A decade of pc gaming. likes and dislikes.

As I was sifting through my old pc games I remembered how I hated having 6 install discs for one game. I figured i'd make a post and see what everybody liked and disliked about pc gaming in the past 10 or so years.

Dislikes

1. updating games. I remember when updating certain pc titles for online play was the most difficult thing to accomplish.

2. Multiple install discs for one game.

3. Using AOL as an ISP

Likes.

1.Awesome box art. (which isn't entirely gone but is slowing disappearing because of services like steam.)

2. Buying pc games from walmart, gamestop, etc.

3. Not as sophisticated to get into pc gaming ( or at least it seemed at the time.)

I share your dislike for multiple CD when installing games... As well as always needing the CD in the CD drive.

I dislike DRM, digital only games, steam, bad ports, buggy games, EA.

I like how games are becoming better in gameplay, and the physics and graphics are really good now and I like how they have a lot of destructable objects, and are becoming non linear and open world.

Also like how some games really give you your moneys worth, back 10 years ago you barely got 8 hrs of gameplay from games, most quality games give over 20-30 now... except fps which are still lacking and give 8-10 hrs at best. Back before then even games on nes or snes you could finish in less then an hour usually, and they cost more then todays games.

I wish all PC games would come with software to mod their games graphics and gameplay easily. Modding makes a good game live on forever. And seriously, get rid of DRM, its a joke and pisses off honest pc gamers and ruins a games longterm quality. People pirate the crap out of games way way more when they are rigged with this crap DRM. Simcity may have been a much better game if it never had DRM and they had focused on improving the games map sizes and other gameplay problems. But instead they focused only on the DRM and the game is now a permanent piece of garbage in minds of many Simcity fans.

Multiple disc's - you had it easy if that was your main gripe lol

sounds like you missed stuff like having to create boot discs to change things such as extended or conventional memory just to get the game to work

I started pc gaming in 2003 when i was 12 years old. So i started about the same time as you.

What i loved about pc gaming back then was:

thick manuals with lots of information you could read while installing the game.

Lots of variety in the fps genre (my favorite genre)

People were less selfish in online gaming

Looking at the back of the box in the store to see if my geforce 6800 could handle the game i wanted to play.

Dislikes

Keeping track of my cd`s all the time

Gamespy

Pc gaming was on the decline (low point 2008-2010)

I remember those days...

Agree with this 100% especially the part about the manual.

I think that I miss the manuals the most. I've gone pretty much exclusively digital, so I don't get the manuals anymore, and I do miss that part.

Boot disks!!! The things you forget or I guess want to forget lol....

I agree, they were my toilet reading material!!!!

I hate all the UI crap like this in FPS games. What is this? A jet fighter HUD? But, luckily on the PC, there are some ways around it (see bottom image)......

Multiple discs aren't so bad. How about multiple floppy disks? I'm talking double digits for a single install plus having to look up something in the manual and typing it in before the game will launch. People have it easy nowadays.

Never thought I would say this but I do kind of miss the cool box art and game manuals...the awesome game manuals that use to come with PC games, especially RPGs. That new game box smell was so awesome. I have consoles so I do still buy physical copies but it's all plastic now and the smell is gone.

I miss the boxed games of the MS-DOS days.

what i disliked the most about pc gaming is the lack of split screen gaming. Do devs really think pc gamers are anti social losers that have carpal tunnel syndrome and play by themselves in their mothers basement? Split screen/local multiplayer gaming is the only thing keeping console gaming alive!!

I started building PC's in 1990. 10 years ago PC's were easy mode, today they're more than simple.

Pain in arse things from days of yore

Setting dip switches and jumpers depending on RAM and CPU

Unmarked or keyed ribbon cables, pin 1 to pin 1 wasn't that simple

Games and software coming on 16 floppy disks

DOS boot disks and needing to write your own Autoexec.bat

Windows 3.1

Waiting for a magazine to come out and hoping that the patch you need is on the free floppy disk

I could go back to having to spend all day copying code from a magazine just so as I could play a game ;)

The only dislike I have is DRM. It makes my life a living hell. And I AM NOT a pirate

i mostly dislike DLC that is not free that adds content into a game which should have been in the game in the first place. I also dislike games which treat you like an idiot by signposting things so clearly that there's no reason to do any exploration. i also dislike linear/corridor games where everything is scripted.

i like the fact that there are more sandbox open world games now like Boiling Point, GTA, the STALKER series. ambition is not a bad word game devs.

@jun_aka_pekto:

Truth, I had a game called waxworks, I think it was more than 13 floppy disks!!

