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Wow player here. I swear my focus and awareness improved in rl driving on the road because of it! Helps my reflexes and exercises the brain when a new expac comes out, and I have to relearn my toon >.<
My SO and I play together. My kids roll their eyes, lol.
A PC on the other hand is almost always going to have the ability to play older games.
What game and where are you having trouble? I'll bet I can get it to load
There are several games I've had trouble with, I play some obscure 3rd party wargames that you probably would not recognize. Trust me I know all the tricks to get them to play in 8.1 - compatability mode, administrative settings, switches, changing to windowed mode, changing resolutions, and sometimes actually getting into the game data and modifying it, etc. Most of them I have managed to get working, with some quirks, but the point is what I am able to do, besides simply changing compatability settings, is not practical for most PC users.
A few games, even with all the tricks I know, do not work in 8.1. For those I actually have to add an XP virtual drive using VMWARE. Again, impractical for most users because it's lots of work and takes some PC knowledge.
OK one mainstream game I can think of that will absolutely not work in 8.1 without the XP virtual drive: Medieval Total War (the first one). I think there are websites however that have entire lists of games that are not compatible with 8.1, it's not a short list.
okay.. I'd like to play games on my computer but my son say's I don't have enough something or other to do that.
If you know what I'm talking about, because I sure don't... is there something I could buy or install?
RAM, video card, CPU too slow. Could be a variety of reasons. Sometimes you can upgrade, but it comes to a time where if a system gets too old and you just need to replace everything, i.e. buy or make a new PC.
There are several games I've had trouble with, I play some obscure 3rd party wargames that you probably would not recognize. Trust me I know all the tricks to get them to play in 8.1 - compatability mode, administrative settings, switches, changing to windowed mode, changing resolutions, and sometimes actually getting into the game data and modifying it, etc. Most of them I have managed to get working, with some quirks, but the point is what I am able to do, besides simply changing compatability settings, is not practical for most PC users.
A few games, even with all the tricks I know, do not work in 8.1. For those I actually have to add an XP virtual drive using VMWARE. Again, impractical for most users because it's lots of work and takes some PC knowledge.
OK one mainstream game I can think of that will absolutely not work in 8.1 without the XP virtual drive: Medieval Total War (the first one). I think there are websites however that have entire lists of games that are not compatible with 8.1, it's not a short list.
There's a number of things that you can do to get older games to work, one of them you already mentioned (VM Ware). Getting into the specifics is indeed as you said unconventional.
My point however is that PC's are for the most part backwards compatible with just about everything and forwards compatible up until a certain point. Most consoles however are not. This kind of stemmed from another poster that complained that it sucks that after you buy a new console that console won't play the games of the previous console... while not 100% true for every console out there, it is at least mostly true.
It is also at least "mostly true" that most games that were released for the pc years and years prior will work on new PC systems. It is also true that there are some compatibility issues with some of the games out there. These compatibility issues are software related and are fixable in almost all cases.
I understand the convenience with a console as I've had many of them growing up and I also understand that some people don't want to tinker with things to get them to work, they just want them to work. I personally do not mind.
For what it's worth I haven't been able to find a game new or old that did not run on my system. I've found a handful of older programs that wouldn't run without some tinkering, but games I have not.
I also think it's a shame how much consoles are being under scaled and frame limited. PC's are capable of significantly higher resolutions and frame rates which consoles are not capable of. Games just "look" better on PC and there's not much to argue against that. The other reason I dislike consoles is the willful disabling of keyboard + mouse support by game developers (pushed by console makers).
If I could play on a console with keyboard + mouse natively I would be significantly more likely to buy one for fun.
There's a number of things that you can do to get older games to work, one of them you already mentioned (VM Ware). Getting into the specifics is indeed as you said unconventional.
My point however is that PC's are for the most part backwards compatible with just about everything and forwards compatible up until a certain point. Most consoles however are not. This kind of stemmed from another poster that complained that it sucks that after you buy a new console that console won't play the games of the previous console... while not 100% true for every console out there, it is at least mostly true.
It is also at least "mostly true" that most games that were released for the pc years and years prior will work on new PC systems. It is also true that there are some compatibility issues with some of the games out there. These compatibility issues are software related and are fixable in almost all cases.
I understand the convenience with a console as I've had many of them growing up and I also understand that some people don't want to tinker with things to get them to work, they just want them to work. I personally do not mind.
For what it's worth I haven't been able to find a game new or old that did not run on my system. I've found a handful of older programs that wouldn't run without some tinkering, but games I have not.
I also think it's a shame how much consoles are being under scaled and frame limited. PC's are capable of significantly higher resolutions and frame rates which consoles are not capable of. Games just "look" better on PC and there's not much to argue against that. The other reason I dislike consoles is the willful disabling of keyboard + mouse support by game developers (pushed by console makers).
If I could play on a console with keyboard + mouse natively I would be significantly more likely to buy one for fun.
The main reason I stopped playing on PCs was (at that time) lack of decent controllers. I hate the mouse keyboard combo.
I always say that if everyone liked the same things life would be boring.
I have never seen the attraction of video games. I have to admit that back in the 1990s I tried a Mario game on a Nintendo 64, but it did nothing for me. Neither did Angry Birds or Candy Crush or any of the other plethora of mind numbing garbage that people seem to be so very enamored of. I just don't get it.
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