Steam and online gaming, Retro gaming, and getting too old for 1 player?

[GentleJerk]

Because my friend wants to play Halo online with me, as we used to play it with all the boys after school when it first came out, like 20 years ago- I've just wasted all day going through the effort of setting up microsoft, xbox, and steam accounts, buying a pc adaptable controller, paying for this Master Chief Collection, and clearing space on my hard drive to download it... Turns out my crappy laptop specs are nowhere near good enough to play online! Very anticlimactic.

I've always loved console gaming, I've collected a nice stash of retro systems and games, NES, SNES, Sega Megadrive, Saturn, PS1, PS2, Xbox... But these are relics from a much simpler time. Sadly, my friends are all playing games online now and aren't very interested in popping around to play some old classic stuff, and I have spent a lot time in my life playing all these games in the past so I'm not interested enough to play them by myself anymore. Especially with my days coming to an end, it feels like a waste of time.

It would be nice to get into PC online gaming as I do think that's the direction we're heading in. So far I'm impressed that I can run emulators and use a PC compatible controller to play all the old games I grew up with on the one computer, without having to use a keyboard and mouse which is one thing I always disliked about PC gaming. But with minimum required specs of 16GB RAM and fancy graphics cards etc... The cost of a PC that can actually stand up to the task is ridiculous. At upwards of $1,600 for a basic setup, It is only for the rich and privelaged at this point and the average person is pretty far off from ever catching up with the times.

Oh well. My friend says at least I can play these games myself now, and I'm playing Lego Star Wars atm for the first time since High School, but really bummed out I can't play online. It's passing time but I've spent a lot of my life playing games, and unless I'm enjoying it with a friend, 1 player just isn't even worth it to me these days.

 

[Interloper]

I'm the other way around, I find myself drifting more towards solo experiences as I got older, and there are still plenty of games for that.
So many popular online games now are a young man's game, co-op games with friends are nice though I agree.

And it is indeed an awful time to get into the hobby, with the card prices; Your best bet in the current climate might be a prebuilt? Depending on how frugal you are willing to go, find a second hand monitor for 10 dollars. KB and mouse also don't have to be expensive. For those few online games I still play, I am still more than tagging along with my 2014 budget build, before that I used an optiplex from my school with a 750ti chucked in.


What else ya looking to play?

 

[Julgran]

Because my friend wants to play Halo online with me, as we used to play it with all the boys after school when it first came out, like 20 years ago- I've just wasted all day going through the effort of setting up microsoft, xbox, and steam accounts, buying a pc adaptable controller, paying for this Master Chief Collection, and clearing space on my hard drive to download it... Turns out my crappy laptop specs are nowhere near good enough to play online! Very anticlimactic.

I've always loved console gaming, I've collected a nice stash of retro systems and games, NES, SNES, Sega Megadrive, Saturn, PS1, PS2, Xbox... But these are relics from a much simpler time. Sadly, my friends are all playing games online now and aren't very interested in popping around to play some old classic stuff, and I have spent a lot time in my life playing all these games in the past so I'm not interested enough to play them by myself anymore. Especially with my days coming to an end, it feels like a waste of time.

It would be nice to get into PC online gaming as I do think that's the direction we're heading in. So far I'm impressed that I can run emulators and use a PC compatible controller to play all the old games I grew up with on the one computer, without having to use a keyboard and mouse which is one thing I always disliked about PC gaming. But with minimum required specs of 16GB RAM and fancy graphics cards etc... The cost of a PC that can actually stand up to the task is ridiculous. At upwards of $1,600 for a basic setup, It is only for the rich and privelaged at this point and the average person is pretty far off from ever catching up with the times.

Oh well. My friend says at least I can play these games myself now, and I'm playing Lego Star Wars atm for the first time since High School, but really bummed out I can't play online. It's passing time but I've spent a lot of my life playing games, and unless I'm enjoying it with a friend, 1 player just isn't even worth it to me these days.

One of the drawbacks of modern online gaming is that the gameplay of many games seems to converge, so in the end, today, there are games like Dota 2, PUBG, Call of Duty and Counter-Strike, and not much else, since newer games are just derivatives of those games, because the people who developed those newer games think that they can invent the wheel once more - unless you can find other games that are better suited to a friend group.

 

[Feeding Pigeons]

PC gaming is so goddamn lame. For every game thats interesting and unique theres eight billion borefests. Like you said, the requirements to run a lot of them are really high for NO valid reason, they're just bloated and unoptimized for no fucking reason.

