Coming Home...
Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 8:47PM Those who've listened to the podcast a few times probably know that I like to talk about classic PC games. While I began gaming on the NES in the late 80s, it wasn't very long after that my family picked up a PC. I can still remember its specs: 386 SX 16, 1 MB of RAM, 40 MB HD. Some friends of my dad loaned us a few games, Sierra adventure titles and a little gem known as Sid Meier's Pirates!, and I was hooked.
I don't like to claim that PC games were 'better' than console games back then - we all respect the classic console greats, of course - but it's undeniable that they were different. Chalk it up to hardware specs and/or design philosophy, but there was a certain grandeur to PC titles that was lacking in early consoles. The RPGs were immense and epic, the strategy games timeless, the simulation titles punishingly accurate, and so on. While I love aspects of games on all systems, my decision to leave PC gaming in favor of console exclusivity for the past several years has occasionally left me with pangs of regret.
In some ways, this hasn't been all that difficult. The PC has been declared 'dead' repeatedly within the last console generation, and the recent dive in PC games coverage among some of the big websites and publishing firms (e.g., the death of Computer Gaming World) hasn't helped. And yet, despite all of this, I perhaps foolishly decided to put aside a few dollars and buy a new gaming PC.
I'm certain you're all familiar with 'buyer's remorse', or that nervous feeling you get when you drop a lot of cash on a frivolous item. Recent examples of such remorse in my case include purchasing a PS3, and a Wii, and a PSP... well, you get the idea. However, I've felt no such remorse at all with the purchase of my PC, which coincidentally, was more expensive than any of the aforementioned systems. Instead, I immediately felt as though I was returning from a long pilgrimage, or something like that.
There's no denying that the PC ain't what it used to be. Many of its most iconic series have migrated to consoles - sometimes exclusively. And some genres are simply dead; Wing Commander anyone? But despite this, simply browsing the titles that are available on Valve's Steam service has let me know that I won't be wanting for games to play any time in the near future. In addition, I'm feeling a bit of a 'retro' renaissance lately and have an acute desire to revisit some classics. Thus services like GOG.com, whom I really cannot reccomend enough, will provide me with even more fodder to slake my gaming thirst (as an aside, can you tell I've read too many fantasy novels?).
I'm a newly minted PC gamer, and I welcome any suggestions of titles that I may have missed in the past few years. Also, I'm going to try my darnest to blog regularly about my experiences. It feels good to be typing this on my new 24" monitor. It feels like it's whispering to me:
"Welcome home Doc, we missed you."
Reader Comments (5)
I can't believe nobody has replied to this yet! I can't just leave you abandoned out here by yourself, even if my opinions on PC gaming are weak!
It's not exactly old school but Garry's Mod is a hell of a lot of fun. Of course it's quite the opposite of the heavily narrative driven games that you seem to enjoy so much.
Torchlight is a fun, compact little title at a good price. It's hard to not recommend.
Wicked! Torchlight is on my must-play list. It's funny that I always seem to talk about these deep narrative driven games despite the fact that I'll pretty much play anything. I've always been intrigued by Garry's mod, maybe I should look it up.
I guess narrative-driven games are just easier and more interesting to have long discussions about than a game about building rocket sofas :p
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