GuildCom

First thing first, ladies and gentlemen: you must all be aware of the fact that his honor the Reverend Bishop of CenCom owns not one…

Not two…

Not three…

Not. Even. Four.

Five.

The honorable Reverend Bishop of CenCom owns now five copies of Tom Clancy’s Raven Shield,not counting the expansion packs he may or may not admit to having purchased—or any of the copies that have been stolen and/or permanently borrowed by his immediate blood relatives. These were all published, sometime near the beginning of the millennium, by Ubisoft, a publisher which has now achieved a tie for first place on the Reverend Bishop’s shit list, right up there with Activision-Blizzard.

Now hear this, Ubisoft: I used to buy your products in unreasonable quantities—but no more.

R.U.S.E. (from hereon called just Ruse) is a very fun little strategy game. Quick to learn. Dare I say “easy”? But with a lot of potential for depth that, to be quite honest, I was excited to explore as I first began playing when the public beta opened on Steam on March 9, 2010, just a day ago now. It reminded me of another game with a similar spirit, which I have long wanted to see remade (but my love affair with Ruthless.com is a story for another day—and, oddly, I own only a single copy of that /tears).

But it isn’t all just a bed of roses. As my comrade in the East dutifully pointed out after some of our initial enchantment had worn off, Ubisoft intends to publish this little gem with the same sort of [censored] DRM as Assassin’s Creed II, which has recently become famous for being unplayable whenever Ubisoft’s DRM servers happen to be unavailable. This might be an important note, actually: the honorable Reverend Bishop knows nothing at all about Assassin’s Creed II other than the fact that it doesn’t work when the retarded servers are down. Is this really the sort of publicity a publisher is looking for?

…At any rate, those of you who follow the teachings of the Bishop are aware that I recently decided that I would never, for any system, purchase Modern Warfare 2, as the price tag for the PC version of that game is simply beyond the pale and I am not ready to start plunking down that kind of change for a game, no matter how well hyped. It was a painful decision, most especially as some of my good friends play that game and I felt I might have been missing out on something. This decision, however, is less so:

Unless they mend their evil ways, I will never purchase another game published by Ubisoft.

I reserve the right to purchase games with retarded digital rights mechanisms should the desire take me. However, when April 9, 2010 rolls around and the Ruse beta closes, I will uninstall the game, happy for the diversion it offered, forget about it entirely. “Voting with my money” may not have sent Activision-Blizzard quite the message I intended when Modern Warfare 2 broke all kinds of sales records, but hopefully, eventually, enough people will follow along that these giants of the gaming industry will start to leave the PC out of their plans in the future. These publishers assert that PC gaming is dying a little every day anyway, and I would just as soon be dead to them.

Lord knows, these assholes are already dead to me.

Thus sayeth the honorable Reverend Bishop. As it has been written, let it be done. And I hope you moneygrubbing dicks rot in Hell in the same hot tub with Janet Reno and the guy who invented instant breakfast.

Afterword:

My Eastern comrade and I have remarked more than once in recent times that it is a sad day when Electronic Arts can garner more appreciation from gamers than… Well, anybody, actually. With a tradition of yearly sports game rebuys franchises and a habit of committing obscene evils on the DRM front, Electronic Arts once represented all that we hated about the people whose children we unwittingly, sometimes unwillingly, and almost always unfailingly, feed.

In light of recent reversals in the industry, by the power invested in me by the State of Texas and the Guild Investing Committee, I hereby declare that EA being less evil than the competition is the norm rather than the exception. You may now rejoice.

While looking on Steam yesterday, I saw that LucasArts has *finally* made available the original  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in the Steam store.  And as a reasonable price of $10, no less.  Even though I still have my beloved KotOR disks sitting upon my shelf, I was happy to see the game on Steam. 

Too bad that as of this writing, the old widescreen hacks from the retail version don’t work on the Steam version from what I hear.  Hopefully, that will change soon.  Still, other than that, it seems a pretty solid deal.

Reactions across the web have been mixed at the news that id Software has been purchased by Zenimax, the privately-held company that owns Bethesda Softworks.

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I was just re-installing my trusty copy of DOOM Collector’s Edition(the purchase itself was two-thirds redundant, as I already owned Ultimate Doom and Doom II’s Win95 versions…but I wanted Final Doom, damnit!  So anyways…), which does still work on Windows Vista 64-bit amazingly enough, and I saw the minimum requirements for Doom, and it made me laugh as its a reminder of how far we have come.
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…and just pre-ordered F.E.A.R. 2 off of NewEgg.  I had actually talked myself into getting the Steam version earlier, despite the fact that *they* won’t be releasing the game until the 12th (as opposed to the 10th like everyone else).  Since the rumor going around is that it requires Steam anyways, I had pretty much decided to save a couple of bucks in sales tax and gas and sacrifice having the disk (meaning a lengthy download off of Steam as I imagine it’ll be slammed on the 12th). 

