The bittersweet irony of PC gaming

I recently acquired two games for the PC.

First, SC:Blacklist, which I had zero hype for and my friend gave me a code for because he had no interest in playing.

Second, Rome 2: Total War. A game which I pre-ordered and have been hyped for like a 9y/o on xmas eve since I played Rome 1.

What did I get? Simultaneous extremes of surprise and disappointment. Blacklist is, in my opinion, the best PC title Ubisoft has put out since Chaos Theory. On the other hand, Rome 2 is the biggest pile of dysfunctional garbage CA has ever fucked its loyal and small fan base into buying.

What did I learn? Never pre-order again, and never trust trailers. Took me long enough I guess. Oh well, at least both games aren't shit. And maybe Rome 2 will be patched out of Alpha stage.

PC gaming, you can love it or hate it, but it keeps you on your toes.

That's not exclusive to PC gaming.

Also that's not irony.

But maybe now I'll think about picking up Blacklist.

One would hope Blacklist worked, Ubisoft has been working with that same bloody engine for 10 years. I wonder how much more junk they can bolt onto UE2 with the PS4 and XBO.

not surprised to see another misuse of irony but yeah from what I've seen Blacklist is looking good. I'll play my copy once I know the controller support is fixed.

Wait till you play Max Payne 3, then go to Saint's Row 2. That's another 2 extremes I can think of. Seriously, though, a lot of games on PC are merely (at times, terrible) ports, which sucks, but I hope PC gaming gets the respect it deserves again, and we start getting proper ports.

We've been getting proper ports for years, only few are genuinely bad. I think sometimes people overstate the state of them.

Even the worst ports are better than the console versions usually, often you don't get all the extra graphical options and improvements a PC version should have, but you still get 60 frames and 1080P+. (not including unmodified Dark Souls, ahem)

Also OP your issues are more with gaming in general, I thought this was going to be a post about a PC game just refusing to launch or something.

I've heard good things about blacklist but from what I played with my buddy the other day I was kind of left going "Well huh, yeah that was a splinter cell game alright" kind of just shrugging my shoulders. Its not bad but I just don't find any element of it exciting or feel that the game has any real heart to it.

Yes, it is exclusive to PC gaming.. Big developers don't release busted console games. Certainly not to the extent that it happens in PC gaming. And it is ironic that the one of the most loved and trusted developers would release a busted game within weeks of Ubisoft actually trying on PC. My expectations were flipped, that's irony. Thanks for playing though.

You ever play a Bethesda game on PS3? Or most Obsidian games on any platform (before the inevitable patches)? Bully on 360? These and many other games launched in varying states of brokenness on consoles. It's not a PC only thing.

Ok, not to the extent on PC, but broken console games come out!

Mercs 2! Fallout: NV!

I heard that Amy was pretty good...

Total War: Rome II isn't that bad, well, at least not as bad as everyone is making it out to be (from my side of things). I'm certainly enjoying it, and have only experienced a couple of bugs so far. The pathfinding ones being the most annoying.

"Never pre-order again" is a good lesson. You could be a well-versed game veteran but you will never know how a game will turn out from just looking at preview material. It can be your favorite franchise from your favorite developer... don't pre-order. Not even if you think you would've bought the game no matter what, if it's crap you can at least buy it cheaper if you wait.

"From Dust"

There's nobody out there making Total War'esque games besides Creative Assembly. That's a bigger issue than most would care to admit. Nobody should be able to keep such a fantastic genre combining big army/fleet real-time combat with turn-based action a monopoly yet they have, for a decade.

@funkydupe: it's a monopoly because no one really plays those sorts of games. Before you get defensive I should clarify that by "no one" I mean there is a very specific almost niche audience that enjoys those games compared to the broad appeal of third person cover shooters. Combined with the fact that people tend to play these games for hundreds of hours, it just doesn't seem like it's a very profitable field of gaming.

I pre-ordered GTA 5 though.... always pre-order, it's part of what makes gaming fun.

@funkydupe: there are a couple actually, you're just not looking. The King Arthur series, and the Real War (I think that's what they're called? I own both, I should know this) series are two example off the top of my head.

Both Wargame games are essentially total war but modern(ish) too.

Please tell us more; it's hilarious.

Empire was was more broken than Rome appears to be so far, but it's still a shame that they didn't continue the apparent progress they had made with Shogun, which mostly worked right out of the box.

More germane to the topic, I think that PC gaming has generally worse extremes of brokenness, not just by major developers. The gap is narrowing though.

I think PC gamers everywhere learned their lesson from EA and the SimCity fiasco. NEVER PRE ORDER ANYTHING. It's funny that the pre-order bonus is exclusive DLC for the game, but usually within a week of the game being released, it's 25% off on GreenManGaming or equivalent websites. So you can get the DLC and game for cheaper than it was on pre-order and you avoid getting burned by the shady games industry.

Eh, not to defend it, but its generally par for the course with CA. They fix there issues usually though, it sucks they rushed it out but theirs nothing else quite like Total War for me.

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/78979-First-Total-War-ROME-II-Update-this-Friday.?s=4fa785ed3eb891c3b383c079bdb15032

@missacre said:

Funny thing about Saints Row 2 is that even if it is worst PC port ever (it actually might be), it still runs better on my PC than it runs on my 360. That said, being cautious has always been part of playing games on the PC.