Castle Magus

Putting all this shit behind cuts, because it's mostly just a buttload of Youtube embeds.

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( Console start up routines )

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( Company/Publisher specific logos, either general or game-specific )

As of today, I no longer own any video game consoles or associated games. I sold all of that stuff to Lost Ark Video Games in Greensboro, NC. Well, actually, I do still own a Xbox 360, because Lost Ark wouldn't buy the old fat model, a Playstation 2, which I didn't even take out there to bother to try to sell because it was already on its last legs, and an old, modded Playstation 1 that I didn't even take with me to Washington when I moved out there in 2004, let alone to Lost Ark to try to sell. (EDIT) Oh, and I still have a Wii Fit board, even though I no longer have a Wii to connect it to, because I forgot to bring the stupid thing with me when I sold all the other crap. (/EDIT) Everything else is gone, though, including the handheld stuff. And, weirdly, I don't feel too awfully bad about it. I thought it would probably feel like the rough equivalent of selling one's children to do it or some such, but no... nothing all dramatic like that. (EDIT 2) I have to say that going into my Backloggery and tagging all those games with the little "Formerly Owned" ghost was somewhat sad, though. Some of them I had to actually (stealth) add as new games, since they weren't previously even in the list given that I hadn't bothered to update my Backloggery page in forever, only to then mark them as "Formerly Owned." >_> (EDIT 3) And... that was probably very close to the last time I ever even bothered to keep up with my Backloggery page, so... yeah. (/EDIT 3) (/EDIT 2)

Now, though, I still have a ton of old PC games, which Lost Ark also wouldn't buy, that I need to do something with. I'll probably end up selling those individually on eBay or Amazon Marketplace or something. I actually could have done the same for the consoles and console games as well, and probably would have gotten more money out of them in the long run if I'd done so, but I just wanted to unload them somewhere relatively convenient, so that's what I did.

"EA Halts DICE Projects Pending 'Battlefield 4' Fixes"
"Electronic Arts Tanks After Hitting Reset On Battlefield 4"
"Did EA Lie About Battlefield 4? Now Under Investigation"

I don't give a single crap about Battlefield 4 per se, but it's nice to see EA finally starting to reap back a tiny bit of the bullshit that they've sown over the years, even if nothing really comes of all this in the end. The schadenfreude alone is worth it for me.

Kind of sucks for DICE though. They're just yet another company that got gobbled up by EA and is now being shat upon by them. (I'm guessing they were, like, shat out first, and then that shit was itself shat upon... I don't know, mixed metaphors and all that... *shrug*)

(EDIT)

A quote from the last article linked above: "Of further worry may be that EA has permanently damaged its reputation among gamers, which could affect its sales of other games in the future."

I can't help but roll my eyes at that. One would think that this particular ship would had sailed loooooong ago, but if it hasn't already done so by now, then this thing here with Battlefield 4 isn't going to matter much in the long run either, unfortunately. Video gamers (generally speaking, and aside from me and a few others of like mind) are very fickle and have incredibly short memories about things like this. Once the problems with BF4 are half-assedly patched up into a mostly playable state, people will forget all about it, and when the next big thing (such as the next Dragon Age game) comes out, they'll suck it down and ask for more (even though the previous game, in the case of Dragon Age, was a mediocre mess at best).

(/EDIT)

Just finished it about an hour ago or so.

( Vague spoilers for the ending )

Also, here's a protip for avoiding gigantic spoilers for the plot of the game. Do not, repeat DO NOT, start to type "Booker DeWitt" into Google, because the auto-complete will spoil the shit out of a major plot point that is only revealed at the very end of the game (though I suppose it might be possible to suss it out before hand). I'm glad I managed to avoid all spoilers for the game prior to playing it. Made it have a lot bigger impact for me.

In any case, yeah, I liked it. It was a cool game.

So, I just realized that I haven't played this game yet. I usually get the new Silent Hill games at least shortly after release, but this one just kind of fell off of my radar entirely somehow. Before I look into getting it, however, I'd like to know... is it really as bad as all that? Granted, I'm still probably going to end up getting it eventually, regardless, but I'd like to know what I'm going into.

For reference, the only Silent Hill game I never finished because I thought it was really crappy was Silent Hill: Origins (the PS2 port from the PSP). I actually even kinda liked The Room and Homecoming. Downpour has to at least be better than Origins, right? (EDIT, after having actually played Downpour) Yeah, it's better than Origins. (/EDIT)

"Bioware and EA, meanwhile, have been a little flip-floppy about whether they’re taking the complaints seriously. Initial comments from ME3 lead Casey Hudson held that he deliberately wanted to polarise sentiments and leave mysteries hanging, while other Bioware brains later stepped into the fray to claim that they were listening to fan feedback and hint that it might lead to something."

