Call of Juarez 3 - Modern Cowboys

For months I've been trying to find some time to write something about the great Call of Juarez games, but I've failed. Just this: play them. Start with the second game (Bound in Blood) and then continue with the first one, which has the best story and design; it's better this way in terms of story (even if the first game is technically inferior).

Now we learn that there will be a third game, but... it has a modern setting. The only thing I can say is... WTF? I don't think it's a change justified by the story, but who knows... I'm afraid maybe Ubisoft asked Techland to do something "more like Call of Duty", and this weird concept is the result. We'll see. But it really looks weird.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 watch

The chairman of Ubisoft says they are trying their best to make Beyond Good & Evil 2 the best game possible.

If you read the Kotaku article, you could believe he's serious and Ubisoft is still the same company it used to be, choosing innovation and quality above the "iteration method" (running a franchise to the ground with yearly sequels, like they did with Prince of Persia). But remember, until it's proven otherwise, Ubisoft is still the same company that ruined Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell not long ago. And don't forget about their really evil DRM scheme, which always makes me think of this joke.

Splinter Cell - Destruction

Splinter Cell: Conviction feels wrong. It's one of those games that (if you care about Splinter Cell, anyway) makes you think "this is not going the way it should", like Deus Ex: Invisible War, which wasn't a bad game, but it also deviated too much from what a Deus Ex game should be.

Conviction is a mess in many ways. First, Sam Fisher doesn't feel like the same character. He's old and battered, as he should be, but now he looks ape-like, and his eyes have pretty much disappeared. Even if the graphics are really detailed, he looks less human than ever. He's now an unstoppable killing machine.

The story is as subtle as a jackhammer. Somebody killed his daughter, so he wants revenge. This is the excuse to present him as somebody who doesn't care about anything, and who just kills everyone in his path with no remorse, unlike all the previous games which were about surgical strikes and careful stealth. Very early in the story (like, in the second level or so) you discover that she's not dead after all (spoiler!!), but does that change anything? No, not really: Fisher continues on a rampage, and the game keeps beating you on the head with images and dialogues about your daughter, over and over, after we just don't care because we know that she's still alive, though Fisher doesn't seem to care about anything else, even about Irving Lambert. Oh, the game tells you with a throwaway line that you killed your best friend (a very optional choice from the previous game) but Fisher never shows any pain or guilt about that whatsoever. So no "Oh, I thought my daughter was dead, so I didn't mind killing my best friend. I'm an idiot!". There's a scene that tries to suggest that by projecting words like "guilt", "lies" and such on the walls in giant letters (again, sublety!), but when Fisher finally catches up to what was obvious for the player a few hours earlier, he doesn't show regret, but anger. At this point, I guess we are supposed to feel sorry for Fisher, but he just looks stupid. Yes, the game is full of bad writing, and that's just a sample of it.

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SC: Conviction also seems to believe, like Batman: Arkham Asylum, that showing a lot of people dying is cool. The "climax" of the story takes you through a virtual tour of empty, boring White House hallways and rooms with lots of dead people around you. Family entertainment! (Modern Warfare 2 did something similar with the Washington setting in smaller doses, and it worked considerably better). Also, there's a lot of torture (inflicted by the protagonist!) that seems ripped straight from THQ's The Punisher.

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So there's a lot of bad shooting? What else? Well, everything is streamlined for the dumb, assuming players will be overwhelmed unless the game holds your hand all the time (the stylish messages telling you what to do and where to go get old very soon). You don't even have to hit a crouch button: if there's a big pipe in your way or you have to enter an air duct, Fisher ducks automatically. Also, you are really fast, and you can climb a very tall building in 30 seconds. Altair and Ezio never were so quick. It feels almost like a parody.

Still, the game still forces you to be more or less stealthy, not only in those annoying "if an alarm sounds, you are instantly dead" stages but also during the rest of the game, because if the enemies discover you, it's pretty much impossible to line up a shot with a keyboard and mouse. I didn't have any trouble at all playing the unfairly maligned Alpha Protocol, but shooting in the PC version of Splinter Cell: Conviction is just a pain. And that is too bad, as Sam Fisher is no longer a spy: he's now a soldier. We even get a contrived Modern Warfare-like flashback to the first Iraq war which soon becomes a below-average cover shooter that feels jarringly out of place and stupid (you are wounded and can't take too many hits, so why don't you just stay of the road to avoid the enemy soldiers? But there's an invisible wall...). This is not Splinter Cell! What is this, Soldier of Fortune Payback?

