Rant: I hate time-limited demos

Warning: Upcoming mini-rant

Today I downloaded the demo for Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box for a bit of fun. Of course, I expected "a bit" to be more than "thirty minutes".

When I play a demo, I want to have adequate time to explore and get a good feel for the game. I like to take my time looking around, checking things out, and basically exploring the area. I don't want to be rushed through it by an insanely short and constricting time limit. I'd rather be given a small chunk of the city with a handful of races and unlimited time to explore than have the whole shebang and a minuscule amount of time to check it out.

I don't see why any developer would decide that a timed demo is better than a content-limited one. While downloading the demo, I thought "Hey, I can give some impressions on this demo tonight" Not with only 30 minutes of gameplay I can't! It took me that long just to settle into the bizarre controls!*

On the other hand, I also downloaded the demo for Crysis today (I was bored, you see). Unlike Burnout Paradise, the Crysis demo offered unlimited play time to complete a portion of the game. In this time I got to get a real feel for the controls, do a bit of exploring, and kill a whole lot of bad guys. I actually had the time to understand what Crysis was about and form an opinion on whether or not I should buy it down the line (Short answer: Nah). Crysis' demo was how all game demos should be.

So then, I ask you, game developers: Why with the timed demos? It doesn't make much sense to me no matter how I twist it. Okay, fine, so some people might just play the demo forever if it's a small bit of the game without any time limit. A bigger problem, though, is distributing the entire product with a time limit, because you just know someone's gonna hack that within days of it becoming available. Then, instead of losing a few sales on folks that are content playing the same level a billion times, you end up with thousands of pirated, cracked-open copies floating all over the internet. Which sounds worse to you?

The above? Just something I had to say. Timed demos have always gotten on my nerves, but usually it's just little indie developers that pull that, not the big guys. If you plop the entire big-name game on my hard drive yet only let me play it for half an hour, I get a little cheesed off. I spent over half an hour downloading this 3GB+ game, so I feel entitled to more than the piddly little taste you gave me. Yes, I know that demos are free, but as the old saying goes, time is money. I spent time downloading this game. Call me foolish for expecting the game to spend a little time on me.

*A to accelerate? Z to brake? What the hell?

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A small assortment of Team Fortress 2 rants

I've been playing Team Fortress 2 a lot lately. And by a lot, I mean way more than I should be. During this time, while I've had a whole lot of fun, I've also run into quite a few annoyances. No, not any sorts of glitches or faults of the developer. I've run into a lot of problems with the other players. People being stupid, being jerks, or otherwise just not being fun to play with at all. The following article goes out to all these people.

First of all, y'all gotta stop pushing people off the teleporters. If someone gets to the teleporter before you do, leave them. They got to it first. It's their right to use it. You can darn well wait a few seconds for it to recharge, or just walk to the battle, okay?

Relating to the above, if you're a scout, for the love of all things good, don't use the freaking teleporters! For crying out loud, you're the fastest class by far! Leave the other, slower players to the teleporters, and hoof it! In the time it takes you to run there, the person who got the teleporter will already be there, doubling the fighting power at that moment. If you steal it, all that happens is one measly little scout gets there, while some other player waits and waits for the teleporter to recharge because it would take to long to walk. Not only is it a pain in the ass to have a teleporter meant for you used by a scout, it also hurts the team. So don't do it.

And would it kill you not to use such disgusting sprays in game? Good god, I've seen some stuff on the walls of pl_goldrush I wouldn't even show to my worst enemy. Keep your sick, twisted sense of "humour" to yourself and play the freaking game instead of disturbing all of your teammates.

If you're a spy, don't disguise as a scout. Ever. You move slower than a scout, you can't double-jump like a scout, and you can't use the bat like every other scout does. It's the worst disguise ever. Stop doing it.

A microphone can be a great tool in battle, allowing you to quickly pass information onto other players; and if you want to say something funny, go ahead, we all love a good laugh. But come on, people; Stop being racist, sexist, crass jerks. Stop screaming into your microphones. Stop blasting crappy music over them. And for crying out loud, if your microphone sucks, stop freaking using it. I don't need static and garbled speech blasting into my ears, thanks. Yes, I realize I can mute you with a few clicks, but I'd rather focus on fighting than pause and fiddle around just to stop some pre-pubescent idiot from swearing at me.

We've all heard of sore losers, but there's also such a thing as a sore winner. Yeah, your team won three rounds in a row; That's no reason to act as if everyone on the other team is the worst freaking player in history. And if someone kills you, don't scream obscenities at them. You died in a video game. You'll respawn. Calm down, man. Oh, and if your team is kicking ass, don't go "YEAH WE ROCK" if you're not even in the top ten on a twelve person team. You're hardly helping, pal, don't steal all the credit. Seriously, I've seen people with two points acting as if they're carrying the whole freaking team on their back.

Finally, quit using aim-enhancing programs. You aren't kidding anyone when you use one. You suck at Team Fortress 2 and you need a program to make you any good. It annoys everybody, enemy and ally alike. Turn off the bot, get some practice, and darn well play like you should. Can't get a kill like that? Practice some more. Believe me, it's a whole lot better than sitting back and letting the computer do all the work.

