Custom Gaming PC VS Console. Which One Should You Buy?

Photo by kilovega on deviantart

So, you have some cash and are ready to get a new state of the art console or build your own custom personal gaming computer. Which one do you go with? I am not going to tell you whether to buy an Xbox One X, PS4 Pro or the Nintendo Switch, but I will use the PS4 Pro in comparison to building a custom gaming computer.

First off, you need to look at pricing. The cost of a PS4 Pro before buying games is $500 plus tax, which comes to about $565. This is just for the console with no games and extra accessories. Also, the assumption is you already own a TV. The cost of a game will be about $30 to $80, so let’s round the starting cost of buying a console to $600. Next, let’s look at the price of a custom gaming computer and why you should choose individual parts rather than buying a pre-made assembled computer.

Building a custom machine vs a pre-built requires you to have knowledge of what parts to pick out and how to assemble the computer. For inexperienced people it involves research and tutorials, but this process can save you a couple hundred dollars. Typically the cost will be at least $1,200, (though you can spend a lot more,) and this does not include the cost of a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. But let’s assume you already own these components. (If you don’t, you will have to spend several hundred dollars more.) The entry cost for a gaming machine is about double the cost of a console, but there are other pros and cons.

credit to sony interactive entertainment

The more money that is put into a custom gaming computer, the more superior it will be to a console. This is mainly due to the graphics card you buy. You can spend anywhere from $200 to $1,000 on a graphics card alone. Comparing a PS4 Pro to a custom gaming computer in terms of bang for buck, the PS4 Pro wins for sure. But if you have a lot of cash, you can well surpass the PS4 Pro in graphics quality.

You’re not spending all this money just to look at an expensive machine. You want games! What platform is better for games, factoring in cost and exclusivity? Console games generally cost a lot more money to buy than buying PC games online. The price of console games goes down a lot slower than on PC, and this is mainly due to the PC gaming platform Steam.

Steam is a gamer’s paradise.

They always have games on sale to buy digitally, and they have huge deals. At certain times of the year, most games are on sale. If you have the patience to wait for better prices and choose to buy games that are on sale, you can typically get them for up to 75 per cent off. Steam has almost every game that has been released in the PC platform. When there is a big sale, you can buy games cheap and stockpile them to play later. It is by far the cheapest place to buy games.

Consoles will have exclusive games, though, but at a higher cost of purchase. The PS4 Pro has exclusive games that are top notch AAA games that are worth playing (like the new God of War or Uncharted 4.) You can’t get these games on Steam, and if they ever do end up on Steam it’ll take a long time to happen. Another point of comparison is the cost to play online. PlayStation Plus costs $70 a year to play games online. Playing a Steam game online is free unless you are paying a direct subscription to an MMO like World of Warcraft.

The PS4 Pro and other consoles win when it comes to entry cost and having decent graphics at an affordable price. But the best bang-for-buck when buying games is definitely purchasing through Steam on PC and, if you have the money and are willing, you can spend the savings to have a higher-end machine. This makes it a better option than owning a console.

Click here to see an awesome beginners guide on building a custom PC.

Click here to see the awesomeness of Steam.

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Evan McKinley

Evan McKinley is a 2nd year professional writing student that aspires to be a novel writer in the genre of fantasy. Favorite books and movies include The Lord of The Rings, Neverwhere and The Alchemist.

Why World of Warcraft is so Re-playable and Addictive

Art by Fearpredator ON DEVIANTaRT

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World of Warcraft has been in business since 2004. The number of people that still play is a testament to how well it’s made, how much content there is and how addictive it can be. Millions of people have played the game over the years, and Blizzard’s WoW has been “a license to print money.”

There is so much replayability, and the amount of content is huge. There have been seven major expansions with each adding a higher level cap, new classes and new zones to explore. There are so many zones and classes to explore and level up, that people can put all of their free time into WoW. The amount of time to get a character to max level can takes weeks or months depending on the commitment of the player. After the max level, the endgame starts where there are even more massive amounts of content where people guild up and spend huge amounts of time getting better gear and making attempts to overcome and defeat the end game dungeons.

Some people have spent years playing in a dedicated manner to this game to max level a character of every class and explore the different zones in WoW. Others come back every time there is a new expansion to try the new classes and explore the new zones. I think what is appealing to players is the range of different zones, each one being unique in its own sense of style and art.

Credit to Blizzard Entertainment

The mass amounts of content ties into the addiction side of the game. A lot of players feel like they are never done. They get so into WoW (whether it’s long-term or signing up for a new expansion) that they procrastinate with exiting the game and going to sleep or taking care of other things in their lives. WoW addiction is a real thing. People have actually died while endlessly binging on WoW. I’ve known people who have stayed up for two or three days at a time, playing. WoW addiction can be really unhealthy. It’s not Blizzard’s fault though: they made a great game that people get excited about. You can’t blame a liquor manufacturer for producing the whiskey that an alcoholic drinks. WoW is good in moderation.

Other elements tie into the addiction of WoW players. One is that people put in so much time into their characters that they feel attached to those characters. Part of this is that those characters are part of a guild. People don’t just get addicted to WoW to play; they get addicted to coming online and chatting with their guildmates. These people could be friends in the area the players live in and also anywhere in North America. People get attached to talking to others that they have never actually met in person. To top it off, the guilds schedule end-game dungeon runs that players have to be committed to. It’s like having a part-time job. I think that introverts just feel safe and accepted in this guild environment without having the discomfort and worry of going out into the real world.

