Why are modern consoles bad?

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

[But those convoluted control schemes do exist. Imagine how much better Dark Souls' awful platforming would have been with a jump button instead of the double tap. Or how much easier it would have been to select your items with a number row instead of cycling with D-pad down. Or shoving with a button instead of the sometimes accidental or tricky to pull off R1 + forward. Arkham City is a better example. I'll quote myself:

It's annoying how many actions are tied to the same buttons. I want to use an item but instead the character deploys my only smoke grenade. I want to place a bomb on someone, but instead Robin tries to take him out, teaching me the hard way that I have to hold it while approaching. Sometimes, I accidentally perform a counter instead of readying an item, or vise versa. I really think item deployment should be separate from the counter/stealth attack button. I also don't like how the characters automatically climb stuff when running or how you have to let go of the run button and then tap it to evade. Or how sometimes you try to go underneath a floor grate and instead he attaches to a wall or railing.

You can get used to aiming with a stick, but it's not efficient or good.

In Dark Souls or really any game, you can have running tied to the left analog stick instead of having a sprint button and then circle could be used as jump when running. An online shooter (MGO) functioned just fine mapping walk, jog, and run to the left stick. It's been awhile since I played a Souls game but I think you might be able to just have switching to 2-handed on your weapon tied to un-shielding instead of wasting a button for that and then you have a button free to be a dedicated jump button. Or simply hold L1+triangle as toggling one-handed/two-handed.

I don't recall ever having issues with Arkham City and I played that game a shitload doing quite a few (all of the predator ones) of the challenges. I'm not saying I never had an issue crop up once in a while but I don't recall having an issue that would crop up rather consistently. It's been awhile since I played AC obviously. I'm normally pretty hard on controls too like I can go in-depth how both Uncharted and Max Payne 3 have terrible TPS controls and I'd remember a consistent controls issue from any game I sunk decent time into. For example, Dark Souls has horrible shield controls, even MGS4 has better shield controls.

Aiming with a stick is good and efficient unless you think headshotting an enemy on your six in less than a second is inefficient and bad. Yes, the mouse is better but analog sticks work just fine as well.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I grew up on SNES cartridges and let's get this out in the open: I don't give two fucks about installation times. I don't know if this has to do with growing up in the countryside, living in a third world country or being generally absent from social media, but I don't live or consume at such a velocity that for every game I purchase I can't spend a once-in-a-lifetime 5 minutes (or less, usually less) for it to install.


Shame about the splitscreen though.

Geez I can't believe so many peasants are on stand-by to defend criticism against consoles (͡? ͜ʖ ͡?)

"Console Jew", thank you very much. If you're going to cloth yourself with nazi ethos let's do this properly.

 

[Yoshi178]

Dear god the PC master race going on in this thread... If Jim Sterling says a thing he isn't necessarily right, lately it's usually the opposite.

What are you talking about?

The plug in and play complaint is directly from a Jimquisition video and is wrong in general. Also the regular "consoles are inferior PC" mantra.

Consoles don't suck now, almost all of gaming sucks.

People have been saying it for years though, especially this gen as games now take up massive amounts of spac, meaning far longer download and install times.

Space is not really an issue, especially as there are 3rd party hard drives for PS4 and you can just delete old unplayed games. I tend to buy physical copies so download time is naught, but even if downloading takes a "significant" amount of time in console than PC (IE one more day)... who cares? Do we really regressed to the points we take whiny children who can wait a day for their game seriously? And I never had a game install for a significant time.

Plug and play means if I buy a PS4 game I can play it on any PS4 without praying to the gods that it is compatible with my system and fiddle with the options.

It's so nice of you to speak for everyone.

Space is an issue and buying additional hardware to store your games even when you buy physical is also a problem. Waiting a day to play the game you bought is indeed a problem. No we haven't regressed, we have always been able to play a console game within minutes of opening it, until last gen and this gen is even worse.

and this is why Nintendo using cartridges for the Switch instead of discs is actually a godsend.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Dear god the PC master race going on in this thread... If Jim Sterling says a thing he isn't necessarily right, lately it's usually the opposite.

What are you talking about?

The plug in and play complaint is directly from a Jimquisition video and is wrong in general. Also the regular "consoles are inferior PC" mantra.

Consoles don't suck now, almost all of gaming sucks.

People have been saying it for years though, especially this gen as games now take up massive amounts of spac, meaning far longer download and install times.

Space is not really an issue, especially as there are 3rd party hard drives for PS4 and you can just delete old unplayed games. I tend to buy physical copies so download time is naught, but even if downloading takes a "significant" amount of time in console than PC (IE one more day)... who cares? Do we really regressed to the points we take whiny children who can wait a day for their game seriously? And I never had a game install for a significant time.

Plug and play means if I buy a PS4 game I can play it on any PS4 without praying to the gods that it is compatible with my system and fiddle with the options.

It's so nice of you to speak for everyone.

