Do not buy this game for PC - worst game bug I've ever seen

Wildeyn · Post by **Wildeyn** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:38 am

I've seen a few posts on forums by people who don't have the following issue on a PC, but many others, including myself, do have the issue. And sega's suggestions of edits to the engine.ini file do not fix it. It is the worst bug that I have _ever_ personally experienced in a game in at least a decade, and it makes it, to me, totally unplayable.

Essentially, quite often, the screen will freeze up and then, after about a second, your mouse movement during that freeze will cause your guy to spin around randomly. So, imagine playing Mass Effect 2, but every minute or so, in the middle of fights and such, the screen freezes and you end up spun around staring at the wall behind you as enemies are killing you.

How this could happen (along with several other smaller but annoying bugs and issues with controls and mechanics) in a world where no other similar games have had this sort of problem... ever... is beyond me. It seems that the lead dev on this game was one of those terrible group leader types who ends up causing chaos and having ever-increasing complexity with huge problems going unnoticed and unfixed. And, clearly there was literally zero playtesting of this game on a PC anything like mine (a vista PC built for games that runs every other game just fine). Or, if this bug was found, Obsidian had utter cynical contempt for the consumer.

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 12:09 pm

Well - Obsidian don't really have a reputation for making games which are ..... bug free to say it mildly which we saw in KOTOR2 and NwN2.
So unfortunately - I wouldn't really hold my breath for them fixing the issues.

But thanks for the warning - I do suspect, I'll stay away from the game for now myself.

swcarter · Post by **swcarter** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 3:44 pm

I had the "spinning" problem, too, but it only happened once every 10-20 minutes or so, and so it wasn't a big deal. Alpha Protocol has more than a few technical problems (including a thoroughly unimpressive interface for the PC version of the game), but its campaign is sort of fun, and so things balance out.

SWC

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 6:01 pm

I noticed that the game is very minimize unfriendly. Aside from that, the only issue I've encountered was that the game does not remember any of my checkpoints upon a restart.

jklinders · Post by **jklinders** » Fri Jun 11, 2010 11:18 am

Crenshinibon wrote:I noticed that the game is very minimize unfriendly. Aside from that, the only issue I've encountered was that the game does not remember any of my checkpoints upon a restart.

I can confirm this, the autosave checkpoints are the only ones that seem to work. Officially the biggest and most annoying bug I have seen. The mouse input thing actually happened to me today. I was in very wierd tight cover and that may have been the reason in that case.

swcarter · Post by **swcarter** » Fri Jun 11, 2010 3:10 pm

jklinders wrote:I can confirm this, the autosave checkpoints are the only ones that seem to work.

FWIW, all of my saves work fine (on the PC).

SWC

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Fri Jun 11, 2010 11:36 pm

After restarting the game from the beginning, the "new" checkpoints appear to load properly.

vio · Post by **vio** » Mon Nov 08, 2010 12:41 pm

if it wasn't for the bugs I'd recommend this game to pretty much anyone. as it is, it seems to be a kind of lucky dip. maybe you'll be lucky and it'll run perfectly on your PC. maybe you'll just get some minor bugs that'll annoy you slightly. or maybe you'll get gamebreaking bugs that result in your character acting more like a Jenkins than a Bourne, Baur or Bond

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Mon Nov 08, 2010 2:49 pm

I have successfully complete this game twice with absolutely no bugs, after I had resolved the problem that I had mentioned before. Worked great for me.

candesco · Post by **candesco** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 3:42 pm

Xandax wrote:Well - Obsidian don't really have a reputation for making games which are ..... bug free to say it mildly which we saw in KOTOR2 and NwN2.
So unfortunately - I wouldn't really hold my breath for them fixing the issues.

But thanks for the warning - I do suspect, I'll stay away from the game for now myself.

Obsidian have fixed NWN 2 mostly. They made several fixes for it, also when Storm of Zehir came out. I had a problem with the OC when i installed SoZ, so i sended a bugreport to Obsidian. And more people had the same problem. It was a bug in the trial of combat which is at the conclusion of the quest The trial in act II. It took some some time, but Obsidian finally fixed it and now everything works normal again. When installing NWN 2 it takes a while to install all the patches. So they do patch. Not quick, but they do it at least.