I really love PC Gaming. I tend to play the vast majority of my games on the PC, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Peoples’ main objections to gaming on a PC tend to be twofold: firstly, that gaming PCs are too expensive. Secondly, that installation and troubleshooting in a Windows environment are a pain. I’ll certainly agree that consoles are easier to use, but in my opinion the advantages of gaming with a PC far outweigh the disadvantages. Plus, I hate playing shooters without a mouse.

As far as expenses, I tend to spend roughly $1000 every five years or so on a new gaming PC, and perhaps I’ll upgrade my graphics card once for each PC. So we’re talking about maybe $2500 or so each decade. Ten years is a long time – it averages out to about $20 per month. And gaming is by no means the only thing I use the PC for. Best of all, when you do get a new PC, the old one is likely still viable for other things. I’ve turned my old gaming PC into a media server, and I use it to store all my music, movies, and photos.

People rave about the great graphics on their 1080p displays when they play XBox 360 or PS3 games, but I haven’t played a game in 1080p on the PC in years. I’m currently running games at 1680×1050. If you have a decent graphics card, you can boost the graphics on a PC well above 1080p without much trouble. And if it’s a newer game that’s more graphically demanding, the PC will scale. You can change your graphics options to achieve a balance between graphics and performance.

Also, games on the PC tend to be $10 less than their console counterparts. If you play a lot of games, those increments of $10 will start adding up, making your investment in the PC a good one.

Another thing I really enjoy with the PC is the ability to replay older games using mods. Whether it’s replaying the original Baldur’s Gate using EasyTutu, running Thief: Deadly Shadows with improved textures and remapped mouse controls, installing Circle of Eight’s mods for Temple of Elemental Evil, or using the wealth of modifications available for Oblivion, user-created mods have greatly increased the replayability of some already excellent older games.

One of the few shortcomings I see with PC gaming is that aside from the few games that implement the terrible Games for Windows Live system, PC games have no achievements. There are Steam Achievements for a few Steam games such as Plants vs Zombies and the Half-Life 2 episodes, but PC games tend to not have the same online connectivity as XBox 360 and even PS3 games. But services like Raptr now provide desktop clients and gamercards that you can post online. I use Raptr’s desktop client, and have coded the gamercards on the left sidebar of this site to read data directly from Raptr so that I don’t have to do anything manually. Unless I play a PS3 game like Trine.

Call me a PC fanboy, I don’t care.