Guess who's back?

No, I'm not back. I'm just taking off-time to deliberate on our choice for GOTY 2010 (yet!). But SuperViv is back from Australia! We hope she'll resume playing where she left one year ago so we can keep chatting about games.

And big bad EA is also back as a major villain. Last week I played lots and lots of Mirror's Edge and Dead Space (both amazing games) and I was thinking "I definitely liked where EA was going a couple of years ago". Now, I'm not so sure I even like them anymore, after the evident watering-down of Bioware's games (just look at the recycled rush job they did with Dragon Age II), the Call-of-Dutization of their shooters, etc. With Activision completely out of control and Ubisoft acting crazy like a videogame-world Charlie Sheen (why would you want to sell a sexless sex game?), I don't know who can deliver us from video-game evil now. Valve? The indie developers? We will see.

A brief aside

I just want to take a minute to quote this comment from RPS:

Jim Sterling really ought to be stood down from his job at Destructoid – he’s totally hateful and mysoginistic, as a recent public Twitter spat between him and Auntie Pixelante’s partner has proved. I won’t be reading Destructoid until they eject the idiotic, infantile shithead from their payroll.

That's what I think, too. I stopped reading Destructoid altogether because that professional troll annoyed me so much. That's the reason I haven't written any "Jimbecility" posts tracking his insane foulmouthing for months.

Speaking of losing readers by the hundreds, did you know you can keep reading Kotaku without the annoying new layout if you type "UK" or "CA" in front of the url? Just try it:

http://uk.kotaku.com/

http://ca.kotaku.com/

Luckily we don't have to worry about anything like that because we don't have any readers.

Happy new year!

I've been on holiday for a month with no internet connection, but we'll be back soon! We missed very interesting conflicts, like Activision making insane accusations against Zampella and West, and lots of bad news (Bizarre Creations facing liquidation, Harmonix being discarded by MTV like an used tissue and being sold off for the price of a copy of Rock Band 3...). Anyway, soon we'll present our own 2010 GOTY and we'll keep talking about games as usual. So... happy 2011 to you all!

Uncharted is so screwed!

WTF?!

http://kotaku.com/5698269/mark-wahlberg-will-be-nathan-drake-deniro-could-be-drakes-dad

Max Payne was probably the worst movie I watched in the last two years (my wife even fell asleep during the first act). When you think of Mark Wahlberg, "likeable" and "funny" are not the first adjectives that come to your mind.

I have nothing else to say about this. I'm depressed.

Xbox exclusivity?

Now we know why Microsoft is charging you more for your Xbox Live subscription (if you live in North America or the UK):

Now in 2002, it was strictly multiplayer gaming. Now we get those Call of Duty map packs before anybody else does. We’ve got Gears and Halo, of course, as exclusives. We continue to get exclusives on the service as well. And we’ve gone from 400,000 members in our first year to 25 million.

Well, if I were an Xbox player, I wouldn't think "oh, I love these games but I don't want anyone else to play them". That would be selfish and stupid. But Microsoft is paying millions to developers so they don't sell PS3 versions. Do Xbox players get any real benefit from this? No. Microsoft does.

Also, an Xbox player has Gears of War and Halo. Microsoft could easily release Halo for PS3, but they don't want to, because it's all about strengthening the Xbox brand and hurting the competition. Does that benefit Xbox players at all? No. That's only good for Microsoft.

If Microsoft is the one reaping the benefits, why should the players pay for all that exclusivity nonsense? Are you kidding me?

Nerdrage: The Backlash

So GOG is back in business. Back to normal, I guess. But now a lot of users are aware of the fragility of downloadable games. After this ill-advised PR strunt, a lot of fans have now become haters, stating that they won't buy anything from them ever again because they feel betrayed. Yes, it was not nice, but I think they are overreacting, because we only lost access to downloads for a few days, and some trust. The games are still there, no-DRM and all.

I've read some great comments in RPS, but in this case comparatively few users have stopped to think about this in a calm manner. One of them named "Kurina" wrote this opinion. I couldn't agree more:

I am definitely not a fan of the actions they have taken, temporarily closing down their website and leaving a cryptic message. It was not the smartest move, and has brought them some bad PR that they really do not need.

