Sweet, Sweet November…

I’m currently enjoying the single-player campaign of Gears of War on the PC. I’m playing it like it was meant to be played – with the faithful combo of mouse and keys. On November 6th, I was looking all over for this long anticipated game – only to find out Microsoft had stiffed me and the TRUE release date was the 7th, despite what their site said. But all gripes aside, the year-old game still manages to blow me away – graphics, gameplay and all. And this thing’s only the tip of the iceberg for this glorious month.

A symbolic event in this month is the opening of a Gamestop that’s less than 10 minutes from my house. This is truly a sweet November – next week, Crysis comes out in all its DX10 glory, and I’ve pre-ordered the collector’s edition at said store. Life is good – especially since this is the first time I’ll ever spend $60 on a game. For anyone who’s played the demo though, one can see its very convincing in getting people to drop the cash. It sets a new bar for what shooters should look like – nothing, not even Halo 3, can top this game. I can go on and on ranting about the game. However, much like trying to describe an experience one has during a beautiful vacation on some tropical island (sans the flying bullets), it’s impossible to try to convey with words what one sees in this game. If you’ve got the hardware and haven’t heard of this game, you’ve been under a rock for the past couple of years, and go download the @#$%ing demo right now. If you’re still running last years machine (which should, admittedly, be just fine for most games), it’s time to upgrade that piece of junk right now. Much like Half-Life 2 justified a major hardware upgrade back in 2004, Crysis does the same this year – only it’s leaps and bounds beyond what HL2 graphics had to offer.

A good gaming PC can be had for a pretty cheap price nowadays. A PC with a Core 2 Duo, GeForce 8800GT, 4GB of DDR2-800 RAM, nForce 680i Motherboard and the works costs less than two grand. Pump it up a bit with a Core 2 Quad and an 8800 GTX,  and it should be able to handle just about everything that’s thrown at it.

With all the new hardware and games coming out this month, there’s never been a better time to be a PC gamer.