I'm a big fan of PC gaming, and have been playing pc games scince DOOM, duke nukem, death rally, etc.  
My favourite games are Unreal Tournament, Comand and conquer: Red alert series and Colin Mcrae rally.
 
I'm VEEEERY disaponted with Unreal Tournament 3 (it's a PS3 GAME!) and specialy with colin mcrae dirt, wich in my opinion is a disrispectful game towards a traditional sprort like rally (Travis pastrana may have won the x games in rally, but in the rally world he is no one). I just can't stand exesive xbox-ps-ish explotions and voices in UT3 and a copilot calling you "dude" in colin mcrae. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
 
PC gaming is totaly different to PS3 and XBOX, and game creators need to accpept that in order to maintain the market.  
 
I just swear, if age of empires 4, unreal tournament 3 expansion pack, next colin Mcrae, C&C RA3 or any other sequel to a classic untouchable game fails to satisfy me, I will definetly stop with all this gaming thing, screw them.

TO BE FAIR, a few of the games you mention are somewhat arcadey in their outlook.  
There are plenty of 'sensible' games for the PC.
 
If you want some recommendations for games for a more mAtUrE audience, then just say The Word.

Only reasoning is due to the fact that consoles make more money. But C&C will never really become xbox-ish. Its a PC game and always will be.

Hey Jay_l_a, thank you, yes I would like some advice, I need some serius research to justifiy buying a new video card  
What I like:
colin mcrae (not dirt!!!)
unreal tournament 1 & 2004
Age of empires (all)
Microsoft links  
Starcraft
C&C Red alet series
FIFA & Pro evolution soccer
 
PLease keep in mind i'm not a hardcore gamer, my system: athlon x2 4800, 2GB RAM, radeon x1650pro
 
Thanks man!
 
 

based on AOE (RTS) Have you tried the homeworld series. Old but EPIC.
If you can find it, Sacrifice. Old But great fun and addictive.
See if you can root out some of The Settlers, A bit like AOE only you control the buildings, rather than the people.

based on UT (FPS) have you played Half Life 2? Probable the greatest FPS out there. So many times during the game, I just though WOW!

I always recommend OBLIVION to people, even if it doesn't seem your sort of thing. It will run on your hardware pretty well.

There are others, I'll have a think.

All the Relic RTS games are excellent (Homeworld, Homeworld 2, Company of Heroes and it's expansion, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and all it's expansions.)
 
If you liked Age of Empires you might also like Rise of Nations.

---------------
Travis Meacham
 

I agree with tmeacham, if its made by relic, its definitly worth buying. Same with anything with the THQ label actually, I have yet to play a game marketed by THQ that I did not like.  
 
PC gameing is far from dead when you have developers like Valve in the mix still fighting for the PC.

 
Don't stop! PC gaming needs your support.
 
There still are some great games for the PC  
WoW
SOURCE
COD4
BF2
BROTHERS IN ARMS
STAR CRAFT 2 coming soon!
These are just a few I threw out off the top of my head.
 
Anyway I play alot of games and I keep coming back to just two of them, WoW and DOD:Source and they keep me satisfied.  There will never be a good MMORPG on a consol because of the cross platform. FPS games are meant to be played with a keyboard and mouse.  RTS is so much easier with mouse and keyboard as well...
 
The consols are becoming more and more like PCs, O wait they are.

Seems like the gaming developers don't even try to make great games. They know there a tens of thousands of suckers on the planet that will waste their money.

10 million WoW gamers would say, err no...

NetHack
 
Need I say more?

Which is why "piracy is hurting the industry" because more and more people are downloading the torrent, playing the game for 20 minutes and going "Thank Jesus I didn't just pay for this garbage."

We're reaching a point where getting a "7" rating on the review sites means your game is going to fail.  Game companies need to give it 100% or stop making games.  Anyone have a link to that post made by the employee that worked on Titan's Quest where he was complaining about how hard it is to build a game for different hardware?  Whiners like that need to get out of the industry.

 
I had no idea that still existed :-) I played that in the early 90's and it was fun but why would people still bother with something like that today, if only for refusing to go with the times?