It would be nice to get into PC online gaming as I do think that's the direction we're heading in.

Yeah okay grandpa, you're about 15 years late on that one. If anything its on the decline because all the triple A studios keep making crappier products and censoring their playerbases more and more due to all of them being in bed with China. Fuck online gaming.

With that said, Gentlesoul, look into fightcade and parsec and things like that. People play old games online all the time. Mostly fighting games though.

 

[Live Free or Die]

It would be nice to get into PC online gaming as I do think that's the direction we're heading in.

There's some great single player games that people still play and mod years later.
You could try playing some things like skyrim or fallout 4. They run great on old hardware and have infinite possibilities with all the mods. What style of online gaming are you looking for fps/strategy/card/mmo?

 

[demuic]

You can get a good gaming PC for less than $1600. Just make sure you meet the minimum requirements. At least 16gb is pretty much mandatory for the "AAA" gameS eleased these days though yeah. I have a GTX 1060 and can play pretty much every game that comes out, just not always on the highest graphical settings. Though I have a laptop rather than a desktop. And you don't really need to play games on the highest settings, that's just a bonus. Older graphic cards are getting cheaper as the newer ones come out. You can also look into older games and indie games. Most of the game I play (single player) were released 10+ years ago. There are also multi-player online games that aren't that demanding in terms of hardware.

 

[lostundead]

You can get a good gaming PC for less than $1600.

I got a good new(as in: not used) gaming PC in 2016-ish for around 900€. I could play GTA 5 or Witcher 3 for example on the second highest graphical setting with a solid 60fps.

 

[Live Free or Die]

You can get a good gaming PC for less than $1600. Just make sure you meet the minimum requirements. At least 16gb is pretty much mandatory for the "AAA" gameS eleased these days though yeah. I have a GTX 1060 and can play pretty much every game that comes out, just not always on the highest graphical settings. Though I have a laptop rather than a desktop. And you don't really need to play games on the highest settings, that's just a bonus. Older graphic cards are getting cheaper as the newer ones come out. You can also look into older games and indie games. Most of the game I play (single player) were released 10+ years ago. There are also multi-player online games that aren't that demanding in terms of hardware.

This. I bought a decent i5 with a 1060 in it the year those came out for 800$. I upgraded the ram and added a SSD. Total was about 1000$ and I can play almost anything... except cyberpunk 2077 lmao. But for the older games I actually play it works great. I get over 100 fps in elder scrolls online, dying light, skyrim, Fallout 4, ect. New games I just play on low settings and works fine. Low graphics on new games still look phenomenal to me...

 

[Angst Filled Fuck Up]

Yeah you don't need to break the bank on a fast laptop if you still want to play some games. Knowing benchmark scores etc, something like this could be a good fit, unless the games really do require a beast of a graphics card. Should run pretty quiet too. Just turn the settings down a bit.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/304195085389?hash=item46d370a44d:g:aXYAAOSwkPJhf3xd

 

[Lefty]

I find myself liking single player games more than multiplayer. I've never been into the whole online gaming thing. I guess achievements and trophies are kinda nice, since they can help make a game last longer. But playing online doing the same thing over and over? Not my cup of tea. You don't need to break the bank for a decent gaming computer, but with crypto miners fucking with the prices of hardware, prices have been all over the place.

 

[Deleted member 8975]

I'll play games with you if you want to, I'm on all the consoles and I have a gaming pc

 

[Sakura94]

I have never actually played online. I still use my PS3 and a couple of emulators. I don't know how it would work? Wouldn't it be really slow due to the internet speed? Even videos can glitch.

 

[GentleJerk]

@AntiquatedHorror Yeah for sure, co-op is what I'm hoping for. I've tried a few online PC games, for instance some of my friends are into League of Legends- I tried it for their sake but I feel worlds apart from that sort of thing and I'm just not into it that much.

I got through playing Chrono Trigger on snes recently, it's an amazing game and I could play it through multiple times for different endings if I want, theres plenty of really good games I haven't even played yet, but as a suicidal 30 year old it seems sitting here alone playing games isn't as rewarding as it used to be!

The Halo games are something I've played too much in the past to bother playing solo, but when a friend wants to co-op online that seems worthwhile.

I don't know what I want to play these days tbh. I've got boxes of oldschool games that I know are good, and I'd probably prefer them over most of the new ones, even remastered games are great but I don't have the energy to set them up and play them alone. Part of that has to do with the fact that I'm not well, so for the last few months I have been thinking about who to give them to or selling them.

