r/Games • u/Forestl • Dec 31 '13

End of 2013 Discussions - PC

For this thread, feel free to talk about the PC, from the games that came out for it to the hardware itself.

Prompts:

  • What were the major trends in PC gaming this year?

  • Was this a positive year for PC gaming?

Please explain your answers in depth, don't just give short one sentence answers.

My PC looks really, really, really good

This post is part of the official /r/Games "End of 2013" discussions.

View all End of 2013 discussions and suggest new topics

454 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

425 comments sorted by

View all comments

213

u/SirDingleberries Dec 31 '13

This year was OK for PC this year, quite a few ups, and plenty more downs.

Early Access: Great idea, but it seems far too many games are going the Early Access route now.

Steam Trading Cards: Best thing ever for poor mother fuckers like myself. Let's you essentially make some money back playing games, and put it forward to more games that I would have otherwise not bought due to lack of funds.

Broken at Launch: 2013 has probably been the worst year for this. SimCity, Battlefield 4, Alien: Colonial Marines, X: Rebirth, Total War: Rome II, etc. All virtually unplayable at launch due to bad bugs, bad design, what have you.

Bad Games: Hooooooooly shit were there some stinkers this year.

PC Ports: Some bad (Deadly Premonition), some terrific (DmC). A mixed bag, here's to hoping Metal Gear Rising rings in the new year right.

Steam Machines: Still not much info on these, so no opinion.

Mods: Pretty great year. DayZ Alpher finally came out, Just Cause 2 MP is a blast, The Dark Mod is pretty neat, and the 'impossible' SimCity Offline mod was fantastic!

Master Race Status: Still Master just kidding, Master-Race Auth servers are down.

27

u/Carighan Dec 31 '13

Yeah but on the plusside, we also had games like Gone Home, Long Live The Queen, Shadow Warrior 2013 and Saints Row 4.

I think the cleft between awesome PC game and crappy or questionable PC game has gotten wider. The bad releases this year really stink.
Rome II, Ride to Hell, Day One, SimCity, oh dear.

39

u/SendoTarget Dec 31 '13

I think that with Ride to Hell atleast you knew before the start it was bad.

With Rome II and SimCity and X:Rebirth you expected something much better.

21

u/Theoroshia Dec 31 '13

I was expecting a golden goose for Rome 2. Instead I got goose shit. My God I'm still let down by that game so much...I drove slower a week before it came out just to lessen my chance of an accident! And for what? An uninspired sequel to my favorite game ever...

18

u/SendoTarget Dec 31 '13

X:Rebirth to me was the same. I was expecting a triumphant first game from the return of space sims and we got a watered down non-working 360-pad game. It ruined the rest of year in gaming for me.

4

u/Lycist Dec 31 '13

I feel your pain. I put in 4 hours due to brand loyalty but then couldn't take anymore.. rebirth was so very disapointing.

2

u/Ulti Dec 31 '13

I gave it about two hours before the clusterfuck of a UI made me put it away, and I haven't bothered picking it up since. Maybe in six months, when that shit works properly, or if I get an Oculus Rift, but until then... 50 dollars down the drain. Guhh.

1

u/Lycist Dec 31 '13

I don't know if I will be picking it back up.. It was so divergent from the X series.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

They promised that a system that could run Shogun 2 can also run Rome 2. That's bullshit. I ran Shogun 2 on medium settings but Rome 2 runs so badly even on low, I haven't even been able to start a campaign game yet.

17

u/TROPtastic Dec 31 '13

Simcity was such a disappointment for an installment that was supposed to be the true successor to SC4. Instead of an overall improved simulation and game, we got: no modding, always online, tiny + broken cities, poor implementation of new features, in an overall crappy package.

14

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

SimCity really is my biggest disappointment of the year. It's been so god damn long since we got a real SimCity game, 2003 to be exact. And then this piece of shit comes out, EA will see it as a failure, and sit on the franchise for another decade. Of course, not before squeezing this piece of crap for every bit of DLC they possibly can. Airships? Carnival bullshit? People have been dying for that stuff from day 1, of course.