To top everything off, I think the icing on the cake is how much people love the style of the graphics. Playing WoW really feels like you’re going on an adventure. WoW is good fun, but players need to know when to call it quits and deal with real life. It can easily be a way to escape from the outside world. Escaping for a couple hours here and there is all good, but I wouldn’t escape life every chance I get to log on.

Check out Blizzard’s newest expansion, Battle for Azeroth, by review with IGN.

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Evan McKinley

Evan McKinley is a 2nd year professional writing student that aspires to be a novel writer in the genre of fantasy. Favorite books and movies include The Lord of The Rings, Neverwhere and The Alchemist.

Why Are YouTube Walkthroughs and Let’s Plays So Entertaining?

Icon Property of YouTube

So, I have a question: Do you watch YouTube? Now, many of you may have answered yes to this, so my next question is do you watch video-game walkthroughs/playthroughs as well, and if so, why? Why is it that many of us, myself included, find Youtubers that do this kind of content for the respective channels entertaining to watch? The first logical explanation might be that we simply just have too much time on our hands, or that we are just bored or don’t care about what we are watching. But these seem to me as being the coward’s way out and that just won’t do.

I think that a big reason for why we find this kind of content so entertaining, might be do to the fact that we don’t just watch the game but the gamers as well. I think it is because of them that we are so entertained. Many of the more popular Youtubers that do video game walkthroughs and playthroughs usually have unique personalities. Some are funny while also having a deep respect for their fan-base, and may or may not have an odd hatred of chairs, but I digress. 

Some even try to get their viewers involved as much as possible in their content, but no matter what they display themselves as doesn’t matter so much because they do so in an entertaining manner or that’s just who they are inside.

Either way, that is what keeps us coming back for more. Another reason for this style being more entertaining is kind of easy when you really think about it; I mean who would you rather watch, a person who never talks? Or someone that talks all the time about various things in an attempt to keep we the viewers amused in some way.

Also, I don’t know about you folks, but the whole silent player routine really makes this kind of content seem kind of eerie to me. I mean, if you are not going to talk then why even go through the trouble and risks involved with uploading video games onto the site? Wouldn’t it be less risky to talk? Just saying it beats the heck out of me.

Now, there are probably a million other reasons why we watch these kinds of YouTube videos, and I would be quite interested to read about what you, the readers, can come up with in the comments section.

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Jesse Hill

Jesse Hill is a second year student in the professional writing program at Algonquin College. He wishes to be a novelist.

Nostalgia: Growing Up Gaming in the 90s

Art credit to Pixabay

I was born in 1988. Video games were always a part of my life starting with the original Nintendo system (that was released in 1985) with games like Super Mario 3, Zelda 2 and Mega Man 3.

Through the 90’s, I, like many other millennials, played the first Nintendo, Super Nintendo, the first Gameboy, Nintendo 64, PlayStation one and games on PC in the late 90’s. I was fortunate enough that over time, my dad bought all the systems but we only had one TV, so I and my 3 siblings had to share.

During the 90’s, there was no sense that the graphics were simple and primitive. There was no thought of comparison to modern times. Did those early games shape and contribute to our personalities and character? Did they affect what we liked and didn’t like as games evolved? It may have even affected what we grew to like for movies and books. I wonder what my life would be like now if I grew up without any video games. Would I be a different person now?

Playing these games as a child made me determined to explore and be adventurous. Video games made it so that I could experience things outside of the real world, that I could visit imaginations of the mind that I delighted in.

Why is it that when I see Mario, I think of Super Mario 64? Why does thinking about Mario bring forth feelings of fun and comfort? Mario 64 must have made me feel pretty good as a kid and somehow some of those feelings are still inside me decades later.

I thought about collecting the old game consoles and some of the best games associated with those consoles. I am not alone on this. I (like others) am willing to spend money to bring back the good feelings of the old days and relive some of my childhood. I don’t have those old consoles anymore. I suppose that I got to a point in life where I didn’t feel like I would play those old games anymore.

Now I feel like I should have those games and consoles around like someone holding on to a toy that they had when they were a child. I now realize that people are willing to pay for things that bring them good feelings about their childhood.

Looking back, one can think of how the old games evolved over time to the games of 2018. The worlds in modern games can be massive. Modern games are so much more complex like in leveling your character and selecting abilities to use. Back in the 90’s, they depended so much on the style of the game, and by this I mean it more as an art form and having characters that you got attached to. Story had to be good back then. Today many games just focus on the gameplay and the combat. They can more easily get away with not having original characters and great stories. Not all modern games are like this but a lot are.

What kids are growing up with today is very different than in the 90’s. Are modern games better in some ways? Yes they are. I however wouldn’t trade my childhood experience for modern games because I loved the originality of those games that I grew up with.

Here are a couple links to the games that started the industry. Super Mario 3 & Final Fantasy 7.

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Evan McKinley

Evan McKinley is a 2nd year professional writing student that aspires to be a novel writer in the genre of fantasy. Favorite books and movies include The Lord of The Rings, Neverwhere and The Alchemist.