Step 4 of 5

Installing, signing in, and the first hour

This step is a general order of operations that applies to any large PC game, not a walkthrough of one product's screens. It also tells you how to judge the first session fairly, which is harder than it sounds. Reading time is about eighteen minutes.

Where the installer should come from

Get the program from the publisher's own site, or from an established distribution platform the publisher itself points to. The reason is simple: a file obtained from a mirror, an aggregator or a link in a message is a file somebody else has had the opportunity to alter, and a game installer is a program that will run with your permission on your computer.

Avoid sites that wrap an installer in their own download manager, sites that ask you to disable your security software to proceed, and anything described as a “cracked”, “repacked” or “pre-activated” version. For a game with no purchase price, a modified version offers you nothing you could not have for free, which makes the question of why it exists at all worth sitting with. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes general guidance on software from untrusted sources.

If your operating system or security software warns you about a file, read the warning rather than dismissing it. Large game installers do sometimes trigger cautious warnings legitimately — they are unusual programs that write a lot of files — but that is a reason to check the source you got it from, not a reason to stop reading warnings.

The order of operations

Confirm the free space figure from Step 2 is still true. Disks fill up. Check it on the day rather than relying on a number you wrote down a week ago.
Start from the vendor's own page and begin the transfer there. If you have an account from Step 3, you may be asked to sign in first; that is expected.
Close other demanding programs and, on a laptop, plug it in. A long transfer on battery power will often be throttled or interrupted by the machine's own power management.
Let the transfer and the unpacking finish. These installers do two things: they bring files down, then they unpack and verify them. The second stage can take as long as the first and shows little activity on the network. Interrupting it is the most common cause of an installation that behaves oddly afterwards.
Expect an update immediately after installing. It is normal for a game to patch itself on first launch, sometimes substantially, because the installer you received was built before the current version. Budget data and time for it.
Sign in with the account you confirmed in Step 3. If sign-in is refused, check first that the confirmation link was actually followed; an unconfirmed account is the most common cause and looks like a password problem.
Before playing, open the options and set the visuals low. This is covered in its own section below, and doing it first saves you from forming a wrong impression.
Play for thirty to sixty minutes, then stop and write three lines: how it ran, how it felt, and whether anything was asked of you that you had not expected.

What the first evening looks like

Timeline — a typical first session

Minutes 0–5. Finding the vendor's page, starting the transfer, signing in if asked.
Minutes 5–60, varying widely. The transfer itself. This depends entirely on the size of the game and the speed of your connection, and it is not a measure of anything except those two things.
The unpacking stage. Little visible network activity, substantial disk activity, no useful way to hurry it.
First launch. Often an immediate update. Then a sign-in screen.
Five minutes in the options. Setting the visuals low, setting the audio to a civilised level, finding where the controls are listed.
The first thirty to sixty minutes of play. Usually an introductory sequence. Judge the machine during this, not the game.
Stop, and write three lines. You will not remember accurately tomorrow, and a second session is a better test than a longer first one.

Visual settings, and why to start low

Every game of this kind has an options screen with visual settings: resolution, overall quality, shadows, effects, and often a preset labelled low, medium, high and so on. Most games choose a preset for you on first launch by guessing at your hardware, and the guess is frequently wrong in the optimistic direction.

Set the preset low, or at most medium, before your first session. Then raise it one notch at a time, playing a few minutes between changes. Working upwards gives you an accurate picture of where your machine's limit is. Working downwards from a setting that was never going to run gives you a first impression of a stuttering mess and no information at all.

Two specific settings are worth knowing by name. Resolution is the number of pixels drawn; lowering it is the single largest performance gain available and the one most people never try. Vertical sync ties the game's drawing to the monitor's refresh, which can smooth out tearing in the picture but can also add a small delay between your input and what you see. Try it both ways.

If your Step 2 reading showed integrated graphics, start at the lowest preset and the resolution one step below your screen's native setting. That is not a counsel of despair; it is the configuration most likely to show you what the game actually is.

Judging the first session by named symptoms

“It ran badly” is not useful to you a week later. These four descriptions are.

Common symptoms and what they usually point at
What you notice	What it usually indicates	First thing to try
Motion is uneven, as if frames are being skipped, continuously.	The graphics hardware is being asked for more than it can draw.	Lower the resolution a step, then the overall preset.
Brief freezes every few seconds, otherwise smooth.	Often loading from disk or a shortage of working memory.	Close other programs; check free disk space.
Smooth picture, but a delay between your input and what happens, or other players moving in jumps.	Connection timing rather than hardware.	Prefer a wired connection if available; test at a different time of day.
The machine becomes hot, the fans become loud, performance drops after ten minutes.	The machine is reducing its own speed to manage heat.	Raise it off soft surfaces so air can move; lower the settings.

Write down which of these you saw. If you try the game again after an update, you will be able to tell whether anything changed, which is otherwise guesswork.

When something is plainly wrong

If the game will not start at all, the usual culprits in order are: an incomplete installation, a graphics driver much older than the game, and a system requirement not met. Most publishers provide a way to verify or repair an installation without starting again, and most graphics hardware manufacturers publish updated drivers directly.

If the game starts but the account will not sign in, return to Step 3 and confirm the email confirmation was completed. If it was, the publisher's own support channel is the place for it; this course cannot resolve an account problem and will not pretend otherwise.

If something asks you for a payment, a code or a password outside the game's own sign-in screen, stop and look at what is asking. Messages offering in-game rewards in exchange for signing in somewhere are a standard pattern; Scamwatch collects current examples and accepts reports.

What this step does not claim

Nothing here is a statement about how any particular game performs. Performance depends on your hardware, your connection and the current version of the software, and the only honest general statement is the method above. The vendor of the example game does not publish performance figures, and this course does not invent any.

The example household, at Step 4

Hypothetical example

The invented household starts the transfer after dinner, on mains power, with the laptop's other programs closed. The transfer takes most of an hour; the unpacking takes twenty minutes more, during which they assume it has frozen and are almost right to be worried. On first launch there is an update. They set the preset to low and the resolution one step down, play for forty minutes, and write three lines: motion mostly steady, two brief freezes, machine hot and loud by the end. That is enough to know what to change next time. This household remains a hypothetical used to show sequence.

Checklist 4 — before you move to Step 5

Checklist 4 — installing and the first session

Free space confirmed on the day, not from last week's note.
Installer obtained from the publisher's own page or a platform the publisher points to.
Other demanding programs closed; laptop on mains power.
Transfer and unpacking both allowed to finish without interruption.
The post-install update allowed to complete before judging anything.
Signed in with the account confirmed in Step 3.
Visual preset set low and resolution lowered one step before first play.
One session of thirty to sixty minutes played, then stopped deliberately.
Three lines written: how it ran, how it felt, anything unexpected asked of you.
Any symptom matched against the table above, and the first remedy noted for next time.
Nothing purchased during the first session.

Before you move on

The one idea to carry forward: start low and work up, and describe what you saw in specific symptoms rather than as a verdict. The last item on the checklist — nothing purchased yet — is what Step 5 is about.