Korax

Fucking PC gaming!

Recommended Posts

DISCLAIMER: This post is mostly just enraged ranting, and can be dismissed as such. Or you can join in, or whatever.

I've been dipping into my backlog recently in order to knock out some of the build-up before I'm distracted by all the good-looking releases coming in the next few months. It's been fun, and I've finally completed some great games, but as luck would have it, the last two games I finished ended up as exercises in frustration.

First up is STALKER: Clear Sky. This one wasn't actually much of a surprise. Both STALKER games have been buggy and a bit unstable, and I knew full well what I was getting myself into. The only real problem I had was with the ending fight.

After carefully making my way through teleportation anomalies and sharpshooting enemies, I finally get to face the final boss. I unsling the gauss rifle designed to penetrate his psionic shield, take aim, fire, and... nothing happens. His health bar doesn't move. He doesn't move. He doesn't even shoot. He stands there, shouting things I can't understand because the localization team decided that his incidental dialog didn't need to be in English. I spend the next ten minutes trying desperately to kill him, to no avail.

I subsequently did a few searches online, and found out that a great number of people had experienced the same bug, and there wasn't much I could do to try and fix it. A quick trip to YouTube to watch the ending video, and all was well. Overall, it wasn't much of a big deal. The ending bug was the only real problem I had run into the whole game. Unfortunately, its proximity to another end-game bug helped to magnify my anger at the next game's problems.

The second culprit? Crysis. Again, I had a lot of fun playing the majority of the game. But this time, there were so many little things that happened, it completely ruined my playing experience.

First was the flying sequence. Not really hard, but one of the worst-implemented scripted events I've seen. I'm flying a VTOL aircraft, tasked with defending to other aircraft while we make our way through a small canyon, rescuing soldiers along the way. The problem is that the VTOL's movement is extremely sluggish, and the other scripted aircraft continue about their course completely unaware of my situation. By the time I've finished clearing an area of aliens, they've already taken off and found some more guys to rescue, and more aliens to be attacked by. They reached the objective, declaring, “Yes! We made it!” as I'm still only halfway through the canyon, and it takes me another 3-4 minutes to reach the end.

Then I'm aboard an aircraft carrier. There were a few groans and some head-shaking at some of the inaccuracies during the lead-up to the attack on the ship (I used to not only be in the US Navy, but was also qualified as a Reactor Operator on an aircraft carrier), but hey, it's a video game. I can forgive that. The real issues are, once again, during the final boss battle. The gun I need to use won't lock on the the boss. After restarting the game, the locking is back, but now the major piece of cover doesn't physically exist. I can see it, but it doesn't collide with any other geometry, so its function as cover when re-arming at the nearby weapon cache is now useless.

When I finally kill the boss, there's a checkpoint and an auto-save, after which I instantly die. I re-load. I die. I re-load. I die. As it turns out, the game saved right as an alien was in the middle of a lethal attack, leaving me to experience the final result of that attack every time I started from the checkpoint. I had to start over from a mid-fight save in order to kill the boss again and finally, actually survive the fight.

I have never been more frustrated with a game. I felt like snapping my keyboard in half. All the fun and interesting things that had happened up to that point were completely overshadowed by the buggy, glitchy ending, and now I'm much less interested in playing the expansion or upcoming sequels.

Now, I say "PC gaming" because I really can't see something like this happening on a console. I'd like to think that the prolonged testing and certification process that a game goes through in order to be released on a console would have fixed these problems, but who knows. The PC is still my favored platform for almost any game you'd care to mention, but FUCK! It can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To be fair, that VTOL thing has nothing to do with PCs. There have been a million shittastical flying sequences in GTA and all sorts of other console games. Same with auto-saves right before death. Nothing to do with host hardware, it's purely a game logic issue.

The STALKER games are legendarily buggy. It indeed sucks. The tradeoff is that it would be very difficult to actually get those games published on consoles in the first place.

I totally share your pain--gaming is a huge headache sometimes, and PC gaming even moreso, so I don't mean to diminish the frustration of your troubles. Many of them aren't necessarily PC-specific though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What a coincidence you just posted this! I finished Crysis just a few minutes ago after picking it up for cheap during the steam sale. Everything went fine for the first 90% of the game, and I was pleasantly surprised at the high level of settings my computer could handle smoothly. The flying sequence was complete shit, and felt a bit out of place, but it paled in comparison to the pain I felt on the last level.

When I got to the ship and made it all the way to the sub-boss, my computer began freezing hard. Assuming it was high temperatures or my memory filling up, I checked the usual things. No indications of anything unusual though (I'm still using the Windows 7 RC1 so that may be a factor). Thankfully I stumbled upon a forum post somewhere suggesting that you run the game in dx9 compatible mode. That worked, and I made my way to the final boss. Somehow at that point it got fucking worse!

