Well.. this has been a long time coming. I meant to write this up a while ago, but I've been putting it off way too much, so I feel it's about time I get to this.

Now, when I really got into gaming, I was more of a console/handheld person. I did play the heck out of ROBLOX from 2009 to.. well, present day actually, but I usually stuck to playing games for the Wii and DS (didn't have any of the others besides my brother's 360 at that point ), but as the 8th gen has rolled along.. honestly, besides for the Wii U which I probably won't get for a while.. I haven't been impressed. Neither the PS4 nor the Xbox One have given me exclusives that have actually "wowed" me, and with the 8th gen, I've been migrating to PC gaming. Why is that? What are the positives and negatives? Well.. lemme explain.

Also, I'm not going to use any "PC Master Race" or "Console Peasant" jokes, as that's probably the most annoying meme the internet has produced. At least to me anyway.

This review comes from the opinions of the poster himself. This does not reflect the opinions of the rest of the gaming community.

Personal Experiences:
Now, my first experiences with PC gaming were when I was around 5 or 6. Well.. sorta. I didn't know much about gaming then, but all I had at the time was my Gameboy Advance (didn't get the DS until I was like, 10), my brother's 360 and PSOne (which he sold, but I bought another one years later ), and a Windows XP machine my parents bought. I was starting to learn how to use the internet, and I remember that every time I used the PC, I would go on the Thomas and Friends site and Youtube, and on the former, I'd play the little minigames they had on the site all the time. And my parents ended up finding me an actual T&F game called "The Great Festival Adventure," which after installing, I would play all the time. And then around 2008 or 2009, I was introduced to ROBLOX, a free-to-play game (well, at least besides for having to buy membership ever so often to access certain features ) that had a "lego feel" to it. And I would spend a lot of time on it, building my own places and going to other places and stuff like that.

Now, when I became a more experienced gamer, I learned that there was a huge PC gaming community, and there were tons of people developing games for PC. Now, at the time, despite me still playing the heck outta Roblox and Minecraft (funny, because I'm not much into the latter anymore), I was more partial to playing my DS, Wii and all my retro consoles. But, as the 8th gen of gaming has rolled around, after getting a better PC, I made a Steam account, which I got more games on and as the PS4 and Xbox One haven't interested me all that much, I've been starting to lean towards PC gaming (and my 2DS xd) more. So.. why is that? Well..

