Console game question for the PC gamer

I think that this is more of a question for the console forums. Most PC gamers prefer the KB/M.

Just a word of warning and possibly to save your effort, this issue is the dead horse of AVS that has been beaten over and over. Do a search for "keyboard mouse" on a console forum and you will find 50 pages of ranting and raving.

Sniping is actually one of the easier things to do in console FPS's since you just need to line up one shot, basically just push your crosshair towards the player you are aiming for and fire when it passes over him. I find that "tracking" a player while using an automatic style gun is the bigger task when comparing gamepad to KB/M. Proof of concept, log into a COD2/360 server and 90% of people use rifles, vs on a PC where there is way more thompson/mp40, etc.

Of course accuracy is reduced on a gamepad, but you're playing against other people who are also using gamepads. Making the switch from KB/M->Gamepad is a completely alien feeling at first but you need to understand that it's totally 2nd nature to people who have been playing FPS on consoles for a while.

You can't really compare joypad aiming with KBM aiming because its just a very different feel. Console FPS's tend to be more forgiving, or move at a slower speed.

I mean, compare the speed of your enemeis in HALO for the PC versus a game like, say Unreal Tournament. No comparison....the Halo baddies move at a snails pace, this is to make target aquisition and tracking easier with a thumb-stick.

At first I hated joypad FPS's.

Today, I almost preferthem, particularly the 3rd person ones...or the first/third person ones....a straight FPS seems a bit limiting now that I have grown accustomed to "Taking Cover", or locking to cover and being able to blind-fire, or pop up fire....GRAW's, GoW and now Rainbow Six Vegas are spoiling me big-time.

In a traditional FPS that would just be me strafing l/r behind cover to pop off a few rounds.
I'm playing through HL2 again on my PC and while fun, it also seems a bit...pedestrian..to me now.

I've been playing PC FPS since the days of Wolfenstein and Doom. I just got a 360 and Gears of War is the first shooter I've ever played on a console. I'd say it took almost two hours to become comfortable with the game pad but now it doesn't seem that bad.

It does seems really inefficient to me. I would think there are better controls schemes but not all games allow you to configure the buttons the way you want. I wish you could configure them the way you can on a PC.

Gow is a strange bird....dont use it as your benchmark, the whole "Roadie Run" thing and the way you move in that environment makes it a somewhat unique 3PS...

PS3 will definitely continue to evolve - if their time is now - they have problems. More games will come. It won't be dominant in the PS2 style sense with 70%+ makretshare but it will do well and garner good droolworthy titles. I imagine their online will evolve some but at this point they are well behind Xbox Live in even the most ardent fanboy's view.

The Xbox360 Elite doesn't do anything else to add lifespan. The console is set already (black exterior, a larger harddrive, and a different connection to pass HD video mean nothing for the games). The technical specs of the PS3 and 360 are very close, neither is going to blow the other away and make it look dumb 4 years from now although certainly both platforms will continue to mature and Sony's first party studios will get better with the cell. Keep in mind you will see nearly all 3rd party games ported to both the 360 and PS3 this generation so there will be a whole lot of parity. They will both live a long time side by side with only services and first party titles truly differentiating them.

. Now, no disrespect intended, but seriously...what gives you the impression that the 360 has Peaked exactly 1 year out of the gate? I mean, what was the indicator that showed you that the box was now at its max and no further graphical goodies could be pulled from its magic wellspring.....?

I think what alot of people are surprised about is the quality of year 1 games so far....there aren't a lot of fugly, framerate-humping games on the system..usually it takes 2 years for the impressive stuff to hit...but PGR3, GoW, Vegas, GRAW and so on..are all year 1 titles, people weren't expecting that. Sorry, Vegas is technically year 2 huh... :P


its probably going to have all the download capabilities that the PS3 has, sans perhaps movie downloads if Microsoft has locked its suppliers into Exclusivity contracts......of course Sony has quite the movie catalog they could offer online as well....

Sonys online is currently....functional.....and thats as nice as I can put it. But it will improve. If you are into such hype things, check out the threads on the "HOME" service that PS3 is going to be pushing out. Its of no interest to me, but apparrantly alot of loser...I mean..people..who are into "Second Life" and other such....wahtevers, are all wet in the panties over it.

Walk your little avatar around...go to your little friends avatar house and share photos and movies and watch them play games....supposedly. .
(meanwhile every a-list game is pushed back another 6 months). BUT I digress


Loaded question...what do you want to do?

Game now? 360.
Watch HD Downloadable content? 360
Watch HD movies on Disc? Probably PS3 as HD-DVD taking it on the chin

Game Later? Who knows......I value my 360 far more than my PS3 right now, its my game machine...mys pS3 is my "machine desperately trying to find its place in my life".

But eventually that will change to some semblence of balance between the two. I can say this, equal game for both systems I'd buy on the 360 due to the seamless online environment, chatting, game-launching and inviting and of course...for the scaling, which the PS3 is still working on, I guess (scaling to 1080i, I mean)).

What they mean is that they had to push really hard to make GOW look that good. That doesn't mean the average quality of games won't rise and some others over the life of the console won't look equally as good. Honestly, I would not expect much if any better than GOW on either the 360 or the PS3 for the life of those consoles. Don't look at it as a console peaking but simply a game pushing the console.

you should check out mass effect and forza 2 if you think the console has peaked or is even really being pushed to the maximum.

i think people thought oblivion was as good as it got because it had some framerate issues, but that was more due to the HUGE open environment of the overworld, than anything else.

both systems will continue to get better. also look for the indiana jones and star wars games to push both graphically and gameplay wise with the Euphoria AI engine.

I own a PS2 with my 360... In regards to GHII, gameplay-wise, they are for the most part the same, but the slight differences in the 360 version make it a better experience- enough so to buy the more expensive 360 version over the PS2 one if you don't already own it, but not enough to re-buy it if you already have it for PS2.

As for Oblivion, the draw distance boost may make it seem like it was a limitation of the 360, but you have to remember that the PS3 can't do HDR and AA. By having AA off, they could increase draw distance, and enable more grids (the setting that controls the texture draw distances on terrain), and with the extra time, they could better optimize the code for PS3.

A better comparison would be if a game released for both with different dev teams on different code bases with the same art.

I think the PS3 upgrade in Oblivion is directly a result of them having an extra year to bang away at it, and people finally starting to become familiar with the PS3's dev kits.

It depends on the game. Some games are designed in such a way that layers of visual effects can hide aliasing in a game. The Doom III engine was very good at this. That game only marginally improved visually when you enabled AA.

Other games look awful without AA turned on at any resolution....the more high-resolution thin assets a game uses, the more pronounced the effect is. Half Life 2 and Battlefield 2 have lots of objects in the game that are made up of very thin objects, even things like telephone lines glitch out badly without AA turned on, at any resolution, in these games..or objects in the distance are destroyed by jaggies.

Even at 1080p, AA on some titles is still a must...which is tough since AA on 1080p requires quite a bit of horsepower to do effectively.

But it all depends on the game......