I’ve been exceedingly slow in posting lately. I’ve mostly been posting things on Twitter. http://twitter.com/sethdavis
Slow Posting Lately
July 27th, 2009Headed to GDC
March 23rd, 2009I’ll be at GDC 2009 on Thursday and Friday. Hope to see everyone there.
The Red Ring Strikes
February 24th, 2009Just as I was getting back into GTA IV in a big way over the past few nights, my Xbox 360 Elite red ringed today. It started with freezing and white vertical artifacts. They were lines of a sort. The 360 froze every time I booted it, but no red rings. For a while I wasn’t getting any ring at all. Once I unplugged the power and plugged it back in I got the red ring.
Microsoft’s online return website was easy to use. I just registered the console and picked the option to have a box sent. No muss no fuss. Now I just have to wait for the box and the transfer to happen.
I didn’t expect to ever get the red ring. My console is about 15 months old from the time of purchase (it is about 30 months since the manufacture date). The console hasn’t had any prior problems. I’d also heard anecdotally that Elites seemed to have less red ring problems. It was probably just the case that there were less Elites out there to red ring so you don’t hear about them as much. I can dream of getting a Jasper Elite as an exchange, but it’s doubtful. I don’t think any have been found in the wild yet.
Now to figure out what I want to play on my PS3 or PC. Maybe I’ll finally play through Crisis Core on the PSP. My library is feeling very 360 slanted all of a sudden.
My Top 5 Most Anticipated Games
February 16th, 2009I was inspired by Gamespy’s editor’s lists of top 5 most anticipated. You can click next on the bottom to see each of the contributor’s lists. I was surprised how different each of them was until I tried to put together my own list. There are tons of good games scheduled for this year. With no further adieu, here is my list:
1) Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams
2) Diablo III
3) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
4) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
5) God of War III
Honorable Mention – Star Wars: The Old Republic
Cautiously Optimistic – Batman: Arkham Asylum
Everything on my list is currently a day of full price purchase. Key observation #1, everything on the list is a sequel. I’m a skeptic at heart and I put a lot more stock in what the developers have proven rather than what they promise. That said, I am expecting some top quality titles out of the various new IPs this year. I just don’t know which ones will hit the mark far enough in advance to have high expectations for them now.
Now some further commentary:
Bioshock 2 – I know I’m setting myself up to be disappointed here. My expectations are sky high for this title. I can’t tell how many articles I’ve read that point out Ken Levine’s lack of involvement. I’m not entirely sure how true that is. The core group in 2K Marin was essentially formed out of key members of the Bioshock team. The group essentially mentored under Levine. You don’t think they have conversations about what they are doing and how it fits into the world he created? Bioshock was one of my favorite titles of all time. The team wasn’t boxed in by any parameters and were able to create a tight game and compelling narrative. I expect the next Bioshock to be technically successful but I have real concerns about what the narrative will be. The biggest concerns I have are polish and story. I hope they don’t end up having to rush things.
Diablo III - I sunk a ridiculous amount of time into Diablo II. The combination of RPG and fantasy elements appealed to me from the start. The first Diablo was ground-breaking in its time. There has been a groundswell of concern about the art direction on the newest title which I feel is entirely unwarranted. I don’t want the color pallets for all of my games to be dipped in muck. The Gears of War’s style color schemes are just too dark and boring. My biggest concern is around the inclusion of the Paladin class. There hasn’t been an announcement yet. I always pick the Paladin.
Star Wars: The Old Republic – I can’t wait to see what Bioware does with this. I posted at the time of the EA acquisition that I though this game was the reason for the purchase. Based on the highly successful KOTOR game, this title. If anyone can challenge World of Warcraft, it’s the Jedi.
Batman: Arkham Asylum – What a PR campaign. The team promoting the new Batman game has the blogs whipped up into a frenzy. The screenshots look great and all of the blogs are saying positive things. The commentary and screenshots so far give the impression of a Bioshock-like tone to the game. We are seeing the first crop of games to be influence by the top quality 2007 titles. Batman is coming from an unproven studio, but I’m cautiously optimistic based on everything I’ve heard.
COD: World at War…Something’s Missing
February 16th, 2009Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best games of all time. All of the sales have been well warranted. With a compelling 6 hour solo campaign and a well honed multi-player with player progression built in, the game was destined to be a classic. Based on Activision’s franchise model, it was certain that we would see another version of COD from Treyarch on the off-year.
