There are quite a few problems that, for me, make it nearly impossible to play a game that I would really like to play – on a very freshly installed Win7 box that works flawlessly otherwise:

• On the European launch day, the EA servers went down. And stayed down for several hours, making it impossible for quite some players to play their freshly acquired game.
• Now still, days later, the EA servers regularly show “connection failed” error messages, some friends of mine have not got the game to work yet at all (hi Ratty and Mooseman).
• PunkBuster – apparently, it consequently fails to boot up. I updated, deinstalled, reinstalled it, without effect. It seems that currently, I’m not the only one with this problem, as everybody seems to be kicked from the servers in regular intervals.
• The server browser, while a neat thing overall, has quite a few problems:
  • It’s slow, very, very slow.
  • It lacks crucial filters (can’t filter by ping range, can’t filter by player number, or by whether the server is in hardcore mode or not).
  • Even those filters it has – it does not store which ones you set on your last search when you start the game anew, meaning you’ll have to re-enable them all again.
  • It regularly shows servers as having spots left when apparently, they’re full (and give an error to that end when you’re trying to join them).
  • Occasionally, the connection to the server you want to join gets lost in nirvana, just like that – with an appropriate error of course.
  • Regularly, when trying to join a server, the “please wait” popup box just disappears, and neither do you actually join the server nor is there an error message of any kind.
  • Once, it happened to me that after clicking to join a server, the game hung itself up and kept showing “please wait” for 10+ minutes (I went to get a coffee meanwhile).

My game also apparently got a minor case of file corruption at some point, which I had to fix with Steam’s repair feature (no errors anymore now), but that’s a minor issue compared to the things above and was probably my hardware’s fault (or, what I believe, due to a crash I had before this corruption thingy, and then causing further crashes). There’s other people who have regular total system lockups from the game.

Dear EA: If you release your games bugged like this, people like me will, when the next good game or expansion is released (in my case DoW2:CR), stop playing your game. They will no longer play your game by the time you release an expansion, and consequently probably not buy that. They will also not promote your game mouth-to-mouth.

Keep in mind that at some point, the PC version of BFBC2 had more players than either of the consoles it was also released on. But if this does not improve, things will change and yet again naysayers will believe that “PC gaming is dying”. Well, if things don’t improve, it just might. Us PC gamers like to have games that are actually playable you know.

While writing this, I’ve been trying to get into a game for 3-4 hours, without any success. You know what I think I’ll do tonight after dinner? I’ll play TF2. Because their multiplayer, including VAC (speaking of PunkBuster), just works, and did so on release day already.

Well, it was not totally zero-day, since it took slightly more than 24 hours, apparently. Still, indeed it is now the case that the only ones suffering from the whole “you have to be online all the time or we’ll kick you out of your offline game” thing are the legit customers, while pirates gladly ignore such silly limitations.

The source (on InfoAddict, via PlayNoEvil) states:

Now that the news has spread like wildfire, Ubisoft is finally issuing a response and it is predictably vague. So vague that I am inclined to believe their statement doesn’t hold much water or truth.  Is it possible some aspect of the game is missing? Sure. Is it likely? No, not given how Ubisoft designed Silent Hunter V, meaning it’s not an MMO and it’s world doesn’t exist on a 3rd-party server. If Ubisoft really wants to defeat piracy, may I suggest that your next game be called Silent Hunter Online? Problem solved.

Indeed. Yes, for online games, it makes sense that you need an online connection. For offline games, absolutely not so much. Worst case is that some encrypted content needs to be streamed from the online servers in order for the offline game to work, but even that can be emulated by a dedicated cracker as well (and it requires faster internet connections than mere keep-alive pings that are a more probable implementation of such a feature).

Anyway. Ubisoft of course claims the games won’t work at all anyway. We’ll see what the next days hold, I might update this post or even write a new one if fundamentally new things show up.

Most recent example: Ubisoft. There is a good article on Rock Paper Shotgun about this. What they have announced to do is the following: With every future Ubisoft game, whether it’s single player or multiplayer, online or offline, boxed with a CD or delivered via download, you will constantly need an online connection in order to keep playing the game.

