Humble Bundle w/o the Bundle

The Humble Bundle people have a new thing starting today called the Humble Weekly Sale. Apparently one game will be for sale each week and they retain the whole ‘pay what you want’ thing. They have however created a tiered system where paying more will get you more. Interesting, though I do wonder how this will affect future bundles. We’d certainly be less likely to go after a bundle if we already have an included title, or wait for a certain title to show up. Guess we’ll see what happens.  For it’s debut the lucky game is Bastion.

Paying at least $1 will get you a Steam key, game works on Mac, Windows and Linux. Paying more than the average (currently $2.68) opens up a bonuses including the soundtrack, a digital art pack, sheet music and ringtones. Perhaps for the first time there’s also physical bonuses if you cough up $25, including a bandana, a soundtrack CD and 2 postcards, this tier includes free shipping on the bonus items.

Also while I don’t see it specifically advertised, I believe you can still pay 0.01, one freakin’ penny, to get the game directly from Humble with no Steam key.

I don’t have Bastion, apparently having missed it in various bundles t’s been in. It’s currently $15 on Steam, with the soundtrack an extra $10. I love soundtracks and feel they should be included in everything. How hard is it to stick a few MP3s in a zip file anyway?

I think I’m gonna pop on this. Though I must say I often feel embarrassed on behalf of my fellow gamers when I forums filled with people paying $1. Do they expect the developer to turn a profit on that and remain in business? I’m leaning towards paying $7. Even that seems low from a standpoint of the developer turning a profit. We’re such entilted blowhards. On the other hand it’s more than I paid for Mass Effect during a Steam sale. If an indie title really needs to make more than Mass Effect to stay afloat, that shit ain’t my fault.

SimCity

So the gaming community has decided the SimCity fiasco is just yet another example of how EA is The Devil and how Always on DRM is a demonic entity. And people say gamers never over react.*

Full disclosure, I have not played the new SimCity so I don’t have first hand knowledge of how bad or overblown the situation actually is. I’ve always looked at the SimCity franchise and though ‘That looks cool. But… complicated…’. The streamlining (curious how a game I’m interested in is streamline, while a game I’m not interested in is dumbed down) of the latest SimCity has almost moved me to buy it. Almost. And no, it’s not because of all the horror stories, it’s simply because of finances and I can’t afford another new game right now.

However, let’s look at the problem and try to be rational. A heavily anticipated game is released and there’s so much interest it crashes servers… Is this really a surprise? Let’s take a deep breath and chill out for just a minute. On launch day everyone that got the game tried to log in and play, servers weren’t designed for this and the system broke. Sucks yes, but let’s be realistic here. Aside from the first week after release, there’s no way everybody who bought the game is going to be playing at the same time and it would be ludicrous for EA to devote resources to make servers that can cover everyone when after the initial wave hits numbers will balance out. EA in the last week has more than doubled it’s capacity, capacity it likely wont need next week.

When Star Wars The Old Republic was released they had 77 servers up and running to prevent this kind of launch day problems. A month later many of those were ghost towns. The game has since consolidated to eight servers. The quality of the game aside (I still say it’s better than most give credit, it just should have been a single player game – KOTOR3), they obviously didn’t need that huge capacity. Merging nearly 10 servers into 1 I’m sure damaged communities that had formed and caused many irritations. Notably I personally was forced to change my Legacy name, and out of 11 characters only 2 were able to retain their name. Due to unique names I simply could not find a name I wanted that was available. I ended up naming my Jedi Knight Arbitraryname just so I could log in. Haven’t played him since because that’s a stupid name, but apparently the only one not taken. Is this going to happen to Simcity a few months from now when EA doesn’t need all the servers they added and starts consolidating? Will people need to rename the towns they’ve created?

Does it suck not to be able to play something you just bought? Yes, yes it does. But people also need to not flip out. If you go see a highly anticipated movie on opening weekend, say Dark Knight or The Avengers, there’s probably going to be a line. Don’t bitch about the line. Suck it up. Or go next week.

As I said I haven’t bought Simcity, yet. I probably will at some point. Right now I’m trying to decide if I should go ahead and do it now to take advantage of the free game EA’s offered for the problems or hold off hoping for a sale. Origin doesn’t really seem to have good sales… but lacking any specific details I’m assuming EA’s free game is a choice between Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age 2 or Dead Space 2. All of which I have.

*Nobody says this, I lied

PlayStation 4 and the Media

So Sony made the big announcement that the next PlayStation will be called… PlayStation 4. They mentioned some specs (8gigs of RAM!! PS3 has 512MB), showed some trailers for some games, announced every developer in the world is on board (like there’s any chance they wouldn’t be).

They also seemed to concentrate a bit on social aspects which I really couldn’t care less about and cloud services which I’m leery about. The cloud service thing I’ll talk a bit more about later.

