Geoffrey Morrison

I'm ashamed. I must embarrassingly hand in my nerd card.

This month, for only the second time in my adult life, I purchased a computer. No longer can I haughtily proclaim "well, I build my own PCs." Gone is the geek-cred I felt enshrined me as an elitist in the elitist world of PC gaming. But it had to be done, and I'll tell you, it's awesome.

So let me save you some money, and go through the various bits of the PC I bought, so you know where to spend your money on a PC you might buy, or want to build yourself.

I love big screens. Really big screens. 60 inches? Pshhh. 65? Ha! 70? In a pinch. 80? Okay, wow, now that’s a seriously big TV. A monolith of a height and breadth that brings to mind projection screens of yore. Wait, forget “yore.” It’s closing in on projection screens now.

It’s hard to believe Team Fortress 2 is 5 years old. I remember waiting breathlessly for the Orange box to come out, unable to decide which game I’d play first: TF2 or Episode Two of Half-Life. There was also some puzzle game included as a bonus, but puzzle games are lame.

Three days of nothing but the amazing Portal have since proved that last thought incorrect, but over time I came to love Team Fortress 2. I was shocked, in preparation for this review, that I hadn’t played in almost a year. Thanks Steam for making the passage of time so blatant.

Last summer Team Fortress 2 went free to play, and to mix things up (and get some players back, no doubt), they’ve added a new mode: Mann vs. Machine. It’s pretty awesome.

The Internet has allowed millions of creative people to offer their works to the world, without the gatekeeper of traditional publishing.

This can be good and bad. There’s good in that there are fewer roadblocks for creative people. The bad in that without that gatekeeper, there’s no “pre-check” of quality. Not to say that everything from a publisher is good, just that the assumption is that somebody looked at the thing before it went out. Without this initial eyeballing, how do you sort through the slag to find the gems?

Enter: Bundles.