There really is no easy way to sugarcoat that fact. Harsh language but it truly is accurate. When people want to become journalists they have to go through a long hard road of freelancing before hopefully being picked up by a local newspaper then eventually they may go on to be on a major news network or paper. When people want to become a games journalist they want games for free. It's not hard to be picked up by any number of gaming review sites and they all promise free stuff but you all have to remember that 5/10 is a BAD score and anything below that HAS to come from an indie studio because they don't want to stop the flow of free stuff.
Just look at SpikeTV's VGA's. Sure Uncharted 2 is a fine game. Very enjoyable but game of the year? GAME OF THE YEAR??? How much exactly did Sony pay for that trophy? I weep. There is no surprise the gaming industry is not taken seriously, why would you when the experts ignore actual quality? Not one games journalist has any integrity. They forget that games cost MONEY and they get games for free that are poor but they haven't paid for them so they call them average. Look at Left 4 Dead, it's an average game. Enjoyable yes but I know a great many people who bought the game for the Xbox360 and were extremely dissapointed with it. Yet the Journalists heaped praise on it, giving award after award to it, not for a second caring that some kid saved all his money for a month to buy it on their recommendation.
I remember EDGE Magazine coming under fire for having a huge amount of games being scored 6/10. So EDGE decided to make 5/10 average and started with Deep Fear on the Sega Saturn. Deep Fear was of course the last Pal release on the Sega Saturn, a console EDGE had spent their entire print run saying was utter and complete cowpat. We all know EDGE were on the Sony Payroll and they just couldn't resist sending the Saturn off with a final kick in the teeth even though Deep Fear was actually far better than Resident Evil which they scored 9/10. When I was working for CEX a reviewer from EDGE magazine came in the store, we brought up the review and he started claiming that it was part of their re-format that made 5/10 average and that Deep Fear was an average game. Oh how we hurled abuse at the slimy little shite who was only in there I might add to sell all the free stuff he was given.
I don't review games for a living, thank god I don't as the stream of freh would quickly dry up. But if someone asks me if a game is good or not I will tell them its shit or its worth a look. Why is that? Because I paid REAL MONEY for the game. As soon as someone becomes a games journalist they forget about money because everything they get is free. Suddenly crap becomes niche, average becomes worth buying and good becomes GAME OF THE FUCKING YEAR.
If you want a review of a game then ask someone you know. All these shits that call themselves journalists will lie to your face while company x stuffs their pockets with free shit. Games journalism is a joke, never forget that.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
The 2009 Delixe awards
Or the Lixie's for short. There will be a bad awards later with more Bobby, but no Bobby this time this is the best of the best of 2009 IN MY OPINION!! I cant stress that enough. These are the games I most enjoyed in 2009 and you might totally disagree with and thats your right and I encourage you to do that. We are after all a democracy. Unless you live in Ireland. You might absolutely hate what I am about to say but with all due respect stick it. There is one voter and thats me so sit back and enjoy my picks of 2009.
First Person Shooter
The winner here actually features more sneaking than shooting but never the less it did the best job of putting me in a role. Absolutely lovely graphics and a great soundtrack, not to mention featuring his almighty surlyness himself Mr Vin Diesel. Yes the winner of the Lixie for First Person Game of the Year is The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.
For 29.99 you got two games. Assault on Dark Athena and the prequel Escape from Butcher Bay Enhanced which was amazing value for money in these days of Modern Warfare 2. A First Person Game needs to tax both your brain and your trigger fingers and in this respect Riddick was a triumph. There were factors against the game. Like Atari's use of TAGES DRM and limited activations but the game won through in the end. Great story, beautiful visuals, quality voice acting whats not to love? If you don't own Riddick then you really should, it's one of the best games in recent years and firmly my choice for an award.
Runners up:
Modern Warfare 2: Only missed out thanks to Steamworks, and a criminally short single player game.
Borderlands: Great visuals but sadly lacking outside co-op.
Left 4 Dead 2: You just cant win an award for an expansion pack.
Role Playing Game
A lot of you will accuse me of taking the easy option here but I don't really care. look at my face! "Bothered!". I fly my flag for Bioware and once again they have not let me down, no one makes an adventure game look and play like a big budget movie like they do. Role Playing Game of the year is Dragon Age: Origins.
