Headshots & Friendly Fire
08/23/2009 Written by Cameron Teague
The gaming industry has gotten bigger and better with each passing year, but sometimes they just don’t do things right. Whether its gameplay, story, pricing, or business practice, sometimes the industry needs a little friendly fire from the gamers to keep it in line.
Other times, developers look down their sight and fire off a well placed bullet right into our unexpected head.
This is Josh & Cameron, and this is Headshots & Friendly Fire
A Bit of Friendly Fire
- Pre-Release Date DLC Announcements – These always seem to rub me the wrong way. I know Developers are trying to let people know that they are going to support their product and that there are reasons to buy and keep playing their game. Yet when the game has not even released and the developers spend most of their time talking about DLC coming soon, it makes me second guess my purchase of the game. Just recently Borderlands was talking about how soon DLC would hit and the game does not even hit until October. But i guess that is just the changing of the times.
- Day One Patches – There is just something that screams “facepalm” about a day one patch. You purchase your game, bring it home, pop it in and before you can even reach the title screen,here is a patch. I guess its good that they caught whatever issue it was but still, nothing says finished game like a day one patch. While luckily this has not happened recently I do remember my frustration when it did happen.
- After the Fact Demo’s – Just recently a demo for Call of Duty: World at War was released onto the PSN. Now this game released on November 11, 2008 and the demo hit the store in the last month. I just do not see the point in releasing the demo so late in the life of the product. If a demo was going to be released, why not do it earlier? By now most people have read up on World at War or have friends who played it so a demo really is not needed. But I guess we can give Treyarch some points for actually releasing a demo.
- QTE’s (Quick Time Events) – We’ve all been there, and chances are, you’ve worn off the paint on the X button. Sure, they were fun for a while in Shenmue, but 10 years later, QTE’s have become completely annoying. The latest offender is Radical Entertainment’s Prototype, which has you mash triangle button to hijack vehicles. How many times will you do this? Over 1 billion times. But what if you want to play the game without hijacking any vehicles? Well, you can’t do that, because several missions require you to pilot a vehicle for at least part of a mission. To make the situation even more annoying, rockets and attacks from hunters can launch you off a tank and disrupt your QTE, forcing you to get back to the tank just so you can do it all over again. The only thing more annoying than failing a QTE and dying, is failing the same QTE three times in a row and dying.
Check out our Headshots on Page 2.
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15 Responses to “Headshots & Friendly Fire”
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Valid points!
I agree with the DLC market. Too much content is being held back that would normally be in the game (and in the case of many 360 games the content is already on the disc….you just pay to unlock it).
I understand that money makes the world go ’round…..I just don’t want it to be all of my money. I don’t mind supporting developers and buying the odd DLC, but when the final tally for your game is over $100 and most of that would have normally been included then something is wrong.
Now we are seeing games become shorter and shorter experiences for the same pricing…but here comes DLC to the rescue. Pay more and get access to the content we never gave you. Hey there is multiplayer to extend the fun, but if you don’t buy the latest map pack then good luck finding a game.
It should be a positive, but it is becoming a very strong negative. It is a purchase that you can not trade, sell or return.
DLC is far overpriced imo. I haven’t really purchased a single one DLC (only free ones). Especially Capcom’s DLC. $12 for Alternate Costume? give me a break! It’s already in the disc. Why don’t you serve your consumers with these stuff? I mean all games before include this. If its an additional character that is not on disc then its ok. But companies like Capcom are making a fool of gamers. I’m really disappointed on Capcom about RE5. It’s not RE anymore. Street Fighter 4 is a great game, but I feel there’s still some stuff missing.
Capcoms DLC was stupid..its been 10 years since the last street fighter (like a true sequel) the most they could do is GIVE you a brand new costume and DLC a newer version. Tying in your save file with the DLC ? what idiot does that? Capcom…… if you replace your HDD or file gets corrupted you have to do EVERYTHING over again. That sucks for people like me that never bought there DLC.
The reason Treyarch never released a demo was to pay less on the PSN everyone would download W@W and cost them in the long run.
I have no problems with DLC… Only IF they start talking about it before the games out.
Because of the DLC crap, I’m only buying games from Amazon at Reduced prices. That’s why i’m getting Batman Arkham Asylum at 48.99 that’s why I got Killzone 2 at 52.99, and that’s why I’m going to pre-order Uncharted for 51.99 dollars. (I has extra coupon)
For Disgaea 3 and Cross Edge I buy those kinds of games from Gamefly at even cheaper costs so that I can try the game, then keep it, then buy all the extra paid DLC. What I like about Cross Edge is that it even has a TON of FREE DLC.
I actually enjoy Day 1 Patches. Why? Because it let’s me know that they are working hard to get bugs that they couldn’t catch or fix earlier taken care of. Example is the online play for BlazBlue. I mean if it’s fixing the lag issues that they weren’t aware of early enough, then why does it matter? I personally just like patches. The more the better for me. lol I don’t mind waiting. I just want to be informed is all and have more than just “Various issues” or things like that. The LBP patch was released before launch and it was SOOOOoooo needed.
