PC Gaming Is For Fools, But I Still Love It
by Bob CaswellIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
This last week or so will likely be the most exciting this year for any avid PC gamer: both Crysis and Unreal Tournament III have been released (not to mention the latest in the Half-Life 2 saga). These are high adrenalin, action-packed first person shooters. Both are technical and artistic marvels (consisting of “next generation” graphics) all while being loads of fun to play.
Another game came out for the PC around the same time with slightly less elevated status (but still widely praised): Gears of War. It has been available on the Xbox 360 now for a year. But as I don’t own an Xbox 360, I picked up a copy for the PC last week. The only problem is, it didn’t (and still doesn’t) work at all. And I’m not alone. In one of the official forums for the game, there are 68 pages worth of gamers complaining about almost the same issue: the game locks up soon after first loading.
Right now there’s no fix or solution, and Best Buy will not return my purchase (I don’t know of a store that takes back open games). So I’m stuck with a $50 paperweight for now with the hope that the game developer will eventually release a fix/patch to resolve this issue. Was I annoyed? Very.
I have a friend and fellow columnist, Paul Ellis, who swears by the Xbox 360 and doesn’t understand the PC gamer. After all, in order to run the latest games mentioned above, I need some fairly hefty hardware. I purchased, that is, built my own computer over the summer for around $1,500. The video card alone was nearly $400 (more than the cost of buying an Xbox 360). Also, Xbox 360 games just work. You don’t need to check system requirements and make sure you have enough RAM or hard drive space before installation. And your TV (where you’d most likely play with your Xbox 360) is likely to be bigger than your computer monitor.
So why don’t I save a lot of hassle, headache, and money by switching to an Xbox 360 (or other gaming console)? For whatever reason, PC gaming is just more fun for me. I enjoy being on the cutting (bleeding?) edge with the best possible graphics and games. I prefer the precision of the keyboard and mouse to the clunkiness of the console controller. And I like being in full control of the game settings (even if that causes other problems).
Yes, it’s true. In terms of pricing and overall ease of use, console gaming should win hands down. PC gaming may be for fools, but I still love it.
*Update 2/25/08* Kudos to commenter Daniel (and by Kudos, I mean $20 Amazon gift card) who provided a solution that worked! Too bad, though, that it’s more canon fodder against the game company involved:
Why wasn’t there an announcement of this beyond the otherwise obscure Microsoft link? How would I magically know about this Microsoft update that fixes my problem? It’s cool that it exists, but there should be a tie in somewhere online (the game’s official website would be a start) about this update and the game(s) it affects/fixes. And what about the revolutionary idea of *gasp* the update happening automatically when I load the game?
Note: This article is cross-posted at BobCaswell.com.
10 Comments 
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November 20th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
You are right Bob, I just don’t understand PC gamers. After all who would ever put up with an Xbox 360 game that didn’t play at all? And how recent did those beta nVidia drivers have to be run Crysis, one day old? The problem with Gears of War is just unforgivable though.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
There is a solution to Gears of War right now from not crashing, it’s quite simple and yet so stupid you would think they’d hammer that out on day one.
When you install the game, it does not install any icons or desktop shortcuts (which is retarded)… so most people go “Okay well let me put the DVD in and load it up”…
THAT is the reason it crashes. So if you are running vista, go into your Games folder and launch it through there, and you will be fine.
Now all they have to fix is the fucking graphics and the resource hogging that is going on causing massive chugging at any setting.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Hi Travis,
Thanks for the attempt, but I already tried what you describe (and many more fixes outlined in the forum discussion I linked to above). Unfortunately, no change. While that (and other so-called solutions) fixed the problem for some, there are still plenty left with no solution as of yet.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:29 am
I don’t know if you saw this yet, but Gears of War has a patch out now. Maybe it will actually let you play the game now. That would be novel.
http://gearsofwar.com/GearsPC/Gears+of+War+PC+Title+Update.htm
December 1st, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Grr… Even with that new patch, the game still doesn’t work. And it’s not just me. It looks like the fix helped a few gamers, but there are still plenty (most, really) still complaining in the forums.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:35 am
…ah, for “fools”.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 am
[...] The Point? The only point of this is to show the PC gaming is in fact more expensive. If you enjoy PC gaming, so be it. Just know that it costs more. For the record, I was actually surprised how well PC gaming did in this comparison. For my dollar, I’ll take the integrated approach of the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live though, not to mention that I don’t have to install my games and troubleshoot them to make them work (if you can make them work). [...]
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
[...] least this time I was able to find a solution to the problem. My previous gaming problem with Gears of War still has me with a $50 gaming paperweight. But I’ll say again what I said [...]
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
[...] not to mention that I don’t have to install my games and troubleshoot them to make them work (if you can make them work). SlackeR on February 24th, 2008 | File Under Gaming | [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I had a gears of war problem as well, it took me two months but i fixed it finally. It was crashing soon after it was loading, the problem was windows live. You have to uninstall your current version of windows live and download the new version from Microsoft’s website. For some reason when you install games from Microsoft it doesn’t update the version. I accidentally came across this when i couldn’t get Universe at War to work either.
I installed the new version and it worked, tried gears of war and all of a sudden that was working also. So if you haven’t already give it a try!
Here is the link to the version i installed:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6a69b9f-2aef-4125-b162-edf0ae922caf&displaylang=en
Remember you must uninstall the old version first. Good luck! Hope it works.