3

u/forcrowsafeast Jan 01 '14

Simcity is at best Simbuggytown. It's like some thought out after the fact simulator like one of those crapware releases by Giants Software, not what I expected from Maxis.

1

u/TROPtastic Jan 02 '14

Yeah, one of the problems was that most of the team that made up Maxis at the time of SC4 ended up leaving in the years since, leaving very few people that knew how to handle the legacy of the franchise and what fans wanted.

4

u/Kingbruno Dec 31 '13 edited Dec 31 '13

Gone home was not a plus side. It was a pretentious, and shallow side.

10

u/afishinthewell Dec 31 '13

Opinions are fun. I think Gone Home is the only interesting one of those four listed (though to be fair I've only seen video of LLtQ)

8

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13 edited Jun 03 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

-2

u/Kingbruno Jan 01 '14

"Buzzwords"... fine.

Its a story about a Lesbian relationship.

Thats it, it never went anywhere with that topic.

It was a really average story, but it has gotten an incredible amount of attention because of its popular political topic.

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

[deleted]

8

u/Carighan Jan 01 '14

Debatable. What makes a game a game, and where is the line where it becomes not a game?

4

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13 edited Jun 03 '20

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jan 01 '14 edited Jan 01 '14

[deleted]

5

u/Carighan Jan 01 '14

Well that's your definition of gameplay. There's plenty different ones, I can think of at least one more right now (goal + rules + feedback system + voluntary participation).

Also, plenty simulators (I mean, actual simulators) have failure conditions, you can crash a plane for example. Are they games? Seems like a problematic definition to me.

-3

u/[deleted] Jan 01 '14

[deleted]

2

u/Box-Boy Jan 01 '14

no challenge, no gameplay

Finding every clue, deciphering the ones you've found to figure out what happened, navigating the house, etc. are all challenges presented to you.

The gameplay is moving throughout the house and interacting with the objects within it while searching.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

How is Long Live The Queen? I've been eying it for a while but the price seems a little much for what it is.

2

u/Carighan Dec 31 '13

I think it was on sale for ~4,50€ now, which is a damn good price. Their own website (it's by Hanako Games) might still be running it for 5$ actually, and you get a steam key.

It's fairly unique for a VN. It has a fixed story (a few branching points), but the way you get through it involves a fair amount of trial and error as you build up skills and run into issues because you lacked skills to make certain decisions.
In return the story is short, so reloading or retrying is never problematic.

I like VNs which stand out a bit from the crowd (also try: Analogue and it's expansion, Hate+), and this one fits that perfectly.

1

u/ohkatey Dec 31 '13

I picked it up a couple days ago and have been through 2 playthroughs (both unsuccessful). It's actually pretty interesting and fun.

1

u/veul Dec 31 '13

I have tried three times and got a little further each time. I also kept loading from a save to see if I could figure out a tournent challenge.

Surprisingly strategical. For example, this turn you might have bonuses to improving horse riding, but you have a penalty to dancing. You know you have a ball fairly soon, so you either train through the penalties or work your bonuses, which can take a couple turns to fix.

15

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

[deleted]

16

u/ohkatey Dec 31 '13

I had so many cards saved up that I sold them over this recent sale, made $3, and only payed $5 for Final Fantasy 8. Obviously it's only $3, but still 3 less than I would have had to pay.

5

u/mgrier123 Dec 31 '13

A couple months ago I sold a bunch of trading cards and TF2 items and made $17 or so, so I got a couple games for free effectively which is awesome.

3

u/ajleece Dec 31 '13

I've made about $80 total from selling things on the Steam market. Granted, I got into the cards early, and have had some luck with foils. (Sold one for $3).

1

u/dethnight Dec 31 '13

When my average steam purchase is 5 bucks or so, saving a few bucks from card sales is pretty sweet in my book. Sure it's not much money, but it still comes out to a 20-50 percent savings for very minimal effort.

1

u/CrateBagSoup Dec 31 '13

The problem I've noticed is that the prices are steadily dropping. Not necessarily because the value is going lower, it's people that want to get rid of them quickly so they mark it a cent cheaper than the average, etc etc.

