I played the game a few days ago; I grabbed it when it was on sale on Steam, mostly to see if it really was as much of a trainwreck as everybody said.

The gameplay itself is actually quite solid, which is not too surprising since it is an obvious rip-off of DayZ. In some regards, I actually enjoyed WarZ more than DayZ; the engine rendered more smoothly and it wasn't quite as newb-unfriendly.

On the other hand, WarZ has a /lot/ of rough edges that make it a very unpleasant experience to play. From the fact that I had to click through four different EULAs, or that some controls could not be rebound without restarting the game, or that I couldn't even figure out how to switch to a new weapon, not to mention the obvious pay-to-win monetizations of the product. And don't get me started on the idiotic one-hour cooldown before you can reload your character! Individually, none of these issues were that serious )and some, admittedly, are rather silly) but the combination of all these minor issues were more aggravation than I was willing to tolerate, especially since I knew I could get virtually the same gameplay /for free/ playing DayZ.

With a more experienced (and less greedy) developer - not to mention a longer development time - WarZ (or, as I guess it is now called, "The Game Formerly Known As War Z") might have had potential to be truly great. But given its troubled start, its competition with a free product and a development team that doesn't really seem to care, the end product - even at the sale price of $4 - is still not worth buying.

"In the console business there frankly isn't much of a business for games outside of the top 20," says EA Exec Gibeau.

On the other hand, on the PC there /is/ a lot of business outside of the top 20. Just ask all those independent developers. Their games don't have to be triple-A, hundred-billion-dollar investments to still be fun. They are small, experimental and recoup their investment often on only a few thousand sales.

So... ever consider you are in the wrong business, EA?

Uh-huh.

"With an amazing level of attention down to the smallest detail, where each hair is noticeable on character models, scratches and bruises are apparent, and even the dirt beneath fingernails of characters are recognizable, Call of Duty: Ghosts sets a new bar of visual fidelity and near photorealism without sacrificing any performance, maintaining the hallmark of 60 frames per second-on every platform"...

How? By reducing the FOV to 30 degrees, and making each level two rooms and a hallway?

Because console processors aren't getting more powerful, the COD developers certainly aren't getting any more clever, and the only way to increase "visual fidelity" is to sacrifice in other areas.

Remember, there's more than one reason to stop supporting a game.

It could be financial. If EA isn't making enough money to pay for server or employee costs - and for a free "social" game that's quite possible - then it makes sense to close it.

But it could be an attempt at planned obsolescence. People playing an old game aren't playing the new ones - and the new ones may be where the money is, either because it's not free or they have a better deal on how much money they get from in-game purchases.

It could be legal. Their games might be doing things that violates - or will violate - Facebook policy, current or future and they are closing it before the hammer comes down. Possibly there are licensing issues, patents used in the game that EA only had the rights to for a limited time.

It could be a "not-invented-here" move by the new CEO. After all, if the social games were sponsored by Riccitiello that's all well and good for him, but none of the credit for the move will fall on Probst. It's not uncommon for successful programs to get axed after a reorganization for such petty reasons in other business so I wouldn't be surprised if its happening in EA.

Or perhaps, EA might have new products they are interested in developing that are interesting but that they don't have enough faith in to hire an entirely new team. So instead, they might be cannibalizing other projects to find the resources to create the new product.

Those are just a few ideas that pop into my head. I'm sure others can think up some more. The point of it all is that it's not always as simple as "it ain't earning its keep".

Although actually, I guess the /real/ point of it all is that if you are the sort to become really invested in a game, you'd better get it from a company that doesn't tie you to the mothership so that they can't take it away from you if they find a some reason - be it based on the needs marketing, legal, office politics or redistribution of corporate resources - at any time. And increasingly, that company is not EA.

HorrorScope wrote on Apr 9, 2013, 11:57:
You could pretty much go into EA and do the opposite and become a hero.

That's sort of an interesting concept. Imagine if we actually had a CEO who did just that; looked at the course laid out by the previous CEO of EA and then went the opposite direction. What would this consist of? Would it make EA's customers happier (and I mean its general customers, not we cynical, whining PC gamers)? Would EA remain profitable?

It's an idea to play around with. For instance:

- No online DRM built into the game. Activation not required.

- Origin is binned (or at least made completely optional). Software is available through retail, Steam and any other similar venues (GOG.Com even!)

- No Day-One DLC. In fact, no DLC except on proven successes; development on DLC isn't even started until a certain number of sales are achieved.

- Equal focus on PC gaming.

- Less emphasis on a yearly release schedule for existing IPs. Sequels come out when the developers are ready to make the sequel, not just to keep the franchise name "out there"

- Multiplayer components added only to games that need them. Similarly, online-only requirements should actually provide benefit from being online.

