The Sims Social presentation made me want to puke in my mouth, then spit that out into a pint glass and swill it back down. That’s no exaggeration.
The staged conversation between the two morally bankrupt mid-20′s facebook tossers was bad enough… but to then see it acted out by Sims? Yet spoken as though it was real events?
That was some creepy stuff!
Well, I’m blown away.
I have just been informed via email of an amazing deal! Apparently, Microsoft are willing to give a £10 discount towards the games on demand version of Halo Reach. Incredible! Right?
Of course, even with the discount the price is still £39.99. For a digital version you can’t trade in, or sell on.
Amazon has it listed as £28.25 brand new. Physical copy in your hand. To do with as you please within reason.
Game UK are selling it for £24.99 brand new. Physical copy in your hand. Yada yada yada…..
Do Microsoft even check the retail price of titles? I mean, I know games on demand has always been somewhat of a scam when it comes to pricing, but this is just crazy.
Let’s assume the worst is true about digital downloads for a minute. Let’s just say, the big reason for pushing it is to knock out the preowned market. Possibly to some extent the rental services too. Would it not be beneficial to price the digital versions at least comparable to the retail price? I’d prefer a little lower considering there are no covers/manuals to print, disks to write, cases to make, and no shipping costs. That does not seem too unreasonable to me.
If pricing were lower I’d support a disk free future. If only to get away from faulty DVD drives in consoles, or the various problems that come from disk based media. Less loading times, quieter console, possibly more life before a console fault, these are things I can get behind when it comes to digital distribution. No questions asked. I may prefer having a hard copy on my shelf and the freedom to trade it in towards a new game (something I rarely do anyway), but the benefits to a disk free future are pretty substantial.
Right now, you would have to be insane to buy Halo reach via games on demand. A certifiable nut. Even if you really, really wanted a disk free Halo experience… firstly, you can buy Reach for £15 preowned. A saving of £24.99, plus you get a physical copy in your hand. One you can take to your friends house and use on another console easily. You could then take that £24.99, buy another preowned title and still go home with cash in your pocket. Even if you bought it brand new at £25 you could still pick up another game from the preowned bin.
Secondly, install it to the Xbox HD. Not quite disk free, but it’s as good.
For digital distribution to ever work, or catch on, companies like Microsoft need to occasionally step outside and check the prices everywhere else in the world.
I think it’s about time we all sat down and discussed the merits of removing melee kills from online FPS games.
Keep it for single player by all means, but get rid of it for multiplayer.
Don’t agree? Go play the Crysis 2 demo for at least 2 or 3 hours. Now get back to me on how many players you saw sprinting towards you, shrugging off bullets like they were peanuts, spamming the melee button, rifle butt swinging madly as they run in your face.
It’s a lot right? Yeah…
Sprinting at a player and spamming melee should never be more effective than careful aimed burst fire in a fecking shooting game! I’m sorry but there is just no logical way it should work like that and with many games implementing a “lunge” type feature to compensate for console player’s naff aim, the problem only gets worse.
Take Bad Company 2 for example. Before they messed with it, the knife required you to be right next to someone for it to connect. If you were moving when you swung it, chances are you’d need to try again for the kill.
Pants right? Well yeah, but it meant if you got knifed it meant you were 100% doing something wrong. If someone can sneak up behind you, and get that shonky knife to work before you hear them and spin round, they deserve the knife kill. Anyone tried running at you spamming the knife would get cut down, simple as. Which is how it should be. As the saying goes, you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
After the patch the knife has some kind of lunge BS to it that gives the knife user crazy range. Therussianbadger has a vid up on youtube where he stabs someone upstairs in a building from downstairs… partially through the ceiling? If you are behind someone, you can now start the knife earlier and your character lunges a good distance at them for an instant kill.
Being knifed, or knifing someone is now worth nothing when you can do it by jumping at a ceiling, spamming melee, and still manage to kill someone a floor above you. Whatever your stance on melee mechanics, that is a poop sandwhich whichever way you slice it.
Now consider Crysis 2, a game that features the use of a nanosuit that can protect the wearer from an increased amount of bullets. You can use an armour power up to increase this bullet resistance for a small amount of time. Yet opponents can and will literally sprint through gunfire and slap you in the face with a single rifle butt for a one hit kill.
Think about that for a second. The suit you wear is strong enough to deflect smegging bullets, but it isn’t armoured enough to withstand a rifle butt? Isn’t that like a tank shrugging off an RPG, but exploding to a single shot from a flaregun?
Every online shooter has some kind of crazy one hit kill system, with massive crutches to the players doing it such as lunges… and because of lag, more often than not you are going to see enemy players sprinting through entire clips of ammo, melee animation spamming like crazy, then a respawn screen.
Killzone 3 is a step in the right direction at least. Whenever you perform a melee kill it triggers a preset animation that lasts a second or two leaving you vulnerable to enemy fire. I understand the new Halo has a similar system. This is at least something to remedy the situation but I’d still prefer if we just took the feature out completely.
Or at the very least, give me a gun that fires rifle butts!
