The Computer/Console Gaming Thread

[davieanix]

Anyone know if Target or Big W have PS4 Resident Evil Origins cheaper than $79? Wondering if I have to make a trip to JB or not.

[Gutsman Heavy]

Did you like Transformers Devastation but think it needed more mutants, more ninjas and more turtles? Then you're in luck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO_jtTw87kw

A must buy for me

[DELTAprime]

Did you like Transformers Devastation but think it needed more mutants, more ninjas and more turtles? Then you're in luck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO_jtTw87kw

Saw that announcement. I haven't even found time to play Devastation yet and now I have to add a Ninja Turtles game to my growing pile of unplayed games.

[philby]

Saw that announcement. I haven't even found time to play Devastation yet and now I have to add a Ninja Turtles game to my growing pile of unplayed games.

how big is your pile?
my steam stats:

$2265
Current account value

$592
Total cost with sales

8
Steam level

$14.52
Average price

$8.24
Average price per hour

156
Games owned

1,213h
Hours on record

18.4h
Average playtime

90
Games not played

58%
Games not played

[DELTAprime]

how big is your pile?

Not sure. I buy a lot of console games and PC games from places other than Steam like Origin and GoG so it would take me a while to figure out mine.

For those of you with an Xbox One, Red Dead Redemption is coming to backwards compatibility. It's rolling out now, if you want to jump the queue and own a digital copy of RDR you can follow these instructions: http://www.icxm.net/x/red-dead-redem...t-install.html

[kup]

This is my documented experience with using the Steam Controller for those interested:

Intro

I have been following the development of the Steam Controller since it was announced a couple of years ago. I was greatly interested in it because it coincided with my then transition from the PC desk to a PC lounge room. Since just a year before that, I had become a late comer to modern Console gaming as I got a PS3 rather cheaply. My last console before that was an N64 and had been an exclusive PC gamer since. Although I only had the PS3 for the exclusives and playing blurays at the time (the latter has now become its main use along with Netflix), it did show me how much better a modern game can look on a big TV and how much more comfortable to play and immersive it can be as a result of that. From then, I was convinced that Lounge room PC gaming was a must and since PC versatility allows you to use any peripheral on it (from Atari Joysticks to Wii remotes and PS3 Controllers) it was worth a trial. Overall once I started playing in the living room on a TV, it didn't feel as good to come back to the small desk.

However there were a few compromises I had to make for this transition. First was that although I had gotten very used to using a PS3 controller for FPS and adventure type games, the thumbstick was nowhere near as accurate or graceful as a mouse. Games are playable within reason without being frustrating but there was a definite handicap. This was alright with me as I don't generally like playing competitive online games and as mentioned, it is good enough once I got the hang of it. The second compromise and possibly the most damning was that games made with the intention of using a mouse as the primary interface (RTS, RPGs, Turn based, etc.) were shockers with a traditional game controller like the PS3. Moving the thumbstick as a mouse is a mess, specially for quick actions or trying to precisely click at a small item or icon on screen. Even new turn based games that natively support controllers such as XCom were rather awkward. For this type of game, I simply had to go back to the desk or use a wireless mouse with an annoying plastic lap board as a surface which is not a comfortable set up.

I was really concerned about not being able to play mouse based games so I started looking at alternatives. And behold, I found out that Steam was already working on a solution for all the mouse related problems with the newly announced, Steam Controller.

The Steam Controller

The Steam Controller was designed to bring PC gaming to the living room. By design, it aims to be a controller that offers mouse like accuracy and compatibility with any type of PC game, from FPS shooters to Mouse interface based games such as Baldur's Gate, Civ or Stracraft. Yes, I mentioned older games because one of the highlights of the Steam Controller is that it is fully backwards compatible with any game.

To achieve mouse like accuracy, it uses two large (owl eyes) haptic feedback interfaces. On the original prototype, that is all it had aside from the shoulder buttons as their intention was infinite customisability. Basically the haptic feedback is supposed to 'simulate' the feel of button presses, scroll wheels, and even trackballs through timed vibrations. Even thumbsticks are supposed to be emulated in the haptic interface. However the bizarre look of the prototype without anything resembling traditional controls scared a lot of people away and received negative feedback. To compensate for this and regain greater gamer interest from the mainstream, they have now included in the final release a traditional thumbstick and buttons. They also molded the left Haptic feedback with a 'D-pad' cross to further appeal to players intimidated by the design.



Although fan reactions and companies trying to compensate for them often is detrimental to the final product, I have to agree that it was a good idea to also include traditional controls, specially during this transitional/adoption period . The haptic feedback interface require some getting used to and the Steam controller is highly reliant on user customisability through Steam - This is both its biggest strength and weakness as I will detail below.




