Getting really frustrated with buggy PC games

B2BigAl

2[H]4U
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Mar 23, 2003
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Is anybody else getting really tired of all the buggy games coming out on PC. I mean, it's expected that there will always be a few games with problems, but this is getting ridiculous. I have a stack of games sitting here, that I either can't play because they constantly crash, or are at the very least unstable.

Crysis Warhead - can't play more than a few minutes without a system hard lock

Sacred 2 - CTD every three or four minutes

Left 4 Dead - Crashed constantly, until I found out you have to turn on multi-core support

Fallout 3 - Random crashes. I didn't have it near as bad as some people, but there are/were a lot of people having problems.

GTA 4 - Where do I begin, did they even bother to test this before they released it?


Now, I know there will be the usual "everything runs fine for me" replies, so good for you, but there are a lot of people having problems with these games (and many others I'm sure I don't have listed here). Were it just me, I'd chock it up to there being something wrong with my system, but there are a LOT of threads out there by people having the exact same problems. Luckily, some people have been able to find work arounds (see L4D) to fix some of these issues, but it's still absurd that we're having to do that. I don't ever remember so many games coming out with so many problems as there have been in the last few months, and I've been gaming for 20 years.

I'm not really sure what the deal is. All I know is that the last five games I've bought have had major issues, and three of those I just flat out can't play. I'm fortunate that I make good money these days, or I'd probably be really pissed right now. I feel sorry for the poor kid who has to save up his allowance to buy a new game, just to get home and find out he's SOL. I don't mean for this to sound like a rant, just an observation of the poor quality control I'm seeing lately.

And before anyone says it, yes I've stability tested my rig. 24 hrs of orthos and furmark is pretty stable in my book. I even installed some older games like HL2, Far Cry, Crysis (the original) and had zero problems with any of them.
 
Sounds like you got some serious computer problems.
"Runs fine for me" Have all of them except for GTA 4
And for L4D multi-core is enabled by default I thought?
 
The wolfdales are a bit flakey. I had 5 of them, they always primed higher than they were bench stable... and since your rig is OC'd I'd imagine thats why its crashing. Try setting everything to stock. I've played L4D, GTA IV, FO3 and Crysis Warhead and didnt have a single crash in any of them.

Either way its definitely a PC issue, not all those games are THAT buggy :D


Another possiblity is its Vista - Vista is the cause of alot of issue for folks.
 
Have you tried taking your computer back to stock speeds and testing these games?


I have a issue with Half-life 2 Episode 2 which I did not have in XP Pro 32-bit but do now in Vista Home Premium x64. it will either hard lock the system, popup message cmdcache.dll or something or just blank out. Its been doing this since install on vista, but not in XP, kinda annoying and it doesn't happen all the time cause sometimes it will go up to about an hour before crashing :(, since my vista install is still fresh I haven't tried any other games.
 
It's obviously because you pirated the games. That's what happens to pirates.. :p

Seriously though, you have a stability issue. Orthos only tests the CPU, and even then it's not completely 100% accurate (e.g F@H clients crashing despite days of running Orthos). And stability testing with Futuremark? I've got a GPU with a missing cap that'll pass a FM test but won't even play a four year old game ( WoW ) without a BSOD.



EDIT: oops, I read furmark as futuremark.
 
L4D crashed like a motherfather when it was in demo but a few days before the final games release they'd managed to patch up most of the problems, I've had zero problems with the full game.

Fallout3 has been stable for me up to about 10 hours gaming straight

GTA4 has crashed once and that was when I first started it, and I checked the error and it was a restarted needed after installation of (im guessing) DX10 components since the error was D3D related, after that its been fine for multiple 6+ hour sessions, no crashes.

It sounds like you have hardware issues, run 1 copy of prime95 in torture test mode for every core you have on your CPU so for dual core run 2 and for a quad run 4, see if that can make it 8 hours without error, run a memory test tool just to be safe, and make sure to run the furmark video card testing tool, Im betting one of them gives you errors.

