Bioshock no longer playable on 360 - every second - stutter freeze slow crash pause

[Northstone]

Please help. I have been through the FAQ and a lot of the Forum here and tried some of the solutions. Bioshock is no longer playable on my XBOX 360.

Details below:

Problem:

No problems until now - am now on Fort Frolic level. About every 1 second the game pauses all visible actions and animation and apparently the controls do not work for about a half of a second. Then it resumes, but game action continues during that time. This renders the game unplayable.

Here is an example of what I see:

If you push the stick forward and start moving, the screen pauses (meaning stays with the same image on the screen) for about a half of one second. Then when the screen starts moving again, you have moved forward during the time period and other things in the game have had action too. Such as if a character is moving towards you, then after the pause they are much closer to you. This happens even if you are not moving. So, if you are moving forward, it is like a freeze frame for a half a second, then you move for about a half to one whole second, and then it stops again. You totally get your butt kicked by the slicers because you are being attacked and cannot attack them back, except for the half to one second that it is working and not frozen.

What I have tried so far:

I looked on the FAQ and searched the forum. Based on what I saw about the 15 second pause problem, hoping my problem was a variation on that, I did the clear cache solution. I tried several times to clear the cache using the LB RB during reboot, doing it during starting the game from the dashboard. Did that several times, but did not fix. Then I tried the Dashboard - Console - Memory clearing with XX LB RB XX. That I could visibly see did clear the cache, because I got the message from dashboard about "Do you want to perform maintenance on your drive" and when I restarted Bioshock, I got the reprompt to download the patch again. I already had the patch previously, btw. I downloaded it again, but still did not work. Still having same problems.

I also tried starting a new game, saving it, then reloading the Fort Frolic saved game. If I go back to prior saved games it does not do this behavior.

Other Details:

The game disc looks fine to me. I have NEVER had similar problems with my 360. My 360 has the 20gb hard drive, not the Elite with 120GB drive, but I have over 4GB free, so more than plenty of room to have a ton of cache. Besides that, the cache clearing did nothing for me.

PLEASE HELP ME:
Can someone please help. It's an awesome game, but an awful problem that has now pulled the plug on my ability to continue.

[Northstone]

This is an update to my post earlier today.

So, I got on the phone with a friendly and helpful guy from 2K today. He walked me through the clear cache method again, but it still did not work.

He also had me try copying my profile and latest save game over to my 360 memory card, turn off the 360, remove the hard drive, and start back up, but running from the memory card. This is a great idea and tests the hard drive to make sure it is not the problem. Unfortunately (or fortunately - depending on how you look at it), the problem was the same running with HD detached and only from the memory card.

He also said they can exchange the game for a new copy if it was purchased within 3 months and I have the receipt. Well, I found out that the place I purchased it at would also give me a brand new game in exchange within 30 days. So, I got a new copy of Bioshock, reinstalled the hard drive, moved back my profile and reloaded the most recent game. Unfortunately it is still having the problem.

So, at this point the only thing that has not been replaced is my 360 itself and I have no way of testing the game on a different 360 at this time. Even if I did, out of a fairly large library of games this is the only one that is not working. It is hard to believe that it would be my 360, when there are also so many others having similar problems.

Again, please please if you have any ideas, similar problems happening to you, please post a reply.

If you work for 2K, please figure it out, post a patch on LIVE or contact me, I'll provide any additional details you need.

[BioShockWins]

That is really strange.

It almost seems as if the only variable left is your 360.

I honestly am stumped.
If you ever get a chance to play on a different 360, send me a PM for your results. Mostly because I'm genuinely curious.

[mwinter77]

If you go back to an earlier save that does not exhibit the problem and play forward to fort frolic does the same thing always happen? Does it start at the same exact point of progression through the level when replayed from an earlier save? It sounds like the game somehow got into a funky state and it then saved this bad state somehow in the save file.

[Northstone]

If you go back to an earlier save that does not exhibit the problem and play forward to fort frolic does the same thing always happen? Does it start at the same exact point of progression through the level when replayed from an earlier save? It sounds like the game somehow got into a funky state and it then saved this bad state somehow in the save file.

That's a very good thought and thanks for the post.

