It’s happened to all of us at one point or another: we buy a game, tear off the shrink wrapping, pop the disc into our console or PC, boot it up and watch as our hopes are torn asunder. It doesn’t occur all that often, being the net-savvy video game fans we are, but there are some games that manage to defeat all of our ingrained warnings and end up absorbing our hard earned cash.
This circumstance befell me last week with STALKER: Call of Pripyat, an open-world FPS by GSC Game World, a Ukraine-based developer of some note. I’ve been interested in the Stalker series for a while, but I’ve never had a machine capable of running the titles until now. I figured that, after three iterations on the formula, it was probably a safe bet that Call of Pripyat would fix up the nagging problems I’ve heard about the first two games, namely the repeated crashes and lock-ups.
Well, you know what they say about assumptions, and it turns out that Call of Pripyat is just as unstable as the other two games. After raising all my graphic options to maximum, the game promptly crashed, forcing me to do it all over again. It also doesn’t help that, even on full graphics, the game looks and plays like a budget 2007 title. I understand that GSC is using the same engine, but they could have at least given it a bit of spit shine.
Needless to say, I promptly uninstalled the game and began pining after my forty misspent dollars. Has something like this happened to anyone else? I can think of two other instances of this phenomenon, but I’d like to hear your stories first. Have any of you been burned by hype? Sound off!
I can say that a few of the games I did this on were FEAR (I know, but it wasn’t as scary or as good as I thought it would be [Doom 3 at a young age has prepared me for the worst XD]) and Call of Duty 3 for the Wii.
Yes, this actually happened to me with the last STALKER game, Clear Sky. I pre-purchased it on Steam and was ready to play it the day it came out.
I have a good enough machine to run it and it’s never crashed, but it is just so dang hard! I am probably 20 minutes into the game and stuck there, with no money, bullets, or armor, and about 20 bulletproof enemies around me. I was highly disappointed by this game and wanted to kill myself for wasting that forty dollars.
Gah, there are so many games that I’ve bought without really a good reason to. I just wasted monry. GRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! Curse my frugality and the nagging guilt that comes with each useless waste of money!
The most notable mistake I made was getting L4D 1 and 2 for the 360. I AM SUCH AN IDIOT! GAAAH But really it was because my computer sucks, so I doubt I could even run the damn thing.
Well I’ve mentioned this a few times before but HAZE. I’m confident that many PS3 owners suffered from Free Radical’s hiccup.
Also, I’m sure that it’s well known but there’s a HUGE problem with fat PS3s. I sadly didn’t give my PS3 a workout so I’ve fallen foul to this. Anyone else here suffering from this problem? That’s a huge disappointment for me as I’ve yet to complete Heavy Rain!
well, Saints Row 2 has to be at the top of this list. Has anyone played it? It is just ridiculous, the graphics are pants, the speed the game runs at it just insane, like watching an old black and white film. Biggest let down in my gaming history.
Saint’s Row 2? I loved that game!
*Shakes fist*
For me I think it would have to be Little Big Planet. Not because it was a bad game, but because I knew fairly quickly that for me it would have been a better rental than a purchase.
On the flip side of that, as soon as I started really digging into Heavy Rain I knew that I made the right decision by renting instead of buying.
I think my last bad game purchase was Frontlines Fuel of War. It was such a great idea that was just executed terribly.
Jaws Unleashed. Hated it right away.
I actually liked the STALKER games, yeah they can be insanely difficult but I liked the challenge, and the atmosphere. Eddy, I also found it hard to love Saint’s Row 2 (please don’t kill me) because I am playing it on the PC and it is a really crappy port. I can run Crysis on high settings but Saint’s Row 2 has frame rate issues on on medium settings??? Resident Evil 5 is also a game that most people liked but is not very good on the PC 🙁 finally I would say Prototype is the worst regret I have, I just don’t feel the motivation to finish that game.
For me, it’d have to be Bioshock on the PC. I really enjoyed that game, but it never seemed to run right on my system. It lagged on high settings, and looked like crap on any lower settings. It crashed frequently, and on several occasions it kept asking me to register the game, even though I already had. Therefore, I couldn’t play the game offline. That, and the load times were very long.
Great game, but not very stable. 🙁
hay Mich, I’ll take your copy of STALKER: Call of Pripyat if you don’t want it 😛
I guess i’ll be the one to throw out MW2. I just can’t muster any enthusiasm for that game. Bought it, but i just find the first one to be a more enjoyable experience in almost every way. I’d also put Wii play on that list. Bought it for the controller, and i thought Wii play would be a good time like Wii Sports, but i now linger in self-hate every time i see the box.
ahh, sorry Eddy, maybe you had more luck than me. I read a lot about the bugs in this SR2, no fixes worked for me though. New comp soon, so will give it another shot then!
Gears of War 2
got it when I first got my 360. IMHO it really sucks, 30 dollars wasted.
perfect time to remind people once more of the wonders of gamefly, even with games your sure you will like, it’s still always a good thing to try them first. Gamefly has saved me a few hundred dollars so far- easy.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R Series has been awesome. I’ve never had a single problem with it crashing.
What DID happen however: Playing Clear Sky, it autosaves when going between 2 map jump things, and while it autosaved, there was a countdown for the first huge emmission, so I always died and hadn’t saved an earlier save since way back in the first game.
Other than that, the only problem were the games that couldn’t be installed on Vista. I bought the first Splinter Cell for a $9 nostalgia trip, but it won’t install, and ubisoft won’t fix it. =(
I really wish they would make the older Splinter Cells more compatible. Though, Double Agent for the PC should just be destroyed…