In light of the PC vs. Console debates and flame wars I’ve participated in this past year, I owe all of the PC gamers I’ve argued with an apology. As much as the words “I’m sorry, I was wrong” sting my lips like lemon juice on an open wound…PC gamers: “I’m sorry, I was wrong.” While I’ve never advocated console titles as being on par with the technology behind PC games, I’ve argued that the gaming experience and immersion of the two can be equal. Unlike a lot of gamers I’ve come across, I generally don’t care what system a game is on if I enjoy the experience. I thoroughly enjoyed Red Dead Redemption on my Xbox 360, but I’ll only play Left 4 Dead and Battlefield Bad Company 2 on my PC. I’m even considering buying a used Game Cube so I can revisit some GC games that I miss (unless I buy a Wii and download the titles). In my analysis, any preference of systems was either a symptom of fanboy-ism or a case of elitist syndrome.

Last week, two unexpected events occurred that rearranged all of my gaming priorities. The first event was the upgrading of my CPU from an AMD x2 6400 to an AMD Phenom 965. The second event was the modding of my installation of Fallout 3, via fallout3nexus.com. I had been using an outdated processor since I built my PC 3 years ago, and while the Phenom isn’t exactly current-gen technology, it is an improvement on my system’s processing power. Regarding modding games, I realize that this is old news to most PC gamers, but I hadn’t taken the time to research the possibilities. I was unaware of the impact a few well-developed mods could have on gameplay.

Prior to last week’s revelation I was bored, depressed and sick of gaming altogether. I had even considered giving up my invitation to E3 and going on a hiatus from writing for The Adrenaline Vault. We’re all adults here, so I’ll explain why. In the last month I lost my grandmother unexpectedly, my wife’s grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, and I was working 12+ hour days. I’m exhausted, depressed, and having a hard time sorting through my feelings. Some of you may understand how I feel, and also understand how gaming can cease to matter during these traumatic life experiences. I don’t deal with emotions very well, so I become this ticking time bomb; ready to detonate the next time life decides to kick me in the head. This story isn’t all doom and gloom however, as here’s where Fallout 3 appeared with unexpected consequences.

I had been jonesing to play Fallout 3 again, as I missed the open world environment and the desolate landscape. It’s the perfect game for when you want to be thrown into an isolating environment and forget about the real world for a while. In addition to missing the stellar gameplay and RPG mechanics, I missed the story (and walking around post-apocalyptic America listening to music from the 30s and 40s). I already knew that I couldn’t play this game on a console. The controls would drive me mad. I was going to have to reinstall the game on my PC, but I still didn’t care enough about gaming to actually install it and wander the wasteland. The last game I had played was Blur and that was only because Dan Amrich was having a One of Swords gaming night on Xbox Live. I had wanted to participate in a Playing with Swords event, so I pushed my emotions aside and got my butt handed to me in every race – I still had a good time though. Other than a few hours with Blur, my Xbox remained a glorified DVD player and my PC kept its role as a workstation.

One of my freelance projects during this month’s workapalooza was editing and rendering a video for a dental trade show. If you’ve used After Effects (or a majority of the Adobe products) you already know that they can make a lesser computer scream in pain. Now I never heard my computer scream, but when the 1-minute video wanted 16+ hours to render, I knew I was asking too much from my dual-core AMD. Fortunately, my friend (who I was working for) offered to buy me a new processor. Once I installed my new AMD Phenom 965 and flashed my BIOS, my rendering time dropped to just under 6 hours. I still need to upgrade to a 64-bit OS, buy a new motherboard and some DDR3 RAM, but the performance increase from swapping out just the processor was a small victory.

Having a new processor got me thinking about PC gaming again. In the past I experienced performance issues with Left 4 Dead (which is processor intensive), but despite having dedicated 500+ hours to L4D multiplayer, I wasn’t in the mood for testing my quad-core with my favorite Valve title. However, I still wanted to know how the 965 would improve my PC gaming experience. After buying Bad Company 2 and experiencing horrible system related performance issues, I had pretty much given up on my PC and switched to console gaming. I hoped that my new processor would improve my experience enough to allow me to game on my PC again. So I put the Fallout 3 disk in, filtered out the real world with my headset, and began my escape from Vault 101.

I had put a few hours into my standard edition (non-patched) version of FO3 when I was convinced to install my first mod. One of my favorite things to do is argue with fellow Adrenaline Vault writer Alaric Teplitsky, OK, maybe not a favorite, but I still enjoy the heck out of it. On May 19 I read one of his Facebook posts recounting his negative experience with installing The Witcher 2 on his PC, so I trolled his post by exuding the virtues of console gaming and its lack of installation/updating/driver issues. Bob Ivins immediately chimed in, as he is wont to do, by reminding me that the less powerful and more childish consoles are incapable of game modding. The “discussion” resulted in me reading a PC Gamer article titled 10 essential Fallout 3 mods, which convinced me that gaming on a PC offered an unrivaled gaming experience. This was no small feat.

A week has passed since I installed the Fallout Mod Manager, which allows me to finely tune my Fallout 3 gaming experience, and I can confidently say that I haven’t been this excited about gaming since 2011 began. And I have Alaric, Bob and the Fallout 3 nexus to thank. I’m not giving up on console gaming, but when the option is there, I’m buying the PC version. A medium to high-end gaming computer, a higher than 1080p resolution monitor and audiophile-grade headphones are all I really need for gaming now. When I experienced what modding could do to Fallout 3, my thoughts spun out of control when I thought about the options modding opened up for the other PC games I love. I’ll admit, given what’s happened this month, that I’m still depressed and not every day brings with it a desire to play, but it feels good to be excited about gaming again. It’s encouraging to believe the industry has a positive future, and it’s exciting to be a PC gamer again!