I'm a hardcore PC gamer, but sometimes I can really understand why gamers get a console over a PC, despite the much weaker hardware, since the bloody thing most often
just works. I'm going through just such an understanding, epiphanetic moment right now, since I've been unable to play Far Cry 4 for weeks due to a combination of faults.
I got Far Cry 4 over a month ago on Steam (the fancy Gold one with all the trimmings in a nice sale) but I've not even got out of the starting gate with it and it's really pissing me off.
First off at update 1.7.0 (when I first downloaded it) it wasn't saving checkpoints, so I sit through the lengthy 9 minute intro sequence, which is very nice once or twice, but not again and again as I try to sort out the problem. Turns out, unsurprisingly, that it's a bug in the game, since I've seen loads of forum posts about it and update 1.8.0 addresses this very problem in the changelog. Great! Except that now, while the game progress is finally saved, it jumps forward by some unknown amount when I come back to it.
Essentially, I'm right at the start, exploring the villa, picking things up like you do and then save the game. I come back to it and the game now goes through a cut scene where I have to go into some little hut which is a shrine to some murdered woman (forget the name). WTF?! Steam shows 3 hours playtime, but believe me, I've not actually "played" it at all - it's all troubleshooting and annoyance.
To cap it all, FC4 has just started crashing at startup - complete lockup requiring a kill with Task Manager. Only I can't quite blame FC4 for this one, since the PC has simultaneously developed stability problems! Note that nothing is overclocked.
Sometimes the desktop becomes semi responsive, forcing the inevitable, reluctant press of the reset switch. Other times control panel windows get stuck and won't close etc. It's all handily tear-hairingly intermittent where the PC can run for hours without problems and then screw up, which is the kind of PC troubleshooting joy I can do without. While it could just be a corrupted Windows install, I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the hardware. Despite the instability, the PC still plays the handful of other games I tried by the way, so FC4 still isn't in the clear over this startup glitch.
I then discover that there are 41 updates from Microsoft waiting to install, presumably from this Patch Tuesday, so I install them. In the few hours since I installed them the PC seems to work ok, but the game still locks up at the start. Fabulous. Just fucking fabulous.
It's the small hours of the night, so of course I'm not gonna start doing any troubleshooting now and will have to find some time over the weekend to my enjoy busman's holiday.
While experiencing this level of problems is rare for me when playing games, there are often teething issues one can live without, so putting all this together can you see why some gamers just say "fuck it!" and get a console?
Specs are as in my System Specs, but here's a snapshot for when they inevitably change:
Ignore the CPU overclock - I removed it ages ago