On Kelly's Longevity. in Whey and Sonic Screwdrivers.

I just realized that Kelly Quark is over five years old. Which feels midlife to me. I pretty much can’t play bleeding edge games without an upgrade to my graphics card. (Asus EAH4870 Radeon 4870 1 gig 256-bit). My CPU feels safe (AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE @ 3.4 Ghz w/ stock cooling), though obviously if one replaces their CPU, they might as well replace the entire rig. As for my 16 gigs of RAM, well, it’s rare usage goes above 4 gigs. Better safe than sorry.

(Ask me for the entire specs, if you’re curious.)

And so I think to myself, “Well self, Roxanne Covalent lasted a long time.” Then I do the math. I built Kelly Quark in the fall of 2010. I built Roxanne Covalent in the spring of 2005. Kelly is now older than Roxanne was when I retired her. Fancy that. It’s hard to say what the primary motivation was, though I think Everquest2 was a factor. Hard to believe that, at the time, I built Roxanne to run Doom3 and Sims2. For real, those were my benchmarks to run at a good framerate.

Here’s the thing that irks me: I just don’t see the benefit of better graphics these days. I’m not trying to fanboy about older games. I see the distinct improvement of graphics, absolutely. I just don’t see the benefit. I feel the wow-factor “jump” in graphics peaked at about the PS2 level. Hardware should improve, absolutely, but I just don’t see how a graphical level better than your average PS2 game improves the gameplay.

I think the two biggest jumps in graphics were the SNES to the N64, and the N64 to the PS2. One was 2D to 3D, the other was blocky or grainy graphics to distinctly rich graphics. Don’t get me wrong, I was impressed by the PS3’s graphics when it premiered. I just feel that the PS2’s graphics were optimal for most games.

Don’t tell me being able to see your enemy’s ass pimples is going to improve your gaming experience.

With all the Star Wars hype lately, I’ve been playing a bit of the original Battlefront. This game was released back in 2004, which is aeons ago for those with a short memory. Given that I built my current rig 6 years after this game was first released, it runs at max resolution with max FPS. It’s fun, the gameplay is awesome, and looks fantastic. It looks clean, and since I’m usually staring at my character’s ass, I really could care less that the faces of the characters look silly. Watching reviews of the new Battlefront game, hearing how IMMERSIVE the environment is, just makes me laugh. How’s the goddamned gameplay? How’s the storymode? Oh? There isn’t much? Fuck you.

A game with a fantastic storymode is Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. This game was released back in 2000, so naturally it runs full-rez, full fps on my current rig. Do I need better graphics to feel MORE IMMERSED? Fuck no. Each area has a distinct color and texture scheme. Making the graphics more better would not improve the GAMEPLAY one iota.

It’s about the goddamned gameplay. Don’t get me started on how Fallout3 and Skyrim felt boring.

Frankly, you know the last time an actual GAME impressed me with graphics? The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. That’s right, a console game from 1998. I remember playing that game for the first time and feeling “holy shit, I’m in Hyrule” or something like that. It looks blocky compared to the 3DS version, yet at the time it impressed the fuck out of me.

The Hoth level on Battlefront (2004) is fun and immersive. No amount of ATMOSPHERE can impress me.

....I’m sorry, I got immensely off-track. I was just reflecting on my last two builds and suddenly I got into a video game rant. As for Kelly, I still feel she’s midway through her life cycle. I built her higher-end (at the time) so I wouldn’t have to spend more money [about now] to replace her. My long-term plan was for her to last until around 2020. I’m sure I’ll have bragging rights by still using Windows 7 in that year. Fuck windows 8. (and fuck windows 10)

As for video games, there’s a perk to catching things after-the-fact. With both PC and console, they’re cheaper. And with PC, you’re more or less guaranteed to run (older) games faster with a new rig. Elite Force? I bought that as a bundle (with Armada and Armada2) a couple years after it was released. Memory serves me right, that was when I still had Lisa Electron. That’s right, I still play a game that ran on a 1000mhz pentium 3, a PCI geforce mx420, and 384 megs of RAM. So, nuBattlefront and Fallout4? Maybe I should make a list of games I’d like to play in 3+ years, because no way I’m bothering with them now.

Last updated November 24, 2015