Back to PC gaming after about 6 years...

What have I missed?

Last game I could play properly was Half Life 2 and BF2 (so will be picking up BF3 even though I've got it on the 360). But other than that I'm totally out of touch.

Any must haves that are either PC exclusive or far better than the console version? I'm not too narrow when it comes to genre really. Oh other than indie games, which I know is bad thing, I just don't do sprites and 2D anymore.

I've gone for an i2500k with 8gb so should be ok on CPU for a while, my big bottle neck is going to be the Geforce 8800GTS OC I've borrowed for a couple of months until I've saved up for something a bit more modern.

Edit: Oh and I picked up Company of Heroes and Age Of Empires 3 about a year ago in preparation for this, so they're covered (its just coincidence they're both RTS games as I had hoped my laptop would handle them).

Starcraft 2
Stalker series
Metro 2033
Drakensang series
King's Bounty
The Witcher Series
Warhammer 40k - Dawn of War 2 series
Hector Badge of Carnage
Divinity Dragon Knight Saga
Singularity
Wolfenstein
Dragon Age series
Neverwinter Nights 2 Series
Fallout 3 Series
Portal
Deus Ex Human Revolution
Overlord Series
Mass Effect Series
Bioshock
Tropico 4 (if you don't own 3)
Rage
Torchlight





I know most of them where out on the consoles (and I played most of them on them) but playing them on the PC (in some cases) you'll notice an huge gameplay difference, other the experience will exactly the same...

For me they are some of the must have from the last few years.

Thanks Dragul. Think the Witcher is something I'll need to check out. No idea what its about other than I've heard it mentioned plenty.

Is ARMA2 any good by the way?

Never played it but I did love Operation Flashpoint (ArmA 2 is an spiritual sequel to it).

The Witcher is based on some Polish books, and it's a really good RPG (for me clearly superior to Skyrim thanks to a tighter experience).

Can you post the new system specs so I can have an idea on the my upgrade path?

I'll be honest, I just used the Budget Gaming PC thread on EG, so credit to the helpful souls over there.

I set myself a £500 budget, hence me sticking with a borrowed graphics card for the moment.

I went for:

Asus P8P67-M R3.0 Socket 1155 8 channel Audio ATX Motherboard

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor

(from the EG thread and what I've read consequently, the combination of the above means the CPU can be easily overclocked to 4.2ghz with no need for extra cooling)

Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz

Those three came in about £250-290 on Ebuyer.com. Unfortunately I then got screwed over on the hard drive price due to the recent floods, but I assume that wouldnt affect you if you were upgrading. Then it was just stuff like the case, DVD writer etc which I won't bore you with if you're upgrading, but in total, I came in under budget (even with paying £100 for a 1tb drive). Next step is a decent GPU and monitor upgrade then I should be set for a while. Hopefully.

Arma2 is good (combined ops is the best, the compilation) but you need a group. I may resurrect the EG one at some point in the new year, if my time allows.

Dragul nailed it, but also the X3 space sims, Frozen Synapse, the Silent Hunter series, and others that I'll probably remember later.

I had an 8800GTS512 in the machine that I just upgraded from, I think that will be a big stopping point in terms of getting the best out of the games that look/run better on PC than console.

fwiw, these are the "new" games I've bought since getting a new PC a couple of months ago (basically the same as yours, but with a 560Ti and an SSD):

Deus Ex: HR
Shogun 2
Crysis 2
Portal 2
Skyrim
Rage
BF3

Other games I have been playing/looking at recently that are exclusive/better on PC in some way imo:

Crysis 1
Mass Effect 1
NFS Hot Pursuit
Torchlight
STALKER
Starcraft
Amnesia
SupCom

And also PCSX2 and Dolphin, if you want those sort of things.

Was looking at some vids of ArmA 2 last night and I think that'll be my first purchase. Love the look of the fake Afghanistan and I used to love Flashpoint (nothing has beaten "that" level yet, in any game).

Yeah the 560Ti was what I was thinking of looking at actually.

Thanks ilmaestro, thats a good looking list, especially as I'm interested in the eyecandy aspects so it will be interesting to compare console version.

So Stalker still holds up today? That was the game that made my old PC give up the ghost and the point at which I stopped playing last time.

I wouldn't bother getting anything until you've got a better GPU.

Stalker is great but there are some seriously lovely mods out there for it if you really want to make it look purty.

Yeah, I remember spending hours tinkering with mods/settings to make Stalker look spectacular. Never actually got round to playing the game itself. :/

Yeah there's the 'Complete' series by Artist Pavel, supposedly one of the best and the one I used for all three stalker games:

http://artistpavel.blogspot.com/2010/04/mod-call-of-pripyat-complete.html

Call of Pripyat is the one to get, much better than the other two. Complete mod is a system hog though, but well worth it as it fixes the gazillion bugs as well as making everything look ten times better. I don't think I could play a Stalker game without the Complete mod tbh, it's become so essential.

Now seems like a good time to get a new gfx card though, might get one cheap in the sales? My Radeon 5770 is around £50 nowadays and is just about holding up, though it won't last much longer. I think for a new GFX card now you'll want to go for a single card setup with over 1 gig of VRAM. Avoid dual card GPUs like the plague as the crossfire implementation on some of them (ATI ones anyway, dunno about Nvidia) is still really wonky on some games, wasting all the extra power.

