Personal Computer Game News

[yourbeliefs]

Elder Scrolls Online gets rid of monthly fee. Still need one time purchase

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/21/78...e-release-date-free-to-play-tamriel-unlimited

 

[king3pj]

Elder Scrolls Online gets rid of monthly fee. Still need one time purchase

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/21/78...e-release-date-free-to-play-tamriel-unlimited

I kind of figured that's what they would do. Star Wars did the same thing with their MMO. They call it free to play but that's not really true. You still need to buy the game. They just removed the monthly fee.

This makes it much more appealing to me since I'm not willing to pay $15 per month for any one game. I'm a lot less likely to try it now that I know I will have to buy the base game unless it's dirt cheap.

 

[king3pj]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/01/21/free-upgrade-to-windows-10-for-first-year-after-release

Windows 7 and 8.1 users will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free in the first year of release. I haven't paid any attention to Windows 10 news because I had no intentions of paying $100 plus to upgrade my machines. Now that I know it's free I will I'm going to start looking into the benefits more.

I have a Windows 7 machine in my home office that is mostly used for remotely accessing my computer at work. It's also used for streaming my music and video to other devices in the house.

The bigger deal is my gaming machine running Windows 8.1. Upgrading that to Windows 10 will give me the ability to use DirectX 12 for future games. Now the only question is whether my Radeon HD7850 is one of the existing graphics cards that will support DirectX 12. They said it would work on some of the hardware people already own but they didn't give specifics.

Once I know more about the differences between 7, 8.1, and 10 I will look into upgrading one or both of those machines.

 

[Poke]

Windows 10: gaming on steroids with DirectX 12

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-gaming-on-steroids-with-directx-12

 

[Ramy]

What if you have a machine that has Vista?

 

[king3pj]

What if you have a machine that has Vista?

They only mentioned the free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1 users. I'm assuming that means you would have to pay full price if you have anything older than that.

 

[Zookster]

I was waiting for Windows 10 to roll out before buying a new computer. My 5-year-old home office laptop is really sluggish in spite of many troubleshooting attempts to speed it up, and I can't upgrade its memory from the 4 GB it shipped with. I don't think upgrading to Windows 10 would help in that area unless I could install a lighter version than my current Windows 7 OS.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I'll probably wait until about month 11 of that 1 year free upgrade period. I do like Windows 7 but it is a little long in the tooth and I don't want my OS holding back the full potential of my machine. I do want the major bugs to be ironed out before I take the plunge.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Assassins Creed: Rogue (the AC game that came out for last gen in the fall) is coming to PC on March 10.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/311560/

If for some reason you're still keen on the idea of preordering, you get a giftable copy of AC 3. So yeah there's literally NO REASON whatsoever to preorder this.

 

[Poke]

Early DirectX 12 benchmarks show massive improvements in CPU and GPU utilization

http://www.winbeta.org/news/early-d...-massive-improvements-cpu-and-gpu-utilization

 

[Poke]

Cant wait until this comes out this year it could be one of the best Sci-Fi programs out there..

 

[yourbeliefs]

BioShock 2 has been removed from all digital vendors.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/9/8008923/bioshock-2-steam-psn-xbox-live

 

[yourbeliefs]

BioShock 2 has been removed from all digital vendors.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/9/8008923/bioshock-2-steam-psn-xbox-live

Statement from 2K:
"BioShock 2 has been temporarily removed from the Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network marketplaces and will return to these digital stores soon. We'll let you know when that happens. In the meantime, this in no way affects the single-player or multiplayer experience for those who currently own BioShock 2."

It got pulled on it's 5 year anniversary so the belief is that it was pulled due to music license issues. Let's just hope they don't do the same thing they did with GTA: San Andreas and take it down, remove the music, nerf the game, and then put it back on as well as mess up everyone's existing installations of the game.

 

[king3pj]

Well I got my nice tax refunds deposited into my bank account yesterday. I always have extra taxes withheld all year so I can get a couple thousand back on my refund and buy myself something I wouldn't normally buy. That's how my TV purchase was made, that's how my big surround sound was paid for, and that's how I built my gaming PC. Usually I have a plan for my refund well before I do my taxes. This year I don't really have anything in mind.

I've told myself that I wouldn't buy another GPU until cards with 4GB of VRAM we're reasonably priced ($200-$300). My Radeon HD 7850 is only 2 years old and it certainly doesn't need to be replaced yet. It's able to max out just about every game I own at 1080p with solid framerates. Last week I read that AMD is putting the finishing touches on their 300 series GPUs and this made me look to see how far the prices have dropped on the 200 series.

I was surprised to see the MSI overclocked AMD r9 290 4GB on Amazon for $269.99. Keep in mind that this card was close to $600 when it came out last winter.

I decided to check out the Nvidia competition as well since they generally have better performance even if I prefer AMD's best bang for the buck approach. The Nvidia GTX 970 has slightly higher benchmarks than the AMD r9 290 but it is the most comparable card. Amazon has the ASUS GTX 970 4GB for $339.99. Again, that number is lower than I would have expected given the prices last time I looked.

Games like Shadow of Mordor and The Witcher 3 are starting to ask for more VRAM than the 2GB my 7850 has to offer. Hell, the minimum card for The Witcher 3 is a 7870 which is just above my card. Again, the 7850 runs 99% of the games I own maxed out at 1080p beautifully. I have yet to try a game that it can't run smoothly. Even Shadow of Mordor looks great and probably better than it would on my PS4. Because of this I'm leaning towards waiting another year to upgrade like I originally planned. Those prices are pretty tempting considering that I have this refund just sitting here though.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well, if you're looking to unload that 7850..

 

[king3pj]

Well, if you're looking to unload that 7850..