Ubisoft's DRM in action

In other words: Even if it’s a pure single player offline experience, you will constantly need to be online. If for some reason (shaky WiFi, ISP hickups, flatmate downloads too much stuff, Ubisoft’s servers have problems) you lose your connection for a moment, you are also dropped out of your game and (at least in some games) lose all the unsaved data. (Image source)

Ubisoft also does talk around the issue that in five or ten years, their licensing servers for a game might be offline. As a sidenote, in the case of EA, servers shutdowns happen nearly every year. Ubisoft do not fully commit to promising a patch that will remove the online shackles (Source):

PCG: So you can commit to saying that those systems will be patched out?
Ubisoft: That’s the plan.
PCG: It’s the plan, or it’s definitely going to happen?
Ubisoft: That’s written into the goal of the overall plan of the thing. But we don’t plan on shutting down the servers, we really don’t.

I trust the developers that they don’t want to shut these things down. But I don’t trust the management that they won’t. After all, they get nothing out of second-hand sales, and they can stiffle those if only more recent titles actually work at all.

Cogs, great indy game on Steam

Now, a common argument appears to be “but Steam does the same”. And I love Steam. But it has a few fundamental differences to this incoming Ubisoft system:

• You’re only kicked out of actual online games if you lose the connection to the game server (and not the Steam server – the latter doesn’t have any serious impact whatsoever) – so Steam does not affect your capability to play games.
• There is an offline mode, which always worked a treat for me in the rare occasions where I’m offline.
• Steam uses the fact that it’s online for great benefit: automatic background updates, digital content delivery, online save data (well, Ubisoft plans that as well), community features across games (with text and voice chat), all with a very easy-to-use interface.
• Steam is open for games from other developers, and notably, indie developers who gain a way bigger exposure to an interested audience through the system. Without Steam, I would have missed out on Cogs, Bob Came in Pieces, Defense Grid, or Braid.

Vote with your Wallet

Ubisoft’s feature only does one thing: It makes it harder for legitimate customers to play the game. As i wrote elsewhere: Since no server connection is required at all, it’s just another small hoop crackers have to go through, and no change at all for pirates. On the other hand, it is a big change for legitimate customers. Yet again, legitimate customers are punished for piracy.

Piracy is merely a strawman argument. It shouldn’t convince anyone.

If it would actually make game piracy harder, I might understand it a slight bit. But it doesn’t: Cracks and patches will be out within a week tops, patching out the online requirement for pirates. Essentially making the game a better product for non-legitimate customers. They even have an internal schedule for about when the game will be cracked (Source):

Do Ubi believe this DRM is unhackable?
They accept that it’s all DRM’s fate to be eventually hacked, explaining that internally, they’ve already talked of a timescale for how long their games will be protected by it. But, they believe that it’s secure enough for them. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t believe in it. The guys who designed it believe in it. Do we think that it’s the one system that God has sent onto earth that will never be cracked by anybody ever? We can’t guarantee that, but we believe in it.

”

Well, I really looked forward to the new, back-to-the-roots, Prince of Persia games. Looks like I won’t buy them, completely unlike all but two (1999, 2008) of the previous ones.

I have one thing to say really: Vote with your wallet. If you run into this post after having bought a broken product like that, return the game. Ubisoft will only stop hurting you if you don’t encourage them to.

Disclaimer: Even though some of the contents of this post make it reasonable to believe that I advocate piracy: I don’t. I also do not play pirated games, or use pirated software – it’s a matter of ethics for me, being both a developer and an aspiring philosopher myself.

Now this alone might not have been news-worthy, particularly since it’ll take some more time before it’s ready (pre-alpha ATM), but the thing just did win the ModDB “Indy game of the year” award (where they lumped together current and upcoming indie games). It’ll use an unique engine with neat effects.

