I just bought saints row 2.... uses steam Should I open it or return it

I am not againt all drm, alot of them are painless and have been removed from the game later on, but having to be online was also one of my gripes with GTA4. Also steams attitude towards we don't have to remove the drm even if we disappear forever is a killer.

Is steams offline mode painless after setting it up or should i just return the unopened game. I have a feeling I am just gonna be disappointed and annoyed.

 

Steams offline mode is really nice. You just have to have logged in once to activate the game and add it to your account. From then on, it will detect you are not online and then prompt you to go to offline mode (you can also do it from the internal menus). Trust me, offline mode is very easy/convenient.

 

This sums it up nicely.

 

I wouldn't return the game just because it needs Steam to activate. As bhattsan said, the process for using Steam's offline mode is very easy and painless.

 

I opened it however, there is a real possibility of not being able to play it in future years which is like blah. Its not even a steam game, their logo isnt anywhere on the package didnt notice till i saw the writing on the sealed corner. I like how they used steams activation as their drm yet plenty of games avaliable on steam are avaliable in box without needing steam.

One good thing dont have to have the disc in to play. Can play 2 games while being lazy lol.

 

Valve isn't going anywhere soon.

 

This shouldn't be an issue because either
1. Steam will be around still and playing it will be no big issue
2. Steam will be gone, in which case they said they will release patches to allow their games to be played without Steam.

 

They went out of there way to make sure theyre butt is covered in case they decide to not do this. However individual publishers of in print games will patch for it and the rest is up to them for out of print.

 

I dont see the problem even if Steam went out of business and didn't patch (at least for the single player games). Steam's already installed on your computer so offline mode will always work.

The only problem I really see is that if they went out of business and you changed computers, how would you get data from computer A to computer B. Since I didn't buy most of my Steam games in Disc form I guess I'd be screwed, unless they allowed the files to simply be copied from one HDD to another without causing issues like most other games.

 

You nullified your first statement already lol. Unlike some people i wipe a little more often then every decade. In fact try like anywhere from several times a month to 90 days at the most. I do image with some stuff installed but every 2 or 3 years i get a new pc, the image is useless.

I am a retro kinda guy, not the kind of game i will want to play down the road though. Most likley if steam d ever go out as i said they dont even have to patch as publishers can take it upon themselves, still makes me nervous. We have some people here that wont even buy a game because of drm so dont call me crazy hehe.

 

One thing to remember, if you do decide to keep and install, once activated with Steam, you can't return the game if you don't like it. Might be stating the obvious, but I got caught out with crappy DOW2.

 

Should have researched the horrible steam protection before your bought it. But the fact that its Saints Row alone, should be enough reason to return it.

 

yeah return it because its saint's row, not because of steam

 

you can get programs that are like steam emulators, So you don't have to worry about steam

 

Saints Row 2 on the PC has serious issues and you are guaranteed to get some major stuttering while driving any fast vehicles. If you are using a 5400 RPM hard disk, it is likely to be even worse.

The game is extremely poorly optimised and even GTA IV runs better.

However, if you some how manage to tweak it and get decent performance along with a reasonable level of eye candy then it is a great game and a lot of fun.

You might as well just download the entire game from Steam and use your CD key code because this way you will get the most up to date version that has been patched.

 

Actually even though I get up to 60 fps in GTA 4 at times, which im not getting in SR2 my lows are actually higher then GTA 4. SR2 looks really dry and on that note so does GTA4 on PC in comparison to 360/PS3. Sadly Rockstar admitted to the requirements somewhere SR2 says 3.2 recommended.... nah 4.0 minimum, quad recommend lol.

I installed from the cd and only took an extra 2 minutes for it to automatically install the new patch.

 

Have you seen the stutter problems in SR2 when you drive fast cars though?

If you tweak the graphics, especially advanced lighting, SR2 can look pretty good.

 

Varies and isnt like it is in an FPS where i cant operate just makes me sick or dizzy. But if u look down at the road while driving a fast car ull get 30+ fps. As well as driving around where theres nothing but buildings. As with any game when your in an open area it takes more power to render the scene.

Also note the real drops arent from the graphics rendering per se. When you drive through environments with more people and cars it will drop framerates as well not due to complexity but due to AI calculations.

I played it on max and turned it down here and there, almost no difference in framerates, a little though, another sign of the cpu usage. Very often gets 24-26 in averge driving but hits into thirties, but does under those described situations get below 23 and of course isnt fluid.

I have to say the game is like eh, but im addicted. Really if we crossed all the good of SR2 with GTA4 we would have a cool game.... whenever 9 Ghz 8 core cpus come out j/k.

 

I have to say that I also really enjoy this game, I get about 30 fps on my Q9000 and I noticed less stuttering after I upgraded my hard disk to a 7200 RPM although I could just be imagining it.

It must be very CPU intensive like you say. On another note, I have been testing out Windows 7 on a spare hard drive and I noticed GTA IV runs better so if I can get SR2 to install and run, I will see if there is any difference.

I run both on XP SP3 at the moment.

 

I have an OLED display to tell me whats what, though the stock program doesnt update very often its usually at 90%. I kow GTA4 its usually reading 94-100%. Everything on vista x64 here.

 

OP request closed