PC Games - Some help please

If someone has never gamed, an old-school Real-Time strategy might not be best way to start, IMHO. It might be too fast-paced for them.

I think perhaps Half-Life 2 would be more catered to start with, controls are quite easy, the story is nicely guided along, and is about as sci-fi themed as you can get.

wow, this is a bit of a challenge really, okay, so you've never played much games, you don't owna console, but you plan to get one, and you don't know what kind to get.... okay, i have a few sugestions.

for the pc, i highly recomend Bioshock, got a 4.5 out of 5 i beleve so that is defenitly worth getting. i also recomed Fable 1 and 2. very good idea of a game. like the very few selection of games out there, everything that you do effects the ending in some way, granted it stays to the main story line, but it effects it. so you could play Fable two or three times, doing something different each time, and then get a better ending each time. Also, i recomend the Doom sereis, the Deablo series, the halo sereis, and if you get a ps3, the kingdom hearts series.

now to answer a few of your questions,

the games that usually don't work, are the games like World of Warcraft I've heard, I'VE HEARD!!! no one start argument over that. certain MMORPG's like that have a possibility of crashing your PC. granted, its not likely, but it is possible.

Don't worry about your PC company and the Game company, they're usually designed to work on all consoles. The sound and picture is a different story, sometimes you might have to chnage the sound settings on your computor, If this is the case, then i would write down what the current settings are, and then i would memeorize them, that way if what you change it to dosn't let you play your music or something, you can easily change it back. same thing with the video, but i don't think you'll have a lot of problems with that.

Well, i hope that i've helpd you in some way, remeber what i wrote, and hopefully you'll be just fine.

These suggestions are for 3 or 4 year old PCs ideally. Nothing too cutting edge, but nothing old-school that may require ancient drivers (or DOS emulator) to work properly:

Space Exploration:
* Freelancer - recommend a joystick to fly around space and engage in space battles with, but would also work with just keyboard + mouse. Very engaging sci-fi storyline, and I finished it completely, showing how engaging the plot was. Don't recall any major patches needed to download - was quite stable right out the box.

First-Person Shooter:
* Half-Life 2 - mentioned it earlier. Updates done automatically via Steam application that gets installed, so game is always up to date easily. Story line is movie-quality, levels are very unique making it feel like you want to keep playing (nothing feels repetitive), and another game i played right to completion. Controls best via mouse + keyboard. As a bonus, comes with Half-Life: Deathmatch, and online fragfest where you can battle out in teams or as individuals on different amazing maps, so adds lots of replay value too.

Adventure Game:
* The Longest Journey and its sequel, Dreamfall - I think both the Limited Edition and the Game of the Year edition of Dreamfall come with Longest Journey included. Graphics of TLJ are a bit dated but still beautiful, and Dreamfall was stunning visuals. Controls are VERY easy for anyone to use, simple keyboard + mouse and interact with items, collect items, talk to characters. One of the best stories found in any game, about an alternate universe where magic and technology co-exist, and the heroine (different in the two games) teleports from one to the other. Very little skill is needed with adventure games, they almost play out as interactive movies.

Non sci-fi game:
* Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - not sci-fi, but a blast from start to finish. Kind of a mixture of First-Person Shooter and Adventure/RPG hybrid, its a very riveting story deep in vampire mythology. Lots of swearing, scantily clad women, and even strippers mean its not for the younger audience, and one of few reasons this game struggle at first is because it was buggy as hell on first release, but find the latest patch and apply it before you start this adventure and you'll play it through right to its amazing end without any stability issues.

* Oblivion - Game of Year edition: This release includes Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion, and its two expansions. Probably most taxing of all games listed, you may need a half-decent video card to enjoy it (nvidia 6600GT minimum, but preferrably something like an 8600GT would do better), this RPG set in medieval era gives you so much freedom you can get lost for days exploring its huge world and towns.

Half Life 2 and it's sequel episodes are some of my favourite games of all time. But I'm not sure if you need to play Half-Life the original first to fully appreciate!

i played Half_life only a bit (first few levels), never finished it, and i still enjoyed Half-Life 2 and its sequels very highly. I dont think its a prerequisite.

First I would suggest going here for checking if the game will run on your hardware before you buy it.

I have played Bioshock on Vista and the game worked fine even with my no-dvd crack...

Just take a look at Prelude's little list as they are great games and agree to most of them and would add The Orange Box, Fallout 3, Call Of Duty 4, Left 4 Dead, Rise Of Nations, Sins Of A Solar Empire.

I would be wary of any eBay deals on Valve make games, like HL2, as when you buy and play the games they are linked to the account pretty much forever so someone might play it and sell you the disc and you can't play it because it's linked to their account.
And take a look at the Steam store every weekend as they have deals going on and some can be really good ones.

Try Call of Duty series, sorry if I ain't suggesting any genre you actually need.

I'm just gonna go ahead and rattle off a few i know and play :)

For first-person shooters, you'll want to look at Half-Life 2. Generally praised as one of the best games of all time, there's now a couple of episodes out (1/3 of a game each) and another on the way. Story driven single player action at it's finest. Then there's Left 4 Dead, (spelt with the '4', not just an abbreviation) a great multiplayer game in which 4 people (hence the name) must fight their way through literally hordes of zombies to get to a 'safehouse' at the end of each level. How they squeeze SO much great gameplay out of 4 chapters is beyond me, and I recommend the game highly. For both of these games you'll need 'Steam', an application through which you can buy games and play them. It's very simple to use, but I recommend buying your games from Amazon or another site, as Steam is quite expensive and you download the game to your PC, so no nice box.

If you like strategy games, have a look at Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, and the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War for your sci-fi needs. All very enjoyable games, with online aspects too if you so desire. Just check listal for more info.

Finally there are the all-our space games, which are my personal favourite. My ultimate favourite is X3. There is now another installment out, X3: Terran Conflict, but Egosoft. the publishers, are notorious for releasing games not entirely bug free, and then hurling stacks of 'patches' (downloadable bug fixes) at you later on. The 'regular' game, X3: Reunion, is a great open-ended game, in which you can make your fortune in any number of ways. Its been out for a while, and despite being moderately old, the graphics and gameplay are as good as any game I've seen today, and better than anything on games consoles. It also means you can get it in the bargain bin very cheaply ^___^ If you feel up to the task, there is a wonderful 'mod' out there which almost doubles the number of ships and activities in game. A mod is a player made modification, and can be anything from bug fixes to whole new universes. Now very simple to install, just run along to www.thexuniverse.com to see how. It's a great forum, and I hope to see you there :)

Hope this all makes sense, as I typed it out pretty quick. Any questions, just send me a message on listal! enjoy :)