Let me start by saying I'm not a gamer. I don't get off by building a $10,000 gaming rig full of nodded parts running slimed-down operating systems designed to run Unreal and Crysis at mad frame 120fps. I don't even have a 'gaming rig'. I run games on a dual-core p4 (Centrino), 2 ghz, 2gb of cheap memory, Vista powered laptop with no real graphics card (Intel Mobile 945GM Express Chipset Family to be exact, a piece of junk), no real sound card, and not much else. This is the same machine I use for everything else, which is basically the point. I also do not have an console games. I have no xBox, Playstation, or Wii. In point of fact, I don't have a TV either.
I am a gamer in the sense that I'd like the ability to occasionally distract myself from what I'm doing by firing up a simple program and blowing the hell out of stuff. When I was younger, I enjoyed games, but never seriously, only as a supplement to other amusement activity.
I have not played many games. The last popular game I played was Halo 1. Before that was Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft. So, recently, I decided I was tired of playing such outdated games. Sure Diablo 1 is fun, but I can only smash so many of those little demon critters before you eventually lose interest and start thinking about how to write a piece of software to automate it. The instant I start thinking about software, macros, or other automation shortcuts, I know the game has lost its entire point, as I am not immersed in it, and my mind is not actually distracted.
But I was unsure about how my system would react to more modern video games, as it is certainly not a power-gamming rig. So, after (very stupidly) losing my CD key to halo 1 for PC, I undertook to try (via the demos) out a set of what seemed to be the most popular modern video games and determine which was the best. My plan was then to purchase one or two of my favorites. I am so glad I took this step, however, as I have been sorely disappointed by the results.
First up is the lineup of games:
- Bioshock for PC - Download via fileplanet link, found at offical website.
- Tomb Raider Legends - Downloaded via Steam
- Tomb Raider Anniversary - Downloaded via Steam
- Half-Life 2 - Downloaded via Steam
There were more, but I gave up after these.
First off was Steam. I downloaded Tomb Raider Legends and tried to install it. It failed, saying it couldn't run some hyper-sensitive security (read: DRM) component. Fine, one down, lots to go...Vista's known for causing this kind of problem....
Next I downloaded Half-Life 2, and got a similar fail. So the problem may not be the games, but steam itself. FAIL! I'm going to try to download this on its own as a last resort, but as the download page says it still requires a steam account, I don't have very high hopes (my only hope is that the developers were smart enough to correctly package their restrictive DRM 'feature' in their demo executable where the fools at steam were not).
So with steam a fail, I then tried to download Tomb Raider Anniversary direct. And I was greeted with my first and only success of the night. It worked. Not really well, but it did work alright. But Tomb Raider is not exactly my first choice for game play. It is interesting and challenging, but it's puzzle-heavy play is anything but mindless, which is more what I was looking for, and while the visuals are nice, they are not unique and novel now that we have Google image search.
So that left only Bioshock, which was supposedly an excellent game. Sadly, the external link was to a members-only section of fileplanet. I hate fileplanet. But, I really wanted to play a video game. So I signed up, and I even downloaded their crapware IE plugin. And, two hours and several thousand ads displayed on my screen later (none of which I saw, as I was busy doing other, more interesting things), I had the installer. I unzipped and ran it, and was so happy when it said it had installed! But it was not to last. The first run comes up with a dialog saying my videocard is unsupported, and the result will be unpredictable. Sure enough, five seconds later, the result is a complete program crash, without even a hint of a splash screen. No games for me.
At this point I've invested four hours and the best I've gotten to run is a Tomb Raider game. Great. Discouraged, I gave up, for the night. I'm not sure what I will do now, but I will probably either move back to old games, buy Halo 2, or maybe even just buy a console and a TV input card to use my PC as a display. You can't beat a console on simplicity, and that's what I want. Consoles are expensive, however, and I want to buy more MIDI gear for my studio.
It shouldn't be this hard. No wonder every tech writer and their Grandma is predicting the death of PC gaming, as they finally have something in computing that neither of them can figure out.
[Update]
Since then, I have been able to get Half-Life 2 to run dispite its dependance on Steam, and I've decided I will buy OrangeBox, as I really did want a mindless video game to play. But I'm still not very happy here.
[Update 2]
I have beaten Half-Life 2, and Episode One. I cannot load Episode 2, however, which I think is the fault of the new source engine...oh well, I give up.
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