Steam game behaving BaDly

On 02/24/2014 at 11:37 AM by mothman

Linked to Article Series: Blog a Day (BaD) 2014

A week or so back I picked up the two Witcher games on Steam mainly because paying $1.99 for the first game again was cheaper than buying an external DVD drive so I could install my disc based version. Compound that with the fact that patching the game to the enhanced version may be free but it's a pain in the ass.

So I downloaded the game and went to run it only to be stopped by a "system does not meet minimum requirements" message. WTF? This is a 7 year old game and the laptop I'm trying to run it on is a core i7 with 8 GB of RAM and 1.5 GB of available graphics memory.

To make matters even more perplexing the disk based version ran without this error on a 3 year old laptop with mediocre specs.

Fortunately a workaround for my problem was found quickly by checking the Steam community. Unfortunately the fix hard sets texture and other settings to low.

So the game plays now and gameplay is fine. The cutscenes however stammer and stutter badly. Well at least I can play it.

From what I've read in the Community messages it is not uncommon for Steam versions of games to have issues even when disc based versions don't.

I fall down, go boom.

Ranger1

02/24/2014 at 11:40 AM

And this is why I play console games. I don't have the patience or desire to futz around with settings and fixes and patches. i just want to stick a game in the drive and "hey, Presto!" there it is. My friend Michael is the opposite, he likes trouble shooting and mods and all that other stuff that I hate.

KnightDriver

02/24/2014 at 01:44 PM

I kinda agree with you even though I want to play some stuff that can only be played on PC.These big triple A games I'm going to avoid and play stuff like Wayward Manor and Banner Saga.

goaztecs

02/24/2014 at 01:04 PM

Hot damn, as much as I like how PC games look, consoles get the nod because it's pop disc in, and play. Good to know that you did get the problem resolved for the most part.

That panda reminds me of various gifs and images of pandas on slides.

mothman

02/24/2014 at 01:15 PM

Yeah, I did the pandas on slides vid last year. I liked that pic. because it looks like he just fell over which is how I feel today. :)

BrokenH

02/24/2014 at 01:17 PM

The Witcher games are good but I remember both of them being harsh on system requirments. I could run the first one but the second one was practically unplayable at certain points.

Nicoleb1989

02/24/2014 at 02:02 PM

Had this same problem when I bought the Witcher last year. I got lucky though because I have a friend who knows computers forwards and backwards and he fixed it for me. Im glad the community could help you with a work around.

02/24/2014 at 02:11 PM

The stupid thing is that the workaround is actually a Steam setting that you put into the Startup section which stops the game from checking for requirements.

-dontforceminreqs is the command. That's all I had to do but it also stops you from altering settings in the game.

C.S.3590SquadLeader

02/24/2014 at 03:49 PM

That's just odd, though it is why I tend to perfer console games. I have enough trouble with my laptop as it is, I don't need the added headache of trying to get a game working on top of that.

Aboboisdaman

02/24/2014 at 06:41 PM

I've run into issues with a few Steam games, but the support seems better than GOG at least. I've bought games off there that I couldn't get to work for anything. At least you figured it out, and you could always look up the cut scenes or something.

02/24/2014 at 06:52 PM

One of the things with GOG games is you can actually mess with OS compatibility by right clicking on the executable and selecting properties.

Failing that there are always patches out there.

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/24/2014 at 10:49 PM

That's always my fear with Steam games. Fez has a blinking screen ... bleh.

NSonic79

04/18/2014 at 01:40 PM

and that is another reason why I don't PC game. I don't think i want to deal with those kind of issues when I know the game should run on my PC when I know it meets the specs. Even my free copy of the typing of the dead is giving me issues. I gave up after the first system reboot.

PixlBit