In the last few months, I acquired a few games from Steam because of their sales. They were all games I actually wanted to play but until today I hadn’t found the time to play them. It did not go well.
My first try was Freedom Force which I had bought for 2$. The game was unplayable at first, but I managed to get it working after a looking for solutions to the problem online. However, I only managed to finish the tutorial because the controls were unresponsive in the second mission.
My second try was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic which I also got for the low low price of 2 dollars. Unlike Freedom Force, this was a game I was really looking forward to playing. Just like Freedom Force, the game was unplayable at first and I had to find a hack somewhere to get it to load. I managed to create my character and see the initial cinematic, but the screen was totally black after the video. I will try a few more things (like playing on a Windows XP machine) before giving up because I really want to experience this game.
After failing with 2 old games, I figured I’d try with a more recent title: Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (I do not understand Tycho’s love for prose). I had actually tried playing this game on my previous machine with no success. I attributed the failure to my PC because it was crap and never played any games well. However, my current machine is well built and plays modern games without any issues. This game was different, the audio would simply not work. The official FAQ mentions crackling noise (which is exactly what I was experimenting) however the proposed solution was not doing it for me. I contacted support and am still waiting for a response (it’s the week-end, so I wasn’t expecting an answer yet).
My last try was Flock. It played correctly for the first 7 or 8 levels but froze for no reason at some point. I haven’t tried playing it again, but I suspect I could continue playing and finish the level without issues. I was just too frustrated with my PC experience that I stopped playing for the day.
Thoughts on PC gaming
With that kind of experience and all the DRM fiascos going on (Spore, Ubisoft, etc.) it’s no wonder that console gaming is more popular. You just have to put the game in the console (or just run the downloaded game) and start playing: no setup, no issues (most of the time), just fun.