the time, or inclination, to go hunting for a solution to this very vague problem. I assume once I get round to activating Windows it will stop.

VERDICT

Out of the 90 hours I spent playing this game, 89 were fantastic, 1 was a bit meh. That's a quite astonishingly good success rate. I cannot recommend this game enough. It's has both breadth and depth. It's pretty, has great lore, storylines, characters and voice acting. This is a game that comes along only once every few years, and is one that will be the game against which other games of this variety are measured. This is one of my very favourite games that I put up alongside Final Fantasy 7, Fallout 3, Morrowind, and Grand Theft Auto V.

If you like this sort of game, and haven't played it already: play it now.

BONUS REVIEW OF HEARTS OF STONE EXPANSION PACK

After completing the main game, I bought the expansion pack straight away. The storyline I won't spoil, but it's very good. The new characters introduced are as memorable as any in the main game. The boss fights are quite something to behold. The absolute high point of the expansion for me was the boss fight against The Gravedigger. I won't provide any details, but you will come away from that fight knowing that you have mastered the game's fighting system, or not at all.

There are some new Gwent players added (yay!), new side quests, and a new rune crafting system (which I paid about as much attention to as the potions in the main game). 

This expansion was very fresh, and definitely wasn't just 'more of the same'. I have high hopes for the Blood and Wine expansion due out... eventually. Although I'm sadder than a grown man righttfully should be about the fact that once I complete Blood and Wine, that's it. No more Witcher 3. It's a game that I really wish could just keep going and going, but I know that it can't.

I can certainly say that CD Projeckt Red have a loyal fan for life, and they can shut up and take my money when their next game comes out. 

RETRO REVIEW: GRIM FANDANGO

This is definitely one of the biggest pluses of PC gaming for me: that as well as all the latest games I can also play games from back in the day. Want to go one better than that? If you’re like me you’ll probably remember your favourite games having crystal-clear graphics when you played them the first time. However, go back and look at them now, you’ll realise that unfortunately they look like something a half-blind chimp made out of Lego. Never fear though, we live in the era of the HD remake, so you can play them without having to slather Vaseline in your eyes to take the jaggy edges off.

THE GAME

You play as Manny Calavera: fast-talking travel agent to the dead, providing poor souls with options for traversing the Land of the Dead to get to the afterlife. Unfortunately for Manny, he has some karmic debts to pay off, so can’t move on himself. Even more unfortunately, he’s having a hard time of making any progress with his repayments, because the company for whom he works is corrupt to the core. He discovers this when he comes across Mercedes (Meche), a modern day saint who should be fast-tracked to the afterlife, but Manny can’t seem to do anything for her. He digs a little deeper and discovers that the corruption by his employers goes much higher. Meche is spirited away and Manny vows to rescue her.

The game draws inspiration from the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead in its character design, music and overall aesthetic. It’s a look that works for it. My theory is that the character design was made deliberately bold so that the characters could be made out on screen when the game first came out with the original crappy graphics (see mini-rant above). The characters transfer well to HD. There is an option to switch between the fancy new version and the original, for nostalgic purposes presumably. It shows just how far graphics have come since this game was released in 1998. The backgrounds are pre-rendered and don’t change with the HD makeover. This is a plus and a minus. They don’t benefit from the advances in graphical technology, but the plus is that the backgrounds were clearly rendered with love the first time around, and to change them would be change for change’s sake. Pre-rendered backgrounds are rare nowadays, but there is definitely something to be said for them. It gives a game the appearance of an interactive painting, and they are an art form in and of themselves. I can recall some of my favourite games from the 90s, such as the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy series, looking amazing because of their pre-rendered backgrounds, and in spite of their crappy character animations (even for the time).

In the HD version the characters are nothing special. They are an improvement on the original, no doubt, and they make the game playable to someone who has become used to crystal clear graphics, and who would be put off by having to revert to squinting and using ones imagination to work out what the hell is going on onscreen.

The game’s control system will make you wonder at times if your computer has been hacked and is being controlled remotely by a patient in a mental hospital, but that’s fine, the game rarely (although sometimes) requires quick movements. For the most part it’s a thinky-thinky-problemmy-solvey kind of game, but the times when it tries to be a quickly-quickly-do-the-thingy kind of game you might find yourself risking an aneurism. If your doctor has advised you that you are at a higher risk of brain bleeds than the general population then I would advise that you get someone to help you with the tar-swimming beavers puzzle.