I always get the feeling that people may as well be arguing over which brand of DVD player is the best whenever I see PC/console versus console/PC debates.
Star Wars was no less impressive on VHS at its time of release than it is now. It doesn’t matter if you saw it on Blu-Ray, DVD, VHS, TV… the first time you see Star Wars it’s a great experience no matter the format. When it gets re-released in 3D, it will still be the story that people enjoy.
(I’ll grant that a cinema viewing will kick ass over a home viewing but it doesn’t fit my argument so shhhh 
)
Playing games is no different. So some games look crisper on the PC / The textures are better on this or that console / A controller is more comfortable to use / Mouse & keyboard controls are more precise.
Whatever.
To the average gamer without a side by side comparison of games running on other formats there is very little difference graphically lets be honest. If you like the precision of Mouse/Keyboard you are most likely tied to your desk/monitor. If you prefer sitting on the couch with a controller and a large wide-screen HD TV you give up the customization and precision that comes with PC gaming.
Have a preference by all means. If you want the best possible quality/comfort from your gaming experience then buy the machine that will give you that performance/comfort. Just don’t then try and justify your choice by attempting to belittle competing products.
Games matter, not platforms.
I think the Wii as a console is a letdown but if I didn’t own one I’d miss out on Monster Hunter, Super Mario Galaxy, and Donky Kong. Xbox has a somewhat problematic technical history (I’m on my third now) but if I didn’t own one I’d miss out on some great exclusive games. I don’t own a PS3 yet but I plan to remedy that very soon or I won’t get to play The Last Guardian, arguably the game I have been anticipating the most.
Platform wars are a waste of time…
Microsoft have now moved the indies section back to the games and demo area of the dashboard after its brief cameo in the speciality shop area. Nice that they responded so quickly and fixed an issue that was bugging many XBLIG developers.
I know the section is fighting a tough battle with so many massage simulator titles and other assorted guff, but there are some genuinely good games available through XBLIG at a bargain price.
With nearly everything priced at or around 80 MS points, it’s the perfect place to use up leftover points from other DLC purchases… I’ve picked up a couple of fun titles that way myself and usually check the section every time I log in for new arrivals.
Posted to the Lionhead blog regarding Fable 3 bugs;
We’ve set up this reporting page where you can fill out a short form with a description of your problem. Please be aware we are monitoring this on a daily basis and the test, development and community teams meet on a regular basis to try and repro issues that come up, so the development team can fix it for the next update we’ll release.
Paying customers are NOT an extension of your QA teams guys!
More and more games are being pushed out to retail stacked to the gills with bugs and paying customers are now being asked to submit bug reports to dev’s?
It’s nice that you’ve opened up the avenues of communication with gamers. It’s a shame you are asking them to do a job that firstly should have been done BEFORE the game launched, and secondly should be done by the QA team you HIRED to do the work!
Gamers are not a free source of QA. We do not pay for a retail game and expect to be part of an extended fecking Beta test!
The ones I feel worse for are people like my buddy, who still doesn’t have the net. Yeah I know, get with the times and all that.. we tell him on a regular basis, but he has no interest in online gaming and the little internet he does need he gets via his phone. Unfortunately this leaves him high and dry for day one patches and lets face it, what games release and DONT get a day one patch to fix some cruddy bug or another these days?
He bought Fallout New Vegas on release. Now he’s left with a buggy game that he’ll never get patched. Great stuff! Well played Obsidian, well played! 70+ hours of putting up with stupid issues that shouldn’t make it to retail.
Online enabled consoles are breeding lazy developers who push for release dates and patch the naff bits later. This is unacceptable without a reduction in the price of games in my opinion. If you want me to Beta your retail product I want a cheque for my time or a reduced price on the game. If you don’t like that I suggest making better use of the QA team you hired or stop shipping buggy games!
Keep in mind, not everyone is online enabled and you keep letting down that portion of your market releasing half baked games to meet release deadlines.
The situation as it stands now is ridiculous!
I’ve not tried it yet to confirm (minecraft too tempting right now), but apparently the new Xbox dash update tucks the indie games away into a “speciality shops” section along with avatar items and Game Room?
Anyone else find this a little strange? Why are they not listed with the demos, games-on-demand, and XBLA titles?
“Speciality Shops” just doesn’t seem right to me. Are indie games that specialist that they can’t be sold under the regular games section? Considering a large portion of XBLA hits originated with indie devs it strikes me as a little off that the XBLIG selection has been relegated to the area reserved for avatar fluff.
Very odd.
This is getting out of hand.
There is a post up at GamePolitics about the bad timing of the Red Dead Stats announcement in regards to the Schwarzenegger v. EMA SCOTUS ruling. As I understand it the issue here is, there are some concerns that the recent RDR stats announcement (players have murdered over 132 million virtual characters in-game since release) may back up claims regarding violence in entertainment, which may then have knock-on effects for the Schwarzenegger v. EMA SCOTUS outcome.
Firstly, Schwarzenegger, I’ve watched you;
In fact hasn’t most of your money come from glorifying violence in entertainment?
