Why You (Goose) Should Upgrade Your PC

A friend of mine was ruminating on his blog if he should upgrade his PC. Well, the obvious answer to this is... yes. He's primarily a console gamer but has been known to dabble in the PC game realm. So why should someone upgrade their PC? Why to play games of course. What other reason is there to own a PC? Here are some specific reasons that a person should upgrade their PC. The best reason for upgrading a PC that I can see is the advent of Direct X 10. This new graphics standard which is a core component of Windows Vista is slated to bring us a wonderful crop of new games in the next coming months.

1. The Orange Box - Easily the best deal going in video gaming at the moment. For a little over 50 bucks you get 5 complete games in one! This package from Valve software contains: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. While you can get this package for Xbox360 I would recommend the PC version. The only draw back to the PC version is actually a strength. Installing and playing the game on PC requires the use of Steam. Steam is Valve's online software distribution platform. (Think Xbox Live) Unlike X-Box Live it is free to join and maintain an account. Steam authenticates your games for copy protection purposes, but also allows you to manage friends, download demos and even purchase full games. Purchased games are tied to your account, so if you have multiple PC's (like say you are getting a laptop for work wink...wink) all you need to do is install the steam client on that PC to and it will download all of your games to that system without the need for software disks to install. The biggest draw back to Steam is that I think it requires you to have an active internet connection to play games through it. However, I think certain games can be played off line. One other feature that makes The Orange Box such a great value is that Steam supports a great many user created mods for the Half-life series. Allowing you to play original games such as Goldeneye: Source (a free multi player version of the N64 Classic) or DBSource another mod based on the Dragon Ball Z universe. With the amount of mods that are sure to be released in the future this could almost be the only game you ever need to buy again. I would go into more detail about the individual parts of the actual Orange Box, but I think I have written enough previously about the stellar Team Fortress 2.
2. BioShock - Yep, it's out on Xbox360, but if you want to see this game running as pretty as it can be you should play it on PC. I run it under Direct x 9, and it is astounding. I am curious to see what this game is going to look like with DX10 hardware.
3. Supreme Commander - I am not much for real time strategy games, but this one is supposed to be pretty awesome. Another DX10 game, the crazy thing about this game is apparently the level of depth that you can use to control the game. Battles can contain hundreds of unit per side. This game allows you to scale your view of the battle out to almost a global perspective, and the battles can become so huge that the game has built in support for dual monitors.
4. Spore - A game slated for release next year being developed by Will Wright. (The genius behind just about anything with the word SIM in it's title.) This game looks like it will be the ultimate "God" game. You basically create an organism and guide it through it's evolution from a single cell organism to a creature to a society and then to a space faring civilization. The amazingly compelling thing about this game is that players will be able to make their races available to download by other players. As you download other players races of creatures they will populate the universe that you explore with your space traveling race. Allowing you to interact with the creations of players from all over the world. The possibilities of this game cause the mind to boggle.
5. Crysis - If there is one game that the editors of PC Gamer magazine all seam to be going crazy waiting for this would be the one. This is one of the first games that will truly show off what DX10 can do. Apparently even DX9 demo versions being shown at trade shows have been mind blowing displaying totally destructive jungle environments and a fantastic enemy AI.
6. Microsoft Flight Simulator X - Perhaps the first DX10 game released. It sounds pretty cool. I have never been into flight simulators, but the fact that this game features accurately mapped photo realistic maps of THE ENTIRE WORLD it is certainly tempting. Yes, you can fly a plane from the Buffalo Airport to Toronto is real time. How bad a$$ is that?
   

Well, that is just a sample of some of the great reasons out there to own a PC and get that puppy upgraded. Enjoy.