Boasting an all-star voice cast (including Claudia Black <3), beautiful visuals and an interface that can be played like Knights of the Old Republic or Baldur's Gate Dragon Age: Origins proves that Bioware are the masters of the Role Playing Game. The beauty of every Bioware game is that they make you feel like you are the star of your own movie. Some scenes in Dragon Age are up there with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. But most of all its the characters you grow to love. Bioware invest so much in them, they all have a unique story to tell. Something many TV and Movie writers would be well to take note of. Dragon Age: Origins will swallow a good week of your life and you will love every minute of it.
Runner up:
The Witcher: Truly amazing game and would have been number one if not for Dragon Age.
Stategy Game
Ah possibly my favourite genre. There is a fine line between fun and work in strategy games. The Europa Universalis games for example were too much like work for me, all those maps and lines... eugh. One game got everything right with the strategy and the fun and that game was Empire: Total War.
I was always a fan of the TV series Sharpe and Empire brings it to life. There is a massively deep hole of strategy and resource management to fall into here but it is balanced with a glorious battlefield game. Total War was always known for its huge body count and Empire does not disapoint, in fact there is an achievement for 1 million kills. The strategy is there but you don't really look for it. All that matters is there is you and an enemy and 10,000 men to send into their deaths. I defy anyone to not like having thousands of men at their command and most importantly the graphics are beautiful. The downside is you will need a good PC to run this game and console players can just forget it. Empire: Total War I salute you for being uncompromising. You are a PC game and you love it, just like Crysis before you.
Runners up:
Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment: You cant win with an expansion pack. Rules is rules.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2: Poor single player and boring multi ruin a great game.
Red Alert 3: Uprising: Perfect update to a perfect game but missing any multiplayer.
Fighting Game
There was only ever going to be one winner here. Capcom perfected 1 on 1 fighting back in 1991 and people still to this day try and emulate it. They try and fail because there will always be Street Fighter. No fighting game ever not Mortal Kombat, not Tekken and not Soul Calibur can boast the characters that Street Fighter can. Even someone who has never played Street Fighter will know who Ryu and Ken are. Street Fighter is a finely balanced masterpiece and Street Fighter IV is a natural evolution.
The newbs love it, the pro's love it and that makes it the perfect fighting game in my book. Next years sees the release of Super Street Fighter IV and you bet I will be first in line. Hell they could release Super Street Fighter IV Turbo and I will be queuing for that as well. Keep it coming Capcom!
Runner up:
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger: The creators of Guilty Gear give Capcom a damn fine run for their money.
Marvel Vs Capcom 2: All time classic now on XBLA but not improved.
Racing Game
The PC has been bereft of decent racers while the consoles have enjoyed teasers of GT5 and Xbox360 owners have had Forza. Luckily or unluckily for Black Box who were closed down by EA (One too many shit games!), EA created a new studio for driving games and Need For Speed: Shift was born. Shift is everything the NFS games should have been. Great cars, superb graphics and no bloody EA TRAX music. Most importantly the game is a real drivers game for once. There is power sliding but only in drift events, at other times you are forced on the racing line. This is SRS BSNS!
Truly magnificent return to form for a franchise that was being greeted like a turd in a pram. Say what you like about Shift, I like it and its the best racing game this year.
Runner up:
Race On: If simulation is your thing then you cant beat this. Expect to spin out a lot.
Game of the Year
So, so many choices. All the winners before could stake a claim to game of the year. However there is one game that was so ball grabbingly good that it had to win. A small studio in England managed to do what dozens of huge budget studios failed to do. They made a decent Super Hero game. Step forward Rocksteady and the truly astonishingly good Batman: Arkahm Asylum.
Never before has any studio ever paid that much attention to the licence. Never before have they perfectly cast the characters just how the fans know them (Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as Joker). This is not a game, it is a love letter to Batman and DC Comics. Rocksteady treated everything with the utmost care and made sure that nothing would be questioned by the fans. Even bringing back Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn when WB had dumped her long ago because in the fans eyes she IS Harley Quinn. I wish all the best to Rocksteady, I really hope they have a long, long future ahead of them as we are all sick and tired of lazy licence ports these days. Lets hope Rocksteady have Superman and Green Lantern on the way. You win one Internet Rocksteady.
Developer of the Year
Not hard to guess. Rocksteady. It's a long time since the UK has been anything on the Games atlas. Infogrammes got revenge for the battle of Trafalgar by systematically destroying the UK games industry and it has taken decades to recover. Yet here we are with a UK developer making game of the year.Who knows, this might actually be a boom again in the UK gaming industry and we may yet see games like Dungeon Keeper and X-Com return. Until that day, Rocksteady I salute you! Keep flying the flag.
