Articles crysis-2

Published on August 29th, 2011 | by Adam Vjestica

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Guaranteed: Get Rid of Your Fear of PC Gaming

Technophobia

Like the majority of gamers, I grew up happily suckling on the comforting teat of gaming consoles. I fondly remember my first console, the Sega Megadrive. The humble cartridge system, simplistic controller, the plug in and play -set up; perfect for a very young, heavy handed child who naturally couldn’t fathom how a technical piece of hardware operates.

Consoles were essentially toys back then, sturdily built, available, accessible fun at your fingertips. If I wanted to see a really fast blue hedgehog I could. I demanded nothing more, nothing less, and if the Megadrive said ‘no’, my developing mind managed to figure out that a simple blow of the cartridge would instantly fix the problem.

This was a golden age for the consoles, an age before the Internet was accessible to the masses, an age where PCs were luxury items in people’s homes. Fast forward 15 years or so and things have inevitably changed. PCs are in practically every home, even your mobile phone is virtually a fully-fledged PC. Children are more technically gifted than older generations; expectations of what a piece of technology can do has changed.

CTRL+ALT+DEL

After purchasing every console to date in my life span, bar the SNES (yes I know, but Sega did what Nintendon’t…) I have adapted to the constant evolutions of the home console. From the cartridge to the DVD; most changes are important and welcomed additions. However, unlike a lot of pro-console gamers, I also dabbled in the labyrinth of terror that was PC gaming. I came away relatively unscathed, but the mind boggling intricacies of PC gaming back then eventually became too much for me. I missed the ease of the consoles. So I returned, waiting to be embraced by the portly arms of Mario and co.

All was well in my gaming world. The GameCube, PS2 and Xbox were fantastic machines. I had access to fantastic exclusives, brilliant offline multiplayer titles and eye popping graphics. Things couldn’t be better. However, my perspective was soon to be changed upon the arrival of the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Teh Blu-Ray, RROD, Wee

Enter the ‘nex-gen’ systems and, as is customary, things were very different. Online gaming, fully fledged operating systems, HD resolutions, wireless controllers and eye melting graphics were the norm. The messiahs had surely arrived. Well, to be honest, as the console cycle continued, and promise after promise failed to arrive (1080p native gaming on the PS3 anyone?), this gamer, who was now a hairy, yet well groomed man, was starting to feel rather disillusioned.

I was becoming increasingly concerned when supposedly high-definition games were being released at below the standard 720p resolutions. Games were struggling to reach their ‘frames per second’ targets, the gameplay was becoming shallow, and not to mention the countless games that were released broken, only to be patched at a later date. Things were very disheartening. The accessibility, reliability (I’m looking at you early Xbox 360’s), even relatively low-entry costs were also gone (how much did you pay for your PS3 at launch?).

Undoubtedly, the current generation of consoles have become very similar to their estranged birth mother, the PC. Game installations, patches, hard drives, reliance on an operating system, lack of offline multiplayer; the only thing left that truly feels like a console of old is the fact they use a controller! Isn’t the reason that we love consoles the fact that they avoided all of these annoying pitfalls associated with PC gaming? Why do people still (as did I) constantly claim that PC gaming is this big, scary monster that is a million miles apart from consoles? I decided to take the plunge and invested in a gaming PC, for better, for worse.

I’m a PC

Now please, do not jump to the irrational conclusion that I hate consoles. I don’t. I merely want to highlight and debunk the cloud of negativity that surrounds PC gaming from my own personal experience.

The transitional period was definitely difficult; mainly due to the fact I’ve been a sworn Mac user the last 4 years and had barely touched the self-proclaimed ‘virus riddled, slow and unstable Windows operating system’. Colour me surprised. Windows 7 was a fast, well protected (with the right software) and visually appealing operating system. Once I realised that everything I touched wouldn’t cause the PC to explode, I began to settle down. The PC was off to a good start.

The next area under scrutiny was Steam, the digital distribution platform which was rightly regarded as the saviour of PCs. I downloaded Steam and immediately knew I’d found the right home for my gaming obsession to reside. Batman: Arkham Asylum ‘Game of the Year Edition’ was £3.75! PC games are notoriously good value; you can forget your £35-55 price tags here.

