Eckyman.com

This was originally going to be a positive review of BF3′s multiplayer… but then the article lagged out and for every three words I wrote, two of them lagged right off my page before finally informing me there must be a problem with my words, would I please check my keyboard and try again.

I thought this was odd as I had just finished writing some words about another game, and they didn’t lag all over the page with sudden punctuation marks appearing out of nowhere. I guess if all my other words on every other subject work fine, but not for a BF3 review, it has to be my fault and not BF3′s fault that my words don’t work. Thanks for clearing that up for me EA.

It pains me to say this as a long time Battlefield fan but till they sort out the servers so I can walk for longer than 2 seconds without rubber-banding back to my original position, BF3 can suck it.

Ports are open, all other games work fine and DO NOT lag like this. This has been a constant problem for myself since release making it extremely hard for me to recommend this to anyone in it’s current state. Don’t get me wrong, if it worked, I’d love this game. As it stands it’s an exercise in frustration, all the way from simply trying to get in a game on the same side as your friend, to just trying to navigate the map without rubber-banding all over the place. I turned off in frustration for the last time yesterday feeling it was just pointless to keep trying to play through it.

I had heard today that the servers have been updated so I hold some hope that tonight may be slightly less painful. If not, I’ll be hammering Uncharted 3 some more.

If things are working out for you in BF3, I’m envious

This isn’t my review as I’ve not finished it yet. Not far off mind you but I’m digesting this like a large meal, reclined on my couch and at my own pace.

However… what I did want to talk about is the idiotic moaning about the difficulty of the boss fights if you go for a stealth build. You’ll have seen it by now, the tears flowing on this subject are fast and salty.

Let us clear a few things up.

1. I’m using stealth. All my points went in non-combat, stealth/hacking related areas.
2. The bosses go down faster than a hooker with a blank cheque as long as you THINK about it.

First boss fight. Pants, that dudes arm is a cannon, I don’t have many weapons and all my points are in non-combat augs.

Wait, I do have a brain and the ability to think my way around a problem so.. what I’ll do is first toss this EMP grenade at the walking cannon guy. OK, that fried him. Now how about stacking a couple of these explosive looking barrels at his feet and blowing them up while he is dazed. Yeah, he didn’t like that and the EMP grenade has worn off. OK, so I’ll hide behind this pillar and place two frag mines either side so the boss can’t get close. OK, looks like the boss just walked over one. Wait? What? It’s over? I thought these boss fights were supposed to be tough according to reviewers?

Took no time at all, nothing stressful about it, and I didn’t need a single point in any augmentations to use my smegging brain!

Second boss fight. Let’s see, EMP grenade worked well last time, lets try that. Hmm, not so good this time. OK, you like charging at me? So I’ll put my back to the wall and place frag mines in front and to the sides of me. Charge that! Oh you did.. OK, have 3 rockets in the face from the rocket launcher I saved all the way through this level. Ahh, you died did you? Didn’t take long.

Well, I guess I had a rocket launcher, what did I expect. Reload, throw away rocket launcher and pick up heavy rifle from the room right before the boss, available to all players no matter of build.

Same tactic, back to wall, frag mines down… dumbass ran into one again and is standing around inviting me to drill her with bullets. Naturally I aim to please and just as fast, the second boss is down.

If you are one of those people moaning about the difficulty of the bosses on Deus Ex, I suggest growing a pair… or spending 30 seconds thinking of a way around the situation that does not involve moaning all over the internet about the hike in difficulty when in reality, the boss fights are the easiest part of the game.

But I’m going to because yet another moron has decided to throw their hat into the “I blame videogames” ring and at this point I’m rapidly grinding my teeth to stop my eyes from bleeding!

Do I need to post the usual rant? Or can I assume the many posts I’ve done on this subject have made my feelings clear?

Quick summary.

Riots happened before videogames, or whatever scapegoat you want to blame.

