by Matt | Oct 20, 2005 | Games
In case you didn’t know Quake 4 came out this week… and I couldn’t care less. Apparently its single player is at least interesting but it multiplayer, the reason most of us would buy it, is a pathetic rehashing of Quake 3. Reviews mention that they’ve “recreated” the classic maps. Translation: they couldn’t think up anything new. I’ve done my homework on this one. I’ve checked out every official and unofficial video of the multiplayer gameplay. I’m completely and totally unimpressed.
I have no intentions of playing this one. I had grand ellusions about wasting the night away reliving some old school Quake goodness. Apparently all I have to do is find my Q3 cds.
On the flip side, Civ4 ships next week. That’s pure love in a box folks. Crack, personified. I have my preorder, do you?
by Matt | Oct 14, 2005 | Games
If you’re looking for xbox party games, look no further than Fusions Frenzy, Super Monkey Ball, Whacked and Kung Fu Chaos. All are highly recommended… Especially when the guests have been drinking.
by Matt | Aug 24, 2005 | Games
And I told him he would be. He mentioned in his journal last week the fact that it’s very likely that places like EB will have Xbox 360 “bundles” and only sell the console in said bundles. I agreed with him. Typically those bundles are the system, a controller or two and a game or two. Well. Looks like EBGames.com (not the physical store… yet) has gone out of their way to anal invade people’s wallets this time around. I can say with perfect certainty that now I’m not getting one of these at launch, check out how rediculous these packages are. Thanks Shacknews.
EBGames.com has just announced its package deals for the upcoming Xbox 360. Preorders for the system will only be accepted in the form of these bundles, which are priced at and $599.93 and $699.92. The less expensive bundle includes the Xbox 360 Core System package as well as a memory card and an extra wired controller. The more expensive bundle includes the Xbox 360 Premium System with an extra wireless controller, a battery pack for the controller, and a charge kit for the controller. Both bundles include four games: Perfect Dark Zero Limited Edition, Kameo: Elements of Power, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Dead or Alive 4. However, the page also notes that EB “[reserves] the right to substitute or remove a game or accessory that will not be available at launch”, with the option to cancel the preorder if that occurs.
My calls to the EBGames.com offices and various EB brick-and-mortar stores revealed that as of now these “deals” are exclusive to EBGames.com. It has not yet been decided whether or not the physical stores will also require customers to buy this sort of bundle, but if they do they would likely end up being different based on the availability of consoles and games.
Give it a week. They will. Like I (think I) mentioned to Chris, the only way to avoid the bundle is to preorder online through a non-game store. Amazon for example. It’s really sad the price gouging going on. $699 to play video games that first day, when, two weeks later you can get it for $299. Fuck you EB corporate. Thanks for being one of the reasons our favorite industry is going downhill. You, and the rap culture you’ve exploited to sell more games. Fuck you all.
by Matt | Jul 10, 2005 | Games
I didn’t want to stick this in with the Battlefield post, but Chip and Jason N should dig this. Check these out:
One
Two
Three
These are screen shots from Chris Taylors new game Supreme Commander. Chris Taylor created Total Annihilation and this is it’s “spiritual sequal” so he says. It’s sure as hell looks a lot like TA to me, which is 100% awesome. Can’t wait for this one.
by Matt | Jul 10, 2005 | Games
There’s been a lot of hate floating around about Battlefield 2 recently. As of yesterday the controversy about the game, it’s patch, and the competence of EA Games themselves, spread like wildfire across the internet and every gaming site I visited. I’ll try to sum it up.
When the game was released 3 weeks ago, it shipped with 3 or 4 bugs that myself and other gamers found less than acceptable. The “Server Browser” ingame would stop, not refresh, or take literally 15 minutes to refresh, everytime you were looking for a server to play on. Then there’s a nifty bug of your teammates (represented by BLUE dots on the map) appearing as RED dots (aka: the enemy). Sometimes even the tag above the player would be Red, indicating someone to shoot at, while they are clearly on your team. Another happy little bug had to do with Linux servers. Apparently, the Linux version of the stand alone server would crash players games to desktop randomly at the end of a round. The end of a round, conveniently, was when your stats are reported to the ranking system along with any medals or awards you’ve received. People would be promoted from a Private to a Corporal for example, then, at the end of a round on a Linux server, would crash to their desktop and their progress would be wiped out. Those were the biggies.
