Once again PC gaming has failed me :(

[Charli]

...Really crap wording of a topic, and obvious baiting, so I'm not biting, nor helping your with your problem because you had to be a sass about it. All I'm telling you is there is likely something in the files the devs haven't caught yet, PC's come in all kinds of shapes and sizes which makes it hard to develop for ALL the computers anyone could possibly own. This is the cost of all the nice sales we enjoy on PC. We forsake our right to moan about such things when certain games fail to click with our computers.

Otherwise stick to consoles because they DO enforce that guarantee.


But really, why did you have to word the topic like this? Like no one else in the universe but you has ever had problems with a game either on PC OR Consoles? Lamenting it like someone ran over your dog.

If you'd said it like 'Oh, um, please help, I really want to play this game but all I'm getting is frustration and a black screen'. Maybe one of the Escapists clever clog PC know-it-alls might be a bit more willing to assist you by suggesting any alterations to the load up you could make.

 

[The Madman]

...why don't you just play the game on your laptop then?

 

[TehCookie]

See if cracking it helps. I have a game that blackscreens and crashes if I run it through Steam, but it runs just fine without it.

I was going to mention how laughably deluded PC elitist are against anything negative about PC, but it seems they have already arrived.

 

[teebeeohh]

Point being, I feel for the OP, PC Gaming is either great one day or horrible the next day. While consoles are consistency pretty good.

unless you want to properly aim in an fps
or play strategy games
or mod your games

but the one argument that always baffles me is "will this run on my PC", there are a lot of sites that will check your hardware against the requirements for a game and while those results may not be 100% correct before a game is released the more people install it on different machines the better the information will be.

OT: i think i had that problem and solved it by reinstalling. i know that sucks in your case since your internet is so bad but you could try to have steam validate the files, that might help.

but what do i know, i am weird and had more fun setting up freespace 2 than i had actually playing anything over christmas

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

Lets turn your logic the other way around.
Remember that time the Fez devs couldn't afford to pay microsoft $10,000 to let them fix their broken game?
Yeah all of console gaming sucks because of that one incident.

Anyway.. I bought Sleeping Dogs a while ago when it was way cheap on GMG and I still haven't got it to work. There's an unfixed bug that causes the game to CTD on launch. Sooo apparently it's a pretty shitty port. I wish they'd stop making DLC and fix the game but hey ho, ports be bad sometimes.

Normally if something was this broken (like The War Z) I'd be really annoyed but for some reason I almost find it hard to care this time

 

[TehCookie]

See if cracking it helps. I have a game that blackscreens and crashes if I run it through Steam, but it runs just fine without it.

I was going to mention how laughably deluded PC elitist are against anything negative about PC, but it seems they have already arrived.

well you have to understand that instead of asking for advice/help from the pc crowd he just uses his time to tell us how it has failed him "again" and how much better his console is than our rusty old pc.

When you have games fail several times it starts to piss you off. 3 of my 7 Steam games don't work, PC games failing are not uncommon.[small][sub][sub]Leaving out my DRM free games that run fine.[/sub][/sub][/small] My PS3 always works and therefore I think it's a better system. So what's your issue with different opinions?

 

[Brotha Desmond]

So I did, and after 17 hours of downloading (can't afford better internet) I eagerly press the play button and am greeted by....

You could have afforded better internet if you didn't pay a ludicrous sum of money on that computer.

 

[Xanadu84]

All technology has a failure chance. X Boxes RRoD, computers get screwed up, phones break, that is a part of technology. It is not limited to PC gaming. That is part of life. It happens with relative infrequency, however. And that's why going from one failure to, "PC Gaming sucks" is ludicrous. Personally, I have over 300 PC games, and I have had 1 game not work. And I didn't try to fix it very hard because it was a $2.50 steam deal. If you're frustrated, fair enough, but don't drop blatant flame bait.

Besides, in the long run, your paying less for games anyways. If you can't play one game, your still ahead of the curve. PC games sacrifice some simplicity for infinate flexibility. Id say that that is a good trade, but thats why I play on PC. If you don't like the hiccups and don't don't care about the advantages, well thats probably why you play console. Thats fine. But don't use it as an opportunity to lecture other people on how they are wrong in there preference.

 

[Waaghpowa]

My Xbox red ringed twice, PS3 died once. I have over 300 games on steam alone, not once have I not been able to get any of them to run.

Guess consoles have failed me again.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

Ok, I am not familiar with the game or most of your hardware specs, so I would suggest going to systemrequirementslab .com and making sure that your PC meets all requirements.

I would also go into steam and "check the integrity of local cache". You said it took you 17 hours to dl your game (I grew up in a rural area, so I feel your pain), such a long dl time can cause data irregularities in my experience.

