In my earlier post, I spoke about my woes trying to buy Atari: 80 Classics In One from Steam.  I bemoaned the apparent lack of response from the steam meisters.
 
I must now retract that criticism.
 
I was contacted by Steam support and told to purchase something else of equal or greater value, and that I would be refunded.  I followed their orders and will likely be refunded tomorrow. 
 
All is forgiven, Valve.  And to everyone reading this, don't ever hesitate to throw a line to their support department.  It may take a few messages and clarifications, but you'll get served eventually.

A couple of days ago, I bought Atari: 80 Classics In One off of Steam, only to find that it doesn't bloody work. The store page said nothing of the game not working on Windows 7 64, but every time I try to run it, the main menu is off color, and I can only play one of game because if I quit out to the main menu, the damn thing crashes. There's no information on the Atari website, there's nothing to help on the Steam support page for the game, and the forums have limited solutions that don't really help at all. So now I'm stuck with software I can't use, I'm out $15, and Steam just gives me the bloody runaround. They told me to go to Atari support, in what I can only guess is a form letter, and when I told them I couldn't find an answer there and asked for my money back, I got no reply.

I'm pissed, to say the least.

Steam is the premier digital distribution service. It has the most games, the most active community. In many ways, it's the only thing the PC has left going for it. However, while Valve's support with their own games is fantastic, they have no work on their behalf with regards to 3 party games. Games with retarded DRM are put on there, games that don't run on the average Steam user's system are on there (the forums for the game in question are almost universally negative in their opinion of the experience), and Valve does nothing.

Could you imagine if the first parties for the consoles were this lax? If you couldn't be sure that a game for the system would run, no one would trust their money to that console. Yet with Steam, no one bats an eye, despite the fact that the games are as bound to the platform as a console game (you can't run them without Steam). Valve is very much a first party now. Steam is their platform, they control it, they own it, and thus it is their responsibility to make sure that the experience for the end user is as seamless as possible. No one's saying to scan for game quality – that'll always be subjective – but at least the ability to run things without the enormous headache that we now experience. Be it putting in virtual machines for older titles, forbidding overly intrusive DRM, or working with 3 parties to make sure the game doesn't crash all the time, shit has to work. If not, then the consumer can't possibly be expected to trust their money to chance.

Steam has been an enormously successful platform, and I still love the service. I just wish the support would be up to the same level. It's a shame that the company with the most important item in all PC gaming has decided to run it half-assed. Get your act together, Valve.

So I've been playing through a bunch of games recently, having the time to do so, and I decided to give Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare a go on the PC, since I picked up the Call of Duty Collection on Steam during their amazing June sales (and finally beaten CoD1 and UO, by the way). Now I'm already on record as preferring Treyarch's games (as well as UO by Grey Matter), but going through CoD4 has really refreshed my memory on why I put Infinity Ward below Treyarch in terms of personal preference. Now I get that the Infinity Ward/ Respawn Entertainment fanboys are probably going to give me a bunch of shit for this, seeing as everyone in the gaming media and community is quick to kiss the asses of Jason West and Vince Zampella with the sort of fervor normally reserved for Rockstar Games, but hey, it's a free website, so go ahead and fling shit around like monkeys at the Metro Zoo. Anyway, let's start.

First off, the infinitely respawning enemies. Now I get that there has to be challenge in a game, but this is seriously the worst way to do it. While there was some respawning going on in Call of Duty 2, IW really ramped up the nonsense for 4. It's nearly impossible to actually reduce the number of enemies since they respawn nearly instantly. As such, the game will at points turn into a slow, pitiful crawl where luck plays more of a role than skill. This becomes bleedingly obvious in “Shock and Awe” and the two Azerbaijan village levels, but is pervasive throughout most of the game. It's a horrible, cheap way to design a game, and both CoD4 and MW2 are guilty of this in spades.

