PC obsession confession!

[Caspar]

Right you all know me and my love of the Xbox…but like many our roots were in the PC. [Let’s not digress this to earlier game master systems like the mega drive/SNES…etc…cause I never owned any of them. I did have a C64/S+3…:whoops!: I digressed didn’t!]

Anyway…

With the current hole in Xbox release games, and we’ve all been playing the current ruck for a few weeks/ months now…I decided to pop my head back into PC games for a week or two, until Crimson Skies, R63, Topspin, etc comes out over the coming weeks for the Xbox.

What a bloody nightmare! I now know the full power of console gaming!

I bought the newly released Max Payne 2 and Hidden and Dangerous 2. Both are excellent games and no-one is disputing this. I have always been a fan of old Max, and his wicked ways…and have been waiting for H&D2 for sometime; cause we do like our war games don’t we :sickos:

Well first of all I tried H&D2 – 3 CDs it is! And a total install of 2.4Gb :p Just use a DVD! ..surely everyone has DVDs these days??? I had numerous problems installing the game, plenty of corrupt files, reading form the CD. In fact I must have tried to install the game >20 times

Half way through this diabolical nightmare..I thought this could be a drive issue and took my DVDROM out and put in a normal 48x CD. The problems continued! I then tried to install on another machine, not as many problems, but took about 3 attempts to install it. The problems weren’t confined to read errors but to the actual installation procedure…it kept asking for the first CD, even tho it shd have finished reading that one earlier on, during installing CD2 or 3.

Anyway, I installed the game, wayheey! …then I had to go round the shop checking for updates, non that I could find! :phew: Fair do’s the game didn’t automatically autodetect the best game settings for me so I could just play!. As it turns out the ‘best game settings’ turn out to be ‘the safest’ cause I managed to winch them all up to the max..so god knows why the game set them all to medium. Btw, I have a ATI 9700 PRO 128MB.

Max Payne 2 was a better install, on the CDROM drive, but did have CRC errors and took 3 attempts to install.

I think multiple CD game installations is a nightmare…took me ages and had to keep swapping CDs in and out.

Bt the time I did install them I was so hot and bothered!..that I need to go to the gym to cool off!!!



Ok, enough whinging!...cause I’m sure the first person who replies to this says they never have any game installations problems!

But, let’s compare this to Xbox games, and I’m not even going to touch on the FACT that Xbox Live allows seamless real-time voice communications through headset! – I was forced to actually type words to my teammates!....I forget how many times I died during mid sentence!!!! :evil:

To play an Xbox game, this is what you do:

1. Put game disc into the Xbox gaming console and play.
Not complicated I know!

notes:
1. There’s only game disc !, as we all have DVDROM drives!
2. No graphics setting’s reconfiguring, as we all use the same graphics spec
Isn’t standardisation a dream! :p



The conclusion to this is that I’m going to take both Max Payne and H&D2 back to Game, within the 10days trial period, and keep my shares in Microsoft strong. :p

Microsoft to the rescue!
Although this long tedious PC game installation is a big sidetracking problem, it’s not here forever! It seems that MS are in discussions with game developers/publishers/ installation experts like Wise and Installshield to have console based installations (whether non at all…or a transparent one)

This is all coming in Longhorn, next Windows OS, due in to 2 years time!

[Caspar]

I'll move this to the PC forum, as it connects both platforms...

[NEONKNIGHT]

Originally Posted by Caspar

Microsoft to the rescue!
Although this long tedious PC game installation is a big sidetracking problem, it’s not here forever! It seems that MS are in discussions with game developers/publishers/ installation experts like Wise and Installshield to have console based installations (whether non at all…or a transparent one)

This is all coming in Longhorn, next Windows OS, due in to 2 years time!

I've been reading about the new Microsoft incentive in the current edition of PC Gamer - looks like the DirectX Team are going all the way to make PC gaming as accessible as console gaming. Hooray!!!

[Jarandco]

Thanks for that Cas - interesting about the new installation system!!

Console gmaing on the pc would make it a lot easier!

I've never had a problem with installing games onto pc but I do like to use the nocd patch's because I hate hearing the cdrom spnning round for no reason.

It would make thing's easier if they brought games out for the pc on DVD format. Don't think it should cost anymore seeming how its just on one DVD instead of 2,3 or 4 cd's


Ps Maxpayne 2 fecking gr8. Finished it in 2days like but starting it again

[ZrByte]

Caspar: Sounds like a bad Config to me, the only time I have ever had CRC errors was on a poorly writen CD-RW I accidently Sat on and it seems very unlikeley to get it on Two games on the run.
Maybe one of your IDE leads are damaged? or you have a Duff hdd, or maybe you have installed an old 16bit CDROM driver (Ive heard these can cause similar problems on XP.... What OS are you running BTW?

I do agree with the whole Graphics setting and Compatibility problems though, that Console style install sounds fantastic definatley wont be for a few years though, too many 'Potential' Customers dont have DVD drives yet even though they are in the minority, Mostly applies to the laptop Market I believe as DVD drives have only become standard in the last year or so (Up until recently they where only on the Higher spec models).

I dont like the sound of it only beeing in Longhorn though, I plan to make XP my last MS OS (Technicly win2k as im switching back to that tomorrow), though Console style installs might make games work better on Linux style OS's.

[TigaSefi]

I installed Call of Duty legit no problem this weekend, in fact I can't recall the last time I had problems installing multi cd's games. Do you have problems with other software like MS office that some times require 2 or more cd's ?

[Gareth]

I agree that some 'potential' customers may not have DVD drives (sheesh, they're only £20 nowadays) but why don't manufacturers produce both DVD and CD-Rom versions? Then you could choose to buy whichever version you wanted, and the manufacturers would know how many people really need CD-based versions.

Incidentally, isn't Pro Evolution Soccer 3 for the PC on DVD? Hopefully we'll be seeing more and more games distributed like this.

On to the question of non-standardised grafx for PCs..... admittedly it's nice to not have to worry about whether your console is configured for optimum settings, but it does mean that you're stuck with that configuration for the life of your console, whereas PC owners can upgrade once their cards become outdated.

[Ramrod]

Never had a prob installing pc games. Problems with pc's on the other hand.....make me wish I was back on console. Till I see the difference in the graphics quality.

To save space now I've started putting my older games which are 2cd's or more onto DVD's. I've got three games on one and 4 on another

[Ben]

I rarely have a problem installing games tbh. Yea sometimes it happends but there is normally always a way round the issue. Console gaming I can't deny being alot easier but I just seem to be a PC freak

I normally take an image of my game and run it though deamon tools to cut out the cd altogether.