PC Version of Mass Effect 3 Will Not Support Controllers

Mass Effect 3 on PC will not have controller support. While this won't phase most pc gamers at all as they are happy enough with there keyboard and mouse to play. Despite this Biowares senior designer Manveer Heir explained why this is on twitter.

“There is a development cost in terms of time/effort to get all the graphical user interfaces so 360 buttons show up on PC. It may seem minor, but our GUI team was already stretched thin, and things were coming in at the last minute, so we couldn’t add more work.”

This seems like a pretty legit reason for it and I believe the previous games in the series didn't support gamepads on PC either (don't quote me on that though). While there are third party programs out there which will allow you to play on PC with your controller if you wish to do so, I still believe in this day and age all games should be compatible with both, regardless of platform. Of course you will get those that think playing on PC with a controller is blastphemy, you will find these morons everywhere that allows you to post a comment who say things such as "I'm glad it doesn't support gamepads. Keeps console noobs from screwing their teammates over in multiplayer. Mouse + keyboard = best shooter controls". Just because you prefer a certain type of controls doesn't give you the right to be a complete asshat.

If you are a gamer it shouldn't matter about your choice in peripheral. Everyone knows aiming with a mouse is much more accurate than thumbsticks, therefore making them better for games such as shooters and RTS games. On the other side of the coin you have fighting games, driving games and the majority of sport games which gamepad controls have the edge over keyboard and mouse. I am primarily a PC gamer and do prefer using keyboard and mouse for most games. But sometime I just want to sit back with my feet up on the desk and play a game, you can't really do that with a keyboard and mouse, at least not with my desk setup. So I occasionally break out the Xbox controller and use that instead. Due to me not wanting to sit up at my desk that makes me a 'console noob' according to the muppet who I quoted above. All this makes me is lazy. Sure it's less accurate than aiming with a mouse, does that mean I can't play game? No of course it doesn't, it just means I have to spend an extra half a second aiming.

Alan Wake coming to PC

Xbox exclusive Alan Wake will be making it's way over to PC some point in Q1 next year. Took a while but it's still a lot quicker than some games have been ported over to the PC side of things, two years is relatively quick for getting console ports. Anyway hopefully this is a sign of things to come and more Xbox exclusives will be making their way over to us with mouse and keyboards. Two main ones I want are Gears of War and Halo, I highly doubt their going to make an appearance. I can only hope.

PC Versus Console Gaming.

I came across an article on Gamerant about Id's John Carmack and his statement about PCs not being the lead platform for gaming and how Valve disagree. This obviously started I'd say a discussion but was more of a flame war about which was better PC gaming or console gaming. So here we are at the age old debate about the matter, so here are my thoughts about the matter.

While I am primarily a PC gamer, I do agree with John Carmack, and actually believe PC has never really been the lead platform for games, consoles have always been ahead, you can take this back to the days of early Nintendos and Segas and compare them to the likes of Amiga and Commodore, both of which were good platforms for gaming but I am sure consoles were ahead in sales back then as well. The fact of the matter is that console gaming will always be popular due to the fact of it's simplicity. What I mean by this is that you can go out and buy whatever console you want and buy a game for said console and you can play straight away. With PC gaming after you buy a disc of what ever game you want to play, you have to sit there and install the game so you are waiting 10 - 20 minutes or however long before you can actually play your game. That is 1-0 to console.

We then have the debate about cost and a lot of people have this notion that if you want to game on PC you have to spend thousands. While yes you can spend thousands if you're the kind of person that needs to have the latest tech possible, you will spend a ridiculous amount over the years. I bring up a point that console gaming could also cost a ridiculous amount if you want to have the latest version of which ever console you choose and go out and buy a new Playstation or Xbox etc every time they release a new one (and I don't mean PS2 to PS3 or Xbox to 360, I mean buying a new one when say you have a 250GB version and they bring out a 320GB version. There are people out there who do this, just as there are people who upgrade their computer every 3 months). The point I am getting to is that PCs don't have to cost £2,000. You can quite easily upgrade every 3-4 years and still have no problem running the latest games. The last time I upgraded was maybe 2 years ago (I can't remember so don't quote me on that). That was getting me up to a dual core chip, 4GB of Ram and a Radeon 5770 graphics card (which is the very minimum I would suggest for pc gaming, I am not sure of the Nvidia equivalent) costing me about £300 or so while it won't run the newest games at the highest graphical settings it runs them perfectly fine at the default settings, which is probably about on par with console graphics. Yes a 'gaming' PC is more expensive than any console counter part, but you also get a pc with your gaming platform if you choose to go down this road unlike consoles.