Then there's the level design, which are lacking, to say the least. Virtually all the cover in the game can be accessed by some enemy or another in a ridiculously easy manner. Now this wouldn't be so bad normally, if not for the whole infinitely spawning enemies thing I discussed earlier. Here's an example: In “Shock and Awe,” when the player meets up with the squad that needs rescuing, there's this building right across from the one s/he's in. Now the common sense thing to do is to kill the people on the roof, at the windows and in the doorway before jumping down and hiding behind a large shipping container near your position. This will, however, have to be repeated multiple times due to the respawning enemies, which are also spawning to the left of that building, and coming for you. So you have to deal with enemies on both sides and hope you get a couple of lucky grenade tosses to get you through this particular section. This happens several times throughout the game, and it wouldn't be so bad were it not for the...

Grenade spam. Holy shit, there are so many God damned grenades to deal with. Now I get that enemies are going to throw grenades to flush you out – that's what that's what they're for, after all. However, when you have upwards of three grenades at any one time being thrown in your general direction, more often than not, escaping one grenade leads to another. And it's all the time. I suspect that they're not thrown from enemies, but rather, they rain from the sky, cascading you in a shower of exploding pineapples. And it's all the fucking time. Sorry, but when the entire contents of a grenade production facility are being thrown at me constantly, the suspension of belief goes straight out the window, and the game becomes unbearably unbalanced.

Lastly, I have to mention one level in particularly, namely “One Shot, One Kill,” or rather, one part of that level. I'm sorry, but the Ferris wheel is the biggest pile of ass in the whole game. Let me paint a picture – There's this giant Ferris wheel in front of some misplaced cars and bumper karts (now where the cars came from, who knows? This is supposed to be an amusement park, not a parking lot). Anyway, after setting your buddy on the ground behind the Ferris wheel and setting up some claymores, it's time to wait for your ride to get there. Only thing is, your ride is more than 7 kilometers away, and here comes more enemies than a game of Space Invaders. It starts off well enough: Shooting the first few enemies sets a pack of wild dogs on them, and then they fall into some of your claymore mines. Then the real fun begins. Enemies come in from all directions, sometimes two or three at a time. If they're not coming in from near the swimming pool that you passed by earlier, they're getting dropped in by helicopter. At this point, the few undetonated claymores left matter not. You are nearly constantly besieged by an entire army. Only luck determines if you can make it long enough for the chopper to get to you, but more often than not, you'll be getting up close and personal with the game's myriad of quotes about war.

Needless to say, I'm not a huge fan. It's not a terrible game, but one that can lead to so many hair pulling moments. Contrast that with UO, Big Red One, CoD3 and World at War, where each death brought with it a lesson, and it was actually possible to clear enemy positions (unless it was one of those “hold out” missions, but even then, your support characters were actually useful, unlike in CoD4). A game should always challenge, sure, but it should never frustrate, and never should it leave the player simply thinking they were just lucky. How no one ever calls IW out on this nonsense is baffling, but then again, we live in an age where celebrity developers can make all sorts of shoddy tripe and get near limitless praise.

Anyway, if you've read this far, thank you. I truly needed to vent. Now if you'll excuse me, it's back to the Ferris wheel.

So I'm here watching the finals of the U-20 Women's World Cup on ESPN3 and I decide on halftime to hit GiantBomb for a bit. That's when I see the current achievement event on the site:

Next Class

You'll earn +5000 bonus XP if 6000 users complete this set this week. Sponsored by Best Buy™.

Lord in heaven, really? Now the achievement system in Giant Bomb is itself flawed, as it makes people do things that offer nothing to the community, a point that one of my favorite bloggers on the site, Symphony, makes a point of in talking about why she backed out of doing user reviews. However, sponsored achievements go one step further. In particular, I have a concern with the “Late Night Cram” achievement.

Last Night Cram

Here's a clue

Procrastination is made easier with the right tools. Click this link to check out Best Buy's Next Class of laptops for your college needs.

