I've been a pc gamer since the times of x wing and doom, but these last few years with less money available to me due to real life getting in the way, most of my gaming has been on my Xbox well apart from my flight sims. I've had every major release for the Xbox since two years ago and I've loved every minute, that was until Tuesday when I got so frustrated with battlefield 3 I ended up turning the bloody thing off, but this got me thinking about why I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn from two feet away. I decided to try battlefield bad company on the pc so I brought it off steam and I'm loving it so much it's got me thinking what the hell have I been doing playing on consoles for so long when I can get a better quality of game on the pc, I mean I've got it running full settings and max res for my screen and it looks 100% better than the Xbox version and to top it all of I even managed to kill a guy from half way across the map with an RPG. All this has got me thinking now is what else have I missed? So guys if anyone's got any good recommendations then please let me know.

Welcome back ! Recommendations will depend on what type of gameplay you prefer(arcade vs sim, run & gun vs tactical realism, etc.). There are a lot of great PC games out there . Personally, I have the following shooter-type games currently installed: Arma 2(great modern warfare sim), Red Orchestra 1 & 2 (both excellent WWII tactical shooters), Day of Defeat: Source (a more arcady WWII shooter), Deus Ex: Human Revolution (using "give me Deus Ex" difficulty , of course) The witcher(sword-wielding 3rd person RPG with lots of sex & violence), and Orcs Must Die!(a great arcade dungeon defence after-work-stress-reliever). This doesn't include the many excellent flight sims, racing games and strategy games I have installed.

Cheers,

Fafnir_6

Im pretty sure arms 2 doesn't work too great on my pc coz i brought it when it came out and it was a total mess, that is unless they've patched the hell outta it, well I'm thinking along the lines of shooters but I've been looking at getting the witcher for a while. Deus ex hr is a great game but ive already got that for my Xbox along with battlefield, mw2 & 3 and skyrim

Witcher 2 is on sale at www.gog.com DRM free for the holidays... just FYI.

Cheers magnum I might just have to pick that one up.

Arma 2 has received many patches since its release and runs a LOT better now. Try it again, your system should run it just fine as long as you don't mess with that view distance too much (it has a great bearing on performance, so keep it under 2000 to start).



The Jedi Master

The trick to being a pc gamer returning from a console is not to limit yourself to games out on both platforms. The beauty of pc gaming is in the *variety* of games, not just getting better graphics, that alone isn't enough of a trade off--Live still beats out any other MP system out there. Re-buy some key favorites when they come up on a dirt cheap sale (Steam, Amazon, Direct2Drive etc), but don't just waste money playing the same old stuff.

There are a ton of games out there you probably don't even know about and even genres you haven't considered. My advice would be to go to Steam and start checking it all out, fill up a wishlist. Not just to use Steam, it's just an easy one stop shop for a ton of games. Direct2Drive as well.
Then get ready to upgrade, go to Tom's Hardware to catch up on that. LOL

Yeah I've been looking at upgrading next year but it ain't gonna be cheap lol, I'll probably build a new system from scratch to be honest and give this one to my dad, I've been looking at steam but all the games seem to be more expensive than real hard copy's I can get a hold off online so I'd rather do that lol

If you're looking at recent releases, then yes generally you can get a physical copy for less. If you're looking for games that are hard to find, or look during the big sales, they're cheap!



The Jedi Master

You buy games at Steam during the sales. Otherwise, I do tend to get older games at Amazon. Sometimes good classics only sell for insane prices due to rarity. I wish they could all go digital so a fair deal could always be had.