Yeah yeah, ok that was shooting fish in a barrel so how about this…
If the RDR stats are shocking these mouthbreathers, can someone give a ballpark figure how many virtual soldiers lives have been lost in the boardgame, Risk? Should we start making a fuss about Risk teaching our kids to invade foreign countries and become powerful wartime strategists?
I’d like to know… At what point did control pads become dangerous weapons?
I’m glad I don’t play Warcraft any more.
I’ve seen Blizzard do some questionable things over the years but this just takes the biscuit.
The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name
Yeah, has to be about the worst thing they could have done. As I write this, the forum thread has hit 953 pages. And it was at 942 when I started typing this post. Looks like I’m not the only one to think so.
Looking at it from Blizz’s point of view, it seems they have done this in an attempt to combat the trolls and spammers infesting the official forums. If people are forced to post under their real first/last name I guess the thinking is, they are less likely to post some racial insult or something. OK, I see the thinking, however…
Firstly, and I know this from experience, with 11 million subscribers, the portion of the playerbase that I’d describe as being “tossers” is very high. If I were still playing the game lets say, and I crush one of these “tossers” online a few times as he tries to gank me while on a mining run, or I post something reasonable on the forums but one of these nutjobs takes offense to it… under the old system the worst they could do is get my in-game name and harass me there. Under this new system players are not many steps away from having a little too much info.
Lets take a second and look to some other games for an example of the “internet tosser” in gaming. These are all examples from this year alone.
In January GamePolitics reported on a 16 year old teenager cutting his 46 year old father over a disagreement over tactics used during a game of FIFA on the PS3. When the father responded by turning off the TV/Console, the teenager went to the kitchen for a clean knife and stabbed his father in the neck.
An article posted in March details how a 17 year old Counter Strike player was stabbed in the head with a 12 inch knife in an internet cafe after being found to use ‘wall-hack’ cheats.
In June GamePolitics also reported on another Counter Strike related attack. Several months after being knifed in-game the 20 year old gamer tracked down his online enemy, who it turned out only lived a few miles away, then stabbed him in the chest to pay him back.
These are not isolated incidents either, I can sit and pull link after link up all day long on this subject.
Now, some may take these links as proof that video games cause violence, but because I’m not naive I see it for what it really means. Nutters are everywhere and need very little reason to set them off. If those guys played darts there is every chance that a loss or a disagreement over darts would set them off and cause the exact same reaction. Nutbags are everywhere.
As children we are taught not to talk to strangers, not to give personal info out to random people. We were taught caution, and for good reason. Then along comes a bunch of idiots like Facebook, Blizzard, etc, who think that those lessons of caution should be thrown to the wind and anyone who doesn’t has something to hide. The idiocy of it is jaw dropping. Even more so in a game like Warcraft which has spawned more nerd-rage outbursts than 90% of games that have ever existed.. or will ever exist. Give these mouthbreathers a first/last name combo and some of them are going to take it too far, I guarantee it.
Ironic that an attempt to unify an online community will essentially rend it in two. I never posted on the official boards (I don’t have the patience to wade through the rantings of semi-literate teenagers quite frankly), and were I still playing I know I wouldn’t even dream of going near the official boards ever again.
I recently picked up Fable 2 used for pretty cheap and I am now probably at least 3 or 4 hours into the game so far.
One thing bugs me… a LOT
So you start the game poor, destitute, and living from the gutter. When a mysterious lady implies we should buy the music box, the sister remarks;
5 Gold? We could eat for a week on that!
Fair enough.
Next, the sister and brother decide, what the hey, its a magical music box, lets buy it anyway. OK, so with no money the game asks me to complete a few ‘odd-jobs’ for NPC’s around town. Fine I think. About 10 minutes later I’m rolling 5 gold coins around my pocket ready to buy the music box.
Go back a little, remember when the sister mentioned something about eating for a week for 5 gold? And I just earned 5 gold in about 10 minutes. To be generous I’ll use in-game time, so not even close to the time it took for night to cycle to day. I can work a minimal amount, for less than a full day, and eat for a week on the proceeds? You have to wonder, perhaps if you got off your arse and did two or three days work maybe, just maybe you wouldn’t be living in the effing gutter you idiots!
If the main character is sleeping in a no walled shed with only a blanket to his name, has no food, no money, no prospects in life.. how about making it a little harder to earn a weeks food money than putting in 5 minutes work?
Kinda ruins the effect of trying to build up sympathy for your main protagonist if it turns out the only reason he is destitute is simply because he can’t be arsed doing a days work!
I kinda like the game, but man it has some serious issues. Job’s are ridiculous. Gaming distilled into it’s most basic form. Hit that button when this bar reaches here. Again. Again. AGAIN! Going back to the main point of this post, my character came from a life in the gutter yet within 30 minutes of spamming the blacksmith job I had over 10 thousand gold. I went to the smith as the shops shut, by sunrise I had 10 thousand gold.
When in-game systems contradict the storyline, something is very wrong.
