I've recently taken a trip to China for the summer and left my PS3 back in Canada. I'll be here for four months, so I decided to try out some PC games to play during this time.  Hence, I downloaded steam and bought some games, borderlands, trine, torchlight and portal (free). It's been awhile since I've played PC games (not since the heyday of Starcraft and Age of Empires). So far, Torchlight is great, portal is fun, and the general steam experience and acheievements have been positive.
 
But ultimately a series of other issues have arisen which remind me why I abbandoned PC gaming years ago...
 
Borderlands was great for a little while. I got up to a 10th lvl character and was enjoying the game. But there have been a number of technical problems. First my gamepad doesn't work properly with the game (which is ok, since I can just use mouse and keyboard). Second, and more servere, is that a strange crashing bug has appeared out of nowhere. Didn't bother me untill after about 6 hours of gameplay or so, and now I can't load a character without crashing the game with a "general protection fault error". My laptop meets the specs for this game just fine, and it ran well at first, so that is not the issue. I have discovered that this is a very common problem with a 71 page thread on the gearbox forums full of people complaining of it. Of course since Borderlands is a console-first game the PC market and the technical issues of a minority are not enough to warrant development resources and so the problem remains unaddressed. I have spent hours troubleshooting this problem and have given up. Which sucks, because I paid for this game and now I cannot play it!!! The lesson here: don't buy console games on the PC! Unreliable.
 
Trine seems like it might be a fun game. Ever tried playing a platformer with a mouse and keyboard? I would rather use my gamepad, thank you very much. Problem is, the right thunmbstick doesn't work properly in this game. I downloaded new logitech drivers and software to try and fix the problem, but the software won't run because my computer claims I don't have permission to do so. After several more hours of fiddling with ownerships, permissions, and administrator settings, I've once again given up. Not sure if I'll try playing Trine with the mouse and keyboard or not... not terribly attractive. The lesson here:  even when the game works, windows or peripheral devices can start to give you trouble. Unpredictable.
 
So, the end result, out of the three games I purchased, only one (Torchlight) actually works. I've have spent more time this week troubleshooting all these problems than actual gaming!!! This is the great burden of PC gaming. You can buy stuff and even start to play stuff,  but you never know when a problem will come up that ruins your gaming time. And so often, the response of PC  gamers is that I should just buy a whole new rig. No. That is not an option and my laptop is first and formost for school and I am not willing to upgrade it specifically for playing games. When I get back from my trip, the PS3 comes out, and I really don't know if I'll bother much with PC games in the future. It seems the only ones worth considering are games built specifically for the PC (ex. Starcraft 2, Torchlight), where the developers resources are actually devoted to making sure the game runs properly! 
 
Given all this, I guess it's not particularly suprisingly that so few developers can manage success with PC games, and also not surprising the the relatively care free console environment is so much more attractive to modern gamers...

... is that it leads to pointless blog posts like this one. 
 
Gyromite was a fun game if you had somebody to play it with. And no, R.O.B. doesn't count, even though he could technically play the game with you.