Have a look at some just-released footage:

What do you think? I preordered the special edition (directly from the project site) myself, if only to support indy development

Update 2010-02-09 12:24: The development team is on Twitter, too. And an interesting business sidenote: Apparently social media (Facebook, Twitter, ModDB, Reddit, YouTube) drives roughly one third of the preorder sales, and dwarfs even the biggest gaming sites. A really interesting blog post about this can be found on the Wolfire Blog.

Left 4 Dead 2

First things first, Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2 at the E3. The game will have plenty of new things over the first:

• A new and improved AI Director 2.0 for even more scary hordes of zombies.
• Many new zombie models (they look better and more dynamic than the ones in the first part, too).
• One new kind of super zombie, the charger.
• Dynamic weather (courtesy of said AI Director 2.0).
• Dynamic pathing through some areas (courtesy of said AI Director 2.0).
• 20 new weapons, among them, melee weapons like baseball bats, chainsaws and frying pans.
• A new setting, in the daytime instead of the night (meaning, few reusable assets).
• New survivors with different backstories and even more dynamic lines of small talk.
• One big campaign, in which the survivors get to know each other, and a feeling of progress throughout the different movie plot scenarios.
• Better Crescendo events that reduce survivor’s ability to exploit closets (I hate closets) by making them have to move.

That certainly does look like a list of changes that is a lot longer than the one you see in an EA sports title, or Call of Duty for that matter. The fact that it’s going to come out November 17th, a mere year after the first? Hooray! Gee, Valve is fast in producing quality content.

More on IGN, they have a preview.

Nerd Rage

Anyway, I promised you that I will also be talking about nerd rage. Well, here you go: There is a Steam group called L4D2 Boycott with now nearly 20k members -- and gee, how unexpected, they call for a boycott of that new shiny new game. I leave you to read the full list of their protest bullet points elsewhere, but want to point out that among the things those folks hate so much are the new music and “the game is too bright”.

Funny enough, the same folks also complain that L4D wasn’t worth its money for them. That is, after the game got multiple discounts and weekend sales, and many of them probably got it for the price of an indy game. Personally, I got more playtime out of L4D than out of many, many other full price titles, I have no clue what those guys are talking about.

We’re Spoiled

Yes, we’re spoiled. TF2 is awesome and got huge amounts of updates over the past years. New maps, new game modes, new weapons and “meet the …” videos. But what Valve seems to have done for L4D here goes way beyond these updates for TF2. Personally, I trust them enough to believe that when they think it’s worth buying a new game, then it’s worth buying a new game.

And when they say that there will be new content for the first L4D still, then the experience with TF2 made me confident enough in their abilities and their trustworthiness to believe them that as well.

Where the Protesters are Right

It is true, L4D2 could be an expansion. A standalone, tie-in expansion, a bit cheaper for those who already own L4D, with a bundle offer for those who want both.

It is also true that L4D didn’t get a huge lot of added content so far -- although we did get a new gametype, a new map, Valve enabled Versus mode on the remaining two campaigns (which meant reworking them altogether, since infected can reach many places survivors can’t). Still, there could be more. According to Valve, there also will be more -- so what exactly is the problem? Anyway, L4D got slightly less updates than TF2, point acknowledged.

But beyond that? No way. “We want to keep the old characters” and “we don’t want this new setting” and then at the same time “there’s not enough content here to justify a sequel”? That sounds an awful lot like “waah waah” to me.

Update 2009-06-09 19:53: There’s an interview at the Negative Gamer that is well worth the read. Seems that with size, they also changed to the better. Mr.Pancakes:

We changed our manifesto because we wanted to keep it in line with what most people in the community had concerns about. The first manifesto was there from the beginning. It contained our gut reactions to the new game and why we disliked it. But as the community grew, people began to focus their concerns on the content issues with Left 4 Dead 1 and the timing of Left 4 Dead 2, more than the fiddle-music or the visual aspects of Left 4 Dead 2. It became more about Left 4 Dead 1, and many of our members wanted us to drop the complaints about the fiddle-music and the Left 4 Dead 2 aesthetic.