The only recent game i've had any major issues with recently is Far Cry 2, which for me crashes every 10-15 minutes :/
 
Don't forget spyware doctor and registry mechanic. That and defragging quite a bit keeps my oced 6400/280GTX pc running pretty smooth. I still get occasional ctd but minimal. Fallout 3, L4D only ctd 2 times b/w them.
 
Yeah, I've tried taking my system back to stock settings, same problems. Like I said before, there are tons of people having the exact same problems in the exact same games, it's not like I'm an isolated incident. Just google "Warhead Crashing" and see how many pages of results you get back. Sacred 2 has had several patches to fix the problems with it crashing, so they are well aware of the problems. Fallout 3 I didn't have too many problems with, but there were a lot of people who did. Just google "Fallout 3 crashing" and see how many results you get. Left 4 Dead, found that fix here on the forums, that's a pretty well known issue. As for GTA 4 issues, heck that made the front page of [H], so I know I'm not alone there.

And ryan, I said "Furmark" not "Futuremark". lol, I haven't run a futuremark product sine they were Mad Onion.
 
Yeah, I've tried taking my system back to stock settings, same problems. Like I said before, there are tons of people having the exact same problems in the exact same games, it's not like I'm an isolated incident. Just google "Warhead Crashing" and see how many pages of results you get back. Sacred 2 has had several patches to fix the problems with it crashing, so they are well aware of the problems. Fallout 3 I didn't have too many problems with, but there were a lot of people who did. Just google "Fallout 3 crashing" and see how many results you get. Left 4 Dead, found that fix here on the forums, that's a pretty well known issue. As for GTA 4 issues, heck that made the front page of [H], so I know I'm not alone there.

And ryan, I said "Furmark" not "Futuremark". lol, I haven't run a futuremark product sine they were Mad Onion.

notice that I added something about that 6 minutes before you posted.. :D

Googling games crashing is not valid evidence to support a game is completely buggy. If falls under the "everyone with a problem complains while those without one are too busy playing their games" tag. Programming on a Windows system is a pandoras box. You never know what problems you're going to have on release day. There is no way to test every single configuration out there. Tracking down issues and fixing them takes time.

Hell, I wrote a simple 100 line program using only iostream and iomanip libraries. Compiled it and sent to a friend to test it out. It wouldn't even run for her. She was missing a runtime DLL that programs compiled with VS2005 have to have. Imagine a software package with thousands or millions of lines of code that include calls to hundreds of libraries.
 
I've had zero issues with all of those games in your post. I'm guessing you're just unlucky or your computer is at fault.
 
Vampires the Masquade was buggy as shit.

The Witcher crashes like a blind man racing in Nascar

BioShocks mouse acceleration was pissy as all hell.

Kotor 2 I wont dignigy this with all 1k problems.

Stalker had a ton of problems at first.

The trnd has been to get out before christmas and fix it afterwards. But many times these companies are just making the money and running, as with what Lucas Arts did with Kotor 2, and BioShocks Mouse accelartion. BooO!!!
 
L4D hasnt crashed for me once since I bought it a few days after release. Multi Core support was on by default.
 
notice that I added something about that 6 minutes before you posted.. :D

Googling games crashing is not valid evidence to support a game is completely buggy. If falls under the "everyone with a problem complains while those without one are too busy playing their games" tag. Programming on a Windows system is a pandoras box. You never know what problems you're going to have on release day. There is no way to test every single configuration out there. Tracking down issues and fixing them takes time.

Hell, I wrote a simple 100 line program using only iostream and iomanip libraries. Compiled it and sent to a friend to test it out. It wouldn't even run for her. She was missing a runtime DLL that programs compiled with VS2005 have to have. Imagine a software package with thousands or millions of lines of code that include calls to hundreds of libraries.


