Grumbel

The biggest problem with Far Cry 3 isn't how Jason is portrayed, but how the natives are. Nothing wrong with Jason being there and doing hero stuff, but the natives are not only completely useless, they also are limited to like three lines of ever repeating audio and they seem to all have the same face. They never come to help you liberate an outpost, they only drive in after you have liberated it. They can't even manage to kill a tiger. They are nothing more then generic filler.
 
Far Cry 3 also introduces far to many new characters over the course of the story. Why does there need to be a CIA guy, that German guy and those other guys that help you over the course of the game? They feel completely unneeded and unfit as they add nothing to the core plot. Instead of constantly introducing new people they should have just stuck with whom they introduced at the start of the game. Why isn't Dennis used more? After the start of the game he pretty much disappears for most of the rest of the game. Citra never leaves her temple. Even Vaas, who is on the cover after all, only has like 10min of screen time and really doesn't do anything of importance. There where plenty of natives that they could have used more instead of introducing even more white guys that just happen to be on that island for some convoluted reason.

That weird FIFA stuff has been going on for a long long while, but I still don't understand how they get the logins. Was your password weak and easily guessable, did you enter it into some phishing website or is there some problem on Microsoft or Origins end that they failed to plug in over a year?

It's not half bad, the whole presentation is quite similar to NOLF or Perfect Dark, i.e. less realistic and more cartoony, which is a nice change of pace after playing all those gritty realistic games of the last few years. Level design feels a little dated and there is plenty of circle strafing. Story could have used some more introduction, as I didn't know who half the characters where or how they related. Overall I liked it, 4-5h old school fun for the $2.49 is ok.

The Bitmap Brpthers or Psygnosis if anything just to see what their Splinter Cell like game would have looked like.

None, as there is no need to, Kickstarter seems to have revived most of them already. People involved with Bullfrog, Origin, LucasArts, Sierra, Interplay, Black Isle Studio and so on all already had their Kickstarters or are having them right now., so there really isn't much left to wish for.

Something completely obscure: Bullfrog's demo for Creation left quite an impression on me. Loved that whole under water setting, sadly it got canceled.
Something not obscure: Zelda: Links Awakaning, that damn Windfish song, still whistle it every now and then, almost 20 years later.

The Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro is probably the controller I have been happiest with, it was a big improvement over what came before and just all around a great product, not only had it all the funky new digital modes for Win95, but it was also downward compatible to old DOS games by being able to emulate Thrustmaster and CH Flightsticks. If it wouldn't be for the lack of gameports on modern PCs I would still be using it.
 
The Xbox360 is right now probably the best thing you can find for modern games, but the shitty dpad, the terrible driver, the fragile wireless adapter and no official support for the chatpad on PC are really preventing it from being called a favorite. It's a really solid product that Microsoft just refuses to give that last ounce of polish that it really needs.

The reason I left PC gaming was the same reason I have always left PC gaming in the last 20 years: My PC was getting to slow and couldn't run any modern games any more. Since I upgrade PCs every 5 years and games stop being usable after ~2-3 years, there have always been holes in my PC gaming history. On top of that upgrading is pretty damn complicated, as it's impossible to find proper technical details on how much an upgrade would actually offer. Benchmark always only compare new cards to other new cards, not new cards vs that five year old OEM card that is stuck in my PC. The confusing graphic card naming and the dozens of different models don't help. And if that new graphics card would work with my 350W powersupply was also a big "maybe" and new definite answer could be found. So long story short, I stuck with console gaming for a while.
 
So what changed? Not much really. PC gaming is still complicated, but ATI released the HD5xxx series and the HD5670 seemed like a good fit for my aging PC. I still had no idea if it would work with my powersupply or how much faster it really would be to my OEM Geforce. But whatever, I gave up on trying to be the perfectly informed consumer and just I bought it. As it turns out, it worked with my old  powersupply and was substantially faster then my old Geforce 7600LE, not just a little, but games I could only run at minimum details in 800x600 now I could run in 1680x1050 in high. So I could finally run some PC games again on my aging PC and the upgrade was just 70€.
 
On top of that there are some other things that actually let me stay with PC gaming: 
 

• PC gaming now supports gamepads properly, most games have build in Xbox360 controller support and work out of the box, this is a big change to 10 years ago when gamepad support was abysmal and required driver hacks, mouse/keyboard emulation and oher stuff to get things to work
• Steam does automatic patching, so no more trying to find half a dozens language specific patches for that DVD release and then trying to figure out how to install them in the right order, Steam even supports multiple languages per game, so you aren't stuck with some crappy localized version like you sometimes are on consoles
  
• Indiegames seems to have some traction on the Xbox360 a few years ago, but since then they seem to have shifted back to the PC again
• Humble Indie, IndieRoyal and numerous other bundles happened, reducing the cost of trying some indie game from $30 five year ago to $1
• Steam sales, along with sales on Gamersgate, GetGames, etc. are also drastically cheaper then anything you will find on consoles, even used games on consoles are often 15-20€, on the PC I don't pay more then 5€ for new games
• GOG provides easy access to older games
• consoles now require constant patches and firmware upgrades, thus the plug&play advantage they once had is largely gone
  

So long story short: Steam and the competition makes PC gaming easy and cheap and the long console lifecycle has kept hardware requirements low. Support for gamepads and HDMI out also means that I can game on a PC like I do on a console. Since that graphics card upgrade my PS3 is collecting dust, every now and then I switch it on, but then I only cringe at being forced to do yet another firmware upgrade and being welcomed with an slowly and unresponsive shopping interface.
 
One thing PC gaming could still do better is system requirements, they are extremely imprecise and basically unreadable for any regular person thanks to the weird naming of graphics card and CPUs. Why can't Steam tell me: "This game will run with at 30fps on your PC on high settings" or "Sorry, this game won't run on your PC"? 
 
As for the future, I currently don't have any plans on getting a Wii U, Xbox720 or PS4. To much lock-in, to much focus on trying to get a subscription for their online service and nothing that makes them stand out from a PC. Once upon a time I used PCs for X-Wing and consoles for jump'n runs, that separation is no longer there, everybody does now, aside from a handful of exclusives, the same types of games.