---------------
+10 Sarcasm, +999 Jackload, +1 Inevitable reference , +3 original bonus, +1 amateur thief, + Pedantry, +5 Bunny, +2 Kicking while down, +3 Puking, +5 Messianic Approval, +10 OQ

PC gaming is dead! Oh no! Better not tell that to Blizzard with there 10 million subs, there 10 year old RTS and 8 year old RPG still selling.

On a more serious not tough you might have a point, last year, the profit made by video game industry in NA was only ~14% due o PC games.

I think that is because either, PCs are expensive(bout 750$ for a decent one) complicated (for people who just wanna slap a DVD in and play) and the copy protection pissing every1 of. <~ Just look at Sins of the Solar Empire, no copy protection, yes its on Pirate Bay Mininova and <insert torrent site here> but its still hitting record sails.

I think if Developers and publishers dropped copy protection and you could just put a DVD in the Drive and wait a minute for it to install and then play with no bullsh*t like registration and suff or even a spyware that sends you advertising (looking at you EA) I think that PC game would sell loads more.

yep. if they remove all of the drm crap, they would sell more.

most copy protection is broken within a day when a game comes out

a 1 day delay in piracy doesnt help the company much, but it does  turn away legit buyers because they have to deal with the drm the whole time while  pirates  never even notice it

Piracy lead to DRM, which lead to more piracy which lead to more DRM which lead to more piracy ... ad nauseum.
 
Removing DRM would not stop piracy, but optimistically, within a year or two, piracy would be back down to where it was when DRM was minimal.  Largely this optimism stems from the idea that the more honest among the pirates would pressure the others to legitimately buy any game that did not use DRM as already happens to some degree.  Then they would eventually get out of the habit all together.  
 
I would like to see a world where putting DRM in your game meant that the game did not sell.  

yep, they were so greedy that they couldnt stand 1-2 hundred people pirating their game so they  make drm  which is a major inconvenience for everyone so to escape it, many legit users move to piracy for drm free copies

most people pay like how they did for radiohead and NIN  out of respect and fairness, they did the work to make the mucic so they earned the money being paid to them.  but if they slap on drm from hell on their stuff then they loose all respect from their  fans  and people move to piracy.

DRM is a method of punishing people before they do anything ( the Do onto others BEFORE they do onto you method)

if the legal system followed the method of drm,  every one on earth would be in jail because that have the ability to do bad

usually it is common for pc games to have problems
and when you have a problem with a pc game, you will generally google for solutions,  if someone is having a problem with the drm in their game making it frustrating for them to get to play it then their solution would be to get a drm free copy (aka pirate copy)

 
Exactly, also why would I want to buy from a company that treats me like a criminal?

While I the presence of DRMs can lower a game's sales, the complete absence of protection won't make PC games sell any better. Of course, some people download cracked copies of games so they aren't bothered by DRMs, but these people do this AFTER they've bought the game. This is different than downloading the game and never buying it.
 
So the first reason why people download games is that they don't have to pay for it, not because of DRMs. Give them the possibility to copy their games, and they'll make copies for all their families and friends. From the first day that a video game was released without any protection (they used to have those "What's the 59th word of the fifth paragraph in the manual page 18" ), everyone was like "Hey ! Let's buy only one, and make copies for everyone !"
 
Remove protections, and it will be 1990 all over again. And it won't help game sales. Actually, I believe that copy protection is what made PC Gaming live so long.
 
Now there's an alternative to make sure people buy games : do what Blizzard does ; make a game that truly shines by its multiplayer part, which requires a unique cd key that no keygen on Earth can give you. Looks like it worked for them, so it could work for any other game.

there shouldn't be a need to download the game after buy buy it, it is basically punishing legit users and this discourages them from buying the game.
 
while i believe in some copy protection like the kind that just makes it slightly harder to copy a cd (a little harder than copying a old music cd
 
but thats it, that kind on protection only becomes a slight annoyance when the legit user tries to copy the game but not when they just want to pop in a cd and install and play the game