On that note though, I believe people are also overreacting to some degree. While access to the service was suspended, the website also clearly stated that games would be able to be downloaded again this Thursday. This was never in question or hinted at by cryptic statements. Games and accounts were not lost, and everyone would still be able to claim titles they purchased in the past.

This does bring to light how fragile our dependence on these services are though. All it takes is one problem, decision, or marketing stunt to impede our access to games. I hope many people are beginning to realize how they truly are putting all their eggs in one basket, by focusing on services such as Steam. The interesting part being, at least with GOG, their stunts do not prevent you from playing downloaded and archived games. If another service did this, good luck reinstalling and accessing them in the future.

While I do not appreciate the stunt, this will not prevent me from purchasing GOG titles in the future, solely for the fact that I know I can back them up and play games indefinitely regardless of what happens to the company itself.

I knew this would happen...

...but this was much sooner than I expected.

GOG is down. I repeat, GOG is down.

I knew about the risks of spending money to buy non-physical games, and I wrote about them. But I never expected something like this to happen so soon, and I never expected it to happen to GOG. I trusted them. Many people trusted them, because they seemed to care about customers, and they were so nice... This shows the main issue against digital purchases: you are just "renting" the games and they could take them away from you unexpectedly.

This is just bad, any way you look at it. Some customers say "oh, but you should keep backups for your games", but then again:

-If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't buy digital games in the first place, I'd buy discs with nice cover art and goodies.
-I own 150+ games on GOG. How long would it take to download all those games, and where do I put them? Should I buy a couple of hard disk drives just for them? And hard disks fail after a while, you know.

We are now waiting to see if this is just a really stupid PR stunt for the end of the Beta stage or something, but nobody is OK with this. The trust is gone. We've been warned about the risks, and many people will think twice about buying digital next time.

The new censorship

As you can see in the comments from users here, the Steam software forces you to upgrade your version of Plants vs Zombies to the GOTY release even if you don't want it. Yes, even if you have disabled automatic updates for that game. They have blatantly ignored the choice made by players to keep the old version of the game, following the rules set by Valve to handle Steam.

This kind of disregard for what the player wants, taking advantage of the power they hold when they fully control your access to the games, is what makes me skeptical about digital downloads. They can tamper with your game in any way they think appropriate. Now they are saying, "oh, sorry, some character in the game may get us sued so we are removing it", but at some point you can log in to your game account and be confronted with a disclaimer telling you that "sorry, a big Earthquake killed 100,000 people in California so the Quake games are in bad taste and you can no longer play them". Or maybe one day you try to play "Rock and Roll Part 2" in a Guitar Hero / Rock Band game but then Gary Glitter is arrested for molesting a child, so then the song gets patched out of the game because some parents complained about it... You know what I mean!

And then I, as a player, will yell "stop screwing me! I just want to play my game in peace! Don't take anything away from me!". But now there's nothing I can do, because in the digital era nobody can hear you scream.

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?

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.

Scary new games

There are lots of new games at this time of the year. It's E3 again! Well, Los Angeles is too far and I couldn't afford the journey anyway. I could afford a trip to this year's Gamescom in Cologne, but it's still too early to know if I will be able to go. Well, what about all the new games? There are just too many, so let me talk about just a few of them.

The Guitar Hero games were getting stale, so Neversoft's main competitor Harmonix has decided to present the new, innovative Rock Band 3. Now there's a keyboard, and there will even be MIDI guitars and the possibility to connect your real MIDI instruments (like my really nice Roland drum set) to the game. The good thing about this is probably that these games are slowly leading advanced players to real musicianship, as the advanced difficulty is almost like playing a real instrument. The bad thing is that, well, you are still playing along other people's music. What I like about playing (about real playing, not the make-believe variety that these games brought to the table) is that you can change the solos, improvise, try a new rhythm to make things more interesting. Because I'm a musician myself, I feel there's still a limit to what these games can offer me. I don't want to play along a song: I'd rather just play a song, because I can, because I have the chops for it.