/end summary

(EDIT: Removed a lot of ranting that essentially repeated itself)

I just read they are basically getting rid of threat mechanics by buffing tanks threat output through the roof!!

Learning optimal rotations just became pointless, as did learning any tanking tricks outside of your classes skill bar, as did several threat reduction abilities, as did any need to play DPS tactically – just keep on spamming those buttons and posting recount stats!

In Kara, one of the things I enjoyed the MOST about tanking was the constant fight against the rising DPS and aggro of the damage players. Half the game to me was more about fighting players DPS gains than tanking mobs. Once you know an instance and patrols/boss fights, the challenge is purely in holding threat from other players.

…and now that’s gone.

All that is left is to soak up boss hits and position the boss when something on the floor is on fire. Big fecking whoop! If I hadn’t already quit, I’d be clicking my way to the cancel subscription page and copy/pasting this rant into the reasons box!

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Last one of these…

“We live in this age of violence—and I don’t care what other people say: Brutal TV and brutal videogames are a reason for this pointless violence as well,” Gallagher toldBang Showbiz. “The people are immune to violence, they are used to it. And if they get caught they aren’t punished the right way. The prisons are already full? Then build new ones!”

Gallagher, shut your mouth and stick to the things you know.

Of course it’s gaming.. that’s why everyone is looting TV’s and electrical goods. Nothing to do with criminals and opportunity right? As it has been throughout the years before we had Vidyagaems to blame.

Build more prisons? With that surplus pile of cash the UK has sitting around right now yeah?

I shouldn’t be surprised really based on his previous comments about knife crime…

I was up in Liverpool for a week a couple of weeks ago and even on the news there it’s every single night… People say it’s through violent video games and I guess that’s got something to do with it. If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised to crime because they’re playing these video games, it’s really, really scary.

Naturally… there was no knife crime before video games and skunk right Noel?

It wasn’t too long ago that Rock & Roll was blamed for all sorts of stuff, including Satan worship. Think about that one next time Noel.

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It’s going to be these stories that send me over the edge, not violent games…

Swiss Police Association calls for ban on Darkness II because the game features police officers being shot at and killed.

“Politicians, game producers and sellers have been advised that such games be immediately removed from circulation,” read a statement from the Swiss Christian Police Association.”

“When police in England are the target of mobs running amok, it is important that police are not portrayed as the enemy,” added Felix Ceccato, president of the association. “

The response?

“Reported stories regarding police officers in The Darkness II were erroneous. To be clear, there are no police officers in the game,” 2K Games said in a statement to Kotaku.

Don’t think I need to comment further on that one really. Maybe, oh I don’t know… do the most basic of research before calling for bans?

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You know we don’t like DRM. You especially know we don’t like the “constant internet connection required  for OFFLINE play” DRM.

If you claim to be surprised at customer reaction I’m calling BS. If you are serious, I’d strongly suggest poking your head out of your office for one second and, oh I don’t know.. paying attention to customer reaction to EVERY game that has been released with internet connection DRM. How you can be a VP of a gaming company and claim to be surprised at this is beyond me, it really is.

Personally I couldn’t give a damn as I’m always connected to the net. That doesn’t mean I can’t see the problem. I have plenty of friends who have no need for a PC internet connection. They get what little they use of the internet from mobile devices and avoid paying an additional line rental here in the UK for a land line.

All these people are now barred from playing. In an attempt to combat piracy, you lock legit paying players out of your game and chances are they wont be back to buy anything else you try and sell them. In addition, all these DRM games get cracked eventually anyway so pirates get to play without DRM but paying customers have to jump through a few hoops to play the game they legally bought.

At this point you are better off either buying legit, then downloading a cracked copy to play (but unfortunately this sends a pro-DRM msg – More pirates = More need for piracy protection), or simply voting with your wallet and not buying/supporting these DRM games.

Tycho calls it what it is and I agree with him…

Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn’t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream.