Publisher of the Year
Again this was not hard. Here we are looking for a Publisher who puts their customers first above all else, even profit! That award can only go to EA. EA in the past have been a massive ugly organisim that has swallowed whole studios just to own IP's. Somewhere along the line EA absorbed some of their niceness. It's changed EA and now EA say things like "People using Torrents are potential customers" and "Our customers do not like DRM so we are investing in Downloadable content to make people want to buy the game". Gaa? EA? Yes indeed. In fact EA have said they have one target in their sights and that is Activision and they need us to help them take Activision down. Thats a battle cry and I am answering the call! EA take my award!
First Person Shooter
The winner here actually features more sneaking than shooting but never the less it did the best job of putting me in a role. Absolutely lovely graphics and a great soundtrack, not to mention featuring his almighty surlyness himself Mr Vin Diesel. Yes the winner of the Lixie for First Person Game of the Year is The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.
For 29.99 you got two games. Assault on Dark Athena and the prequel Escape from Butcher Bay Enhanced which was amazing value for money in these days of Modern Warfare 2. A First Person Game needs to tax both your brain and your trigger fingers and in this respect Riddick was a triumph. There were factors against the game. Like Atari's use of TAGES DRM and limited activations but the game won through in the end. Great story, beautiful visuals, quality voice acting whats not to love? If you don't own Riddick then you really should, it's one of the best games in recent years and firmly my choice for an award.
Runners up:
Modern Warfare 2: Only missed out thanks to Steamworks, and a criminally short single player game.
Borderlands: Great visuals but sadly lacking outside co-op.
Left 4 Dead 2: You just cant win an award for an expansion pack.
Role Playing Game
A lot of you will accuse me of taking the easy option here but I don't really care. look at my face! "Bothered!". I fly my flag for Bioware and once again they have not let me down, no one makes an adventure game look and play like a big budget movie like they do. Role Playing Game of the year is Dragon Age: Origins.
Boasting an all-star voice cast (including Claudia Black <3), beautiful visuals and an interface that can be played like Knights of the Old Republic or Baldur's Gate Dragon Age: Origins proves that Bioware are the masters of the Role Playing Game. The beauty of every Bioware game is that they make you feel like you are the star of your own movie. Some scenes in Dragon Age are up there with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. But most of all its the characters you grow to love. Bioware invest so much in them, they all have a unique story to tell. Something many TV and Movie writers would be well to take note of. Dragon Age: Origins will swallow a good week of your life and you will love every minute of it.
Runner up:
The Witcher: Truly amazing game and would have been number one if not for Dragon Age.
Stategy Game
Ah possibly my favourite genre. There is a fine line between fun and work in strategy games. The Europa Universalis games for example were too much like work for me, all those maps and lines... eugh. One game got everything right with the strategy and the fun and that game was Empire: Total War.
I was always a fan of the TV series Sharpe and Empire brings it to life. There is a massively deep hole of strategy and resource management to fall into here but it is balanced with a glorious battlefield game. Total War was always known for its huge body count and Empire does not disapoint, in fact there is an achievement for 1 million kills. The strategy is there but you don't really look for it. All that matters is there is you and an enemy and 10,000 men to send into their deaths. I defy anyone to not like having thousands of men at their command and most importantly the graphics are beautiful. The downside is you will need a good PC to run this game and console players can just forget it. Empire: Total War I salute you for being uncompromising. You are a PC game and you love it, just like Crysis before you.
Runners up:
Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment: You cant win with an expansion pack. Rules is rules.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2: Poor single player and boring multi ruin a great game.
Red Alert 3: Uprising: Perfect update to a perfect game but missing any multiplayer.
Fighting Game
There was only ever going to be one winner here. Capcom perfected 1 on 1 fighting back in 1991 and people still to this day try and emulate it. They try and fail because there will always be Street Fighter. No fighting game ever not Mortal Kombat, not Tekken and not Soul Calibur can boast the characters that Street Fighter can. Even someone who has never played Street Fighter will know who Ryu and Ken are. Street Fighter is a finely balanced masterpiece and Street Fighter IV is a natural evolution.
The newbs love it, the pro's love it and that makes it the perfect fighting game in my book. Next years sees the release of Super Street Fighter IV and you bet I will be first in line. Hell they could release Super Street Fighter IV Turbo and I will be queuing for that as well. Keep it coming Capcom!
Runner up:
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger: The creators of Guilty Gear give Capcom a damn fine run for their money.
Marvel Vs Capcom 2: All time classic now on XBLA but not improved.
