Disclaimer: As usual, the opinions expressed in this column are the author’s alone, and do not reflect those of MyGaming.

Be sure to read the first article, where we examined a few reasons why PC Gaming seems to be on the decline.

A friend of mine who recently upgraded his PC just enough to be able to play most modern games complained to me the other day about the general decline in quality of PC games. His main complaint was not the graphics or writing of the games, but instead on the games’ design. More and more, he claimed, was his enjoyment of these games decreasing due to poor design; more specifically, the lack of first party titles that were developed primarily for the PC. In other words, more and more games are created with consoles in mind as the primary market, and then ported shoddily to the PC.

In the case of Assassin’s Creed II, these console ports can take months to appear, and when they do there is a very strong likelihood that something went terribly wrong in the porting process. Grand Theft Auto IV, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Mass Effect, Resident Evil 4, Need for Speed Undercover, Guitar Hero III and World Tour, Gears of War, Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider and arguably, Modern Warfare 2, are just a few games that immediately jump to mind when I think of the “bad PC ports”.

When games are designed for consoles, there will be obvious discrepancies between the original and the port. I feel that there are some games that just play better on a console. It just seems like more of a natural fit on the console, and when played on a PC just seems strange. I’m talking about beat-‘em-ups like the aforementioned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, where using anything other than a gamepad just seems … less efficient. Another example of foreign feeling gameplay is the Tomb Raider series, which feels more at home, at least to me, on a console.

As a result of PC Gaming not having a central, unified gaming service (despite there being a few contenders for the title), it also makes sense that PC gamers are frequently left out in the cold when to comes to Downloadable Content. Burnout Paradise on PC is still waiting for Big Surf Island, despite console gamers having it for months already; and if you’re on PC, you can forget about any extra songs for your Guitar Hero, which actually puts you on par with the rest of South Africa, who have to resort to lying about where we live to be able to download anything. And, even though you’re not missing too much, forget about that travesty of a so called “epilogue” for 2008’s Prince of Persia if you were playing it on the PC; because the honour of playing it was reserved for console gamers only.

At the end of the day, it boils down to personal choice; and whether you prefer to play games on console, PC, phone or handheld is neither here nor there. PC Gaming may seem to be the proverbial stepchild of the gaming world, but even stepchildren sometimes get spoilt. If you think of games like World of Warcraft, which enjoys over 11 million paying subscribers, you’ll see what I mean.

Is PC gaming indeed the Britney Spears of gaming, or is this author a total buffoon? Flame him repeatedly in the forums