After picking my jaw off the floor I decided to play some games, modern and old. With all the craze of HD remakes on the consoles (a shameless cash cow due to the lack of backwards compatibility), I thought it fair to test some older titles first. No need to worry about backwards compatibility here, the PC booted up the old games with no problems, only to leave me completely stunned.

They looked fantastic, supporting resolutions which weren’t even available on their console counterparts. Released in 2005, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory had 1920 x 1080p resolution option, 60+ fps, 8x anti-aliasing, 16x antistrophic filtering; the whole caboodle for £8. Now, if you don’t know what all this technical jargon means, then the best way to explain it is ZOMG AMAZING GRAPHIXXS.

To put this into  greater perspective, the very best console exclusives run at 720p, a capped 30 fps and have 4x anti-aliasing, but hey I hear you cry, that games ancient, what about new games? Well, they look even better. They can achieve everything above and more. It may sound cliché but you have to see it to believe it. Uncharted 2 and Killzone 3 are fantastic technical achievements, but in all honesty they don’t hold a candle to the vast majority of the PC’s library especially exclusives like Crysis.

Endless Freedom

Countless genres, indie titles, free-to-play games, MMORPGs, online-only titles, RTS, whatever your tastes; the PC has it covered. Sick of being killed online when you know you were behind cover, or missing that perfect headshot? Well that’s because of the delay caused by peer-to-peer hosting, dedicated servers on PC remove this annoying occurrence. Worried you’ll miss the controller? No problem, the PC can support Xbox 360 controllers, PS3 controllers, wheels, arcade sticks, flight simulators, even motion control. It’s your PC, you can make it as powerful as you want, you can choose higher graphics or higher frame rates, choose your input device, upgrade the system when you want, change the game with a mod; it truly is an open platform.

But Dah Consoles Is Cheep

That may have once been the case but when you truly factor in the high cost of games, online subscriptions, controllers, HDTVs, overpriced downloadable content and console revisions, the cost of the modern day console can be as much if not more than a top-spec gaming PC. Bear in mind that you do not receive all the benefits that a PC alone provides plus the high graphical fidelity.

Face Your Fears

I think the biggest hurdle to overcome with PC gaming is your own trepidations. The link between the modern day consoles is more similar than maybe people think, and the once cold, cruel domain of PC gaming has come a long way. Yes, there will be things to learn, but it’s exciting and, if gaming truly is your passion then you should embrace the fact that you get to expand your knowledge and understanding of your favourite hobby.

I hope this article will raise awareness so that people won’t be discouraged by the stereotypical anti-PC arguments out there such as ‘you have to upgrade it all the time’ and the classic ‘it’s sooo expensive’. If you love gaming and want the best possible experience out there then PC gaming is waiting for you. Believe me, it’s worth it.

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About the Author

is the Editor-in-Chief at Awesome Games. Adam decided to use his love of writing to talk about all things gaming, with the greater vision of creating a community and fan base with which he could share his passion.


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  • Tony Thompson

    You spend about $200-$400 on a console to start with, and a crappy PC to browse internet ect will be another $200-$400. For the $400-$800 you spend on those you can get a PC that does all your needs faster and better and it will play games that look and play better than they do on the consoles. PC gaming isn’t expensive. People that think you need to spend thousands on a gaming PC are misinformed. You don’t need to buy a Ferrari to drive to work, nor do you need to settle for the broken down 87 Honda Accord with rust spots. You buy the middle ground car that is just right. PC gaming is the same, you can always go overboard, but there is no need unless you want it.

  • David

    Thanks for this article! – I’ve been an avid pc gamer all my life, and I’ve never been able to understand why so many others are so hostile towards pcs. Like you, I don’t hate consoles and I have several, including a ps3 and a wii.

    There are a few things I’d like to point out which you kind of grazed but didn’t really go deeper into; and that’s the price of pc gaming and need for upgrades. Whenever I ask someone why they prefer consoles, those two points are brought up time and time again – it’s more expensive, and you need to constantly upgrade it…

    I live in Sweden, and a typical AAA game here costs about 450SEK (£40/$60) for pc – those same games at release, for ps3, sets me back 700SEK (£65/$100) – If you buy ten games a year (and I buy more) you’d save 370$, or £235. That’s a lot of money in your pocket for playing the same exact games (with better resolution mind you), on a different platform.