Steam Controller - First impressions


I received the Steam Controller at my workplace, my first instinct was to plug it into my work laptop which does not have Steam or any games on it. To my surprise, Windows natively detected the controller as a mouse with all the features you would expect although without steam, it is not customisable. The right haptic feedback served as the mouse 'pad' and controlling the cursor with it was extremely smooth and accurate with not much of a learning curve (if any). It is worth mentioning that in this 'native' mode, the right haptic feedback interface is configured to be a trackball and you can feel the 'rolling' as you interact with it. The only strange thing is that for some reason, Valve decided to use the right trigger button as a 'left click' and the Left trigger button as the 'right click'. This was a bit odd to me but got used to it rather quickly. The left haptic feedback is used as a scroll wheel with a similar effect. I started to use the controller as a mouse while in the office, simply by opening applications, moving the cursor on word and even had a go at dragging selection squares on items, all worked really well, about as good as you would expect from a standard mouse.

When I got home, it was time to try the controller as it was meant to be used with Steam - First thing to note that the only way to get the most out of the controller is to run Steam in Big Picture mode. The regular mode will only give you basic functionality and you would not be able to change things while in game. Switching between modes is hardly an effort so this is not really a deterrent but can be a bit odd as I prefer the normal mode. In big picture mode, you can go and configure the controller as you wish, the customisability is truly endless - You can set up the haptic feedback panels to behave however you wish (joystick, mouse, buttons, etc) and also map keys to any button. Interestingly enough, if you are playing a game that requires lots of buttons, you can assign one of the buttons as a 'shift' type key that will give you a second set of customisable functions while you have it pressed similar to a keyboard - Great for games that have a lot of keys although I don't know any that has that many. Another very interesting feature is that the Steam controller has gyro mechanisms. You can enable it by simply pushing a button or touching one of the haptic feedback panels and physically moving/turning the controller in the air. You can also assign whatever action you wish to the Y and X axis such as mouse movement, scrolling, etc. For any action or feature you can also assign the sensitivity, speed, etc. In short, everything on this controller is customisable. One of the things that I enjoyed was that you can update the firmware of the controller wirelessly (which I did). This was a nice and easy process. Another thing that I also liked is that the controller as a beeping speaker (similar to old PCs) and you can change the start up and shutdown sound beep tunes - Useless but rather cool, I set mine up with what sounds like an Atari version of the Portal end game credits song 'This was a triumph..'.



I decided to leave the control configurations as default to try them out. I noted that the right haptic controller was already configured as 'Joystick Camera'. First game to try is Fallout: New Vegas. I was previously playing it with a PS3 controller rather well and since it was fresh in my memory, it was a good comparison point. Upon bringing it up in my Steam Library, I got a notice saying that the game is not natively supported in bright yellow. That was fine which just means that this game was not made with the Steam Controller in mind. However playing games that were not directly designed for the controller is a feature that I was the most eager to try. Upon starting the game in Big Picture mode, it went to the New Vegas loading window. This was annoying as it placed Steam in the background and wouldn't let me click on 'Start Game' on it's interface - I had to use an actual mouse to start the game but I can forgive this as the game is not aware of Big Picture mode or the controller and I can always configure the game to bypass the startup window in the future and go straight to the game - However from a casual gamer/Newbie perspective, this is jarring.

Once in the in-game intro menus, the game responded very well to the controller which it seems to have detected it as a game controller, Xbox controller to be exact. That was fine with me as the physical buttons matched that and my main interest with the game was the accuracy of the camera. I loaded a level that had me just outside the Think Tank in Big MT and tried to look around...It was horrific. The camera movement was jerky and all over the place - Totally unplayable and very disappointing first game experience. I most definitely see a casual gamer or someone with little patience throwing the controller away and declaring it as shit without a second look. You can see these people all over the internet furiously complaining about the controller after their first few goes. However I don't give up that easily..

Configuring the Controller

I pressed the centre 'Steam' logo button on the controller and brought up the Big Picture interface and into the game controller configuration options. I changed the 'Joystick Camera' option on the right haptic interface to 'Mouse' and went back in the game. This made a world of difference, I was now able to control the camera more accurately look but still super slow and not smooth, not very useful if I am in frantic combat and the jerkiness was off-putting. Went back into the configuration settings and ran into an unfortunate bug in which a Steam loading screen appears and doesn't go away. This seems to be a software bug as you can cancel the loading screen, go back to the game and then try again and it will work. However this happened enough times to be annoying and should be fixed as it can turn off users. I went into the controller's advance mouse settings and started changing mouse smoothness and sensitivity. The configuration options also provide hints on the setting you are changing and one said to also increase the mouse sensitivity to maximum within game. After a few trials and probably 20 minutes of tweaking, I got the right balance and the mouse movement on the controller was remarkably smooth, accurate and fast. It was time to give it a real test!



Actually Playing an FPS game!