First, games. There were plenty of new games I tried. Let’s have itsy bitsy tiny mini-reviews in alphabetical order, as part of my great catchup

• BattleForge – it’s  now also play4free, but you won’t have as much fun with only the 32 cards you get initially – more are obtainable with microtransations. The strategic focus lies in deckbuilding, actual battles are more tactics-based.
• Braid, but it’s less interesting once you completed it for the first time – admittedly, I had to cheat a bit with some puzzles.
• City of Heroes / Villains – it’s a very subjective rating, mostly because I’m horribly bored by the traditional MMO formula by now. But the game does have an incredibly nice character editor.
• Cogs, mainly due to lacking long-term motivation for me personally, but still a great filler and brain teaser.
• Dawn of War II – it’s the epitome of WH40k’s grim future. I particularly like how the single player (more action-RPG) and the multiplayer (deep strategy and tactics without base building, finally) are essentially two entirely different games.
• Defense Grid: The Awakening, a great continuation of the tower defense meme that begun with Warcraft III custom maps and found its way into countless Flash games (like this one) to date.
• Mirror’s Edge – I played through it three times! Splendid how they mixed up the FPS formula. Not that much to do after you finished the game though. (Yes, I did enough time trials to unlock them all.)
• Plants vs. Zombies, which was surprising for me, I do not like any of the other PopCap games this much.
• Team Fortress 2 Sniper vs. Spy Update. Would have been more if it weren’t for how the unlocks were introduced (merely as random drops). And, I still got no hat, what’s up with that?
• Zeno Clash,  but I would like to give it more. It’s so charming and well-executed. It just didn’t make me actually want to finish it, and I can’t even put my finger on why that is.

I guess my rating average is rather high (3.7 stars, which pretty much translates to  “Hey, that’s good!”) – but arguably, that is because I don’t even play the games I know I wouldn’t like.

Have you tried any of these games? Do you agree, or disagree, with my rating? Let me know, I love comments

Left 4 Dead Survival Pack

Left 4 Dead did get a new update a couple of weeks back, which improved the balance a bit. I liked the Smoker changes, but other than that, it was a bit less spectacular than I hoped. However, the slightly more spectacular update is coming: The Survival Pack, supposed to come out “sometime in March or April”. Careful, watching those videos might hurt if you’re allergic to spastic gamepad shooter movement like I am.

Anyway, what’s gonna be in it for us PC users:

• The SDK, so people can create their own maps (exclusive to the PC)
• Versus modes on the Dead Air and Death Toll campaigns (finally!)
• A new Survival game mode, where the survivors are pitted against wave upon wave of infected
• Lighthouse, a new level for that new game mode

I am really looking forward to this, being the old Versus nut that I am. I actually never played the Dead Air campaign yet, with it not being available in Versus.

There also was a minor patch on the 11th that brought some further balance fixes, in particular, who plays the survivor side first in Versus is now determined by who is leading -- those get to play first, as the ones coming second know where all the weapons are, and have a rough idea of where tanks and witches will show up.

Update 2009-03-14 09:45: Just now, new post on boomercharged.net, with essentially this very information, plus they say that Valve named “before April 21st” as release date.

Quake Live Open Beta

It’s running for a couple weeks already, and the comments on my most-commented-on post ever have dwindled ever since the beta was made public and no longer invites-only. Quake Live is still a perfect reenactment of one of the two core roots of today’s online shooters, Quake III (the other one being the original Unreal Tournament).

If you haven’t checked this out, maybe you should do yourself a favour and relive some good old school fun

Team Fortress 2 Scout Update

Ah, the big one. This update for Team Fortress 2 is a few weeks old already, in fact. Like the Goldrush/Medic, Pyro, and Heavy updates, this one features tons of achievements and three new, unlockable alternate weapons for the Scout, and a couple community maps. Have a look at the goodies!

