[QUOTE="blackgamer1213"]
I'm not trying to flame or anything. But I have been looking into this but I mean PC Gaming is like a foreign country to a person who has been a console gamer all their life. So I'm wondering what makes it worth me building a rig, and just you know start PC gaming besides mods, graphics and emulators.
Mazoch
There are a lot of different reasons why I prefer PC Gaming. Here are a couple of examples.
Mods
While you mention mods in your post, you're not really going to be able to truly appreciate just what that means until you've really tried it. Mods have allowed otherwise mediocre games to become some of the best games of all times on the platform (STALKER, saw huge improvements due to fan made mods, Fan made mods and patches made Vampire the Masquerade one of the best VRPGs, mods have allows players to make a massively multiplayer version of GTA: San Andreas, dozens of players playing gang warfare in GTA:SA, that's huge!
Oblivion is a great rpg on both the PC and the X360, however mods on the PC allows you to customize every aspect of the game. You can change the leveling system, the skill system, download hundreds of different types of armor and weapons, hundreds of new quests and dungeons, mods allow you the train and fly dragons. The mods for Oblivion alone offers more content than all DLC available for the X360 and the PS3 added together.. and the mods are free.. And you can find the same amount of new, free content for Fallout3, and for the source engine and for the unreal engine.
Mods are not just only small tweaks to a game; it's a lot more than teenagers adding naked breasts to their games. It's one of the best ways for would be game developers to creatively reinvent the games they love. Sometimes the result sucks, sometimes it makes the original game look dull and half finished.
Indie Games
All the platforms have indie games, but the PC is the true home of indie developers of all shades and colors. This means that you see some of the truly surprising, odd, inventive and strange games here. From great small arcade games to games that are barely games but more experiments in interactive story telling like 'The Path' a surrealistic retelling of the adventure of Red Riding Hood or the Graveyard, a small 'game' that simply puts you in the shoes of an old person visiting lost friends and family in a graveyard, for there you got games like World of Goo and Audio surf, Crayon Physics Deluxe. Each of these is great games that help reinvent game mechanics and offer new and interesting game mechanics. Braid was a huge hit on the X360 and each of these games have the same kind of surprising quality and imagination that made Braid such a hit.
Scale and Scope
The PC offers a lot of different games that are HUGE compared to anything on the consoles. This is not always a good thing, it obviously depend on the game, your preferences and what you're in the mood for. But you only find games like X3 on the PC, a massive space simulator where you can fly everything from small one person scout ships to massive battleships. You an even amass fleets of ships and control your own armada of space ships. The games allows you to work as a pirate or a bounty hunter, or forget about combat and focus on running trade between systems and stations, buy high and sell low. Still not enough to do? Build your own space stations, factories, set up trade routes. Assign ships to guard your growing empire. There's also a regular 'campaign' but to be honest there's so much to do that you might not care.
Games like civilization (not the simplified console version), develop your civilization, path it's research, its political system, engage in diplomacy or warfare, build world wonders. Convert you enemy by warfare… or religion... or culture. It's a game that embodies the idea of easy to learn but hard to master.
Or the Total War Series. A game where you can literally have thousands of soldiers onscreen at a time, control huge armies of dozens of factions. Watch your artillery bombard the enemy line while your cavalry moves to flak your enemy. All of it in graphics that matches the best you'll find on any platform.
Now this doesn't not necessarily make these games better than some of the recent shooting / action games. You can get most of those on all platforms. A few are exclusive most are available to all. However, while you can get plenty of shooters and action games on the PC, you cannot get the big, complex style games on the consoles. Without a PC you're excluded from the most complex and in-depth game experience.
Huge library
The PC have a HUGE library. If you're willing to accept outdated graphics there's thousands of games available, some of them offering game play that is still unmatched in games since (games like Deus Ex, Planscape Torment, Ur-Quan Masters (Formerly Star Control 2)). Many of these can be bought for a couple of dollars or gotten free, and they offer as good (or better) a game play experience as anything available in the stores today.
There are plenty of other reasons. The PC have genres that just doesn't exist on the consoles, the PC have the capacity for better graphics (though it always depend on the game).
The other stuff
The PC can do a lot more than just play games. Sure you can watch movies on a console, you can do the same on a PC, in addition you can surf the next, word processing, picture editing, make a web page, talk to friends and family, work / home work, read the news, research whatever you want.. you know... everything you can do on a computer. Heck, in this day and age you more or less have to have a computer, why not get a decent one, that way you also get access to the most advanced gaming platform available :)
You are so awesome for posting such a thorough post, thanks man!!!
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