Space is an issue and buying additional hardware to store your games even when you buy physical is also a problem. Waiting a day to play the game you bought is indeed a problem. No we haven't regressed, we have always been able to play a console game within minutes of opening it, until last gen and this gen is even worse.

and this is why Nintendo using cartridges for the Switch instead of discs is actually a godsend.

Agreed. I have always preferred cartridges to discs and especially now when mandatory installs are the norm.

 

[Yoshi178]

whenever i buy a new game for my Xbox One, any hype or excitement i have for it immediately dwindles as soon as i realize i have to spend time installing that ***** for an entire fucking day almost.


Welcome back cartridges! i've missed you my old friend!!!

 

[Mcgeezaks]

"Console Jew", thank you very much. If you're going to cloth yourself with nazi ethos let's do this properly.

Nah that would imply that I think I'm superior thanks to your religious beliefs, peasant fits just fine.

 

[bluegate]

whenever i buy a new game for my Xbox One, any hype or excitement i have for it immediately dwindles as soon as i realize i have to spend time installing that ***** for an entire fucking day almost.

Sounds like your Xbox may be bro... oh wait, you have a Yoshi avatar, nevermind.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I'm not saying the consoles don't have ANY advantage over the PC anymore. But they're now pretty few and far between. For example, a console definitely costs less than a half-way decent gaming PC with the linked benefit of not having to worry about system requirements. But as I said in the OP, that latter benefit looks like it's slowly disappearing now.

I also don't have a problem at all with online play on the consoles. Not at all. I have a problem when that's my ONLY OPTION. And to add insult to injury, I have to pay for online multiplayer too, which maybe would have been fine if I hadn't been forced to do it.

I like how 'modern consoles" consist almost entirely of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Or at least, I haven't had either of those problems with the WiiU.

As for the price of games: $60 AAA games are undercosted. If prices changed to count for inflation alone, we'd be paying more than $60, let alone if we accounted for how much money and development time goes into AAA games these days. And I'm not even a big fan of the AAA game space.

That's because the Wii U is dead in the water now. Even Nintendo knows it or else they wouldn't have released the Switch. Their big mistake was not investing more power into the Wii U and making developers shoehorn the two screen gimmick into their games.

 

[WeepingAngels]

So delete old games or upgrade you memory.

Then wait for it to install and when you want to play the game you had to delete, wait for it to install. People who buy physical media shouldn't have to install in the first place. Thankfully Nintendo agrees and did not take the Blu Ray route with the Switch and they don't force installs on the Wii U.

And if you honestly can't wait a day for your game (though I doubt the connection is that slow) just start it offline and update afterwards, or play COD.

Consumers should expect and be fine with waiting a day to use a product they bought? You are serious right?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

we have always been able to play a console game within minutes of opening it, until last gen and this gen is even worse.

PS4 plays any game within a couple minutes of prep time. PS3 was far far worse and the PS4 fixed just about every issue with the PS3. Now, Xbone is a different story mainly because it wasn't made to be a proper console as you can immediately see all that stuff that the Xbone was supposed to have that everyone hated and got removed was basically gutted out and is still sorta there.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

"Console Jew", thank you very much. If you're going to cloth yourself with nazi ethos let's do this properly.

Nah that would imply that I think I'm superior thanks to your religious beliefs, peasant fits just fine.

Brags about master race.
Says it's about religion.
Ok.

 

[WeepingAngels]

we have always been able to play a console game within minutes of opening it, until last gen and this gen is even worse.

PS4 plays any game within a couple minutes of prep time. PS3 was far far worse and the PS4 fixed just about every issue with the PS3.

PS3 rarely had mandatory installs.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I'm not saying the consoles don't have ANY advantage over the PC anymore. But they're now pretty few and far between. For example, a console definitely costs less than a half-way decent gaming PC with the linked benefit of not having to worry about system requirements. But as I said in the OP, that latter benefit looks like it's slowly disappearing now.

I also don't have a problem at all with online play on the consoles. Not at all. I have a problem when that's my ONLY OPTION. And to add insult to injury, I have to pay for online multiplayer too, which maybe would have been fine if I hadn't been forced to do it.

I like how 'modern consoles" consist almost entirely of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Or at least, I haven't had either of those problems with the WiiU.

As for the price of games: $60 AAA games are undercosted. If prices changed to count for inflation alone, we'd be paying more than $60, let alone if we accounted for how much money and development time goes into AAA games these days. And I'm not even a big fan of the AAA game space.

That's because the Wii U is dead in the water now. Even Nintendo knows it or else they wouldn't have released the Switch. Their big mistake was not investing more power into the Wii U and making developers shoehorn the two screen gimmick into their games.

How does the WiiU being a lame duck console interact in anyway with it also not exhibiting the flaws of "modern consoles" that are being complained about? Hell, its online play might not be as robust (although my PS4 download speeds have gone to down the toilet, so who knows) but it is free.

And considering how 3rd party devs recoiled from the WiiU during its launch (even after claiming they were going to support the console to the point Nintendo was relying on them for its launch lineup) I'm not sure they could've, or should've, tried "forcing" them to do anything.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Plug and play means if I buy a PS4 game I can play it on any PS4 without praying to the gods that it is compatible with my system and fiddle with the options.

