fredbear5150: Whilst I will continue to play older PC games & to buy GOG releases, I have decided today that modern games are just too much of a liability for me to buy them any more. (And, no, I won't pirate them either.)
dreadcog: I've been where you are man. Games were buggy and very low budget with horrible plots. There were a few gems sprinkled in there but it was mainly garbage. My problem was I didn't have a source to pirate them from. So I switched to console systems and started with older models, then to newer ones. The Xbox 360 is my favorite out of them all, 3DO is a close second. After a while of playing them I figured out that consoles are good to a point. I noticed that PC games were improving because of the console industries strict standards. So I leapt back to PC to see what the buzz is about.
It's WAY better then it was before. With all that time playing consoles I managed to piece together a really nice computer. So it can play anything out there. I noticed someone made a DOS emulator called DOSBOX. So I scooped that up to play my old DOS games and it's only improved with age. It can't play everything but it can do most. Vista has also improved a great deal so I can play most of my new and classic titles. Alot of fans have made patches for games to get them working. There are some little stinkers that won't work so I bought a classic PC from a thrift store. Now I can play any game ever made. I've purchased many titles from here and Amazon to help complete my collection.
So my point is this, it's not the end of your computer gaming fun. You're just creating a new strategy. When it's all done you will see the method to it all.
I agree. Completely. Well, not about the 3do. Other than that....
Also, I love my XB360. Incidentally, I can't really afford a gaming computer. There's not much difference nowadyas anyway (versus the huge difference in performance during the ps1 era, for instance). Try as hard as I can, I can't justify the cost when most of the games I want to play nowadays (Oblivion, Bioshock, Mass Effect, FO3) are available on the XB360 anyway and the graphics aren't that much worse. I don't really play enough games to make it worthwhile.
I just threw more RAM in my laptop. With 4g it plays NWN2 and Titan Quest adequately. Good enough. The only game I might seriously be annoyed about missing out on is Dragon Age and Diablo 3. Heck, who know, maybe they'll run on my PC (probably not).
Oh and ditto Plants vs. Zombies. Great, great game.