I’m primarily a console gamer. My ideal Saturday afternoon is to sit down with a controller, cup of tea, blanket on my lap, and cat by my side in front of the television. I don’t tend to play on PC too often as I view that space as where I sit down to work every day. However, I will turn my desktop on when I’m in the mood for a game that can only be played on PC, or I feel the game is best enjoyed on PC. So, most of my PC game experience includes point and click adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island and isometric CRPGs like Planescape Torment or Fallout 2. I’ll also tend to lean towards PC for competitive FPS and co-op games, as I enjoy utilising Discord in conjunction with them.
However, now that I’ve built my new PC, I’ve been tempted to dabble in some more PC gaming as I can finally run games at big boy resolutions and frame rates. So, for this post I’m going to go out of my comfort zone, and try my hand at a few games on PC that I could play on console and compare the experience of playing them in 1440p/165hz, just to see what all the fuss is about. So, let’s finally decide who is the winner for me, PC or console gaming.
Dead Rising
As I now have a brand spanking new computer that can run most games with the graphics settings cranked up to ultra – it only made sense that the first game I tested out was from 2006. I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. Perhaps I should’ve started with Skyrim with a bunch of mods or something, but I just wanted to see how old faithful (granted it was the 2016 remaster) was going to look in 2021.
I’m not going to lie; it felt good to crank up those settings to the max, something I haven’t been able to do in the past. Witnessing my dearly beloved run at over 100 frames was good fun, and the obvious graphical upgrade was a treat too. Those silly looking NPCs with ghastly 2006 facial features actually looked respectable in 1440p! (They’re still going to keep me up at night though). Also, the lighting effects were really impressive, with the reflection of those god awful artificial light tubes that plague shopping malls everywhere looking hyper realistic. Especially when reflected off of the ‘waxed to a mirror sheen’ floors of the supermarket. Overall though, it was an experience that remained pretty similar to that of the one I had on the Playstation 4, so I think it’s time to test something else.
Sunset Overdrive
For something a little more recent, I wanted to pick a shooter with fast, twitchy movement in the hopes it would bring the best out of my new rig. Instantly, the graphics got an eyebrow raise out of me. For a game that’s a few years old now, Sunset Overdrive looks stunning in 1440p thanks to its stylish art direction and realistic lighting effects. I didn’t test how many frames I got while playing, (I’m not that big a nerd) but despite one of the missions being a wave based shooter where there were dozens of enemies on screen, I didn’t notice any slowdown as I sped around grinding on wires whilst shooting them all down.
Also I can’t confirm for certain, but it felt like I was a better shot? Perhaps it was just placebo, but I’m usually garbage with mouse and keyboard, however I was hardly missing here? Perhaps a high refresh rate monitor makes more of a difference that I initially thought! Overall my experience here didn’t completely blow my mind, but consider me impressed with what a 165hz monitor can do for your shooty shooty bang bang experience.
Dirt Rally
Finally, I wanted to test my PC with a high speed, graphics intensive racing game. I’m admittedly a pretty casual racing game player, so I’m not sure if I’d be able to spot what 165hz refresh rate would do to my experience, alas I booted it up anyway. What was immediately noticeable was how smooth the experience was.
Even for someone who doesn’t dabble in the genre, the experience of rocketing down a race track read so much more legibly than what is offered on console. I never felt completely out of control of the car like I often do on PS4, as you often get to a point where the car becomes too fast. Where backgrounds tend to blur and lose detail to compensate. Here though, every single tree and NPC were crafted with loving detail and dressed up with realistic lighting effects.I swear I could even make out the bystanders horrified faces while I zoomed past them at 200kmph careening off of a cliff face. That’s impressive stuff. I think the PC will now be my go to for racing games, although I guess that doesn’t mean a whole lot.
Onto the final verdict!
The Final Verdict on PC or Console…
Yeah. It’s cool. I guess. Some of the visuals left me impressed and the buttery smooth game play made for a wonderful experience, but I just don’t think that stuff will ever tip the scales for me. It’s just not why I play video games. So, I don’t think I’ll ever be ditching my console and handheld hardware any time soon, but it was a nice change of pace, and it was nice to see the colour of the grass on the other side, if only to confirm it is not in fact, any greener.
Anyway, what do you think?
Am I just a filthy console pleb who has no idea what I’m talking about? Let me know whether you prefer PC or console down in the comment section below! Otherwise, feel free to check out some of our other gaming blog posts here, or check out some of our other content over on our YouTube Channel.