    As for upgrading, you certainly don’t need to upgrade all the time. If you wanted to, the money you save for games could certainly do it. I’ll tell you personally, I switch out a few components here and there whenever I see the system can’t cope with max settings, and my yearly expense falls well within the savings. But there’s certainly no _need_ to do what I do. If you’re willing to not play everything on max settings, you could easily milk five or six years out of a gaming rig. Cause, I mean, that’s exactly what consoles do.

    When I first bought my computer, it was a standard HP media center pc – it didn’t have a particularly strong graphics card, but that card lasted me from 2007 until today. And it played crysis on max settings.

    Now, if you want to upgrade the graphics card, it can get expensive. I recently switched out a lot of components to get the pc in good shape, and Axe99 is right – a top of the line graphics card can set you back $500. However, you don’t need one. I have an ATI AEH6970, which costs about half of that, and there is nothing the computer doesn’t breeze through.

    The rest of the components though, are a lot cheaper. I don’t think you can find a processor that costs more than $200 perhaps, and $150 will get you all the power you’re going to need.

    Finally, there should be some mention as to the fun of upgrading – it’s a hobby all in it’s own. It might seem intimidating at first, I certainly remember it being that way, but once you’ve read a few guides and you begin to tinker with it; picking out which components suit your needs, cracking open the case and installing new hardware, etc etc, it’s great. Plus, you form a bond with the computer, because you’re the one who built it – it’s not just a box, it’s something you put together!

    • http://www.awesomegames.co.uk Awesome Games

      Thanks for the truly awesome comment David! You are right having a PC Gaming rig is a hobby in it’s own right and once you get over the initial fear of upgrading / changing parts it becomes quite a lot of fun.

      Also, our advice to novices is, to choose a sensible case for your PC that is easy to open and access all the hardware for upgrading.

      There is a benefit to getting the latest graphic card / motherboard and future proofing your PC, it means that you don’t have to shell out every year for new parts. It also means you can play the latest titles at their best for many many months, even years.

      After all the money we spent on the Xbox 360, going through all the different SKUs an models, we saved a small fortune with the PC.

      Every gamer has a preference. We still have all the consoles regardless.

  • Anonymous

    I grew up with both PC and console games, but I essentially only play my PC now a days.

  • Anonymous

    Pffft…. that’s a fairly one-eyed view you’ve got of PC gaming there. I grew up a PC rather than console gamer (strategy games are and have always been my favourite genre, and you just don’t get much meaty strategy on consoles). but these days play my PS3 more than my PC, because it’s still far easier and more straightforward. Where do we start?

    Well, gamepad support would be the first thing I’d have a go at PCs with (as someone who finds the somewhat over-precise mouse/kb approach to shooters a bit hard to swallow, I much prefer a controller for my action/shooting games, as it gives an experience that’s a bit more realistic than the immersion-breaking accuracy of the standard PC control method – not perfect. but better). For a start, most PC games prior to 2006/7 _don’t_ natively support gamepads (hell, Microsoft shipped Fable, a game designed around a controller, with no native gamepad support!). Yes, it’s possible to get profilers for gamepads, but they’re not always reliable – I spent about an hour unsuccessfully trying to get my profiler to work with KOTOR, and in the end gave up and had to persist with either clunky WASD movement, or RSI-inducing mouse click-and-hold. And, of course, if you go with a profiler you need to set it up for _every_ game you want to use it with. Not an issue with many (but not all) modern games, but if you’re looking to hit the back-catalogue, expect to be stuck with using input methods designed for office work to play your games with.

    The gamepad issue also highlights another problem – and that’s reliability getting the damn things to work. Not every game, but about every third, I’ll need to search a forum to find a download just to get the damn game to load, on plain old Windows 7. In some cases, it’s a game released since the launch of Vista (ie, something to which Win 7 shouldn’t be so alien). I can’t say how much better it is just popping the disk in and having the damn game work.

    And what about your point ” not to mention the countless games that were released broken, only to be patched at a later date.” Suggesting that this isn’t still a far larger issue on PC is head-in-the-sand madness. Where were you for the launch of Magicka? How about the non-final version of Dead Island that was on Steam on launch Day? Yes, console games don’t always launch as smooth as they used to, but they still launch far, far, faaaaarrrr smoother, on average, than PC games (even, ironically, when the game is launching on both console and PC!)

