#oneaday Day 128: That’s Not Very PC

I just bought a new PC. Well, technically, I bought a case with a motherboard, processor, RAM and PSU pre-installed along with a graphics card, the wrong wireless adapter, a hard drive, a DVD drive and a few other little bits and pieces. Technically speaking, it cost a lot of money that I don’t really have, but while I can at least “sort of” afford it (that’s the closest I’m going to get for a while) I figured I’d take the plunge as a birthday treat to myself.

I have it hooked up to my HDTV and it looks glorious at 1080p. Naturally, the first thing I did was download a bunch of stuff from my Steam account that used to run like ass on my Mac and see how well it works on the new machine. Here are my findings so far:

• Mass Effect – Silky smooth, character models are blurrier than I remember from the Xbox version, but the gorgeous framerate makes up for that.
• The Witcher – Super-sexy hi-res, though the frame rate chugs a bit if there’s a fancy magical effect taking up a lot of the screen. It otherwise looks great, though.
• Crysis – Bought for £2.50 in the EA sale the other day even though I have been fairly anti-Crysis in the past — granted, I haven’t played it and was ready to dismiss it as a shooter. But by God that game looks fantastic. Am actually intrigued to play it, too — it seems to be rather different from your typical corridor shooter.
• Left 4 Dead 2 – Silky-smooth. Hi-res. Actually playable rather than borderline unplayable.
• Borderlands – My God why did I ever play this on a console? (Although the PC interface is a bit crap in the menus.)
• Magicka – actually runs and looks like fun. Bit juddery at times though I think that is more down to its questionable programming than performance issues.
• TrackMania United – Looks great on a 40″ HDTV and is just as fun as ever. Looking forward to TrackMania 2 now.
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent – Had a copy of this for ages, just started. Looks utterly terrifying. Looking forward to it.

So. Looking forward to playing some games the way they are meant to be played. And of course, if any of you want to add me on Steam, you can feel free — Steam community username is, as always, “angryjedi”. Say hey and feel free to send me a message or send me an invite to a game.

Now I’m off to go and shit my pants at Amnesia. See you in the morning. Maybe.