CODMW2 multiplayer footage

I’m not negative about everything. I’ve been loving going back and trying to get some more achievements from the Orange Box and experiencing again the genius that is Half Life 2 and its expansions. And, when you can find a lag-free match, there’s nothing like original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare online.

Which is why I’m going to share with you the following:

Oh, yeah.

Nintendo thinks you’re a moron

Oh my god. When you first put in the Wii Sports Resort disc, it shows you an unbelievably patronising video on how to install the MotionPlus add-on to your Wiimote – whether you’ve already attached the thing or not.

AND IT DOESN’T LET YOU SKIP IT. It actually disables the “home” button.

Not only that – it makes you watch MORE patronisingly stupid videos, on how to disconnect it, and how to attach the nunchuck.

Jesus H. Christ. The videos themselves are pretty insulting, but not permitting users to skip them? UNBELIEVABLE.

Valve! Oi, Valve!

Right, that’s it. I’ve had enough. I can’t be dignified about this a moment longer.

WHERE THE FUCK IS HALF LIFE 2 EPISODE 3?!

Please! How much longer must we wait?

Time wasted

As part of its scheme to be an evil parent to the entire world, Microsoft apparently expends a lot of effort trying to make sure xbox users don’t have potty mouths:

That’s because they are constantly on the look for up and coming vulgarity.

“You’ll see a meme running through high schools, suddenly you’ll see this phrase popping up everywhere and we have to be on top of it, figure out if it should be banned,” he said. “My guys spend a lot of time using Urban Dictionary to see if a new phrase is something that should be banned. It requires a lot of research, a lot of time sharing knowledge with each other.”

So much time is spent on the research of fictional cursing that the team has developed an internal Wiki to track the forbidden words of Xbox Live. The interactive document includes thousands of phrases and words deemed inappropriate, much more than the seven once banned from TV.

But to describe how pathetic this sort of domineering language control is, those seven words are more than sufficient…

UPDATE: Penny Arcade’s take on it.

And it’s back to PCs and piracy for many then

Those who’ve been trying to do the “right thing” and have been buying games for an unmodified xbox 360 console and paying MS $100 a year to play online (even though most games don’t have local servers) may find that this is the final straw:

You want us to PAY FOR ANNOYING, INTRUSIVE ADS?

Screw you, Microsoft.

Could be good news for Sony, though – they’ve been desperately waiting for MS to do something stupid.

UPDATE: Some shills are on the Screen play comments defending the move by reference to Rip Off TV… sorry, “Foxtel”. Remember when they launched pay-TV and one of the selling points was no ads? And then they brought ads in but continued to charge the full price? Yeah, that’s a great example of where we should be going.

Australia wants brainsssss

I’m not sure that Australia really wants to be reminded of this sport at the moment, but it’s nice to see that we’ll be represented in another kind of apocalypse:

Did the survivor have to be a Pom?

Don’t buy the Fable 2 “Knothole Island” DLC

It took about ten minutes, or less, to get to a point of the Fable 2 “Knothole Island” DLC that made me greatly regret having bought it.

Do you remember in the original game a particularly frustrating bit (Fairfax tomb) involving having to shoot (using Fable 2′s maddeningly imprecise and slow firearm targeting system) a series of glowing balls that moved quite fast and if you didn’t get one in time you had to start all over again? Do you remember thinking – if you made it past that section without throwing your controller at the TV – “that was awesome, I wish I could do that a bit more”?

If so, then you’re in LUCK! Not only does the Knothole Island expansion require you to play a variant on this idiotic challenge, it makes it last for a dozen iterations, evenly spread between the three different combat types. Miss one – and you will, particularly the yellow shooting bits – and it’s back to the beginning with you.

Designed by Nazi war criminals

Whatever possessed the Fable 2 developers to highlight the limitations of their own control scheme with a mini-game that’s almost impossible to complete using it, and to make that mini-game an unavoidable part of getting anywhere in the DLC storyline, god only knows. Or basement cat.

Whatever, I had to turn it off and play some nice soothing COD:WAW to get back to a state of equilibrium.

I cannot believe that they playtested that section of the Knothole Island DLC. No-one played that – no sane non-masochistic person, anyway – before it shipped. It’s just not possible.

Developers – if you’ve made an action RPG where the control scheme is not really all that precise, DON’T make players endure a timed shooting event that’s almost impossible to complete using it. And if you must include such a thing, at least make it optional, not an unavoidable part of getting through the main content.

Owners of Fable 2 – avoid Knothole Island, unless you enjoy being tormented. Save your money.

More things that suck about BF1943

There’s no way of telling what quality connection you’ve got to the current match before you join it.

There’s no way of telling what quality connection you’ve got to the current match after you’ve joined it (apart from people not dying when you shoot them).

Why is it that developers of online shooters still can’t get this right?

They’ll fix it if we buy it

The new Battlefield 1943 is apparently now almost working, and some people in Australia have managed to get on and get through a game, adjusting – as usual – for the lag.

And – good news! They’re going to set up some local servers, thereby making the game actually playable!

Weirdly, they seem to consider that this is doing us some kind of a favour:

I had to fight hard to get this after we got the sales numbers and Australia had really low sales numbers, it was 8 times less than Japan, 24 times less than the UK, and 34 times less than the USA! I hope I see this change so I can add even more servers in your region!

We need to buy the game first to justify them making it playable? That seems a bit arse-backwards to me.

I hope Gordon explained to his bosses that the REASON for the low take-up might be that Australians are sick of online games that are nigh-on unplayable due to lag. We might have put up with it by buying COD4 and L4D in large numbers – but that naive goodwill was sure to run out eventually. Maybe it has now.

EA MAY RETIRE THIS GAME AFTER 30 DAYS NOTICE POSTED ON www.ea.com

Looking at buying that 1200 MS Point ($24.75*) Battlefield: 1943 today?

Check out this little note at the end of the “description” -

EA MAY RETIRE THIS GAME AFTER 30 DAYS NOTICE POSTED ON http://www.ea.com.

So – you buy the game, and EA can simply take it away from you at their discretion.

I think they were hoping no-one would notice.

What a fantastic development. Henceforth game studios won’t have to worry about you onselling your second-hand games – they’ll just delete them for you. It won’t be “does this year’s update offer a good enough reason to upgrade?” It’ll be “Um, where did last year’s version go?”

Let’s hope this catches on, eh?

*Technically, $24.75 will leave you with 300 MS points left over: it’s just that the smallest possible amount you can spend on this, given that the points come in multiples of 500, is 1500. MS wants you to ignore that you HAVE to buy an extra 300 points – I think they should be called on it. It is a cost you must pay before you can play the game.