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Columns > LongShot > #90: Back From The Dead
Just when everyone's writing off the Personal Computer, it pulls me back in.  Computers are still great game machines. It took an upgrade to near-cutting edge technology for me to see that again, but now I'm solid with the PC sticking around for a whole lot longer as one of my game playing devices. In the last two or three years I've spent less and less time playing games on the personal computer. This always seems to happen to me as a console generation gets into full swing and the latest console games look, sound and play better than just about anything I can find on the PC. This time though, it really seemed like there'd be no great reason to get back on the hardware upgrade bandwagon and keep the PC afloat. I was wrong. I recently reviewed the game GTR for Computer Games Magazine (look for it on newsstands!) and that one game helped convince me I was a fool. On video game consoles, you just can't find the same type of depth of play experience that racing simulations, real-time strategy games and even first-person shooters like Battlefield 2 provide on the PC. There are very deep games on consoles. I'm in no way trying to say console games are all flash and shallow experience because that's false. I shouldn't have to rattle off lists of games to make that point. What I think I was missing on consoles is the depth of interaction that PC games provide. Control schemes can be more complex (mouse and keyboard) while at the same time being entirely more intuitive and natural (mouse and keyboard) for different types of games. Let's set the record straight right now. Halo and its sequel are incredible games for the Xbox. They rock. Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay is another superb first person shooter that makes the Xbox lineup much better because it exists. Halo 2 especially takes online multiplayer to a new level of fun because of the integrated voice chat of Xbox Live. It makes playing a first person action game in a team setting something really unique and enjoyable. However as great as these games are and as great as they play, the control with a gamepad is simply not as intuitive as using a mouse and keyboard and nowhere near as precise. Until someone either invents a new control scheme that's better or comes out with a keyboard and mouse as standard equipment for their console, the PC will be the better place to play first-person shooters. With higher resolution screens and the precise aiming and quick movement that the mouse provides, you are simply better able to aim and shoot using those controls. Yes, it takes some practice to use this more complex control scheme, but anyone that learns it will undoubtedly end up favoring it over a controller. They have to because any other control method used against a mouse player will get them owned. As an aside, I learned this lesson years ago playing the original Quake. I was in a clan (Mayhem, Inc.) and our top player was an all keyboard guy. Just about everyone else used the keyboard too. He played under the name MasterFett and he was able to run roughshod over most all of us. I held my own but never felt I was as good as this guy. One night I was playing on a server with another fellow who used the mouse and keys. He completely schooled me. I finally got to talking with him and discovered that was his "trick" for beating me so handily. He suggested I try to learn that control scheme (something that seemed so unnatural at the time) and that it would improve my play tremendously giving me easy access to things like the rocket jump and more. I took his advice and within a couple weeks, I felt I had it figured out. Our clan would just play online together to practice and one night all that was left was myself and Fett. I switched to mouse and keys and finally was able to beat him. I hit him with rockets at angles I never even considered shooting at before. Of course he learned to use the mouse shortly thereafter and the rest is history. I beat friends locally using the same controls and it didn't take them long to drop the gamepads and keyboard-only controls for the mouse too. The superiority of the mouse/keys cannot be denied. Back to PCs in general. It's clear to me that the PC can co-exist with game consoles. I was asking in this column where the PC had gone just a year or so ago. It really had disappeared from gaming consciousness for the most part being labeled the machine for The Sims, real-time strategy, shooters and not a whole lot else. I think what happened was most of the PC's best developers all ended up on the same schedule! With no big release from id, Valve, Ensemble Studios, Blizzard or just about anyone else during 2003 and into later 2004, there just wasn't a whole lot of excitement. Unreal Tournament 2004 was probably the one game that broke up the malaise that PC gaming faced during that time. There were other titles released, but nothing from those companies we'd come to see as leaders on the PC platform. Many of those games that did come out were ports of console games too. Of course all of that changed at the end of 2004 with DOOM 3, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft and smaller but very solid games like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War showing up on game store shelves. For this year, there are some big games coming or already here like the aforementioned Battlefield 2 and Age of Empires III. Yes, most of those are sequels, but they're entries in series that have always dripped with quality production and feature something truly new in each iteration, even if that's just some drop dead gorgeous graphics. It costs a lot of money to be a PC gamer. This is a cold, hard fact of the hobby. There is also a tremendous upside in spending that dough because a single game can eat up all your game time for weeks or months at a time on the PC. I've reviewed Battlefield 2 for GamerDad but I'm still playing and don't see myself stopping any time soon. The game provides an enormous sandbox of fun stuff to do all centered on the simple goal of capturing flags. In the future there are undoubtedly going to be user-created modifications to the game that I'll try out, too. Not only that, but each time I play it's never for a short stretch. PC games always compel me to play them for extended hours. In the end, I probably get more gaming value out of the PC than any of the consoles in my house. The kids on the other hand get more value out of the Gamecube than anything else, at least for now. My oldest is definitely bugging me to play a "fighting" game which actually translates into something like Battlefield 2 in this case. Maybe in another five years. For me at least, the PC is back. Yes, it cost a lot of cash to get my computer up to current standards. For the tech heads, my new box is an Athlon 64 3500+ w/2GB RAM, MSI nForce4 SLI motherboard, GeForce 6800GT video card, 160GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA hard drive and a bunch of other stuff that's not really important. The only other major upgrade I made was a 19" LCD monitor from LG Electronics. It's their new 1980Q model "Flatron" which is probably the single best piece of the whole kit with its 9ms response time and gorgeous output. Never skimp on your screen, I always say. This box runs current games at blinding speeds at 1280x1024 with 4x Anti-Aliasing always on. The images it outputs are brilliant and filled with detail. Battlefield 2 looks better graphically than anything on the console machines currently and probably as good as anything we'll see on Xbox 360 this fall. This particular PC upgrade has been well worth it. PC's and consoles are all just games now. As the consoles continue to offer more functions beyond gaming, they become more like PCs. As PCs continue to become easier to set up and configure, they become more like consoles. This is all good news for people like me who prefer to spend as little time as possible doing configuration and as much time as possible enjoying games on their computer. With more big name games set to ship this fall and some of the biggest names in PC games showing no sign of slowing down on the platform, the PC has a very bright future ahead of it. It might never be like 1998 again on the computer, the year that PC gaming was probably at its very peak, but it's far better than analysts and even armchair soothsayers would have you believe. I got caught up in the hype myself to a certain extent. I started to believe I didn't need the computer for games. Now that I'm back on the inside with current hardware, I realize again how dumb that idea was. I think the PC will always be my favorite platform for games, but like a close childhood friend you see on and off throughout life, sometimes you're enjoying every day together and other times you're sort of at opposite ends of the world from each other and just barely in touch. Me and the PC are walking arm in arm again and it feels good.
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