Life is an expensive thing. Mortgage, electric, telephone, pension, insurance. All these things eat up my monthly hard-earned wage. With interest rate rises and inflation I simply don’t have the infinite computer games budget I’d like.

So why do game manufacturers act like I’m a bottomless well able to upgrade at will? My current computer is only a couple of years old yet even a lot of the budget titles are beyond my ability to run them already. If you can’t afford to change your computer every six months or less then you might as well forget about playing the latest games. Just look at these specs for the upcoming Crysis:

Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows XP or Windows Vista
Processor: 2.8 GHz or faster (XP) or 3.2 GHz or faster (Vista)
Memory: 1.0 GB RAM (XP) or 1.5 GB RAM (Vista)
Video Card: 256 MB
Hard Drive: 12GB
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible

Excepting the operating systems, I can meet exactly two of those requirements (assuming I want a third of my hard drive taken up by one game) and I suspect I’m not alone. I can’t even pretend that I’d be able to play it with only a few slowdown issues. This is a complete non-starter.

But even if I’m slightly under-specced and prepared to put up with the issues arising, sometimes the manufacturers won’t even let me do that. Case in point, Lego Star Wars. My graphics card doesn’t support Pixel Shader 1.1 (which the game uses to generate shiny metal effects). Since only certain objects in the game use these effects I’m prepared to put up with these looking a bit odd. The game, however, is not.



No warning of potential problems. No option to continue at my own risk. Just a plain no. Clearly the company had a rethink for the sequel. This merely displays all the metallic objects with a slightly odd grey texture, an anomaly which harms the gameplay not a jot.

But surely adventure games, with their notoriously retro look, must be immune. True enough, I haven't encountered any problems of late, but the genre hasn't always been an exception. Having enjoyed both Gabriel Knight 1 (DOS based) and Gabriel Knight 2 (Full Motion Video under Windows) about five years ago I really wanted to play the third instalment . Despite the game being a couple of years old at that point, it still showed as over-specced for my then-computer. I gamely got a copy and loaded it anyway and was overjoyed to find I could walk around the hotel and chat to the guests freely. Then I stepped outside and the world froze. Technically the world hadn’t stopped, but rendering all of Rennes-Le-Chateau had just made it mind-bogglingly slow. I could direct Gabriel to where I wanted him, go and make a cup of tea and maybe he’d have got there when I got back (assuming I’d managed to aim him correctly). I had to wait until I upgraded to my current computer to get it to playable speed. Of course, now I have Operating System compatibility issues but that’s a separate rant.

So does all this rampant upgrading and high-speccing actually produce better games? My personal opinion is that it doesn’t. Having played games for many years, I appreciate there was a need to move beyond monochrome blocks that went beep. However, I think we reached a point where graphics and sound were fine a few years back. All the additions just seem to be adding to development time and expense without adding to the experience. If I’m fighting off a pack of bears, does it really make a difference if their hair is individually animated and their roars are ultra-realistic? I don’t think so. I’d much rather they spent the time and money making the game more fun and interesting to play.

Alas, as technology rushes on and the games manufacturers rush to follow it, this doesn’t look like it will be happening any time soon. So, until I win the lottery, I guess I’ll stick to doing my games buying in charity shops. Their range is a bit variable but I often find little gems and, in a world where video is still the film medium of choice, at least I know I’ll be able to run them.