I remember those annoying copy protection things as well: what word p112 line 6, or that stupid code wheel monkey island had

I can't recall any game requiring Windows 3.1 aside from the MS Entertainment Packs (Pacman, Asteroids, etc).

Let's face it. The only ones who liked splitscreen gaming were bratty preteen kids. Once they reach their teens, they become more concerned about their possessions and privacy such as their own bedroom, their own gadgets, their own TV, etc. They ceased hanging out in the living room where most splitscreen gaming occurs.

Floppy Disk are the true enemy we have to worry about. Not the CDs.

Yea, I missed the floppy disc days. Although I do remeber how much I hated floppy drives. Then At the time money was tight and I wasn't into pc gaming like I am now, and we kept this old dell with a cd drive and floppy drive and man it was pain. Yea game manuals were awsome. Although there both still used or atleast one will be before too long. I didn't care for gamespy or punkbuster. I remember spending an entire weekend trying to get punkbuster to let me play fear.

omfg windows 3.1

/wrists

Wasn't being specific to gaming, just early windows software in general.

Hate:

• Day one DLC
• EA, Origin, and all associated companies/games (thanks for Origin, Bullfrog, Westwood, etc)
• P2W "free" games
• The glut of side-scroller indies
• Five-hour SP campaigns on full-price games
• Early-access games
• USB jacks that you always put in the wrong way the first time
• Spending two hours with a brand-new game downloading sound card drivers (thanks Soundblaster)
• Having to play with no sound because your card doesn't officially exist anywhere
• Wolf 3D on a black-and-white 386/20 laptop lul

Love:

• Steam sales
• Open-world RPGs that are off-putting yet excellent (Two Worlds, Gothic, Risen, etc)
• The ease of indie developers getting their products to consumers
• Bundle sales
• Being able to buy a game from the toilet and having it done downloading by the time you get back on your computer
• MODS MODS MODS MODS MODSFMOMODFMSOMFDSOJFGSFMDHS
• Steamworks in general (achievements primarily - gotta have my positive reinforcement)

Oh. Okay. True that! ;)

Like

- Steam, it essentially saved pc gaming.

- Technology ever rapid increase, primarily pc

- Japan taking more of an active interest in pc gaming

- Total War, barring Rome II, has been consistently great for a long time now

- Prices are much lower for hardware than it was in the 90's

Dislike

-What Halo and Call Of Duty has done FPS

-What consoles have to expansion packs

-Publishers actively abusing free2play and steam early access to drab the concept through the muck

-Bullshit indie 2d snes like games proclaimed as "art" by dickheads

- Microsofts attitude to pc gaming in recent years, terrible.

The thing I miss the most about FPS games from back in the day was they took advantage of what the PC could do, and not just in terms of graphics. Single player games (even linear ones) would have save anywhere and quick save enabled, controls were optimized for the PC, there were multiple weapon slots (one for each number key!)

All of this changed when Halo and Call of Duty hit it big.

As much as I love the modern technology, it seems me as if the core features are forgotten. After Crysis, I can't remember a single player game on the PC that felt complete.

Likes :

• Games becoming Cheaper .
• Rise of independent Developers .
• Building PC costs much less now .
• Much easier to get into PC gaming .
• Competition among different companies (gog , Steam , humble bundle etc)
• Openness of the platform .
• Better looking games .
• PC gaming becoming more profitable than ever before .
• Return of Old School genres .

Dislikes :

• Always online DRM (or any kind of punishing DRM) .
• Games being dumbed down for lowest common denominator .
• Death of Space Sims/Real FPS (now slowly returning) .
• Less sophisticated games (more casual garbage) .
• Yearly franchises , F2P , P2W , Microtransactions , DLCs etc .
• Less coverage from mainstream media (Despite it being more relevant than ever before . You barely see sites like gamespot covering PC exclusive , until it is announced for console , then it is best thing ever) .
• The feeling when your DVD Rom can't read disc of your favorite game and you can't install it because you didn't take care of it and now it is full of scratches . Either get better DVD Rom or buy new disc . (AAAAAAAAHHHH !!!!)

@PatchRowcester: Crysis is known by many as the last game where it was fun to see graphics progress. I didnt buy that game at the time though because i only had a pentium 4 and geforce 6800 which would barely play the game on lowest settings.

I enjoyed the multi-disks that came with Baldur's Gate. I think there were around 5-6 of them. For some reason, that wasn't as bad as loading one disk to boot to DOS, and then a separate for any other program.

I also really enjoy updates, because it means I'm not stuck with a potentially buggy mess.

The only thing I really disliked were the shoddy drivers and not-yet-unified marriage among peripherals in the distant past.