You could also debate the matter of exclusive games for consoles, and yes there are quite a few out there (and I'm not going to get in to a rant about Xbox exclusives that should be available for PC through GFWL). I would have to say PC probably do have a lot more exclusive games than consoles combined such as the obvious ones like WoW, Starcraft, Diablo and Total War series. Then you have the likes of Quake, Unreal, Hard Reset and Red Orchestra making an appearance on the shooter side of things. There are literally hundred, possibly thousands of PC exclusive games. Where as consoles each have very few in comparison.

It is obviously going to be easier for developers to create games for consoles as they have specific hardware specs so they only have to make one setting suited to that, while on PC they have to be able to support both high and low quality graphics. Which is why I believe PC gamers are seemingly more loyal and appreciative to companies that look after them, just look at Valve and Blizzards fan base.

Last point I am going to make is the keyboard and mouse versus controller debate. Frankly I find this stupid to be quite honest. Some people find controllers easier to use than keyboard and mouse and vice versa. Unless you are in to competitive gaming it doesn't matter. I prefer controllers for games which involve fighting, racing along with rpgs (final fantasy etc..), I prefer keyboard and mouse for shooters and mmos. They have made controllers compatible with PCs, it seems kb+m is starting to make an appearance over on the console side of things with the release of CS:GO for the Playstation. Why it took a pc developers to bring this to console god knows. But hopefully it's a sign of things to come so we can once and for all stop this pointless debate as it doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, there will always be both PC and console gamer, and this debate always seems to happen when either a) a 'next gen' console is released, which is when the "death of PC gaming" is usually predicted or b) when a consoles are showing their age which is when the PC gamers seem to come out of hiding and go on about how consoles are dated tech and pc gaming is the way forward. We see to be getting toward the latter right now.

I will leave you with this final thought. If you enjoy gaming just go out there and game. It doesn't matter if you play on PC, Xbox, Playstation, Wii, Gamecube, N64, SNES, NES, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis, Master System, PSP, DS, Gameboy, Game Gear...... are we starting to see my point here. Stop bitching about how the console you don't have is worse than the one you have. Just play it and have fun, enjoy it. You know the reason behind them being created in the first place.

Fanboys piss me off!

'People don't understand that the PC is more powerful'

The guys at DICE have came out with this comment in a interview between themselves and eurogamer, to explain why the PC will be Battlefields lead platform. I call bull shit on this comment. They expect us to believe the majority of people don't get that a platform that is upgradable, and therefore able to keep up with tech as soon as it is released, is obviously going to be more powerful than consoles that were designed what 5 years ago? Granted it's good to see that more companies are developing for PC and I'm not knocking that. I am having a go at the fact this comment implements that we are all to stupid to realise the fact that PCs have the potential to be 10x better than consoles and have been for years. They need to give us some credit. Hell, the majority of people I know even those who aren't computer savvy realise PCs can be upgraded making them potentially better tech wise than consoles.

Razers Big Announcement

I know I'm a bit late writing about this as it was announced 2 days ago but I've just got back from 3 days away from home. So I haven't had the time or the internet to do so. Anyway Razer put up a interesting website under the name of PC Gaming Is Not Dead this was quite intriguing and it seems they have released a high end gaming laptop called the Blade. It does really look pretty good spec wise which can be found here. What is pretty cool is the interactive touchpad to the right of the keyboard. The buttons and display on it change depending on which game you have running, which is a nice touch. Hopefully there will be a decent amount of games compatible with it on release. With games such as World of Warcraft and Starcraft I can see it being quite handy, maybe with games like Counter Strike for buying things at the start of rounds aswell, I'm not really sure what else in game it could be used for. Again it is a pretty awesome looking gaming laptop, the price on release later this year is said to be $2,799. For that kind of money you could build a much better desktop and still have some cash left over. Is it worth nearly 3 grand... I dunno I wouldn't buy it, but I am happy enough to sit in the house and game, I don't have a need for portable gaming. Unless you do to would you really want to throw away 3 grand. Don't get me wrong this isn't a dig at Razer and this product, it is looking like a fantastic piece of tech and they obviously have enough of a market for it otherwise they wouldn't invest in making it. But it's gaming laptops (be it from Razer, Alienware or wherever), they really aren't my thing. If I had plenty of disposable income I probably would think about buying one, but until the price goes down there is no chance in hell i will even consider one tbh.

