Games that stop existing

A few days ago we commented about Plants vs Zombies being updated to modify its content. As an owner of PvZ on Steam, I'll be forced to get the censored version of the game the next time I download it.

That's the worst thing of downloadable games: they can be modified by the provider, and you can't do anything about it. And it even could be worse: the game could just disappear, like Street Racing. This Facebook game was just removed from the internet surprising all its paying customers. This is one of those games in which you buy in-game stuff with real-life money. So may have "invested" a lot of money buying virtual advantages that no longer exist. You are basically screwed.

We all trust that our downloadable games will be there for as long as we want them on Steam, on Xbox Live Arcade, on PSN... but is there a real guarantee? Or can they just say "sorry, you can't play anymore" when they consider that the fan base is not big enough to justify the expense and we have to accept it?

This is what I don't like about downloads... Unless proven otherwise, we are just renting the games. They don't usually disappear, but if they do, can we do anything about it? Or are we just going to be told "sorry, it's over. But you can play our other games!" like with Street Racing?

Say goodbye to the MJ zombie

Plants vs Zombies was our Game of the Year for 2009. It had laughs, very clever design and a lot of memorable zombie characters. One of the best ones took inspiration from Michael Jackson and his Thriller video, with hilarious results.

Well, if you haven't bought and played this game yet, be quick, because the old version is going to be pulled from game providers (Steam, etc) and replaced by a different build. Seemingly, after his death it's not funny anymore to laugh with Michael Jackson, even after he's been laughed at for several years now. I don't know what PopCap is going to do to replace that memorable enemy, but it won't be easy to match the kind of inspiration and lunacy the original MJ zombie had.

Goodbye, MJ zombie! We'll miss you!


UPDATE: If you have bought the Steam version of the game, then download it right now and select the "Do not automatically update this game" option to keep the old version. The game takes very little space (25 Mb), so you won't regret it!

2nd UPDATE: Here's the new dancing zombie!

3rd UPDATE: JR just sent me this link, and it's perfectly appropriate to illustrate this situation. Trying to "protect the value of a brand" shutting down everything that looks even remotely as a "copyright infringement" only leads to destroy creativity and can even be counterproductive. If Andy Warhol tried to paint those iconic Campbell soup cans nowadays, he would be sued out of existence. Just think about it.

FINAL UPDATE: Forget about disabling automatic updates. Even if you do that, Steam forcefully upgrades your version to the GOTY release. That's not nice, Valve, that's not nice at all...

POST-FINAL UPDATE: Some guys have found a way to keep MJ in the game. It's not perfect, but it seems to work.

Never say this is the last game

Did you love the Monkey Island games? Well, then you'll love Deathspank. This is the first game from Ron Gilbert in a very long time, and it's good.

It's nice to see Gilbert creating cool games again. The Monkey Island games became crappy and too cartoony after he left! To his credit, he has created something new and exciting. Other designers are happy to make the same game over and over again, with Hideo Kojima being the worst offender, or even Hironobu Sakaguchi, who made his long, prosperous career possible after he went all out to create a "Final Fantasy" which was supposed to be Square's last game. So what's he doing now, after leaving Square-Enix? The Last Story, which will probably be his "last game", again. You have to be kidding me!

Do you know who has been actually frank about creating the same game over and over again until we can't take it anymore? Yes, you guessed it right... Well, the guy responsible for creating Kevin Butler and the ad which kind of proved that Killzone 2 had amazing graphics after all has been hired by Activision. So I guess Activision wants to look less evil now, and this is probably the right person to whitewash Robert Kotick's wrongdoings. I can't imagine what he will do, but I'm sure it will work, because he's clever and we gamers have really short memories.

Jimbecility - A bullet in the head

I shouldn't care about idiots making the world a worse place. After all, I didn't write any blog post about George W. Bush in eight years. But after he single-handedly started a wave of critical hate against a truly great game, and then he kept kicking it at any possible chance until that was it, I've decided that I've had enough with this twat who fancies himself a video games professional writer.

I didn't even want to acknowledge his existence ever again, but his latest act of stupidity is too amazing to let it just slip away. As part of a commentary about the difference between video game violence and real violence, he says: "to illustrate my point, I want to show you a bit of footage that it's a bit disturbing, so I want to warn you now." and then he shows the footage.

This guy is never one to be taken too seriously, because his rants are always so over the top that you don't really know if he is serious or not. So, what is he going to show us, a clip of the death of Bambi's mother?

Well, most of Sterling's followers are teenagers who don't know better, so they don't immediately identify the 23-year-old footage of the Bud Dwyer suicide. So a lot of young readers are expecting some of the patented tongue-in-cheek antics to be expected from him, they keep watching, and they are unexpectedly "rewarded" with a close up of a man shooting a gun into his own face.

Can an immature blogger sink any lower to prove an obvious, sophomoric point? The poor wretch goes on to say something equivalent to "See? Real violence is not disturbing at all. His head didn't blow up or anything like in video games". No, but I got to see a stream of blood gushing down a recently dead dude's face, and now I have to try to sleep after seeing that.

And to cap it all off, this pathetic, unineuronal excuse for a video games journalist thinks it's a good idea to end his simplistic rant taking a plastic gun out of an envelope and placing it in his mouth. Oh, how funny! I'm going to die laughing. And after 150 comments, none of his faithful readers seems offended or anything. Oh, the internets.

Killed by bad reviews

Sega has confirmed that there will be no sequel for Alpha Protocol, crushed by slow sales and middling reviews. Because yes, reviews actually have a strong influence on sales.

I didn't want this to happen. The game is very good, but for some reason American reviewers really hated it, specially a short-sighted idiot from Destructoid with a taste for self-promotion (with features like "Jimpressions", "the Jimquisition", and probably something called "Jimbecility" in the near future) who was so off-the-mark as Tom Chick was when he "reviewed" Deus Ex ten years ago in a perfect storm of cluelessness. According to Chick, Deux Ex was a "cliché-riddled game" with "an uninteresting story", "generic soundtrack" (wait, what?!), and "isn't all bad, though; I'd say it's only 90% bad". Amazing words for what is now considered one of the best games in history (or even the best, period).

Now Alpha Protocol is getting the bad rap, even if a lot of people is really enjoying the game. This reminds me of what's been happening to M. Night Shyamalan for the last few years. All of his new movies have been torn to pieces by critics, and the last one is no exception. The Last Airbender has at this point a pitiful 8% at Rotten Tomatoes, which means 92% of the American critics hated it.

But the thing is, a lot of people went to see The Last Airbender. After earning $40 million during its first weekend, it's not a disaster. So Shyamalan's planned trilogy could very well happen, if word of mouth is good and people keep going to watch it.

It didn't go that way for Alpha Protocol. European reviews were usually kinder, and I was even considering to buy the PS3 version (I originally bought it for PC) to support Obsidian's effort. But now it's too late. I guess a future for RPGs with lots of choices is now crushed, as it was for Deus Ex, one of the few games with real significant choices. In the amazing coverage by RPS celebrating Ten Years of Deus Ex, some people express their disappointment because nobody followed the trail opened by it: "I just assumed that games were going to be like that in the future."

Alpha Protocol is truly one of the few games in which the player can actually shape the story in visibly different, complex ways, even changing your allies and foes and getting to fight different people as a consequence. Despite its few weaknesses (the actually decent combat system is hated by many), expect in a few years some articles wondering why this great game failed.