Let me give you an example: it's cool to follow Pink Floyd's "Another Brick on the Wall", but what happens if you just want to jam for a while and just keep playing? Here's a video of my old band doing just that. But with Rock Band you just mimic the song, and that's the end of it. Will Rock Band titles give you that opportunity in the future? That would be really cool. But would regular players even want that? I'm not the best person to answer that.

Super Scribblenauts promises adjectives that offer a lot more options than before. But are these new options any fun? Because the problem with the first game was not the lack of options, but their faulty implementation. Guys, we don't want more options, we want better options. This time you are not fooling anyone with the "hey, you can do anything!" hype. Just give us a good game, OK?

Homefront is... well, just a stupid far right wet dream turned into a videogame. Inspired by one of the most absurdly paranoid movies ever, Red Dawn. It's usually easy to present the Russians as the bad guys, but in this case the developers try to sell the idea of a Communist invasion making it look as real as possible, if real means "Korea is just like Nazi Germany". You know, Modern Warfare 2 wasn't just a good example of great storytelling, but at least they bothered to create an acceptable -even if flawed- excuse for the main conflict (you know, that level). Now it's just "Koreans are crazy and want to kill us all!"). I'm curious about the game, but I can tell you now that I'm not going to pay a cent to fuel paranoid fantasies, even if it turns out to be really good.

There are just too many new games to comment about all of them, so I just won't. Oh, but there's another thing... Today Super Mario Galaxy 2 has been released in Europe. You should definitely check out that game. It's awesome.

Alpha Protocol's rift - A mystery

A few days after Alpha Protocol's release, a lot of us are still shocked about all the bad reviews it got in the good old USA, which forced people like me or these other Spanish guys to hastily defend the game even before we were done with it. The game has been received warmly elsewhere and players all over the world love it, as I showed at the end of my full review, so why all that hate?


Vlad Andrici tries to study this phenomenon in this article, trying to check all the facts and find an explanation, but it still doesn't make any sense. What is going on? Now, I hate to turn too paranoid, but I've come to think that there are some reasons that don't have anything to do with the quality of the game. First, as Andrice points out,


I've noticed for a long time that many magazines/review sites tend to overlook some pretty noticeable problems that certain games coming from big-ass publishers and developers have, while the "not so hyped" games tend to be hammered for the same issues.


That is so true! If a GTA or a Metal Gear Solid game is released, it automatically gets top marks. Yes, it's a completely populist attitude but it's not going to go away soon (most players actually go crazy if they don't get those unrealistic reviews, anyway). But some game must be seen in a negative light so it doesn't look like reviewers love just everything. And it looks like it's Alpha Protocol's turn.


Also, I hate to turn to ideological explanations, which always look crazy no matter how you present them, but I'm really starting to think that American reviewers are not OK with having a company called "Halbach" (a dead ringer for Halliburton) as the bad guys in Alpha Protocol's story, while the head of the effing islamic terrorists is depicted as a man of his word. Blasphemy!

But I don't know what to think. Thankfully, this game was released a bit earlier in Europe, so when bad reviews started to drip from the US, a lot of people already knew that the game was much better than what they were being told. And you can influence someone to not buy a game, as in this case, but it's different if you are already playing the game... and enjoying it.

I hope this whole thing is not disastrous for Obsidian. As far as I'm concerned, they have delivered the goods with their latest game. If my review didn't convince you yet, I'm telling you again: Alpha Protocol has great writing, and decent gameplay, so if you love RPGs, you should definitely try it.

And speaking of good writing, I really enjoyed this in-depth article by Chris Breault about how important writing is, and about the way careless scripting can ruin the whole experience, using Splinter Cell: Conviction as an example of how bad a game can be because of that. You should read it!

BONUS: Someone sent me this article which says that core gamers are male and casual gamers are female. Well, SuperViv, JR and I are both things at once, and we are not hermaphrodites! Or, at least, I wasn't the last time I checked. Let me have a look again...

How my enemies are doing

Rebellion seems to be in trouble.

Splinter Cell: Conviction is fighting hard to ensure that nobody will ever buy any PC Ubisoft title again. This is not going to end well.

This won't last. They are going to pay for what they've done. So it looks like there's justice in this world after all. Right?

