Games that take over half an hour to get going

[denizsi]

When was the last time there was a complex game that required you to read the manual before playing? From before 15+ years doesn't count.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

War Plan Orange? Battles in Italy? Airborne Assault?

Practically any decent wargame. Amusingly, they almost never come with printed manuals. Actually, the probability of printed manual being in game box is reversely proportional to price and complication level of the game.

 

[LazyD]

long install times? Get on a raid configuration idiots.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

long install times? Get on a raid configuration idiots.

The times have nothing to do with hard drive speed. Copying 10 gig files takes a minute or two, installing a 200 meg patch should not take 45 mins.

 

[LazyD]

my install time were cut in half after I got on a raid.

 

[Melcar]

Installers are simply file extractors with shinny interfaces. Faster HDD/RAID does improve speeds for these type of operations. The problem is when said installer is a buggy and inefficient piece of crapware. InstallShield is pretty good, but some third party crap many game companies use are shit, which is the main cause for faulty game/patch installations; this is sometimes compounded by the fact that some game companies do a shitty job at compressing their games/patches.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

When was the last time there was a complex game that required you to read the manual before playing? From before 15+ years doesn't count.

Frankly, i never read a manual, except for BGII, that i am currently playing. Obviously not for the gameplay.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

my install time were cut in half after I got on a raid.

Installers I've never had problems with, always done in a few minutes. Its patches that are getting ridiculous. For some its like after every byte the patch changes it needs to save the copy to disk, flush the RAM and load up the file again completely.

 

[Turok]

Games on my computer take only some minutos to install, i got a SSD hard disk.

 

[Korgan]

It's installing XBOX 360 on your PC

God help me, I lol'd.

 

[poocolator]

There was a "free weekend trial" offer for Age of Conan so I decided to have a go at it. After downloading 13 gb of game files for a day and installing it for almost an hour, I was required to download 3+ gb of updates to be able to play it.

This is depressing and frustrating to hear. I haven't bothered buying or downloading any of the newer games (including Dragon Age, although I wanted to play for the lulz) for this reason. The worst part of it all is that, for example, Conan doesn't even make for a good multiplayer game. Good games worth their weight in hard-drive space are far and few between; and we have to navigate through a mire of shit to get to them. Children, what has become of thee?

 

[A user named cat]

You know, why don't more games do what Sims 2 did? I mean having a mini-game in the installer, gives you something to do instead of thumbing your butthole while waiting. Sure it was just a simple match game, but it was something. I can't remember any other game ever doing that either, such a great and simple idea too.

 

[SCO]

Broken sword 1 (Breakout).

 

[A user named cat]

Really? That's even better, Breakout is awesome once in a while. Any other games then?

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Red Alerts had "interactive" installations. I kinda miss that.

Though nowodays I just start the install and alt-tab back to the Internet.

 

[bhlaab]

You said it yourself. They had to compress 15gb of data onto a 7gb disc.