As necros said device 1 is the CD and AFAIK, it's not a good thing to have it on the same channel as the HD for performance reasons.

I think only one device can be used at a time on each channel, so accessing the CD will block the HD momentarily. That's why SCSI performs better (although for a higher price).

I've also heard that the protocol on each IDE channel will be the slowest of the connected devices (i.e. the CD in your case), but I don't know if it's true.

On my machine I only have the HD on the primary and the CD/DVD are sharing the secondary channel.

Good to hear that you've got it installed now. 

that supposedly allows the game to start. Time will tell.

aguirRe, thanks for the info - I have a Dell computer, and the IDE settings were set by the manufacturer, so I don't really know what's going on.

Cheers Kell - sometimes the situation gets so ridiculous that you have to take the mickey just to stay sane. 

sure go get a crack and play already :)

www.gamecopyworld.com
www.megagames.com

and be free :D 

I suspected the thing about media players interfering with the installation was BS. I didn't bother holding down SHIFT as I inserted the CDs like they said, and it didn't affect anything. 

which appears to do fuck all. I suppose I've got to download the 86 MB patch now? On dialup? Perhaps I should just uninstall the game, put it down to experience, and make sure I never buy anything produced by Dreamcatcher again. 

you could do that, but then you wouldn't be able to play the game... 

about borrowing my brother's copy because it might mean less residuals for Vondur. I'm so naive sometimes. 

Once I updated my graphics card drivers, I got the game to run.

I have a PIII 1.5GHz, 512 MB RAM, and a 64 MB nVidia GeForce4, and I had to turn all the graphics options down to the absolute lowest settings to get a playable framerate (which doesn't really bother me). What is annoying though is that it frequently pauses for seconds at a time when there's a lot of crazy physics going on. Despite this I still managed to play through the first few levels up to the first boss.

I will refrain from posting my impressions of the game until I have completed it. 

better late than never, or, maybe not..... 

And you do realise, from what I hear, the game will be over in far less time then you took to get it to work

Oh I've no doubt of that ;) I've already played through a sizable chunk of the game, and although part of me wants to hate the game for all the grief it caused, i'm actually rather enjoying it. I'm currently fighting a boss monster that appears to be just slightly larger than the size of the known universe, >:) Anyway, full review when I finish it. 

You've perchased the game, so whats the harm in downloading the cracked version as you have paid for it? Get a friend to download it for you :) 

yeah, i cracked my version as well. just because it's more convenient:P 

I haven't bought PK yet but I plan to. It's less expensive then most new releases. I plan to buy it because I love the look of the environments and enemies.

I agree very much with Shambler's view on bosses. I can enjoy a game immensely only to hate it at the very end or at chapter ends because the obligatory boss climax is more frustrating then fun.

One boss battle feature that I liked was on the AvP2 mission pack. The HUD showed the boss's health meter. That really helped to motivate me to push on because I knew that my attacks were actually working. Diablo II also has such a feature (but for all enemies.) I hate not knowing whether the boss has 1,000,000,000 hit points or if I'm supposed to figure out it's weakness during the 4-5 second spells between reloading my game and dying again.

Boss battles that are not hugely difficult are exempt from my whining.

Go tell 'em Shambler. 

Haven't finished the game yet, but I'd just like to say that so far I've found the bosses to be the most interesting aspect of the game. Once you figure out how to destroy them, they are fun, and satisfying to take down. I particularly liked the swamp beast, which frustrated the hell out of me at first, but once I discovered how to kill him, it was just so much fun.

It's a pity the other aspects of the game can't be anywhere near as creative/interesting. 

I got up to the boss with the hammer, and my computer basically ground to a complete halt. That stage is completely unplayable on my system, so I don't think I'll progress any further without cheats. I'll look forward to revisiting the game when I get a new computer.

Depite that, I felt the game had really perfected the art of simply "shootin' stuff". Every method of dispatching the various baddies was deliciously satifying; my favourite being the freeze gun/shotgun combo, which made close range horde combat an absolute pleasure. Gibbings were supremely succulent; the way the bodies just came apart perfectly was really well done.

I liked the way health was handled; a little bit for each monster killed, plus the checkpoint system was a very good idea.

For me, the weakest aspect of the game were the levels; they looked lovely, yes, but they didn't really feel like anything more than just pretty backdrops to the action; there wasn't really anything else to them aside from 'enter room, door shuts behind you, room fills with insane amount of monsters, you kill monsters, door opens, enter another room...' ad infinitum. They were nothing more than a series of arenas strung together. Don't get me wrong, I do love arena combat, but it's nice to break it up a bit sometimes. Also, pretty much every level played exactly the same, with only the boss stages to provide a bit of variation.

