Visual C++ is a nice IDE to work with and you shouldn't have any real issues with making games in it.

Honestly, I think there is too much pressure for up-and-coming gamedevs to learn C++. Unless you're interested in engine development (a field I personally find fascinating, but YMMV) I'd stick with high-level scripting languages rather than spending your time slogging through pointer-arithmetic.

Properly used to create nice data structures and objects, C++ can be as nice as any scripting language, albeit with a few syntactic stumbling points (most scripting languages handle template-type logic in much more eyeball-friendly ways). Unfortunately, C++ is usually written by a hackneyed team of OOP nuts and C diehards and so usually what comes out is a thoroughly illegible API where void-pointers and unsafe typecasting are a way of life.

Yes Visual C++ is very good IDE... but for beginnings You can use free compiler and IDE such as DEV-C++

C++ is very interesting language, but some belive that it's to slow for game development, so they prefer standard C or "C+" :)

I've read in one book that "If such games like Quake I and Unreal could be written in standard C there is no need to use sophisticated methods from C++ to create new games".
Maybe it's true...