Post up if you pick up Arma and I'll get the chaps together, had some great games last year. Do get Combined Ops though, as nearly all the MP content nowadays requires it to run. It's just ARMA2 & Op Arrowhead (and maybe the DLCs, I forget) in one package, which means kit from both can be used in scenarios. If you buy just Arma2 or just Op Arrowhead you'll just find yourself needing to get the other game a month or two down the line, so save yourself the trouble!

Thanks Orpheus, that'd be great and yeah I'll be getting the Combined version. Should hopefully have a new card by the end of this month/start of next then I'll be good to go.

Just did my first boot up (no OS yet, thats for tomorrow) but it looks good so far. A BIOS that supports mouse and graphics :-o When did that start happening? First time ever for a build with me where I had no POST issues either.

Steam id is century_rain, add me and it'll make all that stuff tons easier. Steam is fast becoming the xbox live of pcgaming; everyone's on it, and it's easy to keep in touch.

Wonder if the excellent modless series of zombie missions has had another instalment, was an absolute blast playing through those. Arma has so much scope you can forgive the clunkiness. Arma3 this year as well! o_0

Great, I'll add you as soon as I'm set up. The whole Steam thing has totally passed me by (other than casual glances) as when I was a lad, it was just causing people grief activating their HL2 installation :)

Was browsing it earlier though and its going to cost me a fortune with the amount of games I want to catch up on at impulse buy prices. Makes the prices for Games on Demand on 360 seem even worse.

Must try and convince the guy at work to buy my spare Xbox Elite in the week, I'm going to want a decent GPU quite soon I think...

I'm agonising over a new GPU/more RAM as well. Word of wisdom for Steam purchases - if you can, try and hold out for the sales. They have silly silly discounts and fairly frequent sales, so you'll often find the game for £1.50 for the sake of waiting a little bit. :D

Yeah do not buy anything (bit of a generalized statement, but yeah) on Steam until the big sales. So many big titles are Steamworks anyway now, it's almost always better to buy retail and activate them on Steam.

Apart from that though, it is a fantastic platform, far better than Live in terms of managing games/friends/etc, absolutely one of the first things you should install (it's selectable as part of ninite's easy download/installer, anyway).

ilmaestro is right!

Steam sales are your friends, most of the games I listed can be bought for less than a tenner.

I bought the 3 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games for around 9 euros...

Singularity and Wolfenstein fo 5 euros and Shogun can be bought for around 15 euros...

And you could also check some of the promotions on stores (Deus Ex, Shogun, Call of Duty and some others are steam enable so you can activate them)

Thanks for the tip. How often do they have sales?

Tried Pro Evo and FIFA last night and was pleased to see I could run them at max detail with no questions asked even with my crappy card (although I realise they're not the most demanding of games).

Pretty much every holiday, next one will be Easter I expect.

Easter most likely... Like orpheus said!

And also everyday there's a different promo, and also there's the week promo and the weekend promo! :)

Yeah since you don't already have a massive library of Steam games, you might actually see stuff in the daily deals that you might want.

Your first actual big Steam sale though... there's nothing quite like it ever again.

My wallet still hasn't forgiven me. This xmas I was so skint I couldn't afford the great majority of it, thank fuck!

Coincidentally, a few people I know are thinking of picking up Arma2 again and enquiries are being made about a game in a couple of weeks time to see what kind of group we can muster, with a view to a regular night. Don't know what your timeframe is on your new card Furbs but I'll post up more details for you (and anyone else, all welcome) as things become finalised.

Combining the EG regulars, the Subsim chaps and the Halibuts could make for a fairly hefty squad. :)

Its soooooo good being late to the party.

Picked up the Arma Anniversary pack in Game today for £15, which is Op Flash, Arma1/Queens Gambit plus Arma 2 and the addons. Oh and Rome/Medieval 2/Empire/Napoleon Total War for £15 too (annoyingly its a White Label Compilation so just crappy PDF manuals grrrr).

Should be able to get my card by the end of the month/first week in Feb (weekly pay has its pros and cons!), although I'm hoping I might be able to get away with running Arma 2 on what I have (about to find out!). Good thing for me is that since I have no other frame of reference except a 6 year old games consoles, so as long as it runs, it'll probably be playable to me!

Was happy to see 3D Mark 06 dropped no lower than 30fps last night though. When I tried the first version, I measured it in seconds per frame on my old Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think the last PC game I played was Peggle.

I just love my sofa too much.

I must admit, I'm struggling with that aspect, its a real shock to the system.

Starcraft 2!

It's the only one I haven't seen specifically listed. Welcome to not being a fag world.

I can never get in to Sci Fi RTS's much as I want to. I really fancied Dawn of War but I just couldnt enjoy the units in the way I did with AoE.

I just realised that the last time I did a proper build/upgrade for a PC was for BF2, and this time I promised myself I wouldnt do it as I was happy with the sofa and Xbox. Without thinking it, thats exactly what I appear to have done...

Fuck me install times are long these days.