20 years since 2004. The greatest step forward in PC gaming?

VR has been the only real leap in 20 years tbh. But the issue with it is not everyone can use it (most people need to build up a tolerance to "VR sickness" which takes time) and it's not as easy to just sit down and play. It's a shame support for it has been dropping off, even in games which used to have it.

Horror games in VR are on another level. You feel real fear lol. You are IN the game rather than looking at it through a window.
 
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aardvark said:
Also the other benefits - the PS1 didn't even have bilinear filtering or mip mapping. It looked garbage compared to pc.
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you have your timeline confused there I think. the playstation blew the pc out of the water for a short while iirc.
the playstation was out at lease a year before the voodoo 1.
I remember taking the **** out ofy mate who was trying to claim the pc was better than the playstation and he used...... I think it was wipeout to compare so we set them up side by side. it was no contest.

of course pcs being pcs they soon caught up and over took, but for a time no pc could touch some of the early games like ridge racer and tomb raider and Wipeout
for a time I had the original video logic PowerVR.. this was closer to the playstation and was out before the voodoo 1. but that also didn't have bilinear filtering and it was only really an ultimate race demo which showed it off. it was quickly made obsolete by the powerVR2 (and totally smacked by the voodoo1)
 
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bigmike20vt said:
you have your timeline confused there I think. the playstation blew the pc out of the water for a short while iirc.
the playstation was out at lease a year before the voodoo 1.
I remember taking the **** out ofy mate who was trying to claim the pc was better than the playstation and he used...... I think it was wipeout to compare so we set them up side by side. it was no contest.

of course pcs being pcs they soon caught up and over took, but for a time no pc could touch some of the early games like ridge racer and tomb raider and Wipeout
for a time I had the original video logic PowerVR.. this was closer to the playstation and was out before the voodoo 1. but that also didn't have bilinear filtering and it was only really an ultimate race demo which showed it off. it was quickly made obsolete by the powerVR2 (and totally smacked by the voodoo1)
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Because there was no real standard back then, PC games ended up looking quite weird and were generally worse than the Playstation versions.

They could be played at higher resolutions, but the graphics didn't translate very well IMO. I had a PC and Playstation in 1995 and would often play PC Zone demos on CD-Rom. Inevitably the PC versions were weird.

Not to mention controller support was non-existent to lousy at best. (Until DirectX came along)
 
bigmike20vt said:
I think that is what people mean by the fact that games now are just minor incremental improvements..... the fact is hardware wise the low hanging fruit is gone now, ray tracing was the last big thing in terms of eye candy that lots of folk were pining for... and we have it now.,
back in the day huge advances in hardware meant that stuff which was previously technically just not possible suddenly became available so we got actually new mechanics or in game features which we had never seen before (i remember when stairs and multi storey levels in an FPSer was a huge deal for instance.
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AMD demoded thousands of NPCs accelerated on the same GPU that did graphics too, back in 2008 or something like that. Red Faction series proved you can do advanced physics and destruction on relatively weak hardware. BF took it to prebaked, but at least made it to MP - although guerilla had an MP mode as well. Then PhysiX both by dedicated PPU and then accelerated on the GPU with nVIDIA. Hydrophobia: Prophecy had some awesome water gameplay and effects. Mudtires series was great as well when it came to offroad. Now MFS which practically puts the world at our disposal...

So besides the usual graphics/visuals (techincal or art), there's already a lot of great tech out there that isn't used, because devs rush stuff and players find excuses for the games they like, so things don't go in with the next iteration. Latest and biggest: Starfield.

Gampleay is something like Horizon Zero Dawn is about the same as Far Cry 2 or any other simial game with some variances here and there. Fallout series and CB or Deus Ex, all the same principle. Economy, AI, world that actually reacts to what you're doing? Nope.

The only one that I know of which tries something different is SC/SQ42. That's about it. The majority are a "remake" of a remake with a different story.
 
bigmike20vt said:
you have your timeline confused there I think. the playstation blew the pc out of the water for a short while iirc.
the playstation was out at lease a year before the voodoo 1.
I remember taking the **** out ofy mate who was trying to claim the pc was better than the playstation and he used...... I think it was wipeout to compare so we set them up side by side. it was no contest.

of course pcs being pcs they soon caught up and over took, but for a time no pc could touch some of the early games like ridge racer and tomb raider and Wipeout
for a time I had the original video logic PowerVR.. this was closer to the playstation and was out before the voodoo 1. but that also didn't have bilinear filtering and it was only really an ultimate race demo which showed it off. it was quickly made obsolete by the powerVR2 (and totally smacked by the voodoo1)
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not for long though as you said, the pc quickly took over.

i had a powervr card, or was it powervr2? i can't remember, but it had bilinear filtering. GLquake was awesome!
 
Uriel said:
Just thinking back to 2004 releases. Half Life 2, Far Cry, Rome: Total War, World of Warcraft, Counter Strike: Source, Doom 3 and my personal favourite Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (although released in a dreadful state before patching).

Huge leaps forward that year - some of those still stand up pretty well now.

Has there been a bigger step forward in a year in PC gaming? Makes me feel old that it was 20 years ago...
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Its more with the tech as playing with Oled 48inch and HDR does more than the games themselves.
In the arpg market, we will have path of exile 2 thats likely be a set game for a a decade to come.

I wait for augmented reality tech but guess I be waiting.
 
Those were still the days when you’d get several big games in just one week of the year. I miss the number of excellent releases, but wouldn’t have time to play them all today.
 
RBImGuy said:
Its more with the tech as playing with Oled 48inch and HDR does more than the games themselves.
In the arpg market, we will have path of exile 2 thats likely be a set game for a a decade to come.

I wait for augmented reality tech but guess I be waiting.
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I'm hoping full dive VR becomes common before I die. Maybe we will see rapid advancement of these technologies as AI matures, I really hope so.
 
peaked then all went down hill with fornite and modern warfare. a lot of games are just rinse and repeat with different assets on screen, you can usually tell with the trailer alone which ones to avoid.
 
Note.... i havent played it yet - but its on my list for sure - but is something like Enshrouded showing quite a significant jump?

It is possible i have missed a bunch of games, however to me it seems the only other game which comes close to having similar base building and landscape altering in a fully 3D RPG like environment is minecraft really.......... but Enshrouded technically looks a million times more advanced.

This is the kind of voxel based visuals i was hoping for years ago, however afaik it has taken until now for it to properly come out in a really good looking game.

mechanically you could argue there is still not much new, and maybe you would be right, but to me the way you can adapt your environment around you i think does offer something quite unique.
 
1999. The days when games came in big boxes.

Age of empires 2
Dungeon Keeper 2
Homeworld
Planescape: torment
Quake 3
System shock 2
Unreal Tournament
X: Beyond the frontier

Every one of those games is a stone-cold classic.

Honourable mention: Shenmue (I know, it's dreamcast, but still...)
 
potatolord said:
1999. The days when games came in big boxes.

Age of empires 2
Dungeon Keeper 2
Homeworld
Planescape: torment
Quake 3
System shock 2
Unreal Tournament
X: Beyond the frontier

Every one of those games is a stone-cold classic.

Honourable mention: Shenmue (I know, it's dreamcast, but still...)
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UT99 and Quake 3 rocket arena...I would love to be playing those games again :)
 
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