Experiment in PC Gaming

The entire reason I got into computers can be attributed to games. It wasn't easy getting them (or anything on the PC, for that matter) to work, or even work well. You had to educate yourself; familiarize yourself with the various kinds of memory, startup files and disk space usage. Or perhaps you're too young to remember when drives were forty megabytes and you had to compress the space just to install a game - but if you compressed it, you were increasing the volatility of the entire computer, not to mention some things don't work on compressed volumes. I became very aware of disk space when my dad brought home a computer with 200MB, and we compressed the hell out of it. It allowed me to install Mechwarrior 2 instead of running off the CD-ROM, and a few other games. Quickly drive space wasn't a problem yet more came up: video and audio cards. Specifically, video cards that enabled true 3D graphics (polygons and the such) were entering the market, and if you were familiar with the industry at the time, you knew how wild it was.

There were many manufacturers of cards, and the game you were playing had to be built to take advantage of it. I'm happy the industry sorted itself out and we have two main providers now and follow standards. There's a level of comfort that we didn't have before when buying games now, but I'm still irked. This is because the tech advances so quickly, and there's a huge range of cards available with various specs. The latest games are demanding, and the ability to play them can be costly. Some say the PC gaming industry is dying out; I would tend to agree and cite costly upgrades as a major reason for it. I can buy an XBox and be guaranteed that any game released for it will indeed work - no upgrades necessary. Then the 360 and PS3 come out and it's blowing away anything on the PC anyway; my interest in PC gaming died six years ago. I think the last one I installed was SimCity 4 (which I don't believe was very demanding anyway).

In the past year or so I've noticed some more standards being introduced in the PC gaming scene, addressing installation and platforms. As I said before, installing a game could be tough, but it's not just because of the hardware or memory. Getting a game installed and configured to work on your system was a chore, and sometimes you end up reinstalling numerous times. Software standards like DirectX have been around and continue to evolve, but I really took notice of are platforms like Steam and Games for Windows. I can't speak for Steam - as I've never purchased a game through it - but I love the idea; digital distribution can be a wonderful thing, although I prefer collecting physical media. Some of their deals are incredible too, and you can get some great titles very easily and very cheaply. Games for Windows seems similar, but again, I'm not buying; instead, today I downloaded a trial of Resident Evil 5. As well, it's important that these are playable on the big screen and are playable with a wireless controller. Enter the 360 wireless controller adapter for the PC, and you're in business.

I keep seeing things about physics cards adding to games; I saw comparison videos on YouTube about Batman: Arkham Asylum, and for the first time in ages I feel like I'm missing out on experience-adding content. The core game remains the same, but it's the details that get enhanced; we're not just talking improved graphics, we're talking environmental effects, movement and other wonderful things. Plus, I was really curious to see if my PC setup could run a modern game. So RE5 installed, and I ran it. Now, this was misleading as this is a "benchmark" demo: not playable. It's like the game is on autopilot and the frames per second are in bold on the screen for you to see performance. Using mid-quality settings I was getting an average of 32FPS, which seems decent, but I'm not sure I can be the judge of that. I'll be researching: how many FPS does the 360 pull off? These "mid-quality" graphics looked as impressive as the 360, and I was excited knowing the possibility they get even better. And that game is a couple of years old.

But then I step back and think: what is the cost of upgrading to something that can push RE5 and all these other games at the highest quality? And 1080p? I refuse to look as I'll get the itch to tinker, but I imagine we're talking hundreds of dollars, perhaps $300? That seams reasonable to me, but then again, that's the cost of an entire console. And was this experiment in modern PC gaming a success? I'm not going to give up the 360, but I will check out some more demos. I have little interest in investing more money in my computer, but who knows; being into tech it's fun to tinker with one's own computer; it's just a matter of time before the bug takes hold. As they increase integration into the Live service (XBox Live) and grant achievements that are viewable on the XBox, the intrigue will be there.