Change of Habit

I usually avoid magazines at the doctor’s office for obvious reasons. But on a recent visit I saw a couple of neglected issues of PC Gamer sitting on a table in the waiting room. After recovering from my double take, I noticed both issues were from 2008. It was kinda like seeing an old friend from high school. In this case, my friend had dropped a lot of weight. Setting aside my germ phobia, I thumbed through the issues, reading a few articles and reviews. While the writing was up to the same high standard I remembered, the games discussed were completely foreign. Of the games reviewed, I had only heard of a couple. And based on the scores given, it didn’t look like I was missing out on much.

Although I’ve spent a lot of time with my Xbox 360 over the past 18 months, I still consider myself a PC gamer at heart. In fact, I maintain a classic Pentium system (running Windows 95) that I can play my old DOS games on at a reasonably slow speed; after 14 years, X-Com still rocks! But as reinforced by the magazine reviews, there hasn’t been too many compelling reasons to upgrade my four-year-old Pentium IV system. I can still run WoW, Company of Heroes, and all of the Battlefield games. What more do I need? Plus, most multi-platform titles look just as good on my 360 as they do on my PC. While there are some games on the horizon (Spore, The Sims 3) that might warrant an upgrade, it looks like my aging PC will last me much longer than I expected. Who knew? I never thought I’d feel so content with such an old machine.