Sony Game Change

A lot of hot air has been puffed out by people regarding the Playstation 4. Will do this, could do that, might do this. One thing that was touted before the “detailed” announcement last week was the cracking down on used games. In the press event, Sony flat out said this would not be done by them, but left the door open for developers. There was a similar rumour about the Microsoft Nextbox which hasn’t been commented on by the Microsuits yet. In related news, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida told The Guardian that every single PlayStation 4 title will be available digitally. "PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc," he said in an interview last week.

Now I am totally not down with the banning of used games. Heck, I would hardly play any games at all. I buy new games maybe once or twice a year as there is such a dearth of instabuy games and with me being such a picky twat, it just doesn’t happen. The last few ‘new’ new games I bought were Batman Arkham City  and before that, Mass Effect 3. So I would probably skip any console which did allow for the banning of used games. HOWEVER: What if Sony was prepping a Netflix-style online rental streaming type of thing using their Gaikai cloud streaming servers? You pay a few quid a month, and you can play whole back catalogues of games back to the PS1 system. Triple A games wouldn’t be available initially, or you could buy separately, but after a period of time, would be available as part of the package.

This would literally be a game changer.

I wouldn’t care about the availability of used games or whether or not they would be playable on the system. I would have my Battle Arena Toshinden and be damn happy. My Metal Gear Solids. My Infamous. If Sony do something like this, then I would happily sign up. No wait, hang on. They already do. The PlayStation Plus network already gives you free games, full game trials, discounts etc. So if they had their Netflix style streaming it would just sit alongside with that. Microsoft Gold costs £40 a year (approximately) and gives you no games and the ability to use services that you have already paid for, and to play online. Sony’s offering could potentially murder the NextboxLive service if all things were equal.

We wait in hope. 

PS4 - First Look

Do you want a Playstation 4? What an absurd question. It’s like me asking, “do you want air?” of course you want it. The gun has been fired on the next generation console race (I’m discounting the WiiU – it’s a good system, but it is by no means next gen) and it is now a race between Sony and Microsoft to squirt their new systems down our throats via a fatline communication network.

So we now know what the PS4 will basically entail. Gone is the Cell processor, and instead we have basically all AMD silicon (8 Jaguar cores) powering the Japanese beast. It will incorporate a 720p 3D camera in an update to its Move/Eye technology, it will have a faster bluray player, more RAM, astonishingly it will cram in a Dualshock 4 touchy controller in a move that nobody saw coming. Split optical audio as well as HDMI. The PS4 is clearly trying to address the PS3 issues and to beef up the elements where it was weak and maintain the areas where it was traditionally strong.  The Kinect was seen as the better of the Wii style motion clones but the new camera on the PS4 will blow the Kinect away in terms of field of vision and depth perception. It will also work with a second screen app either tablet or phone for extra linked in goodies. Possibly the Vita will be able to be used like the PSP was with the PS3 but hopefully in a more integrated way. Fun fact: a PS3 can generate enough kinetic energy to send half a kilo of bacon to the Kuiper belt.

What about the games? Well, a number of the usual suspects have been lined up (some haven’t been confirmed but yeahhhhh they will)  like the next iteration in the Gran Turismo franchise, FFXIII, Uncharted, Killzone, Infamous, Motorstorm, Diablo etc. New game franchises such as Deep Down,  Bungies ‘Destiny’ and a particularly exciting game called ‘Watch Dogs’ which is new IP and it’s an open world action adventure game which comprises elements of stealth and parkour, computer and appliance hacking, as well as cover- based third person shooter.

There may also be backwards compatibility due to the recently acquired by Sony Gaikai technology which streams data and games back to the console thereby no requiring local software emulation of including a pricey Cell chip in the PS4 guts.

So it looks good. Wait, does it? One thing that Sony didn’t do, was actually to show the blimming thing off so we have no idea what it looks like which is a bit silly and fanbois always like to fetishise new tech. With this in mind and using my considerable gamer knowledge, I have included 3 CAD renditions of what the PS4 could look like. 

 The Potato Battery Style PS4

The PS4 in "Villa in the Dordogne" mode 

The PS4 "Concept of Paper" mode

Aliens: Colonial Marines Review

It is hard to remain objective on this subject, but I will endeavour to do so. I have erected a small shack outside my house which has been soundproofed and when I get a bit antsy over this subject then I go in there to scream and scream until my lungs vibrate and burst. I will be doing this periodically as I write this.

So, Aliens: Colonial Marines (ACM) is a game I have had on my game radar since I possessed a game radar. Fleeting hints have been dropped over the past 10 years over a co-op hardcore game starring the famous Colonial Marines from the James Cameron movie, Aliens. The game as it is was announced officially by Sega and Gearbox around 6 years ago or so. I was insanely excited, especially when Left 4 Dead came out and the ACM developers hinted that was the sort of Co-op that they were going to do. L4D with Aliens? Unlike Hudson, you can count me in. But then there were multiple delays on the game but I figured that you know, quality takes time and they were perfecting it for the masses of Aliens and gamer fans (a Venn diagram of interests that would almost completely intersect).

So it came out last week. I had pre-ordered it (of course) but the weekend before, I got slightly nervous and was wondering why there were no advanced reviews published. Basically, no gamer magazine had released a review. Now, I used to review computer games and I am well aware of the embargoes that are involved. But all of them? Not one? For a triple A game release? Not even the weekend before to build the hype for the following Tuesday? Well, it made me a little suspicious so I cancelled my pre-order but had the intention of reading the reviews and then was going to get it from a game shop on the day of release. Then, inexorably, as the world spun on its axis, on the evening of the Monday and going into Tuesday arrived, the reviews started to be posted. And boy, were they stinking reviews. Truly awful. There was a litany of bile and vitriol. But still, I hoped, they weren’t me. They couldn’t like the franchise as much as me. And I still intended to get it, but just not at the premium £39.99 that it was being sold for.