I'm getting my ass handed to me running around trying to figure out how to beat the thing (it took me a bit to notice the cache of ammo, and for some reason I forgot how well the old cloak and shoot maneuver worked). After every few reloads I begin randomly falling through the floor to the belly of the ship. At first I thought there were legitimate pits you could fall in and get back out (maybe placed there for a little cover or something). I tried to find my way out, but nope, I was fucking stuck. I tried to fight through it and things kept getting weirder (the dead soldiers on the ship would be standing up like zombie puppets for example). Every time this happened I had to restart the game. Thankfully, after all that I finally beat it.

What a shame, I so rarely finish games. I had a ton of momentum going yesterday too making it all the way from the mine level to the end in one sitting, but all the problems killed it and I ended up finishing it tonight. Considering the ending was basically a big ...to be continued, I considered playing Warhead next. After all the problems though, I think I'll play Arkham Asylum instead (or one of the 50 other games I splurged on during the sale).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The ending to Crysis could have been better, and overall would have made the whole game better if your commanding officer just said "shit just got real" and it faded to black. I think my problem with Crysis is it rides the line of completely ridiculous, but they refuse to admit it and keep playing it serious. I wish they'd just go completely over the top. It tries to be serious when it should be Bad Boys 2.

As for the main topic here...I think your issues are mainly with game design and logic, rather than PC related. There's plenty of console games out there with their head stuck up their ass.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree that a couple of the points I had were more of a design problem, but they were really just the cherry on top of the glitch-sundae that the ending turned out to be. And I hate cherries.

Those types of things can usually be shrugged off. Poor boss AI or bad arena design are usually things that you can say, "Oh, those developers! Should've done a better job!" to. But when the most basic mechanic of the game, the point-shoot-kill system, stops working because of some flaw in the code, you can no longer complete the majority of FPS games.

Incidentally, I figured out how to reproduce the lock-on bug. If you're in the middle of locking on, and the boss hits you with his freeze ray, but not enough to kill you, you will thaw out after 15-20 seconds, and the locking function no longer works.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's not like console games are any better when it comes to bugs. I managed to get stuck and fall through the world a couple of times in Ratchet & Clank Crack in Time. And I don't know if it was by design, but at a certain point my weapons wouldn't upgrade anymore in the arena.

If STALKER was on the consoles it would have been just a buggy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
It's not like console games are any better when it comes to bugs. I managed to get stuck and fall through the world a couple of times in Ratchet & Clank Crack in Time. And I don't know if it was by design, but at a certain point my weapons wouldn't upgrade anymore in the arena.

If STALKER was on the consoles it would have been just a buggy.

I think he is referring to the certification console games are supposed to undertake (a lot of bugs slip through still). A lot of the polish in console games is similar in PC games, just not all developers seem to bother, with it being an open source the developers seem to leave this to modders, this may be because the resources they had for the development have run out, or the time which could be used for a patch is time the developers are making another game.

Personally, with my resurgence into PC gaming, I have had few problems, admittedly I haven't played many games which are supposed to be specifically buggy. I do however intend to play some of them, hopefully I won't encounter many bugs. In fact I am pretty much finished setting up my new rig, which is gorgeous!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Only points I wholly agree in there is about Stalker. I gave up on Stalker a long time after running across a whole bunch of issues that just didn't make the game fun to play.

Other than that, even though PC gaming might be heavily flawed in it's own way, I still prefer to play my games on the PC.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think he is referring to the certification console games are supposed to undertake (a lot of bugs slip through still). A lot of the polish in console games is similar in PC games, just not all developers seem to bother, with it being an open source the developers seem to leave this to modders, this may be because the resources they had for the development have run out, or the time which could be used for a patch is time the developers are making another game.

Sure, but the the variation of PC hardware has to be taken into account. It's no excuse for genuine glitchadelica - Troika physically pelted me with my own gonads with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and I confess that I gave up on Stalker when after twenty hours of hiding and creeping I hit a missing door bug. I was feeling pretty weak at that point. That said, given the demented mixture of hardware configurations and software on the PC scene, there's aways the possibility that some driver or other might bring the whole edifice crashing down...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Game logic bugs are not driver issues, most bugs people encounter are game logic bugs.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's definitely true that PC games don't have to undergo certification (at least from platform holders), and in many cases that can leave them a bit less stable than their console counterparts.

But, while this doesn't make it any better when you're in the heat of the moment getting fucked by a bug, remember that the lack of that certification is what makes the PC the PC, and what makes it so important. The computer is the ONLY gaming device with any kind of real market penetration that doesn't require consent from some large multinational corporation to develop and sell a game. Some people understandably don't care about that kind of thing, because there's obviously no shortage of great games on consoles. But it's really important that people keep supporting the PC, because it would be really shameful if games were the only major entertainment form whose only routes not just to market but even to creation were through closed, proprietary systems.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Game logic bugs are not driver issues, most bugs people encounter are game logic bugs.

Oh, sure - that's a perfectly fair point. I do think that it's harder to build for PC, because you don't know what the system's going to throw at you, whereas, theoretically at least, if your game runs on one XBox 360 it should run on all XBoxen 360, region limitations and modchips permitting. Arguably that's just part of the deal, though, like multiple resolutions and having to insert some desultory new content into your console port. I mean, <i>could</i> you even run a certification programme for PC games, beyond "we're pretty sure that if you meet the specifications printed on the side of the box, this will work", which is roughly the extent of the assurance you get? Likewise, the ability to release patches and have people propagate them on your behalf is no doubt a powerful incentive to snatch the plate from its fall from pole to floor.