The gaming press in general to me almost seems pissed off more information was not handed out, they talk about real issues such as price and off the wall things like does the console have actual buttons or touchpads.

While I do agree it’s a bit of a letdown not to hear about price, we do need to understand Sony’s got approximately 9 months of announcements to plan for. They can’t tell us everything  or there’s nothing to talk about. Let me touch on a few of the odder questions I’ve seen floating around.

How much is it?
Agreed, it’d be nice to know. Sony is probably saving this announcement for E3, they may also be waiting to hear from Microsoft.

When does it launch?
Seriously? You need an exact date, right now? How strict is your job’s time off request system. Holiday 2013 to me is between Oct-Dec. Seems fair enough date range this far out.

Will the system use physical media?
I’ll file this one under the ‘duh’ category though it’s been mentioned at several site’s I’ve seen. I’ll assume it’s because Sony was touting it’s cloud services so much, but really… Did anyone expect PS4 to NOT have a drive? Eventually, but I think we’re still a long way off from streaming everything. Speeds and bandwidth caps just aren’t there yet. Besides, Sony learned that lesson with the PSPgo.

Were the trailers gameplay or cutscenes?
A bit of both, just like every other trailer that’s ever been made.

Will existing peripherals work?
Considering the changes in the controller (touchpad, move integration, built in headphone jack) do you really expect it to? Seems like a non-issue to me, though I suppose families might be irked to buy 3 new controllers again.

Maybe I’m a Sony fanboy and don’t realize it. I mean, I prefer my PS3 to my 360*, but I don’t actively hate the 360. I just don’t care for the controller and honestly, the green cases bug the hell out of me. Many of the authors of these articles I’m reading give the appearance to me, of bitching just to be bitching. Which is what I’m doing right now. I’ll shut up.

*Full disclosure: I actually uh… traded in my 360 to Gamestop last week. Seeing as it’d been collecting dust it seemed time. Paid for a StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm CE!

Graphics Aren’t Everything…

… but they are something.

On a whim I decided to install Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 a whirl. I’ve never beatin’ the game but I have fond memories of it’s outstanding level design for the levels I did get to. My playthrough oddly enough usually stopped once I gained more than one Force Power as the Force interface sucked.

Anyway, I went into this knowing that the soundtrack wouldn’t be there. There’s an weird thing were originally the music played right off the disc in a CD format not MP3 and Steam released ‘as is’. Sucks, but I get that it’s an older game and these things happen.

Also, I expected a certain amount of fiddling to get the game running smoothly. Had to download a hack DLL file to prevent the game from looking like an acid trip (Maybe a mistake..?). Once that was done though, I was ready to jump back into one of my favorite games from the olden games… ACK my eyes!

In these days when a lowly marine is rocking 100k polygons in Starcraft 2, Jedi Knight’s characters seem to be sporting… 30? Jarring to say the least.

I really don’t consider myself a graphics snob (Is that the right term?). To me my mind seems to be stuck in Playstation 2 mode. Most any current gen game will leave me in awe. Baldur’s Gate is still playable for me. And I really don’t get people knocking WoW for it’s ‘outdated graphics, they act as though the engine hasn’t been updated 4 separate times. Go hunt down a vanilla robe, then put something on from Pandaria, the texture differences are shocking.

Still, Jedi Knight was a shock I’m not sure I can overcome, and it saddens me.

Oh well, Crysis 3 comes out soon!

Pop Culture

This happens every once in awhile. ‘The Internet’ and perhaps even other assorted mass media will start talking about someone or something as though it’s  assumed I should know what the hell they’re talking about. It happened with Lady Gaga, it happened with Game of Thrones (that has since been rectified) it happened with Parks and Recreation. And now…

Who or what, is a Manti Te'o and why should I give a damn?

I Don’t Get It

Ryan Gosling. I don’t get the appeal. The internet seems to consider him some badass superstar hunk of sexy man beef and I… I just don’t get it.

I’m not gay but I can look at say… brad Pitt and say “Damn!” If I were, I totally would. Ryan Gosling… I don’t get it.

Drive, a movie on several best of 2011 list, I was bored. It was like Lost in Translation all over again. Best part of that movie? ScarJo in her undies, I seem to recall it was in the opening credits. Went downhill from there. Hrm, come to think of it though, ScarJo is overrated too.

Things that piss me off…

It pisses me off when games make me struggle to do something that should be easy. I’m looking at God of War right now. After slaughtering a hydra as the level 1 boss we’re then tasked with a feat of strength, forced to tap the ‘X’ button 50 times a second… to open a door. Any door.

Let’s assume that @!#$ing Kratos, is strong enough to open a GD door or break a barrel without making a major production out of it.