Last rant of 2006... probably

How was your Christmas? Mine was great... got to see all my family and spend some quality time with them, eat lots of great food and all in all had a very pleasant time.

As tends to happen at Christmas, I got lots of new stuff to play with (lucky lad that I am). Two of the presents in particular were a welcome surprise: Splinter Cell Double Agent and Battlefield 2142.

Splinter Cell in particular was one I was looking forward to playing. I've always been a fan of the series but this one looked like they'd made some cool additions, like the whole 'trust system' where your choices during the missions would really make a difference. Unfortunately I have yet to find out... thanks to the 'brains' at Ubisoft who decided that releasing a triple-A title in a less than fit state was a good idea!

To avoid replicating the many, many (many) pages of people complaining on the Ubisoft forums, I'll try and give a brief summary:

Firstly, the game only 'officially' supports about eight of the most up-to-date, cutting edge graphics cards. That said, as most gamers know, you don't always need to have an officially supported card. Unfortunately, they also decided to screw the majority of ATI graphics card owners but deciding that the game requires shader model 3. Evidently they've not been doing their research... you only need to check out the Valve survey to see that most people do not have such up-to-date hardware. This means that my lovely desktop PC with it's fairly decent Athlon64 3500 and 2Gb of HyperX RAM can't run the game AT ALL because it's using a ATI Radeon x800GTO2 (flashed to an x850 with all the pipelines). A complete joke if you ask me... and for the sake of including SM2 (which is, ultimately, just another set of librarys) into the TEN GIG installation is just taking the piss.

These technical differences aside, I discovered that there was another issue... that a large percentage of people couldn't even get the game to run even WITH the correct, supported, hardware. An undefined **MUST CHECK** error upon launching the title seemed to be stopping a lot of people from getting into the game and only by following a messy workaround were some of the able to get in. Ubisoft's response? Not a lot for the first month or two of release... class job guys and girls... class job.

All being said, I have been able to get Double Agent running on my laptop (which has a nVidia GeForce Go 7600) though the game only just about runs despite a gig of RAM and a decent dual-core processor. Not helped by the fact that every time you change the settings from 'Next Gen Graphics' down to 'Standard Graphics' and apply/save, the game decides differently and changes it back again!!! Only by selecting the custom option and switching everything off are you able to turn the graphics settings off! I'm guessing that all their Beta testing budget must have gone on paying the zoo keepers that looked after the monkeys who ported this directly from the Xbox 360.

I've got one small observation for you Ubisoft... take a look at the number of console owners, not just the 360, ALL of them... now take a look at the number of PC owners. Now have a good hard think (use a calculator if you need to) about who's likely to cost you more money if you upset them... I'll even give you a hint: it's not the console owners!

Battlefield 2142 on the other hand, installed (and plays) like a dream. My only complaint would be the inclusion of a little slip of paper inside the box that tells you that they will be including in-game advertising and collecting information on you. If you don't like it, don't install the game! Nothing like options eh EA? They're not alone either; Valve have just announced that they will be putting in-game advertising into Counter-Strike. The only difference here is that Valve don't pay for any of the servers or bandwidth and don't offer any additional services like the Battlefield 2/2142 ranking. Seems a bit much that they should be making money off people that pay for their servers and bandwidth themselves... at least we all now know why they threatened admins with legal action if they put their own adverts in-game.

Not entirely sure how I feel about in-game advertising... after seeing what Ubisoft did with chewing gum in Chaos Theory I'm inclined to stay well away. And I'm not sure I want to see adverts for Tesco car insurance while trying to take out a huge assault mech. If they can keep in subtle and it doesn't detract from the game then I don't really care either way but I very much doubt that they are capable of that. Look at the product placement we already get in films, James Bond being a prime example... lengthy shots focused on the brand of their phone/laptop/car etc... Maybe we'll get branded weapons and vehicles? A Ford Assault Buggy anyone? Or maybe a Sony Plasma Rifle (in the 40 watt range)? Time will tell...

Anyway... life is good and 2007 is fast approaching. Have fun and enjoy the festivities!

Naiboss

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

'Nuff said

Games are for life... not just for Christmas!

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Because, quite frankly, we rock and we need to let people know!

Life without the net...

It quiet.... too quiet... most likely because I'm currently off-line at home at the moment!

Scary huh?!? Imagine (if you will) a world without emails, websites, blogs, MMOs etc... It's a very strange place indeed. If not for the delights of Guitar Hero II (which rocks btw) I may have gone crazy!



It's ok... it's only because we've moved into the new house and I'm between ISPs at the moment. I'm willing to make the sacrifice however for heating and hot water that work, double-glazing and (much) more room! It's g-r-e-a-t!

Mind you, I'm not going to be net-less for much longer! Thanks to the nice people at Rural Internet I have a nice shiny new 8Mb connection on it way! Yay!

Unfortunately I can't mention ISPs without a quick rant about ADSL4Less (AKA HotChilli Internet) so if you're not interested in reading it... stop reading now (I won't be offended)... Still here? Good to see :)

Yet again ADSL4Less have proved that I've made the right decision switching to a different provider; After numerous attempts to get a MAC code out of them to migrate my line rather than disconnecting, I gave up and ordered a 'cease' on the account (as this requires no communication with their 'help' line). Unfortunately this requires a seven day 'block' on my line stopping me from moving straight to another ISP... which I have no problem with apart from it taking me two days into the next month for which they then charged me a full month's fees!!! This is also despite the fact that I have, on several occasions, made it quite clear that I have not authorised they to automatically take payments (but their 'system' does not allow you to remove card or account details from their database!).

On top of this I also need to mention their (laughable) bandwidth monitor. As I was running on a capped connection, I often found myself having to top up my limit during the month (not really an issue)... what I didn't realise is that their bandwidth monitor (which the cap relies on) seems to have a mind of it's own. Not only does it measure how much you've downloaded, but it also seems to add your uploaded data usage and a random extra percentage to the top. At first I though I'd just downloaded more than I'd realised (easy to do) so I ran a few tests. In October I decided to blow my bandwidth cap (of 2Gb) in style by downloading 20Gb of torrents... I kept track of exactly how much data I had both downloaded and uploaded (using a variety of tools) over that month and at the end found that I downloaded (as expected) just over 20Gb but also uploaded just over 20Gb... and the ADSL4Less bandwidth monitor? 50Gb!!!! So, if you're thinking of getting a capped line with them... don't.

If, however, you are drawn to them by the cheap monthly fees and no contract deals... just be aware that you get what you pay for.

/rant over

Have fun!

Naiboss