I almost stopped reading right there. So, the first guy was straight up trolling, essentially. And then the second group came in and basically admitted to what they probably had planned all along, given that the "something" that this might "lead to" is almost assuredly going to be a "proper" ending to the game being patched in later via DLC, for which they are going to charge extra for, of course.

And then, later on, there's this part:

"In a new statement, Hudson is more conciliatory towards fans who felt closure was lacking, claiming that these concerns are 'valid' after all. You should read the lot, evasive and vague as it may be, but the key part is this:

'Throughout the next year, we will support Mass Effect 3 by working on new content. And we’ll keep listening, because your insights and constructive feedback will help determine what that content should be. This is not the last you’ll hear of Commander Shepard.'"

So, yeah, that's exactly what they are and probably always were planning. Release a crap ending, get everyone all angry about it, and then DLC in a BS "true" ending. Mr. Meer is absolutely correct when he says that they're "playing with fire" by doing this.

As for me, I still haven't even bought ME3 yet. As time passes, my desire to do so lessens ever more. Again, I'll probably cave in and pick it up someday down the line, when I can find it dirt cheap. But I'm not going to be paying full price for this crap, not at all. And, again, after this I will probably never buy another BioWare game, unless and until they (and more importantly, their EA overlords) finally come to their senses and realize that what they are doing is not good business in the long run (though it's excellent business for them in the short term, unfortunately).

Seriously, though, it's not even just BioWare/EA that's doing this crap. There's also Final Fantasy XIII-2. Before that, there was Fallout 3 (which "fixed" the vanilla game's crappy ending with the Broken Steel DLC), and yet, I don't much recall there being any sort of issue (I almost said "fallout"... >_>) with that. I mean, sure, there was a minor brouhaha over the ending sucking, but when the DLC came out, most people were just glad to get a better ending. (Personally, I never even finished the vanilla game of Fallout 3, so have little use for any of the DLC. I'm currently waiting for the Steam version of the GotY edition to hit a 66-75% off sale before giving it another try.) Are people finally, finally starting to wake up to this blatant, abject BS crap that these game companies are doing to them now, and have been doing to them for some time? Or am I just being overly optimistic here? I'll be pessimistic and say that I'm probably just being overly optimistic.

My ability to give a crap about Mass Effect 3 continues to spiral ever farther down the drain.

This isn't really news though. It's still the case, apparently, that you don't have to play the multiplayer in order to get the best ending. No, you just have to have played the previous two games absolutely perfectly (which is kind of difficult given that there are bugs in those games that screw over some of the minor quest results, as well as bugs in the process of carrying over data from ME1 to ME2) in addition to playing the singleplayer part of ME3 itself perfectly as well, including all of the mind-numbing minigame crap.

You used to be great, BioWare, but not anymore. I won't ask what happened to you and why you became so crappy though, because I already know the reason for that.

(EDIT)

Oh, and here's another thing. I don't have Xbox Live Gold anymore, so even if I wanted to play ME3 multiplayer (which I vehemently do not) I couldn't do so, at least not without paying Microsoft some arbitrary non-insignificant amount to reactivate a Gold account.

So there's that too.

(/EDIT)

Dear BioWare,

If this Thing™ that you are doing (and have been doing at least since Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, except that you're gouging everyone this time, rather than just used buyers) is something that you feel the need to "defend" from everyone who is calling it a very crappy thing, then perhaps you should take a step back and consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be doing said crappy thing?

Sincerely,

Someone else who is also very sick and tired of Day 1 DLC, regardless of any bullshit excuses and rationalizations for it.


In any case, between this and all the other crap swirling around this game, I've pretty much decided now that I'm just going to wait for a "Game of the Year" or "Ultimate" or "Complete, and not hacked up into various pieces of DLC" version of Mass Effect 3 before I bother to get it, if I get it at all. I can wait. I've got plenty of other things to keep me busy in the meantime. If such a version of the game is never released, then I can still wait until the hacked up version is suitably bargain bin price, such that it plus any DLC (assuming the DLC is even still available at that point) would be around the price of a normal full game altogether, rather than as it is now, i.e. a game at full price plus what will likely end up being an additional almost full game's price worth of DLC on top of that.

