Comments on: Blue Thunder

By: dante76

dante76 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:32:12 +0000

Seriously. Back the book up. Now.

Or dust.

By: James

James — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:55:26 +0000

Ah, the fury of a platform scorned. Never in my life have I had a PC rig capable of handing anything more hardware-intensive than Minesweeper. Though with my birthday coming this weekend, there’s the possibility I may get to condemn my Pentium 4 (that’s right folks, fall to your knees and tremble before the raw, pulsating power of my 6 year old processor) to the recycling bin. Even if I do get my hands on a young and vital new unit, I’m not convinced it would draw me away from my consoles. Battling with drivers and DRM to get to a menu screen that may or may not crash out on me is not my idea of leisure. I don’t wanna fight to play, I wanna play to fight!

Fantastic piece Lorna. :)

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:44:58 +0000

Uh Duncan, am I not remembering correctly that you bought a whole new computer “to see the Tiberium glow” in the second year? And that the new computer does indeed let you see the Tiberium glow, it just has issues with running ANYTHING for longer than 10 minutes without having to restart explorer.exe (thanks for showing me that trick by the way!).

By: Absolute Power « Impulsive, Compulsive, Insane

Absolute Power « Impulsive, Compulsive, Insane — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:59:14 +0000

[...] find it rather odd to be writing this on the same day that my better half published a blog about PC gaming, so I apologise in advance to all those who will see this as plagiarism but, the reality is… [...]

By: Duncan

Duncan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:03:39 +0000

My comments are going to seem so tame compared to the more hardcore users, but I’ve yet to really venture outside the world of C&C and other RTS’ on the PC. So my three year old glued together monstrosity just about gets the job done.

Though that being said, I’ve only ever stuck to games my computer can handle (duh), so I’ve never purposefully upgraded, despite my extreme lust for an Alienware (they’re just so damn sexy!). I’d almost certainly play more PC games if it weren’t for my (now) totally old arse setup…

Now that I rant/comment about it… you’re right. You’re damn right! Excellent post!

By: The Rook

The Rook — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:22:13 +0000

I’ve never been a pc gamer. I could never afford a PC, let alone a gaming PC, and settled in with a snes. Now I can afford a decent PC, the desire is not there. I love my console gaming, no required installations, no drivers to mess about with, no resolution settings or effects settings to turn on/off.

Maybe someday that will change and I’ll actually include PC gaming as part of my gaming experience. Until then my PC knows it is invaluable to me. Constantly online when I am home, keeping me in contact with friends, and allowing me to interact on sites like Ready Up.

By: Lorna

Lorna — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:08:28 +0000

Thank you very much to everyone for the kind and positive responses, always very much appreciated.

By: Ramsden

Ramsden — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:17:37 +0000

Fantastic blog. I especially liked the Red Dwarf reference. The same thing pretty much happened to me. I was almost exclusively a PC gamer. I could overcome any problem with older games running too quickly or not at all. I laughed in the face of obstinate DRM or broken graphics drivers. And all of my favourite games of all time were PC titles. I bought my current gaming PC two years ago, just before I was forced out of work. It was the best Comet could offer, and I couldn’t afford to take my time as I usually did, to build my own. My previous monster had died and I had to do work with it.

Well, just over a year ago I finally got a 360. I’ve always had consoles since the Atari ST, but they always played a distant second to my PC. But the 360 ended that. Apart from when I’m in hospital or on long journeys, when I take out the DS, I’ve started to only play on the XBox. It’s plug and play, and despite getting red ringed earlier this year in May, it just works when I want. I don’t have to dedicate 2 days to simply getting a game to have a working installation. So my PC was relegated to only playing Football Manager. Sure, I wanted to go back to it for certain titles, but as is the eternal problem with PC gaming, it is considered too old by most new games. And I can no longer afford to upgrade it, in a move which actually hammered home to me the effect not being able to work is having on my life more effectively than anything else to this point. I’ve had to save up for a year to get my new Toshiba Satellite laptop. It was get something I could comfortably use for the internet and for writing, or upgrade my gaming PC. Practicality won out. And now, my desktop PC has just died. Motherboard failure. I had everything backed up to external drive, and as good as this laptop is, it doesn’t do games the way a desktop PC can. It’s the end of an era. I’m no longer a true PC gamer. And I can’t begin to describe how sad that makes me feel.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:35:44 +0000

I think I’m the opposite, my PC can do things my 360 can only dream of doing and more often than not it’s my 360 that sits next to me sulking into its crappy black case while the PC roars and taunts it while it’s processor handles rendering a Unreal map with ease.

