The games you should be playing vs. the ones you might want to play
By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor
You’ve accomplished your first level as a PC gamer. You now have some idea of what your equipment should be, and how you can adjust more easily from a controller to the ever-so-intimidating keyboard and mouse. So what is there left to do?
Unfortunately, as a PC newb, your troubles don’t end there. In order to better train yourself into adapting from console to PC, you must take the time to select the games you want to begin learning on in a very careful manner. The number one reason an individual will choose to PC game is the social aspect—you do it because your friends are doing it. As such, your first instinct might be to jump into a game with a high co-op value: something like an open-world MMO, where the majority of the game involves interacting with other players. If you have a group of friends who are all jumping into a new one at once, then I say go for it, but more often than not, you’ll be the one entering the party a little late. MMOs have a high learning curve, because there’s a lot of key mapping—the need to assign skills and powers to different buttons on the keyboard—and as someone used to an average of 10 buttons, this can get overwhelming. Not to mention, your friends are probably at a way higher level than you, so you’d end up playing mostly on your own anyway… at least for the first 100 levels.
Instead, try joining your friends in something like a team-based strategy or battle arena game. This will ensure that you can all play together, even if you are a pleb. Playing with you will help them out by giving them a chance to try new tactics, weapons, or roles against an enemy team with a collective level slightly lower than what they’re used to playing—and you’ll get to cut your teeth playing against people a lot more skilled. So, by the time you face people of your actual level, you’ll be able to wipe the floor with them. Games like Overwatch, League of Legends, Dota 2, Rainbow Six, and Rocket League can all serve this purpose. These types of games also generally have a much easier learning curve with less key-mapping, so you can begin on a much smaller scale than something like World of Warcraft, which requires at least 20 equipped skills and alternative set ups based off of whether you’re going to fight other players, or just doing some quests.