EA, in an attempt to solve some of these problems, released a 1.01 update for both clients and servers. The update contains a serious memory leak that can render the game completely unplayable and servers unstable. What a nifty patch.
So, instead of quickly fixing the problem, they simply “suggested” in a loose “community announcement” that everyone completely UNINSTALL the game and reinstall it without the patch. Brilliant.
This has thrown thousands of players into a frenzy demanding the blood of EA brass, and I can’t blame them. Luckily, however, I don’t suffer from the memory leak problem. Some aren’t so lucky. So many infact that everyone in the competitive circuits are waiting to see what happens this week. CAL (CyberAthlete Amateur League) has postponed the first week of the Battlefield 2 season for just this reason.
Other folks have expressed their anger with all this is far more flamboyant ways…
“And what is the latest mistake? Slowly developing a very minor patch, releasing it flawed, then ‘sort of maybe recommending’ everyone uninstall and reinstall the game, even though the problem obviously doesn’t affect everyone.
Who the fuck recalls a patch when you’ve got servers full of people out there playing for hours and hours without issue? Seriously, can I possibly imagine a worse management decision then asking a couple hundred thousand gamers to uninstall and reinstall the game because you think maybe some of them might get a memory leak because you don’t know how to test software? No I don’t think I can, that’s pretty damn bad. I can only guess that nobody in PR knows what is going on, or they don’t care, or something.
What should they have done? Try calling everyone at DICE in on the weekend to do and test a 1.02 fix, and then put it through an excessive QA process (that they apparently skipped before) when EA USA wakes up on monday, that’s what.
Jesus Christ, EA is breaking all the rules of civilized software development here. Talk about taking the industry back 25 steps in one title, holy shit.”
“I have lost all hope in BF2 becoming as popular as some game like CS because in order for that to happen the company has to actually support is product. Clearly EA has no intention of burning the midnight oil to fix its problems and putting anything but the minimal effort involved in patching the game.”
And of course, the master of the news post, Tycho…
“The new patch does this awesome thing where if you “Update” the “Server List,” what actually happens is that all servers are erased from it instead, and in order to bring them back you must restart the game. This would be less of an issue if, upon quitting the game in question, the music didn’t just continue to play for thirty seconds or more while the machine shudders like a crew capsule on re-entry. This is all completely aside from the fact that your teammates’s names can show up red, or that when you’re resurrected the game can (and will) change your class, or that when your teammates are on any terrain that isn’t completely flat it’s virtually impossible for the medic class to bring them back.
Last I heard, they were considering rolling back the patch. It’s hard not to make the parallel to Tribes 2, where a succession of strange “fixes” and partial resolutions slowly eroded the game’s base of support. I’m really wondering where we’ve gotten to if the largest publisher in the world can’t actually execute on the sure-fire sequel to one of the biggest action franchises in history. It’s irresponsible, it’s unacceptable, and if they persist in this the community will answer in a clear voice:
“We purport to be angry, but it is largely an ethereal anger, suitable for forums on the Intertron. There is no connection between my willingness to purchase shoddy products and the continued production of said products. At any rate, there is no connection that I am able to perceive.”
That’s about it. Must fustrations are a combination of all of the above. That said, the game IS playable and the game IS fun. So much so I do it nightly and with a large group of friends. As the man said, where have we gotten to if EA can’t fix this and support the community properly. We will never see a community of support and innovation like old school Counter-Strike, it simply won’t happen. Giant corporations have gobbled up all the great “small” developers, even Valve is lacking in support of HL2/CS:S (come on, 3 maps and 2 player models since the game was released? Sad.). Regardless, I’m going to continue to play. It’s a sport for me. It something I’m intensely good at and proud to be good at.
Matt out.