You don't have to tell me about software releases, I've been a software engineer going on almost 10 years now, since back in the Visual studio 6 days. It's a bitch I know, but it just seems like a lot of devs are getting lazy. Heck, there's even console games coming out that needs patching, that's unheard of. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I've got 23 games installed on my system right now, and none of them have problems other than the ones I have listed. I understand what you're saying about googling, but when there is page after page of people complaining about the same problems, that's a pretty big red flag.
 
You don't have to tell me about software releases, I've been a software engineer going on almost 10 years now, since back in the Visual studio 6 days. It's a bitch I know, but it just seems like a lot of devs are getting lazy. Heck, there's even console games coming out that needs patching, that's unheard of. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I've got 23 games installed on my system right now, and none of them have problems other than the ones I have listed. I understand what you're saying about googling, but when there is page after page of people complaining about the same problems, that's a pretty big red flag.

Actually, even NES and SNES carts had bug fixes along their lifespans. The consumer just didn't know about it. There was little that could be done once the buggy cart left the shelf other than exchange it.

I don't think it's so much that devs are getting lazy. It's more like publishers (cough*EA*cough) are pushing them to release products sooner and sooner. Companies like EA know full well that a game will sell no matter how bugged it might be. So they've taken on the relase-then-test attitude. They get money flowing in for a product sooner for the same work.
 
With that many games crashing, I would think the issue somewhere in your OS or hardware. It's not unusual for a game to crash, but not all of your games. There's a common denominator there.
 
Be careful when googling for game crashes, many people have games crash due to problems with their own system, no doubt these games have some bugs and some crashes, however a lot of peoples complaints are basically their own fault.

There is a massive slew of crashes and errors with GTA4 for example but 95% of them seem to be because the system isn't updated or not patched etc, I browsed through the steam forums and it seemed like a nightmare but when I came to install it was pretty much fine for me.
 
Be careful when googling for game crashes, many people have games crash due to problems with their own system, no doubt these games have some bugs and some crashes, however a lot of peoples complaints are basically their own fault.

There is a massive slew of crashes and errors with GTA4 for example but 95% of them seem to be because the system isn't updated or not patched etc, I browsed through the steam forums and it seemed like a nightmare but when I came to install it was pretty much fine for me.
qft
 
All those games mentioned run completely fine on my computer... I dunno... Lemme guess, I got lucky ? No... Hmm.. Maybe its because my new computer is faster.. No.. b/c my older system ran every game that met requirements just fine... Hmmm.. Where oh where could the problem be for everyone else... It couldn't be the users problem could it ?? Amazing that out of the dozens of gaming systems I've built in the past how many years, none of them have ever had so many problems with games... Wonder why I so bloody skeptical to the abundance of issues people have ? ;)
 
Sounds like a problem with the PC build. If you cant take the heat GTFO of the kitchen.
 
Sounds like a problem with the PC build. If you cant take the heat GTFO of the kitchen.

Really, what are you, twelve?

And ojax, you don't need to be condescending. I guarantee you I've built more systems than you in my day, I know what I'm doing. Yes, there are cases of user error, believe me, I've seen it all. But this is just a simple matter of installing a game, trying to play it, and it crashes. I don't know any other way of going about that, it's pretty straightforward. I can concede the problem with Warhead, maybe it is just a few people, but the issue (and subsequent fix) with L4D has been confirmed by quite a few sources, and the problems with Sacred have been confirmed by the developers themselves. There was an article on the front page just yesterday talking about the problems with GTA4, and how the devs are trying to get out a patch to address them. Of course, that must just all be user error I guess.

Anyways, I didn't start this thread to get a critique on my computer building skills, though I appreciate those of you who were trying to be helpful. I was just making an observation, if nobody else is having problems great, I must just be the lucky one. Just seems like the last few major game releases, I've seen a lot more people having issues than normal, myself included.
 
I sortof agree with Big Gay Al...or big2al....or whoever... ;)

Fallout 3 crashed on me a lot. GTA IV crashes on me if I try tro use the video capture feature. QA definitely failed on those games, if they even bothered.

