I guess I can see that if you are used to those things, you might feel that the consoles have gone for the worse. Dual analog has always felt more natural for me personally as far as controls go, and I'm just a common man, I ain't know nuthin' about no moddin'.

Actually, I refer to it as dumbed down because I sincerely feel that it damages the quality and playability of certain games in certain genres. Menu's and overall feel is clunky and old fashioned and lots of games are almost disfigured when it comes to visuals and customization.

Among the most annoying games I've played on the PC that were changed due to console versions and ease of programming are Mass Effect and Bioshock. I'm not saying that people who play consoles and don't have the same preferences as me shouldn't be allowed to play but even PC centric developers are steering more and more towards consoles now and aren't showing the PC as a gaming platform as much love as they used to (examples would be Epic and Valve). I know I sound whiny but it annoys me.

scottie; you're making me and many others sound very elitist with your last statement and that's a tad unfair. What if someone started fundamentally chaning the elements and gameplay of your favourite games and genres all of the sudden and gave you only games with interfaces you could tell from a mile off weren't designed for the platform you were playing it on? I am just as entitled to complaining as everyone else...

No real graphical settings
No tweaking
No dedicated servers
No K/M
No mods
No In-game settings
Matchmaking
Competitive gaming is crap
Worse graphics
Longer loading
More pop-ins
Less features
..etc.

Thats "dumbed-down". Basicly, "take what you get". While PC can be optimized to suit any needs.

I started my gaming career as an online PC gamer. Had a Lan party for the Quake Beta release(nail gun bitches), played the hell out of the original TF mod for Quake(2Fort4 baby), Quake 2, a Quake 2 mod called Battle of the Sexes(a TF rip off), UT, UT2004, Rainbow Six, Tribes(hell yeah baby, best pc online game eva), and I find console online gaming to be perfectly adequate.

I actually prefer the idea of matchmaking. Team vs team, no joiners. Who you start against is who you end against. This idea does not necessarily have to use peer to peer, but the service is more scalable and manageable using it. I have played around 2000 matches of Halo 3, and I can honestly tell you, I sure wouldn't have played that fucking many if lag was an issue.

As for controls, it would only matter if input devices were mixed. As long as everyone is on even ground, it doesn't mean shit to me. I am perfectly adequate with either dual analog or mouse/keyboard.

Graphics are not really a concern for me, Tribes, my favorite pc FPS of all time had mediocre graphics even on release. The only impressive thing was the map sizes. Gameplay is FAR more important to me.

Mods can sometimes be good, if you can find a diamond in the rough, I already mentioned I played the original TF and a Quake 2 BOTS mod(which my father was actually a map designer for). But it doesn't matter to me as long as the original game's design keeps me coming back, ie. Tribes or Halo.

I have gotten to the point where I just like joining up with a party of my buds and going from playlist to playlist and game to game and just having a good time. Console has just suited my lifestyle more as of late. There is nothing wrong with online console gaming, it is perfectly adequate, and quite well suited to the matchmaking paradigm.

Mummelmann - you have every right to complain about these changes in gaming (I know how you feel, I hate FPS with regenerating health. I still rue the day Halo 1 came out) but I don't refer to games with regenerating health as 'dumbed down' because, quite frankly, it is a bit elitist. Isn't there another adjective you could use to describe these games? Something like 'watered down' perhaps?

Hmm; FPS Light? Kinda like the butter with less fat?

I can't believe it's not FPS?

when was that exactly? there were patches even back in the DOS days, and you did need hardware requirements, and massive installs, for that time frame. back then, 100 MB hard drives were a big deal, and so was 8MB of memory, not to mention the VESA 2.0 requirements for a lot of games, and if you didn't have a Sound Blaster AWE 32, your music sounded like shit in general. PC gaming always has been PC gaming, hasn't changed then, not gonna change now, and I fucking love it since gaming is only a part of what I do on my PC since I'm also a power user. If you only buy a fast PC for gaming, that's questionable, but if you use it for other tasks, the overall value, performance, and flexibility will always be much higher rated than consoles, because consoles are consoles.

We have a winner!

No PC versions score lower because PC reviewers have higher standards, I myself catch myself doing this and treat console games alot nicer than I should because I know console's limiting factors.