"PC Master Race"

I'm a big fan of PC gaming, especially now that digital distribution is now a big thing.  Back in the day you could make an argument for console gaming being the better route to take because getting something to run wasn't so involved and hair pullingly annoying but today that argument doesn't hold any water and it's just as easy. 

So there's a little joke on the internet which you could call "PC Master Race".  It's basically PC gamers taking a stab at people who play exclusively on consoles, claiming that console gaming is much simpler and PC is where all the real players go to show their skills.  Most people, I think, are aware that's its just another net joke but I have seen people take that shit a little too seriously but I don't really get why they feel so high and mighty when PC can cause a lot of uneeded headaches.

A recent example of these headaches came with Batman: Arkham Knight.  Apparently it's a really good game, I wouldn't know because I've not played it yet but the PC gaming audience is not quite having as much fun as the console crowd here.  Reports are saying that the PC version is just atrociously bad, to the point where it's unplayable.  I'm not sure of the specifics but I'm sure a quick google search would give you the lo-down.  It's so bad that if you look at the Steam page for the game you find this.

 Guess the console crowd are laughing here because while you're stuck with an unplayable game they are having a great time.  I'm sure the issue will be resolved but it's sad that shit like this even happens at all.

Another example that's a little more personal is my experience with Silent Hill: Homecoming.  Now I hate this fucking game but someone gifted it to me on Steam (shout outs to PTDave!) so that I could speed run it.  Now I'm a man of my word so despite my hatred for the game, I'm going to try and learn to run it to at least a semi-decent level.  Or at least that's what I'd be doing if the thing fucking worked AT ALL.

The PC version of Silent Hill: Homecoming is one of the most horrendously unstable things I've ever seen in my life.  It crashes when you start it, crashes when you save, crashes when you change areas, pick up items and basically do fucking anything at all.  Then, I don't know if this is just me or the shitty game, whenever a cut scene plays the frame rate just drops to something embarrassingly low which is weird considering I've stream newer games than this without any problems.


So yeah, "PC Master Race" my ass.  These are just two examples but I have plenty of stories ranging from when I was a child to the present day of PC gaming just giving me a massive headache.  Luckily, I'm persistent and know how to use Google so I usually figure most issues out but the fact I have to do any of that shit at all is frustrating.  At least with my consoles I can just put the game in and fucking play it.  Still, like I said at the start, I love PC gaming and really I wouldn't have it any other way but that joke is fucking dumb.

Boring is Worse than Bad

I'm really struggeling with Final Fantasy 4, the game is just dull.  This made me realise something and that is that a boring game is way WAY worse than a bad one.

Let's take a truly shitty example of a game

It's pretty much accepted by anyone with any kind of taste in anything ever that Silent Hill: Homecoming is an absolutely shitty game.  This game truly has nothing good going for it to the point where it becomes offensively bad but when a game reaches this level of shittyness there is still some entertainment to be had.

Get a friend round and play a shitty game together and you can both sit there just raging at it and that can be sort of fun in a strange kind of way.  Then when you're done you can hop onto your computer and have a giant bitching session with thousands of people about how much Tomm Hulett is a piece of shit.  Then when you're done with that, you can go to YouTube and be entertained by other people that you don't know raging about how shitty the game is, all with this smug sense of satisfaction because there are literally thousands of people who agree with you about how shitty this game is.

But then you have something like Final Fantasy 4.  Final Fantasy 4 is fine, it's not mechanically broken in any way and nothing about it really sticks out and just sucks.  The graphics are fine, the story is fine and the gameplay is fine, but at the same time it's not really all that fun either and that's the problem.  Final Fantasy 4 is BORING and this is way worse than being shitty.  At least with Silent Hill I can go on a tirade but I can't rage about FF4 because it's fine, it's just dull.

A bad game can almost be fun to play because sometimes you really want to see just how shitty it really gets (E.g. Heavy Rain) but a boring game really is just an absolute chore to play.  If I wasn't streaming it for charity I would have put it down by now.

Come enjoy the FF stream tonight!
www.twitch.tv/taurinensis