Biggest issues for me is I'm 100% a couch/TV player. I sit at my desk for work all day. Sitting at a desk for gaming is a total no-go. I don't care how many hardcore gamers do it and how serious business it is to use the mouse and keyboard for leet skillz.
Ha, yes! That was one of my biggest peeves with PC gaming as well. But I have a separate, dedicated gaming rig literally hooked up to a 40-inch, sitting on the entertainment system on the shelf beneath the PS4.
It's in a Syber case (horrible for heat, I know), so I had to remove the bottom plates and grille, so the GPU could vent the heat, and propped it up on some little furniture stands. So the heating issue is dealt with. Not sure why they designed the thing that way, but it was an easy problem to fix. Now it just looks like a really large Xbox-like console on the shelf.
Why I didn't then is because I do tend to play a lot of older games, and up until just a few years ago controller support on PC was just plain atrocious.
Oh boy do I remember those days, when the Gravis Game Pad was all the rage, but support for it was about as shoddy as a wooden shed in a thunderstorm.
These days controller support is WAAAAAAY better, so much so you can actually use Steam to emulate keyboard/mouse functionality for controllers OUTSIDE of Steam.
So for my gaming rig it doesn't even have a mouse or keyboard plugged in. No wires or cables coming out of the front. All the major controllers are wireless. So I turn it on, turn on the Steam controller, and navigate to the tab I want to use. All the tabs on the main desktop are gaming related; emulators, Steam, nucleuscoop, the Xbox companion (to stream Xbox games on PC), etc.
I can't remember the exact year, but once Steam implemented Big Picture Mode they made controller compatible far superior to anything else on the market. No more Xpadder, no more Xbox360CE, no more DualSoft4 or whatever that DualShock emulator is called. It's all native support for every type of controller, even the 8bit retro SNES wireless controllers, which I bought for the Switch but also use on PC to play stuff like Streets of Rage Remake.
I wouldn't be shocked if I just go to whatever the Switch's successor is and go back and catch up on whatever comes from that library instead.
Same here. Only two major things I play now are the PC and Switch. I know my post sort of reads like a sales pitch, but really, I'm just so happy with my gaming rig and how console-like it feels. That was my biggest disappointment with the XB1 and PS4. The load times, the installation times, the constant updates. One day while I was waiting for a really large update to install on PS4, where I couldn't do anything but sit and wait, I started thinking "Why am I doing this? Why am waiting for a console to load an update when I could just use my gaming rig and multi-task?" That was the eye-opening moment for me.
The only thing I don't use very often is the VR headsets, and it's just because of how cumbersome they are. But otherwise, I've been playing through quite a few old PS3 games via emulation on PC. Just click the tab on the desktop, hook up a DualShock controller, and you're good to go. It's amazing because it's easier and better playing some PS3 games on PC (with native resolution upscaling) than it is on the PS4!
Haha, I just got rid of a Gravis Gamepad I found in a drawer a few months ago. No idea why I'd hung on to it as I haven't used it since the 90s. 15 pin game port, so I have no use for it anymore. Worked sort of ok in the old DOS platformers. I remember playing Descent with a joystick for some reason too. I guess it worked ok.
So RPCS3 works that well? I've tried Dolphin and PCSX2 and was quite impressed. I doubt my antique CPU will run PS3 but I wouldn't use it anyway. Still will note for future reference.
Right now if anyone wants to sell me anything, they have to work on some games. I can't think of a time where I've been less interested in what's coming out, so I'll just keep what I have.
Haha, I just got rid of a Gravis Gamepad I found in a drawer a few months ago. No idea why I'd hung on to it as I haven't used it since the 90s. 15 pin game port, so I have no use for it anymore.
Oh boy, yeah I think I still have mine in a box somewhere with a bunch of broken OG Xbox controllers.
Worked sort of ok in the old DOS platformers. I remember playing Descent with a joystick for some reason too. I guess it worked ok.
I think I only ever got it to work right with a few games, one of which was
Venom & Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety for Windows 95, which was one of the earliest games that required exclusive use of DirectX, so you couldn't play it in Win 3.10 or Win 3.11.
So RPCS3 works that well? I've tried Dolphin and PCSX2 and was quite impressed.
Only played a few games. Resistance, Resistance 3, Blacksite Area 51, Clive Barker's Jericho, Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Army of Two, Army of Two: The 40th Day, and Captain America: Super Soldier. Ran all the games fine except for Resistance 3 -- game runs well, but it hits an error in one of the stages, so it needs an emu update. I turned on the 200% upscaler to run the games in 4K, otherwise the PS3's native resolution is a chore to get through.
Dolphin runs games like a dream, and I still need to finish Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines some day, ha!
