Category Archives: pc

Mass Effect? More Like Mass ACTIVATION Effect, Am I Right?

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on May 7, 2008 – 2:05 pm

Some portions of the Internet are ablaze today, as the news of how the protection schemes used to stop people from bootlegging Mass Effect and Spore on the PC will work has come out. Most of the reporting sites are tracing the news back to Derek French, a technical producer at BioWare, who posted the info on EA’s plans to use SecuROM in both releases.

Here’s what French had to say back on May 3:

“Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.

After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez’d and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn’t become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can’t contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.”

So not only will you need to be online to activate your copy of the game, you’ll also have be online at least once every ten days to prevent your copy from deactivating. Now, I’m sure most of you out there planning to play either game will probably be doing it on machines that are always connected to to the internet, so it’s probably not going to be a hassle for most players. But that doesn’t exactly make it right, either.

Personally, I’d feel a lot better about protection plans like this if they actually worked. But these days, that stuff doesn’t even seem to slow down the cadre of shady dudes looking to crack software and set it free for the bootleggin’ masses. So the pirates still win, and all we’re left with is a protection scheme that annoys legitimate users. Well… at least they aren’t using Starforce, right?

So I put it to you, the people out there actually playing PC games in 2008. You’re always complaining when consoles get games first, or bitching about how PC games are getting dumbed down for “the console kids.” But can you really blame developers for turning to consoles, when putting out a PC version isn’t much different from just releasing your game for free, and your effort to protect your investments with a protection scheme is met with forum posts about how dudes are going to boycott your game?

What would you do to reverse this? How much over-your-shoulder spying are you willing to put up with to stop pirates from torrenting the market for single-player PC games out of existence?

My solution: Everyone who purchases the game must submit a photo containing the person who purchased the game, one photo ID for said person, the receipt for the game, and a newspaper with today’s date on it. Every five days. Oh, wait, that’s right, I wanted you to try to make this easier. Never mind.

systems: pc games: ,

I’m Lookin’ for a Jawb

posted by Ryan Davis on April 21, 2008 – 12:53 pm

While most Hollywood stars wouldn’t think twice about signing off on a crappy movie tie-in game, Vin Diesel takes games seriously–perhaps more seriously than his films, seeing as his virtual performance in The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay was much more well-received than the movie upon which it was based. Now, Midway and Vin Diesel’s Tigon Studios are teaming up for Wheelman, a criminal mission-based driving game, and Midway gave the press a look at the game at its recent Las Vegas event.

Virtual Vin Diesel will play the part of Milo Burik, the titular Wheelman who appears to be your typically stoic, guttural, and tough-as-nails Vin Diesel character. Little specific detail about the story, though we know the game kicks off with an explosive escape from a bank robbery, and you’ll end up involved with some salty Romanian gangster. The game will take place in Barcelona, and while the city will be dotted with recognizable landmarks, the actual geography of the city will be different, ostensibly for the sake of playability. The structure of the game itself seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to Atari’s Driver series, though a nice sense of speed and some over-the-top physics already set it apart.

While Midway was happy to reference films like Ronin, The Bourne Identity, Bullitt, and Vanishing Point as inspirations for Wheelman, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Burnout during my time with the game, mostly because of the prominent vehicle melee system. Rather than just grinding enemy vehicles into walls or knocking them into oncoming traffic, though, you’ll use the right analog stick to violently slam your car into enemies. The movement of your car in the vehicle melee attacks is distractingly severe at the moment, but it seems like a pretty novel take on vehicular combat.

You will also be able to perform some vehicle super-moves, one of which will be the cyclone. When triggered, the cyclone will cause the action to slow down and your car to spin around, with the perspective dropping inside the car and your control switching to Milo’s gun hand. As you spin, targets will appear on nearby enemy vehicles that, if you can hit them, will disable the vehicles. While the bulk of the action in Wheelman will take place behind the wheel, you can also expect some on-foot action, which I’m told is based on the same tech used in John Woo’s Stranglehold.

Save for the plastic-looking character model that makes Milo Burik look more like a Vin Diesel action figure than the actual dude, Wheelman looks pretty good, and I see some good potential in stuff like the vehicle melee and super-moves. Wheelman is currently slated for release on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 this fall.


systems: pc, ps3, xbox 360 games:

Rebooting the Animus

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on April 14, 2008 – 3:41 pm

Well, I sat down this weekend with grand plans to play the heck out of Assassin’s Creed on the PC for the purposes of a review. It’s been awhile since I played either of the console versions, and the addition of four new mission types into this “Director’s Cut” release sounds like it can at least put a dent in the game’s repetitive nature, my one real knock against the previous releases.

