Gabe and I both have been cutting, shooting, and also choking our way through Splinter Cell: Double Agent’s single player campaign. They’ve done away with the explicit "light meter" that told you when you were safe in absolute terms, replacing it with a more general purpose "spider sense" type of equipment. Early in the game, it’s mounted right there on the wifebeater you are wearing in prison, and it doesn’t really seem to bother anybody. We found that odd.
After trying to play Tiger Woods virtually every day since we purchased it, last night the celestial order was such that we could get four of us together to play - this was really all we wanted to do. I had two hard locks of the console before we arrived in the game proper, though - Keek left the lobby to load another golfer, and apparently that can crash all other clients(???). Huh. I wondered if calling them "criminals" in my last post did not venture beyond the realm of propriety, but now I’m trying to think of something worse.
Readers reminded me of an ancient post I wrote shortly after Gabriel the Younger was born - one regarding the dark and deadly eternal night that is the Electronic Arts matchmaking "service." The language I deployed then was so bleak that they wondered by I was surprised to suffer again at their cruel lash. I’ll tell you why: because that was two Goddamn Years Ago. In my adorable naivete, they had begun to hold their customers in something less like contempt.
I remain devoted to Meteos on the Nintendo DS - as one of the Earth’s most novel and exciting adversarial puzzle games, it’s almost impossible to believe that a tiny chip housed in plastic has been the conduit of such enduring joy. I’d heard that a sequel was forthcoming, but when I learned it was Disney Branded I didn’t really know what to make of that. Would one simply arrange blocks to the cloying strains of Hakuna Matata? I would rather burn forever, unable to die. It sounds like I was worried for nothing, though - more than the expected palette swap, there’s actually something good happening there.
(CW)TB out.
now the wolf is at the door
You probably heard a few weeks ago that there was a Rainbow Six demo dropping today, and there is - in every region outside the United States. On these blessed shores, Official Xbox Magazine has it on lock for the coverdisc.
Unless, um, you create an Xbox Live Silver Account whose “region” is designated as some other country, like Wales. Wales seemed to work for me. I have a feeling that the virtual population of Wales is about to balloon.
They should never have consented to limit the availability of this demo - it might have generated a lot of goodwill. After Lockdown, I think people felt that the series had kind of run its course. Play it and see - with a new protagonist and an ultrasatisfying tactical cover system, it’s clearly meant to reboot the franchise.
(CW)TB
I’m pretty frustrated with Tiger 2007. Based on the demo, I picked up a 360 for my Dad. He really liked playing Links with us and I figured Tiger 2007 would be perfect. So I got him all set up a couple weeks ago with the box and a Live account. I told him once the game shipped I’d mail him a copy and we’d have some fun. Little did I know the game would be completely fucking busted.
First of all the online functionality doesn’t even work. Tycho, Kiko, Robert and I have tried for the past three nights to get into a game together and only once did one of us even manage to get into the first layer of the warren they call a lobby. There’s no good Goddamn reason to make people use EA’s bullshit matchmaking system. Xbox Live works, their system does not. That’s it end of discussion. But let’s pretend for a moment that their pile of crap matchmaking service actually could connect people to one another. You would still have to navigate the cluster-fuck they call a UI.
Training your golfer should be easy but it requires you to navigate through multiple nested menus each one more fucking ambiguous than the last. Is training a part of my career? Is it a game mode? Is training the same as practice? There are times when I stumble onto a menu full of useful shit and I have no idea how I got to it or how to find it again. This is not a game that my Dad could just pick up and play. It’s a game I’m only barley willing to tolerate and the only reason I do is because the actual golf game that’s hidden away in Tiger 2007 is damn good. They just don’t want you to see it and they sure as hell don’t want you to play it online.
The most frustrating thing is that there’s no competition. Just like the NFL, EA has an exclusive deal with the PGA tour. So they can get away with dropping a pile of shit like this because there’s nothing else for us to play. What incentive do they have to make something good when there’s no other option for consumers? God help us if they ever actually succeed in buying Ubisoft, because that will be the end.
-Gabe out
Welcome to the show notes for Downloadable Content 10/20/2006, "Advertising In The Future." The episode is available for direct download at this link, or feel free to subscribe to our iTunes compatible feed here. This one is pretty weird - Scott Kurtz was over, and so there was a lot going on, and not everyone is always perfectly audible. Might be best enjoyed on a pair of headphones. On the off chance that some portion of it might amuse you, we have made it available.
1:25 - That is Kris Straub talking, there. The Checkerboard Nightmare/Starslip Crisis/Nightlight Press guy.
2:09 - Don’t forget - as I made clear in the post, almost all the initial reports were way, way over the top as far as what it was actually doing. The reality is that, for demographic purposes, simply being the sort of person who buys Battlefield 2142 already tells them a lot. Eventually, I think that advertisers will demand more robust “targeting” for their payload, which will mean that what IGA is doing now won’t cut it for them. They’ll demand more information, and in order to “monetize” the community - because selling products is apparently passe - they’ll find a way to get it. This could make the process more transparent - but I wouldn’t bet on it.
5:58 - For “what Crecente has to say,” you can go here.
10:38 - I’m not. Seriously, I’m not.
17:24 - Jesus Christ, Scott Kurtz is funny.
19:19 - I started making this sound recently, I don’t know why. It’s from Ice Cube’s “Fuck Dying.”
(CW)TB
