• Hazzard@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    Man, I’ve been console for ages, but this January I bought a gaming PC and hooked it up as my dedicated console, and it’s been amazing. If you like a bit of tinkering, PC can dominate as a console.

    • Playnite makes an amazing front end, stitching together everything my PC can do. Emulators, Steam, itch.io stuff, GoG and Epic and Xbox Game Pass, all seamlessly stitched together and 100% controller accessible.
    • Emulators are fantastic, my PC plays Switch, PS3, Wii, everything.
    • Real settings are a godsend, as is more powerful hardware. Actually play Elden Ring at a proper framerate. Play old games in true 4K/120.
    • Tinker like crazy. Mods, ReShade, actual in-game settings, GPU Driver settings, if it bugs you, you can do something about it. Currently messing with emulating Demon Souls with ReShade, some mods, and connecting to RPCN for online multiplayer, and it’s a delight.
    • More powerful hardware too. Great to be able to push games past console, in whatever way you prefer. I’m already planning a GPU upgrade to be able to do more.
    • Heck, even sharing features. My GPU can save 5 minutes or more of instant replay clips, which I used to save all of my Elden Ring boss fights, just hitting a controller shortcut when I killed the boss. My PC shares those via FTP, so I can just grab those on my phone and upload them to YouTube. Faster than Xbox uploads, and actually my files, with no arbitrary storage cutoff like I hit on Xbox.

    Basically the only thing I miss is Xbox’s Quick Resume, or suspending a game on Switch. But a good PC fires up games fast, so it’s really not a huge loss in the face of all the benefits.

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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      9 days ago

      I made a tool for pausing every game (except online games, obviously). There are some free ones that do that, even on steam. If that’s what you mean?

      If pausing the whole pc á la standby is what you mean, then you could simply try hibernating (maybe after pausing like above). Most games actually can be resumed afterwards. Pc is totally off.

      But yes, that’s probably the only thing a switch (wifey has one, hence i know) can do great. Besides total portability…

      • Hazzard@lemm.ee
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        9 days ago

        Yeah, definitely hoping they consider bringing that to windows at some point, because it could be incredible. Obviously ultra-complicated, but it works unbelievably well on Series X. Being able to say, skip the loading of an emulator and hop directly back into the middle of a level in Demon Souls, jumping past all the logos and whatnot, would be amazing.