Actually I've gotten it to run fine without closing anything...as in my firewall is till up, my anti-virus is running, etc. Whenever I have a new game and have problems with it, the first things that they say are close resident programs, etc, then run in 640x480 (yeah, right) and a bunch of other lazy meaningless crap. It's almost like they are going to ask if my PC is plugged in....now not all of us are PC literate, but a LOT of gamers are, and asking us to reduce our settings to a point that makes our PC's technology 10 years out of date is simply crap, and if it did fix our problems then it's the result of shoddy programming. Most of us have similar hardware, the same OS, etc. I din't buy a PIII 600 EB, a GeForce and 256MB of PC-133 ram so some putz can tell me to run at 640-480 in software mode, (what am I playing, Leisure Suit Larry 1?!), and to shut down all my resident programs....actually I don't mind the resident program thing, but with well made games it's never necessary...sure for a system hog like UT I can understand it.....
In any case, they always say the same thing, and regretfully I have found Activision is one of the worst offenders. Too bad, because they're releasing some of the best games. I had to buy a TNT2 just to run Vampire!
Those types of suggestions are meant for the truly PC challenged. So why do they give them to experienced gamers who probably know more than the tech they're talking too? Because they don't know what's wrong, and they don't know how to fix it. I'd rather hear, "well, we released it, and it SHOULD work fine, but if not, let us know what you got and we'll look for a fix." Cutting edge hardware is tempermental....I know that. But give me something to work with, not the idiotic stuff they always say first (do you have the latest drivers?)...We're gamers, give us SOME credit. I not only have the latest drivers, I've kept copies of the last 5 releases in case I have compatibility problems with your games.............
Now I'm not dissing the techs, I've found them to be god people who want to fix your problem......but the info they're getting is crap. And the suggestions they are told to give you are crap. They should be told to be up front (and most are, after they go through the crap part) and look at patches as an obvious and viable option....not a last resort. Many times, in fact, more often then not, the problem isn't on our side. It's on theirs.
Just a little rant
|