Racing Game
The PC has been bereft of decent racers while the consoles have enjoyed teasers of GT5 and Xbox360 owners have had Forza. Luckily or unluckily for Black Box who were closed down by EA (One too many shit games!), EA created a new studio for driving games and Need For Speed: Shift was born. Shift is everything the NFS games should have been. Great cars, superb graphics and no bloody EA TRAX music. Most importantly the game is a real drivers game for once. There is power sliding but only in drift events, at other times you are forced on the racing line. This is SRS BSNS!
Truly magnificent return to form for a franchise that was being greeted like a turd in a pram. Say what you like about Shift, I like it and its the best racing game this year.
Runner up:
Race On: If simulation is your thing then you cant beat this. Expect to spin out a lot.
Game of the Year
So, so many choices. All the winners before could stake a claim to game of the year. However there is one game that was so ball grabbingly good that it had to win. A small studio in England managed to do what dozens of huge budget studios failed to do. They made a decent Super Hero game. Step forward Rocksteady and the truly astonishingly good Batman: Arkahm Asylum.
Never before has any studio ever paid that much attention to the licence. Never before have they perfectly cast the characters just how the fans know them (Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as Joker). This is not a game, it is a love letter to Batman and DC Comics. Rocksteady treated everything with the utmost care and made sure that nothing would be questioned by the fans. Even bringing back Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn when WB had dumped her long ago because in the fans eyes she IS Harley Quinn. I wish all the best to Rocksteady, I really hope they have a long, long future ahead of them as we are all sick and tired of lazy licence ports these days. Lets hope Rocksteady have Superman and Green Lantern on the way. You win one Internet Rocksteady.
Developer of the Year
Not hard to guess. Rocksteady. It's a long time since the UK has been anything on the Games atlas. Infogrammes got revenge for the battle of Trafalgar by systematically destroying the UK games industry and it has taken decades to recover. Yet here we are with a UK developer making game of the year.Who knows, this might actually be a boom again in the UK gaming industry and we may yet see games like Dungeon Keeper and X-Com return. Until that day, Rocksteady I salute you! Keep flying the flag.
Publisher of the Year
Again this was not hard. Here we are looking for a Publisher who puts their customers first above all else, even profit! That award can only go to EA. EA in the past have been a massive ugly organisim that has swallowed whole studios just to own IP's. Somewhere along the line EA absorbed some of their niceness. It's changed EA and now EA say things like "People using Torrents are potential customers" and "Our customers do not like DRM so we are investing in Downloadable content to make people want to buy the game". Gaa? EA? Yes indeed. In fact EA have said they have one target in their sights and that is Activision and they need us to help them take Activision down. Thats a battle cry and I am answering the call! EA take my award!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Greedy Bastards
In a recent interview Gabe Newell of Valve noted that game sales increased by up to 200% during Steam sales. It's not rocket science is it really? You lower the cost of a product and therefore make it more affordable to the masses and increase your sales and increase overall revenue as long as you cover the overheads of production. Thats pretty much retail 101 there. Major Supermarkets at the moment are complaining about lower revenue due to the economic recession and yet low cost brands like Lidl and Aldi are booming. Why? Because Lidl and Aldi buy cheap and sell cheap and at times like these people can do without the occasional premium brand label. The games market is no exception to the economic downturn and all the big companies are laying off staff left, right and center hoping to cut operating costs. Yet the prices are still high, why is that? The simple answer is that retail economics do not factor into publisher thinking. As far as Activision are concerned Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a product thats worth €59.99 and €59.99 is going to be the price they want to charge for it.
Yes we are back to our old friend Bobby Kotick again but in this respect he is not alone, almost all games publishers are guilty of inflating the prices of games and most importantly maintaining those high costs. Remember that most publishers still see their market as being 14 - 18 and therefore it will be the parents that purchase games. With this reasoning they assume that a middle income family will more than be able to afford to buy little Timmy the latest games every month. The reason I mention Bobby again is because he has taken this a step further by raising the costs further and further attempting to gouge money with games like Guitar Hero and the endless amount of peripherals people are required to buy let alone the downloadable music tracks.
Piracy is ALWAYS thrown up as the chief reason why prices are so high. The poor publisher has to protect their investment by covering the costs of lost sales and by investing in digital rights management systems to ensure their games are not pirated. But this is where the argument falls apart. Valve say that sales of games hit the roof when the costs are lowered. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that some of those sales have gone to people who have pirated the game in the past. Normally you sell 100 units but in a sale you sell 2000, so where did those additional sales come from if not sales you would not normally have? I put it to the publishers that people WANT to buy their games, they have downloaded them illegally because they cannot afford the price you are charging currently but when the price is lowered they do. I am not saying that games should be at a constant sale level as that would make little sense financially however it does say that between the sale price of €9.99 and the full price of €49.99 there has to be a happy medium where customers and publishers can meet.