Last night, we tried this and found out that even going back just a few games, where we thought this was NOT happening, it actually was, but less noticeable. We went back even further in the saves and found one that did not display this, but as we progressed it started lightly displaying this.

It seems to be something that sneaks in more gradually then all of a sudden. It does not seem to be at the same point, but hard to tell.

[Spartan242]

The exact same thing happened to me, it got so bad that i could not play the game anymore. At first i thought it was my 360, but every other game I had played just fine on it. Then i inspected the actual CD and noticed a rippling, golden, discoloration on the bottom of the disk. I took it back to the game store and they swapped it out for another one. Of course like an idiot I didn't check the bottom of this one either. Well it started hanging and refused to save my game, so I checked the bottom and sure enough it was discolored to. I took that one back as well and got a third one, this one has an all silver bottom with no discoloration at all, and it works just fine. when I took the game back the first time the manager of the store told me that there were a lot of people complaining about the same thing and that his was also lagging out, and crashing.

[mwinter77]

Thats interesting - I would be interested to hear if this is the case for the OP. I did not think the game went to the disc that often during play as to have read errors interrupt the in level play as described but I suppose this certainly could be the case depending on how the disc reading is threaded with the rest of the program processing, and how much read ahead for textures there is.

[BioShockWins]

Having too many saves could cause this...
I had a bunch of saves, and it started getting screwy.

Now I keep it down to one or two.

[baked ant]

Having too many saves could cause this...
I had a bunch of saves, and it started getting screwy.

Now I keep it down to one or two.

thanks! this was the problem for me.

[Northstone]

I am no longer having problems! So happy about that!!

Details:
Previously tried advice having to go back to older saves to see if the problem still comes back. We had tried that, but the problem was either still there or had crept back in.

Well, out of sheer desperation, even though nearly done with the Fort Frolic level, we went back all the way to before Fort Frolic and started playing, dreading the return of the big freezing stuttering problems. We thought for sure when we got to the ice tunnel, we would have the problems return. They did not. We kept on playing and playing, all with no problem. Finally, we made it through Fort Frolic and on to the next level.

Still no problems.

FYI:
We only have the smaller hard drive unit 360 model. We had a ton of saves, the most you can have in Bioshock. The size of the hard drive has no bearing on this problem. The number of saves you have has no bearing on this problem. Apparently the game disk is not the problem. We know it was not our hard drive, because we copied our profile and save game from the hard drive to the memory card and then REMOVED the hard drive and reloaded it. It was also not the cache clear that helped.

My assessment, after our problems, and hearing about similar problems can only be that there are some bugs in the game. They are probably pretty hard to find or recreate or I would think that 2K would fix them.

Final Advice if you are having this problem:
Do not return the disk. Don't get a new XBOX 360. Do not get a new hard drive. Do not get a new big memory card. Do not clear the cache - actually, this does not hurt anything - so go ahead and do it anyway. At least, none of those things worked for me anyway. Try whatever you need, but restoring back before the level and trying again seemed to do it for us. BTW - we went through the level a bit differently this time, maybe that was enough to stop the problem.

Thanks:
Thanks to everyone for your help.

Happy Button Mashing! :D

[kernesh]

thanks for that man, had the same problem of late and its been driving me insane >.<

[outlawmoon]

Just to throw my own gasoline on this apparently not-very-important fire...

I'm freshly in the Farmer's Market, and the crashes (by which I mean total screen-frozen and have to restart the infernal machine crashes) come damn frequently; if I make ten minutes of gameplay, it's a miracle, and average maybe 3-5 minutes before a crash.

This happens even when the 360 is well-rested, cool, and only just fired up.

It only happens on Bioshock. Everything else is smooth and solid.

It's been happening for most of the f*****n' game, meaning I've advanced in a halting staccato which does wonders for immersion. It gets worse all the time.

I've cleared the memory cache hundreds of times.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled and uninstalled and reinstalled the update, with no percievable effect.

I took the game back and swapped it for a new copy. Still have the issue.

There is hope on the horizon. I can fully enjoy the replay of Halo 3 at a higher difficulty I've begun. I'm headed out after posting this to grab the Half-Lifey goodness of The Orange Box, which should be loads of thrills and giggles. I still have a lot of practice to do with Kasumi in both DOA2 Ultimates and DOA4. Plus, just got a PS2 and a copy of God of War.

