Steam

I've been a gamer as long as I can remember. The earliest system I remember playing a lot was Coleco. I actually had an Atari 2600 before that and remember playing it, but it wasn't till Coleco that I remember consciously going back and playing again and again cause I loved it.

My parents never bought me a Nintendo anything until the 64 and Turbo Grafx 16 was a gamer's paradise until they all started epic failing and the company went broke.

After that it was Sega Genesis and then PC gaming.

I spent a good portion of my young life playing games on the PC. Star Wars: Rebel Assault was a good one, but it was MDK and MechWarrior 2 that showed me what gaming could be and The Neverhood that proved games can be funny, touching, silly and serious.

After my parents PC couldn't play new games anymore it was on to the 64 and then GameCube and then the XBOX and then 360 and then PS3 and now with the revelation (late to the party and a revelation to me at least) of Steam I'm back to PC gaming.

I've recently come into the possession of a brand new decently powerful 17 inch laptop that runs pretty new games well.

Left 4 Dead is a game that I would love to come over to the PS3, but since there seems to be no signs of that ever happening I realized that maybe my new laptop could do it. I looked up the minimum specs and everything was in place. Everything required my computer had in spades....except for the graphics card. It's some junk no brand name internal thing and I was worried that it might not run.

With some comfort from Juniper I took the plunge and downloaded L4D and it works awesome! I now have access to literally hundreds and hundreds of extra maps at no charge! The game was just given legs way past what Microsoft or Sony would ever allow!

Needless to say I've been having a blast playing on the PC again and I wish you guys would jump in too....at least for the shit ton of L4D user created boards.

Since I had some birthday money left over I purchased Mass Effect 1 and 2 off of Steam for 40 bucks total! A used copy for the PS3 would run 50 bucks and I'd still have to pay the 15 buck activation for the DLC because I got a used copy.

Bottom line is that I'm really looking forward to diving headfirst into some more serious games over the next several months and with the revelation of how great, easy to use and customer friendly Steam is I'm seriously considering plunking down the cash (if all goes well with my new work that is) to get a respectable gaming desktop.

Juniper has been right all along about Steam and thanks to his nonstop talking about how great PC gaming and Steam is I'm glad to say he had a large part in me at least giving it a shot again.

Steam is very awesome and honestly it works a lot like the 360 and PS3 Dashboards except a lot more versatile.

That is all.

or is it?!

P.S. I'm shocked at how much better L4D looks on a PC. I mean it's common sense that the PC games look better than the consoles, but seriously there are many games that look better on the 360 than the PC version of L4D. You can actually see your legs on PC.

P.P.S. Something that's always bugged me about console games is that there can be a startling amount of "jaggies." I wasn't looking for them, but it just stands out to me how much less of a problem it is on the PC.

P.P.P.S. This is not meant to start a flame war. I'm just excited to have a machine that has the ability to do these things.

That is finally all.