As anyone who has played the 'Old World Blues' Expansion of Fallout: New Vegas, this game is super hard. You can easily get jumped by multiple high level enemies and your VATS meter can quickly evaporate. Several of the confrontations end up in chaotic running, shooting and bashing in which the ability to accurate spin around while moving and attack is a must. As I was walking through Big MT (the large area where Old World Blues takes place) while using the controller to look around and getting used to the button functions, I got jumped by 4x Y-7 Trauma override Harnesses (a freaky automated body suit that carries a corpse inside), at the best of times, this is a difficult battle as everything in Big MT is levelled up and the AI is surprisingly good. I quickly exhausted my VATS meter on just one guy so it was up to me to manually fight the others while it generated. I was able to very accurately shoot them as I was running and turning around, something that a traditional mouse is best at and the Steam Controller felt just as capable. Then one of them came at me with a shishkebab (a flaming sword) so I went into melee combat with my own. It worked great, once again I was able to turn around quickly and accurately to attack as I was moving from cover to cover to avoid the remaining shooters. Once the melee guy was killed off, I used my generated VATS to kill the other and then tricked the other to get close and got it with a shotgun blast (no vats). Overall, I survived and the controller performed superbly, much better than the PS3 controller, specially with accuracy on smaller more accurate aiming and turn around actions. I will also add that for sniping, you can use a combination of the haptic pad and gyro for greater precision which is great.





FPS style combat was a great success with the Steam Controller and that's on a game that was never designed for it! I continued playing as normal until I came across a locked door. I tried to pick it but unfortunately the haptic pad was very unresponsive when turning the lock which requires careful precessions. However I quickly discovered that it was infinitely easier to use the Gyro control on the lock so I was able to lock pick by simply turning the controller physically in the air which was a more satisfying experience - Another success!



I continued playing the expansion all the way to conclusion. Finished several of the Sink AI retrieval quests and even fought Dr Mobius' Giant Scorpion. All very smooth and more accurate than the PS3 controller. The only drawback that I could see was that it can get tricky to get used to the physical button placements as they are down further and centre than other controllers. However this is by no means un-ergonomic, just needs getting used to.

Extra features & Conclusion

I have not tried the controller with any other game yet but all FPS games play similarly, that means that I can always use the configuration I made for New Vegas for other games without spending more time tweaking. Steam also allows you to set up multiple configurations for different games and share them with your own games or online with other users. Next, I will probably try a more mouse 'point&click' oriented game such as an RTS or XCOM. Maybe to keep the theme, I will use the original Fallout.

For games that require actual keyboard typing input, the controller software features an onscreen keyboard that can be interacted with the two haptic feedback pads at the same time and looks very useful. Much easier and faster to type with than on a PS3 controller. As Valve promised, pretty much every aspect of PC gaming is covered by the controller. However it has too much of a learning curve to be inviting to new users and the need to tweak it and configure out of the box for optimal functionality can be a turn off. However if you persists, you would be greatly rewarded. Strangely enough, I suspect that people who already use traditional PS3/Xbox controllers would have a harder time adapting while people who use Mouse & Keyboard setups may find it easier. PC gamers like to customise and that is certainly on offer. The mouse style responsiveness is also there, may not be 100% but it is close and I noticed that the more I played, the more I got used to it and the better I got. The Steam Controller has now supplanted the PS3 controller as my preferred gaming option on PC and I don't see that changing, in fact I see it as improving as the Steam controller is so versatile and customisable that future software updates could make a huge gradually progressing difference.

[DELTAprime]

Did anyone else buy Xcom 2? It's gotten 100% positive reviews from the press but there are lots of end users with technical problems. I have a Samsung 950 Pro, the fastest consumer SSD in the world, and I'm often having to wait 2 or 3 minutes for missions to load. Also I have a decent graphics card, a GTX 970 and I'm dropping frames all over the place. I want to love the game, but the technical issues are frustrating.

[kup]

Did anyone else buy Xcom 2? It's gotten 100% positive reviews from the press but there are lots of end users with technical problems. I have a Samsung 950 Pro, the fastest consumer SSD in the world, and I'm often having to wait 2 or 3 minutes for missions to load. Also I have a decent graphics card, a GTX 970 and I'm dropping frames all over the place. I want to love the game, but the technical issues are frustrating.

Mainstream gaming press is known to be very well 'looked after' by publishers.

[DELTAprime]

Mainstream gaming press is known to be very well 'looked after' by publishers.

Please don't bring up gamergate BS like that here. We don't need to descend to that level. There is no conspiracy. Reviews are not paid for.

Far more likely that because everyone reviewing 2K's PC games has to submit system specs the game has been optimised for much of the hardware used in the reviews. Like how Batman Arkham Knight is only optimised on a very small set of hardware.

[Gutsman Heavy]

Please don't bring up gamergate BS like that here. We don't need to descend to that level. There is no conspiracy. Reviews are not paid for.

It's not paid as much as its given fancy parties and cushy junkets and sponsorship deals, it's pretty well documented like the Kane & Lynch 2 fiasco. Hell even Hyper did a piece on it back in the day.