I never saw many graphical bugs, maybe some clipping here and there but nothing like streets disappearing behind me.
The map does work but it has an annoying bug that shows the highlighted route displaced to the right of where it should be so it doesn't match the streets as you see them. This only happens on the big map, the mini map works as it should. Another annoying thing with the map is that markers don't stick to locations like in GTA so you can never pinpoint a location with precision.
My experience was with an AMD Radeon card and Windows XP. I don't know it has problems on Windows 7.

Damn, I also have a Radeon. I was hoping it was the card (so I could get the game when I get a new one). I do use Windows 7, maybe it was this.

It was a very interesting concept. But it took me ages to get past the race due to the bugs and I simply gave up on it shortly after that.

The woman I spoke to on the phone tried to comp me a Digital Download version of the game, but apparently it's so old that they can't even comp it anymore. She also tried converting the serial number in question to a Digital Download code, but that didn't work either. The only other solution the two of us could come up with (aside from a no-cd patch, since a legitimately installed game wouldn't be able to contact any active EA servers anyway) would be to seek out the remnants of Pandemic and see if one of those guys had a patch that took out the limited activations. My issue was that the automated script system that the online tech reps were using to "help" me were old and outdated, and weren't telling them that the game in question was also old, and the code was an older code and wouldn't work with Origin's new serial code structure. Their whole support site is old and outdated, as opposed to their store, which is updated every five minutes.

If the service gives you too much grief, then you-ho-ho yourself a barrel of grog.

That actually sounds like very solid customer support. And how stupid DRMs are, especially if you don't patch them out (even Ubi does this for christ sake!).

Like I said, the representative was great, it's the equipment and reference materials she had that were the problem.

Pretty much my experience anytime I want to install an EA game lately and can't due to a problem I give them an IM with my product name and the disc key and 2-10 minutes later it's in my origin account with a new set of installs...

I have too Win 7 64 bit. Also Radeon.

2008. Apparently gamers were using computers made out of wood and monitors out of bone, it was such an antiquated age. No wonder that poor tech rep couldn't help you, you with your stone age requests!

When you're done being a smartass, stop and think about how EA has been pushing Origin so hard, and how anything before it has been dropped.

I comprehend that just fine. Even as far back as '92 Origin was satirizing EA's "Evil Empire" methods as the Fellowship in U7. I'm well aware of how many developers they've assimilated and then sat on their back catalogs like a bloated spider queen.

All the more reason I make .iso backups with cracks of everything I legitimately own. Of course this can't extend towards everything these days that requires online verification or perma-net connections. But if I have to pirate things on a torrent site I've already bought and paid for that some bureaucratic publisher blindness is keeping me from being able to fairly use I have no compunction about it, and neither should you. Don't expect to change EA's tunnel-vision or lack of support for older titles, as they really don't give a shit in their grander mission-scheme of the current market and current titles with wide current online player-bases.

In the meanwhile, I'll continue to throw my money to this site. If only the rest of the EA back-catalog would crop up...

Pandemic isn't even around anymore, so I'm not too conflicted about cracking a game that the publisher tried to prevent losing "second-hand sales" money on. That was smart.

That said, if Mercs, Inc. ever makes it out of development hell (supposedly being produced by the Pandemic members that didn't dash for the nearest exit and take a job with 343), and if EA doen't faff it up too much with "executive suggestions", I'm enough of a fan of the series to buy it, even if it's only on Origin. On the other hand, EA probably will faff it up and turn the title into what Homefront came to be. I mean, the title itself, "Mercs, Inc." screams "MMO". Poor old Mattias will be relegated to being some kind of "board member" NPC that hands out missions or something to players that create their own merc characters.