PC Gaming

What do you think the future holds for PC gaming? To be honest, with WoW aside, I could go the rest of my life and never play a PC game again. I've grown to love consoles so much more than PC, which is crazy. I always thought I would have liked PC best, but I must admit, I prefer the simplicity of consoles.

I think it's rather ridiculous that some people spent hundreds to thousands of dollars upgrading their system to play Crysis. It's crazy that even after those upgrades, no one could run the game with absolutely everything maxed out. I just don't understand where the benefit of spending that much money on something comes from. At the moment, I have a laptop with a 7900 GS (flashed to a GTX and OC'd to 575/1150), an Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5300 @ 1.73 GHz, and 2 gigs of RAM. It's not the best system in the world, but it can handle any game that's thrown at it with decent settings. The thing is, that laptop was $2000. An Xbox 360 is $350 (prices range, but that's the standard model). It's a fraction of the price, yet runs games so much better than my computer.

Take Oblivion, for example. I would have thought that with the power my computer was packing, I could have run Oblivion maxed out and have it go pretty well. That's not the case. While it does run maxed out, the frame rate can chug and the gameplay will stutter. To get the game running smoothly, a lot of the special effects have to be turned off and the graphics have to be toned down. The 360 version, however, looks better, and runs smoother, all on a system that was a fraction of the price. I don't even want to see how my computer would react to something like Crysis being thrown at it.

Another thing that has caused me to greatly prefer consoles is online play. Sure, PC games have been online for ages, but nothing is streamlined like Xbox Live. Getting into games and having fun is usually easy and fast, making a quick match in Call of Duty 4 just a couple button presses away. Now, a lot of PC devotees will say that despite the 360's online set-up, PC gaming is better because it's free and you can use a mouse and keyboard. Yes, it is free. But to me, the $50 a year that Xbox Live costs isn't asking much for the service it provides. As for the mouse and keyboard issue, that's an argument that requires a whole new paragraph.

Yes, a mouse and keyboard is more accurate. However, I believe that that's its biggest strength and weakness. I have never played a first person shooter online on PC and actually enjoyed it. The reason is that are some crazy people out there. I remember back when I tried to play Unreal Tournament 2004 online that it would get to the point where I would die less than a minute after spawning every match. I admit I'm not great with a mouse and keyboard, but I'm not terrible either. There are just some insane people.

The controller may not be as accurate, but it doesn't really matter because it's not like you are using a controller and everyone else is using mouse and keyboard. No, with console games everyone is on an equal playing field with the controller. Controllers are not as crazy accurate as a mouse and keyboard, but they are more accurate than a lot of PC-exclusive players give them credit for. When I play console games online, I usually have a blast. Sure, there are your people who are crazy and take you out pretty easily, but I never get the sense of "holy crap how the hell are they that good?!" that PC games give me. All in all, it's just a more fun experience.

Now, I am not saying PC gaming is going to die out. I'm not saying it should, either. It just isn't for me. Spending thousands of dollars on a gaming peripheral just doesn't make sense to me when I can get the same experience for so much cheaper. If you love the mouse and keyboard set-up, I get why console games would seem retarded. But I'm not a crazy gamer. I can't use the mouse and keyboard like some people can. I can, however, take a controller and go into a game of CoD4 and do just as good, if not better, than most people online. To me, that's fun. But everyone is different. I just don't see the point in spending thousands of dollars on a gaming computer, when you could get the same experience for so much cheaper on a console.