I Finally Gave PC Gaming A Shot, And Now I’m A True Believer

For as long as I’ve been a gamer, I’ve always been attached to home consoles. From the NES to the PlayStation 5, the console was always my gaming home base, and I was happy with its convenience. When it comes to PC gaming, though, I’ve always watched from afar, envious of the buttery-smooth frame rates and graphics, but intimidated by the parts, drivers, settings, and prices.

But that time had come. I needed a new PC anyway, and I set out to see if whatever hype the folks over at the PC Master Race really lived up to the hype. As it turns out, being told what PC gaming has to offer didn’t make me a believer — but Feeling This did the trick for me.

ready player 2

My first forays into the wide world of PC gaming started with some research. Knowing my technical limitations, I immediately gave up on custom-made or build-it-yourself models and looked at what pre-built gaming PCs were available. In theory, this should be as intuitive as a console to go and allow me to get comfortable with the platform before deciding whether or not to go deeper and start tinkering on my own. .

After some research, but relying mostly on recommendations, I ultimately went with NZXT’s Player 2 Prime. This model, I was told, would easily match or surpass my PS5. The product page was partially unreadable to me, which I expected, beyond the type of graphics card and amount of memory (which happens to be an Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti and 32GB of RAM).

The main specs section was most helpful to me as a newcomer to PC gaming, especially the box that estimates how many frames per second (fps) I’ll get running games. call of Duty Modern Warfare And Fortnite at different resolutions. I’d never experienced triple-digit FPS before, so that alone got me excited to make the leap.

The Player 2 Prime arrived as advertised and was just as easy to set up as the console itself. All I had to do was take it out of the box and plug it in, my monitor, and keyboard and mouse, and I was able to get started. At least, that’s what I was sold on.

Immediately, I was struck by an issue that felt like an ominous one. I’m not sure how or why, but the Bluetooth range on my particular unit seemed ridiculously short. I’m talking about not being able to use headphones more than a foot away from tower levels of bad. Thankfully, I have wired options, but if I were someone who only used wireless accessories via Bluetooth, this would be a bigger issue.

Setup problems like this were half of what kept me away from PC gaming all these years. However, I was determined not to lose heart. If this PC can live up to the promise of high FPS counts and eye-watering graphics, I can forgive a few technical issues along the way.

max out

I wasn’t confident enough to start investing heavily in games for this new PC. After all, I still wasn’t completely sold on committing to the PC platform. Luckily, there are plenty of free PC games out there that have been able to show me what this new rig can do. since i’ve played a thousand games Hello 2 And hello 3 Before going back to PlayStation, I felt Hello Anant Would be an appropriate place to start since I knew what to expect. One download later, I was in the Settings menu.

My first order of business was setting everything to max. Graphics, shadows, texture quality — the whole nine yards — were set as high as possible. I also hit up the convenient FPS display option, as my eye isn’t so sharp for frame rates above 60, especially coming from a console. With that, I loaded into a match. All it took was one game that made me question whether I’d ever go back to consoles again.

off, and i mean Close, At 120 fps, I’ve never felt like I’ve been in control of a first-person shooter before. My aim was fast, the controls were responsive, and everything was just fine. felt Better in a way I’d always heard about but never understood until I experienced it. This is all despite my unfamiliarity with keyboard and mouse controls. Still, he was a match – I was converted. If games could feel like this, how could I have played like before? It’ll be like going back to standard-definition TV after experiencing 4K.

Even then, Hello Anant Is a few years old now and not pushing the graphical boundaries in any way. If my PC was as modern as advertised, it obviously would have no problem handling whatever the game was throwing at it. My next test will be something new, or better yet, to come. i chose demo for this resident Evil 4 Remake.

Booting up this demo, I found myself really excited to go into the Settings menu to see what I could do, and I again limited everything – even the settings. Even in tracing. Instead of max fps, though, this time I left it to variable. According to Counter, this resulted in frame rates above 160 fps. Once again, that blissful responsiveness dawned on me and, without really noticing, I completely forgot to keep an eye on the frame counter. I’m sure I would have noticed if it dropped significantly, but this is what I’d call a best-case scenario: I was totally engrossed and immersed in the game. No technical glitches or “PC problems” went over their heads.

I know I am in the honeymoon period right now. More technical issues will arise of course, but there is also a large community of players with years (or decades) of experience that I can turn to. Knowing this, I’m surprised to say this, but I feel more comfortable taking on PC gaming than I thought I would.

No, I haven’t sold my PS5 yet, but I know which platform I’ll be spending my gaming time on in the future.

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