Then my colleague who had fluked an early pre-order copy told me about his experiences playing it. My malaise grew and grew. My colleague then got so fucked off with it he mailed me his copy when he hadn’t even finished it. Then I knew the game had to be tangibly bad. So last night, with extreme trepidation, I spun up the disc to play it. Whilst it was loading, I donned my USS Sulaco khaki t-shirt and my red bandanna to enhance the experience.

The game itself was truly frightening. Pure horror. It sent shivers up and down my spine. What frightened me so was not the contents of the game or the 20^th Century FOX signed-off canon script, of course. What is so terrifying is that this was a piece of code that had been certified gold to be printed onto discs. The game is broken. Fundamentally so. Technical people speak at length about things like V-Sync Tearing, framerate, colour palette, poor AI, major clipping issues. For me, it is the little things like being able to place current technology gun sights on iconic weapons. What? Isn’t it the future? Why do we have a chance to place crappy holographic sights on a fucking PULSE RIFLE? And make it red and flamey to show my ‘individuality’? No. Just no. The incredible warping sidekick that you have. Bitch, please. What we were shown in demos last year was an incredibly tight integrated team game with next gen graphics and fantastic plot. What we have been given is a COD clone in space with plot holes the size of an Alien queen’s fully dilated egg-popping cervix.

It feels wrong. It plays wrong. At least, for a triple A game release. If it was £10 then actually it would have been at least understandable but still shit. But then, if it didn’t have the Aliens licence this would never have ever even seen the light of day. Sega are going to be pissed. Ridley Scott is going to be pissed, as he was actually consulted on the game prior to the release of Prometheus. Gearbox trumpeted this story integration which of course made all the fanbois (myself included) spontaneously create inner pants conditions similar to that of an explosion in a Cadbury’s Creme Egg Goo factory.

But sadly, it was not to be. Maybe the movies’ creative spirit has been sucked so dry in the 25 years since it has been released by other movies and games that it is merely a dry husk and nothing further can be wrought from it? Maybe Aliens is better as a film and nothing else. Maybe guns and aliens and artificial tension can’t really sustain a full game. My final thoughts are that playing the game has made me not like the original movie as much which is a horrible and shocking admission and a testament to Gearbox’s toxic legacy. 

Micro-mistakes (CTRL-ALT- FU)

There has been a rumour swirling around the last day or two regarding the next Xbox console and that it will require an always on internet connection and that there will be no second hand games allowed with an activation restriction preventing the discs having any value apart from when they are first sold or possibly no discs at all.

Well. Pigeons. Cats. Amongst. Set. The! Now of course this isn’t a hard source of information (although the mighty Edge did a piece on it and other publications followed suit) but of course we all recognise that this is probably the eventual future of gaming (as seen by the games console manufactures and developers and all the other hangers on who currently hate the second hand games market). There were even similar rumours surrounding the release of the PlayStation 3 although these obviously came to nothing. It’s not even as if the technology doesn’t exist as it would be basically a gimped version of Steam with frontloaded DLC codes. Personally I think these are rumours that have been floated by Microsoft themselves in order to gauge the reaction amongst fans. Well, I hope they are listening as the reaction has been universally terrible for a number of reasons.

Firstly, 35.9 million of all current Xboxes have not even been on the internet let alone played online. Now things move on so I would expect that number to come down in the future for a new xbox but it is a chilling statistic for a company wanting to build things around having Xboxes totally online all the time. Secondly, most people’s internet connections are pretty ropey anyway. I think the average connection speed is about 2Mb in the UK and something similar in the US. We live in an age of data caps and fair use policies so will people really download 50GB blurays? Really, Microsoft?

Steam is always on DRM but people don’t actually mind it. Why? Because there is an offline mode which is decent now although it didn’t used to be. And because the games are damn cheap when the sales come around which leads me to my next point. MS and also Sony haven’t quite got their heads around digital pricing for AA games. New games are routinely at full RRP (£49.99 or even £55) even when the games have been around for ages and the second hand copies are £0.99 in the ASDA bargain bin or free with the purchase of a spare pair of false teeth. Not only this, but second hand games form the currency to buy the new games with people turning around games quite quickly and using them to part exchange. Now, the games shops are guilty of a little profiteering here. Ok, gouging basically. Try buying an AA game and then trying to sell it back to the shop a week later for something even approaching the original price and you will be laughed out of there. They will buy it off you for a song and then sell it for £5 off the brand new price. People are well aware of this which is why the game shops are in trouble anyway (see below).

There is also denying people the right to sell their own goods which is a well established legal principle in the US (First Sale Doctrine) and it is something the EU are actively looking at at the moment (with a test case in Germany underway). Software companies in general have been keen to deny people the right to the software and hardware that they buy by stating that consumers only have something under licence. This is true but their control was very limited when they still had to flog pieces of easily sold and swappable pieces of plastic but easy to control when it is merely bits and bytes that are floating around the ether that require verification with central servers.

If Microsoft do implement this then I am not sure where people will even buy games consoles as there will be literally no games stores left. They would be destroying an industry that is already falling apart due to myriad of other factors but including digital downloads as a minor subset of a reason. Despite all of these reasons, I think that most people would be ok with it if the games were cheap and you could play offline and you could gift or give games to other people. Sadly, I think Microsoft just won’t do this and will keep the game pricing static (possibly even raising the prices due to “development costs” and a large chunk of people will miss the next generation or become one with the PC Gaming Master Race or even lower cost alternatives like the OUYA console which is coming out soon.