I consider my self a gamer, I’m not any one kind of gamer I like all kinds of games. Board, card, video, and sports (more watching not so much the playing). I’m not partial to any one type of game over another I just enjoy playing games.
On the subject of video games I consider myself a PC gamer first and foremost and console gamer a far distant second. I’ve been that way for coming up on 10 years now (basically since my first run through with the original half life and the X-wing / TIE fighter games of the later 90’s). Last night I had a experience that may have signaled the shift of my PC gamer status. Playing the “Left 4 Dead” demo with Curtis and Nick we kept having some serious technical issues. We are all running Vista on our gaming boxes and you all know how much I loathe Vista, sadly Vista didn’t cause the headache it was game itself. Which is really unfortunate since it runs on the STEAM service for the PC and honestly if I’m going to buy a game on the PC and it’s on STEAM that is how I’m going to buy it.
The problems seemed to be mostly of the beta/demo variety which I can understand, but after having such a good experience with Team Fortress 2 last year during the beta period I was fairly disappointed by the technical problems last night. What happened next is to me amazing, I downloaded the “Left 4 Dead” demo onto my Xbox and played for about an hour online with public groups with really no problems outside of the occasional lag spike.
My experince with “Left 4 Dead” is probally not that common experince I will still pick up the game since when it did work the game lived up to the usual polish and refinement that I have come to expect out of the folks at Valve.
I have to say though, this is the first game that if I knew more people who would be picking it up on the Xbox I would probally go that route rather then the PC.