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.

Just the other day my boss commented that, for precipitation (or for “snow”?), we are three inches ahead of the game so far this year. I just gave him a funny look. Here I am in my baggies and my flower print shirt and this guy is talking about nasty weather like that? I’m like, dude, if it were snowing, would I be wearing my sandals? I’m not yet certain that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, but it does seem like people are losing their minds.

In the meantime, stay thirsty, my friends.

Signed,

The most interesting man in the world.

If the language sounds stilted, it’s because the author is attempting to be scrupulously objective. Not that the author considers that to be a valid excuse.

One party argues that Wars’ stealth mode is too effective, thus making it almost imperative that players adopt a passive, defensive posture rather than an aggressive, offensive posture when playing, thereby neutralizing—to an extent, at least—the effect of basic FPS skillsets on the outcome of a game and reducing “deathmatch” games to something more closely resembling “hide and seek.”

The other party suggests that Wars’ stealth mode addresses a problem in the original Crysis, where stealth was seen as a liability, and that Wars’ new, more effective mode is an improvement over the former. Furthermore, as all parties have equal access to stealth, the offended parties could simply adopt the tactics used by their opponents. Guild doctrine, obviously, supports this stance; in fact, whether or not all parties have equal access to stealth is irrelevant. Traditional Guild doctrine would hold that stealth would still be a valid tactic even if it were unbalanced.

However, something came up in discussion today that calls into question how much support this old doctrine really has in the modern Guild: one Guildsman suggested that the problem could be alleviated by adjusting graphics settings down so that the stealth mode effect stood out more. Another immediately protested that this would be “cheating.”

…This is in obvious conflict with the doctrine above stating that, if a tactic works, it is valid.

Of course the Guild has always looked down (at least selectively) on underhanded techniques like hacking; changing underlying game files to net an advantage over one’s opponent is bad form, and at the very least calls into question the player’s true ability. (Interestingly, the Guild has traditionally imposed very light punishments for such infractions as “looking over the enemy’s shoulder to see where he might be” and other similar forms of cheating.) However, as things like “graphics settings” are a part of the game and require no such underhanded modification—indeed must be turned down, often to the detriment of the player’s experience, if a rig cannot handle a given game—one wonders if this can actually be defined as cheating, and more particularly if the old school Guild could have defined it as such.

At this point, the author does not seek so much to question one argument or the other, but rather the old doctrine itself, and so the question is:

    Fundamentally, has the Guild changed in such a way that “fun” may now be considered more important than “winning”?

The author—Bishop—asks this because it is his opinion that his win-at-all-costs attitude may have had significant influence on the old doctrine and wonders if, having been made wiser (or at least less apt to win) by the wear and tear he has experienced over the years, it might be time to reevaluate these old standards.

I suppose it’s because too large a proportion of them are stupid. We coddle our idiots in the West, you see. We have signs that read “High voltage!” And then when some fucktard electrocutes himself, burning off half his skin and condemning himself to a life as a crippled fucktard, we then mandate that the guy who owned the sign now has to pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars so that he can still buy pussy and reproduce, creating more fucktards.

It would be better to remove the sign and let the fucktard cull himself from the herd.

I’d love to know what kind of fourth world ape actually looks up at high lines and says, “I bet I can climb on those without getting fried.”

I’m open to new info on the subject, but things don’t sound great.

The Windows 7 Product Guide provides a detailed look at the many new and improved features in Windows 7. The guide is designed as an accurate source of information that can help you to understand how Windows 7 Simplifies Everyday Tasks, Works the Way You Want, and Makes New Things Possible. The guide is also designed to provide IT Professionals with information about how to Make People Productive Anywhere, Manage Risk Through Enhanced Security and Control, and Reduce Costs by Streamlining PC Management. This is not a help and how to guide. Rather, it provides an overview of the many exciting features in Windows 7 and pointers to more information. The Windows 7 Product Guide is available in both XPS and PDF formats.

For the most part, though, I liked Windows Vista, especially when I moved to the 64-bit version of Ultimate last January (I had been using 32-bit Ultimate before that because my upgrade copy of ultimate didn’t come with the 64-bit disk, and MS wouldn’t send me one.  A year later, I finally got my hands on a 64-bit disk, and remedied that problem).  Not everyone was so fortunate, either by genuine Vista issues or their own foolishness/stubbornness in trying to get it to run on outdated hardware.  Vista needs a beefier system than XP did.  When I was buying the parts for my faithful rig Old Blue (a.k.a:  Stormrider) in the autumn/winter of ‘07, I had two main considerations:  building the best gaming rig I could afford and also ensuring it would run Windows Vista happily.  Not only was I using modern hardware, the hardware was all at least six months newer than Vista was!  And since I came to the party a year late, I had missed most of the early problems, particularly the drivers issues that were fairly commonplace.  Most of Vista’s issues have long since been corrected (at least in my experience), but the damage caused by bad press had been done.  Microsoft’s solution?  Windows 7.

Well, not quite.  As had been done in the past, Microsoft actually began development on Windows 7 before Vista was even released (and they are now working on Windows “8″, and have been for several months, presumably even before the Windows 7 code went gold back on July 22).  The beta version of Windows 7 was released on January 9, 2009 to the general public.  I snatched it up and installed it alongside my Vista installation.  I played around with it a bit but didn’t use it heavily (though I could tell even then Windows 7 was going to be impressive; the beta already worked pretty darn well).  On May 5th, the Release Candidate build of Windows 7 was released to the general public and I snatched it up as well, replacing my Win7 Beta installation with it. 

I’ve been extremely impressed with the Release Candidate build:  enough so that in early July, I completely removed Vista from my system and started solely using Windows 7 RC 64-bit as my day-to-day OS (actually, my *only* installed OS).  I’ll make that clear:  I dropped a mature OS in Vista that had Service Pack 2 installed and worked perfectly well and started using a pre-release version of Windows 7.  I was, and still am, that impressed with it.  Its running faster than Vista did, is generally more stable, and I have had fewer driver-related issues.  Virtually all of my software that worked in Vista works in Windows 7 (a small number initially had some issues but have since been fixed with updated versions…and that small number was very, very small).  I love the changes to the taskbar (once I grew accustomed to it), and the new troubleshooting features.  The UI looks slicker and more polished than Vista’s did while still maintaining the excellent Aero look; it simply looks better now. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I won’t detail everything that has been changed or improved; that’s easy enough to find elsewhere on the Internet.  I’ll just say that Windows 7 RC is the best OS I have ever used period, and it is just a pre-release version!  I expect the final RTM version to be even more polished and bug-free. 

The finalized RTM version of Windows 7 has been available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers since August 6th, and those eligible for MSDNAA have had access for just about as long.  But today the rest of us can finally start getting our copies.  The pre-orders have begun shipping, you can now buy new computers with Windows 7 pre-installed, and can walk into stores and buy your copy (assuming they have them available) or buy a copy online from Amazon, NewEgg, and the like.

As for me, I’m just waiting for my pre-ordered copy of Windows 7 Professional to get here. 

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.

On a related note, I noticed that after my hard work, the site looked rather garbled in Internet Explorer 8.  The “Compatibility Mode” button was also not showing, but the workaround to get the site looking normal is to simply add Guildcom.us to the Compatibility view list on the Compatibility View Settings under Tools on the normally hidden menu bar (which can be brought up by simply pressing the Alt key) or under Page on the command bar.  This seemed to fix things right up.  Opera 10 displayed fine from the get-go, and although I haven’t tested them yet, I assume Firefox 3.5+ and Chrome ought to work fine as well.