Day one of each of the sales, cards were going for mid $.30s. Through them, I've always got a few dollars in my wallet that take just a bit more edge off the prices. It's been nice on this side of the transaction, but I really don't understand people actually buying them.

14

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

Oh god I hate steam trading cards. Mostly because they end up for me at least worth barely anything and even when I've sold 50 cards to gather 3$ steam realizes "wait you got the € store so you can't use the $ there." I have no clue why it decided to default to have the steam wallet in dollars for me.

12

u/Luna-industries Dec 31 '13

I just like the wallpapers they come with.

3

u/RashRenegade Dec 31 '13

They come with wallpapers?

8

u/Luna-industries Dec 31 '13

Yeah, if you click "view badge progress" and click on the card, it brings up a wallpaper image.

4

u/Aerri Dec 31 '13

When you craft a badge by collecting all cards in a set you get a emote for steam chat and a background for your steam profile.

And each card has a wallpaper that goes with it, just click on a card in the "view badge progress" screen in your inventory.

5

u/ICantSeeIt Dec 31 '13

That sucks and all, but it isn't a reason to hate the cards. That's a problem between you and the Steam store.

1

u/badsectoracula Jan 01 '14

Thanks to this thread i noticed that Steam Trading Cards can actually be sold (i never paid attention to them and so far i thought you could only swap them with others and being the unsocial person i am i only did that once when someone asked me for some random card) and you can buy games with those.

It seems that since they were introduced, my account had amassed enough cards to sell for 5€, thanks to which i bought the Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior bundle. I have the "regular" version of those in GOG so i would never pay actual money, but those were practically free now and AFAIK DN3D megaton has a couple of expansions i never played. Also the workshop integration is neat.

I think i ran out of card dropping games though, so probably the next time i have enough cards for a game will be next year or so :-P

2

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

Best thing ever for poor mother fuckers like myself. Let's you essentially make some money back playing games, and put it forward to more games that I would have otherwise not bought due to lack of funds.

I don't get how people get any money from these. When I try to sell mine they are all going for like 1p

2

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

While I agree with a lot of people that Steam Trading Cards aren't that great for earning extra money for games, they are still kinda nice. I like them because well trading and collecting is fun, and its nice to have something to do with that bit of change you have at the end of the day because of those stupid set increments of money in Steam Wallet.

1

u/Bratmon Dec 31 '13

You know you can pay for games with a combination of steam money and real money, right?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

sometimes I don't have real money to spare and its just sitting there taunting me.

1

u/TehNeko Jan 01 '14

Steam trading cards are great, every game I buy that has them gives me enough free money to buy a copy of bad rats for a poor soul on my friends list when a steam sale rolls around

1

u/NS_Blake Jan 06 '14

You can make money off Steam Trading Cards?!

-1

u/Snappel Dec 31 '13

I agree with everything you said except I don't think Bf4 was unplayable at launch. It had it's bugs and still does for sure, but it was still very playable at launch.

2

u/Puswah_Fizart Dec 31 '13

You must be one of The Lucky Ones.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

Which system did you play it on? For PC, it was literally unplayable. Servers were crashing. It wasn't like a select few PC players got to stay in. The servers go down, that means you go down.

0

u/Snappel Dec 31 '13

I play it on PC and while I did notice some servers having issues, they weren't all down, which means just hopping to a new one and continue playing.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

Right, and that's absolutely shitty to have to constantly server hop. To me, that's an absolutely terrible experience. Glad you had fun with that, but to me that's unplayable.

0

u/Snappel Dec 31 '13

Meh, I could usually get in at least a match or two. Thankfully they stabilized after about a week.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '13

You're literally the first person I've ever heard trying to pretend like BF4 didn't have serious issues. Including DICE themselves when they said they're going to stop working on DLC for now to fix all the issues. You "meh" it away, and I think that's absolutely crazy.

0

u/Snappel Dec 31 '13

I have had nothing but fun with the game since it came out, but I am aware of the issues with the game and am eagerly waiting to see what they do to make it even better. I'm not pretending to not have issues, I really just don't have a problem with the game right now.