My only regret now is that I didn't do the same sort of thing for Mass Effect 2 as well, given that all of the DLC for that game that I may care to get currently comes to a total of 2480 Microsoft Points, or around $31 (and if I ever do get it, it will only be if/when there is a sale on it). But then, there hasn't been an "Ultimate" version of ME2 made available yet (at least, not for the Xbox 360 anyway), which leads me to be pessimistic about there being one for ME3 either. Oh well.

(EDIT)

And would you look at that. Yet another industry brown-nosing op-ed piece by that dumbass Chris Pereira guy at 1up.com. This guy's starting to bug me even more than Jim Sterling of Destructoid does.

(/EDIT)

First Sony and EA and now Microsoft as well.

Well.

I was thinking of cancelling my Xbox Live Gold membership soon before it auto-renews in January anyway, purely for monetary reasons, but hadn't entirely committed to it yet. But this, however, just gives me another reason to do so. Thanks, Microsoft! But then, I'm pretty sure the clause applies to the free Silver accounts as well. :/

It looks like these things are being challenged in at least some states, according to that Kotaku article, and I'm glad that's happening. Hopefully these clauses will get struck down soon enough. Then again, given how ponderously the legal system tends to work, it could still take years before anything comes of it. (Also, given that big corporations similar to this all but run the country/government these days, who knows if they'll actually get struck down at all. /pessimist)

Well, at any rate, at least I can stop giving Microsoft money every year for increasingly I-don't-give-a-crap-about-any-of-this-stuff service. And yeah, I was thinking of cancelling my subscription last year as well, but didn't do it yet because I'd already renewed it for another year at the limited time discount price. That doesn't apply this year, though, so I probably will actually go through with cancelling it this time. I just hate that they force you to actually call them to cancel it, and don't just offer an easy way to do it via the website or through the console itself. They certainly let you sign up through those easily enough. ¬_¬

(EDIT)

Oh wait, they actually do let you cancel automatic renewal via the website now, apparently. That's cool, I guess. Of course, I had to accept the new EULA in order to log in and do so. :/

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2)

However, while I was able to set automatic renewal to "off", I got a so-called "error" saying what was essentially "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." when I tried to remove my credit card info. I am going to assume for now that this is because it is tied to a still active LIVE Gold account. As such, I won't raise a stink over it yet, and will instead wait until after the 1/22/2012 date (the date the account is supposed to expire) and see if I can do it then. If I can, good enough. If I can't, though, that's when I start trying to bring the wrath o' god down on them (i.e. I actually call them and tell them to remove it). If that doesn't work... well... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. ¬_¬

(/EDIT 2)

As far as I'm concerned, virtual applause is even more meaningless than achievements/trophies, and I already (mostly) don't care about those. (Besides, the Super Smash Bros games already had the virtual crowd reactions thing long before Super Mario 3D Land, so this isn't really anything amazing and new either.) I mean, it's not something that will prevent me from playing a game, obviously, but it's still something that simply doesn't matter to me, outside of when it gets explicitly talked about in articles like this.

If people feel like they must have achievements or applause or whatever in their games before they feel like they're worth their time to play (and some of the commenters under that article explicitly and depressingly stated this was the case), then, well... I feel like that's just one more bullet point to go on my "Things I Find Sad And Wrong About The Video Game Industry/Community Today" list. A minor one, mind you, but it still goes on there. If playing the game isn't innately its own reward, then perhaps they should reevaluate why they play video games at all to begin with.

Really, I've long felt that people actively seeking out incredibly crappy games that they otherwise wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pole, just because those games allow them to get easy achievements scores, is bad enough. But if the opposite is true and people are actively avoiding games, no matter how awesome they may be, merely because they don't have achievements... well, that's even more retarded, in my not at all humble opinion.

Also, on a related note since it was mentioned in the article/comments as well, I think the very concept of being able to redeem achievements for tangible, real life rewards is an abominable one, and I hope it never becomes a realit- oops, too late. Huh... it never really occurred to me until this moment, but... why does it seem like it's Ubisoft lately, more so even than the more likely suspects of EA or Activision, who are the ones actually pioneering a lot of these incredibly terrible new ideas such as this and, of course, the always online DRM crap that we've seen way too much of lately? Seriously... Ubisoft came up with that asinine always-connected-even-for-singleplayer crap, and people justifiably went apeshit over it. But later, Blizzard comes along and does pretty much the exact same thing, and yet now people are actively defending their decision to do it as though it's all of a sudden somehow a good thing just because it's Blizzard doing it. What the hell?! The Uplay achievements-for-rewards thing isn't nearly as obnoxious as the always online crap is. Why couldn't the others have latched onto that, as dumb as it is, rather than the other, which is many orders of magnitude worse?