One of the major advantages of Oblivion was the fact that the game was so easily mod-able. This allowed the modding community to do things like:

1. Fixing the hundreds of outstanding bugs.
2. Repairing the broken graphics engine.
3. Fixing the awful, self-defeating leveling system.
4. Replacing the abominable default interface with something appropriate for a mouse & keyboard.

In the past I’ve heaped shame on Bethesda for the state that Oblivion was in at release, a state that remains largely unchanged today. Oblivion is a huge freeform world, which scratches my particular gaming itch in a profound way. Despite the scorn I hurl at the title, I’ve clocked a lot of hours on the game, and I wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t fun.

The release of Oblivion stung badly for me because the game was so buggy and unpolished. What was I going to do? Wait for the next freeform RPG? If we are very lucky we will get one more before the decade is out. And even then, we still must hold out hope that Fallout 3 won’t be dumbed down by its obligations to consoles, that it won’t be encumbered by unacceptable DRM, that it will run on computers that can be constructed on this planet, and that it won’t be a software jalopy like Oblivion was.

So I find myself in the position of needing to play and complain about this title at length. If there is only one game in your chosen genre, you’re sort of obligated to play it. Although, since it’s the only one, I guess we can say Oblivion is the very best freeform RPG for this generation of PCs.

So my hopes for this title rely on using mods to straighten what Bethesda has made bent. There are three major problems with the mod system in Oblivion: (more…)

Sweet mercy. 63 comments!

I’ve been getting emails and comments here and there from people soliciting reaction to the end of the Chainmail Bikini webcomic and asking about what I’m going to do next.

Shawn’s announcement says it all, really. There wasn’t any difficulty between us. We’re still cool. I’m still grateful for all the hard work he put into it, and I wish him all the success in the future. (And let’s be totally clear, he put a lot more work into it than I did.)

I plan to wrap up CB by posting my notes for the future scripts and a synopsis of the rest of the story. It won’t be funny, but I do hope it will give readers a sense of closure. I plan to set aside a block of time this weekend and finish that off.

I don’t have any immediate plans to do another comic with FtB. I’ll talk with them at some point and see what everyone is interested in doing.

For right now I’m scratching my comic-making itch with these little videogame comics I’ve been doing. I’ve done 15 of them so far, and they’re pretty fun to make. They don’t really deserve to stand beside DMotR or CB comedy-wise, but for the effort I’m putting into them (almost nothing) they are a bargain.

It’s rather telling that I’ve come to calling them mini-comics. They’re usually six or so panels, which puts them well over budget for a “normal” sized comic. They’re not small. They’re just small compared to what I normally come up with. Perhaps some day I’ll figure out how to work my japery into four panels.

I’m not sure how much further I want to take the idea. They don’t have a title or a logo or anything. I don’t follow a regular schedule. There’s no name for them. They’re just humorous pictures placed in a cynical attempt to get readers to endure my endless blather. That is, the comic is there to trick you into reading the wall of text. To that end, they have been a rousing success. I’m not sure if naming them and committing to a regular posting schedule is a good idea or not. If I get too formal I’ll probably start raising my standards, which would require actual effort on my part.

Anyway. Thanks for reading. Sorry it didn’t work out. I’m sure we’ll find some way to keep ourselves amused.

Feeling chatty? There are 25 comments.

Shawn touches on a subject near and dear to my heart, which is the practice of lazy people to attempt to do business using the voice of a child. Shawn actually received an email which read thus:

Now, I don’t think of myself as overly pedantic when it comes to the written word. I have typos and spelling errors on this site often enough that I have no room to criticize others. I’m not faulting people who make simple errors in the course of business correspondence. I am faulting people who can’t even be bothered to try, who communicate by staring fixedly down at the keyboard, spewing out a formless stream of words and hitting “send” without so much as a glance at what the result was.

In the last ten years or so this has been growing in popularity. Nobody ever sent me email in this condition during the early parts of my career, but in the last ten years it’s become increasingly common. What is causing this? The rise of phone-based text messaging? The educational system? Are we being infiltrated by aliens who mimic our habits in every way except that they can’t grasp the most rudimentary rules of our written word?

(more…)

156. There are now n+1 comments, where n is a ridiculous number.

A friend brought over his PS3 last weekend and we clocked a few hours on GTA IV. It is exactly what I expected: A series of mostly uninteresting and highly contrived challenges wrapped within some of the most spectacular technology and extravagant production values I’ve ever seen.

People are saying this game is less DIAS than its predecessors. That’s nice, I guess. Sort of admirable. Like finding out a pedophile has cut way back on molesting kids.

I only saw a few missions, and my friends assured me they were an aberration: The game had been fun and cooperative until the moment I started watching. Perhaps I just have bad luck, but the fact that Rockstar feels the need to spike the game with punishing “do it again” gameplay is depressing.

I can’t comment on the plot. I missed a good portion of the start of the game and didn’t have a sense of who the characters were or what was going on. All I knew was that Niko (the main character) needed money and, like his predecessors, was willing to commit crime on a stunning scale in order to earn a little. The cutscenes were usually humorous, well-written, and well-acted. It plays like a series of Quentin Tarantino Vignettes: Over-the-top characters propose doing outrageous things as if they were talking about running out for a hamburger.

Even during the early stages of the game that I witnessed, Niko is asked to bring about incredible destruction for a pittance. I don’t know how much I’d charge to assault a building filled with heavily-armed gangsters, swipe their duffel bag of drugs, and then battle my way through the city police to freedom. While I don’t know what I’d expect to be paid, I do know that I would not expect to still be poor after the job was over. Perhaps the game is social commentary on the plight of underpaid illegal immigrants.

