Baldurdash

"My first venture into Biowares epic. I was undecided as to where to start - do I go for the original Baldurs and begi my quest at the start? or do I jump in with the latest version and see if it floats my boat? There also is the niggling doubt that I have previously dabbled with Planescape Torment, having shrugged it aside when I found the going too tough, will Baldurs be any different?

I opted for Baldurs Gate II. Mainly because the collectors edition included a T-shirt. Also, I thought I may as well appreciate the latest and greatest, rather than my view be tainted with an older less sophisticated product. So, I uninstalled Black & White to make room for the extremely large install. At first I could not believe the full install wanted nearly 2.5Gb!!! I bit the bullet, and cleared up some vidcap stuff from my overburdened hard disk. After the install, a lengthy operation involving four CD's, I darkened the room and started it up. I thought I would pay my respects and run through the tutorial, since I hadn't the patience to read the manual. My initial reaction was one of disappointment. Mainly because I was expecting cleaner, crisper graphics with much more detail and definition. Still, I soldiered on, blaming my high expectations on a gluttony of super slick Dreamcast console graphics. I was just getting the hang of various simple tasks, when I noticed something odd. I could not successfully cast a spell, without taking too long. Moving the character became a chore in itself. One of the action buttons, usually turning the undead, or guarding another started to rapidly flick on and off! There was nothing I could do to control or stop it. The constant activation prevented access to the spell list sub-menu, and movement required at least three or four clicks for the command to take hold. I checked all the settings. I tried saving and loading the game. I even tried several different characters. All had the same problem, after a few seconds with a single character selected, this insane button twinkling began! I presumed it was a mouse problem. My Microsoft Optical Intellimouse had served me well over the past year or so.. but it was USB - so I thought I'd try a bog standard serial one. No change. I unhooked the USB hub altogether. No change. Ok, manual time. The message was loud and clear. INSTALL THE LATEST GRAPHICS DRIVERS!!

Before I chanced my arm, I'd bought Icewind Dale (another Bioware RPG romp) at the same time - so I thought I'd give that a look-see. Since Icewind and Baldurs use the same Infinity Engine, not surprisingly, Icewind was struck with the same ""flickery affliction"".

I downloaded the new ATi drivers, spent an eternity going through the complex ritual of exorcising my machine of its previous graphics drivers and installing the new ones. It was recommended that you re-install Baldurs. A man could grow old whilst waiting to play this game.

Started her up. New character, no tutorial. Same old flicker. I've spent 50 quid on two Bioware games, a whole night installing, configuring and re-installing - with about 15 minutes play on the tutorial. My first real quest began. To try and get this game to work.

I scoured the 'net for anything and everything I could find about the problem. I stumbled upon a posting on the Black Isle ""official"" Icewind Dale messageboards, it had the topic ""Annoying Problem"". Basically several folk had exactly the same problem, all the Bioware games suffer from it, except Planescape Torment. But no-one including the Black Isle Studios moderators could offer any advice other than... INSTALL THE LATEST GRAPHICS DRIVERS or TRY A LOWER GRAPHICS SETTING (disable OpenGL/3d acceleration). It was obvious several folk were frustrated by this problem, the game almost works... but this small nagging gripe renders the whole game (all 2.5Gb of it) unplayable. I was convinced the problem must be my USB mouse. I was blinkered. I began removing the drivers for some of my other USB peripherals. Luckily, the first one I uninstalled was my Cardport Swift Smartmedia card reader, for my digital camera. Removed the card reader from the USB hub, rebooted and tried Baldurs. It was fixed! No flicker! My mouse was free of blame.

Now in total it took me a good three nights to get to this point. My love of gaming was the only thing preventing me from marching back to GAME with Baldurs and Icewind and getting a DC/PS2 replacement. This episode just re-inforced my decision to play console games. Anyway, the problem and solution is logged on their message boards. The majority of people who posted to that thread had similar card reading devices and can now play the game. I feel I did my bit, and it was something of an acheivement. My first quest over, my reward, to take on my next quest in-game…"