Have you ever bought a game on PC and not been able to play it?
- Thread starter krazykidd
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Aside from not being able to play those pesky Vista/W7-only games in my old XP desktop, I've always been able to fix whatever problems they threw to me.
On the other hand, since I upgraded to 7, I have a lot of good games to play now.
Dark Souls was one of the most problematic to "fix", because I had to install several mods just to make it playable with KB+M (I can't stand playing with controllers).
On the other hand, since I upgraded to 7, I have a lot of good games to play now.
Dark Souls was one of the most problematic to "fix", because I had to install several mods just to make it playable with KB+M (I can't stand playing with controllers).
Yes.
Literally:
World of Goo just won't launch, causes the screen to do all kinds of weird shit then spits an error message.
One of the Ghost Recon games I picked up for about £1.50 once runs at about 0.01fps (no, really, <1 frame per minute). I think(?) my Google-Fu eventually revealed that the software was speaking a long-dead language that my modern graphics card didn't know how to interpret.
Figuratively:
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission.
[rant]
It very quickly becomes impossible on account of the fact that you can't control everything personally all of the time, and sometimes you actually need more than a single unit to get something done beyond the first couple of missions - and yet the friendly AI is retarded on scale that can only be described as "legendary". It literally can't drive a land vehicle 20m in a straight line over flat, unobstructed ground, I shit you not. It's just... Why? How? I don't even? Even more perplexing is why they decided the notably unimpressive enemy AI was apparently too good to give to the player's units. Add to that the world's most obnoxious mouse acceleration (with no option to disable) and this game has pretty much shot itself in the foot. With a rocket launcher. Admittedly I did (eventually) get a mouse acceleration fix (which wasn't exactly simple either to find or apply, and required disabling the OS mouse acceleration too), and there's an AI "remedy" which, I hear, brings it up to "playable", but no more - I could probably tell you more had I got it working - but even the fan-made fix used an obsolete version of some programming language or another, and was thus incompatible with my OS. Perhaps if I was a professional programmer or computer scientist I might've been able to play this game?
[/rant]
I'm sure there are more, but those are what occur to me immediately. I've never had too much trouble playing a game I've paid full-price for, though. Mostly it's archaic software from games that pre-date one's OS by a version or two that cause the big issues, and they're almost always fixable, not to mention cheap.
Literally:
World of Goo just won't launch, causes the screen to do all kinds of weird shit then spits an error message.
One of the Ghost Recon games I picked up for about £1.50 once runs at about 0.01fps (no, really, <1 frame per minute). I think(?) my Google-Fu eventually revealed that the software was speaking a long-dead language that my modern graphics card didn't know how to interpret.
Figuratively:
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission.
[rant]
It very quickly becomes impossible on account of the fact that you can't control everything personally all of the time, and sometimes you actually need more than a single unit to get something done beyond the first couple of missions - and yet the friendly AI is retarded on scale that can only be described as "legendary". It literally can't drive a land vehicle 20m in a straight line over flat, unobstructed ground, I shit you not. It's just... Why? How? I don't even? Even more perplexing is why they decided the notably unimpressive enemy AI was apparently too good to give to the player's units. Add to that the world's most obnoxious mouse acceleration (with no option to disable) and this game has pretty much shot itself in the foot. With a rocket launcher. Admittedly I did (eventually) get a mouse acceleration fix (which wasn't exactly simple either to find or apply, and required disabling the OS mouse acceleration too), and there's an AI "remedy" which, I hear, brings it up to "playable", but no more - I could probably tell you more had I got it working - but even the fan-made fix used an obsolete version of some programming language or another, and was thus incompatible with my OS. Perhaps if I was a professional programmer or computer scientist I might've been able to play this game?
[/rant]
I'm sure there are more, but those are what occur to me immediately. I've never had too much trouble playing a game I've paid full-price for, though. Mostly it's archaic software from games that pre-date one's OS by a version or two that cause the big issues, and they're almost always fixable, not to mention cheap.
My first Halo game ever, Halo Combat evolved. Tragically enough this is when I learned that not just any PC can play a game at the tender age of 13. 
Manhunt. It was the first game I ever bought off Steam, basically before I understood much about Steam. I had been looking for it for ages, and when I realized it was available on this service, I made a Steam account and eagerly bought it.
It plays well for five minutes...and then it has a game-breaking bug. Essentially, there is a door that is supposed to open which does not. Without going through that door, there is no further progress in the game. Apparently this has been the case since a Steam update to the game in 2010 (according to the forums). They are still charging $9.99 for it, and the game absolutely does not work. The people who possessed the game in 2010 came up with a fix for it, available for download then, but not now. Yeah. I meant to contact Steam for a refund, but then life got in the way, and yeah. I've had the game for far too long now. It's just totally unplayable. Shame - it looked really nice and ran smoothly on my computer.
I got a new laptop that can run more games, but it's a Windows 8 machine, and Fallout 3 was a ***** to run. It would get to the point of shooting the radroach in the tutorial section, and then crash to desktop every time, no matter my settings. I did finally get it running by following some tutorials.
I bought the "Back to the Future" games off GOG.com, and they absolutely would not even launch. Never fixed it. But I don't feel too bad now, because I picked them up through the Telltale Humble Bundle, minus what I would have offered for that set. They run through Steam.