The Good:
Well, I have to say.. the games. While I'm not sure about PC having too many "exclusive" games, as many of them have been ported to other consoles, the ones that originated on PC, unsurprisingly play much, much better on PC. With that aside, I might as well list some of the go over some of the games I usually play on PC.
Team Fortress 2 - As someone who isn't really into FPS games (I would be more into 'em if I was actually good at them!), I actually like this game. I don't really play it daily or religiously, but when I play it, I'm usually on it for a few hours. Even though I'm kind of a noob at it, I find it pretty fun to play. One problem though.. as with almost every multiplayer game in existence, the community is pretty annoying. There's either trolls who get angry at you for something small, squeakers or.. both! But, that aside, I like this game.
ROBLOX - Already mentioned this, but might as well mention it again because YOLO. You probably already know about it, especially after I already talked about it, but despite the rather annoying community, it is a game that I do find rather fun to play. I wouldn't really consider it a "game" itself, as it feels more like a game engine than an actual game since you can script and build stuff, but with all that in mind, I actually like it.
Freedom Planet - I just bought this recently, and well.. if you want a good game that has a similar feel to many 16-bit sidescrollers on the SNES and Genesis (especially the classic Sonic games), this is a good choice. In fact, after playing it a bit, this may be my favorite sidescroller besides for Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island. I may do a more major review of this in the future, and it is coming out on Wii U soon, but still, it's a great game and I recommend it.
Terraria - Now, a little unpopular opinion I might as well mention is that.. I personally don't really care for Minecraft. I can see why people may like it, but to me, Minecraft is rather bland and I often just don't feel "immersed" in the world in the way I want to. Why do I mention this? Well, Terraria plays similar to Minecraft, but it's in 2D, so I'm bound to not care about this game either, right? Well.. wrong. I play this often with one of my long time friends, @@Sweetie-Belle and it's actually become one of my favorite games. I felt rather immersed in the worlds in the game, and it feels much bigger than pretty much any sandbox/survival game I've played to date.
Now, those aren't all the great PC games, there's like thousands more I could talk about (i.e. the Portal series, The Ultimate DooM), but those are the ones I tend to play the most. I have talked about 2 PC games before, those being AVGN Adventures and the joke review of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, but yeah. PC, and more specifically Steam, has some great games and considering the amount on Steam and all the Steam sales, there's a lot to get. The problem I have with the 8th gen console line (besides the Wii U at least) is that there's just not as much games on the Xbox One and PS4 that interest me enough that aren't mediocre ports of PC games. I mean, for the Xbox One there's Sunset Overdrive and mayyybee Halo Master Chief Collection, and for the PS4 there's LittleBigPlanet 3, but that's all I can think of for games that actually interest me that aren't, again, mediocre ports/multiplats of PC games. Now, if you think there are more great Xbox One and PS4 games than that, and you like those consoles over what the PC has to offer and think they're the best consoles ever, that's perfectly fine, I'm not stopping you. We all have our opinions, and that's what makes us unique. But, for me, those consoles just don't "wow" me as much as previously made consoles have.
Also, a pretty big one that many PC gamers mention is, well.. freedom. For one, you have more options in terms of what you play with. With PC, you can use a controller or a keyboard and mouse, which I think is a great thing, because there are some games like TF2 and Doom (and on that note, most other FPS games) that I feel control way better on keyboard and mouse, and others like Sonic Generations that control better using a controller. And that's just the tip of the iceberg! A huge one is that, if you have the knowledge to do so, you have the ability to upgrade and repair parts of PC. Usually, if a part fails on a console, you have to either A. ship the console back to the manufacturer or B. if you don't have a warranty, buy a whole new console. With PC, if a part fails, you can actually replace the part if you know how to do it. Or, you can try to find a better part, and use that to upgrade your PC so it's moreso "up-to-date." I think even on some prebuilt PCs you can upgrade parts as well, so ye. Which reminds me, building PCs! Building PCs is a good thing, as a problem with prebuilt PCs is that they tend to be on more of the expensive side, and the specs are, well.. not always the best. There are some I've seen that you can upgrade and stoof depending on the architecture of the PC itself, but still. But, building PCs on the other hand has a bit more advantages. You can actually put in whatever specs, whatever processors, RAM, OS, whatever, to suit your needs. Do you not care about the money, and are you planning on playing Crysis 3 at Ultra High Max settings with dual monitors? You can build a PC with high specs as long as you have the money. Are you a bit uptight on the money and not looking to run more than stuff like Sonic Generations or Fallout: New Vegas? You can build a PC with specs that are great enough to run those. Granted, I'd only say to build a PC if you know what you're doing, as it's not exactly building a bunch of Legos, there are some parts where if you handle them wrong they can fry or break, and if you do something wrong, it can fry your computer, so yeah. I haven't actually built a PC myself, but my brother and I think a friend of mine who used to be on here known as Tera the CLOAKER has and that's some of the things he warned about if I was going to. But if you're careful and know what you're doing, then I'd say it would be a better idea than getting a prebuild. Plus, prebuilds often have bloatware and preinstalled programs that are unwanted and I've heard they're not as easy to upgrade depending on the other parts used, so yeah. Not to mention the backwards compatibility with PCs. Most notably on the Windows line, PCs tend to have backwards compatibility with most past games. It's a bit harder on Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 since I think they have a different drivers or something than the previous ones, but there are patches and programs like DOSBox and Virtual PCs that can help with that. It even has backwards compatibility with older consoles too thanks to emulators. I usually prefer much more to play on the original hardware than emulators for a multitude for reasons, but I do like using emulators to test retro games before I buy them or review them, if there's retro games that cost a bit too much, playing games on consoles I have no interest in getting and for the tons of romhacks. Also, modding!1 There are some PS4 and Xbox One with modding capabilities I think, but the whole modding community is bigger on PC, plus there's more games that support it. Modding is a good thing as it brings in more to games that people often get bored of. I don't actually mod my games too much (the only one I can think of where I installed tons of mods for is Garry's Mod, which I'm pretty sure is the point of that game), but still, it's a huge advantage for many people. Plus, if I didn't mention it, my house would probably get burned down.
And in general, I feel PC gaming is cheaper in the long run. Sure, building a PC that can run godlike is a bit more on the expensive side (although buying a PC that can do as much as current gen consoles isn't too expensive, but still), but once you look at the future of your PC, I feel in the long run, it won't be too much money to support. Internet is free, which while the Wii U also shares that, you have to pay for PS4 and Xbox One's internet, at least for online multiplayer. The only thing you really have to pay for in regards for internet is your own internet bill. Plus, buying games isn't too much money. Steam alone has sales almost all the time, and even without them, I've seen games on PC that are much less than games on console. Not to mention, if you know what you're doing, looking past the warranty, repairing PCs is cheaper.
There's tons more I could mention, like the VR support, multimonitor support and so on, but if I listed every advantage.. well, it would be long, and I'm too lazy to list them all.