Level design can likewise be a pain in buttcheeks. The game follows the tried and tested point and click puzzle-solving game archetype, but without the pointing and clicking. You explore your environments as Manny and investigate/pick up things that capture his attention. Exploration is key, and as with any puzzle game, solutions are not obvious. There’s no Doom-esque ‘blue key opens blue door’ nonsense here. Sometimes you collect things that are useless; other things have no immediate use; other things require to be used multiple times; and occasionally you can obtain more than one of a given item. There is much thinking outside of the box in this game, and you will not believe how many uses a collapsible scythe has.

HOW DOES IT RUN ON THE REASONABLE RIG?

Um yeah, the rig can handle this one.

VERDICT

Great game. Very simple to pick up, but devilishly complex in parts. Occasionally it will cause rage-quitting, but that’s ok. Sometimes a puzzle needs to be left alone for a bit before being re-attempted.

Recommended.

Review: Civilization V - Digital Cocaine

I guess I'm not exactly with the times reviewing a 5 year old game, but screw y'all, I'm still playing it.

The best way to stop is to never start.

This is less of a review and more of a public service announcement.

Civilization V will ruin your life. Let me tell you about my friend. We'll call him Clark. Clark had a girlfriend, and a job, and a family. Everything was going real well for Clark until one day he fell in with a bad crowd. They offered him a copy of Civ V over Steam. Clark had never really experimented with video games before, he was a very clean-living kind of guy. But for reasons best known to himself, he tried it. He'd heard that you can't get addicted from just trying it once, so he jumped right in.

It was like nothing Clark had experienced before. The joys were overwhelming. He founded cities, trained workers, discovered wonders, built an army, and gathered treasures for his citizens. The ecstacy he felt was more intense than he had felt since playing Final Fantasy 7 in the days of his youth.

But soon things changed. When Clark tore his eyes away from the screen he discovered that it was 4am. He hadn't done any of his chores, his dog had pissed literally everywhere, he was hungry, the house was cold, and his girlfriend had sent him about forty texts. The game had turned against him too. That son of a bitch Napoleon had declared war on him, and because he hadn't focused on science enough he found himself going up against WW1 artillery with some stupid little crossbow assholes. One by one the cities in his empire fell and he was defeated. Clark felt horrible. It was late, he felt exhausted, and he had nothing to show for it.

"Screw this piece of shit game," thought Clark.

The next morning he woke; sleep deprived and cranky. He met his girlfriend for lunch. She could tell something was off. Clark wasn't very talkative. His mind kept going back to the game. Lunch ended with a fight, and Clark returned home alone. He didn't even think about it: he went straight to the computer and booted up the game. "Round 2, Napoleon," he thought.

Anyway, you get the picture. Long story short: Clark ended up prostituting himself for expansion pack money.

I've been playing this game for a long time now and every single game I find myself saying 'just one more turn', which is a phrase that I gather so many gamers have used over the course of the Civ series that the developers have incorporated it into the game's win/lose screen.

It's difficult to put a finger on exactly what is so addictive about the game, but addictive is what it is. Like everything that's addictive it gives you some free little highs to draw you in, and then they become more difficult to come by. But even although you have to work for them: you do, and that makes them all the sweeter. Early in the game you send your scouts out into the unknown and find treasures in the ruins which give you a cheeky boost over the competition. Mid game the addictive highs come from building wonders before the other players, advancing along the technology tree, improving units, earning enough points for social policies, and in the case of warmongers: crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women.

It's a solid formula, and although after a few (dozen) games the middle becomes a bit dull, there are enough ways to play to keep it fresh, and once you have a preferred way to play you will find yourself refining your strategy game after game until you are either a wise and benevolent emperor, or a great and terrible master of war.

HOW DOES IT RUN ON THE RIG?

Looks great, loads fast, plays about as fast as a turn-based strategy game can be played, I think.

The rig does get kinda hot after a while and the fans get so loud that my Vietnam-vet neighbour starts having flashbacks.

Not being an expert on these things (I'm trying to learn, but it's hard, dammit!) I'm not sure what the exact reason for that is. I can't imagine it's the graphics. Pretty as they are, it's not as if it's The Phantom Pain I'm asking it to run. I can only imagine it's doing lots of AI strategising. If I had to take a stab of a guess, I'd say it's the processor that's getting hot?

The point is: keep your houseplants away from your PC when you're playing this game.

CONCLUSION

This game is fun. You should play it.

(note to self: work on conclusions)

The Final List

Note the ultra-high quality of the iPhone 5S camera.

So you'll see that I went a bit over the budget on build.

You will recall that the idea was to keep to a price comparable to a PS4/ XBONE. The PS4 is currently £278ish on Amazon, about half the cost of the rig. The XBONE is £263, which is less than half.

That's quite the failure of the experiment isn't it?

