I never really got into Steam. Unfortunately, right as it was rising to prominence I had pretty much gone into console monogamy. In the late 90s and early 2000s I built my PCs to be the finest gaming machines I could muster, but by 2004 I was using Macs and had no real desire to play anything requiring a Mac and Keyboard.
Flash forward to 2009. I know have a decent graphics card (Radeon 4870) in my Mac Pro and have been absolutely gorging on Steam’s greatness since the holidays. Amazing sales from December through January helped me catch up on many games that I had missed, but I also dove into new games that tickled my fancy.
I’m really surprised I didn’t jump on this service sooner as it is one of the smoothest consumer experiences I’ve ever had. They have great stuff, I pay, and then I have. Steam has achievements, voice chat, text chat, and full body massages and all these elements add to the experience.
I started with Half Life 2. I know, heresy, apostasy, whatever. In any case, everything I had heard about this classic is true. Absolute amazing game that brought me back into First Person Shooters. From there I tackled the highly touted Portal that kept me on the edge of my computer seat from start to finish. Valve’s design is akin to the highest level of story telling in film as applied to gameplay. I’ve also been diving into Crysis which just blows me away both with visuals and gameplay. These games are incredibly immersive and it makes me wonder why I didn’t care sooner.
I never thought I would say this, but PC has become my platform of choice. If there is a multi platform game I can play it with better visuals, a better suited controller if it is an FPS, or I can use any other console controller I see fit. I haven’t been so into on PC games since I was playing Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight ever night till the early morning hours. My only regret is that I didn’t start sooner.
