It’s a funny thing, Diablo III. On the one hand, we know practically everything we need to know about it, based on confirmation that’s it sticking closely to what’s gone before. On the other, we have very little HARD FACT about it. We only know what two of the character classes are, for instance, while multiplayer system Battle.net 2 remains largely under wraps. For now, all a fanbase that can’t wait to hack and slash and slash and hack gets is hints – and oddly antagonistic ones at that. Read the rest of this entry »
People really don’t like DRM. And a small but very passionate/ferocious group of people really, really, really don’t like DRM. They’ve struck back by shaping Amazon’s user reviews of Spore en masse, bringing its average rating down to just one star.
While I’m aware it’s a major issue for a lot of gamers, I think it’s a hateful thing to do on this kind of scale. I do understand their concerns entirely, and would much prefer there was no DRM in Spore. Fine, don’t buy the game yourself or crack it if you’re not happy with the restrictions and privacy violations. Write to EA or trading standards, blog about it, demand there’s a big warning sticker on the box.
Even protest ratings based on your actual negative experiences of the DRM are entirely valid, but this concerted group effort (most of whom, I imagine, haven’t actually played the game or experienced its usage restrictions first-hand) is giving innocent Amazon customers entirely the wrong impression of a game they might well love: that star rating is all that a lot of people look at. This isn’t raising awareness of DRM: it’s just making people not buy the game because they think it must be rubbish.
The DRM’s a significant problem – a problem we won’t know the full extent of for a while, I’d imagine – but my concern is that one of the most influential buying guides on the web is currently only telling one side of the story. A progressive, excellent game could get sunk because of it, and we’ll end up with more licensed tripe instead. Not that likely, granted, but possible.
Appreciate that this is a subject people feel very strongly about, but please express your comments below without bellowing abuse at each other.
If you’ve been following the 200+ comments in the thread below our recent discussion of our experiences in the Warhammer Online closed beta, you’ll have spotted that a vocal minority of the WAR community, having made their way here thanks to a link on the warhammeronline.com frontpage, are absolutely furious with us. All those that were simply critical remain, but there were at least another 50 abuse-filled tirades we deleted, consisting of the usual expletives, judgements about our intelligence and sexuality, and a surprising amount of racism towards the British. It’s true: we do drink a lot of tea.
Whether expressed politely or furiously, there were three or four central complaints about what we said – but one stands above them all. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been playing Eve Online on and off for about five years now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much controversy as that being generated by the most recently proposed changes. These changes basically concern how fast medium sized spaceships should go, and what the ramifications for the rest of the game will be if they’re made to slow down. The mixture of rage, indignation and constructive feedback that has emerged in response to the proposals has created a sixty-three page thread on the official forums, and countless arguments elsewhere – even between my own Eve Onlining chums. But are the subs-paying players right to be angry when the developer changes the nature of their favourite toy? And who should be calling the shots anyway?
Preview wot I wrote about the upcoming Bond game is up over on Eurogamer. It’s not, suffice to say, one of those ‘lalalalalala everything is shiny wooo’ previews:
It might end up feeling like Bond skins taped over a hasty Any-FPS skeleton. While we’ve only seen two levels so far, the bizarre presence in those of exploding fuel tanks (“mousetraps”, according to Treyarch) inside a posh hotel lobby suggests this an action game that very much plays by the rules.
While I’m actually fairly gentle to it, I’ll add the qualifier I did over there – there’s still a few months of work left to go on the game, so it could yet be more Goldfinger than Die Another Day. Oh – beware of the Angry Internet Man in the piece’s comments thread, loudly crying foul at the partially pessimistic tone. Whadda ya think – are not entirely positive previews of upcoming games welcome journo-honesty, or miserabilist, unprofessional presumption?
From our comfortable slouch in front of our dusty LCD screens, E3 2008’s seemed surprisingly fertile after last year’s dampest of squibs. Perhaps there weren’t many omigosh new announcements, but it gave a glad chance to see long-awaited shinies such as Dragon Age, Fallout 3 (DON’T SAY A BLOODY WORD), Spore, Mirror’s Edge, Dawn of War II, Borderlands, Alpha Protocol and more in extensive action. Me = chuffed.
You’d have thought “sequel to beloved game announced after eight year silence” would be good news for Diablo fans. And to most, it was. Not everyone felt the same way though – an undercurrent of disappointed muttering had it that the game looked too bright and cartoonish compared to its darker predecessors. Most of us will doubtless wait to see what the game’s actually like before passing judgement based on its appearance alone, but slighted naysayers have banded together for one of those e-petition thingies, determined to talk Blizzard into changing the game’s art style after just four years of development. Can’t fail, surely. Read the rest of this entry »
