PC Gaming Guide

It is staggering how many gamers don't know they can use their PCs to play games. They may think it's difficult, or their computer can't play anything good. Even people with out of date computers can play something they'd enjoy. Often, all you have to do to install and run a pc game is put in the cd, agree to a license agreement and choose where to install the game (usually the default is just fine). The PC offers new games to enjoy, and learning if your computer is ready for a particular game isn't that hard.

If you're afraid of using the keyboard and mouse to get your game on, you're being like that uncle or dad you once asked to play with you who just wouldn't learn the controls and wouldn't join in. Once you've played a game or two, things will come more naturally to you and before you know it, you'll be gaming like usual but on an entirely different platform. You can open up entirely new types of games, and new games like the ones you love from your XBOX 360 or PS3.

PC Gaming - Getting Started

The first thing you need to know when you consider buying a pc game is the stats of your machine. These stats are used in conjunction with computer game devolopers' recommendations for system requirements to determine if your pc can play a game. If you're using a windows-based machine, you should right-click my computer (or just 'computer' in vista) and select properties to learn the stats of your processor and memory. This is not the only consideration, you just also know what type of video card you have. It's typical of budget systems to have on-board video cards that just can't cut the mustard when it comes to playing modern games.

Just because you have an on-board video card doesn't mean you can't play games, it just means you can't play cutting edge games on the pc. These types of video cards typically share memory with your system and are usually slow. Look up your model online, you can find it from the computer properties above. Look at Can You Run It?, which will install a simple plugin on your machine to relay data back to them and compare your system stats to the system requirements of a game.

If your video card just can't play the game you want, you'll have to consider upgrading or finding games you can play. Most of the old classics many pc gaming fanatics love don't have high system requirements and can be enjoyed by gamers owning normal PCs.

What's different about PC gaming?

PC gaming is an entirely different animal than console gaming. There are more games being released cross-platform (for both consoles and PC's) lately, but for the most part, the types of games released for the systems are different. Gamers who like strategy titles need look no further than the PC for their gaming needs. Consoles are typically lacking in turn-based and real-time strategy titles that are very popular on pc. Why? The mouse! Mouse gaming is much simpler than using a controller for many aspects of gameplay. The mouse is more precise, making moving around maps and select units on a battlefield much more precise. Most PC-to-Console strategy titles suffer in reviews because of the interface and gameplay changes developers must make to port a game to console.

Another factor to consider is price. Yes, pc gaming can be more expensive than console gaming. It must also be considered that you can use a good PC for far more day to day use than a console. PCs can even be used to play DVDs to your television if you bother setting it up. However, playing games on PC doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg. You can find decent machines for gaming from major manufacturers like Dell for a bump in price. Often, during customization of a system, you can choose to have a graphics card put in to replace the onboard graphics. Doing this yourself is cheaper, and gives you better options, but unless you have a friend to consult about what graphics cards you can use in your machine, you're left doing research.

In recent years, MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) have cemented their status as a gaming genre, and the PC is the best place to find them. Clearly, there's World of Warcraft, which most people have heard of, but there are dozens of others that have been released. What's more, there are now plenty of free mmorpgs that you can enjoy, while only choosing to pay if you want more advanced features. MMORPGs are more popular for the PC beause of the keyboard and mouse setup. Communicating with other players is easy if you know how to type, and the mouse is, as I've said, great for selecting things in a game world.

The Best Things About PC Gaming

The Keyboard and Mouse: Like I've said, the keyboard and mouse are great tools for gaming. The mouse is just that much more precise, and if you've used one you already have some proficiency. Real-Time Strategy titles often use the mouse just to move and select things like you would with office software. The keyboard is great for communications, and has many more buttons than the consoles' controllers. Believe me, that's not a bad thing because you can reconfigure 9 out of 10 games to change their controls. Almost every function in the game can be hot-keyed for most titles.

The PC Offers New Genres to Experience: I'm sorry to console gamers, but most real-time strategy released for them has been terrible. This genre is best experienced on a PC, its birthplace. The same is true for turn-based strategy, which is best on the PC. Some games released for PC are so good they're still widely played. Starcraft, Red alert 2 and games from the Civilization series come to mind.

The largest catalog of titles is found on the PC You heard me right, the PC has more titles than any console could hope to. One simple reason for this is that most games released in the past fifteen years can work on a modern machine. Not all games work under Vista, but Windows XP is amazing in the library that's playable. The other reason that PC has the largest catalog is that it's easier to write games for it. The internet has allowed hundreds of small game developers to push titles that are free, or dirt cheap. Games that don't work initially often have a patch available, or a workaround can be found on the internet.

Modding: PC Gamers have this aspect of game development almost-entirely to themselves. Individuals, and even teams of players, get together and make mods for games that change them in some significant way. Games like Fallout 3 for PC often have modding fully supported by developers, who provided a way to select what mods you want to use when you launch the game, and allowing additions to what the executable loads when the game is launched. They've even released map creation kits that allow artistic players to make landscapes on which to play entirely new quests.

The Best Cheats: Games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 are the shining stars here. Game developers added the debug menus their coders could use. You can do almost anything imaginable with these types of cheats. Many games also offer 'trainers' that will modify your save file to allow you to gain levels, get new items and the like. Diablo 2 had awesome trainers that let you modify anything about the character's stats, and many games offer similar tools created by gamers themselves.

Greater Online Support PC games have great multiplayer. More titles overall support this feature. Some recent games are designed to be played online. Sins of a Solar Empire, Dawn of War 2, and World in Conflict all come to mind. People with computers tend to have the internet, and developers are aware of that fact and build strong multiplayer support as a selling point.