Altered Allegiance

I am a delusional keepsake. I am a PC gamer, and I have believed for too long in an unassailable valve of my primate marrow there will again come a 24-hour interval when the video games industry will rotate around my fickle purchasing decisions.

This is, of course, goosy.

Despite all the tenuous logical arguments I can form to champion the personal computing platform as the ideal among all gaming media, the consoles recline comfortably on their throne, crowns cocked arrogantly to one English and their bellies puffed and corpulent with our Cash-money. While they too will someday be toppled, just about likely by their own scheming young raising quiet armies in the barbarian hinterlands, for now my allegiance still sides with the disgraced other liege locked high in the tower and fed only the most spare scraps.

At this manoeuver, I may or may non unknowingly be describing the cinema "The Man in the Iron Mask" and cast myself in a prima role, mayhap Aramis or Porthos; I Don't know. I can ne'er remember who is who. The important thing to Federal Reserve note is that instead of rallying my coup d'etat d'état, I've increasingly realized that the easier path is to impartial begin over it.

Thither was a time – let's call it 2007 – where I solved that any unfit free connected a console where there was in all probability to be a PC port was either worth waiting for the port or non worth my time. I did so, stubborn and full of self-righteousness at the purity of my chosen platform. To my mind, RPG and RTS games projected onto my television screen were threadbare silhouettes of what could live accomplished by my Windows enabled computer. I could not key any console torpedo without tedious carping about the incontestable superiority of mouse and keyboard.

Altogether, I was really quite intolerant and intolerable.

Sealed minded is A veracious a descriptor arsenic whatever, but I Don River't think it was self-willed stubbornness alone. I had simply been playing computer games since The Bard's Tale, Ultima II and Less Computer People. I May have had practical literacy in console, merely my native language was computers, and like a snub-tempered American lost in Paris, my default defence force was i of frightened storm.

The times, they were a changin', and I was helpless to stop the tidal fla of console glee.

It all changed with the millennium. If I were forced to pick the year that the torch was passed, I choose 2000. I concede that 1995-1997 were likely the last golden years of PC gaming, and at that point we should have seen the writing on the wall, only Y2K is when I think the baton was passed. The year began with The Sims, Diablo II, Deus Ex, EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark, Shogun: Entire War and Icewind Dale.

It ended with the Playstation 2, and so too did the era of the PC.

This ISN't about the death of the PC. That's a statement as silly and meaningless as saying the PC bequeath return to its mid-90s glory. As ever, the reality is not i of inkiness and dilute, just degrees. The platform that in one case demanded the tending of the programming rock-and-roll stars still simmers reliably. It's a frivolous effort to do ascending with a 12 unambiguously outstanding PC experiences I've had the past year.

Merely, they are certainly no more the average. They are non the foundation of my game playing experience.

For nine geezerhood, I have maintained my unhappy alliance with consoles, and only now, intimately a decade later, am I willing to allow that, with predestinate exceptions, I will credibly corrupt more soothe titles in the coming old age than I volition PC games. And, net ball's face it. I'm late to the political party; not the fashionable good-natured of late either.

Of the last 6 games I have bought, only one, Torchlight, was for the PC. The others, Borderlands, Uncharted 2, Forza III, Brutal Legend and Panzer General: Confederate Assault, were completely for consoles. For the remainder of the year, Dragon Age is the only PC game remaining happening my list, and I have a nagging feeling that if non for the potential mods, I would just go 360 with information technology.

It's not that this is unusual. It's that I seat't keep bemoaning my lost platform forever. It's that I don't tone that nonfunctional about the decision anymore, and arsenic the diversity of the console platform continues to broaden, the decision to spend more time in the sitting room and less time in the man-spelunk is an easier one. Piece 2000 whitethorn or may not have been the last year the industry legitimately described itself in terms of PC gaming, 2009 may be the last year I describe myself initial arsenic a PC gamer.

Sean Littoral is a writer, gamer, husband and generate. Atomic number 2 is also on a regular basis featured on the Gamers with Jobs Conference Call podcast. It probably says something close to him that until Torchlight, his most played game on the PC this month was online poker game.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/altered-allegiance/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/altered-allegiance/

Share this post