There, now don’t you feel better?

I mean, it’s almost been 30 years of blaming games for violence. Have we not moved past this?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/314617/gta-inspired-tottenham-brixton-riots-suggests-police-officer/

Nobody ever thanks Fifa for teaching footballers how to play, or credits F1 for directly training championship F1 drivers. How about all those kids rushing to the world of golf, every one of them as good as Tiger Woods because they played his game? Everyone saw the replay of that heavyweight boxing champ getting knocked out by an amateur who trained on Fight Night?

The amount of different genre games I’ve played over the last 30 years, by rights I should be a world class rally driver, a crack shot sniper, a champion tennis player, footballer, boxer, golfer. I should be able to climb mountains and search for treasure without worry, fight off an entire army single handed, fly any number of airplanes, water based vehicles, and most wheel based transport. I should be able to skateboard in the X-games and win. Ride down the steepest drops in the world on nothing but a cheap mountain bike.

After playing the recent Donkey Kong on the Wii I’ve been eating my weight in banana’s and jumping on peoples pet dogs heads out on the street. Just the other night, once I got done playing From Dust, I went out into the garden and shaped the very land with nothing but the power of my thoughts. I flooded the entire neighbourhood for a laugh, then dropped lava on all the peoples houses on my street that I don’t like.

Funny that none of the above happens, but violent games apparently inspire most random acts of violence. Not only that but they train people to do it too apparently. What’s that? It’s silly to think a game could train someone to drive at 240mph around a race track, but using the same controller method you can train to snipe people from distance and learn to be an effective killer?

I guess the 1985 riots were caused by time travelling video gamers? In fact, all acts of civil unrest through the years are linked to a band of time travelling GTA inspired gamers? Because everyone knows, violence cannot exist without video games yes? RIGHT?

Of course, the police shooting someone dead in suspicious circumstances has nothing to do with people rioting. No, no… every single one of the rioters just got done playing GTA – according to a very insightful member of, you guessed it… the police.

Two Playstation1 consoles.

Five Playstation2 consoles.

Three Xbox360 consoles.

What do all these have in common?

If you guessed they all stopped working within 12 months of purchase you’d be 100% right! As of last night I can now officially add my PS3 to that list too. Roughly six months after purchase and it no longer reads disks.

I never thought it would come to this but I’m seriously considering saying my final goodbyes to console gaming.

I put PC gaming on ice in the late 90′s rationalising that constant hardware upgrades would wind up more expensive over time than converting to consoles. Over the years I’ve been proven wrong on that count not once, not twice, not even three times…  eleven console failures now. Fair enough one was in warranty when it went down, and luckily the PS3 is still under warranty, but that’s still 9 consoles I’ve either had to pay out-of-warranty repair costs, or purchase a new console, or rip one to pieces and self repair it when possible.

I keep all my consoles free of dust and well ventilated at all times. I don’t move them around, they don’t get dropped, bashed, and they are not in direct sunlight. They are as well cared for as they could be without me sealing them in an airtight container and never turning them on.

Console hardware has been a joke for decades now. Even cartridge based consoles required you to blow into the slots numerous times to get stuff working at times.

To say I’m narked off with console gaming at the moment is somewhat of an understatement.

Microsoft confirmed a growing suspicion I’ve had for a while with their E3 presentation.

They are slowly losing touch with gamers.

At least 70% of the Microsoft presentation was fluff. They have an amazing piece of technology in Kinnect and the highlight of the show was voice recognition? Couldn’t we have done that with the existing Xbox headset already?

It seems to me as though they are trying to make the Xbox the ‘everyman’ console and focusing on the media aspects a little too much. Gamers, and their Live subs put the Xbox where it is. Invest that money in gaming. Not bringing UFC pay-per-view to the Xbox for smegs sake!

Last year it was motion control dashboards, this year it’s voice control. Neither of which were shown to push gaming forward at all in my opinion.