If that's your definition of plug and play, my PC is plug and play too.

How did the PC version of Arkham Knight work for you?

Turned out fine in the end. How did the masterchief collection work for you? Or Assassins Creed Unity? Or No Man's Sky? I could go on.

"Console Jew", thank you very much. If you're going to cloth yourself with nazi ethos let's do this properly.

Nah that would imply that I think I'm superior thanks to your religious beliefs, peasant fits just fine.

Brags about master race.
Says it's about religion.
Ok.

But I said it wasn't about religion.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

we have always been able to play a console game within minutes of opening it, until last gen and this gen is even worse.

PS4 plays any game within a couple minutes of prep time. PS3 was far far worse and the PS4 fixed just about every issue with the PS3.

PS3 rarely had mandatory installs.

What games did you play because just about every PS3 game with any kind of open world to it required a mandatory install before playing. Even Mirror's Edge has a mandatory install. Sony's own MLB The Show series always has mandatory installs. Ghost Recon Future Soldier had a 5+GB mandatory install. I could go on and on as mandatory installs were usually the norm on PS3 (hell, just google it).

Having run and dodge as the same button makes sense. They're both evasion. I would personally like see a more instantaneous and speedier run used as primary evasion, with slight contextual animations, removing the roll, and then also have the jump button there as an alternate way to evade, like when there's a low attack or hazard. The benefit would be that you'd still be able to attack and parry while dodging. I find invincibility frames cheap.

A bit convoluted for something (switching hands and defending) that was simpler before.

What if you want even more control? I'd like to be able to assign items to buttons instead of scrolling through five or ten items with just Down. I've often selected the wrong item because of that inefficient system and overshot the one I wanted, which meant I had to scroll through all of them again. Another thing I think Dark Souls could really benefit from is a reverse camera button, one of the reasons being that the lock-on system greatly limits what you can see and another being that turning the camera all the way around might not happen fast enough. Although, with a mouse, the second problem would barely matter. And what if a game like Dark Souls had crouching (as another way to dodge hazards, make yourself less visible and enter low spaces) and fewer weapons with different types of attacks, like thrusts, vertical attacks and wide attacks? Chivalry is clever at this, using the mouse wheel for thrusts and vertical attacks. You can do it with a controller, but it would be more complicated to pull off. Zelda allows you to do that when you're holding Z (targeting), but you can't hold the stick button (targeting) in Dark Souls. That would be uncomfortable and probably damage the controller.

I disagree. It's slow and uncomfortable. The thumb wasn't made for dexterous movements, but for gripping things with the index finger. The small radius that the stick can move means you'll drag the camera much more than with a mouse. It IS inefficient.

There's a lot of issues with the Souls games that the games need to be completely reworked from the ground up from the controls to the RPG elements to fighting dumb, boring mobs to get to actual decently good boss fights from time to time. The level design and atmosphere are great but that's really it. The lock-on system itself needs to go.

I can say the same thing about the wrist not being designed to move a small piece of plastic millimeters at a time. The fact is that humans can practice to get good at just about anything from using a mouse to using analog sticks to throwing a baseball over 90mph with pinpoint accuracy. MGO is a console shooter that required great aim to play at a high level as body shots did shit damage and headshots were king. The best players could kill you from across the map in a fraction of a second with a headshot. With the proper aim acceleration and camera sensitivity, aiming is quite easy with analog sticks. Less efficient than a mouse but not by much.

 

[WeepingAngels]

we have always been able to play a console game within minutes of opening it, until last gen and this gen is even worse.

PS4 plays any game within a couple minutes of prep time. PS3 was far far worse and the PS4 fixed just about every issue with the PS3.

PS3 rarely had mandatory installs.

What games did you play because just about every PS3 game with any kind of open world to it required a mandatory install before playing. Even Mirror's Edge has a mandatory install. Sony's own MLB The Show series always has mandatory installs. Ghost Recon Future Soldier had a 5+GB mandatory install. I could go on and on as mandatory installs were usually the norm on PS3 (hell, just google it).

Ok I don't remember it that way but I am not interested in pitting PS3 against PS4. My point is that mandatory installs on any system is not ideal. Now if you don't care about mandatory installs, good for you but I am glad Nintendo is moving away from optical discs and I hope both Sony and Microsoft do so too.

 

[Zaltys]

Because of constant updates. I don't play console games often, and every time that I try to... there's a new update waiting that needs to be installed before I can play.

That's pretty much why I've completely given up on it. It feels like I'm never able to play when I want to.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Ok I don't remember it that way but I am not interested in pitting PS3 against PS4. My point is that mandatory installs on any system is not ideal. Now if you don't care about mandatory installs, good for you but I am glad Nintendo is moving away from optical discs and I hope both Sony and Microsoft do so too.

I don't really care about installs as long as they happen under-the-hood, which the PS3 did not do. The main point the TC made in the opening post is that modern consoles aren't plug-n-play which is not true for the PS4 and that's the point of the topic. I don't see how cartridges/sd memory are going to even come close to the price point of a disc.