Unlike with the previous updates, Valve themselves didn’t provide own maps or even new game types this time. I have played all the maps they officially release now months ago, too -- although an official release like that gives them more exposure of course. On the other hand, with payload, control point, capture the flag and arena, there’s plenty game types in TF2 now.

Sandman User Guide

As before though, the unlocks aren’t necessarily better than the original weapons, but different. For example, the Sandman allows you to knock out an opponent, but foregoes your double jump. And you give up your ranged weapon, the pistol, for the Bonk! energy drink. If you’re using the Force-A-Nature and the regular bat over the Sandman, you’ll have a triple jump even, counting the gun’s knockback -- which is awesome, I love it, it gives the Scout even more flexibility and speed and allows you to reach places way faster or even at all. Just watch:

Sorry about the distinct lack of sound, I didn’t switch the recording device for Fraps

Anyway, that’s it for now -- we’ve got plenty of shooter goodness to get us over the coming weeks.

Now, why is that? Of course, it has everything to do with the recently released patch 2.0, and the Titan Pack expansion, and that aforementioned free weekend, and the fact that the game is 40% off until the 15th still; there’s hope the game sales rise to Steam #1 for some time at least and show yet another time how important game updates are, particularly when they’re free.

While we’re on the subject of Steam, my own copy was bought back before UT3 even was on Steam, but there is a way of adding it to Steam meanwhile: This tutorial is really nice and explains how to activate your retail copy on Steam. I’m not sure why I did this, considering the game worked a treat without Steam, but I did it anyway, and it worked.

Anyway, what is in that patch, actually? Have a look here, trailer and screenies! There’s a full Titan Pack preview on BeyondUnreal. Or directly watch the trailer below:

When I first heard about the expansion, my reaction was “gee, I hope they do something against the Biohazard/Deck/Suspense spam”. Well, they did! The new maps are really nice, at least the half-dozen that I already played. There’s new game modes -- Greed is great and works particularly well with titans, Betrayal is fun and spices up instagib enough for me to like it. The titans are awesome, both when being one and when fighting one. And there’s a new voting system in place.

Plus the server browser is way better than before (some say, it now has basic functionality, but that’s what we wanted), with pasting IPs and adding IPs to favourites and better filtering and displaying players (and bots!) on a server.

Really, if you tried UT3 before but decided you just couldn’t overcome some of those shortcomings that stood in the way of great fun, there’s way less between you and the fun now. Epic did fix the game. Now go buy it, and add “haslo” to your ingame friends list

Get the patch through one of these mirrors, or download it via Steam.

In other news, I’ll post another shooter news thingy, probably in a mere few hours.

Update 2009-03-11 12:28: That free Steam weekend that left many players unable to play? Gee, there’s another one, starting this Friday! If you feel like participating, better start preloading now, so you have the game when it’s free Via BeyondUnreal, and visible on the game’s Steam page.

Update 2009-03-19 11:09: Rock Paper Shotgun just ran an article about the amazing turn UT3′s sales took with those free weekends and the discounted price and the big free update. Gulag’s comment sums it up nicely:

RARRGH! Internet Game Gods From The Future Ate My Pre-Historic Business Model!!!

Stomp stomp stomp.

So much for “PC gaming is dead”.

Now if you’ve heard a few of those conversations, you know that Francis hates quite a lot of things. Here’s a little music video that proves it:

Via tons of places, but I think I saw it first on Destructoid.

Hope you enjoyed this little interlude And let me take this opportunity to say that the Zerg post is nearly finished, just lacks pictures, and I’m working on the Terran strategy post today. Guess they’ll both be up in the next 1-2 days.

Update 2009-02-03 10:48: Since I’m already linking random stuff, here’s some L4D Valentine cards. But I’ll try to keep random reposts to a minimum, you know there’s delicious.com for such things

Get the soundtrack from here.

World of Goo Soundtrack

If all the raving reviews everywhere didn’t win you over, maybe this will And maybe you, just like me, merely appreciate that the independent developer that you already supported does indeed care as much about his customers as you knew he would.

My favourite? Red Carpet Extend-o-matic – I’m corny like that.