Oh I don’t understand videogames any more. I feel like such an old man, harking back to the days when the game would come out, and then eight months later there’d be an add-on. Now I’m not sure if I’m only getting a fraction of the intended game when I open the box, what with pre-order bonuses, special editions with extra quests, and most of all, DLC. DLC is a great idea! More content, and downloadable because we’ve got this new thing called the internet. Great plan! But why am I posting a trailer for Dragon Age II‘s DLC below, over a week before the game has come out?

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Correction: It seems that Ubisoft’s new DRM will be requiring one activation at install, and then not again. While this is problematic regarding DLC, and I continue to argue (as the post below explains) still not okay, it’s not quite as it was understood from the ambiguous statements given before the article was written. However, the “always on” DRM continues to torment users of Ubisoft games like Settlers 7. Apologies for the confusion caused, and to Ubisoft for the incorrect statements.

Don’t be fooled, I say. Ubisoft, amongst others, have been getting a lot of good press lately, including from this very site, for the apparent backtracking on the DRM that had crippled a number of games. By insisting that players be always online as they played, Ubisoft’s games became a subject of headlines – gamers’ progress would be lost, players dumped out of their games, because BT pressed a wrong button somewhere, or the Sun’s flares caused a blip in a wifi signal. It took Digital Rights Management to a whole new level of pointlessly ruining valid customers’ experiences; while the pirates they were pretending to fight continued to enjoy a far better game. And so we celebrate as they remove this, and we compliment them for backing down from the nonsense. But I (John Walker, whose views don’t necessarily reflect those of his (inevitably wrong) colleagues) say: let’s just think about that a little more carefully.

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Do you care about 3D? As a broken-eyed freak-child, it only makes me feel lonely and left out of the new club for cool kids. Are all games going to start to demand I wear a pair of fetching specs that cause my astigmatism to drill a headache into the centre of my brain? Activision today announces that COD: Black Ops will support 3D play on all systems, so long as you have a 3D TV (which would make you of about seventeen people in the country) or a 3D card that supports it for your PC (much more likely). Presumably there’s a lot of people that want it. But I’m not yet convinced.

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I have a bunch of questions about gaming that tend to begin, “Why can’t I…” Today I was wondering such a thought. Here’s the thing about videogames: they’re games. Let’s just make sure we’re all clear on this. They’re games. Not work. Not obligations. But games. So just exactly why is it so many of them behave like some sort of strict teacher who will only let me run around in the playground once all my work is finished? If I want to go hit the Giant Elves of Elvington on the other side of the Countryland, why the bleeding heck can’t I just be there?

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Less a manifesto, and more a notverymanlyfesto, as this is very much a tech-centric list. If you want thoughtful game theory, you’ve got the wrong nitpicker.

The PC is the best gaming platform in the world – but it could be better still. While it’s great that the PC doesn’t have to suffer quite the same degree of standardisation as its locked-down console brethren, we have nevertheless fallen into certain patterns of how we game. There are things we take for granted and thus expect, like WASD controls in FPSes and patches for bad bugs. There are others still we should be able to take for granted, but can’t because the same damn-fool oversights happen again and again. Even outside of the more obvious annoyances like referring to Xbox controls or including ridiculously draconian DRM (which are both more a question of money than of thoughtlessness), a ton of stuff that any gamer could have told the developer was a glaring screw-up keeps on turning up in otherwise great games. Here are just 10 of the worst offenders, 10 things that every single modern PC game should get right and has no excuse not to. Please do suggest others in comments below.

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Today, a mini-rant, as befits my short stature and general foul temperament.

Or, at least, an open question. Why do so many PC games not support alt-tabbing out?
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“Every time I yank a jawbone from a skull and ram it into an eyesocket, I know I’m building a better future.” So Bender from Futurama, in the guise of a biker vamp, informs me as to how he thinks the world’s problems should be solved. Ah, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Truly, you are the last of your kind. I no longer think you’re one of the finest, however.

Noting that yet another fan-made patch was out for the infamously broken swansong of that RPG/FPS hybrid genre awkwardly known as the immersive sim (unless you count Oblivion, which was a sort of waterered-down, action-only approach to the same concept), I’ve decided to revisit it. Despite slightly too fiercely defending it at the time against those who deemed it no classic because of the sheer weight of bugs, spelling mistakes and mindless combat in its twilight third, I never quite finished Bloodlines. I realised the shift from a game built on conversation, persuasion and seduction to one built on fists and knives and guns was an absolute one, so I stopped, with the story unresolved and my character not yet at the height of his dark abilities. I’d had my brainy fun, and I was grateful for it.

These were, you understand, dark times. Read the rest of this entry »