I’d play game demos which computer magazines bundled in their cds. It was fun. Actually, gaming back then was different than what it’s today. And it was also better in many respects, but I’ll save that for another post.

PC has mouse, keyboard and a dextrous hand

I hope you all might have heard of, or at least played games like Counter Strike or other First Person Shooters (FPS). While we use the WASD keys for skillful maneuvering, our skilled usage of the mouse does most of the grunt work.

Even games like Age of Empires requires the use of mouse. That’s how we select, control and move our forces. That’s how we convey where we want the stuffs to be built.

But what about consoles?

When I first played Lord of the Rings on my new Xbox 360, I was a little nervous. Without the mouse, how would I select what I want, and make them do what I want them to do? And that was not it. How can I do it fast?

However, I followed a simple tutorial to get acquainted with the controls, and found them comfortable. While on PC I could select individual people in games like AoE, but in this game, I selected groups. That ensured that I could select people pretty quickly.

Navigating around was also not a problem, and I pretty much got used to it. I was really enjoying playing the game. It was fun and challenging. However, the controls never came in the way.

And that applies to FPS too, folks

The ultimate “Counter Strike” test was playing Gears of War.

It was not just point and shoot, but involved a whole lot of strategy. I did find aiming and firing a bit awkward at first, but got used to it quite fast.

The graphics were, of course, amazing.

The console advantage

The controls of the console are designed to be “gaming friendly.” It’s not a multipurpose PC keyboard that also helps in word processing. It’s simply optimized for the one thing you want to do, that is gaming.

Also, the same generation consoles don’t differ in any performance parameters (apart from maybe hard-disk space). So, even person who owns a console will get a similar gaming experience.

A few years back, it was very difficult to purchase any new PC game that came out. Your hardware had to be strong enough. You needed to have the next generation graphics card that just got released a month earlier and what not.

Consoles apparently don’t have those problems.

So, what do you need?

Well, you need a console. I personally own an Xbox 360.

It comes with a variety of hard-drive capacity. You have the Xbox 360 4GB and the Xbox 360 250GB.

Though I don’t own a PlayStation 3, I did own the PlayStation 2.

You can check out the 160GB version here.

It was quite fun playing games like God of War and Smackdown vs Raw on a PS2. And I believe PS3 would provide for quite a nice experience. If you’re interested in the games I mentioned, they’re available for PS3 too: God of War Collection, God of War III, Smackdown vs Raw 2011 (of course I had older versions of these games).

Give consoles a shot

I too like playing PC games. I’m a big of Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2 and many other games that have come and gone. But consoles provide a different, if not a better experience.