PC Gaming Is Not Dead

PC Gaming is not dead and to prove it Razer have something something up there sleeve, what it is I don't know but keep the 26th of August in your date book. The website they put up is just a loop of a computerised voice with very vague details on what this is about. Maximum PC think it may be related to the Razer Switchblade. Kbmod has a couple of theories aswell. I also noticed it is the same date as a PC release of the new 'Deus Ex' game on Steam so may have something to do with that (although that is the Euro release date, so I dunno). This has got me intrigued and I will be keeping an eye to see what the hell this is about. It's good to see more people defending the PC side of gaming rather than shunning it because consoles will make them more money *cough* Epic *cough*

Epic still shunning PC.

Gears of War 3 is never going to be released on PC, not too much of a surprise but still a little disappointing

Mike Capps told Bit-Gamer at Gamescon 'It's a decision to focus on the market majority'.

'It was a choice. In that amount of time we could have done one big Xbox 360 update for Gears of War 3, or we could have made a PC port. It was a matter of priorities.'

I disagree somewhat with this being a PC gamer. There are alot of guys who game on PC that would love Gears to be ported. Gears could of done well on PC if first off the did a decent port of the original game and if it didn't use GFWL (I don't mind it but it puts alot of people off, but I'll not get into that rant now). It could do well on PC if they made good ports of the game and if we didn't have to wait ages after the console release.

So yeah, it seems they are in it for a quick buck, which is fair enough they are running a business after all. But it would make sense to widen the market especially as it was PC gamers that got them to where they are today. Now they are big, they don't seem to care. It's almost a middle finger to the guys that made them. Yeah so PC gamers don't matter anymore because Xbox will make more money. The last decent PC game they made was probably UT 2k4. It wouldn't be that bad if it was because a PC port would be interferring with a new game they are working on. But no its because we can patch the Xbox version. I actually want to play the likes of Gears but as I don't have an Xbox and won't be able to afford one in the foreseeable future, I can't. So thank you Epic, thank you so much.

Deus Ex primed for PC.

The new Deus Ex game is due to be released to us in the not to distant future, I am looking forward to this aswell, I very much doubt it will be a day 1 purchase but it's on the list none the less. This is just about how they are actually making the PC version an actual PC version and not just some console port like alot of developers do. We will be getting be seeing full DX11 compatibility along with support for AMD's Eyefinity (which is use of multiple monitors) and also 3DHD, if you happen to be rich enough to own a 3D monitor or tv already. Looks like PC gaming is finally coming back around and getting a bit more loving attention that it truely deserves as it has been sat in the shadows for awhile now. I guess both main consoles are getting a little dated so the logical step would to turn back to PCs with there ever evolving tech.

The baconing release date.

So we now have a release date for the Playstation it seems. It's 30th of August and is release as part of the Playstation Play promotion. Whether or not I get it for Playstation or a different platform is yet to be decided. I probably will just end up getting myself a pc version.

Official annoucement for new Counter Strike

So we have a new Counter Strike heading our way, at the moment coming some point early 2012. We will see new maps, game modes (what modes I don't think has been said as of yet) and leader boards to name a few things, and no doubt updated graphics aswell.
I saw that they will also be releasing the game on Playstation and Xbox aswell. While most people will more than likely sit and complain about this with "ah man it's a pc game crappy consoles shouldn't get to play it yadda yadda bullshit" It's not that big a deal. As Valve being Valve have always been PC based, with a couple minor exceptions. But they no doubt will put the PC version as there priority and keep the majority of there fan base (ie pc gamers) happy. And yes there are going to be a lot of people complain about it just like they did when source was released but people get over that and end up playing the game anyway. If they don't they like this new version they will just return to there favourite version of the game. It's not going to die any time soon. There is still people who play 1.6 and even cz to this day. Hopefully we will hear more about this in the not to distant future.