And the $60 I spent on Biocrash? WASTED. At least till 2K actually does something to resolve these problems. Why play a friggin' great, glorious, magnificent game when it's just an inch by inch progression of technical issues that ruin the whole deities cursed experience?

Please, 2K. Fix your g.d. game.

[starbuck]

@ TC the exact same thing is happening to me now in FF. Ive been through that area on a few different game saves but it appears to be doing this after the patch.

[Tech Dan]

starbuck have you tried the LB, RB fix this will get rid of the game specific cache files

[outlawmoon]

Update: I returned the game again just in case both the first two disks were flawed.

Third disk, same problem.

X360 still working just dandy on everything else.

Biocrash crashing constantly.

[starbuck]

Yep cleared the cache I always do when starting games.
Reverted to the Autosave from the start of FF and its fine now shame as I was nearly done with FF and now got to do it all again.

[dansmell]

I am experiencing similar crashes, Mine only happen when i hack a machine or bring up the map, It doesnt happen everytime, sometimes when i try 1 of the 2 the game pauses as if its trying to load and then it will either stay paused which requires a reboot or it will work, sometimes after a pause that works the gfx background of the map is all messed up.

This is really bugging me so i now save every other hack, I phoned microsoft thinking there was a problem with my xbox and someone in a call centre asked me to remove the harddrive and all of the leads apart from the power supply and turn the xbox on, This resulted in 4 red rings, she then said it needed repair. I think she is talking out of her arse.

[Nokk]

Well, it appears I'm arriving here about 2 years after the fact but...... I JUST started playing my Bioshock game after I had purchased it 2 years ago along with Mass Effect. I played it maybe twice and then other games and just life in general took over and so I never returned to it. I'm a big gamer and also have a playstation 2 & 3, and also a gaming pc......so I keep myself pretty busy gaming. Well anyways....., I just ran in to this SAME EXACT PROBLEM and I tried everything you guys said before even coming to this forum. But by reading this forum I've realized that there still is no fix that I know of that works. I wanted to try an earlier save game from b4 Fort Forlic but, alas, I don't believe I have ANY save games from b4 that level so I think I'm basically....screwed. But at least I know what it is---the game (or code or whatever) and so I can stop racking my brains out, so thx guys :) These forums almost ALWAYS have the answer. Not sure I want to even BUY Bioshock2 now.......hmmmmmmm we'll see I guess, maybe I'll wait awhile and see what creeps up with number 2 b4 I buy it..... 2K PLEASE address this...!!!!

[Whitey_347]

Did you have your problem at Fort Frolic like everyone else did?
If so then im sure they will have it fixed in Bio2 since they redesigned the maps;) as for the fact of not having any saves, i would try restarting the game from the beginning and seeing if it will run fine (atleast the intro mission), but i reccomend you save your progress, also i would make sure you have the update installed for the game, i dont know if the update was out back in '07 or if you have updated your game or not

[farfus]

Hey guys, i discovered this forum from having this same problem, been playing Bioshock the past 12 days. Totally love the game, i think i have the problem licked. Went back about four saves before my problem started, and this time it never started. I erased tons of saves and only have about 5 now, but it apparently is just a random problem, for sure. Since im really digging the game its great i got around this prob. Sorry to read what some of you went through to find out that they still werent getting the prob fixed. I can tell its a random thing, basically comes and goes. I will hang out some here and am getting Bioshock 2 on tuesday! Peace

[exception360]

I'm also playing Bioshock now and I had the same problem on Fort Frolic. Suddenly the framerate was 'freezing' every 2 seconds or so...

Tried everything: cache cleaning, deleting savegames etc. but nothing helped. Game disc is 100% fine and the game is installed on my HDD.

I just continued playing and the problem was gone after I killed and photographed Rodirguez's corpse.

Just for your information.

[franceskhan]

Thank you exception360! I tried every other solution with no change to the problem at all and was about to give up, but then I saw your post; as soon as I found Rodiguez, the stuttering stopped immediately.

[headkase]

money,

Split your post out to here:

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?114232-Stuttering

Closing this thread as it is too old to bump. Please create a new thread of your own for support for anyone else in the future.