I just finished building a computer with my son. It's the latest (I think?) core I5 with 16GB of ram and an nvidia 1060. Hooked up to a full HD monitor (not 4k). Please recommend a newish game (something released after 2012 which was the last time we bought a new PC game) we can buy on steam that is fun and has good graphics that will run well on this thing. Probably most interested in a first-person shooter.

We do have some of the big franchise games on ps4 or xbox, like Doom, call of duty, and battlefront, so hopefully something different than those. Thanks!

Witcher 3. Oh, an FPS? I dunno. But Witcher 3.

Star Marine is in the new Star Citizen alpha. I need a new PC.

Shadow of Mordor was released in 2014, but still has pretty good graphics. It's not an FPS though.

Probably not gonna get too many hits given that you're already buying the AAA games on console.

Battlefield One, Dishonored 2, and Titanfall 2 are all good and good-looking shooters, if they're not among your franchise titles on console.

I also really enjoyed Far Cry 4, despite a pretty thin story.

I probably won't buy Far Cry 4... I've purchased a number of the Far Cry series over the years, and the Crysis over the years, and I've never liked any of them. I don't know what it is about them that makes me not like them but it's always something that makes it so I can't play them beyond the first few levels or area or whatever. I may check out Battlefield One and Titanfall 2, I haven't purchased those yet. Dishonored 2 is a stealth game right? Probably going to skip that one. Thanks for the suggestions!

We do have Rage, and we really liked it. I'll check out the rest of them in this thread.

I saw Doom on Steam for sale for $20. Even though I already have it on xbone I bought it again. We only played to like level 2 and then stopped, mostly because I hate console controllers for FPS games. I got it "free" for xbone ($60 MS store credit when purchasing the xbone and I picked that game). Maybe I'll enjoy it more on computer. If I can ever get my son off the damn thing!

So like... this is the first time in 6 years or more that I've put together a computer. I bought an m.2 SSD with very little research. Well, the whole thing with very little research, just about 30 minutes on reddit buildapc and pcpartspicker and some other site. These m.2 cards are tiny, like the width and length of my forefinger and very thin. They plug directly into the motherboard with no external power or SATA cables required. It turns out the motherboard I bought supports either pcix or SATA interface on this m.2 slot (I didn't realize that was possible) but I had opted for the SATA m.2 card. It's still blazingly fasts and boots stupid windows in only a couple seconds. I threw a separate SATA SSD in there to dual boot linux just for the hell of it but we haven't gotten around to installing it yet. It's a slower one that I had bought for an old macbook that was more broken than I had thought. Oops.

Anyway, I still hate Windows and especially Windows 10 but if you can get past the vomit-inducing tracking (even in the pro-version!!!) and forced auto-updates (even in the pro-version!!! at least with options presented in the control panel -- there is probably a way to get around this using group policies but wtf!!!) and the ****ty bing-integrated, privacy-ignoring, default-browser-ignoring, global search bar embedded in the taskbar and the start menu that is completely covered in rotating advertisements... oh yeah and the all the apps that are filled with ads... oh yeah and the updates that reset your default apps back to microsoft ones... if you can ignore all of that crap and the other stuff I probably forgot to mention, there seems to be a somewhat ok operating system buried in here somewhere. Oh yeah, and it defaults to screwing every user privacy-wise so each new user has to go through all the settings to not have their entire life shipped to MS. Oh yeah, and when you go try to add a user to the computer, it tries to get you to add a microsoft/live user, not a local user, which is really confusing because it asks for email addresses and telephone numbers. The local user option is a teeny-tiny link at the bottom of the second page... this was intentionally designed to be confusing.

One of the things I did like was the fact that all the hardware I have worked right out of the box, no driver disks needed; the graphics were obviously screwy but as soon as windows booted it downloaded drivers from windows update and everything ran well after that. Also it's nice having a fresh install of "just Windows" without all the crapware/bloatware installed by all the mainstream PC manufacturers. I end up providing help to all my family and extended family and they always buy whatever is on sale at Costco or Best Buy or Wal Mart or whatever... Ugh. Although this windows did have **** from facebook and tweeter and some other **** installed by default, it was easy enough to remove (and much faster to remove with this SSD than a regular hard drive).

Oh also, didn't have any trouble with the HW I bought. Nothing DOA, no incompatible parts or anything. The only issue I had during assembly was that when I seated the graphics card I was in a bit of a hurry (it was Christmas Eve and we were going to some party). I came back after the party and noticed that the back end wasn't seated all the way. The card is so big/fat that it was actually pushing down on the plastic clips that hold the main memory in (on the two unused memory slots which had the clips open). So I had to remove the graphics card, close those plastic clips on the empty memory slots, then reseat the graphics card. I guess if I ever add more memory I will have to take the graphics card out, add the memory, then put the card back in. Oh well.

My sister is pursuing a degree in computer science and she's been particularly enthusiastic about computers lately so she came over and I showed her how it all went together and actually had her do a bunch of it. That was pretty cool.

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst is an absolutely gorgeous "FPS" game if you're willing to work with the devil that is Origin (EA). IMO it is easily the most beautiful game released in a long time.

If you want multiplayer, Overwatch is a good time, although it's not pushing the limits of graphics it does feature Blizzard's typical heavily stylized design.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a good stealthy (if you want it to be) FPS and absolutely murders on highest graphics settings. Heavily on sale on Steam right now IIRC.