Publishers generally base their price on a profit forecast. For example EA launched Need For Speed: Shift for €49.99. They probably assume they will sell around 800,000 copies of the game at that price based on the brand and out of that final figure you remove development, advertisement and publishing costs and EA arrived at a figure that would return a healthy profit. However I would like to know what would happen if EA factored in sales of 2 million copies at €29.99? Using my guestimate of EA's figures you arrive at just shy of €40 million, by using the cheaper better selling calculation you come to just shy of €60 million. Next you can further increase profit by removing SecuROM copy protection which is always cracked hours after release anyway. Some people are put off by limited activations and invasive DRM, not to mention disc checks which Laptop owners especially hate. Valve have already proved that if you reduce prices you increase sales and by extension lower piracy so why do publishers insist on setting the price extremely high and assume there will be low numbers of sales? Activision said Modern Warfare 2 was the best selling PC game of all time, but how much higher would those figures have been if the price was half what Activision were charging?
Publisher greed is not only hurting new sales but also sales of classic titles. Many games are now available from services such as Steam and GOG which have been available for decades and thus have no further development or publishing costs and yet you see games like the original Call of Duty and Vampire the Masquerade retailing on Steam for €19.99 and on GOG you find truly old games like Heroes of Might and Magic for €9.99. This makes utterly no sense to me. Surely any of these games selling now is pure profit? If the Call of Duty Warchest was just €19.99 i'm sure it would sell bucketloads and yet no, Activision are happy to sit on the games as they don't sell and just get older. Ubisoft are an excellent example of this warped thinking. Up until a few years ago Heroes of Might and Magic languished in what was known as Abandonware, and dozens of sites all offered the game as a free download and Ubisoft were not interested as there was no profit to be made. Then Good Old Games was launched and they told Ubisoft they could update the game to run on Windows Vista and there is a ready market waiting to buy the game even after all these years. Ubisoft agreed and and asked GOG to charge $9.99 for it. Think about that for a second. Ubisoft were earning no money at all from this title and were happy to ignore the game being distributed freely as they believed there was no money to be made from it. Step forward GOG and now Ubisoft wants to charge the same amount for an old DOS game that a lot of modern games do. That there is greed pure and simple. Imagine how many copies Ubisoft would sell if they allowed GOG to drop the price to the more reasonable $5.99? It's all profit! Yet Ubisoft wants the maximum possible profit and once again we come back to Ubisoft thinking low sales + high price.
There is a lot of money to be made with video games these days but the sad fact is that there is far more money to be made if publishers started treating their customers with a little respect and became far more competitive than they are. 2010 is rapidly approaching and I have the horrible feeling that the trend started with Activision will continue and we may see the first €69.99 game at retail. At the same time I can see more development studios closing to maximize profits and figures for piracy increasing. What would be nice is if 2010 was remembered as the year the retail prices dropped to €29.99, publishers recorded record profits and more and more development studios were opened to take advantage of the new boom. I fear we are heading for the former and its not a good destination for a games lover.
Yes we are back to our old friend Bobby Kotick again but in this respect he is not alone, almost all games publishers are guilty of inflating the prices of games and most importantly maintaining those high costs. Remember that most publishers still see their market as being 14 - 18 and therefore it will be the parents that purchase games. With this reasoning they assume that a middle income family will more than be able to afford to buy little Timmy the latest games every month. The reason I mention Bobby again is because he has taken this a step further by raising the costs further and further attempting to gouge money with games like Guitar Hero and the endless amount of peripherals people are required to buy let alone the downloadable music tracks.
Piracy is ALWAYS thrown up as the chief reason why prices are so high. The poor publisher has to protect their investment by covering the costs of lost sales and by investing in digital rights management systems to ensure their games are not pirated. But this is where the argument falls apart. Valve say that sales of games hit the roof when the costs are lowered. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that some of those sales have gone to people who have pirated the game in the past. Normally you sell 100 units but in a sale you sell 2000, so where did those additional sales come from if not sales you would not normally have? I put it to the publishers that people WANT to buy their games, they have downloaded them illegally because they cannot afford the price you are charging currently but when the price is lowered they do. I am not saying that games should be at a constant sale level as that would make little sense financially however it does say that between the sale price of €9.99 and the full price of €49.99 there has to be a happy medium where customers and publishers can meet.
