Alter Ego - High Performance Gaming PC for Streamers & Content Creators | Ultimate Setup for Gaming, Live Streaming & Video Editing | Fast Processor & High-End Graphics

Warning!!!This game uses SecuROM 7.42.0001The requirements listed on the box (actually a cardboard sleeve over a DVD case) are very low:OS: Windows 7/Vista/XPProcessor: 1.5 GHzMemory: 512 MB RAM4 GB free hard drive spaceVideo card: DirectX 9 compatible video card with 64 MB video RAMComputers much older than mine, and with much poorer video cards, could meet these requirements. But when I installed and tried to run the game, it slowly loaded to a black screen, the DVD eventually spun down, and the black screen persisted until I used Control-Alt-Delete so I could close the game and get control of my computer. It's done this every time I tried to start the game. I get as far as a window showing Play, Setup, Website, and Close. I click Play and wait while the disc spins and spins. Eventually the screen turns black and that's as far as it gets. No notification of anything, no splash screen from the publisher, the game never gets past the disc check. The disc slowly spins down. Come back in 30 minutes, it still hasn't started. It's frozen solid. The Setup option allows you to choose resolution, set antialiasing and shader to 0, play windowed, or use vsync or not. None of these settings had any effect. I tried them all, one by one and in combinations. I tried both while connected to the Internet and not. Antivirus uninstalled. No good. No emulation software was ever installed on the computer, so it doesn't look like a blacklisting problem. It's just plain failure of the SecuROM copy protection to detect a valid DVD.Remember when games would tell you to insert the disc when they failed a disc check?Not SecuROM. It freezes your computer instead.ProtectionID v6.4 identifies the version of SecuROM on the Viva Media version of Alter Ego as 7.42.0001. I bought the game here at Amazon.I was able to play Tomb Raider Anniversary, which uses an earlier version of SecuROM (SecuROM 7.32.0012), on the same computer. It seems SecuROM gets worse with every successive version. 7.42.0001 is obviously more restrictive. They are so anal about pirates playing the game within a week of publication that they won't let legitimate purchasers play it ever.SecuROM is getting worse. And the publisher will never admit that it's their copy protection that is causing your game not to run. They always blame your computer, or your drivers, whether you have a 3 year old aging game computer or a top of the line state of the art computer. And once you pay for the software, your money is gone. The most they'll give you is another copy of the same crippled game.Too bad I lost $29.99 on this crippled garbage. The only NoDVD cracks I could find were for the European versions, so no help there. If I absolutely felt I HAD to play this I'd have to visit Pirate Bay or some similar place and download the Euro version and crack it.If you know your computer has difficulty with SecuROM v7 "protected" games, don't make the same mistake I did. If you haven't had problems so far, don't be too sure you won't with this one. Maybe I'm actually lucky the game wouldn't start right from the beginning. While using Google to try to troubleshoot this game, I found posts from gamers who got partway through it but were unable to finish because it was so buggy and kept crashing. Maybe that's because the game itself is buggy, but it could also be another manifestation of SecuROM in a more insidious form. Do a Google search for SecuROM trigger functions to see what I mean.---------------------------------------------------update:I've found system requirements that are different from what is on the game box on the Steam and the Adventureshop websites:The Steam website lists higher minimum system requirements than the game box: * OS: Windows 7/Vista/XP SP 2 * Processor: 2.5 GHz Single Core * Memory: 1 GB RAM * Graphics: 128 MB 3D Video Card (Geforce 6600/Radeon 9600 or better) * DirectX®: 9.0c or higher * Hard Drive: 3 GB free hard drive space * Sound: DirectX sound cardThe Adventureshop website lists different requirements, that are even higher for video card. It also adds Windows 2000 and does not list Windows 7, which is strange.OS: 2K/XP/VistaCPU: Pentium IVMemory: 512 MB system memoryVideo memory: 256 MBHD: 5 GB freeAudio: 16 bit stereoI suspect the requirements on the game box are incorrect.Sadly this game is dreadfully dull. Good premise but neither of the 1st person characters is very interesting or likable. The environments are alright if extremely limited. The game has a flat 2D matte-painting feel reminiscent of Syberia and other 3rd person POV games, but without the attention to detail or cinematic quality that would help make it more interesting. Each location only has two or three 3rd person views and you'll soon be disappointed by the limited range of movement.The biggest problem is the extremely linear storyline that consists of clicking through all the NPC conversation threads until the next goal is unlocked. There are a lot of "I don't want to go there," and "Now what would I do with that?" from your character when clicking on hotspots. That's not unusual for Viva games but somehow they are more annoying in this game. Sadly the only challenge in the game is trying to figure out what sequence of steps is required (talk, acquire, examine, talk again, combine, use... repeat) to accomplish the childishly obvious solution to any given problem. This leads to the inevitable, "I know what I have to do, but what the heck do I have to click on to make it happen!?" frustration that pulls you out of the game. For example, after awhile of wandering around aimlessly you'll discover you can Examine (right-click) NPCs even after you have exhausted the conversation thread. In truth it's little more than a walk-through hidden-object game. The last quarter of the game is taken over by cut-scenes and voice-overs (some even have you staring at a completely black screen) that push you along to a few simple locations with only one or two blazingly obvious puzzles to solve with most of the action occurring off-screen. It feels like they ran out of time and had to finish the game quickly. Several important NPCs appear in the last bit of the game (the actual villain isn't even seen!) and are never developed. One of our 1st-person characters suddenly starts talking like a Bond villain for no apparent reason. The game tries hard to be exciting with horror-movie underscoring and spooky ambient sound, but sadly the story never lives up to it. There is about six hours of game-play here, none of which is very exciting or particularly challenging.In the point-and-click genera I really love third person point and click games, especially ones from the past, so I decided to give this one a try. Big mistake! This game is so overly boring, frustrating and way too much dialogue! Besides that, you are in the same few rooms for such a long time going back and forth to do such petty things, it's beyond annoying. I guess if you like games that take place in this time zone, then maybe you will like it, but I didn't enjoy any part of it. The conversations were long and pointless, I just couldn't stand it. Games not for me.Good game, bad ending. I had trouble getting the game to run properly. Not seeing the characters is not much fun.) Did Google searches for patches and fixes and was able to get it going. I did enjoy it once it started. Ending was sudden and poor.I downloaded this game from Amazon after spending a long time reading the reviews. Game downloaded OK but as I started to play I noticed that I couldn't see the principle character, and as the game progressed I couldn't see anyone else either. I finally stopped playing when I got into the pub and there wasn't anyone else there, just their speech bubbles. I complained to Amazon, but they didn't bother to respond. My recommendation is to avoid this download like the plague - DO NOT BUY IT - IT'S A SCAM AND A WASTE OF MONEY!!!!The game gives you hours of fun and challenge. The graphics are great and the story line moves along to tell the story. I love adventure games like this and have played 40 or so in the last 6-8 years and found this to be up in the top 25% of the batch.Good gameje suis tout juste à l'esses de ce jeu je n'est pas d'idée sur le jeu maintenant mais il ne me plais pas beaucoupce n'est pas beaucoup mon genre je verrer plus tard avec se jeu merci