Of course, I wouldn’t be writing this story if things had gone smoothly. On my PC, the game likes to just sort of forget to load up the next sequence. So, for example, the game begins with a tutorial that is constantly fading from one scene to the next as you transition from one lesson to the next. I kept getting to spots where the game should fade out, but it wouldn’t–leaving Altair stranded in cloudy not-The-Matrix land forever. After several stabs at getting through this, I finally managed to get into the main game, only to have the same thing happen immediately following the first cutscene featuring Altair’s master.

So, yeah. I give up. I’m not running super-fancy non-standard hardware, it’s all regular, brand-name stuff that is totally supported, according to the game’s minimum and recommended requirements. I went off on a driver hunt, trying three different video drivers, among other things. Still, no change.

In lieu of a full review, here are the things I gleaned from my repeated takes on the game’s first ten minutes, bolstered by some things I heard from our intern, Josh, who isn’t having any technical issues at all.

- The game runs in 16:9 at all times. So if you have a 4:3 or a 16:10 monitor, expect to see some letterboxing. None of the video options I saw appeared to make any difference in that department.

- I definitely prefer the Xbox 360 gamepad to the mouse and keyboard controls, though without engaging in any heavy combat, I can’t be sure the mouse doesn’t improve in high-stress situations.

- The materials provided with the game describe the four new “investigations,” but I don’t know that I’d call any of them actual investigating. Rooftop Race Challenges have you run from one informer to the another in a set amount of time. Archer Stealth Assassination Challenges make you clear a zone of archers without being seen. Merchant Stand Destruction Challenges force you to bust up a set number of merchant stands. Escort Challenges make you help an assassin get from one point to another. I don’t know, most of those sound like they fall more into the “collect a bunch of flags for no good reason” category, rather than pick-pocketing or actually, you know, investigating your target.

Perhaps we’ll see a patch that fixes my particular issues. Until then, I guess I’d recommend sticking to either console version, though the problems I’ve experienced might not actually happen on your PC.

systems: pc games:

If I Could Turn Back Time

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 25, 2008 – 10:47 am

You may or may not agree with what Jonathan Blow has to say about video games, their role as art, and their role in society. You know what? You may never have heard of Jonathan Blow at all. He’s a man that clearly takes games quite seriously, and you can find some compelling writing from him online. But all you really need to know for now is that he’s the man behind Braid, an upcoming release for Xbox Live Arcade and PC.

If you really want to strip it all down to its barest surface, Braid is an homage to Super Mario Bros. You jump on top of creatures to kill them, big plants pop in and out of pipes, there’s a castle with a flagpole at the end of the world, and so on. Of course, if that were all the game did, it wouldn’t be anything special. In fact, it’d probably be actionable. Braid’s big difference is that you have control over time itself. That lets you rewind your mistakes to prevent death, its first useful feature. But it only took a few minutes for me to realize that Braid isn’t primarily a platformer. It’s a puzzle game. You’re eased into the time controls, but each world makes changes to how things work. For one example, you’ll eventually encounter certain enemies, keys, doors, or other pieces of the world that are covered in sparkles. This denotes that they don’t move backwards when you rewind time. So you’ll need to account for that. From there, things get much trickier and very entertaining.

The game feels like it was at least partially inspired by all the tool-assisted speed run videos that are out there online, created by players using emulators and save states to rewind all of their mistakes and present a perfect run-through of classic console games. The game will have a speed runs option on its main menu, but it won’t be immediately available.

There’s also a story here, one that plays off of the gameplay’s concepts. Furthering the Nintendo homage, the lead character, named Tim, is on the hunt for a princess, and you’ll bend time as you attempt to find her. Along the way, you’ll collect puzzle pieces, which you can assemble into some story-related artwork.

Though that’s really all there is to Braid in a pure gameplay-and-story sense, I feel like I’m only scratching the surface. The unfinished PC release I played made an immediate impression, both because it’s well-made and because it tells its princess-seeking story in an interesting way. I won’t go on to ruin any of the puzzles or describe how the time mechanic is altered from world to world, because that seems like something you should see for yourself when the game is released later this spring.

Or, if you’re interested in seeing more, check out the game’s official site.


systems: pc, xbox 360 games:

Tom Clancy Sells His Name: What the heck are we supposed to call him now?

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 20, 2008 – 11:51 am

This isn’t exactly the sort of thing that will have any real impact on you or I, but Ubisoft just sent out a press release touting that the company has “acquired the Tom Clancy name for games, related books, movies, and merchandising.”

From there it devolves into a sweet mess of words like “brand” and “leverage.”

Anyway, this means that Clancy (the man, not the brand) has taken one fat payment from Ubi, rather than collect royalties on every single thing they put out. Perhaps, now that he’s in his 60s, he decided he’d rather have it all right now, rather than keep getting smaller regular checks.