Ubisoft seems to be doing everything wrong lately. Now I see it's not by chance that the Splinter Cell series director called it quits a few weeks ago. And just now, the guy behind the Assassin's Creed series has also left the building after completing the new, unnecessary "Assassin's Creed 2.5" sequel. Ubisoft Montreal, one of the best game studios in the world, seems to be in trouble. And we all just believed the rumours when somebody said that Michel Ancel had left Ubisoft too. Hmm... Something has changed. Ubisoft is no longer a company where creativity is respected and high quality is always to be expected. I hate what they are becoming now.

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One more thing: I finished the game in one day. But, unlike all the previous Splinter Cell games, I don't think I will be playing this one ever again.

Alpha Protocol is a cool game

Jim Sterling from Destructoid is an idiot. He gives a 2/10 to Alpha Protocol, so you would assume the game is broken and unplayable.

You would be wrong.

I'm playing it right now. It's a compelling game, with decent stealth gameplay and a great dialogue system. For me, it feels like a decent Splinter Cell-like game (I've decided I'm not killing anybody and the game lets me do just that, just stalking everybody and knocking them out) in which I can make a lot of choices, developing further the black-and-white "kill this guy or let him live" mechanics from Splinter Cell: Double Agent. There are no other games like this right now.

The game accomplishes what it tries to do. So what if there's a texture-loading problem (Is that something you never see in a game? Have you played any game made with the Unreal engine lately?), if Mike Thornton seems to be a bit unlikeable (well, he is not, if you choose the right dialogue options.) and if the shooting is not as good as in other games? I don't remember Vampire: Bloodlines for it's great shooting or Deus Ex for its compelling, superbly voice-acted protagonist, and they are both classics. There's something else at stake.

Alpha Protocol is a good RPG, but of course it won't look good if you compare it (from a technical standpoint) with the big boys. I'm sure Sega, being as cheap as it is this days, didn't give them a huge budget for this, but the results are still decent. So don't believe what Destructoid and Joystiq say, and give this game a chance. I'll let you know what I think after I play it longer, but it's not a terrible game.

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But I'm not going to stop reading Destructoid yet! They are still a cool site. And thanks to them, I learn that Ubisoft has probably cancelled Beyond Good and Evil 2. If that is true, well... That's it, I'm done with Ubisoft. It was one of my favourite developers ever, but they've made huge mistakes one after another, ruining the Prince of Persia franchise with each new game, forcing the worst DRM possible on players and just being cheap for the sake of it. Where's the innovation, the support for different games? Beyond Good and Evil is a classic, and Michel Ancel is one of the best game designers around. Is he really gone from your company now, or is it just a nasty rumour?

Ubi, don't disappoint me.

WHAT THE...?! UBIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!!!!

What in god's name is this!?!

Ubisoft is retroactively ruining the box art for probably their best game, just to trick unsuspecting customers into thinking that this is the PS2 version of their new (and not that interesting) Prince of Persia game.

Screw it, I'm done buying Ubisoft games. I just can't believe they are so short-sighted, and after watching them build up a great franchise and then demolish it. I don't want any part in that.

But I have to calm down, relax... Is there a good part about this? Well, yes... At least some buyers will buy this release thinking it's a tie-in for the movie, or the new game, and they will be surprised to see it's much, much better.

Still, this shows that Ubisoft is doing despicable things again. I'm disturbed to see how one of my favourite companies has become a worthy competitor for Activision's "King of Evil" title.

No More Manuals

Ubisoft has decided to eliminate printed manual from their releases. They are selling this as an "eco-friendly" gesture, but this is just a cynical, penny-pinching maneuver.

I don't read printed manuals anymore. I used to read them carefully on the way back from the store, or while I was waiting for the game tape to load in my Amstrad CPC (yes, I'm that old). But later the quality of the manuals started to drop. Redundant information compiled by people who hadn't created the game, black & white stills of the game that looked like bad xerox copies... and the death blow for manuals: tutorials. In the current generation the game always holds the player's hand, and if you stand still for a while, some games will even yell at you: "Go that way! Press that button!!". So manuals are not needed anymore, right?

