The Importance of Being Idle

PC Gaming Sucks

It'd been a long time since I'd played anything on PC, even though for a long while there I was a pretty hardcore PC fanboy, so when I got into the mood for a WWII shooter I thought I'd go back to Call Of Duty and carry on with that. Boy that was a mistake. It crashes every five minutes or so, and its not just a problem with my system or anything like that, forums are full of people trying to get this bastard game to run consistently. Over the past two days I reckon I've spent more time either rebooting from hardlocks, or just generally messing about with BIOS and driver settings in an attempt to play the game, than I have actually playing it. That said in even little tiny five minute bursts CoD is something to behold. I've just started the Russian campaign, and the trip across the Volka, huddled into a barge with dozens of other conscripts, listening to commisars trying to stir our love for the motherland while the Germans shell and bomb our flotilla to smitereens, is truly a shaking moment. Of course, reaching the comparative safety of the shore and joining the line for weapons only to be given a handful of bullets and told to follow the guy with the rifle and take it from him when he dies... that was some bad news. Not that having a gun really made life any better... But for all that it stirs my blood, the stability of the game itself stretches my patience, and reminds me of exactly WHY I don't game on the PC anymore: its a fucking nightmare. Will it run on my system? Will it run well? What texture setting should I use? What kind of pixel shader does my graphics card have? How much hard-drive space will the install take? It's gonna install the bloody StarForce thing too? I need to update my BIOS? And sound drivers? And graphic card drivers? And so on and so on... just give me a console any day - at least I know the game runs on my machine exactly as well as it runs on everybody elses and I can just pop the game in, sit in my comfy chair and we're away to gaming land.
So, yeah, it's official: PC gaming sucks. HARD.

posted by BadMonkey @ 8:52 PM