I really have to stop buying more games that I don’t have time to play…

Though I will make time for Rock Band 2, and I wound up buying it today even though I won’t actually play it until I finish off Persona 3. But while I was there I couldn’t resist picking up a copy of Burnout Paradise (it was cheap, and there have been lots of updates), and Spore. Spore was the one I had preordered at Amazon and still hadn’t shipped yet, but I wound up finding a Galactic Edition copy in the stores and canceled the preorder.

Unfortunately, Spore has a problem — it won’t run on my machine. It just crashes when I try to launch it for the first time, and I suspect it’s related to the copy protection system it uses: SecuROM. It’s the same system used by Mass Effect, and that one also won’t run on my system; it doesn’t crash, but it does give me a ‘failed to load’ error when it tries to start.

Usually these copy protection problems are caused by virtual CD drives on the system, but I’ve never had one installed under Vista, so I’m not sure what the problem is. I’ve tested a whole bunch of games on this system, so maybe it’s conflicting with the copy protection or drivers of some other game, but damned if I can tell which one it is.

It’s just another example of how modern PC gaming sucks, alas, but it’s still my preferred platform for a lot of things. Maybe it’s just time for another wipe and reinstall and hope that clears up these problems…