My "gaming enemies" are just not those evil game companies! I also hate bad design and games that treat the players like cattle, and I totally agree with this opinion about what I enjoy (or hate) about videogames. I play games to be entertained, not to prove I'm "the best" at it. I like decent writing, nice graphics and getting from the start to the end with as little frustration as possible. I don't like competitive multiplayer, tough challenges and grinding.

DRM insanity: The lifetime limit

The DRM nightmare is just starting. You just can't buy games anymore: you rent them. Last week I was going to buy the nice downloadable Final Fight port, but I found a disturbing message in the game description offered through the Spanish Playstation Store: You are limited to download this game in 5 PS3 systems. WHAAAT?!! So there's a limit imposed on me. I call that "renting", not buying, folks. So I had to buy the game using my USA PSN account, because they didn't show any message saying that (or I hope I haven't missed it). But then I found out: it's crippled anyway. (UPDATE: Since I bought the game, they updated the description to let you know that the same stupid limitations apply in the good old USA. Just be amazed at how complicated it is: "One time fee for download or use solely by the purchasing PSN account on up to five PS3 units, with no more than one activated PS3 unit within a 24 hour period. Content may not be used by any other account. If you do not wish to accept all those terms, do not purchase this item.")

And with the same really stupid DRM that made a lot of people hate Ubisoft, no less! So you thought you were safe because you owned a console? Think again! At this point in history, April 2010, no internet connection is constant . Is it that difficult to understand?

So, OK, let's say that I go with that stupidity. As you say, I'll "buy" my games for 5 consoles or computers. Let's say I buy now another console and I start buying games with a 5 system limit, I don't care. What would happen if Sony decided that I'm not allowed to buy any additional PS3 consoles? That would be absurd, right?

Well, think again. Apple is doing exactly that.

You probably are wondering, "why would anyone want to buy six iPads, or even just one?". Well, consumers are free to do whatever they want. Or, I should say, they were. Do you realize that paying customers are being manhandled in a way never seen before? We are going down a road that ends with us getting screwed.

Someone has to put a stop to that. So, I say, please stop buying anything with any form of DRM. There are alternatives to everything. If you want to play Assassin's Creed II, buy the console version. If you want to buy Final Fight... Well, why would Capcom even want to protect Final Fight from pirates now? Just everybody has been playing it for free using MAME for years!!!

Seriously, companies putting DRM in their products are just screwing everybody, themselves included. Please stop that. Please.

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.

The first day we die

Today is an important day. Online support for the original Xbox ends forever.

You may think this is not too important. Who would want to play those old games when you can have bigger and better new games? Well, many people. Most people won't care, but just think about the future repercussions of this new age of gaming. If I wanted to do so, I could get a old computer or console (Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, C-64, NES...), plug it in, and start playing my old collection of games. I could do that now, just as I could in 1988, and I will be able to do the same in 2018.

Now think about the current generation of games. The Modern Warfare online matches that you love so much. World of Warcraft. Anything with online features. Just think of the future.

2016: Microsoft issues an statement: "Xbox Live is no longer supported. Additionally, we assume that gaming with controllers is a thing of the past, so hand-held controlling devices are no longer supported either. We know what today's gamers want and we'll continue offering the best service for our Natal 2015 gaming interface."

2021: Steam is bought out by Microsoft. All non-Games For Windows Live and Mac games stop being supported. Also, all games released before 2012 stop being offered for download. A 30-day period is offered for users to backup all their games, because they won't be able to access them anymore afterwards.

This is not a paranoid fantasy. If you think about the current gaming landscape, you know it's true. We know rely on the online functionality not only to get the essential patches to avoid those annoying game-breaking bugs, but to even activate the game. But now we are starting to see that online is not forever. Servers are shut down, companies go under, and we have literally no guarantees that the games we buy now will still work in five years.

Just think about it.


...

Breaking news! Those two guys...

Well, it's not really news, is it? Zampella & West have formed a new company. Yes, with some help from EA. Anybody surprised? No? OK.

Nothing about this is surprising. We knew the guys actually making the Modern Warfare games would leave the rotting carcass of Infinity Ward as soon as possible, and of course that has already started.

Well, maybe I'm too harsh. Infinity Ward it's not dead yet after all. They are pumping out those expensive new maps! Well, not really new, but you know. They may become another Treyarch. But then Activision will realize that they can't afford to have the same developer twice, so they will close down one of them.