Now if you don't understand the issue just yet, allow me to point it out. The achievement unlocks by clicking the link to see a full-page advertisement. In summary, Giant Bomb, as an organization, has decided that it would be a great idea to tie receiving advertisements to your XP. If you ask me, this is beyond slimy.

Now some of you may say “why can't you just ignore that stuff?” and fair enough, it's easy to brush off, but there are people who won't be able to resist the allure of quick XP. We already see forum spam from people trying to get quests done on the site. What happens if Giant Bomb decides to put in a quest along the lines of “extol the amazing goodness of Drank. Talk about Drank on the off-topic forum!” We know the off topic forum would then be full of idiots going off about Drank, or just mentioning it in the header of unrelated posts. Or how about an achievement for downloading a toolbar? Even if I didn't partake, it becomes entirely possible that I might be subjected to mail spam, viruses, or other random nastiness because an associate of mine put some obscure eastern European company's toolbar on their Firefox program for the “ Think Russian!” achievement. Of course, it's easy to assume it won't happen. I'm sure most of us, however, didn't think they'd be handing out XP for clicking on ads.

I just hope this isn't the start of a new and shady era here on the Bomb.

Well, this is a surprise.

While Sony talked about Move, they didn't let it destroy the show like Microsoft did with Kinect. They sprinkled in some 3D stuff because that's apparently mandatory nowadays for Sony. At least that won't ruin perfectly good games. Oddly enough, only Sorcery and Heroes were shown as dedicated to Move. Looks like Sony's being more conservative with it, for which I am grateful. However, none of that has me interested. Neither do the showing of the new Twisted Metal or the PSP push (That system needs it, though). Oh no, what perked me was far more interesting.

Valve stepping up and announcing a PS3 version of Portal 2, with Steam Cloud and Steam Achievement support! With Gabe Newell on stage and everything.

Anyone following Valve and the PS3 over the years should know that this is, without doubt or question, the biggest surprise ever. Ever since that botched EA port of The Orange Box, it seemed like Gabe took any and all chances to bash on the PS3. It's something Gabe himself owns up to, calling himself one of the system's biggest critics initially. What made him switch over?

"...Sony Computer Entertainment has proved that the PS3 is the most open platform of all the current generation consoles and has worked extremely hard to make the platform the most desirable for consumers and developers. As such, we are delighted to announce Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 and believe the Steamworks support included will make it the best console version of the game.”

That's a huge dig at Microsoft right there. The question, then, is what's next for Valve on the PS3? Left 4 Dead 2 with The Passing for free (The new campaign costs 560 MSP on the 360 despite being free on Steam). Perhaps a re-release of Team Fortress 2 with all the extras that PC version has but the 360 can't because of Microsoft?

Either way, it's a huge win for Sony and console-only gamers alike, and the coup-de-grace of the show. Hopefully this'll lead to more support from other developers who've been hesitant to jump on the PS3.

Well, at least there's ONE pleasant surprise for this year's E3.

After the tragedy of Microsoft's showing yesterday, It's Nintendo's turn to take the stage. They were better, but is that really a compliment when Microsoft was so bad?

Of course, they talked up the 3DS, which looks much like the DS but with a larger top screen and a stick in addition to the D-pad. Not a bad system, though I'm still on the fence. Wii Party was announced, and I must admit that I'm surprised they haven't done this cash-in sooner.

The rest of the show was dedicated to mining nostalgia. Miyamoto dressed stupidly while demoing the Wii Motion Plus swordplay in the upcoming Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword. Of course, the WMP had a “malfunction,” but the Giant Bomb liveblog said it best:

[9:15 AM] A little interference is messing with the Wii Motion Plus. In my experience, this isn't interference. This is the Wii Motion Plus. Also, dude made a Steve Jobs joke. Jobs can here you, sir. He can hear everything.

Anyway, we saw a new Mario sports mini-game compilation being hinted at. Golden Sun. Activision's cheap exploitation of GoldenEye, which even LOOKS like it's not getting the lion's share of Activision's attention. Kirby, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus, yada yada yada.