Also, Brian, don't forget that now you have a beefy PC, you can run older games using "Dynamic Super Resolution", an option in nVidia's Control Panel. It allows you to run most games at a dramatically higher resolution than normal, up to 4x your LCD's native resolution. This can make some older games, especially ones that never supported anti-aliasing, a LOT prettier. But it will ask a LOT of your GPU so be ready to tweak settings depending on how new the game is.

I know graphics is subjective, and I guess you could make a case for all these games, but it looks to me like you haven't been playing in a while? A lot of newer games will certainly push the new system in the OP to provide better graphics than these games for the most part, although having played some of the games on your list, they certainly do still look just fine. Gunslinger, for instance, I played through a couple of years ago, and thought it was quite pretty as I'd not been exposed to The Witcher 3 and such where I'll still stop just to soak in the view sometimes. The Portals' graphics are...functional, I'd say. Nothing special at all.

I tried DSR in Far Cry 3. The only real differences I noticed were the performance hit (I guess the image gets rendered multiple times as per the multiplier setting?) and scaling issues. If there was any improvement, it was certainly negligible. Maybe it only works with some games.

I played through most of those games for the first time in 2016. I don't pay attention to when games are released & don't put much substance into graphics. However, I still wanted to contribute what I thought would be games that he & his son would likely enjoy, so long as they met at least one of his requirements. I used FPS liberally, for instance, by including The Talos Principle, which is merely a first-person puzzle game, but I couldn't imagine it not being objectively beautiful, & my daughter had a blast watching me play it. I believe that I stuck to his 2012 rule for the most part, with few exceptions. This rule is ultimately what made me consider contributing, because it didn't require anything on the bleeding edge, which us poors typically avoid out of necessity. In other words, yes I live in my own world where time doesn't mean what it does to most people, & where I'll often play older games & think "goddamn that looks nice", but am aware of newer games & have some (e.g. Overwatch).

I'm sure most people in their right minds are able to appreciate games looking pretty when they do so despite their age. If you go back you'll notice I mentioned being unfamiliar with some of the titles on your list, and The Talos Principle is one of them (I've read a review and seen a few screenshots but that's it). My only actual suggestion thus far, The Witcher 3, is not in the genre requested of the suggestions at all. If I had to guess, I would imagine your suggestions are appreciated regardless of mostly steering quite far away from "good games with good graphics released sometime after 2012 (and preferably first person shooters)", so there's not a problem that I can see.

So, apart from the



what has Microsoft ever done to piss us of?



What?! Oh,... IE, yes...
Shut up!

I wonder how long it will take for Microsoft to say sorry for the whole Windows 10 Upgrade debacle.

They're not sorry. They push and they push and they push until public outrage makes them back off a tiny bit. Then they know where the line is. Then, next time around, they push just a tiny bit past that line. This is the way they "make progress" over time. Even if they say they are sorry, they're not actually sorry. I believe they have issued one of those half-assed corporate double-speak apologies but I'm too lazy to dig it up, it will just make me mad.

I actually remember reading an article pretty recently about how the Microsoft CEO, I think it was, regretted how aggressive they were about the upgrade campaign.

EDIT: found it

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cmo-chris-capossela-windows-10-upgrades-2016-12

Mostly we've traded a litigious monopolist Microsoft for an aggressive and incompetent Microsoft, and I'm not sure which Microsoft I would prefer.

The old Microsoft invented continuous integration, and it was good. The new Microsoft stole continuous deployment from web developers and is trying to apply it to consumer electronics.

I'd like to make a joke about how bad Microsoft's managers are, but truth be told I've worked with a lot of tech leader types at other companies who are seemingly trying to get fired by doing this too.

Isn't it normal, though, to roll out in waves and stop the roll out if problems crop op? MS doesn't seem to have that "STOP" mechanism. They just keep rolling out even if half the world is getting disconnected from their internet due to the update. And their "solution" is to tell everyone to wait a month and download the next update... erm...?

Fortunately Windows 10 updates fail to install most of the time, so the odds of bricking your computer aren't too bad.


Windows Update is one of the worst designed software systems I've ever seen. I'm not talking about the actual update process, like patching the kernel, because Windows Update doesn't do that. I'm only talking about the part that downloads the updates. It is obscenely brittle and over-engineered. It's super stateful, was written as about a half dozen services because I guess race conditions are fun to debug now, and there are something like five update delivery backends, each of which is subtly broken under different circumstances. Microsoft probably couldn't get rollback to work, and given how needlessly complicated Windows Update is, I don't think you want them to try to make it work.

Whoever originally designed Windows Update is probably a technical fellow at Google now, is what I'm saying.

Windows Update bugs I've hit since I built this computer (late October):

Deadlock while checking for updates. Fixed by stopping wuauserv, turning off getting updates for other products, updating, and then re-enabling updates for other products.
Anniversary Update download failed halfway, kept redownloading from start in a loop. Fixed by deleting temp files and switching to the BITS (HTTP) backend.
2x database corruption. Fixed by stopping wuauserv, deleting the cache/database, and rebooting, per an MSDN post about it.
Repeatedly downloaded the same 64 MB security patch without installing it, until it exhausted my monthly bandwidth cap. Fixed by switching to the Delivery Optimization backend.

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_o6DxhslAI