The word garbage comes to mind.

To be fair, though, I didn't even play the game.


Read on my friends, and I will take you through the hell that is installation and configuration of a version 1.00 game.



So, I download the game. It comes in a million little parts and the only thing with a file extension at the end of it is a ".sfv". At the time, I had no idea what this was, so I googled it. Turns out it's a verification format for large files that have been broken up into a million smaller parts. The readme for the download says to extract "it" and mount "it", so I search for and download a .sfv reader utility. I run the utility, and after about a minute it comes up and says "yup, your files are ok!", and I'm like "... ok... where's my ISO?" So after some poking around, I realize that I have to open the file ending .001 with winrar and extract it. Ah. Easy.

I right click the file ending .001 and extract it, takes about 3 minutes. I close everything, and can't find the ISO. I still don't know where it put it. So, I re-open everything, right click the file ending .001 again and tell it specifically to extract to my ISOs directory. About 3 minutes pass again. It works.

I mount the image in Daemon, and go about installing it. Takes about 5 minutes to install (ISO on same hard drive as destination directory) and it finally finishes. It warns me that my video card drivers are out of date, and that I should update them. I tell it to fuck off. It wants me to register, wants to install gamespy, blah blah blah, I click no on all of it.

I copy the exe from the image file to the game's directory, and boot it up. It loads, and warns me again that my video card drivers are out of date, and it may not run properly. I bite this time, and decide I may as well check it out. I click the update drivers button. It brings me to a TimeShift webpage that has a link to the beta drivers for Nvidia. I click the link, and start downloading the beta drivers. Takes about 2 minutes, 35 megabyte file. It finishes, and I run the installation, knowing full well I'll have to restart my shit before I can play the game. It takes me through the wizard, and windows honks at me a couple of times warning me that the drivers are not verified by windows blah blah, I click through it. My system restarts.

I come into an 800x600 window, with all of my icons mashed together. Ok, maybe not totally typical of a video drivers installation, but acceptable for a beta release I suppose. So I right click my desktop, go to the resolution settings, and can't find my triple monitor resolution on the slider anywhere. I click on "adapter" to see if I can get to the Nvidia utility. Oh, turns out, windows doesn't even KNOW wtf my video card is. "Unrecognized video hardware", "This device is operating properly." Yeah, right.

I open firefox, go to Nvidia's website, download the latest non-beta release of the drivers. Takes about 2 minutes, again. 42 megabyte file. It finishes, and I run it. It tells me that I have an unrecognized video card installed, and the old drivers need to be removed before it can proceed. I click ok. It runs through a couple of bars and then says I need to restart my system. I close everything and try re-running the exe to see if it will do it without a restart, but it just honks at me and stops. No dice. I restart.

The computer comes back up, again in 800x600. I double click the video drivers again. It runs through it's normal installation crap, and right at the end, after going black - it never comes back. It just stays black. I watch my hard drive light for a minute, and count the flashes to see if it's operating on something or if it's stuck in some kind of infinite loop. I gather that it's not infinite (at least as far as I can comprehend iterations of hard drive flashing) and try ctrl+alt+deleting. Nothing. I try my standard Ctrl+escape, up, enter, right, right, enter for a system restart, but the hard drive light just goes crazy for about 20 seconds and nothing happens. I finally settle for a hard reset. I push the switch on the front and wait.

The computer comes back up again. I reset all of my video settings without problem this time, change color settings, resolution, and even re-organize my desktop icons back to the way I had them before. Finally. I find the TimeShift game and run it. It loads up and I watch the intro FMVs (the company that made it's logo, Nvidia, another developer logo) for about 40 seconds and it gets me to the main menu. Sweet! I go into the audio preferences because it's way too loud. I turn it down to about 70%, and see an option for "reverberation", and turn it on. I click apply. The sound skips for 5 seconds, and windows honks and tells me TimeShift.dmp is ready to be saved to my hard drive, and that it has crashed. I tell it not to save, click no on an error report, and let the game close. Ok, don't screw with the sound preferences, no problem.

I reload the game. It's going through the intro FMVs again, and I hit escape and click some to skip them, but to no avail. It makes me sit and watch them. I finally get to the main menu, and now I can't move the mouse. I try the keyboard. Nothing. I start laughing at this point. This is the most fucked up piece of gaming software I have ever installed on my machine, ever. I force close the game. I reload it and don't touch anything this time, but it's still frozen. Nothing. I force close it again.

I uninstall the game using windows' utility. I load up the autorun again, and re-install the game. Another 5 minutes passes. I skip all the usual messages, ignore the video card drivers again, and open the game. I make sure not to touch the keyboard during the FMVs, just in case that's what froze up my game, and the main menu finally loads up. The mouse moves. I go into the video preferences to make it work with the triple monitor resolutions. I select the one I want, and click apply. It warns me that changing might take some time. I click OK. Windows honks, and tells me TimeShift.exe has experienced an error, and has crashed. Fucking fantastic.