Really, the only thing in that conference I care about is Epic Mickey, and I'm not exactly jumping up and down for that one either.

The thing that rubs me the wrong way with Nintendo is that the only thing that they seem to know how to do anymore is mine nostalgia. I keep hoping for something new, something creative, instead of just iterations on decade-old franchises for the fan boys. After all, it's Nintendo that always talks about innovation, why don't they ever get held accountable for never doing anything truly new with software?

And the worst thing is that their fans eat it up. Even now, people are jumping up and down, happy to have their nostalgia senses tingle. Nothing new? Who cares! We're getting Kid Icarus!

I get that not everything is going to be for everyone, but I felt so deflated. At least the 360 still has many games I want to play even without that Kinect garbage. With this conference, Nintendo and I move further apart. I'm fully convinced now that the Wii and DS are my final Nintendo consoles. I don't love their mascots enough for their systems to matter anymore, and that's really all Nintendo has to offer.

Here's hoping Sony makes me at least somewhat excited, because I'm all but set to slit my wrists here.

Remember back in 2006, when people were in wonderment about the endless possibilities of the Nintendo Wii. Even I got a bit swept in at the initial promise of this new and exciting thing called motion control.

Then the system came out.

While the non-gaming folks bought it in droves for Wii Sports, those of us who expected good games were exposed to the truth – that they'd be few and far between for the system. The PS3 and 360 were flooded with more amazing games than we could ever play, while the Wii languished, drowning in shovelware and party games, with games of any worth in those multi-year droughts between Mario main games a haunting rarity. Many of our Wiis now collect dust for years at a time, something previously unheard of with the top selling hardware of a generation.

Fast forward to 2010, and here we are again. Microsoft is touting their new Kinect motion control interface. People are in wonder of the endless possibilities of Kinect. But this time, I'm not being swept up at the initial promise of this “new and exciting” thing called hands-free gaming.

Personally, I've had my fill of motion controls. At the end of the day, I just don't see how this will be any better than the already abysmal Wii. The launch software isn't filling me with confidence either, nor is the near-confirmed $150 price tag.

In short, I'll pass.

I remember being a kid in the age of the NES and Super NES, what feels like forever ago.  Some of my fondest memories were of spending hours and hours playing Zelda or Dragon Warrior or whatever RPG or action-adventure game I could get my hands on.  Many of those times, I'd have the volume turned on, the boom box turned up to an AM radio station, listening to a football game or a particularly important news broadcast, or even something on CBS (the local CBS affiliate at the time put their broadcasts on radio as well as TV).  It was one of the ways I kept in touch with the world while still playing my beloved games.
 
Now, here I am, what seems like forever later.  I'm sitting here, playing 3D Dot Game Heroes with the volume turned down, while I watch the World Cup on ESPN's online streaming service, ESPN3.  I realized how crazy this was, going back to something I haven't really felt able to do since the start of the PS2 era, when games became fully voiced and required more and more audio-visual focus to enjoy.  I rather missed those halcyon days, and I got to wondering when gaming, as a hobby, became so all-encompassing that even listening to the news of the day while getting a session in became such a hindrance to the experience.
 
Now I'm fully aware that this makes me sound like an old maid, but I kind of miss having games that can be enjoyed without cutting oneself off from the rest of the world.  These games, however, seem to become more and more rare as time goes by.  Of course, 3D Dot Game Heroes exists mainly as an homage to old school of Japanese game design, so it seems to be more the exception than the rule.  Even XBLA and PSN games are becoming less about the game and more about the spectacle.  Then, of course, we have the new wave of motion controls, where one has to have a rumpus room with nothing else even in it to use the damned things.  Even TV and film don't demand that level of dedication.
 
Of course, I'm glad to have the complex games, the games that challenge the notion of what is possible with gaming.  However, I can't help but wonder if it is simply trading one extreme for another.
 
Well, I guess we all have to grow old some time.