- Instead of purchasing existing developers and then shuttering them, he would push them into EA Partnerships. If a developer was purchased and it wasn't profitable, it would be sold rather than shuttered.

- Ditto for IPs. If EA isn't making use of them, they sell them so somebody can.

- Better work conditions for its employees; crunch-time, unfortunately, seems to be an unavoidable part of software development but at least the coders get proper remuneration for their services.

Those are just off the top of my head. Anything else? Anyone have a multi-billion dollar corporation we can use to experiment with?

Laws are not needed to allow things. The constitution (you remember, that ratty old piece of paper that the nation is supposedly built upon) says:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

In other words, if it is not disallowed, it is legal.

In other /other/ words, the government doesn't - and shouldn't - "allow" us to unlock our cellphones. Instead, they should strike the law that made it illegal in the first place.

I was underwhelmed. Although the gameplay is a significant improvement over the second game, it still lacks the openness of the original; while the combat arenas are larger, it still isn't too hard to bump against the walls - invisible or otherwise - keeping you in. The actual fighting was nothing to write home about either, made worse by the limited ammunition. Honestly, I spent more of the game avoiding combat than I did actually shooting at enemies because I found it that much of a chore.

Graphically, the game takes full advantage of a PCs hardware... unfortunately. It goes way overboard with the effects, so much that it is actually difficult to make out what you are being shown. The HUD was obnoxious and cluttered as well.

At best, it's an average game and - technology aside - has little going for it. It lacks soul and style. At the end, I was forcing myself to finish the game and I uninstalled it seconds after the final credits began to roll, without regret. If I have anything good to say about it, it's that it finally brings an end to a storyline that was becoming ever more preposterous with every iteration. Frankly, as much as I loved the original FarCry and the first Crysis, I'm not sorry to see this franchise end.

Why do I read that comment from the developer as "city sizes will be expanded" ... with a future DLC release.

Although, perhaps microtransactions might work here. EA loves those. Add an extra 100 square feet to your city for five cents!

Well, I guess we shouldn't be hating on EA here. After all, if we hate microtransactions so much, we can just buy SimCity from some other publisher...

It's a shame that these sites are closing. Even though - I have to admit - I did not frequent them on a regular basis, I appreciate having a wide variety of gaming websites available. But watching websites like this get shut down by the corporate overlords only make me appreciate how good Bluesnews is; seemingly around since forever, it's still independent and provides quality content on a daily basis.

Blue, tell me you aren't going away anytime soon. There's a dearth of worth-while replacements out there and I don't think I could handle a day without my Bluesnews fix...

The game is terrible. Every time anything passable comes onto the screen, it is immediately followed by something horrid. And it's not like the good points are in any way extraordinary, which makes the bad parts stick out even more.

"Oh look, the aliens and Weyland-Yutani forces are fighting each other! Oh no, wait, they've gotten stuck on the geometry and are shooting at walls."

"Hey, that model isn't too bad! Oh... except for those textures."

"Hey, this scripted scene looks halfway decent? Hey, how come the models aren't casting any shadows? And why doesn't any of the voicework match up with the lipsync?"

"Oooh, a stealth sequence; well, that's slightly different. Except I don't have a gun so I *know* that the worst I'll get is a few jump scares."

"Xenos attacking! Gee... how come there are never more than five onscreen at once... and did that alien just visibly teleport right in front of me?"

"Aliens! I'm scared! Or I would be if they didn't run right in front of my gun - or just stop altogether - and if I couldn't punch one to death with my elbow!"

The problem is that the game is salvageable. It will never be a classic - not without an complete rewrite - but with new soundwork (the levels and mixing are terrible!), rewritten AI and better textures the game might barely be worth playing, if only to immerse oneself in the Aliens universe for a while. It has at its hearts the making of a good game, but it has been so poorly put together that its potential is completely unrecognized. Maybe if Gearbox went back and gave it another year or two's worth of polish but until then the game deserves all the bad press it is getting.

They had a shopping mall level in the 2nd one.

So did System Shock 2, and that's widely considered a classic.
It inclusion is more logical in Dead Space 2 because, while the Von Braun from System Shock was an exploration vessel the base on Titan was an off-world colony.

I rather enjoyed Dead Space 2 myself (far more than I did the original game) and am likely to buy the sequel. On the other hand, I have no intention of paying them through their "microtransactions". If this experiment with microtransactions makes the game less playable, then I'll reconsider purchasing the inevitable sequel. But right now I'm more worried about how the drop-in/-out co-op is going to affect the gameplay than some DLC packages.

