This past year i treated myself to gaming capable PC. I'd held out for awhile because when i was the younger in th early 90s the shelf life of even a top end gaming PC was only about a year, then it would be rendered obsolete by whatever the latest release was. because of this i avoided PC gaming and focused on consoles feeling that at least then i would be on a level playing field as everyone else. Fast forward to this past year and i made a purchase that I should have made a long time ago: a video card. I realize now, that is was greatly extends the lifetime of a gaming PC. Add to this that in my absence Steam really established itself in the realm of digital game distribution, and its been a super slippery slope. Steam sales don't help much in regards to financial restraint either. Coming from consoles where when a game is $40 that's a steal, to PC gaming where you can see the same game go for $10 and lower during steam sales... you get the idea. In a nutshell, my steam library has ballooned dramatically. I still can't believe that each of those little single 8 pt line of text listings is a 20+ hour gaming experience. they just seem so unremarkable listed like that. Then I switch to the banner mode where each game has banner title pic of it and i'm disgusted at myself for having so many games and having played all the way through so few of them. its like going to a diner where they just have pages and pages of food to order: you end up overwhelmed and forget what you wanted in the fist place. this manifests itself in what I feel is the ultimate irresponsibility double dipping on the same game on both PC and consoles. Now there are exceptions: For example Dark souls PC had the DLC included as well as the updated graphics, and sometimes the PC versions are optimized from the problematic console counterparts, like with the Last Remnant, which fixed game breaking bugs and technical hiccups. Still, I now own Devil may cry 4 on both xbox (which i never got around to playing) then bought it again on a steam flash sale for PC (and ironically am enjoying it there very much). The fate of the original xbox version i purchased? who knows.

There is a drawback to this though. due to the ease of access to PC games, the average skill level of multiplayer games is astronomically high right off the bat. Take Super Street Fighter 4 for example. i played the shit out of it on xbox 360 (about 200 hours) so while not amazing, i'm pretty comfortable with it and not a noob by any means. So during this past Steam winter sale it was going for 12 bucks, so thought why not pick it up to see how the pc community is, maybe even grab some of those nifty mods i see. well I fire it up hop online and get raped, brutally and continuously I admit i was out of practice having been playing SFxT, but it was clear he people playing in the PC community had been doing so for some time, and here were no people left still finding their way. On the console there are plenty of less skilled players such as myself and so its much easier to find someone at your level. I promptly uninstalled the game and decided fighters belong on consoles, so scrubs like myself can, well, scrub together.

This past year i treated myself to gaming capable PC. I'd held out for awhile because when i was the younger in th early 90s the shelf life of even a top end gaming PC was only about a year, then it would be rendered obsolete by whatever the latest release was. because of this i avoided PC gaming and focused on consoles feeling that at least then i would be on a level playing field as everyone else. Fast forward to this past year and i made a purchase that I should have made a long time ago: a video card. I realize now, that is was greatly extends the lifetime of a gaming PC. Add to this that in my absence Steam really established itself in the realm of digital game distribution, and its been a super slippery slope. Steam sales don't help much in regards to financial restraint either. Coming from consoles where when a game is $40 that's a steal, to PC gaming where you can see the same game go for $10 and lower during steam sales... you get the idea. In a nutshell, my steam library has ballooned dramatically. I still can't believe that each of those little single 8 pt line of text listings is a 20+ hour gaming experience. they just seem so unremarkable listed like that. Then I switch to the banner mode where each game has banner title pic of it and i'm disgusted at myself for having so many games and having played all the way through so few of them. its like going to a diner where they just have pages and pages of food to order: you end up overwhelmed and forget what you wanted in the fist place. this manifests itself in what I feel is the ultimate irresponsibility double dipping on the same game on both PC and consoles. Now there are exceptions: For example Dark souls PC had the DLC included as well as the updated graphics, and sometimes the PC versions are optimized from the problematic console counterparts, like with the Last Remnant, which fixed game breaking bugs and technical hiccups. Still, I now own Devil may cry 4 on both xbox (which i never got around to playing) then bought it again on a steam flash sale for PC (and ironically am enjoying it there very much). The fate of the original xbox version i purchased? who knows.

There is a drawback to this though. due to the ease of access to PC games, the average skill level of multiplayer games is astronomically high right off the bat. Take Super Street Fighter 4 for example. i played the shit out of it on xbox 360 (about 200 hours) so while not amazing, i'm pretty comfortable with it and not a noob by any means. So during this past Steam winter sale it was going for 12 bucks, so thought why not pick it up to see how the pc community is, maybe even grab some of those nifty mods i see. well I fire it up hop online and get raped, brutally and continuously I admit i was out of practice having been playing SFxT, but it was clear he people playing in the PC community had been doing so for some time, and here were no people left still finding their way. On the console there are plenty of less skilled players such as myself and so its much easier to find someone at your level. I promptly uninstalled the game and decided fighters belong on consoles, so scrubs like myself can, well, scrub together.

I encounter plenty of really bad people on SFIVAE PC, don't fret, they are there.

what a lovely story

If you've put 200+ hours into SSFIV on xbox, you should be at the point where you're not intimidated by superior competition, in fact you look forward to it. You're not going to get any better by bodying scrubs, it just strokes your ego. But thats just my opinion.