Fripplebubby (Level 1)
PC gaming isn’t as big as it once was in terms of market share, but within gaming circles the PC gamers tend to be the ones that are knowledgeable about games and have considerable clout. (You can read that as an opinion, if you want. I’ve found this to be true.) They really do embody the “vocal minority” spirit on the internet.
So when you mess with PC gamers’ beloved distribution service and community-builder (Steam), you tend to get a bit of flak. So is the case with Electronic Arts’ new Steam-like service, Origin. Announced at E3 last year, EA essentially looked at Steam and decided to “do that”, but instead of Valve getting a cut of the profits, they’d keep it all for themselves.
I can’t take issue with that. It is perfectly reasonable for a company to try to maximise profits, and this is really just EA’s way of trying to do that. As you may have heard, the problem is in the execution.
EA’s recent military-shooter juggernaut Battlefield 3 required Origin to be played on PC and has as of yet not announced plans to come to Steam. Future games from EA look to be doing the same, like Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Origin connectivity is reportedly integrated into the console versions of their new games, too. (Post-Battlefield 3, that is.)
What people sometimes forget is that Steam had a rough launch, too, and it was a forced part of Half-life 2. In the years since that, Steam became a respected service and is today regarded at the top of its class. The difference between Steam’s rough start and Origin’s rough start is that Steam was at launch one of the first platforms to attempt digital distribution. It wasn’t perfect, but it still really was the best option out there. Now, Origin has a model to compare itself to and copy so that it didn’t make the same mistakes- but it did make the same mistakes. Origin has downloading problems, billing problems, and poor customer support. In a world in which Steam exists, many find this unacceptable and criticize EA for putting together a shoddy service just for the sake of getting Valve’s fingers out of their already-lucrative pie.
The saddest part is that the game developers that EA publishes for have no control over this, and the games they’re making actually seem quite good. Battlefield 3 is a good game, and EA deciding to stick it with the burden of being the first over the wall reflects poorly on Dice, even though they probably wanted nothing to do with the service. Mass Effect 3 and SW:TOR will probably take hits to sales, and many will probably turn to piracy as their way of voting with their wallets, so to speak. It’s unfortunate, it really is, and those of us out there who just want good games wish that EA would either improve their service or back down on it.
Not sure why I got on the "knows a lot about Saddam Hussein" list. Actually, I do know exactly why, but Aardvark shouldn't. *ahem*
For the last week and a half or so, i've been using a new ISP. My old ISP, Qwest, was frightfully slow and very, very unreliable. I had used them for about 4 years or so, and it started great (it was a 7mbps plan). As more and more people in my small town started getting Internet hooked up, however, it pushed the DSL "Magic Internet Boxes" (couplers was the real term I believe, but I prefer my way) to their limits. When each of the two Magic Boxes reached 90% or so capacity, it resulted in massive slowdowns for everyone.
So, I switched. The thing about my new ISP is, it's mad hickish. I mean, most things in my town are mad hickish, but this is an ISP with pictures of elk on their homepage (a homepage that looks to have been built in a bout 1998, by the way). Don't believe me? Here. Also, this company is run by one guy. As for pricing and whatnot, on the site it lists it all as "call for details", which I find quite cute and rural.
Anyway, now I get 6mbps down/1 up. The difference is, it's not DSL, but Wireless. As in, I have an antenna on top of my roof, and magic beams come down, run through a cable, through a wall, and into a router. The thing that bugs me about this is that I have limited range to move my router, as it can't just be hooked up to any old phone line.
Ah well. The internet works just fine, nothing mind-blowing, but I can watch netflix and play TF2 any time I want (these seem like minor things until they're taken away).
Otherwise, yesterday I hooked up Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred. It's pretty damn cool, but I really need to get a better microphone. Oh, and if you aren't familiar, it's voice-control software that you can use to dictate text, run commands, and the like. It's not ridiculously accurate, but I chalk that up to two things: A. My mic quality, and B. The fact that I haven't used it much. You see, the more you use it, the more it learns how you specifically pronounce words and as such the more accurate it is. Unfortunately, accurate voice databases aren't like Mass Effect save files, and you have to build them yourself with months of use instead of just finding one on the Internet.
Another unfortunate thing about Dragon is that the Preferred edition can't use custom macros. This seems ridiculous for such an expensive piece of software. Luckily, there are workarounds, such as the free Vocola. This allows one to program some macros in using a Python-based system, but i'm far from proficient at using that kind of thing. Everything I made seemed to crash Dragon, except for one successful one that allows me to say "pause" to pause or play Windows media player. Unfortunately, you have to select a window to be active in order to use your voice commands. This kind of defeats the purpose of using voice commands in the first place.
Also, I think Tested should do a thing on Dragon. I think version 11 is out now, or possibly soon, and i'd like to see their thoughts.
Thanks for reading!
The story was a little anticlimatic. I'll go into detail below.
Next, I think i'll give Borderlands a go. I already played through it 1.5 times with a friend splitscreen, but now I want to do it solo. Also, the DLC looks pretty awesome once I finish up the main stuff twice (you have to do it twice, it's way better the second time).
Lastly, I broke into the Halloween candy I was saving for trick-or-treaters. I severely doubt i'll get 150 of them anyway, but if I do, i'll just pretend to be some Halloween hating religious asshole (disclaimer: not all religious people are assholes. Just the ones that don't celebrate holidays).
All the talk on Giantbomb about Fallout: New Vegas kind of reminded me that I never really played Fallout 3, so now I am. It's pretty good. I'm not immersed in the world to the point that I was immersed with Oblivion, but that probably has something to do with the fact that the world of Fallout 3: sucks! I mean, this is nothing against the quality of the game, because I think it's fantastic, it's just that the world they live in is totally lame. Everything's blown apart, there are giant mutated insects and raiders and orc-like things (they call 'em super-mutants, be we all know that's just an anagram for orc), you have to fight to get your hands on dirty water, and a lot of people are jerks.
Still, the game's a blast. I do feel immersed in the sense that i'm really scavenging the wastes for food, ammo, stimpacks, money, and whatever else, while all the while completing quests that are usually somewhat interesting. When I first heard of this game a few years back (you know, when it was still cool), I heard it described as "Like Oblivion with guns". To clarify, the guy I heard that from isn't exactly a genius in terms of... anything, but this game is not Oblivion with guns. It has such a different tone, not to mention the combat pace is much different with the whole VATS thing (by the way, VATS= Very Awesome Turn-based Shooting), though the sheer amount of dice-rolls in the non-VATS shooting is frustrating, to say the least.
Also, this game is pretty intense at parts. I'm a bit of a squeamish gamer, with the scariest game i've played through being Bioshock (loved that game, but i'll admit it's not too scary). I realize that Fallout 3 isn't supposed to be a horror game, but more of an atmospheric one, but still, I had a few moments... Alone late at night, 6 inches from the screen, headphones on, when I could hear something crawling ever so slightly... I'd turn around and BAM! I jump eight feet in the air from startlement.
I think some of that tenseness comes more out being very weak at the beginning of the game, with only a broken-ass pistol, a few rounds, and a baseball bat to defend against hideous creatures all around. Now that i'm further in with a more well-developed arsenal, i'm not afraid of the creatures as much. Once they rear their ugly faces, I just blow 'em to smithereens and skip off in search of loot.
I've also been playing a little (and I mean a little) L4D2, which is pretty ok. I really want to play that with a bunch of dudes I know (in real life) in the same room, so I can scream at them and shit instead of the silent sentinels of efficiency that I always seem to match up with on random. Oh well, it's a pretty good game, but no Fallout 3.
