Generally, I hate first person shooters, but....

[NekoFever]

The later half of that post is mostly conjecture and lack of experience. Something I'll point out each time I see something like that 'cos it plainly isn't true

Believe me, I have plenty of experience with PC games. I played hundreds of hours of various versions of Counter-Strike, and similar amounts of Battlefield 1942/Desert Combat/Battlefield 2. Not to mention a couple of hundred hours of World of Warcraft and various amounts on most of the big PC games of the past few years, as well as being active in some big PC online communities. But you want examples of what I'm taking about?

Installations - I can't think of any PC games that I didn't have to sit there installing, often having to stay with it so that I could enter CD keys and change discs. If I want to play an old game that I've uninstalled there's no dropping it into the disc tray and loading it up because you need to go through the whole process again.
Over zealous copy protection - see Starforce.
CD keys - most games have them, and if you lose it your only option is to find a public (pirated) one which means you can't play online anymore.
Rampant hacking - you have played Counter-Strike, right?
System incompatibilities - tried running Rollercoaster Tycoon on Windows XP? Good luck.
Drivers - I used to be updating my graphics card drivers alone every month, and it wouldn't be unusual for them to drop performance in certain games and end up being rolled back.
200MB patches - Battlefield 1942 is the best example, coming out as it did in a clearly unfinished state and still having release day bugs after a few gigs worth of patches. If you want something more recent, F.E.A.R's 1.03 patch which was released last month is 262MB.
Hardware maintenance - I probably should have said "software maintenance". I don't remember the last time I had to defrag, virus scan, spyware scan, and run optimisation programs on a console.
Expensive upgrades - For a decent graphics card you're talking £150, and that will be showing its age within a year or so. That's not even taking into account CPU upgrades (and motherboard upgrades that they often require). I know what the UT2007 demos have been running on and the thought of it makes me weep.

[Commander Marklar]

I enjoy the "i'm an expert"/example/denial post as much as debunking the myth that PC gaming is complicated

[Concept]

Not complicated, just sometimes a pain in the arse.

[Team Andromeda]

Yeah, me too. It's a good little game despite the anti-climax generated by the hype (which, to be honest, I only read about after I'd played it ). Reason I mention mech games mind is that beyond Steel Battalion (which IS the definitive mech experience, fact fans), there are only a handful of titles compared to stuff like ZOE, Armored Core, Gundam, ACE, Gun Griffon Blaze, Front Mission, Ring of Red and cross-over genres like Xenogears. There are a ton of titles I haven't even mentioned too! It's all good mind but again, I wouldn't recommend an Xbox to mech fans or Steel Battalion alone

Oh, I do agree about Riddick. Brilliant game. The Director's cut for the PC is something very special indeed. Grab it if you can bud, you'll be surprised at the extras it has.

Oh there's some ace Mech games onthe PS2. ZOE II (amazing graphics and a great laugh), Armored Core were really good . But SB was just somthing else and I really liked Gun Griffon and the likes of Mech Assualt II, Metal Wolf Chaos (great script ) and I've never liked Ring Of Red (though to be fair I didn't really give it go).

Spot on about Killzone , CVG 'HALO killer' never helped matters, and the AI was a bit bad. Thought other than that it was a nice decent game , not brilliant but not poor either .

[Ish]

Regarding PC gaming the whole patch thing doesn't bother me anymore. Its not been a problem (for me at least) since getting broadband. In fact I'd rather download my games than have them delivered on CD and whenever that option is available I take it.

But I have largely stopped with the PC gaming due to the cost of the hardware upgrades. I still do PC game but its largely for complex turn based strategy games than FPSes and the like. I'll weep when the next Half Life comes out and I can't play it though.

[parkinho]

As soon as a decent Football Manager conversion apprers on a console, I don't think I'll ever use my PC as a games machine.

[Kotatsu Neko]

I tend to be a PC gamer in phases. A year ago I was really into it, had a pretty high-spec system, and was loving the console beating visuals. Some great games around at the time too - Half Life 2, Doom 3 etc.

But now my PC struggles to run the latest games without turning the visuals down, there are few good games exclusive to the PC, and visually the 360 can match it or beat it.

So my PC is back to being a 3DS Max/zBrush/Photoshop/iTunes/Firefox system, and my gaming is all done on 360 and DS.

[EvilBoris]

I tend to be a PC gamer in phases. A year ago I was really into it, had a pretty high-spec system, and was loving the console beating visuals. Some great games around at the time too - Half Life 2, Doom 3 etc.

But now my PC struggles to run the latest games without turning the visuals down, there are few good games exclusive to the PC, and visually the 360 can match it or beat it.

So my PC is back to being a 3DS Max/zBrush/Photoshop/iTunes/Firefox system, and my gaming is all done on 360 and DS.

I think alot of people do the same thing, I know that I'm certainly not prepared to spend the money to keep my PC on top of everything all the time, I'd rather buy a top spec machine and let it fade away to being weak and feeble then replace it a couple of years later.

[Team Andromeda]

As soon as a decent Football Manager conversion apprers on a console, I don't think I'll ever use my PC as a games machine.

I'm just the same. Now if only the GOD that is Geoff Crammond's would make a Grand Prix game for the consoles. I'l never had to play a game onthe PC again. Well apart for the liks of F22 and Falcon , for which there is just no answer too onthe consoles

[Commander Marklar]

I could see a Playstation version no problem. It is the online mainstream console that supports a keyboard and mouse. There's millions to be made, damn it

[eastyy]

Well i have grown tired of fps games lately they all seem so similar.

Games i play on the PC baldurs gate 2/dungeon siege 2/X3 and quite a few doujin Pc games like melty blood and eternal fighters and soon oblivion

When it comes to Fps games we really need more stuff like system shock and deus ex.