I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. From my humble beginnings playing FIFA on the Playstation during early saturday mornings as a child, to the present day, where gaming takes up most of my free time. Throughout the years I have gone from solely playing FIFA all day, every day, to trying new games and broadening my horizons. I can attribute this change to two trusty consoles, the Playstation 2 and the Xbox 360, for me, the two most influential consoles on my gaming habits ( I can’t speak for the N64 or SNES as I have never owned one or played on one). These two beautiful pieces of machinery and plastic introduced me to stunning fantasy worlds, such as Skyrim, the beaches of war, Medal of Honor Frontlines. They opened my eyes to more games than just FIFA.
These days FIFA is not the all-encompassing behemoth on my gaming life that it once was, I still play it from time to time but I’m much more interested in other games these days, ones with story, great gameplay and gorgeous art styles. A brief look at my collection shows first person shooters, racing games and third person action/ adventures. But lately I have been playing extraordinary amounts of Strategy games, Free to Plays and MOBA’s.
You see, I’ve very recently gone through a transition, a conversion if you will. I’d always dreamt of owning a super gaming PC, one that runs all my games and more at a higher resolution, better frame rate and higher graphical fidelity, and now that time has come. It might not be a high tier, upper echelon rig like some people but it suits me fine. I can now play War Thunder, something my friends had been urging, nay, begging me to play for quite some time. I can play Dota and LoL, yet again something I’d been recommended by others. But I can finally play a genre of games that had long been a great love of mine, but unfortunately consoles still haven’t quite figured out how to do very well. The strategy genre.
Don’t get me wrong, some strategy games on console have been done very well and with some very innovative ideas, Tom Clancy’s Endwar is the first that springs to mind. Obviously realising that a gamepad is far inferior to a keyboard and mouse (and it is, I’ve come to realise this fairly quickly), Endwar chose to use voice commands in order to move units, attack bases ETC.
Although it sounds extremely gimmicky, it worked pretty well for the most part. The system was basic enough for casual players, like myself at the time, to order units around and beat the campaign fairly easily. But the system was also complex enough that veterans could beat the game on the hardest difficulty with ease. Halo Wars also comes to my mind when I think of successful console strategy games. The developers simplified how to move units, attack and build your base, all completed with one button, at most two. These games had started something within myself. A love for strategy games.
As I’ve previously said my experiences lately have made me realise that the keyboard and mouse duo is superior to the gamepad for strategy games. I can now move individual units across the battlefield without having to find them and then drag the across to the other side. This coupled with the superior performance of PC’s and the multitude of exclusive games has converted me to the dark side, the PC master race as most PC gamers call it, or so it seems. I’ll still play my consoles every so often as there will always be an exclusive game I’m dying to play. And I can’t really take a PC, keyboard, mouse and monitor to bed so I can play in the comfort of my bed. But for now I’m converted to PC, to an extent.