Not necessarily.

I'm not going to rhyme off all the advantages of a PC, but the pertinent ones are that it's vastly more future-proof than a console. If there have to be upgrades down the line, it won't be a brand new computer, it will be some extra ram or a graphics card upgrade, meaning it's a longer lasting investment than a console. Secondly: the graphics are better than a console, which matters to me. What can I say? I'm a sucker for pretty things.

So, how does it perform? Find out on the next exciting instalment of The Reasonable Rig!

To the 120 viewers of my blog: sorry it kinda sucks

Evening y'all.

Or morning y'all, if that happens to be when you're reading this.

If you're reading this in the afternoon: get back to work! If you're unemployed and reading this in the afternoon: carry on.

I did have quite high hopes for this blog, but unfortunately I have zero time for many things, like writing. And as you've guessed, based on the subject matter of this blog, I am also a gamer, and if I have any spare time I like to spend it gaming. So if I have some free time I'm more likely to spend it gaming rather than writing about gaming.

I'll try to make more time for you readers though.

So here's an update.

The rig is built! I wasn't blowing smoke when I started a blog about building a PC for reasonably cheap. I actually did it, and have been in financial difficulties ever since, but that's really down to my own inability to manage my money.

Games: well that's the point isn't it? I built the rig to play games on it, and play games on it I have. I will be doing reviews from time to time. I'm going to have to come up with some sort of system for rating the graphics though, because I don't really understand the technical side of things, and quite frankly can't tell the difference between 32fps and 48fps like many people can. But I do like me some sexy graphics, so I will probably use a scale from "like having shit flung in your eyes" to "like looking at a perfectly formed diamond through a pair diamond binoculars," or something like that...

Other hopeful features for the site:

News? I'm pretty out of the loop when it comes to developments in any industry that isn't my own, so there probably won't be much in the way of news.

Entertaining stuff? Hopefully everything on this site will be entertaining. If you've enjoyed this post so far: stick around! If you think this post, and the ones that preceded it, have been shit. Well, maybe it's best you leave now and try to forget you ever came here.

Commentary on stuff? Probably. I consider myself to be fairly adept at pointing out the failures of others in a smarmy, hurt-durr, neckbeard kind of way. So there will probably a snarky article or two about stuff I don't approve of from time to time.

Articles about nonsense? Yup. I'm a lawyer in my non-internet time, which is quite a low-nonsense job. That's why I'm a fairly high-nonsense writer.

Well-researched and poignant pieces of literature that will find their way onto the Pulitzer shortlist? Ha. Aha. Ahahahahahahahahaha. No.

Anything to do with the technical side of PC-ing? I don't know much about that, but I shall try my hardest.

Ambitious, yes. But Gods dammit I'm committed-ish to making this the best half-assed gaming blog on the internet.

Yours,

Steve

Square One It Is Then...

Per the last post I fired up my old computer to see if anything was salvageable. As it turns out nothing was.

When my buddy and I turned the old machine on it gave a constant high-pitched beep, much like one would expect to hear from a flatlining patient in any good hospital drama. We checked online and that noise tends to indicate that there has been some sort of catastrophic failure with the motherboard: something has overheated, melted, and the whole thing is now fucked. Bad Times.

So that means I'm working with a completely clean slate when it comes to this project. Nothing will be used from the old machine; I'm even getting rid of my gaudy, plexiglass-sided case and going for something more living room friendly.

The upshot of this is that it will give a much more transparent view (pun?) of what the build actually costs.

Cost is an important consideration in this project. It's not a limiting factor as such, I have some disposable income each month (yes, it really should be going to the wedding fund and our flat needs a new carpet, but god dammit I want to play The Witcher 3!), however, the whole point of the project is to match/beat XBONE/PS4 performance with a PC for around the same price. This means that while in theory I could afford Nvidia's latest monstrosity known as the Titan, I won't be using it in this build because I could buy an Xbox, a PS4, and take a short holiday abroad for the same price.

So what is my upper cost limit? That varies depending on how much I've been playing about with options on PC Part Picker, but it should really be based on the PS4 and XBONE prices, which are £324 and £278 respectively.

At first I said: fine, £300 is the average between the two, so that's the cost limit. It makes sense, but here's the thing: investing a bit more just now will mean the rig will stay relevant for longer. The current build I have weighs in at £450.00 and should last a good long while. It should vastly out-perform the current gen consoles and when the next gen comes out there is room for improvement, hopefully without having to completely rebuild the whole computer.

Details to follow. I'm finalising the parts list and am aiming to order at the end of this month (after the credit card bill has been paid).

Until then,

Steve