But. But I think about Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which would not have passed any QA test not created by maniacs, which needed a patch just to not work, effectively. If that had been an XBox game, would it have ever seen the light of day (or another, more vampire-friendly metaphor)? And yet, to deny the world VTM:B just because playing it was frustrating to the point of self-immolation would be like throwing the Venus de Milo away because the arms don't work.

And, you know, what Chris said above. The reason I don't have an iPhone, despite the mockery of my peers, is that it's wholly dependent on a marketplace, or on invalidating the warranty and giving the maker license to try to kill your phone. On the PC it's not just good but right to have the freedom to install what I want.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just wanted to point you towards the quote button, there, Denial, in case you haven't seen it. Also, you want to use square brackets for your italics.

As for bugs, I think there's usually a correlation between game crashing bugs and overall feel of quality and polish in a game. For example, weird Russian PC games, cheap truck racing games, etc. all tend to have both:

  1. Lots of strange crashing bugs, but also
  2. Half-assed stuff all over the place, jaggy fonts, twitchy, unresponsive controls, flickering textures, weird pauses, etc.

Although there's always the inhomogeneous target platform to worry about in PC gaming, if you're making a game for Windows you're working with pretty stable framework APIs, and I think the higher bug count has less to do with it being PC, and more to do with sloppy design and coding.

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about making games.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As for bugs, I think there's usually a correlation between game crashing bugs and overall feel of quality and polish in a game. For example, weird Russian PC games, cheap truck racing games, etc. all tend to have both:

  1. Lots of strange crashing bugs, but also
  2. Half-assed stuff all over the place, jaggy fonts, twitchy, unresponsive controls, flickering textures, weird pauses, etc.

Agreed. While I was lucky enough to only have encountered maybe two or three bugs over the entirety of both STALKER games, they did feel and look kind of unfinished. Same with VtM:B. I don't remember suffering any bugs, but boy, did that game show its need for polish.

...inhomogeneous...

Heterogenous?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love the PC because you can play stuff that you'd never in a million years get on console. You know, thematically existentialist strategy titles by four Ukranian brothers and the like. The fact that anyone can release anything is awesome. The EGP is churning out so much fascinating stuff right now, for instance, and you just couldn't do that every single month on with Xbox indies.

Seriously though, now I sometimes do look at the consoles and think "hm, dumb peasants the lot of them". All they want is in your face action games! And they can't even play them properly!

Sort of joking.

But I've never encountered any huge, game breaking bugs in my year and a half playing on the PC. I guess my "FUCK THE PC" moment was the breakage of my graphics card, or that time the other day when Steam refused to start for no reason in particular.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks, toeblix - I'm more used to HTML or Textile - UBBCode always takes me a while to adjust to. Hopefully this will distract people from noticing that I just compared a Troika game to the Venus de Milo.

I agree with gdf that the PC platform allows for a whole bunch of genuinely demented material, and as wan extension of that it allows you to do stupid or unwise things - find and download Bulgarian RTSes, install things which are almost certainly adware, play Evony. That freedom to error is important, I think.

The generally unfinished sense I definitely agree with; like a mid-air running bug breaks immersion and deflates emotional investment. That said, relatively few bugs are actually game-killing at this point, surely? The STALKER bug Lord Korax came in on clearly is, but at least it's right at the end, where most players probably won't see it. Which is another fascinating element about games as against films or books - a lot of people get a satisfying experience out of them without actually reaching the end. But that's a different discussion.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I started playing PC games reasonably actively (as much as consoles) in the last year, and is it me or are things considerably better than they were in the late 1990s?

I'm running on a relatively new computer but I haven't had anything completely nuts. Even S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has behaved well, though I suspect I've been lucky in that regard.

How about you guys that never strayed, that stayed true to the cause, that plan to die with your PC towers clutched in your cold dead hands? Are things better or have I just forgotten how much I was trying to push limited hardware when I was 17?

DISCLAIMER of my own: I'm pretty forgiving and will play games at basic settings (within reason) as long as they work.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also, I didn't make it clear, but I DID play games on my PC when I was a teenager, and went on hiatus for a good while before coming back recently.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

For the most part hardware is ahead of the demands of gaming, even PCs that are considered midrange can run most games with all the bells and whistles.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My joke aside; yeah fuck PC gaming. After updating my OS after a decade I can't seem to play my favorite game with anything higher then 25fps(TF2) and just tried L4D1 at about 10fps.

No idea what it is, going to wipe it and go back to xp I guess, so Im annoyed at PC gaming right now too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, but try to make that video on a console... After I started playing games on a console, the headaches they've given me have been pretty comparable to PC games, although this time it's not because of the architecture, but because the developers chose to make the games shit in specific ways.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yesterday my PS3 became unresponsive while playing Brutal Legend. The music kept playing, but for the rest it didn't do anything. The PS3 power button still worked though.

So yeah, fuck console gaming.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now