While we are not happy about the situation, as an independent developer we simply do not have the resources to pay the massive costs of new servers along with redeveloping a seven-year-old game.

I'm sure your fan-community would be quite willing to help you out with this problem if you, say, open up the source code to them. Doesn't even have to be for the full game; just enough that they can re-work the networking code. They'll build it and you can offer it as a free patch on your website. Practically free and great advertising for you (e.g., "see how we value our customers?")

<pedant>
Actually, there were a number of shareware games that released on CD that let you play the shareware but to get the rest of the game - which was on the CD - you had to call up the company to get a serial number.

I remember iD did this with Quake. The CD was $5 and included the shareware version of Quake. It had all their shareware games - Wolf3D, Doom, Doom2 (demo), Heretic, Hexen - on that CD. You could play the shareware but you had to call 1-800-ID-Games to get an unlock key to unlock the full version of the game, which was already on the disc.

Needless to say, there were tools available on the net which would generate the serials for you without the hassle of the phone call. ;-)

This seems odd. Treyarch would rather pay for every single dedicated server in the world instead of just letting users rent them from GSPs? What could be the reason behind this?

Possibly an attempt at planned obsolescence, like EA does with its sports franchises.

If the publisher control the servers, they can shut them down when Black Ops 3 comes out. If the consumers control the servers, people can keep playing the same game year after year.

Especially since there seems to be an increasingly growing awareness that the Call of Duty series *is* the same game year after year. Already people are comparing the various Call of Duty games to each other, and debating which ones are the most fun. There has to be some worry within Activision that they are starting to compete with themselves. Their increasingly rigid control of the market may be an attempt to "solve" the problem.

<crosses fingers> Please let it be with Uwe Boll, please let it be with Uwe Boll..

Just three words: Ubisoft; don't care.

"We have no interest in your business since you don’t pay for stuff anyway."

Hey, I can't argue with the man; that's an indisputable truth (at least in my case). Not however, as Pachter assumes, because I've gone and pirated the product, but because I refuse to support such a customer-unfriendly scheme. Nor am I going to validate their insanity by infringing on their oh-so-precious copyright. Instead, I'll just spend my money elsewhere.

So, yeah, Ubisoft doesn't have to care about me because I am not one of their customers. But that's not because I'm a mean, nasty pirate but because they chased me away by creating products I have no interest in installing onto my PC. But frankly, I'd think losing me (and those like me) should worry them more than offending the pirates; after all, were it not for the offensive DRM I would have been quite willing to give them some of my hard-earned cash. Now not only am I avoiding titles like Splinter Cell or Assassin's Creed, but I'm looking askance at any other titles Ubisoft releases.

Ubisoft, you aren't "too big to fail", and pissing off your customer base is not the way to stay in business.

Hey, this is great news as far as I'm concerned. Not for the usual PC-centric reasons; let gamers on the X-Box have a lot of great games too! But I'm not much of a fan of MMO games and the fact that Bioware seemed to be moving in that direction with SWTOR was very disappointing news to me.

But the X-Box market is too big too ignore. Bioware might be releasing their MMO only onto PCs, but it's almost certain that they intend to develop some other game for the consoles. Might it not possibly be a more traditional CRPG the likes of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic? One can hope. And if such a game were to be developed, might Bioware not turn around and port it to PC gamers as well? I can't imagine why they wouldn't.

It's all speculation on my part, of course, but it is still better news than I've had since Bioware first announced SWTOR.

Dang. I'm going to need a new computer.

Germany's behavior amuses me because it runs contrary to all the arguments my German friends used when arguing against America's strait-laced attitude towards alcohol consumption.

Their stance was -and I can't say I necessarily disagree with them- that by turning alcohol into such forbidden fruit (no legal drinking until 21, fearmongering against the dangers of alcohol, not introducting children to beer and wine on a regular basis from a young age, etc), America was in fact promoting underage drinking. Children will automatically home in on the forbidden, and mere laws won't stop them from getting it. Germany, they claimed, with its much more liberal attitude towards booze, had far less problems with young people getting skunked because to them drinking alcohol wasn't any more special than, say, eating some chocolate.*

And yet, when it comes to video games, they seem to think that by forbidding youngsters access to these terrible products, they are stopping the children from learning the wrong lesson. Here's my guess: not only are the kids in Deutschland going to still PLAY these games (France, Switzerland, Poland and Denmark are just around the corner) but the forbidden violence is going to have even more of an impact on them than it would on a child in the United States.

Censorship never works; education is the key.



*facts not verified by me. If you have a problem with these claims, take it up with Gunther in Hamburg