May 28th, 2005
there is still humour in game writing
Not since the halcyon days of Old Man Murray have I read such a scathing, yet wholly humerous diatribe on the bullshit currently drowning the industry. How fitting that it comes after the screenshot contest and orgy of empty promises that is E3!
Of note is the return of the crate commentary (#14): honestly, is there nothing more innovative to fill up a level’s floorspace with? At least in Half Life 2 you could build things out of them with the Gravity Gun.
I also like what the writers insinuate about the online capabilities of the new consoles: as much as I love having the PC as my home platform, there is nothing more infuriating than installing a patch that doesn’t work with your existing saved games, resets game settings, or is explicitly required to play the god damned game. The only genre that has an excuse is the MMORPG, which should be adding more content and not fixing the game like so many do. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the development process, where in a rush to ship a product programmers rely on a future patch. While in most games this could be considered optimization, some are virtually unplayable until they are patched. Console gamers have been safe in their realm of uniform hardware specs and relatively bug-free games. I consider this a turning point where developers can use this technology to provide more functionality in games, or adopt the “release now, patch later” philosophy, a path that is often rife with frustration and disappointment.
June 3rd, 2005 at 10:10 am
Wow, that was some funny writing! Of course, I agree with some points (crates and online play), disagree with others (his whole diatribe about onscreen messages is way off base) and most of them just caused me to nod my head in agreement. I think the scariest thing (besides a $500 console game price) is the usage of network connectivity to release broken games.