Come on! It's not easy to have talented people on your team. And if you have them, you don't force them away. See what happened to now-in-name-only Guns'n Roses. Did Axl Rose really think that he was going to replace Slash and the other guys just like that?

...


UPDATE: From now on, I hope we can forget about this whole mess until Respawn releases their first game (or maybe if there's something really big happening). If you are really interested, I recommend you to follow Kotaku's great coverage.

What?! Al Lowe's had a heart attack

Hi SuperViv,

A couple of months ago, I joined Al Lowe's mailing list. Have you ever heard of him? He was the guy who created those old Leisure Suit Larry games. Now he's kind of retired, so he just sends a couple of free jokes to people everyday. But today I got this mail, and it was no joke:

I apologize for today's jokes being so late, but I have a good excuse: Tuesday afternoon I had a heart attack--but now, 24 hours later, I'm doing fine. Fortunately, I called 911 immediately, the paramedics got to my house within 5 minutes, got me to the hospital quickly, and within an hour, I was in the operating room having a stent installed. As soon as it was in, I felt better. By last night I felt pretty good, all things considered. I expect to go home tomorrow. My doctor says it's because I didn't wait to get help. So, take some friendly advice: if something "feels wrong," don't hesitate. Call for help!

I'm relieved that he's fine. You know, he is a really influential figure in videogames, even if he doesn't make them anymore (partly because the dumb suits holding the rights for the Larry series don't want to hire him), and it would be sad to see him go. Also, my father died after a heart attack, and I'm getting fatter everyday, so I guess I'll have my own heart attack in ten or fifteen years. So never forget this: try to stay healty, and know your emergency numbers just in case!

Later,

- Danda

Switch - Cambio

We are switching this blog to English-only entries, and we'll be experimenting with the epistolary style. Don't be shocked if new entries look like private emails... because they are!

We are just starting, and we'll appreciate your feedback to find our way. Thank you.

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Vamos a empezar a publicar entradas escritas sólo en inglés, y experimentaremos con el formato epistolar. No os asustéis si los nuevos posts parecen emails personales... ¡porque lo son!

Este blog acaba de nacer, así que agradeceremos vuestras opiniones para saber por dónde tirar. Gracias.

Welcome - Bienvenidos

ENGLISH: This blog intends to represent a segment of "hardcore gamers" who have managed to have a life beyond their PC or console, and no longer have the time to spend a lot of hours playing videogames. They enjoy games as a pastime, but not as a full-time occupation (like we did when we were kids), though they spent enough hours doing it to distinguish between a good game or a piece of computerized crap.

We'll try to use a personal voice here. At times this will be a "shopping guide" telling you if it's worth to buy that game or not, which is what interests most of you when you look some game up on the internet, but we'll try to say more things that may be interesting and in some cases useful to the reader/player.

Why are we starting this as a bilingual blog? Well, I'm Spanish, but the whole concept of a "casual core gamer" was created by the German translator Veronika Hoffmann. We talk to each other in English, and I would like to share this blog with her, if she doesn't consider it a waste of time.

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SPANISH: Este blog pretende representar a un segmento de jugadores "de nucleo duro" que ya tienen vida propia más allá de la pantalla de su PC o consola y no tienen tiempo para entregarse a fondo a un videojuego, como sí resultaba habitual cuando éramos más jóvenes. Los que tienen la práctica de jugar a videojuegos como distracción pero no como profesión, y aún así llevan mucho tiempo en esto y saben distinguir entre un juego bueno y otro malo.

Hablaremos aquí desde una óptica personal. Quizás a veces nos vayamos por el típico camino de hacer una "guía de compras", que es para lo que la gente busca informarse sobre un videojuego, pero esperemos que algo de lo que digamos pueda ser provechoso para el lector o jugador.

La decisión de intentar hacer un blog bilingüe, aunque sea algo totalmente insostenible a largo plazo, se debe a que el concepto de jugador "casual core" nace de la traductora alemana Veronika Hoffmann, y me comunico con ella en inglés. Deseo compartir con ella este blog, si ella no lo considera una pérdida de tiempo.