I doubt my antique CPU will run PS3 but I wouldn't use it anyway. Still will note for future reference.
Haven't really looked into the spec requirements all that much, but I think any multi-core i7 should do the trick if you were planning on going that route.
Right now if anyone wants to sell me anything, they have to work on some games. I can't think of a time where I've been less interested in what's coming out, so I'll just keep what I have.
Yup. Totally agreed. Right now I'm just working through my old back catalog of games, hardly buying anything new. In fact, most of the "new" stuff I'm buying are just old games on discount that I may have missed in previous years.
Ha, yes! That was one of my biggest peeves with PC gaming as well. But I have a separate, dedicated gaming rig literally hooked up to a 40-inch, sitting on the entertainment system on the shelf beneath the PS4.
It's in a Syber case (horrible for heat, I know), so I had to remove the bottom plates and grille, so the GPU could vent the heat, and propped it up on some little furniture stands. So the heating issue is dealt with. Not sure why they designed the thing that way, but it was an easy problem to fix. Now it just looks like a really large Xbox-like console on the shelf.
Oh boy do I remember those days, when the Gravis Game Pad was all the rage, but support for it was about as shoddy as a wooden shed in a thunderstorm.
These days controller support is WAAAAAAY better, so much so you can actually use Steam to emulate keyboard/mouse functionality for controllers OUTSIDE of Steam.
So for my gaming rig it doesn't even have a mouse or keyboard plugged in. No wires or cables coming out of the front. All the major controllers are wireless. So I turn it on, turn on the Steam controller, and navigate to the tab I want to use. All the tabs on the main desktop are gaming related; emulators, Steam, nucleuscoop, the Xbox companion (to stream Xbox games on PC), etc.
I can't remember the exact year, but once Steam implemented Big Picture Mode they made controller compatible far superior to anything else on the market. No more Xpadder, no more Xbox360CE, no more DualSoft4 or whatever that DualShock emulator is called. It's all native support for every type of controller, even the 8bit retro SNES wireless controllers, which I bought for the Switch but also use on PC to play stuff like Streets of Rage Remake.
Same here. Only two major things I play now are the PC and Switch. I know my post sort of reads like a sales pitch, but really, I'm just so happy with my gaming rig and how console-like it feels. That was my biggest disappointment with the XB1 and PS4. The load times, the installation times, the constant updates. One day while I was waiting for a really large update to install on PS4, where I couldn't do anything but sit and wait, I started thinking "Why am I doing this? Why am waiting for a console to load an update when I could just use my gaming rig and multi-task?" That was the eye-opening moment for me.
The only thing I don't use very often is the VR headsets, and it's just because of how cumbersome they are. But otherwise, I've been playing through quite a few old PS3 games via emulation on PC. Just click the tab on the desktop, hook up a DualShock controller, and you're good to go. It's amazing because it's easier and better playing some PS3 games on PC (with native resolution upscaling) than it is on the PS4!
Haha, I just got rid of a Gravis Gamepad I found in a drawer a few months ago. No idea why I'd hung on to it as I haven't used it since the 90s. 15 pin game port, so I have no use for it anymore. Worked sort of ok in the old DOS platformers. I remember playing Descent with a joystick for some reason too. I guess it worked ok.
So RPCS3 works that well? I've tried Dolphin and PCSX2 and was quite impressed. I doubt my antique CPU will run PS3 but I wouldn't use it anyway. Still will note for future reference.
Right now if anyone wants to sell me anything, they have to work on some games. I can't think of a time where I've been less interested in what's coming out, so I'll just keep what I have.
Oh boy, yeah I think I still have mine in a box somewhere with a bunch of broken OG Xbox controllers.
I think I only ever got it to work right with a few games, one of which was Venom & Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety for Windows 95, which was one of the earliest games that required exclusive use of DirectX, so you couldn't play it in Win 3.10 or Win 3.11.
Only played a few games. Resistance, Resistance 3, Blacksite Area 51, Clive Barker's Jericho, Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Army of Two, Army of Two: The 40th Day, and Captain America: Super Soldier. Ran all the games fine except for Resistance 3 -- game runs well, but it hits an error in one of the stages, so it needs an emu update. I turned on the 200% upscaler to run the games in 4K, otherwise the PS3's native resolution is a chore to get through.
Dolphin runs games like a dream, and I still need to finish Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines some day, ha!
Haven't really looked into the spec requirements all that much, but I think any multi-core i7 should do the trick if you were planning on going that route.
Yup. Totally agreed. Right now I'm just working through my old back catalog of games, hardly buying anything new. In fact, most of the "new" stuff I'm buying are just old games on discount that I may have missed in previous years.