That’s What She Said: #ilovesteam

I’ve become a bit of a PC gamer. I know the entire internet is going to explode, so before it does I’ll qualify that by using that dirty “c” word (no, not that one get your mind out the gutter sailor); a casual PC gamer. As I’ve often said when professing my love for all things PlayStation, I don’t have the patience nor the intellect for building a PC or maintaining any sort of hardware requirements, so I copped out and used (what I think) is a not too bad laptop for it. That way, I only play what I can play (and sometimes this is by not even meeting the minimum requirements), hope for a stable internet connection and see what my appetite for this new and exciting medium is.

I have a Steam account obviously (I don’t know if there is any other way that one can play PC games) and you should all invite me (I am as original as deshni_naidoo) but not ask me to play Dota 2 with you because I have lines that will not be crossed. I think that Steam is honestly fantastic. I never wanted to think this because I am one of those people who believe that the only thing Valve should ever be concentrating on is Half-Life 3 and that giving the world anything else (SteamOS, Steam boxes, Steam spaceships) is an insult to humankind and a slap in our collective faces.

But Steam is amazing. It really works so much better than the PS Store and doesn’t it make the most amount of sense for your profile and the Store to be in one place? Also, the gifting model is nothing short of amazing. I’ve recently discovered that I can send Kindle gifts (so the gift of books) to people who don’t have Kindles and now I can buy gifts on Steam as well. Being able to give the gift of books and games is definitely making me happier but also closer to committing acts of insolvency.

Since I started buying the majority of my PS4 games digitally (because laziness and also being able to share it across consoles with my account) I really don’t mind the download sizes anymore (or the amount of time that it takes) and the majority of games I have downloaded on Steam were between 10GB and 20GB, which isn’t bad at all. And so, onto the games!

I’ve been using Steam mostly to play private online co-op games and my inventory currently contains Starbound, Trine 2 and Divinity: Original Sin (which is quite possibly the coolest game title I have ever encountered). It will soon also house the newish Counter-Strike (Global Offensive) game when my internet connection decides to behave itself.

Playing on a PC is obviously something very new for me considering that I have spent most of my life on a PlayStation and other than The Sims, I think the last proper PC game I played was Doom. I haven’t made the decision to use an Xbox 360 controller for the games yet (mostly because I think I will be violently ill if I walk into a store to buy one or even add it to my online cart for delivery) so I have been making do with “WASD” and my mouse. Personally I think the whole “WASD” model is silly but I understand that everything cannot be a PS4 controller.

Since I’ve just been playing platformers, RPGs and Minecraft in space (that is quite literally what Starbound is and as someone who didn’t even have the wherewithal to build a wooden structure in actual Minecraft to protect themselves from zombies, I have no idea why I spent good ZAR on this), the mouse hasn’t caused too much drama for me. I think though that in the face of shooters, which obviously newish Counter-Strike is, I am going to see my ass (not literally).

I played the majority of Trine 2 as the soldier so I can manage the brutish basic attacks but I fear that when I have to deal with something as complicated as a firearm (and headshots obviously) I am going to run into trouble. With Divinity, it’s an old school proper turn-based RPG (is everyone not so impressed with me for trying to conquer this nemesis of a genre?) so the combat is pretty simple when it comes to attacking using the mouse (not actually simple because lord only knows how action points actually work). I am hopefully getting to a somewhat decent handle on the controls, and I am sure that I will get there. Heck, maybe one day I will even play Dota 2 (no, that is never going to happen for me).

What I love the most about Steam though is that it seems to have everything (minus console exclusives obviously), and not just games in the proper sense of a completed ready (haha Ubisoft) to sell AAA title or even the little indie darlings I love being confused over, but games that are in development and in beta (although after Starbound I may never delve into this quagmire again), games that get greenlit (are greenlighted) and then all the recommendations for games I should be interested in and want to follow their development and news. It feels a lot more like a community (and I think this is where the store and game account tie in works so well) discovering games together, than just having feeds about what games your friends are playing and the number of trophies they have earned.

I don’t think I will ever become more than a casual PC gamer, but I am definitely loving the Steam experience. And while I will never forgive them for not focusing all their attention on Half-Life 3, dearest Valve I hate you a little less now.

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