Most of the combat was fair, but a couple of areas were stupidly difficult and annoying, particularly in the military base.

The physics engine. Well, this was the reason my computer ground to a halt, so I personally could have happily done without it. That said, if I had a faster computer I would have no doubt thought it "rocked", but I still don't think it was amazingly necessary from a gameplay point of view.

If I had a fast computer, and if there was a level editor for the game, I would definately think about mapping for it. I think with more "Quakey" level design, this game would have been awesome. 

Cheats: http://www.dreamcatchergames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=22515df7b9cc72b01a6347f881e65c93&threadid=19660

BTW, I very much agree with your assessment of the game although I tended the find the lack of theme and continuity between levels as much of an issue as the levels themselves. 

Actually, I have already godded my way past the hammer boss, and have resumed playing normally.

Hmmm...there is a definite improvement in these later levels, the castle in particular felt much more like a proper level than previous efforts; although progression still seems kind of arbitrary.

I'm coming up against some real beefy bongers now - I really love the design of these monsters.

I don't really mind the lack of continuity between levels; in any case I think there is a vague theme that connects each of the levels in a chapter. I think overall it's consistent with the generally oldschool arcadey feel of the game, where successive levels don't necessarily have to match stylistically. 

Where the skelaton warriors guard a UFO, could you send me an in-game pic? That just sounds so cool. 

Nice level, I found all the secrets in that which got me pretty chuffed =). 

Castle *was* nice. I think my favorites were Monastery, Snowy Bridge, and the Venice-y level (City on the Water?). A couple of the secrets on the latter were incredibly difficult to find . . .

I love the monster that grabs lesser monsters and holds them as shields while they kick helplessly. That's good stuff. 

Ok, i'll admit, I had to cheat a bit in places where the slowdown made it unplayable on my system. Also I was disappointed to learn that they still hadn't fixed that awful checkpoint bug in the Monastery even with the 1.2 patch >:|

In case anyone else encounters it; i'll describe both the bug and a nifty way of avoiding it: after smashing the huge cross into the floor, you go down into a small cave network, kill the baddies and then come back out of the cave the way you came and proceed to the next checkpoint; after that you descend a small spiral staircase and enter a room with those witch thingies that emerge from coffins. Now there is a nasty bug here - sometimes you can kill all the monsters, but the door blocking access to the next checkpoint (under the small spiral staircase) doesn't open, preventing you from finishing the level.

Here's the workaround: guarding the checkpoint before the spiral staircase is a skull faced dude - do not kill him. Run straight past him into the room with the coffins - kill all the monsters there, and only then can you go back and kill the skull guy - voila, the next checkpoint appears, and you may proceed.

Apart from that, the Monastery is probably my favourite level of the bunch; it just looks so awesome, and it really does feel like a place you can explore.

Hell was wierd, it looked impressive and for some reason I had absolutely no performance problems with this level whatsoever; I was getting 60-80 fps even with huge crowds of monsters. No idea what was going on there. I couldn't figure out how to kill Satan until I'd read a guide though. 

When I played the hell map I just kept shooting satan when he appeared and he eventually died :) What are you "supposed" to do here then? 

can only be killed by shooting the lava balls and deflecting them back at him; perhaps you were actually doing this inadvertedly and didn't realise ;) Amidst all the chaos it might appear as if you were just shooting him normally. Other than that, I dunno. What skill level were you on? 

I kinda figured that was how I killed him, but I played it the same way DaZ did and just shot at him forever till he went down. I do remember at one point deflecting the lava balls around just to keep them from hitting me...I must bounced a few in his direction too.

Personally, I think this game is great for what it set out to be: A mindless slaughterfest in the same way as oldschool shooters like Quake and Doom. They didn't go over-the-top with the amount of enemies on screen (ala Serious Sam), but there was never a shortage of cannon fodder. Even near the end of the game, after killing thousands of baddies, I was never disappointed with using the same means to kill them all. In short, the game kept the same slaughter-groove going through the whole trip.

I really didn't mind the disparate themes throughout the levels either..it just flowed from one somewhat weird, demon-infested location to another, although they did tend to stay very generally within a theme per chapter. The multiple types of enemies reminds me alot of quake though: There are semi-realistic enemies with guns of all sorts, for a real-world twist. Then there's plenty of hell-knight-ish creeps to blast, and plenty of ninjas and demons. I just can't wait for a map-editor. With all the monster types and textures already used ingame, there looks like plenty of room for creativity right out of the box.

The gameplay was always fun, fast, and with lots of flying bodies and ammunition. Two thumbs up :)