ddpp33

"Mont Saint-Michel isn't just a fancy French name"

It's also the name of one of the greatest electronic music tracks you'll ever hear;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBDAunPkSAY
Play it loud and on good speakers or not at all.

PC gaming is NOT expensive unless you are dumb. You can get a video card that can play Crysis(or any other game) quite well for $100 these days. In fact at any given point a $100 video card can almost always play any game on the market acceptably(up until recently Crysis had been the one exception to that rule.)
The existence of $400+ video cards is always cited as proof that PC gaming is expensive but the only thing it is proof of is that some people have much more money than they need.

Hardware does not get slower with time. Windows does however, both on it's own and because of spy/ad/crapware that builds up on your system. Almost everything you install will want to start whenever you load windows in some fashion. Over time this will slow your system down. Start button -> run -> type msconfig and you can get rid of the stuff you don't need in the start-up tab. If you aren't sure if you need it use google.
As for the number of cores/slot types, ect THAT'S what you are supposed to be learning about when people say "do some research" so that you don't get screwed. Videocards used the same slot, called AGP for many years. About 3 years ago or so the standard changed and is now PCI-Express. You can still buy a decent videocard that will work on AGP system however(the HD3850.) For many, many years hard drives/cd drives used the same connectors called IDE cables. About 2 years ago the standard changed to SATA cables. This is a non-issue for almost everyone as motherboards still have IDE ports and they still sell IDE hard/optical drives. The things you need to worry about are the sockets for the processor and ram, these actually do change often, especially the processor slot. This is what you need to research and make sure you are getting the newest kind(with-in your price range) so that your computer will be reasonably upgradeable for a while.

Your mistake was EVER paying that much for a computer. Undoubtedly you could've built it yourself for half the price(no, it's not hard to put together a computer) and even paying that much probably would've been a mistake.
These days you can build a computer for less than $500 that will play every game you might want to throw at it very well, Crysis included. My guess is that it would also do just fine on any game that comes out in the next 1.5 to 2 years or so. At that point you might want to spend probably $150ish on a videocard upgrade.
That PC gaming has to be expensive is simply not true. The computer industry is like any other, they will try to get as much money out of you as they can convince you to part with. If you let them then you'll find it expensive. If you have a brain and can do some research, use a screw driver, fit a processor and ram into a socket and connect some cables then it's not expensive.

Soma
From Wikipedia

Soma (Sanskrit: सोमः), or Haoma (Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and the later Vedic and greater Persian cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda, which contains many hymns praising its energizing or intoxicating qualities. In the Avesta, Haoma has an entire Yasht dedicated to it.

It is described as prepared by pressing juice from the stalks of a certain mountain plant, which has been variously hypothesized to be a psychedelic mushroom, cannabis, Peganum harmala, Blue lotus[1], or ephedra. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian tradition, the drink is identified with the plant, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity.

When the readers of joystiq don't want to watch your show on videogames you've made a bad programming decision.

Why not just play Gunbound? Much better and much freer.

Wait, a countdown with the word teaser next to it has been revealed to be a countdown to a teaser...?
Mind-boggling.

Am I the only one who thought Postal 2 was an above average FPS for its day with a much more unique and interesting environment than most?

True, nothing like Gauntlet at all(also not as good as Gauntlet)
The correct comparison would've been "a pretty good Golden Axe clone."