I love RE 5, I love RE 4, I never liked any other RE game so I am happy with Capcom. I just want the game a bit longer lol.
What i feel companies need to do though if they’re releasing a TON of DLC at high prices is to release at a lower price point. If you’re releasing 30+ dollars worth of DLC I don’t want to buy the game unless I get it like 20 dollars cheaper or so. Some games like LBP are the exception cause they’re outfits for fan service more or less. Same thing with how I feel about the Disgaea 3 DLC. If you never played Makai Kingdom you may not care to have a book and a really weird to use Oracle. If you never played La Pucelle Tactics or Rhapsody a Musical Adventure then you may not be attached to Priere and Majorly like I am. Besides the fans voted on most of these. Plus some of the DLC was so useful for getting trophies. THANKS HERO PRINNY!
On After the fact Demos, if you mean demos that come out a month after release, I’m fine with that. If you mean demos that come out like a year after the game is released just before hte next game… ya… they may not have wanted to wait so long and it makes me question how many people are still playing the game.
As far as the free demo’s, thousands of people buy a PS3 every day, and they obviously haven’t played any games on it before. I just got mine a couple months ago and have since purchased several games because of the demo’s – when you buy a console, you’re interested in the entire library of games available for it, not just what came out in the last few weeks.
As far as day one patches, I think it’s great. The developer could very easily just say the heck with it, the majority of people wouldn’t notice anyway. But instead they do the conscientious thing and keep testing it.
I agree about DLC though. It used to be a nice thing, where you could buy extra content for a game after it had been out for a while, adding to the value of it. But now greedy publishers think they can sell you half a game and charge you extra for the other half. And people keep buying it, so it will not only continue, but get worse.
And yes, QTE’s absolutely suck.
Sorry to be ignorant, but what does QTE stand for?
QTE = Quick Time Event. Think of the way God of War boss fights work (triangle, then circle, then etc until boss dies). I don’t hate them or like them; they just kindof exist and I deal with it.
Day one patches make sense because of the way the development and QA process works. Trust me: You want to embrace this, not hate it.
I’m mixed on DLC; if you give me a whole game but have to cut out a mission or two because you couldn’t get them QA’d for the gold master then I’m ok with that. $12 for a costume can kiss my a$$, however, especially if you have already delivered the content on the disk! That isn’t DLC – that is holding content for ransom.
There has been almost a carpet bombing on the topic of patches across the net lately. I don’t get it. Not specifically day 1 patches, but I would think that any patch in general should be welcomed. Yesterday, we just had to deal with glitches and broken code. With multiplayer being such a big part of gaming today, I am grateful that we have consistent connections to our consoles with consistent developer support.
I honestly love patches, it just feels odd to buy a game day one, put it in my PS3 and here is a patch.. already..
the arguement isn’t against patches in general just day 1 patches..
If there is some bug, that gets fixed on day one, then it should have been fixed before the game got released. Fixing something that should not have been a problem, and should have been fixed a long time ago, is not a good practice to fall into. Look at socom and how long it took them to fix that game. The reason that game has so many flaws when it came out was because of the “oh we can just patch it later” menatality. A responsible developer would make sure that all bugs are fixed, and the game is complete before it launches.
The 1.01 firmware patch promotes lazyness in developers. and if you don’t beleive me, just think back to 10 years ago, or 5 years ago. The big name games didn’t have bugs in them, even the mediocre games didn’t have bugs in them. But now that we have patches, a ton of games are being relased with bugs and lag, instead of the dev just making sure they weren’t there, like devs use to do on the PS2 or PS1, or NES for that matter.
l would haveto disagree with the pre DLC plans because as a consumer l want to know whether or not if the game l’m purchasing is going to have DLC. As for the QTE, the only game that has done it correctly is the God of War series.
@wtGp – see the thing is i want to hear how badass the game is, what all you are doing to make the game even better, not what you plan to do after the game is released because i myself could careless. I just want the initial product to be amazing and then any DLC after that fact is just a bonus.
Trexman, development on a game is finished a good while before it arrives on store shelves. That doesn’t mean that the programmers hide the code and never look at it again. If something is found before the game is available to buy, then a patch gets worked on expeditiously. It’s not like this happens often to begin with, but why complain about it anyway? I don’t understand it. It’s a one time thing, and it fixes a problem.
Its a problem because devs can become too dependent on the patching ability. As more and more devs have to do this, the more they get used to it and as you can already see, we as consumers can get too comfortable with it. This eventually will lead some devs to a “eh, we can just patch it later” practice which will ultimately trickle down to poorer quality products all around.
Patching games isn’t the evil, but a dependency on the patching ability is evil.