Mark Del Rio
Written by Mark Del Rio Tuesday, 18 October 2011 21:00
These are the voyages of one nerd gamer. Whose lifelong mission it is to play strange new games, to seek out new release dates, and to boldly get DLC codes for free (because I hate paying for DLC).
Zoom out to title screen. Play theme music. And so begins my indoctrination to GoozerNation.
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Enter to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card.Greetings earthlings my name is Mark Del Rio. I’m new here. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am married to a fantastic woman and quickly approaching mid-life crisis age, I’m a father of 2 young girls – ages 3.5 and 0.3. I’ve worked numerous jobs throughout my life, from fast food, to filmmaker, to accounting. I’m also a freelance videographer and graphics designer. I run a website that offers free printable disc and case artwork for Steam games (queue unashamed self-promotion music): www.steamcovers.com I cross-play between my PC and all three current gaming consoles. I am PieMonster if you care to look for me on Goozex.com. Now on to my gaming life.
I've been a gamer since the days of the old and magnificent NES - my first experience being the Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt combo cartridge. I spent so many countless hours trying to figure out how that light gun worked that it's ridiculous. When the SNES came out I quickly jumped to that. Soon afterwards I bought an N64. In the mid-90s, while in college, I was introduced to the PC and its glorious gaming goodness.
Doom was my very first PC game (yes, I do kiss and tell). Everyone had the Doom shareware in college. I was amazed at how much gameplay one company was willing to release for free. Actually, I was amazed that shareware even existed. We never got that on a console. After Doom came Quake and after Quake came Half-Life. Next thing I knew I was playing everything on the PC from Tomb Raider to SiN to Jedi Knight. The list goes on and on.
PC gaming is like a religious experience to me. The immersion the graphics allow are just stunning. The ability to modify games in ways beyond their creators never intended is simply amazing. The graphical prowess and raw horsepower of a souped-up PC really shines through in a great game. We're not just talking graphics here; we’re talking enhanced AI, bigger maps, and more detailed personal customization (assuming it’s all programmed into the game in the first place). The PC is truly the greatest gaming system ever created on God's green earth; don't let anyone ever convince you otherwise. I'm proud to say that I am a PC gamer and I hope PC gaming continues to stay on the cutting edge of technology.
Unfortunately, everything I wrote in that last paragraph is nothing more than a pipe dream. As we all know consoles rule the landscape today. With piracy running so rampant worldwide and sales dropping like flies, the PC is nothing more than an afterthought for most game companies. Classic PC game companies like Epic and id Software have now switched over to the consoles as their lead platform (and are also switching again to iOS to generate more sales). We consider ourselves lucky and call it a day when the few console ports that do cross our path manage to run smoothly on our preferred platform. Even then it's only after about a dozen or so patches and a few months of waiting.
We PC gamers have put up with a lot throughout the years from gaming greats like half-life 2 to gaming lows like Halo 2. It all comes back around like The Witcher 2 to show us that PC gaming is far from done with. MMO’s, which once so greatly sprouted from the PC in countless number, soon quickly declined and are now returning from the dead as Free-to-Play. Numerous social games like Mafia Wars and <insert name here>Ville are giving non-gamers a taste of our favorite brew.
So hold my hand and let's take a stroll down gaming history’s past, present, and future. It's not all pretty but fortunately it's not all ugly either. We just have to know which flowers to pluck and which ones to leave behind. PC gaming is far from dead.