Publishers generally base their price on a profit forecast. For example EA launched Need For Speed: Shift for €49.99. They probably assume they will sell around 800,000 copies of the game at that price based on the brand and out of that final figure you remove development, advertisement and publishing costs and EA arrived at a figure that would return a healthy profit. However I would like to know what would happen if EA factored in sales of 2 million copies at €29.99? Using my guestimate of EA's figures you arrive at just shy of €40 million, by using the cheaper better selling calculation you come to just shy of €60 million. Next you can further increase profit by removing SecuROM copy protection which is always cracked hours after release anyway. Some people are put off by limited activations and invasive DRM, not to mention disc checks which Laptop owners especially hate. Valve have already proved that if you reduce prices you increase sales and by extension lower piracy so why do publishers insist on setting the price extremely high and assume there will be low numbers of sales? Activision said Modern Warfare 2 was the best selling PC game of all time, but how much higher would those figures have been if the price was half what Activision were charging?
Publisher greed is not only hurting new sales but also sales of classic titles. Many games are now available from services such as Steam and GOG which have been available for decades and thus have no further development or publishing costs and yet you see games like the original Call of Duty and Vampire the Masquerade retailing on Steam for €19.99 and on GOG you find truly old games like Heroes of Might and Magic for €9.99. This makes utterly no sense to me. Surely any of these games selling now is pure profit? If the Call of Duty Warchest was just €19.99 i'm sure it would sell bucketloads and yet no, Activision are happy to sit on the games as they don't sell and just get older. Ubisoft are an excellent example of this warped thinking. Up until a few years ago Heroes of Might and Magic languished in what was known as Abandonware, and dozens of sites all offered the game as a free download and Ubisoft were not interested as there was no profit to be made. Then Good Old Games was launched and they told Ubisoft they could update the game to run on Windows Vista and there is a ready market waiting to buy the game even after all these years. Ubisoft agreed and and asked GOG to charge $9.99 for it. Think about that for a second. Ubisoft were earning no money at all from this title and were happy to ignore the game being distributed freely as they believed there was no money to be made from it. Step forward GOG and now Ubisoft wants to charge the same amount for an old DOS game that a lot of modern games do. That there is greed pure and simple. Imagine how many copies Ubisoft would sell if they allowed GOG to drop the price to the more reasonable $5.99? It's all profit! Yet Ubisoft wants the maximum possible profit and once again we come back to Ubisoft thinking low sales + high price.
There is a lot of money to be made with video games these days but the sad fact is that there is far more money to be made if publishers started treating their customers with a little respect and became far more competitive than they are. 2010 is rapidly approaching and I have the horrible feeling that the trend started with Activision will continue and we may see the first €69.99 game at retail. At the same time I can see more development studios closing to maximize profits and figures for piracy increasing. What would be nice is if 2010 was remembered as the year the retail prices dropped to €29.99, publishers recorded record profits and more and more development studios were opened to take advantage of the new boom. I fear we are heading for the former and its not a good destination for a games lover.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The best game intros.
This will be very Japan biased but thats because most Japanese publishers come from arcade backrounds and thus know the importance of an attract movie. 10 videos I hope you will agree are absolutely fantastic. This is in no way a top whatever, there are other games out there and other opinions. This is mine.
1. Namco X Capcom
2. Street Fighter IV
1. Namco X Capcom
2. Street Fighter IV
3. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
4. Sonic Unleashed
5. Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
6. Last Bronx
8. Warhammer: Online
9. Gran Turismo 4
10. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Companies that are killing PC gaming
Atari, Ubisoft and Activision. Three of the biggest software publishers in the business and yet they are actually destroying the very market they live in. Surely that makes no sense you say but it's true. Each of these companies has tried to maximise profits while absolutely screwing their own customers. Seriously you do not get anywhere by fucking the very people you expect money from, unless you are a prostitute. Lets look at the sins shall we?