Then again, now that I’m reading the man’s Wikipedia page, I’m not sure what to think. Apparently even his books are licensing deals, with several lines actually being authored by different writers, yet it still has the Clancy name on it. Sounds like the guy wrote some stuff early on, made his name, and has been coasting ever since. At some point you have to ask why, exactly, Ubisoft would care enough about this brand to spend all that money on it. It may have made sense in the beginning, but now that Ubi’s established itself as a leader in the world of tactical and stealth action, they could drop the Clancy name, start a set of new franchises that don’t involve rainbows or Sam Fisher, and do just as well. Maybe now that the company also controls the book and movie action, it makes more business sense or something.

To turn this into a question, do any of you even care about Tom Clancy? Does the Tom Clancy “brand” attract you to games like EndWar? Or could Ubisoft have saved all that money and come up with some other name that they could use as shorthand for “realistic tactical game?”

Maybe I should start working on Jeff Gerstmann’s Book About Three Guys With Guns Who Fight Terror In Nevada so that, someday, I can trade my name in for a new one and get paid in the process. I think I’ll go with “William Mitchell.” That sounds pretty tough and patriotic.

systems: pc, ps3, xbox 360 games:

My Ten Games That Would Benefit From the Inclusion of a Rodeo Clown

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 19, 2008 – 4:13 pm

So we’ve been talking a lot about site features for the full site launch today and, at some point, we started talking about the lists feature. This, naturally, led to me talking about rodeo clowns and games that should have them. Much like Ryan’s top game ghosts list, here’s my list of games that, for reasons I will keep to myself, would totally benefit from the inclusion of a rodeo clown.

Street Fighter IV (arcade)

Army of Two (360, PS3)

The Guy Game (PS2, Xbox)

Silent Hill 4: The Room (PS2, Xbox, PC)

World of Warcraft (PC)

Chiller (NES, arcade)

Uno (360)

Time Traveller (arcade)

Star Castle (arcade)

Night Trap (Sega CD, 3DO)

…and yeah, we’ll talk more about the lists at a later date.

systems: arcade, pc, ps3, xbox 360 games: , , , , , , , , ,

My Top Ten Video Game Ghosts

posted by Ryan Davis on March 19, 2008 – 3:51 pm

Inky (Pac-Man)

Pinky (Pac-Man)

Boo (Super Mario World)

Nova (Starcraft)

Clyde (Pac-Man)

Manny Calavera (Grim Fandango)

Liquid Snake (Metal Gear Solid 2)

Ghost (Gauntlet)

Sue (Ms. Pac-Man)

Bruce Willis (The Sixth Sense)

systems: arcade, ds, pc, wii, xbox 360 games: , , , , , , ,

Yes, There Will Be Another BioShock Game

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 11, 2008 – 4:52 pm

Take-Two busted out its latest financial earnings report. It’s typical stuff, full of terms like “GAAP,” “EBITDA,” and “EA needs to step the hell off,” but like any good business report from a publisher, they snuck in a few meaningful details about games.

The biggie is that the company has confirmed another BioShock game. They call it a sequel, list it as BioShock 2, and say it’ll hit sometime around November of 2009. The loose talk that’s been going around lately has proven true, as the game’s being built north of the Golden Gate at 2K Marin.

Now, the rest of that loose talk pegged this new BioShock game as a prequel. It still could be. I wouldn’t take a feature-less mention in a financial report as gospel for things like titles and plot points. Saying “BioShock 2″ is just easier to feed to investors and analysts. Personally, I’m pulling for the prequel angle, as I’d rather see how Andrew Ryan’s Ayn-Rand-fan-fiction-in-city-form vision breaks bad in the first place.

No platforms are attached to the announcement, but I’m going to go out on a very safe and sturdy limb and say it’ll be 360, PC, and PS3 this time around. I don’t know, I’m still sort of half-waiting for the first game to come to PS3 as some kind of Director’s Cut or something like that. But this would have been as good a time as any to let that info out, if it was going to happen.

The other breakouts in the press release include a new mini-golf game for the Wii, which is going to ship as Carnival Games: Mini-Golf, just to piss off everyone who thinks that Carnival Games is one of the dumbest things to happen to the Wii, even if it did ship a million copies. Get ready to hate on it all over again, it’s coming to the DS this summer. Also, the company bought the developer of Mafia II and renamed them to 2K Czech. Because they’re located in the Czech Republic.

Because they were nice enough to include a handy chart in their report, here’s what the rest of Take-Two’s fiscal year looks like:

Carnival Games (DS)
Carnival Games: Mini-Golf (Wii)
Don King Presents: Prizefighter (360, Wii, DS)
Grand Theft Auto IV (360, PS3)
Grand Theft Auto IV episodic content (360)
MLB 2K8 Fantasy All-Stars (DS)
Midnight Club: Los Angeles (360)
NBA 2K9 (”multiple platforms”)
NHL 2K9 (”multiple platforms”)
Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution (360, PS3, DS)
Top Spin 3 (360, PS3, Wii, DS)

systems: pc, ps3, xbox 360 games: