Jimtac.com

Week one of March has come and gone, with some interesting hiccups…

If you were a happy Windows 7 RC1 user, you are now an unhappy Windows 7 RC [occasional] user. I hope that if you do fall into this camp, that you have purchased a full license for your recently narcoleptic PC. I’m of course referring to the March 1st expiry of the release candidate of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system, which instead of simply refusing to work, MS was gracious enough to give you 2 hours to use the OS to try to back up your files and regress to your previous OS, or install the retail version of 7 [of course you can only actually upgrade to Win7 Ultimate Edition without doing some hacking of an install disk]. Unfortunately, if you are one of those people who actually used a copy of RC1 as a functional PC trying to use it as a “real” PC in order to try and break things, 2 hours at a time, may not be enough. But either way, it’s time to pony up or fall back.

The next bit of crazy is that PSN decided to crap all over itself this past week, and it turns out that it was a bit of math that tripped those guys up. On the bright side, if you would have just bought the PS3 Slim, then you would have been fine; on the down side, most PS3 owners [myself included] do not have the Slim. When this first happened, you would turn on your PS3, and it would tell you that is cannot connect to the PSN, and would not play most games, or network, or … Well it turns out that it’s not just that the PSN was inaccessible, it turns out that the internal clock of all the pre-Slim PS3′s thought that 2010 was a leap year, and added the extra day to February. Good job Sony, at least I can take solace in the fact that I’m not the only one who hasn’t bought a 2010 calendar yet. At least it didn’t affect me, since now I’m about 52 hours into Mass Effect 2, which has completely negated my use of any other gaming system [or any other media]… So sorry WoW, but I think you can live without me for a bit longer since you’ve sucked months, and not just days of real time from me so far.

Oh, and I REALLY want an Iron Man TV!!!

Though I wish it was that hotrod red, with the arc reactor as the logo in the centre [like my LG Scarlet]

I may be getting a hold of the sequel to one of my all time favorite games a bit late, [see my Canada Post Sucks post], but now that I have, and am still trying to get the damn game running, I kind of wish that I had just ignored the game altogether!

I’m one of those gamers that simply must complete EVERY bit of a game, and will usually go back several times through to do so, [which is probably why I like WoW so much...] So when I heard that Mass Effect was getting a sequel, and that BioWare [one of my favorite dev's] was doing something crazy like ACTUALLY listening to the people who played the first game, and address the issues that we were running into. This made these last couple of days all the more frustrating!

When I tore open the box from Amazon, I carefully sliced open the clear tape, slid the tin from it’s slip cover, got angry with Canada Post for denting the metal art case, then carefully sliced the “Authentic Xbox” sticker, and after admiring the included code for the collector’s armour/rifle, I pried [and I mean almost snapped in two] disc 1 from it’s polycarb resting place… Ah… The anticipation…

I mash my thumb into the jewel on my controller, firing up the massive jet engines powering my Xbox 360, and walk over to remove the copy of Street Fighter IV that has been resident in the tray for a few weeks. As I press the eject button to close the tray, I turn to walk back  to my couch, pick up my controller, apply the update, and as I sit down for a night in which I get no sleep before work the next day… IT happened… I got the launch screen telling me that I need to:

Get the card from inside the companion box

Go to my computer

Fire up a browser

Navigate to www.masseffect.com

Register with EA by giving them all of my personal information

Create a BioWare identity

Redeem a code TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE GAME [and to redeem the collector's armour & rifle]

This is one of the most frustrating things that I have EVER experienced in a video game. I played Assassin’s Creed 2 earlier [and LOVED it], where there is a component to the game which ties into a website based experience, however THAT experience was completely OPTIONAL… Which means it was done correctly. When I saw an image of the card which contains the code to redeem the collector’s stuff, I incorrectly assumed that it was an XBL Marketplace redemption. It also never entered my realm of possibilities that I would be sitting here 2 days later, not able to play the game due to issues with creating an account with EA/BioWare [BioWare's account creation for their "Beta" site is down until 4am tomorrow]. On an aside; Why the hell would you have a game rely on a site that you still call Beta AFTER the game’s release??? Aaaaaand… Doing maintenance in the evening… Don’t they realize people play games in the evening?

One of many reasons that I got into console gaming was that I didn’t have to deal with all of the crap that comes along with PC gaming; site registrations, game keys, usernames/passwords, spreading my information all over the internet. I’ve traded all of the headaches that come with PC Gaming for paying extra for console gaming, and I’m perfectly OK with that, because console gaming just works… Until now…

After day 2 of not being able to play my new game, which by the way is a legit copy sitting in my silent, still, cold, powered down, 360 as yet un-played; I now feel like this game is far less of a “Must-Play”, and more like a wasted $85. Thanks to EA/BioWare one of my few forms of escapist entertainment, which gives me some enjoyment in an otherwise banal, frozen north, has transformed from a fantastic, simple to use “appliance”, to just another unnecessarily complex system. Xbox 360, and Xbox Live have been almost perfect in their implementation; they have a secure system, where piracy, and hacking/modding are kept as close to non-existent as is humanly possible, and every other game has gotten along just fine without requiring you to go outside of this fantastic ecosystem in order to allow you to even play a game that you paid a decent chunk of your paycheque for.

In short… EA/BioWare… Why? You may be thinking that it provides a better, more interactive experience by requiring people to fork over personal data that XBL may, or may not, provide to you; but if a user really wants to expand their gaming experience THEY will seek YOU out. If it’s simply a grab for data that can be sold to to advertisers, or other “interested parties”, then all I have to sat to that is: Shame on you!

One more try tomorrow, and if it fails again, it will be the LAST time I buy an EA/BioWare game.

Tim

Edit: Feb 25

I finally managed to get logged in, and in the game… sort of… I’m finally able to get into the game, and redeem my “Cerberus Network” code, that luckily came with my game, so I don’t have to buy something else on top of the extra that I paid for this game… However I’ve been trying for nearly 30 minutes now to redeem my collector’s edition armour and gun code… Seriously, what ridiculous crap is this… NOT pleased!

Who’d have imagined that when I got a “real job”, I’d have be too busy to do just about anything… Just ask blizzard about my WoW account. I’ve fallen into the trap of New Year’s resolutions myself, which include everything from not bothering a certain person by trying to talk to them, to the perennial ‘get more exercise’ one that we all have, and so far so good.

One of my more odd resolutions is to actually play my Xbox360 rather than just let it remain as a shelf for a thin layer of dust. Luckily for my resolution Assassin’s Creed 2 came out, and I’m a sucker for this type of stealth assassination game. AC2 fixed just about everything that was a problem in AC1, with the exception of when you start to free run Ezio decides to go “full-retard”. I understand that this time around Ubisoft wanted to give more control to the player, but as you speed up, you really need to have some better pathing assistance. Oh, and those stupid box carrying morons that wander around and intentionally get in your path, have yet again made the top of my list of things that suck the fun from the game. So far I’ve put in WAAAAY too much time into the game, but it’s still VERY fun.

Unfortunately for my resolution is that I’ve bruised all the bones in my left wrist, and severely sprained my right one in a pretty nasty fall while walking through the parking lot at work… Not cool… It’s been over a week, and I’m still in an incredible amount of pain, which is not being helped by my ignoring the doctors advice, and am only wearing a fancy wrist brace on my left wrist, and (so I can do things) nothing on my right one. All I can say is, thank goodness for modern anti-inflammatory and pain-killing drugs, they may not stop the sharp pangs of pain from shooting up my arms, but it sure helps for all the times in between them.

Here’s hoping that your new year is a good one.

Tim

Scribblenauts has taken up so much time (speaking of which try spawning a Time Machine), and so did watching Firefly and Serenity a few times each, and yes the full series with commentaries and extras. One thing that I have to say was that the writing, acting, and visuals are all spectacular and still hold up even after 6 years. I hear that Nathan Fillion, and Adam Baldwin both do voices in ‘Halo: ODST’ and their lines are very Firefly-esque. I really wish that Fox could have passed over that whole phase of killing off every fan loved show like Family Guy, and Greg the Bunny, just to please the beancounters. Next series up is Space: Above and Beyond.

P.S. I forgot to hit Published on this one yesterday… Oops, my bad.

Not really an indepth review of the game, but I LOVE Scribblenauts. The puzzles are inventive, and entertaining. Even the “start” screen is fun, you can pit various creatures against one another, and throw various objects into the mix.

I’ll be doing a proper review later, but for now I’m just enjoying the game too much.

It’s technically Tuesday, which means that new stuff comes out, so I need to get some sleep, get up early-ish and make the long drive to go check out the Zune HD, and pick up a copy of Scribblenauts (my delayed birthday present to myself).

On a side note, congrat’s to Neil on getting the HTC Hero, hopefully he can wait for the “official” firmware to come out.