I think the biggest problem with PC gaming at the moment is the social side of it. With Xbox Live even if you’re playing on a single player game you still get the occasional plink sound of a friend signing online – you know they are just a hairs breath away though.

I never backup anything either, although I’ve never had a major PC crash touch wood, that said – will be getting an external HDD soon just for Uni work and that horrible notion of “What if”.

Nice article Lorna :)

By: MarkuzR

MarkuzR — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:07:20 +0000

When the days are shit, and the overall “shitness” perpetuates to the point where you just can’t be arsed even BLINKING anymore… along comes Mr Anfu with yet another hilarious (and articulate) verbal barb to make the day that much brighter :))

You know me… I’m surrounded by 1TB drives, MyBook drives, Seagate FreeAgent drives plus two external passport drives and a weird Philips external that’s self contained… but Lorna swears by her little USB dongles! All of her books go everywhere with her, although sometimes she DOES misplace them… at which point a mass panic ensues. My system backs up on to two external drives every night at 11pm.

Re: the Saturn thing… um… can’t make any promises my friend. As soon as I’m within non-squinting distance (as in the eyes, not the bridge) of the Saturn logo, my mind immediately switches to “106inch Panasonic 1080p Plasma” mode, so you’re on yer own!!

By: van-fu

van-fu — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:04:30 +0000

I am astounded. A more PC-literate couple you will never find. But they have been caught out by the unfortunate side of PC gaming. Stay with consoles, guys. They’ll never, ahem, disappoint. Just don’t mention price increases, red rings of death, scratched discs, the price of an XBL subscription, PS3 failures, etc.

Also, am I correct in reading that after all this time, and all the friendly ribbing and cajoling from MarkuzR, The Rook and Vice Destroyer himself, that you still have invoices that HAVE NOT BEEN BACKED UP?

“my bloody book is on there along with a ton of unsaved invoices and product descriptions which will rend my soul in two and disrupt my work irreparably if they were lost.”

MarkuzR? You know what you have to do. She won’t do it herself and the cry will be “too late, too late” when the PC dies. Take her to Comet. Or even better, next time you are in Saturn, lead her away from those bloody keyboards. Having a keyboard fetish is unhealthy, and they are QWERTZ keyboards anyways. Buy her a 1TB external HDD. I know you have one already, but I feel that if she had her own personal one, plugged in and purring in the palm of her hands, she might be excited by the power cursing through the HDD. She may be inclined to actually back up her work.
:)

By: John.B

John.B — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:53:29 +0000

Fantastic article :) There is nothing more disheartening as a PC gamer than when the plates stop spinning and a few games simply don’t work despite you owning a monster. I swear it’s gotten more difficult though, more games are picky about what graphics card they want… the graphic leaders games come out more often and prompt upgrades more often and with DRM issues gaming on a PC is just so tricky these days.

Which is why I gave in, the odd new game but I just play Civ 4 now exclusively :)

By: MarkuzR

MarkuzR — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:06:07 +0000

I’m the same, as you know. Uber huge PC with a tower taller than most, six hard drives, masses of RAM, more than 1.2Gb of Nvidia video memory… and yet it roars away at me all day long and throws a hissy fit when I tried to play the Risen demo. Why a machine as powerful as mine needs the resolution turned down from 1920 x 1200 to an abysmal 1024 x 768 with “low” texture quality is beyond me.

After yesterday’s debacle of the machine switching off and me discovering a gorgeous beige shag pile carpet on top of my processor… I know why. I haven’t tried it since cleaning it up though, but I bet… I absolutely BET that I’ll have to buy a new PC when the next wave of decent games came out. If I couldn’t even play Crysis on full quality and full res when the machine was brand new, what hope do I have?