Again it's France... it's almost like the French just hate everyone on earth. But Ubisoft made Assassins Creed and Far Cry, they are awsome you say? Yeah... how many games on your Xbox360 or PS3 actually damage your DVD Drive? None? Ok well A lot of Ubisoft games are bundled at no extra cost with Starforce DRM. Starforce uses a system that spins your drive at alternate speeds to function. This absolutely fucks up any optical drive. Starforce and Ubisoft claim this is not true yet the net is flooded with reports of it. Ubisoft have now dropped Starforce with no explanation (avoiding potential lawsuits). Ubisoft have however jumped into bed with SecruROM as this gives them regional restrictions AND limited activations that Atari enjoy, Ubisoft like this, they like it a lot. Go onto Impulse and try to buy an Ubisoft game, oh you cant because Ubisoft don't want to sell that cheap in Europe. Even if you live in the US and buy from Impulse you still get TAGES downloaded with the game. Hang on a minute... Disc based DRM downloaded with a digital game? Oh yes because TAGES gives them.... yes you guessed limited activations. I actually wish EA would buy Ubisoft. EA treat their customers like customers, unlike Ubisoft who treat them like thieves.
Where do I even start with Atari? For one thing they are not Atari they are the French publisher Infogrammes. A couple of years ago Atari liquidated and Infogrammes bought the name then changed their name to Atari. To be honest good riddance to bad rubbish as Atari were a pox on gaming. However it still irks me to see the Atari logo when its Infogrammes. Infogrammes were always an arrogant company and with the new logo they decided to become even more arrogant to fit the image of Atari. Atari view all PC gamers as a cancerous pollip on their anus. They absolutely LOVE DRM, if they could they would even pump more into their games. This came to a head with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. You get three installs and no more, once all used up you have to buy another copy of the game. How many times have you installed Windows 7 in the Beta? Or did you just upgrade from XP or Vista to 7? Tough shit Atari call that a new computer and you have no game, buy another. Even EA give people a de-authorisation tool but not Atari, no they think you should just buy another copy as that increases their revenue.Atari also love regional restrictions, oh they love to sell games only in one place and flip the finger to everyone else. Just this weekend Steam were doing a deal on Ghostbusters, it was advertised all over their site but anyone not in the US was having trouble buying it. Atari soon clamped down on that. Atari only want to sell online in the US, those shitty Europeans can go and find a retail copy at full price with TAGES and 3 activations. Atari are at the moment borderline on going bankrupt and are blaming piracy for everything. How about you dickless morons realize you shat in your own well and now the water is poor? If you didn't treat your customers like shit then you might still have customers.
Again it's France... it's almost like the French just hate everyone on earth. But Ubisoft made Assassins Creed and Far Cry, they are awsome you say? Yeah... how many games on your Xbox360 or PS3 actually damage your DVD Drive? None? Ok well A lot of Ubisoft games are bundled at no extra cost with Starforce DRM. Starforce uses a system that spins your drive at alternate speeds to function. This absolutely fucks up any optical drive. Starforce and Ubisoft claim this is not true yet the net is flooded with reports of it. Ubisoft have now dropped Starforce with no explanation (avoiding potential lawsuits). Ubisoft have however jumped into bed with SecruROM as this gives them regional restrictions AND limited activations that Atari enjoy, Ubisoft like this, they like it a lot. Go onto Impulse and try to buy an Ubisoft game, oh you cant because Ubisoft don't want to sell that cheap in Europe. Even if you live in the US and buy from Impulse you still get TAGES downloaded with the game. Hang on a minute... Disc based DRM downloaded with a digital game? Oh yes because TAGES gives them.... yes you guessed limited activations. I actually wish EA would buy Ubisoft. EA treat their customers like customers, unlike Ubisoft who treat them like thieves.
OH HAI!
Do I really need to state a case here? Modern Warfare 2. We were promised by Infinity Ward it was NOT an Xbox360 port. Yet several players have posted pictures of the game trying to connect to Xbox Live!
Just how stupid does Bobby Kotick think PC users are? You make a game for the Xbox360 then poorly port it to the PC with Zero enhancements AND increase the price by €10 because you can? The good news with Activision is that they have put all their money into novelty games like Guitar Hero, DJ Hero etc and as we all know novelty's wear off. This is the company after all that cancelled Brutal Legend then when EA picked the game up they tried to get the game blocked from release. Activision are a nasty company with a horrible troll as their CEO. I wish nothing more than fire and Brimstone upon them all.
Games to watch in 2010
2009 has come and gone and it delivered delights like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Street Fighter 4. But all the big games became scared of the monolith that was Modern Warfare 2 and were pushed back to 2010. Here are a few of those games you really need to keep an eye on.
1. Deus Ex 3.
Deus Ex was a monument to gaming. It proved a game could be good as long as it had a decent story no matter how bad the game engine was. Warren Spector may have left the project but Eidos and their new Japanese masters SquareEnix seem very keen on re-launching this franchise. Deus Ex 2 was utter dog muck but SquareEnix are taking this project over to Japan for the full Final Fantasy CGI treatment. Some may worry about this but I choose not to. After all SquareEnix do know a thing or two about RPG's.