    Or there’s the “not to mention the countless games that were released broken, only to be patched at a later date.” I’m not sure what your idea of top-spec is, but the top-of-the-line consumer Nvidia card (GTX 580) costs around $500 (give or take, as they vary a little in amount and speed of ram) – are you telling me that you’re paying a fair bit more than $500 for your console?! Add in an i5 or better processor and 4GB of quality RAM and you’ve doubled a consoles cost comfortably, and that’s before you get a gaming-quality hard drive. Sure, everyone’s got a PC in their homes these days, but the cost of upgrading to top-spec (if the motherboard will even support an i5 and faster RAM, many of which won’t) is generally more than the cost of the console itself.

    Of couse, that’s not to say that PC gaming isn’t great – I’m a fan, and spend plenty of time on it, and even use it for action games if they’re not available on console – but if I can get the game on PS3 (my console of choice, but same diff for 360 if I’d gone that way), that’s where I game – the unified Friends List (Steam is better than nothing, but it’s not as good as PSN or XBL, where all of the leaderboards and matchmaking is run through the same system), the standardised controller (which always works), and the fact that 99% of the time the game just works out of the box just make it that much more friendly an experience.

    However, for the games I can’t get on console (strategy, some older RPGs, and most of the 360′s “exclusives”) I very much enjoy them on PC – but man, they sometimes play hard to love.

    • http://www.awesomegames.co.uk Awesome Games

      Thanks for your comment. Really appreciate your opinions and thanks for reading the article!

      In regards to your point regarding controller support, “Microsoft shipped Fable, a game designed around a controller, with no native gamepad support!” – I agree that not all games have native game pad support ( although many titles don’t require it), but to suggest that a game released for the original Xbox should support the standardised wireless Xbox 360 controller is a tad optimistic! However, I do have Pro Evolution Soccer 5 on PC which recognises and supports the Xbox 360 wireless controller flawlessly! Also, it is merely a matter of opinion on whether WASD and a mouse is preferable to a controller. I know many people who would never use a controller for FPS or many other titles. I for one am thoroughly enjoying playing Batman: AA with a mouse and keyboard even after previously completing the game on the Xbox 360! The fact is that you have more of a choice of inputs then on consoles.

      “not to mention the countless games that were released broken, only to be patched at a later date.” – I’m sorry if you concluded that I think PC games are released flawlessly and don’t need a patch, that couldn’t be further from the truth! I spent a week wrestling with Crysis as it kept capping itself at 25fps due to a monitor refresh rate bug! My point was to highlight the fact console gaming is no longer as simple or reliable as it used to be. I’m sure you can agree with this statement.

      “Your Batman:AA example was somewhat misleading – that was a Steam sale” – that may have been the case, but can you honestly provide another source which offers such incredible value without having to buy second hand? Also, of course it’s dependant on your PC spec, the game itself (if properly optimised) is often a superior version, making it an even better deal. New games are generally around £10 cheaper than their console counterparts and their price drops much quicker especially from retailers. For example, Deus Ex Human Revolution is £34.69 for consoles on Amazon, whilst £26.50 for PC. Steam has had it priced for £29.99 for months (digital release). Let’s not forget, how much do Xbox Live and PSN charge for digitally released retailed games? The prices are astronomical in comparison! I honestly think there isn’t much argument when it comes to arguing whether PC games are generally cheaper than console.

      • Anonymous

        No worries, thanks for writing the article, it had some good points, I thought it was perhaps a little one-sided in the presentation, was all. Totally agree with your follow-up comment, and that Steam is a phenomenal value proposition, and that prices drop quicker, and can be cheaper initially (although not always the case). There are definitely positives to PC gaming, and for people that prefer mouse/kb as input devices, it should be there go-to device, with a console and an Eagle Eye (or similar) for the console exclusives that catch their eye. Most importantly, the trick is to have fun whatever devices we all game with :) .

  • Phatty216

    Now that I’m mentally and emotionally prepared, all I need to do is search my couch for $700.
    Or I could sell my PS3 and the games for about $350 and see if my local clinic needs blood.

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