A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in my Joystick Division column about how difficult it is to return to PC gaming. Once you’ve been out of the loop for long enough, nothing about computers makes sense anymore. It’s not like with a game console, where you can be reasonably certain that, once the PlayStation 3 has been out for long enough, you will be able to get a PlayStation 4, and that games marked “PlayStation 4″ will work on it. You don’t need to know anything about what’s under the hood.

This is not the case with PC gaming. The two major video card manufacturers release a new generation of hardware each year, each with several options ranging from low-end to high-end. I don’t mean to re-hash the column. I just want to point out that, while you have your choice of only three major game consoles in the year 2011, if you want to get a PC you must choose between 21 major video cards, which is to say nothing of processors, RAM, storage, and, of course, new hardware that will render yours obsolete the day after you buy it.

At any rate, it turns out that getting a new gaming PC is not so difficult or expensive, provided that you have a friend who is willing to do all the research, send you product links from Tiger Direct, and then assemble the machine for you. Sadly, my computer guru does not have an internet presence for me to link to, but he does share a fake name with a legendary singer-songwriter, and if you are in the market for a custom-built rig, you should try to track him down and hire him, A-Team style. He does excellent work.

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Above: Can’t say they weren’t thinking big with this one.

The short version is: gameplay good, humor bad. It’s hard to criticize crude jokes without sounding like your monocle popped off just hearing something so uncivilized, but it wasn’t a matter of being offended — at least, not by anything except how low an opinion the writers seemed to have of me. The jokes just weren’t funny. And a lot hung on the jokes.

But I did have fun playing Bulletstorm, even when things kept happening like my character falling through a wall and getting stuck outside the map, or my computer-controlled teammates continually running in front of my crosshairs. My fear was that too many of the kills would be canned, or that they would eventually seem repetitive. And that wasn’t the case. I was still finding new ways to kill several hours in — and usually it was on purpose!

The game also deserves props for giving us an interesting setting to look at. It still plays like a corridor shooter, but it doesn’t feel like it, because so much takes place outdoors, with gorgeous backdrops that look like they’re stretching out forever. No, you can’t actually go there, but at least you don’t spend all your time inside metal corridors. Not until the last level, anyway.

P.S. I thought about writing this like one of Patricia Marx’s shopping columns in the New Yorker. A little bit of that made it in. I’m not sure why this is, because I do not like her columns.

Hey there! Forgot to mention that I reviewed Driver: San Francisco for Joystick Division.

Don’t have much more to add that isn’t in the review. It seemed like a good game and I kept waiting for the moment that I would completely buy in, and it never came. I had some fun with it, for sure, but I’d play a couple rounds of multiplayer, or a few missions in the campaign, and start thinking about other games I could be playing, or things I had to do around the house. I never had any problem turning the game off.

Next it’s on to Rage, it looks like, with some time for the Portal 2 DLC and a little more Resident Evil 4 HD. There’s not enough time in the day.