I spent a good hour just driving around, exploring the vast and highly detailed world. I’ve never been a fan of the four to six hundred dollar price tag of the PS3 and Xbox 360, but if I was going to fork over that sort of cash then this is the sort of technical wizardry I’d expect from such hardware. (more…)

52 comments. Copious verbage.

This is a long-n-rambly post. This isn’t so much an article as a disjointed collection of observations, stream-of-consciousness style. Please lower your standards accordingly.

A couple of weeks ago I got a new graphics card, more or less to play Mass Effect. Now I’m not getting the game, and it sort of feels like my pixels are all dressed up with no place to go. Sulking, this weekend I headed to the game store to see if anyone else had their act together enough to get my money. Once again I was shocked at just how few PC titles there are.

It used to be that the bargain bin was a great place to pick up two and three year old games. Now titles linger on the main shelf, and only the most dreadful failures and low-budget movie spinoff games fall into The Bin. I had money to burn, but there just wasn’t that much to choose from. Most of the remaining titles were strategy games. Nothing wrong with that, but my strategy needs are well sated at this point. I wanted… something with characters? A story? Maybe a little leveling up?

There wasn’t much to choose from. In the end I picked up Knights of the Nine, an expansion for Oblivion. I also picked up another game that I’ll write more about later. Both were cheap - the two together were less than what I was willing to spend on Mass Effect.

It’s sort of strange to see this happening. (more…)

There are now 94 comments. My server weeps for mercy.

If you were to take the official Mass Effect DRM thread and distill it into a conversation between the fans and EA, it would flow something like this:

What info does the installer send during registration? Anything private?

No. Nothing private. We can’t tell you what is sent, but Trust Us, it’s nothing bad.

I have to “use up” on of my three installs every time my hardware changes? What exactly is a “hardware change”?

We can’t tell you. But Trust Us, it’s not unreasonable.

But only three installs? What if I run out?

Just call EA tech support, as it’s evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Trust Us, we’ll let you play your game.

But what if you’re out of business? Or you turn off the authentication servers, like Microsoft did with their DRM system?

We aren’t Microsoft. Don’t judge us by what other companies do.

I’m not a pirate, don’t judge me by what other consumers do.

Fine. If we ever shut down the servers, we’ll release a patch that removes the need for registration.

Put that in writing?

No, but Trust Us.

The hypocrisy has now reached toxic levels. Being repeatedly asked for trust from a company which refuses to trust it’s own customers is weapons-grade audacity. The entire crux of the matter is a lack of trust on their part, and reasonable customer concerns are met with the outrageous request for more trust on our part. Some of us still remember the circle of stupidity from last year:

(more…)

47 comments. That is a lot.

I finally managed to work in a few game of Sins. I think I’ve played enough times to be able to say that this is not going to be one of my enduring favorites. It has all the right ingredients, but this particular formulation of those ingredients just isn’t doing it for me. I need to give this more thought.

I often get Google searches for people looking for tutorials or help in various games. They arrive here only to find long-winded analysis and opinion without any real information.

But here is an actual walkthrough for the opening stage of Sins of a Solar Empire. I do not claim this guide is optimal. This is merely a guide for lost newcomers frustrated with the school of hard knocks which most Sins players attend. This is what I wish I had handy on my first game.

Here are my opening actions for a new game. Once you’re done with this you should have a pretty good idea of your next move. For your starting game, I suggest turning pirates off. It’s just another thing to worry about while you’re trying to learn. I also suggest playing against an “easy” AI on a small or medium map. Once you have the basics down you’ll probably want to play on a large map with smart foes and active pirates, but if you’re reading this I’m assuming it’s because you don’t want to learn through repeated defeat: (more…)

Feeling chatty? There are 26 comments.

What I most feared has now come to pass.

EA has relented and given up on the 10-day re-authentication thing, instead “only” insisting on online activation. They caved on the details and held firm on their support for intrusive and restrictive DRM. They have now backed off to the point where their system is “only” as bad as the one in BioShock.

As I feared, this has fragmented the fans. Some hold firm, and others are running back to the game, full of forgiveness. Looks to be roughly 50 / 50 now. I’m happy that lots of people “get” the implications of this, that it’s still wrong even if the system works for you personally, but I doubt the numbers are there to get EA to budge again. Worse, 2KGames promised that “at some point” the need for activation would be removed, and we have no such promise from EA.

The poison pill:

The language here makes it very clear what they want. I buy a disc, and I can install it on any three computers I like, after which the game is “used up”. If I want to install again, I have to email EA, hat in hand, and ask them if maybe it would be okay if I installed the game again. This is a deal-breaker for me.

Sigh. I just installed Deus Ex a couple of weeks ago so I could write this post about it. That’s probably the sixth time I’ve had it on my machine, over the course of four computers. I can only imagine how angry I would have been if I’d popped in that disc at sometime after midnight on a weekend, and then had to go to EIDOS and wait for them to let me in. I’d end up trading emails with some tech support flunky who was ten years old when the game was new. Assuming I had whatever proof of purchase he wanted (all I have is the case and disc, the box and its accoutrements are long gone) I’d still have to wait for the response, get the code, go through the activation, and sometime on Monday I would have been ready to launch the game and take my screenshots.

This is, of course, even assuming the validation servers would still exist. Microsoft “Plays for Sure” system came and went in just four years, leaving customers without a way to access their purchased music. If you can’t trust a behemoth like Microsoft to last four years, then what chance is there that the EA servers will last a decade? Or forever, which is how long I’m used to owning things I buy.

No news on Spore, but we can assume that it will be similarly encumbered. I don’t think EA is going to move again.

Damn it.

There are now 83 comments. My server weeps for mercy.