I returned my PC copy of RAGE yesterday despite the claims of bug fixes by id Software and AMD/ATI. Day one PC gaming has become a growing concern as of late. Out of the handful of day one PC purchases I’ve made, over 75% of them gave me grief.
It starts with Fallout: New Vegas which was purchased several weeks after the release date, but despite that buffer, I was still experiencing stuttering and crashes.
Fast forward to 2011 with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. There were some technical issues, but they were tolerable. The glaring issue was with a buggy side quest that I was forced to abandon. A patch was issued the day after I finished the game.
And now then there was RAGE which went from completely unplayable, to somewhat playable, to playable with user tweaks and now apparently 100% playable for NVIDIA users and some AMD/ATI users. What total hogwash.
Civilization V was the only problem free day one experience for me in the past two years. And that’s a disturbing trend. PC gaming has always been finicky, but in the age of immediacy, developers cannot and should not expect their users to wait for fixes.
When one of the fathers of PC gaming launches a game where the superior version on day one lives on the Xbox 360, there’s a problem.
Now I’m hesitant about my other PC releases like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the new Tomb Raider. Will they hold up on day one? Or should I just return them like I did with RAGE.
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Without RAGE and only one copy of Dark Souls, there’s a bit of a gaming void at the moment. I wrapped up PixelJunk Shooter 2 already which I may review later next week. With no new PSN games, I revisited Call of Duty: Classic to tackle that “Regular” difficulty Trophy.
I didn’t get too far before growing bored. Out of curiosity, I decided to launch the multiplayer before quitting. To my surprise, I got into a game. It was Team Deathmatch on Carentan. I can’t believe people are still playing this. What a pleasant surprise.
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