However, for the heck of it, I decided to check some online retailers.  I say NewEgg is accepting pre-orders and are running a price of $46.99 with FREE 3-day shipping!  And no sales tax to boot!  I thought that was too good to pass up, even if I means I’ll likely get it a day or so later than I would have off of Steam (assuming they actually get it on the 10th and ship it that day or the next).  But as I said, it was cheaper than the Steam version was, and I get the retail copy after all.  Good times.  You all might look into that deal yourselves.

I’ve never bought a game off of NewEgg before.  Nor have I ever pre-ordered anything from there before.  However, all the parts from my computer (spread over about 9 or 10…or so… separate shipments over the course of a few months), and they proved to be a hell of a reliable retailer.  Shipments always arrived when expected.  I did have one shipment that was wrong:  they forgot to put my Patriot RAM kit in there.  But a quick phone call to their customer service resolved the issue:  they quickly sent me the RAM I paid for without additional charge (even for shipping) at the same 3-day shipping method I had chosen before.  No questions asked.  THAT is good customer service.  I’ve sworn that, barring a killer sale, all my future PC hardware purchases will be from NewEgg.  And if this goes well too (and given my past experience with them, I have no reason to believe that it won’t), I may have a new place to look at buying games from, too.

Hmmm…I don’t have to leave the house (except maybe the short trot to the apartment office to get my package if the fucking UPS guy doesn’t deliver it to my door), I saved money, and I don’t have to clog up my internet connection downloading the game off of slammed servers.  Niiiiiice!  With that in mind, I don’t mind waiting an extra few days; hell, I still have Fallout 3 to tide me over, and I just re-installed Oblivion.  Life is good.

Now, bring it on, Alma! 

I understand that, in house here at GuildCom at least, saying this may be a bit of sacrileg… But I haven’t been just drooling in anticipation of the release of FEAR2. I know, I know, it’s probably going to be a great game, but I’m going to play it for a week and pretty much be finished.

The same cannot be said of the game I’m about to mention — which I just heard about today — and which is one of the few ongoing franchises I can still get excited about.

Creative Assembly is set to release Empire: Total War in March of 2009.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a release I can get excited about. I rant about sequels in a lot of cases, but Total War is very nearly a genre unto itself; “yet another” game in this time-honored series is nothing to complain about.

I fully expect to preorder this on Steam when I get home today, if for no other reason than to get a free copy of Rome: Total War to enjoy in the meantime.

I can almost hear the Rhine crashing in the background, thrashing in its icy prison in the midst of winter as an innumerable barbarian horde clashes spear on shield across the field from me… Their tragically overconfident commander prepares to lead the charge against my battle-hardened veterans. The german chieftain will fall this day — and with him gone their hopes of victory will crumble.

Obviously, I’m bored to be posting a trivial reminder that F.E.A.R. 2:  Project Origincomes out a week from today.  Of course, those who care already know this.  Frankly, I just needed to post something, as nothing has been posted for a few days. 

The reason?  Read more…

I’ve played through the demo for F.E.A.R. 2:  Project Origin three times now (and completed it twice), so here’s a few thoughts I’ve had about it so far.  I might or might not update this furter if I play through the demo more and have new observations.  Anyways, here we go:

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The demo for F.E.A.R. 2:  Project Originwas unleashed onto the Internet this morning for the PC, as well as being available for the XBox 360 & Playstation 3 by their usual distribution methods.  Needless to say, I’m psyched; I’ve been looking forward to F.E.A.R. 2 for over a year now, and the demo will help ease the wait until February 10th when the full game is released here in the States.  As you can imagine, I’m downloading right now (or at least in line for the FilePlanet download; currently number 80 of 115).

The download is 1.8 GBs, and the wait time over at FilePlanet is between 40 minutes and an hour depending on the server.  Not bad, really; I’ve seen it be much worse.  While you wait, you can read IGN’s hands-on report of the demo here:  http://pc.ign.com/articles/947/947182p1.html

Download mirrors for PC version (the ones I’ve seen anyways):
WhatIsFear.com
FilePlanet
GamersHell
FileShack
FanGaming
The demo is also available on Steam

So quit reading this and get in line, dammit! 

The game is out, to mixed reviews. There’s no doubt that it’s good — it’s garnered a meta score of 8+ according to Steam — but the critics have both praise and complaints for this astonishing title. But what does the Guild say?

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