If you're reading this and any of the above applies to you, please take my words into consideration next time you play. We'd all appreciate it.

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Mini-Article: Where's all the Mii support?

Tired tonight, thusly, a short article. Sorry 'bout that.



Back in 2006, Nintendo released the Wii, and with it came a multitude of features. One of the features most packed with potential would have to be the Mii Channel. With so many ways to shape your blank slate into a person, new and unique designs are always popping up left and right. You can even take your Miis into games such as Wii Sports and Wii Play and use them as your playable character.

But as I said in August, too few games take advantage of Miis as playable characters. Here we are, eight months later, and the number of titles using Miis in such a manner are still just about as scarce. Is there any excuse for this? Honestly, I think not.

First of all, Miis can be used by any developer when making a Wii game, regardless of whether they're first-, second- or third-party. This has been proven with Electronic Arts' FIFA 2008, which even included a famous soccer player made up in Mii style. So availability to the developer is not an issue.

Second, it's not as if the Miis wouldn't fit some of these art styles. Carnival Games had a fairly cartoony and whimsical look to it, but players still had to make their own characters from scratch when starting up a new file. The art was perfectly suitable to the Mii's animation style, so that isn't a problem in many cases either.

A Mii standing next to this guy would fit in just fine.

So really, most developers don't have much of an excuse for not using Miis. They're available to any Wii developer, they blend in with many of the simpler art styles, and (From my techno-tarded standpoint) they seem like they'd be fairly easy to implement in terms of coding. So unless it's a realistically-detailed game with graphics along the lines of Resident Evil 4, developers have little to no reason not to include Miis in their games.

What do you think of the absence of Miis in most games? Do you think it's justified, or do you think developers are just plain lazy sometimes? Have your say in the comment section, or in this forum thread.

The Duck Has Spoken.

Do some developers care only about money?

I sometimes wonder if developers really care about the games they release. There are some companies who really do make sure they release only quality products, but some just don't seem to give a damn. For example, let's look at one of the most well-known offenders...



Yes, I'm looking at you, Data Design. Let's look at the reviews from some of your latest "games"... Okay, we have a 3.5/10 from IGN for Myth Makers Super Kart GP, a 2.4/10 from n-Revolution for Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing, and oh dear... A 0.5 review from n-Revolution for Ninjabread Man... My, Data Design, don't you have plenty to be proud of!



The Wii versions of all these games cost an average of $20 in the bargain bin at your local Wal-Mart, a price which is likely similar to the game's development costs. After all, these are merely ports of poorly-received PS2 games released back in 2005. All they did was give it a new box art and some crappy motion controls. Whoopee, us gamers sure are lucky.

They couldn't have possibly released these games thinking that they're good. No person with a properly-functioning brain could ever think that. All they wanted was the cash, and they didn't give half a crap how badly flawed their product was. Seriously, if we aren't careful, it'll be the videogame crash of 1983 all over again.

It seems that only in the videogame world can you get away with things like this. It would never work with movies, as consumers tend to be more wary of crappy-looking movies than they are cautious of obviously terrible games. And besides, I've never seen a movie released that looks comparatively bad to Ninjabread Man. Crappy films don't even get that far. Theatres will never display a badly-made movie instead of a new high-budget film. And when it comes to DVD sales, a crappy movie would just sink to the bottom of the bargain bin, never to be seen again.

But with games, it seems to be a lot easier to get them published. Just look at any EBGames selection, and you'll see "gems" like Chicken Shoot and Elf Bowling sitting there next to actual video games. These games could have been whipped up by a Flash artist in about a day and released for free online. Actually, in the case of Elf Bowling, that's exactly what happened! It's nothing but a conversion of a popular Flash game. Have you ever seen a Youtube video remade and released on DVD? I sure haven't. The game world just works so much differently.

Developers whip up some crap, get a publisher to put it on the shelves and that's that. Sure, they won't sell as many copies as Super Mario Galaxy, but their lower development costs would be quickly overcome by their meager profits. Basically, they spend less, sell for less, end up selling enough to cover development, and make a bundle in the process. Cash in the pocket.

I don't think a director would print a movie he knew was crappy. I doubt an author would publish their book if they knew it was tripe. And whether a TV producer thinks their bad show is good or not, it wouldn't matter, as the broadcaster would never show it. Truly the game industry is the way to go if you want to put in as little effort for the best payout. Sadly for us, Data Design caught on to this, and here we are with Ninjabread Man, Monster Trux Extreme and Action Girlz Racing clogging our video game store shelves.

If you're ever browsing in the electronics section and see someone buying one of these titles, for the love of god, stop them. They'll save $20 and their sanity, you'll feel good for doing a good deed, and Data Design will have a little less cash in their coffers. It's all for a good cause.

And it's not just Data Design that's in on this. Oh no, there's more. Phoenix Games is also aiming to bring us "true gaming pleasure" with their nearly copyright-infringing titles such as Dalmatians 4, Iron Chef 2 and Lion and the King 3. Oh man, it's E.T for the Atari 2600 all over again!

Beware the false Disney game!

Have your say on this article in the comments section, or in this forum thread.

The Duck Has Spoken.