The Bad:
Yes, there are some things I don't like about PC gaming, as to me, no matter what type of platform you game on, there's disadvantages. Although my problems aren't really too big, and most of them don't really affect me.
Now, if there's anything wrong with the different specs for certain PCs, it's that games tend to have more problems running, simply because there's tons of different PCs, using different parts like different CPUs, graphics card and operating systems. While most games on Steam are optimized well, you'll probably run into a few games that don't run and aren't compatible with some of the hardware in your PC. There are some issues with optimization on consoles, but I feel it's slightly more seen on PC. It's not as common now, but still.
Also, if you're a person that prefers physical copies over digital downloads, well I hate to break it to ya, but it's rather uncommon with PC. While there are physical copies, most if not all of the great games only come through Steam, which is a digital download distributor. I usually don't care about whatever form of media something comes on, but if you're more of a physical copy person, then that's probably going to be a negative side for you.
But, the dealbreaker for many people will probably be that PC doesn't have much exclusives, at least ones that are in a series and have a large following and fanbase for many people. So, if you want to get the latest Mario, Zelda, Halo (unless you count the Xbox One streaming feature on Windows 10), LittleBigPlanet, Pokemon, whatever games.. then the PC might not be for you. Although, there are other great games for PC, and PC tends to beat consoles in terms of multiplats, but if you're a console exclusive kind of guy, then I wouldn't recommend switching over to PC for now.
As well, as ReviewTechUSA said in his "Is PC Gaming For You?" video, if you don't know much about repairing and upgrading your computer, then it might get a little pricey. Unless you have a friend or relative who offers it for free or little cost, you might have a few problems and you may have to pay technicians to work with your computer.

The Ugly:
N/A.

Conclusion:
Personally, I really like PC gaming, especially with Steam involved. The games are great, it's rather cheap, and the overall freedom and features of PC satisfy me. And overall, I feel PC gaming along with the SNES is something I go for when it comes to having fun with video games.

But, I have to say, it's.. not for everyone. If you're comfortable building and upgrading PCs and getting Steam deals with digital downloads, and don't care much for the lack of huge killer apps, then switch over, but if you're a person who prefers sitting on their couch a few feet from the TV with their controller and playing all the console exclusives, then I'm okay with that. If you just feel better playing consoles, then I personally feel you should just stay with what you like. Again, if you disagree with me that the PS4 and Xbox One have poor exclusives and like using them better than using a PC, I'm not stopping you. But overall, I think PC gaming is great, and I'm interested in seeing the future of it as a whole.

Next MLP Fanon Review: Double Rainboom
Friday Game Review: Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast, 2001)
Sunday Television: ?
Next Thomas Special: Hero of the Rails (2009)