I close the game, and reopen it. The three monitors are working! Only, the loading screen is tripling itself across all 3, rather than in the center. Odd. The FMVs start up. I have trouble reading the logo on the first one and can't figure out why for a second until I realize that it's playing the FMVs backwards. Yes, backwards. As if I was watching them through a mirror. I laugh out loud for about a minute, and finally the main menu comes up, and I change the resolution back down to 1280x1024, because I don't want to run the risk of some things being backwards in the game or in the cut scenes. The game crashes and windows honks again, (as expected) and I force close it and re-open it.

It's at this point, while it's loading and showing me the intro FMVs again that I decide it couldn't have possible been my random hitting of keys that froze the menu, so I hit escape, once, to see if it will take. Nothing happens. I sit and watch the intro again.

The menu comes up, and is frozen. I can't use my mouse, or the keyboard, again. I sigh, force close the game, and uninstall it. I set up the installation again, and go upstairs and relate the story to my roommates, who laugh at me.

I come back to my computer and click through all the boxes again, and load the game. I'm very careful not to touch anything while it's showing me the movies, and I wait patiently. It finishes loading, and I skip going into the preferences at all, and just click "New game". I click the middle difficulty when prompted, and it starts loading.

Windows honks. It tells me timeshift.exe has crashed and that an error has occurred. I finally get frustrated enough to close it and uninstall it off my drive.



Jesus fucking christ. Garbage is not that bad of a word for this piece of shit. Maybe when they patch it beyond 1.00 I'll take a look at it again.

--Locane

...can you just buy the installation disc from the store?

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” - Benjamin Franklin

...also trusting a game to send you to the proper drivers for your graphics card, when nVidia seems to change their location on an almost weekly basis, not wise.

Odd they'd distribute the game that way though - generally you only see that sort of rar archive in pirated stuff. ...or... so I hear... from... pirates I know... >_>

Thoth, they redirected me to the Nvidia website's beta drivers. Apparently it figures I have to use the beta versions for me to be "Up to date".

I'm tempted to spend $50 on it at direct2drive.com and see if it works or not. I'd bet that I have the same or similar issues, I'm pretty sure it's just shitty coding.

Still hilarious though.

--Locane

No one else thinks this is funny? Man. I must have a weird sense of humor.

--Locane

that wasnt funny to me; that made me angry just thinking about experiencing that. i would have given up way before u did.
i would need a break many times during that to "chill out."

What can I say? I'm persistent. I've dealt with buggy installs before, but this one takes the cake.

Playing the intro movies reversed was fricken hilarious - I have NEVER seen that before, and it's just plain screwy weird. That was my favorite part.

--Locane

the whole .rar thing has been common knowledge (at least to me) for very long time now, so you basically got me off to a bad start there.

Then, I didn't have issues getting the new beta drivers to work. So again, not looking good.

Then, you disappoint me and not talk about the actual game.

Granted, the demo was kinda cool, but I could see where it goes a bit astray as the reviewers say. Oh well.

I did say right at the beginning that I didnt even play the game.

Did you miss that part?

--Locane

So I got the opportunity to play it for a little while. The game itself is pretty cool but the ability to slow down time paired with having an arsenal of ridiculously powerful guns makes the game really easy.

Really the entire game is just shooting things in slow motion. This is not really a new concept though it is still cool. In addition to being able to shoot people in slow motion, you can also steal their weapons, play tricks on them, etc. That's pretty cool, but its also pretty gimmicky and doomed to get old fast. If you're really looking for another single player first person shooter than its a pretty cool game, but I really don't think it brings anything incredibly new and innovative to the world of FPS.

Except the first split-packet rar packaging ever seen in a retail game!

Tis a sad day indeed when even the retail game distributors are too lazy to make self-extractors – I almost feel guilty for bitching at the FF guys for that now.
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Thothie

The installation from the retail version in the store is the same as any other.

What source did you download timeshift from anyway? I notice this was not mentioned. Was it even a legit copy?

Of course it wasn't legit.

Do you think I would pay $50 for a game that I plan on playing through a single player campaign?

Seriously, did *anyone* pay for Oblivion and it's expansions?


Honestly though, I usually buy games, but I was loathe to spend another $50 (after purchasing CoD4) on another FPS that I wasn't sure was going to be good or not. $50 per paycheck on gaming software is my limit my friends.


The main reason I had so much trouble was probably due to the fact that it wasn't legit, but I've never run into issues like that before. Like, ever.


What version do you have Doc? Did it install version 1.00 on your machine from the disk? Or was it updated?

--Locane

So... You pirate the game, get a crappy copy, AND give the game a glaring bad review as a result...?

Man! What did Sierra ever do to you? (I mean, aside from letting Valve run wild and make Steam?... ...and the entire Kings Quest series? Okay... Nvm... That's more than enough.) >_>
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"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'" - Charles Schultz
Thothie

lol

Actually, I mostly posted here because I thought the crap I went through and the time I wasted and the results I got were a good mix for hilarity. Apparently it's too long winded though, I don't think most of the people who saw it actually read through every paragraph.

--Locane