Treyarch’s COD3 left a bit of a bad taste in players mouths as the quality level fell from what players saw in Infinity Ward’s COD2. Treyarch points out, and rightfully so, that they had to complete COD3 on an overly compressed time frame. From what I have read, it sounds like one Activision was sure that COD2 was going to be successful, they kicked COD3 into production for the following year. That gave Treyarch half the time (1 year vs 2) that they would normally have expected to complete a next gen title. Even with a bit of help from Infinity Ward’s tech, matching the prior title’s quality level was still a tall order.
COD: World at War is Treyarch’s first full-production cycle attempt in the series. Activision knew well in advance that they would release another COD before Modern Warfare was released. So how did World at War fare?
From a sales standpoint the title has done exceptionally well. That is for two reasons. First, it is a sequel to the extremely successful COD4 and second that it is a solid effort. From a review standpoint, the title has scored in the mid to low 80s.
Dramatic Effect or Simply Brutality?
Treyarch tried to learn from what Infinity Ward did with COD4. Treyarch attempted to intersperse powerful scenes of war for dramatic effect. The problem is that those scenes just didn’t come off quite right. The power in the shooting squad and nuclear explosion scene from COD4 were just not matched in what effectively amounted to brutality scenes within World at War. None of it was bad, it just wasn’t quite right.
Modern Warfare vs WWII
This one isn’t Treyarch’s fault. I’ve read a lot lately about how tired people are with the WWII theater and killing Nazis. I initially rejected that idea. If a game is fun and innovative, the particular setting isn’t really important. Wrong. After playing COD4, I didn’t want to go back. I found myself longing for the updated weapon technology. I missed the current day weaponry. The incorporated imprecision in the WWII weapons really bothered me. It’s very noticeable in the bonus zombie level. Since the enemies are trying to claw you at close range rather than shoot at you from a distance, the lack of accuracy from the weapons is really noticeable.
The one thing that the WWII setting gives developers is a built in effective story. Striking out into an “alternate reality” like COD4 did requires the developer to construct an effective story. It’s better to use WWII than have a bad modern warfare story.
Bugs and Polish
The area that Treyarch fell off the most is bugs and polish. In no particular order I had the following issues:
- NPCs walking through tanks
- Dying bug that required me to reset
- “Cheap” grenades that seem dropped in (Destructoid thought the same)
- Obvious infinite re-spawning enemies
- Nearly broken final level (Reichstag)
The NPC and dying bugs should have been caught in QA somewhere along the way. The cheap grenades and infinite re-spawning enemies feel like a developer cheat to prevent characters from intelligently taking cover and picking off all the enemies.
The last level (Reichstag) is nearly broken due to a ridiculous inconsistency in design. The storming of the Reichstag up to the front steps is fraught with tons of the cheap grenades and re-spawning enemies issues. I can deal with it to a degree as it shouldn’t be easy to storm the enemy’s base. It just feels like you are restarting repeatedly to hopefully pick exactly the right path to pass through. The steps of the Reichstag is one of the worst designed game segments I’ve ever seen. You need to shoot the enemies hiding behind the pillars so that one of the pillars falls and opens the way. I had to look up what needed to happen after spending a long time trying to figure out how to do it myself. If you look it up on google, you’ll see tons of questions and answers about it. Following dying repeatedly on my way into the Reichstag, you get a section where you walk over and pick up a sniper rifle in the main hall and basically kill everything that moves with no repercussions whatsoever. No one shoots at you at all, there are no counter-snipers, and no one even tries to find you.
Overall
If you haven’t played COD4 yet, shame on you. That title should be picked up well before playing this one. I can’t recommend World at War as a full price pickup. I bought it on a $39.99 Best Buy sale. $30-$40 feels about right for the title.
I just can’t shake the feeling that Activision needs to find a way to fold the entire COD franchise into Infinity Ward so that they same main team is giving oversight to the titles. World at War’s problems are mostly story and polish which I think Infinity Ward’s management would help greatly. The real question is whether Infinity Ward’s management wants to do two titles at once and and risk diluting their impact on the each. Either that or Activision doesn’t want to depend on one studio alone to continue the franchise.
The Rose Bowl Flea Market is a Flea Market
February 8th, 2009We went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market this afternoon to satisfy our curiosity. The flea market is often mentioned on HGTV and by vintage wardrobe designers for shows like Mad Men. The HGTV shows make it look like there are bargains to be found everywhere.
The reality of the experience is that it’s just a flea market on a larger scale. We have been to flea markets on the east coast over the years, the Rose Bowl wasn’t that much different. Having entertainment industry around provides some extra items of interest and some extra fame for the flea market. The clientele looked more upscale than those at a typical flea market, but the vendors were the same as anywhere else. Much of what is there looks like it might have been fished out of a dumpster and many of the furniture pieces need refinishing.
