This doesn't exactly count as completing a game, but it sort of unintentionally is. I finally achieved getting Grand Theft Auto IV to work on the current version of Windows 10!
Okay, here's the back story. During the early 00s I had a friend who owned Playstation 2. He had a couple of games I liked a lot that were unavailable on any Nintendo system, GTA IV and Stranglehold. In the past couple of years I contemplated buying a PS2 just for those two games. But then realized how expensive that system still was, along with how expensive the two games were. Option #2, get the XBox they were released on, also expensive. But then another friend pointed out these games were also released on the PC. Something I had never considered because my memories of PC games was during the late 80s through early 90s where their graphics and performance was far less than the bar set by the NES, and continued to fall behind with the arrival of the Sega and SNES. So I completely dismissed PC versions of any game as unequal to the console counterparts. That is until I shown how current PCs are capable of replicating the latest PS/XBox/Nintendo games in full. The only reason to buy a console today is to buy exclusive games like the Zelda franchise.
Except for one problem. Games are designed to work on specific OS. Something that worked on the Windows XP probably doesn't work on Windows 10. Even Windows updates often renders games unplayable. It is up to the game publishers to offer downloadable patches, but often a game that has been around for a while has no support. So I had no idea if the games I wanted worked on Windows 10. I did know they worked on Windows XP. I even bought Stranglehold a couple of years back for my PC, but just didn't have the needed memory for downloading it. And before I had the chance to remove all the video and audio files taking up that memory, a virus crashed my PC so bad it was repairable. I got a replacement, but without XP. I had the option of erasing the operating system and uploading XP, but that would be nuts. I contemplated trying to fix my old PC just to run the XP and XP compatible programs on it, but it couldn't be done. Last November I decided to try loading Stranglehold onto my new PC, and it so far works on Windows 10. Someone got me GTA for Christmas, but it turned out to be the wrong game. In fact, three wrong games as what I got was a box set with the first three GTA games. And they didn't work. GTA 1 and 2 doesn't load. Try it and all that happens is a folder with the programs on the disc appear, most which don't work becaus Windows 10 has no supporting programs to run them. You can get GTA 3 to start working, but once you stop the game or turn the computer off, the next time you try to play it all you get is the opening screen in an endless loop, and have to shut the PC down to stop it. Only by deleting the entire game and reloading it do you get to play it again, but have to start at the beginning again. Rockstar offers no support for these games.
Some further showed that GTA 4 did run on Windows 10 and didn't even need any patches. So I took the risk and ordered it in January and ran into a different problem. GTA IV on the PC was programmed for Windows Live. Basically Windows Live was supposed to be a free service that allowed Windows users to connect with each other and play online. Which sounded great because if I could get some friends to buy GTA IV for Windows Live and could spend hours causing havoc in the fictional Liberty City. Or perhaps use it for a game of hide and seek, using cheat code bazookas. It took approximately forever to download the game from both discs. Then came the final steps of registering the game when for some reason it kept saying I wasn't online. So I removed the game and reloaded it, this time with my firewalls disabled and keeping an eye on the modem to make sure every proper light was blinking, and once again i could not register a Windows Live account because I was off line.
Well, it turns out, as most of you know and I only recently found out, that Windows Live is what was offline. After encouraging a bunch of game publishers to release games on Windows Live, the entire service was discontinued because, while it was designed for Windows XP, it was too buggy with Windows 8. So, no way to open a Windows Live account, so no way to authorize any fleshly download Windows Live games. I had the entire game downloaded on my PC, just didn't have the code that would actually allow me to open it and play it. And thus why everyone still pays extra to buy consoles. This shit!
Microsoft offers no fix I know of. Instead they suggest buying the same game for XBox Live! I was that close to calling Amazon and yelling at some poor telemarketer in India about how their company is selling games that no longer work, and I better get a full refund, when I decided to search the internet for some sort of hack or fix that would allow me to play the game I bought. I finally found a web forum where someone complained about this and someone else posted a link to a fix. The link went to a Rockstar forum where someone complained about the whole Windows Live being Windows Dead, and taking all the games with them, and the moderator posting the url for a patch that would allow you to play the game without authorizing it. This was the only way to find this patch. You would think there was an entire page on the Rockstar site for downloading fixes for their PC games, but I couldn't find it.
So the patch works. The game starts. But one additional problem. The game save is on your Windows Live account! Instead of saving your progress on your PC, it is saved along with all your stats on the Windows server. The one that no longer exist. So basically there was no way to save the game offline. So once again I needed to do a web search until I found another forum where someone posted a link to a YouTube video showing how to create an offline account for Windows Live. Which should have been in the f@#king instruction manual!
So after all of that, the game finally works. Although right now I am stuck on the same level. You are supposed to take a girl named Linda on a first date, and I keep screwing it up on purpose to see what happens. Linda really doesn't like it when you take her to the strip club, or randomly run over joggers in the park, or got to the playground to kill the thugs beating up on your cousin, or abandon her car to carjack a better vehicle, or do anything else you bought GTA to do.
Topic: WOOOO! I just beat ________!!!!! (Read 111944 times)