That's all I can currently think of, but naturally there's been more.
It plays well for five minutes...and then it has a game-breaking bug. Essentially, there is a door that is supposed to open which does not. Without going through that door, there is no further progress in the game. Apparently this has been the case since a Steam update to the game in 2010 (according to the forums). They are still charging $9.99 for it, and the game absolutely does not work. The people who possessed the game in 2010 came up with a fix for it, available for download then, but not now. Yeah. I meant to contact Steam for a refund, but then life got in the way, and yeah. I've had the game for far too long now. It's just totally unplayable. Shame - it looked really nice and ran smoothly on my computer.
I got a new laptop that can run more games, but it's a Windows 8 machine, and Fallout 3 was a ***** to run. It would get to the point of shooting the radroach in the tutorial section, and then crash to desktop every time, no matter my settings. I did finally get it running by following some tutorials.
I bought the "Back to the Future" games off GOG.com, and they absolutely would not even launch. Never fixed it. But I don't feel too bad now, because I picked them up through the Telltale Humble Bundle, minus what I would have offered for that set. They run through Steam.
That's all I can currently think of, but naturally there's been more.
The first game I really bought for myself on PC, so I guess the point where I first really became a PC gamer, was the Orange Box on its launch day, physical copy. I popped it in, installed everything (although I actually bought the entire box just for Portal, cause I had seen previews of it and wanted to play Portal the instant it came out) and it turned out my Computer didn't actually have a video card. And as such none of those games in the bundle worked. I think it was about 6 months later I finally got around to upgrading my computer for the first time ever, and I finally played those games. Now though, I have a much better machine and I'm much smarter about making sure games will run before buying/downloading them.
The only game so far that I wasn't able to play properly when I got it is Fallout 3, but after a few google searching I found out the issue was with the windows games live thingy. It didn't take much to fix it, but it really was frustrating after a while. Ever since I haven't had an issue with it aside from the odd crash or two but those happen rarely for me. I have been lucky!
Yeah pretty much every single game I bought a decade ago is no longer playable.
...But yeah I have also had a new game that doesn't work. It really sucks.
...But yeah I have also had a new game that doesn't work. It really sucks.
Once. When I got Oblivion, it turned out the computer I was using at the time didn't have the shaders required to run it. I managed to get around it by using a mod called Oldblivion though.
Other than that, never had a game I couldn't play.
Other than that, never had a game I couldn't play.
I had issues with Oblivion when it was first released for I just met minimum requirements and after playing the game for several hours anytime I loaded a save the game would crash. It turns out that even though I met minimum requirements for the game the saves had ballooned to the point I would use up all my physical memory and crash the game. Now that I have a newer computer it works fine, but I can't be bothered to play it.
Currently I am having issues with Dragon Age: Origins, but that is because of the horrible DLC management system and using a new OS with it, most of the time the game works, but there are times I just want to throw my computer at the person that designed the system.
Currently I am having issues with Dragon Age: Origins, but that is because of the horrible DLC management system and using a new OS with it, most of the time the game works, but there are times I just want to throw my computer at the person that designed the system.
No. If you look for it, there is always a solution.
I remember The Witcher 2, for example, after one of the patches/updates was crashing on my machine, the conflict was with my version of Kaspersky. There was also some problem with Fallout 3 and multi-core processors on Win 7, there is fix for this as well.
I remember The Witcher 2, for example, after one of the patches/updates was crashing on my machine, the conflict was with my version of Kaspersky. There was also some problem with Fallout 3 and multi-core processors on Win 7, there is fix for this as well.
Only when I was a lot younger and less aware of my computer's hardware.
But, I learnt pretty quickly after trying to play Black and White 2. Only to discover my Geforce MX440 lacked any form of pixel shader, and I don't think I made the mistake ever again.
But, I learnt pretty quickly after trying to play Black and White 2. Only to discover my Geforce MX440 lacked any form of pixel shader, and I don't think I made the mistake ever again.
I have a copy of the Lucasarts adventure 'The Dig' around somewhere.
Didn't work on my last PC, don't know why I haven't tried it again. Compatibility issues ah guess.
Didn't work on my last PC, don't know why I haven't tried it again. Compatibility issues ah guess.
That's odd, I was literally just playing that a couple of minutes ago. They put it on sale through Origin and I bought it yesterday. You might want to try installing it again, if you've still got your discs lying around. It runs really well on my laptop, without so much as the weird glitchy textures I get with BF2.Ieyke said:
Deus Ex has a modern renderer available, and I think System Shock 2 does as well, or a source port or something. Here's a link to two of the three or four updated renderers for Deus Ex[footnote]The modern Open GL and Direct X 9 renderers. There's also a DX 10 and I think a DX 11 renderer, but they're hosted elsewhere, because somebody else made them.[/footnote] (has renderers for most other UT 99 engine games, for that matter), not sure off hand what there is for SS2 but if you google around you'll find it.Major Tom said:
Sorry to quote you again on this, but I remembered something while skimming back over the thread: the last patch for that game came out in late 2010 or early 2011 (I keep finding two different release dates for it). Anyway, it's possible that, depending on the nature of your problems, it's not so much that it got buggier as the final patch broke compatibility for the servers with the version you were playing, and you just didn't realize a patch had come out that far after release. Which is a shame because in addition to bug fixes, it included the expansion for free.Ieyke said: