Bloodlines eats hardware.

[Joe]

In my circle, quite a few of us have gone on a Bloodlines/new games kick. We've all also run into a shitload of hardware problems in a very short period of time, all but one of us having been playing Bloodlines extensively.

We've had three full computers die, a motherboard go, my hard drive cannibalized itself, and I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting one other minor explosion. The only constant on all of our machines is Bloodlines.  I know my friends take great care of their machines, so to see so many die at one time is a bit baffling, but I still don't want to confuse correlation with causation.

It's going out on a limb here, but has anyone else had some serious hardware problems after installing and playing the game?

[Signe]

I was going to buy it, but now I'm too afraid.  :(

[Ardent]

Sounds like those crazy, mischievous Malkavians are up to no good.

[Joe]

What's tragic is I don't mind losing the hard drive. The game is just THAT good. It's better than KOTOR or Metal Gear Solid. I might go as far to say it's the best game I've played, ever.

[Trippy]

Well it's rare for software to actually damage hardware but it can happen if the software is putting undue stress on certain components. For games the usual way this happens is that the game puts so much stress on the video card GPU or CPU that it causes them to overheat (or burn up in the case of old Athlon XP/MB combos that didn't have thermal protection) or draw so much power that the power supply is overloaded. Normally this just causes the machine to crash, or on newer components for the overheated component to throttle its speed back, but if some components are already stressed out -- e.g. weak capacitors on the motherboard -- this could actually cause a hardware failure. Overclocking things doesn't help either. As for the hard drive failure it was already probably just about to fail -- it just so happened it was a game you were playing at the time when it happened.

So make sure your system has adequate cooling and a power supply beefy enough to power the components in your system at max power draw.

[Shockeye]

So make sure your system has adequate cooling and a power supply beefy enough to power the components in your system at max power draw.

And it doesn't hurt to sacrifice a live chicken before you load the game each time.

[Murgos]

pfeathers.

[Morfiend]

It's better than KOTOR or Metal Gear Solid. I might go as far to say it's the best game I've played, ever.

Its a good game. But no where close to THAT good. Great RPG but with bugs, graphic glitches, and lousy combat.

*Edit* And a bunch of sound problems.

[schild]

Deus Ex had all those problems when it was released. Now, by many, it's considered the best game ever. Why the hell do I have to keep reminding people of this.

[Morfiend]

Deus Ex had all those problems when it was released. Now, by many, it's considered the best game ever. Why the hell do I have to keep reminding people of this.

Way to set the bar low. And, I personally do not consider Deus Ex the best game ether. I think think over what game I feel is is worth that title to me.

[schild]

Setting the bar low? The only game in the history of gaming that may have had a better story was Planescape: Torment. But I can never say I got immersed in Torment. Without a first person view it's tough to really lose myself.

You do realize I'm talking about Deus Ex 1. I think it's alternate title was "This is the best game ever and it pwns ur mom."

Btw, are you drunk?

[Signe]

Howard Carter told me that it's caused by the Curse of the Mummy.

[Azhrarn]

Why the hell do I have to keep reminding people of this.

They were distracted by your mom.

[Rodent]

Been lucky enough not to have my hardware failing on me. But I do agree with Schild that Torment and Deus Ex are some of the few games that are as good or better then bloodlines.

[Morfiend]

Your Mom? You having an off day man?

I refuse to give a game with abundant bugs, graphic glitches, and major sound problems the title of best game EVAR, no matter how good the story is.

Best story? sure. But not best game. Thats why I say lowering the bar. What happened to demanding quality, and bitching about bugs and rushed games? oh yeah, I remeber... your mom.

I dont think I could name any one game, best game ever. KOTOR was good. Zelda: OOT was good. Planescape: Torment was good. The first Metroid was good. HL1 was good. We could debate this shit forever. I just think maybe it should be prefaced with Bloodlines could be one of the best games ever, buy it has an abundance of bugs, graphics problems, sound problems and feels very rushed. Not to mention lousy combat. So no, I dont think Bloodline "As Is" could be considered one of the best games ever.

Well, maybe its MY system giving me problems with Bloodlines. Could be, but every other game works fine, so, wouldnt that be another minus to Bloodline? That it wont run properly on all systems?

[doubleplus]

To bring this back to the original post, I haven't had any hardware issues. Either I'm lucky or you all suck.

[Rodent]

To bring this back to the original post, I haven't had any hardware issues. Either I'm lucky or you all suck.

I didn't have any major issues either, though I had to use the console to get past one point of the game ( Unofficial patch floating around now that takes care of that ). But I would have to say you're lucky. I love the game but there's way to many people reporting issues for it to be just a matter of a gimped setup.

[Moroni]

I am glad I did not have the extra cash last paycheck. Whew.

[geldonyetich]

It's amazing how many games which seem to have great potential also have nasty, nasty bugs associated with them.   Add to Bloodlines and Deus Ex games such as Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall and Elite III: Close Encounters.    Are those games truly as fantastic as we think, or did their bugs fool is into thinking so by adding something - perhaps the scratch in the diamond that sets it apart from all the rest?   Tough call.

As for Bloodlines eating hardware, I have to side with the theory it's probably heat from playing the game for an extended period of time.  Too much heat can do all of those things and more.   Not sure if Bloodlines itself is generating too much heat or if it's just because you're playing it for such a long unbroken session (as one is wont to do with really good games).  

My advice is to install a good heat monitor and set it to raise an alarm if the heat reaches unrealistic levels.   (My early-relase AMD XP 2000+ tends to start out at about 50-60 C and peak at about 75 C, then things start to malfunction.  That's really a lot hotter than a CPU should run.   However, but it has improved quite a bit since I installed a bigger badder heat sink... now it rarely goes over 72 C)

[Tairnyn]

I also had no hardware-related mishaps while playing this game. My quirkiness gambit was purely software.

[Ironwood]

I had real problems with the game until I swapped a Radeon 9700 for a new Geforce chap.

It runs a lot better now.

[Signe]

Well, I've already ordered it and it should be here tomorrow.  If you never see me again, it's because I refuse to buy a new computer because some stupid game ate it.  

It's the principle.

[geldonyetich]

I had real problems with the game until I swapped a Radeon 9700 for a new Geforce chap.

It runs a lot better now.

Hmm, that surprises me.   I hear HL2 optimized for ATI Cards and Bloodlines uses the source engine.

Well, I've already ordered it and it should be here tomorrow. If you never see me again, it's because I refuse to buy a new computer because some stupid game ate it.

It's the principle.

Seems a shame to throw it all the way for this crappy genre.   However, if the game's good, I've taken as big of risks.

For the record, I haven't played Bloodlines myself, my bro did.   I could certainly borrow his copy and give it a spin, however... making sure my heat monitor is running at the time.

[Trippy]

I had real problems with the game until I swapped a Radeon 9700 for a new Geforce chap.

It runs a lot better now.

Hmm, that surprises me.   I hear HL2 optimized for ATI Cards and Bloodlines uses the source engine.

I think it's more accurate to say that NVIDIA screwed up the DX9 implementation on their NV3X chips so badly that Valve had to spend a ton of time writing custom codepaths for those NVIDIA chips and still didn't get comparable performance compared to the ATI chips of that generation. But that's only if you are comparing last generation's cards (ATI 9500-9800 vs NVIDIA 5700-5900) as you can see here:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281

The NVIDIA NV4X chips (6600-6800) have much improved DX9 support (better than ATI's actually if you go strictly by features supported) and the 6600 GT will handily beat the 9700 Pro in HL2 as you can see here:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2278&p=1

[Ironwood]

Old Card :  Game Broke.

New Card : Game Works.


Honestly, that's all I know or care on the matter.

In fairness, the 9700 was old and busted anyway.  It was overheating and doing some very freaky things at the DOS level...

[doubleplus]

This just goes to show you that even engines designed around ATI still work like shit when an ATI card is actually used by the end-user.

[Moroni]

No ATI love, again. I am going to KILL my friend who had me convinced ATI's driver woes were a thing of the past. KILL. DEAD.

[geldonyetich]

I'm one for compatibility myself, and indeed for a long time NVIDIA has been the standard after 3dfx.   However, oddly enough, after taking a chance and changing to an ATI AIW 9700 PRO I ran into few, if any, actual compatibility issues.  It's not like I don't play a lot of games, either.   So yeah, I'll go with your friend's opinion that ATI's driver issues are a thing of the past.   At least, not much more common (if more common at all) than NVIDIA driver issues.   If you had issues with your ATI installation (and from the sounds of it, you did) I'd suspect it's a compatibility issue with something else on your system (or else you bought an obscure badly built kind of ATI card).

[Ironwood]

In fairness, the 9700 was old and busted anyway.  It was overheating and doing some very freaky things at the DOS level...

The important part of the post, I think.

I prefer ATI cards.  I remember a time the drivers hosed your machine and I agree that they are, for the most part, rare and unusual occurances.  I wanted an 800XT instead of this new card, but the interesting thing about 3rd world Britain is that you can't get them.  So I was forced to take what I consider second best.  It performs fine and, as I say, no more vampire unusualness.

[Alluvian]

Since installing and playing bloodlines both my dvd drive and my cd-r stopped functioning.  They would start accessing and never stop, bringing the system to a halt.  Then they would try and boot on startup and just hang there.  After taking them out of the boot order they kept having problems.  Removing the cd-r drivers and autodetecting that worked, kinda (I still have periods where the drive will access for no reason and freeze the whole system) but I never could get the DVD drive working again.

In the same time a networked computer is now stuck at POST beeping where it tells us the video card is bad.  Since I don't think it works like a virus, I would lean toward me having really bad luck more than anything with Bloodlines.

[Xilren's Twin]

My machine is closer the low end of the scale but other than dl'ing new drivers, bloodlines has worked fine.  Love the game even if it's a bit buggy, it's not buggy enough to affect my enjoyment thereof.

Funniest "bug" that happened to me; got trapped on the dancefloor of the Club.  Had completed a sidequest and as I was crossing the dancefloor of the club I saw a dance icon pop up.  So I backtracked and hit it; all the npc's surrounded me in a dance circle, which was fine, but they never left. 1 min, 2 mins, 3, finally after 5 mins I knew that was it.  I was stuck in a human ring of gyrating goths.  It was either reload or break out the katana.  So I did both of course...

Oddball question, I can't seem to complete the plaguebearer quest.  When I hit the sewars after talking to the bum I know im supposed to find a way to the lower sewers, but there doesn't seem to be any access.  The only door is locked and wont respond to pick attempts.

Am I missing something?

Xilren

[Rasix]

*Minor spoiler*

You went down the wrong sewer access point.  Try another one.  It should take you directly to where you want to go.

[CmdrSlack]

Safe to buy or no?

I expect my family to give me $$ for xmas because they lack the ability to be creative with gifts.

However, I don't want my only slightly modern machine to die.

So yea or nay?

[Rodent]

Yea! The game has bugs sure, but it's still one of the best titles released in a long time.

[Rasix]

I don't think it's actually killing machines.  It runs on my Athalon 2500+, 1 gig of ram and ti4200 (128meg).  Of course, there's terrible slowdowns at points and I have to turn down/off a lot of graphical options.  

It's a tremendous game if you can stomach the bugs/graphical shortcomings.