kaze0

Hi guys,

I just got a 9800 GT for my i7 920 w/ 12 gigs of RAM. I've been out of the PC scene for a while gaming wise. I want to pick something up new that I can jump into and out of quickly.

Borderlands sounds the coolest with the online coop, but is it something I can pick up and play for short periods of time? One "scene" in left 4 dead 2 is about the amount of time I can commit in any period. So I suspect that it might not be enough.

I tried the original Crysis demo and it's pretty cool. But it was only single player, is there still multiplayer going on online?

I tried the AvP demo and liked the style of play in multiplayer. It seems like it would only get better with more options. Although reviews seemed to be pretty medicore.

I'm probably going to buy it on steam, so I want to take the best value into account.

Any thoughts?

Decker

Borderlands is easily a "pick up and play" game. My BFF and I will hook up and play for a single mission or two and can easily be done in a half hour. The game constantly saves your progress, even mid-mission, so it has that over L4D2 -- you can stop at any time and keep your progress.

I keep waiting on a sale on Crysis Maximum Edition. I may not be able to wait much longer. I want to give my new computer a work out.

kgrogers1979

12 GB RAM!?

kaze0

I'm a multiplatform developer. With 12 gigs of ram I can run 3 VM's simulaneously without breaking a sweat. I felt so bad not using it for gaming though So I bought the 9800GT.

chess

Borderlands is a flawed flawed game, but I love it so much. It's a no brainer IMO.

AvP is getting mixed reviews, and I'd go for Far Cry 2 before Crysis.

Decker

Really? I recently bought it for the PC on sale (I'd forgotten that I already owned it on the PS3 ). I hate it. It's such an ugly (in local and colors, not graphic proficency), charmless and dull game. Maps are so huge and so empty. If Crysis is worse than that, I really don't want it.

kgrogers1979

Crysis is a much better game than Far Cry 2.

Crysis was developed by Crytek, the same people that made the original PC Far Cry. Far Cry 2 was developed by the same Ubisoft people that did the craptastic Far Cry Instincts on Xbox. Crytek is a much more competent team.

Plus, Crysis was actually made for PCs. Far Cry 2 was made for consoles. Crysis therefore looks a whole lot better since it is not limited to console hardware specifications.

chess

I don't know or care which one was prettier or developed by whom.

Crysis is a really pretty sci-fi alien shooter, if you're into that sort of thing. FC2 is an open-world game with lots of opportunity for emergent gameplay.

To be fair, I'm not a PC gamer and haven't played either to fruition on console or PC, but I have checked out both at a friend's place in shorter intervals, and I thought FC2 looked a lot more interesting. My utter distain for mouse/keyboard controls couldn't have helped in either case.

And I'd still get Borderlands (the ugliest of the bunch) before either of them...and it's not close.

RichC2

I agree, Crysis is a better all around game than Far Cry 2 - which is a sequel in name only.

Also, both games support the 360 control pad (my preferred pad for shooters if I'm not using kb+m).

fumanstan

Odd thread to walk into then

I'd have to echo the others, Crysis over Far Cry 2. The 9800GT should be decent enough to make Crysis like pretty good, so I would start with that.

Tscott

Crysis is a beautiful game. Most intense graphics for a PC I've seen yet. The first half is very open with lots of ways to approach combat. The second half becomes very linear, and was for me a chore to finish.

Borderlands is a lot of fun. You can definitely play for just a bit and come back later. One thing about it, is on the PC the menus and such were made with consoles in mind- so you may find yourself fighting with the interface at times at first. (On quests with long descriptions, you'd think the mouse wheel or clicking on the visible down arrow might advance the text- but only pressing the "Page Down" key will let you see the rest of the text, for one example). Also, there's a font issue where all gun stats may not show in the GUI. There's a great Borderlands Config Tool that will help with a number of the issues without needing to resort to manually editing ini files and such. I've never tried multiplayer in borderlands but from what I've read, it's not the greatest in maintaining connections or finding other players.

If multiplayer is what you want, you could go with Left 4 Dead 2, or the ever popular Team Fortress 2 - which even I have a blast with, and I don't have much interest in multiplayer games.

chess

I mostly just dropped in to recommend Borderlands, and mentioned that I thought FC2 looked more interesting than Crysis as an aside.

msdmoney

That's exactly how I felt about Crysis, the first half was great, then they abandoned the open gameply and switched to a linear Call of Duty style game, and it just wasn't as good. Unfortunately Crysis Warhead was also fairly linear.

A lot of people unfairly write off Far Cry 2 though. I had originally written it off too, since Crytek went on to make Crysis, but I enjoyed FC2 much more than I expected to. They really went all out with the open world/emergent gameplay experience. It made for some pretty amazing moments, that weren't just set pieces, but it also meant there were a lot of open world elements that were a chore and tedious.

Decker

Can someone explain emergent gameplay to me. It's a term I'm unfamiliar with and unless it's synonymous with boring or tedious, I'm not sure how it applies to Far Cry 2.

RichC2

A lot of little things adding up to something bigger instead of set piece here, set piece there.

In otherwords, it is rewarding but you have to work for it, it's a deal breaker for most people. I never got far enough into Far Cry 2 to see any of the pay off.

Baron Of Hell

I would go with crysis because there is a badass mech mod for it. Didn't care for borderlands but if you got people to play with it is cool. However, it is horrible playing alone. There really isn't a story and world is lifeless.

chess

It's a characteristic of some games that allows for game experiences other than those intended by the designers...or in the case of open world games, the ability to approach things in very different ways that were perhaps intended by the designers...perhaps not. Maybe they meant for me to kill that band of guys by flooding the valley...or perhaps they had me shooting them in mind...maybe I could have put mines in my jeep and driven it in there...or perhaps they just created the environment and let the chips fall where they may.

You could also argue that speed runs in Metroid and farming weapons in Borderlands are examples of emergent gameplay...a game within a game, if you will.

kaze0

I went for ....

Borderlands. First impressions, it has such an awesome feel, from the opening videos to the voice acting.

Decker

Voice acting? Don't get too used to that, unless you're a huge fan of the line "You never shoulda come here and now you're gonna pay".