OT: Do Not Buy Alert

[Atrocities]

You are lucky Mephisto. Very lucky indeed. I would be greatful if I could get it too run well under any OS.

[Thermodyne]

Sounds like a memory leak. Take a look at memory usage when the game starts to lag.

[Instar]

I feel bad for you man, I got SC4 the day it came out
Stable as a rock on my P4 1.8 GF4 Ti 4400. As always, you should get the latest drivers (but you probably already have)
If you are using an ATI card then you have to change some options, they are not all there for SC4

[Instar]

oh yeah Audigy 1 card in my machine with 512megs ram running WinXP
Your opinion of it being buggy is only for you Atrocities, believe me, I think SC4 kicks major *** and is under-rated. But based on your experiences, you cant say anything but bad stuff.
When I say rock solid, I mean NEVER crashes, and I have played enough to get about 250000 people in about 7 cities

[Atrocities]

I only said the game was unstable and that there have been many complaints by AMD owners. A few intel owners have had problems to. I envy you that you can play the game. I would love to be able to play the game as SC is one of the games in my top five games of all time. I still play SC3k, and was very excited about SC4. I went out and bought it the day it came out. At first I thought the problems were caused by my PC, all drivers up to date, and using a GeForce 4 Ti420 (64megs DDR) when I read a few game reviews. Gamespot.com described it best. And they pointed out that the game has stability problems. I want to play the game, but I also wanted to spare people the cost of buying it now and getting frustrated at it because it won't run properly. Once Maxis comes out with a patch that fixes the memory leaks and other issues, and the game runs, then I will recommend it to god himself.

Don't get me wrong Instar, I think the game looks great, and even though it is missing some features, such as the ability to turn off random events, I hate having to put out a fire every few months, the game has a lot to offer.

The graphics look fantastic, and the controls work much better than in SC3k.

The detail is awsome, and the sound is without equal. The game is a world apart better in many way to SC2k and 3k. (Both of those game kicked *** as well.)

When I complain about performance issues, its not to be mean or evil, its to that lagging issues are a common problem for many people. My specs are above the high end recommendations, but still I get lag and lock ups. There is nothing more frustrating then to wait twenty minutes for a zoom out to cycle. Or to move the mouse and several seconds later the map moves. Very frustrating to say the least.

I also must point out that the game has few starter regions, and the lack of starting difficulty level is missed. The game is hard, but playable.

The one thing that is unforgiveable is EA's technical support. Without a doubt, the worst I have ever experienced and that included Serria. At least I could email Serria.

[ January 24, 2003, 12:17: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Growltigger]

My personal bugbear, games that are released way too early (normally for the Xmas rush) and havnt got all the bugs worked out of them..

Patches? simply a modified form of product recall for the computer game industry

Bastards the lot of them (except Malfador and Shrapnel of course)

[Jmenschenfresser]

My worst experience was Fallout 2. I could forgive bugs in such a complex game, but I can't forgive the sheer amount of terminal bugs. I played half way through the game and ended up with a save game that had a bug which wouldn't let me go any farther.

In a rage I pulled it from my computer and left it. I went back to it few years later and got the final patch for it. Still some minor bugs, but a much more enjoyable experience.

One of the reasons I rarely buy games when they first hit the shelves. A) Price, B) Bugs, and C) Later Versions usually come with more extras, i.e. Gold Versions.