I've been a fan of Call of Duty for quite a while, though perhaps not as long as some. I've played nearly everything in the main series from CoD2 to Modern Warfare 2 and beaten them all on Hardened (can't get 1 or UO to work on my Win7 rig, nor on Vista before it). The games impress me for the sheer level of absolute balls-to-the-wall chaos and tense action. However, one thing about CoD has always annoyed the ever loving fuck out of me. It's not the overly amped up machismo of the whole affair, or the infinitely respawning enemies or the questionable friendly AI. No, it's something more insidious and annoying.

The Infinity Ward fanboys.

Now for those of you who don't know, Infinity Ward started the Call of Duty series in October 2003. However, even from the beginning, there were many studios involved with Call of Duty. Gray Matter Interactive developed the United Offensive expansion pack and worked with Treyarch on Big Red On before being merged into Treyarch at the end of that game's development. Of course, before Big Red One, there was Finest Hour, developed by Spark Unlimited, who as far as I know, never made another CoD game again due to FH being wholly lackluster. There are many other spinoffs, but it's not them that made the Infinity Ward worship so annoying.

See, it all starts with Call of Duty 3. The first CoD game developed since the merger with Gray Matter, Call of Duty 3 introduced the beginnings of the more character-oriented narrative that we see in the series today (the previous games had just had documentary pieces after each of the campaigns), was the first where you could cook off grenades, or pick up and throw back grenades. It was also the first and only title in the main series not to appear on the PC.

Now, having enjoyed the game much more than CoD2, I dismissed the rage of the community as simply PC gamers whining that the game didn't go on their platform (PC gamers tend to look down on console gamers, after all). It wasn't until World at War, a game I preferred over Modern Warfare, that I started seeing just what the Treyarch hate had morphed into. People were talking about how much worse the levels were, how lacking the multiplayer was; they were even criticized for including the Nazi Zombies mini-game after the end of the main campaign. You know it's bad when the fanboys are blasting you for adding extra stuff.

Then Modern Warfare comes out, with only the wholly lackluster two-player Spec Ops mode for those of us who loved the 4-player campaign co-op and Nazi Zombies mode from World at War, a glitch-riddled competitive multiplayer suite and an at-times nonsensical story in single player. This game, inferior in nearly every way to World at War, was fawned on by media and fans alike, everyone seeming to turn a blind eye at the game's faults.

Now there's obviously going to be differences in tastes, and World at War being a World War II game may have rubbed some people the wrong way. However, this cannot explain why everyone, from the lowliest forum troll to the most respective games journalist, was so eager to push aside all the issues with Modern Warfare 2, even when they were so willing to make up issues for World at War (“it's too safe,” “it's too gory,” etc.)

Now let's be clear, it's not like I don't get fanboys. Be it Nintendo vs Sony vs Microsoft, Democrats vs Republicans, or Burger King vs McDonald's, fanboys have been swinging off the nuts of one company or the other since before I was born and will likely continue to do so long after I die. However, the Infinity Ward thing just irks the fuck out of me. We all buy games from many different publishers and developers every single year. Well, most of us do, but we all know Nintendo fans. Anyway, the rest of us all buy games from many different publishers and developers every year. We've also bought games in a single series that have gone from developer to developer since the IP is owned by a publisher. However, this only seems to be unacceptable when it comes to Treyarch making Call of Duty games. I'm not sure why this company has earned the legion of mouth-breathing fanboys it has. Even before the MW2 layoffs and resignations, IW didn't exactly care much for community outreach like Bungie does. They don't have decades of nostalgia behind them like Nintendo. They haven't made a lot of games (in fact, IW itself has only made four – Call of Duty 1, 2, 4 and MW2).

This isn't to say that I dislike Infinity Ward's games, or that I don't look forward to what Respawn is going to bring to the table. However, I wish people would stop hating on Treyarch. They make good games, and deserve some love for all their efforts. Save the hate for the crappy Wiiware shovelware developers that the Bombcast so deliciously mocks.