However:Warhead and Left 4 Dead performed just fine and neither game ever crahed on me that I recall. I have never played Sacred 2, nor do I intend to.
 
Can't say much here, I'm still on my good old Win XP 32bits. the only problems I experience are corrupted save files, or some random crashing due to bad hardware

It certainly sucks to buy a game only to have it crash every 10 minutes

If I were you, I'd probably try and run them on Windows XP and see how it goes. Its worth a try, if it can help eliminate the constant crashing. At least you could play the game you paid for.
 
I'm going to go with system instability on this one. It's too coincidental that multiple games crash. You also bought them over steam, so now if your CPU is unstable, you have the potential of having your data corrupted as well, so even during a so called low clock test, you may still crash. Games usually push my system in a way that exposes weaknesses in the system stability more so than Prime. Also unless you've managed 24+ hours stable on prime, how do you know if its truly stable? I've managed to go 16 hours before a core failed, had to keep playing with little settings until I managed 48 hours of stability under prime for all 4 cores. Multi core systems have funny ways of keeping from freezing now and appearing stable, but in reality they aren't.
 
Sounds like you just do not want to admit you have PC issues. I played every one of those games and had no issues. Well GTA had problems which I was able to fix within 20 mins.
 
OP,

I tend to agree with you. There have been quite a number of buggy, call it poorly coded, not tested enough or pushed out the door too early games over the last few years. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 The Sith Lords would have been a brilliant game if it had not been so damn buggy.

A ton of people have had issues with Fallout 3. I did not originally. it was perfect for a month. Then all of a sudden it just started freezing. I tried replacing some windows files that Bethesda thought they needed to update with beta versions and that fixed Fallout 3 for 1 day. Now it's right back to the same lockups as before. I know it's not my system because Fallout 3 is the only game I have problems with out of many many games.

A lot of you "geniuses" that say the problem is his system may or may not be right.
I have built and fixed PC's for many years. I can take 2 identical PC's with identical parts and load the same damn software on em and 1 will run fine and the other will be buggy. Who knows why sometimes we get "gremlins" in the machine or with a piece of software ? That kind of crap is part of why I like working in IT. It is a daily challenge
figuring out if a problem is hardware, software or does the PEBKAC ?

Software vendors do push software out too damn soon a lot anymore, I am sick of it myself. Anymore the only time I pickup a game on release is if it's a must have title. otherwise I just wait till it's been out for awhile so I dont have to be a paying beta tester.
 
Yes, games are getting more and more complex, and companies in general are spending less and less time in QA.
 
I haven't had any real problems with games lately other then Mass Effect PC that wouldn't install. Some people got really hot and bothered about that... but a quick trip to the internet and I found a fix and the game works perfectly today. Fallout 3 the only bug that continues to plague me is *gasp* CTD on exit. Woopie.

I guess you just have bad luck, because all the bug ridden games haven't really got me so much as to get frustrated. I'm used to having to work a bit harder as a PC gamer, it's one of the reason I love my PC more then my consoles... having to flex some problem solving skills is fun for me I guess.
 
Fallout 3 had warbled radio with X-Fi, crashing inside buildings on a quad core and microstuttering. This was resolved by the reading the Bethsoft forums

Farcry 2 - input lag in menus. Resolved by reading Ubisoft forums.

Dead Space - no input control remapping and vsync lag issue - resolved by reading EA technical support forum

GTA IV - no Logitech gamepad support and settings not retained using 180.84 drivers - resolved by visiting GTAForums

Spot the trend?!

You have to work at it to get it working as you want it. This is now part and parcel of PC gaming in the naughties. Gone are the days where games work as they should out of the box.
 
Maybe it's your PC.

Every once in a blue moon I get a random, inexplicable application crash. I first thought that it might be some thermal paste on my pins, but a quick inspection showed that my CPU was clean. My PC also tears through Memtest86 and prime95.. so I've started to blame Vista.

You have to work at it to get it working as you want it. This is now part and parcel of PC gaming in the naughties. Gone are the days where games work as they should out of the box.
Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy working around the bugs to get my game working.

The only really irritating one is TRU. I hit an in-game error where a statue that's supposed to fall just refuses to drop. It's driving me nuts.
 
Yeah, I'd probably get withdrawl symptoms if games started to work properly out of the box. :D

Unlikely to be my rock solid stable PC as all these issues are confirmed in the forums. ;)
 
I've been in IT for over 10 years and experience says when different programs that are unrelated to each other act up in similar manners, the system is usually the root cause. (steam doesn't count as a relation, it is merely a distribution service)

We have an overclocked machine run out of spec with god knows what cooling solutions for the whole system in general. There is a high chance that it is not a stable overclock. Multi core systems, duals and quads can mask system instability than the old single core setups which simply locked when unstable. The only way to really nail down stability is to run the same process multiple times which stress the system in a stressful environment over a long period of time.

8 hours prime stable is not enough, I've been able to fail systems after 16 hours in closed box scenarios, with hot rooms during summer months. Run the gamut, put it through memtest for 16+ hours, prime 95 for 16+ hours, keep it closed box 50C+ internal case temps for the duration of the testing. If you can hit the 24hour mark under those conditions, you MAY have a stable system. It's not 100% guaranteed though.

First rule of thumb when overclocking, never assume any overclock is stable.
 
I find it odd how people have so many crashing problems with their computers in games where I have almost no crash issues, display ones sure, the damn screen flicker in UTEngine games after a sleep mode cycle is still there.

My point is, your problem is likely due to something wrong with your computer/software, benchmark software does not call every function in the DX package, it might be one thing that throws the red flag.

I would suggest doing a low level format on your hard drive and doing a scratch install then patch it up to current, then install and try your games.
 
I'm glad some of you can see my point, because this is really irritating. I do have some good news though, I was able to get a couple of my games working today. Turns out Warhead just didn't like being played in DX9 mode on my rig. I updated to the cat 8.12 drivers today and saw that there was supposed to be a big improvement in warhead with dx 10, so I thought I'd give it a go. I was able to play for 4 hours straight without issue, so I'm pretty happy about that. Tried dx9 again, and it still crashes every 2 or 3 minutes, but at least I can play it again.

I also downloaded the latest patch for Sacred 2, all 640 Mb of it (good grief :rolleyes:). It appears to have fixed my crashing problems as well. I played it for about 2 hours this morning crash free. For those who don't know, in the software world, we put out "patches" to fix "bugs" in our applications. Quite a stretch, I know. :p

So, 2 down, one to go. Well, I guess 2 to go, because I forgot about FC2. I hated it so much I probably won't even bother, but that still doesn't change the fact that it's a buggy turd too. As for GTA4, I'm not even going to mess with it until there is a patch. If anyone doubts there are issues GTA4, see the "GTA4, why do we put up with this shit?" thread going on now.

Looks like my system may not be the problem after all. ;)
 
I give up on people in this forum... This place has turned fucking ugly with almost every thread posted just to complain and flame some game / developer and scumbag pirates constantly telling us to steal the game. The other threads are the same people complaining about DRM and anti-theft measures... The amount of hypocracy and utter stupidity is astonishing, not to mention the amount of computer illiterates and dummies who can't figure out that most of their problems are THEIR bloody fault.

Go ahead, boycott, petition, spew threats and steal every fucking thing you want and post about doing so here... Nobody cares but me it seems. I'll take my pride and karma somewhere else for the time being.
 
I give up on people in this forum... This place has turned fucking ugly with almost every thread posted just to complain and flame some game / developer and scumbag pirates constantly telling us to steal the game. The other threads are the same people complaining about DRM and anti-theft measures... The amount of hypocracy and utter stupidity is astonishing, not to mention the amount of computer illiterates and dummies who can't figure out that most of their problems are THEIR bloody fault.

Go ahead, boycott, petition, spew threats and steal every fucking thing you want and post about doing so here... Nobody cares but me it seems. I'll take my pride and karma somewhere else for the time being.


:confused: ????

Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya ........
 
Fallout 3 had warbled radio with X-Fi, crashing inside buildings on a quad core and microstuttering. This was resolved by the reading the Bethsoft forums

Farcry 2 - input lag in menus. Resolved by reading Ubisoft forums.

Dead Space - no input control remapping and vsync lag issue - resolved by reading EA technical support forum

GTA IV - no Logitech gamepad support and settings not retained using 180.84 drivers - resolved by visiting GTAForums

Spot the trend?!

You have to work at it to get it working as you want it. This is now part and parcel of PC gaming in the naughties. Gone are the days where games work as they should out of the box.

I sort of agree with this, I think developers should work hard at getting their games compatible with as wide range of systems and configurations as possible, but they will never nail it perfect (at least not with the testing/fixing cost being a serious detriment to the games content)

A lot of issues can be fixed by users just by getting a bit of support for the game, if you can't spend 5 minutes googling an error code and implimenting a fix you need to put down your mouse and keyboard and go buy yourself a console.
 
I've been in IT for over 10 years and experience says when different programs that are unrelated to each other act up in similar manners, the system is usually the root cause. (steam doesn't count as a relation, it is merely a distribution service)

Not quite, steam is intergrated into a lot of valves games it handles the server browser, the game options/settings, friends interaction, updates/patches, anti-cheat, DRM etc etc

3rd party games are less intergrated usually and in this case your statement more or less holds true.

We have an overclocked machine run out of spec with god knows what cooling solutions for the whole system in general. There is a high chance that it is not a stable overclock. Multi core systems, duals and quads can mask system instability than the old single core setups which simply locked when unstable. The only way to really nail down stability is to run the same process multiple times which stress the system in a stressful environment over a long period of time.

A lot of errors people complain about on forums are certainly their own fault for tinkering with things they shouldn't it's a big problem that people who dont know what they're doing can voice negative opinions on something unfairly, we have to try and see through that though.

8 hours prime stable is not enough, I've been able to fail systems after 16 hours in closed box scenarios, with hot rooms during summer months. Run the gamut, put it through memtest for 16+ hours, prime 95 for 16+ hours, keep it closed box 50C+ internal case temps for the duration of the testing. If you can hit the 24hour mark under those conditions, you MAY have a stable system. It's not 100% guaranteed though.

First rule of thumb when overclocking, never assume any overclock is stable.

In my experience most unstable OC's will fail a prime95 torture test within about 5 minutes, ideally you just need to run prime 95 for the length of time you're likely to be stressing the CPU for, most people wont do something like max out their CPU usage for 8+ hours so it's a good test.

it may not be exactly 100% perfectly stable, I'd probably argue that most CPU's aren't if you test for a sufficiently large period of time, you just need to get it stable enough for it not to be a problem for your usage.
 
Just want to reiterate, the games he's complaining about aren't steam exclusive games, he's complaining about different game engines, with already one found out to be a driver issue. For the other parts, you are agreeing, so no real need to make it look like you are refuting anything which seems kind of weird, just toss your ideas in, correct what may need to be corrected.

Just a note about overclocks is that stable for your usage and overall stability are not in the same area. What may be "stable" for your usage means that you could still have a potentially system stopping type error that can be exposed through something else that is "outside" the stable for your usage. Since games tend to do a lot of everything, its potential for stumbling onto one of these showstopping errors is high. At which point, since you want to include games into the mix, your overall goal should be as much stability as possible due to that wide scope now introduced.
 
Gone are the days where games work as they should out of the box.
What days were those? I've been gaming on the PC since 1994 and games were just as buggy and crash-prone then as they are now. The only thing I see being different over the last few years are the ported console games that have interface and control problems. Not all are bad, but game developers need to work harder on fixing these issues before releasing the game on the PC. The tendency to get it out there door ASAP hasn't changed from my experience--especially this time of year.
 
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