If you set aside enough time and patience, there are opportunistic bargains to be had. The couple of hours we spent wasn’t long enough and it was too late in the day. It isn’t really my idea of a good time, but I can see why people enjoy it. Having to drag the kids along nagging didn’t improve the experience.
Wow Queue Frustration
January 4th, 2009Imagine a game that has people so commited that they will wait 30 minutes in line to start playing. That game is the wildly successful World of Warcraft. Around Christmas time, when there is a spike in the number of new users who receive the game as a gift, everyone also seems to be home from work all the time. This results in a huge spike in users and a queue to get onto most servers. Servers that normally have no wait whatsoever spike to a half an hour or more. People will wait in the queue and still play. It’s fascinating. Worst of all, I can’t say haven’t waited for it…
eBay Doesn’t Get It
December 14th, 2008This morning I received annoyingly non-committal emails from Paypal and eBay about a “problem” with one of my purchases. I was informed that the listing violated eBay’s terms of service in some way. As a customer of eBay I was frustrated.
Issue #1 – Why do eBay and Paypal continue to pretend that they aren’t the same company?
I should have received one email from the combined company with directions. One potential explanation is that eBay has failed to fully integrate Paypal over the past few years. I recognize eBay’s desire to grow Paypal as an internal and external brand. Since a huge proportion of their sales overlap, there should be much more coordination by this point. Another, more nefarious explanation is that it allows them the flexibility to point fingers at each other and not take full responsibility. In the past when purchasing magazine subscriptions that never materialized I had to deal with the finger pointing responses. eBay needs to pull it together and start acting like a better coordinated company.
Issue #2 - Why is eBay so non-committal when it comes to terms of service violations and fraud?
The likely answer is that they are afraid of incurring any legal liability from actually accusing anyone of violating their terms of service. The email I received from eBay was that the auction had been pulled “for violating one or more of our policies.” Could that note be any less helpful? I could feel free not to follow through with the transaction. That’s great since it was an immediate payment buy it now transaction. Paypal sent an email telling me how to get to their dispute resolution center with no indication on whether I should use it or not.
I emailed customer service for Paypal to see if I could get more information. I could almost guarantee that Paypal will tell me to talk to eBay and eBay will tell me that they don’t release specific information. Someone had to actually tag and shutdown the auction with a reason code of some sort. Why can’t I see it? Tell me if you think it is a fraudster, the items are counterfeit, or if it was just some sort of action structure that wasn’t allowed.
What’s next?
Situations like this are a major reason why eBay’s growth is flat lining. eBay is great for two things, hard to find items and deals Too many people have had some poor experiences over the years and eBay seems reluctant to be transparent. eBay needs to face into the fact that users come to their site looking for deals. Often, deals that look too good to be true are just that. Users end up having a bad experience and then become reluctant to buy anything else. The user becomes concerned about their own ability to sniff out fraud and they aren’t confident that eBay is going to help. eBay loses that customer.
As someone with a reputation score close to 400 on eBay, I have completed a great many transactions. But my purchases in the past couple of years have fallen off drastically. In order to win me back as a regular buyer and seller, eBay needs to re-earn my trust. That’s a tough thing to do.
Update:
Paypal customer support did, just as I predicted, tell me absolutely nothing and direct me to contact eBay for more information. I asked them specifically not to point me to eBay in the email and they still did. In the meantime, the item arrived from the seller and appears to be fine. I believe the terms of service violation was for high shipping charges and a low auction value. eBay hates those since it gets only a small cut of the revenue. I’m still not entirely sure if that was their issue, though.
Fallout 3 PC has Xbox Achievements
October 31st, 2008One of the reasons I considered getting the Xbox version over the PC version was because I’m not above the Pavlovian attachment to Xbox Live achievement. Good news! The PC version has them. Since Fallout 3 was lead developed on the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live for Windows is now free, the PC version allows you to get exactly the same achievements.
A couple of quick notes:
You need to activate the live features. Select “Live” from the menu screen before you start playing. If you do it during a game, it will end your game without saving it. That is a total pain. Also, if you activate live after you start playing you won’t be able to see your save games any more when logged in, only when logged out, which won’t give you any achievements.
There is a fix for finding your save games. Go to the My Games folder in My documents. Find the Fallout 3 folder and copy your save games from the default directory into the one that has your Xbox Live user id. Now you should be able to log in and see them. Your achievements will not be retroactive. Luckily I really only need to replay the vault section to get what I missed.
