PC gaming - any point in building a system for this ?

Console games don't have to be expensive with a bit of comon sense, In the past week I have bought Little Big planet for £8.50 and SF4 for £18. Yes, if you walk into a high-street shop and pick up a new release it's going to cost you £40 but within a month a lot of these will be on ebay or the shelves of 2nd hand game shops. Even supermarkets are worth a look sometimes. I suppose I slightly resent the money I have spent on my PC. My current plan is to leave the PC as it is and maybe buy a £100 graphics card much later down the line if it's going to be much faster than what I have now. If at that point my E8500 is deemed all but useless for gaming then I'm not sure what I will do.

I completely agree that FPS games are better with a mouse and keyboard. The only problem is that there isn't much out there apart from console ports. I'm pretty sure when/If half life 2 EP3 or Half life 3 comes out I'll be straight on it.

And finally yes, a lot of console ports on the PC seem to require a lot of power. More than they should. But making games is about making money and once they have released the XBOX360 and PS3 version if they can do a quick cheap PC port, then they will. But the reasons are irrelevant to the end user. The fact is that console ports on the PC rarely look that much better than the console version even on a high-end PC and even when they do, you are focusing one just one aspect of a game. While the PC gamers are reading and running benchamarks for a game, trying ultra-high settings and 4xAA, trying different drivers sets etc, the console gamers are playing the game and playing online with their mates.
 
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The best games are those that just wouldn't work on a console in the first place so are always going to be PC based. RTS games, TBS games and MMORPGs.

You seem to be interested only in FPS games though, in which case consoles are right up your alley. Personally I find all console games nowadays are just so dumbed down for the mass market as to hold no appeal whatsoever. tbh I'm of the personal opinion that consoles have done more to damage the games industry then anything else. Sure now they have a few dozen million more people to market to but most of these are kids who like dumb shoot'em up games without storylines. There's been very few actual decent FPS games for years now, the only ones I can think of have come from valve.

Anyway in the end if all you're interested in is FPS or driving games then a console is fine. If you actually want some decent innovative games like Hearts of Iron, Total War, Europa Universalis, Civilisation, Starcraft, Warcraft, WWIIO and many more you need a PC. And don't forget an actual proper version of TF2!
 
i've had a wii, ps3, 360 and gaming pc and here's how i see it

Wii: ok for kids didn't like it one bit same go's for my daughter she had it for 4 weeks and then wanted to sell it

PS3: i think the best way to discribe is too late to market, and overpriced and they keep losing games to the other side:confused:, no real point unless they drop the price to £200 or less

360: i've had my 360 for about 3 years now and have played on it a lot, infact spent a year just gaming on it and had loads of fun but let down by no keyboard and mouse (yes i know you can spend £70+ on a xfps or whatever it's called) but it's not the same shooters on the 360 are just not for me most feel like it's got somesort of aim bot, but do like driving and gta style games on the 360, can't wait for forza 3 awesome don't even come close to how good that game looks, kids also love the 360, my daughter traded her wii in for one and my son has had his for about 2 years

PC: all singing all dancing (subject to spec :D) the true home of the shooters but much more expencive than console gaming, personaly i have spent £800 over the last 2 months and will be spending more next week to upgrade my case and cooling (OCUK can i get shares or something :D) but i love my pc, played fallout 3 for over 400 hours since i got it last november on my 360 but have moved to the pc and wow what a difference, the graphics are stunning 60fps+ on ultra :cool: just waiting till all the dlc and patch's have come out and things to settle down then i'll be back to the wastelands, just bought farcry2 and a few other games from a well known auction site for peanuts so have something to do while i wait for fallout 3 to sort it's self out and MW2 to come out in november but with that might have to look out for a new team cos my mate's in my current team like ww2 shooters but i like modern warfare, just hope the maps are bigger than the last one, 40+ players on most of the maps in the old one was frantic (shipment (or whatever it was called) was just stupid even for 10 players)

i was looking forward to mafia 2 coming out this year but now it's 2010 :(
 
Glancing down that list... I don't think you'd have to spend a bomb to get decent playability with max settings at 1920x with 4x FSAA.

An intel E5200 + 4890, 4gig of RAM would probably run all of those great on the PC - the only exception might be MW2 which would probably benefit a lot in smoothness from having quad core.

I went for this exact setup to try and keep the costs relatively low, and so far it pretty much runs everything I've tried. Even Crysis minus AA runs pretty well :)
 
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