Ha. Well I'm leaning towards waiting another year to upgrade. On the other hand, I'm well known for making impulse purchases that I probably didn't need to make. The price of that r9 290 is very tempting and I do get these refunds for the purpose of getting myself something nice.

If I do pull the trigger you'll be the first to know. I don't know many PC gamers so I wouldn't really know what else to do with the 7850.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I still feel weird calling it AMD. To me, AMD just makes CPUs. I realize that YEARS ago AMD bought ATI and then called them AMD as well, but it's still my impulse to call it ATI and not AMD.

 

[king3pj]

I still feel weird calling it AMD. To me, AMD just makes CPUs. I realize that YEARS ago AMD bought ATI and then called them AMD as well, but it's still my impulse to call it ATI and not AMD.

Yeah, I see a lot of the guys on forums like Tom's Hardware still referring to them as ATI cards. I find that site to be very useful for researching PC hardware or fixing computer issues in general. It was AMD before I built my first gaming PC a couple years ago so that's all I know them as.

My time in the PC gaming world is very short compared to most other PC gamers. I know I went against the conventional wisdom building my PC with an AMD CPU and GPU instead of an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU. That being said, I'm very happy with the price to performance ratio that AMD offers.

Yes, Intel beats AMD in pure benchmark tests. If I remember correctly the i5 was over twice as much as AMD's most comparable FX 6300 at the time though. It goes back and forth in the GPU world but most PC gamers would say Nvidia usually outbenchmarks AMD GPUs too. Again, If I remember correctly the 7850 was about $80 cheaper than the Nvida counterpart though.

I'm not going to win any benchmarking awards with my AMD setup but I don't think you can get a better bang for the buck for 1080p gaming. I don't know if that's still the case if you want to go game at super high resolutions but since I'm playing on a 1080p TV I don't care about that.

 

[king3pj]

Has anyone here ever played Smite?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/01/smite-review

While I'm waiting for Gamefly to receive Dragon Age and send out my next game I thought I'd see what the MOBA craze was all about. I downloaded DOTA 2 months ago but I never actually played it after reading about how awful the community is for new players. I was thinking about giving it a try anyways until I heard a podcast talking about a Smite beta coming to Xbox One. These were big DOTA guys and they were still excited about a good MOBA coming to Xbox One.

I looked into it and it looks kind of cool. It's a 3rd person free-to-play game instead of the top down perspective DOTA and apparently most other MOBAs use. It doesn't seem as intense as something like DOTA or Leage of Legends and that really appeals to me. I haven't actually played it yet but I created an account and downloaded it before I went to bed last night. I also signed up for the Xbox One beta because I've always been more of a controller guy but those invites haven't gone out yet. I'm hoping that since the game is much newer the community won't be as awful for new players.

I almost definitely won't sink hundreds of hours into this like lots of MOBA players do but I'm willing to give it a shot. I might only play a couple matches and decide it's not for me.

I do wish games like this and Diablo 3 would just use Steamworks though. I realize that Blizzard's Battlenet was probably around before Steam but I hate having to make new accounts to play one game. This means that just like Diablo I will probably only play with strangers because my only PC friends list is on Steam. Not only that but I have money in my Steam wallet. This simple fact means I'm much less likely to buy anything that costs real money. Maybe that's actually a positive though.

 

[king3pj]

Tonight was MOBA night. I decided to play from my home office machine instead of my gaming PC because the desk setup is easier than a couch for keyboard/mouse games. Because of this I tried DOTA 2 first since I could just Steam in-home streaming to do all the processing on my gaming machine in the living room and remotely play from my desk. It's the first time I've tried this but I'm happy to say it worked very well with no noticeable lag or artifacting. I should point out that both machines are connected to my network through a wired gigabit switch.The only downside is that it seemed to be limited to 720p. I only did the first tutorial mission, which took about a half hour, before moving on to SMITE.

I ended up playing Smite for about 2 hours. I started with the tutorial. After I finished that the game recommended that I try co-op mode. Co-op mode is basically the regular game only it's a team of real players against a team of CPU controlled bots. I played the Joust mode which is 3 on 3 and only 1 lane. This was the recommend starting point because it allows you to get a feel for the mechanics of the characters without having to worry about lanes and other technical MOBA stuff. I had a good time with this and got noticeably better each match. There is no voice chat system in the game so even if the community is crappy they couldn't verbally abuse you. The text chat is easy to use though and all the people I played with were friendly enough. If you wanted to chat with friends while you play you would have to use a third party program like skype. I assume there is a way to voice chat with Steam friends outside of games too but I'm not positive about that.

Smite gives you 5 free gods for making an account. They also have another 5 free gods that are rotated in on a weekly basis. I don't think you can buy individual gods but there is a gods pack for $30. This pack apparently gives you access to all current and future gods in the game. That's a pretty reasonable pricing model in my opinion. Other microtransactions are for character skins and other cosmetic things. I'm happy to play with the free stuff for now.

The home office computer I was playing on was built pretty cheaply. I used a $50 AMD A4 APU when I built it because it wasn't designed for gaming. The APU is basically a CPU and GPU on a single chip and the PS4 and Xbox One both run of a much more powerful version of this AMD APU tech. The reason I bring this up is because I'm running relatively weak hardware but I think it's supposed to be better for gaming than the Intel integrated graphics they include on their processors. Smite ran perfectly smooth at 1080p with medium settings. This is what the game auto selected for my hardware and it ran well. I just wanted to point out that even though this will be an Xbox One game you don't need a beefy PC to try it out and since it's free-to-play your not out anything if it doesn't run well for you.

This machine would probably be good for games like Civ V and Sim City but I wouldn't want to use it for more demanding stuff than that. Steam in-home streaming means I can play anything from my Steam library on it though. After discovering how that works tonight I don't think I will shy away from mouse and keyboard games as much in the future.