Play Time is Precious!

[Originally from onemanmmo.com.]

I'm looking for my next game after Skyrim so I thought I'd try out some new games. 

I had 20 minutes to play Thursday, so first up was Magicka on Steam.  I'd heard nothing but good things about it and I'd installed and started it before, so I figured it should be good to go.  But no.  Steam told me that before I could play it needed to convert my files to a more efficient format for 15-20 minutes.  Like it's so important to do that right away. So that was the end of that.  I ended up browsing news sites. 

Friday I got Magicka going, only to discover that it only lets you save about once an hour.  This isn't rocket science people, you already have checkpoints in the game.  The game idled most of the night while I put together bits of time to get to the end of the second chapter when I could quit without losing progress.  It was fun, but I'll probably never play Magicka again.

Saturday morning game time: I pick Starcraft 2 to start on the single player campaign.  I'd installed and started it before so I should be good to go.  (I tried to start playing Starcraft 2 last year but there was a problem with my battle.net account and I couldn't log in to play it at all for about a week.)  It isn't on Steam so color me shocked when it insisted it needed to optimize my files for 15-60 minutes and download 6GB before I could play.  Fail.  Fail!  Fail!

How about an oldie but a goodie.  I played Crysis a couple years ago and it was sort of pretty.  I know it's installed and working!  Maybe it's time to get into a little shooting.  Started it up, black screen, no sound.  It worked fine the last time I played it!  I started downloading newer video drivers and the latest Crysis patch when I realized I was again not having fun!.

Last up, Borderlands.  I'd installed it previously using Steam but never tried it.  Pressed Play and what happens?  Steam starts installing 4 more things!  Shouldn't Install have done that?

Play time is precious.  When I want to play, I want to play.  I don't want to fix bugs.  I don't want to download drivers.  I don't want to optimize my files (whatever the hell that means.)  I don't want to patch my single-player game. All of these issues could have been avoided if the companies behind these games had a lick of common sense and any respect for the player.