Well, that's not true. Old-fashioned players prefer to have the reference in their hands. If I only have a digital PDF manual, do I have to exit the game to check it? And where do I make my notes about the game? Some people just need the manual. Also, what about the people who buy their games as "collector's items"? Digital downloads are the way to play games now, but some people just enjoy having the game boxes lining up in their shelves, all complete with great cover art... and manuals. All those elements are part of the ritual for this type of gamers, just like LPs with folded double covers and lyric sheets are for some music fans. What about them?

And finally, does this mean that Ubisoft is going to sell their games cheaper because of this? Of course not. They are lying. They are not making our life easier, and they certainly don't care about the environment. They are just saving a lot of money for themselves and looking good.

It didn't take long, did it?

Only 3 days after the European PC release date, the strange/stupid DRM imposed by Ubisoft has already screwed the users, who can't play the game. I guess they didn't expect so many people to buy the game or something (the Ubisoft rep said something about "excepcional demand"), as some people were saying on the forums that they really didn't mind about this form of DRM and that they would buy this great game (one of the best from 2009, that's for sure!) anyway. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if those same users are saying right now "This is the last Ubisoft game I buy!"

Let me tell you a little story. I always have some hot chocolate and toast for breakfast. And my toast used to have some "Philadelphia" cheese on it for a really long, long time. A few months ago, my supermarket stopped carrying the old boxy Philadelphia and started selling a new format. It looks like they also fiddled with the recipe, because only a few days after opening it, the cheese started getting mouldy. Was it a bad batch? Well, I bought a different type of Philadelphia (probably the diet version, or maybe one of the bizarre variations you can find in Germany), and I had the same problem.

You know what? I haven't eaten any Philadelphia cheese since then. I haven't put anything else over my toast for ten years, and now they lost me because they fiddled with the product for reasons that are not clear to me.

See what I am getting at? Ubisoft wanted to re-invent PC gaming to offer... nothing but a half-baked, big-brothery DRM scheme. Which nobody asked for. So yes, Ubisoft still offers some of the best games around, but we are not going to pay for something that is liable to stop working at any time while offering me nothing in return but some cloud-saving that I don't really need. I haven't played Far Cry 2 yet because of the 5 computers activation limit, and I won't play Splinter Cell: Conviction because of this mess.

Ubisoft, don't be stupid and don't fight Activision for the #1 Baddie spot.

Ubisoft vs PC gamers

Ubisoft thinks you are going to like this.

Well, NO. We are not going to like this.

Ubisoft wants PC gamers to be constantly connected to their internet servers. If not, BAM! You are expelled from the game. That is stupid on so many levels... If you want to stop it before it's too late, try to get organized, and do something that may work.

I respect Ubisoft. One of my first games was Zombi, a shameless rip-off adapting George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead to 8-bit computers. Yes, at that time Ubi Soft was a new French company "inspired" by B movies (they also released Manhattan 95, a transparent adaptation of John Carpenter's Escape from New York) and with very little shame.

For me, Ubisoft means imagination, risk... Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, XIII, Beyond Good & Evil... A company that combines commercial tripe and cash-ins with innovation and imagination. But they can be also evil. Their PC DRM schemes are usually as annoying as possible: They put Tages in XIII, Starforce in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, SecuROM on FarCry 2... But that was nothing compared to this.

In 2005 I decided I wouldn't play pirated games anymore. I've sticked to that, and now I purchase all my games on Steam. But if they also include SecuROM and those stupid activation limits, I'm out (well, unless they sell it for $3.75...). When you have Steam, you don't really need any other DRM, and even that is too much.

I used to buy those expensive House M.D. DVD box-sets, but when I put a disc in the DVD player I always had to watch an unskippable anti-piracy ad, the annoying "You wouldn't steal a car" one, every single time. Well, I like to watch a whole series in a short time, so I watched two or three episodes every day. At the end of the week, I had seen that bloody video a dozen times. And I was thinking all the time, "But I bought this! The people who get these episodes from the internet don't have to endure this crap".

Then, I bought the third and the fourth season, and... they had repeated or missing discs (!) and several packaging defects. I tried to contact Universal, but they ignored me. Are you surprised that I stopped buying House M.D., or any other Universal series for that matter? Of course not.

Ubisoft will be surprised when their customers do the logical thing. I won't.