If the steam forums are no help, try asking for help on the tomshardware .com forums, they have some really bright people who are quite happy to help.

I really doubt you are going to get much help with such a title & commentary on PC gaming. Gaming on PC requires patience..a lot of patience...every PC gamer has their `war story`, still most find the PC to be the best gaming platform for them. It can be satisfying to figure out how to fix any problems which arise and it gets a lot easier as you learn more. If you really cannot tolerate anything other than `instant plug and play every time`, I would honestly look into selling your PC while it is still worth a good amount. I hope you don`t though, we need more PC gamers around here.

 

[frobalt]

sound like a standard

you only state that one of the several games you listed had some hick ups. recap:

Personally I prefer the PICNIC (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer) acronym that a formed colleague mentioned to me, purely cos it's an actual word.


Anyway, as people have said, just cos 1 game is bad doesn't mean all games are. If anything, a game being a bad port is a problem with those particular developers, not PC gaming in general.

Personally, I don't see why PCs and consoles are 2 separate things. Why not just have consoles be medium-specced PCs and have developers aim to get their games working for the most recent one?

After all, you've been able to use your game pad for the PC games, you might as well have just been playing a console.

 

[Murrdox]

I find it really amusing that you're blaming the entire PC game industry instead of the developer who made the port. Yeah, not every PC game is crafted perfectly. I wanted to bash my PC to pieces trying to get Bio shock 2 to work. Then I finally fixed the problem, which was another piece of software on my computer that was conflicting the Games For Windows Live.

You've wasted a perfectly good thread bitching when you could be asking for help.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I just want to say if you want help there is a sub forum for that and since you're not there I assume you aren't looking for help. So that just leaves I'm not sure what. Other than point out you have a 6/7 success rate of things working as far as software goes which never works 100% of the time despite what people think and the "reliable consoles" that had a 8/25 success rate. I mean my launch xbox 360 lasted until the Slim came out with zero problems that must mean they all did right?

 

[Christopher Fisher]

Well the honest to goodness fact is that Sleeping Dogs is not a good port. Not as good as people would like it to be. So yeah, it's likely that it will cause problems on some peoples PCs. Pity it had to be yours.

And that flame bait line? Nawt kewl.

Well that was one of the dumbest things I've read all day.

 

[Christopher Fisher]

I just bought a wired xbox 360 controller yesterday for my PC and I was surprised that it worked right away with no configuration necessary. Worked on Batman: AC, GTA 4, Just Cause 2, Saints Row: The Third (which actually gets me great FPS on my desktop on the highest settings, I guess it wasn't such a bad port after all), and Section 8: Prejudice.

Then I saw Sleeping Dogs was on sale. And I thought to myself "Hey! I played the demo of this on my laptop (which ran very well by the way just on medium settings) which is a HELL of a lot weaker than the desktop I just built! With my new controller I can not see why I shouldn't buy it now!"

So I did, and after 17 hours of downloading (can't afford better internet) I eagerly press the play button and am greeted by....

a black screen.

I checked my task manager to see if the game was working, and lo and behold it wasn't. It was not responding. So I end the process and try again after 5 minutes just to make sure my system just wasn't being slow (sometimes it does on the first time I run a game). I got the same result.

So I made sure my drivers were up to date, verified integrity of the game cache, and then tried again. Nope, still same result.

So I tried running it as administrator.

Nope.

Running it without Desktop Composition (I saw on a forum that that worked).

Nope.

Trying to put it in windowed mode so I could change the refresh rate (which is also apparently a problem).

Nope. Doesn't respond once that screen hits or even before.

So I went to the steam forums and Sleeping Dogs forums and saw only 2 other people having this problem. And NO ONE had a solution. I even went to an official wiki for Sleeping Dogs bugfixes and it says that the black screen on boot was an unresolved problem (unless you had an Nvidia GTX 570, which I don't have).

So once again. PC gaming has shown just how it makes people want to punch a baby seal. And as you can see from above, it can't be me at fault because I gave it hours of chances to find a solution. But the thing is I shouldn't HAVE to find a solution. The product I paid for should just WORK as intended.

And I know I can run it because I have:
Intel Pentium G860 3.0 ghz (dual core I know but exceeds minimum requirements).
Radeon HD 7750 1 gb GDDR5
8 gb Gskill 1066mhz Ram
Windows 7 64-bit

Try running it with steam in offline mode. You could also update flash player...don't remember if sleeping dogs uses something like flash to do the cutscenes. Last resort would be to reinstall the game.

 

[Insanity72]

Here, let me google that for you.

http://bit.ly/UVelws