PS: If you’d like to see a giant list of the “minor” bug in game, click “read more”. Note, this is not MY list…
(more…)
by Matt | Jun 9, 2005 | Games
This is not mine, I have cut and pasted from a forum post:
One of the big groovy features of BF2 will be the ‘ranking system’. This is a quasi MMORPG like feature where you have persistent ranking based on game scores over time. Your rank will have real ingame benefits like weapon unlocks and highest ranked players get access to the new ‘commander mode’ (one player gets to play the game in a RTS like view controlling artillery, sending commands, UAVs, etc)
….sounds great right?
Here is the catch…you can only earn rank on EA servers. This means anyone who wants to get access to unlocks has to play on the EA servers. Also it means that regular players on unranked servers will always lose access to commander mode from anyone who plays on EA servers (and ‘outranks’ them). Private server Admins will have no access to the ‘locked’ weapons and features.
EA’s only solution for admins is rent servers from EA (I assume at their current rate of $8/slot/month!). EA will hold a monopoly on renting ‘ranked servers’
Here is an EA comment about it from a RealityFriends interview
Q. Can you expand bit more about ranks/stats. The sound of it, reminds me a lot of the honor system in Americas Army. Here are some of my concerns: When the screen with the players on the server comes up, will you be able to see the rank of each player? Will the unlocked weapons be available only in official/rank servers? Will clans be able to lease official servers and will it only be one company’s monopoly? What effect will that have for the private servers, since all the people will be playing in official/rank servers to get their rank up?
A: That was a lot of questions:
– You will be able to see the rank of everyone on both ranked and unranked servers.
– Unlocks will only be available on the ranked servers.
– As mentioned earlier, you will be able to lease official/rank servers.
– We hope that will enjoy the game enough to play it both on ranked and non-ranked servers
EA claims that this is to protect the ‘integrity’ of the ranking system (but of course it is a little fishy that the only avenue for us admins is to rent from them)
I dislike this thought process. Having a game with “unlockables” is great, it increases replay and adds something to strive for, especially in this model where your rank is your badge of honor and you get weapons upgrades and whatnot. But, whats the point of having unlockables if you can’t use them?
“Yeah, I spent 40 hours a week playing on EA’s servers, I’m a 4 star general, but I can’t use the sniper rifle today because I’m playing on a private server.”
???
What the fuck is that about? If it’s not a server side variable I’m going to be super pissed. Angry enough to send my thoughts to EA directly. And don’t think I don’t have email addresses from the development team either.
I can see their side, they want to maintain a “safe” enviroment for their gamers. Saying, within these specific servers, there will be zero cheating, zero asshats and they’ll always be well maintained and admined. That’s a server I would infact enjoy playing on, and that’s their point. But to make HALF THE GAME the insentive to play there is a little fucking retarded. I probably haven’t explained, but for every class there’s ranks, higher ranks get cooler stuff, etc, just like a RPG. I’m sure as shit not going to be a private for the next 5 years and never play with any of the unlockables.
Let’s say I do decide to play on EAs servers. I get good. I’m a sergeant now. I’ve got a sweet ass shotgun that I like a lot. Now it’s match time. Matches are played on private clan servers. Private servers are unranked and have no access to unlockables. My cool shotgun that I’ve been playing with for the last month, non-existant. I have to step down to the lowest denominator and play with the basic weapons only. Everyone does, making the playing field level. Level, but incredibly boring and not fun.
Way to go Dice/EA, way to fuck your fans. Way to mess with your biggest support group, the clans, the rabid fans who would have done anything for you. And don’t get me started about the lack of CTF. One game mode. Bah. What nonsense.
I’m still looking forward to this game. The demo should be out tomorrow. I will enjoy it completely I’m sure. What I won’t enjoy is the next few months while the hate mail pours into EA headquaters about what fucking retards they are for making HALF A GAME unaccessable to even those who have infact worked hard enough to earn it.
Give it a month. They’ll be a server side patch NOT from EA to unlock everything. I also fully expect a CTF mod within a few months.
I’m done.
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