@Julgran this is so true, it sounds cynical but I've noticed that pretty much everything has been done before, they are still milking the crap out of all the franchises that have long been successful, and the majority of new things are mainly sub-par or spin-offs. The only thing getting better is graphics and online connection.

@Feeding Pigeons 100%. I definitely have always preferred console gaming, PC gaming is still a world apart for me. Theres only a couple of online games I've seen that are obviously decent, but I really dont like playing games with keyboards and mouses.

Imo the main thing that has really appealed to me is the ability to now play games on the PC with a controller, and connect online with friends. I know the consoles have online capabilities, but I have boxes full of games, consoles, cables and controllers- and I like the idea of having every single video game from all the different consoles available to download on the one system. All you would need is one computer and a bunch of different controllers to swap between Nintendo Playstation Xbox etc. I think thats how it should be in the future, but computers are so damn complicated and finicky, I don't have the money or the time to own a decent setup and learn that much IT just to play a damn video game.

I'm playing lego star wars on steam atm, it's actually not bad but would be way better co-op. We tried to get parsec working thinking that my 4GB RAM laptop might be good enough at least for co-op Lego Star Wars on the lowest graphic setting, but its laggy asf and only one of us can use a controller, the other has to use a keyboard.

@Live Free or Die It's just a complicated lack of interest mixed with a preference for console gaming and an aversion to the standard PC gaming and online games with strangers, maybe a mix of being jaded, and some kind of depression caused by my poor health. At this point in life I wasn't really looking for any particular style of game to deem worthwhile, I've got so many great games at my fingertips I could easily play if I wanted to. I'm actually spoiled for choice in that regard. I force myself to play sometimes as a distraction.

But the excitement and the will to play games hasn't really been there lately until my friend visited and wanted to get Steam set up on my laptop so we could play some old classics together online. The idea of once again playing games that I know are good, with my irl friends online was exciting, I'm spewing that It hasn't worked. I'm now trying to play these games solo that I downloaded to co-op with him. I'm still doing it, I'm just not deriving the same enjoyment from playing games solo that I used to.

@demuic @Angst Filled Fuck Up @lostundead @Lefty that's good to know, it would definitely be nice ngl. It sucks I feel as if it's probably not worth it for me, it would be a lot of effort and money to set myself up with a gaming PC that's good enough to play the sort of games my friends are into. I'm not from US so that $1600 quote is in my currency and for the average cheap 16GB RAM setup minimum for what I would need. I wouldn't want a second hand PC. And when I'm fairly certain that I won't be around for much longer I can't justify spending all that time and money on something like that.

And it would really only be so that I can join my friends, I'm not enthusiastic enough about it just for my own pleasure. I'm more into older games too, or remastered ones, and If I want to play them solo I could do that at anytime. Haha 1st world problems!

@atari thank you atari ^^ I'll see if there are any games I'm able to play online. I gave my PS4 account to one of the fam and lended the cosole to my sister, so It's only steam atm but not having much luck online

@VictoriaShadows Thats sort of what I'm getting at, Console online gaming is usually not bad if you have decent internet speed, you just need to pay for membership and yearly subscription, and it's different for each console.. Not to mention the actual games. I was playing Crash Team Racing Nitro on PS4 a while back which was good, not too much lag. With online PC games, unless you want to play League or Minecraft or something, games require a ridiculously pro setup just to cope with playing online.

It would be great though because with a good enough set up, the PC versions are just as good, and its way cheaper to buy from steam than own a disc.

 

[Lefty]

I have never actually played online. I still use my PS3 and a couple of emulators. I don't know how it would work? Wouldn't it be really slow due to the internet speed? Even videos can glitch.

My internet is crap too. If my internet was faster I'd probably try to stream, I've seen some people be able to make some money off of streaming.

 

[toseeyousmile]

yeah a gaming pc is cracked even if you wanna play old games unless you're a collector/purist since emulators are a thing and people still play single player games so thats definitely a thing that's dated or anything. Also if you guys wanna play anything I can play on ps switch or pc as well, and don't feel too bad about not being able to play multiplayer of the lego star wars game with your friend since the only lego game that currently has online multiplayer support is some random one I forget, it definitely wasnt a star wars or an indiana jones one, I remember looking into it when a friend and I wanted to play a lego game together lol.