2. Bioshock 2.
The fans cried! No way could they make a proper sequel to System Shock! They were right, Bioshock was a different take on the same idea and it worked. It worked very well indeed. Bioshock 2 will do what a lot of fans wanted, put you in the shoes of a Big Daddy. Big Daddy prime you are and Rapture is yours to mould. Will you save the little sisters or will you fight Big Sister?
3. Mass Effect 2
When it was announced Bioware were working on Mass Effect for PC and Xbox the fans went mad. Oh it cant possibly be as good as it was supposed to be as it was dumbed down for consoles. Bioware do not know compromise. Mass Effect was better than all the three Star Wars prequels and more, Bioware proved they were master story tellers and the story continues with Mass Effect 2.
4. Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising.
The Trannids were nice but everyone who knows the Warhammer 40K universe knows Chaos is the ultimate bad boy and Chaos is back in a big way. Back by popular demand is Eliphas the Inheritor from Dark Crusade, arguably the only Chaos Lord with a brain. DOW2 has become stagnant and this should be a much needed shot to the arm. From what can be seen so far Relic have gone back to basics and lets hope they don't listen to too much QQ.
5. Star Trek Online.
I hate MMO's I really, really do. However Cryptic studios seem to 'get' Star Trek and the more I see of it the more I want to play it. Ignore the JJ Abrams reboot, this is the Star Trek we have been watching for years and they really have thought about the story. Klingons invading Romulan space? Very like All Good Things the last Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Cryptic have done their homework but time will tell if they make a game worth paying monthly for.
1. Deus Ex 3.
Deus Ex was a monument to gaming. It proved a game could be good as long as it had a decent story no matter how bad the game engine was. Warren Spector may have left the project but Eidos and their new Japanese masters SquareEnix seem very keen on re-launching this franchise. Deus Ex 2 was utter dog muck but SquareEnix are taking this project over to Japan for the full Final Fantasy CGI treatment. Some may worry about this but I choose not to. After all SquareEnix do know a thing or two about RPG's.
2. Bioshock 2.
The fans cried! No way could they make a proper sequel to System Shock! They were right, Bioshock was a different take on the same idea and it worked. It worked very well indeed. Bioshock 2 will do what a lot of fans wanted, put you in the shoes of a Big Daddy. Big Daddy prime you are and Rapture is yours to mould. Will you save the little sisters or will you fight Big Sister?
3. Mass Effect 2
When it was announced Bioware were working on Mass Effect for PC and Xbox the fans went mad. Oh it cant possibly be as good as it was supposed to be as it was dumbed down for consoles. Bioware do not know compromise. Mass Effect was better than all the three Star Wars prequels and more, Bioware proved they were master story tellers and the story continues with Mass Effect 2.
4. Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising.
The Trannids were nice but everyone who knows the Warhammer 40K universe knows Chaos is the ultimate bad boy and Chaos is back in a big way. Back by popular demand is Eliphas the Inheritor from Dark Crusade, arguably the only Chaos Lord with a brain. DOW2 has become stagnant and this should be a much needed shot to the arm. From what can be seen so far Relic have gone back to basics and lets hope they don't listen to too much QQ.
5. Star Trek Online.
I hate MMO's I really, really do. However Cryptic studios seem to 'get' Star Trek and the more I see of it the more I want to play it. Ignore the JJ Abrams reboot, this is the Star Trek we have been watching for years and they really have thought about the story. Klingons invading Romulan space? Very like All Good Things the last Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Cryptic have done their homework but time will tell if they make a game worth paying monthly for.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
The PC Mascot
Nintendo have Mario, Sony have Jak & Daxter, Xbox has Master Chief. What does the PC have? Well I admit no company ever puts Windows on its flagpole but here are 10 candidates for Mascot for the PC.
1. Max Payne (Max Payne, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Max Payne 3)
2. Serious Sam (Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, Serious Sam HD)
3. JC Denton (Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War)
4. Michael "Psycho" Sykes (Crysis, Crysis: Warhead)
5. Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project)
6. Kane (Command & Conquer, C&C: Tiberium Sun, C&C 3: Tiberium Wars, C&C 4)
7. Sarah Kerrigan (Starcraft, Starcraft 2)
8. Gabriel Angelos (Dawn of War, Dawn of War 2)
9. The Cast of Team Fortress 2 (Team Fortress 2)
10. Gordon Freeman (Half-Life, Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode One, HL2: Episode Two, HL2: Episode Three)
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