Copy of email I sent to Microsoft and EA...


I recently bought the Bulletstorm game. After I installed it and attempted to play it, I had the following problems:

1. I was given no option to play just single player and was forced to sign into Windows Live DESPITE the first screen saying a Live account was needed for multi player (not single player).

2. Despite Windows Live obviously being somehow fundamental to this game, the game did not pick up that I was already signed in to Windows Live via Messenger, thus forcing a tedious signing in process:

3. It took me a few goes to recall my password, each time I had to wait for it to "download profile" and then return to the start, rather than simply informing me of an invalid password when I typed it.

4. Despite ticking the "log in automatically" tickbox, this was NOT applied so I had to retype my details every log in time, of which there were many:

5. After finally signing in, I was forced to apply an auto-update. After this downloaded, I was told to exit the game to apply it, BUT there was no option to exit the game (only the same start screen about logging in) so I had to Ctrl-Alt-Delete to close it.

6. After the Windows Live update applied (with no pop-up indicating it was complete) I had to restart the game, go through the unskippable splash screens AGAIN and sign in AGAIN.

7. After this the update was VERY slow to apply in game (several minutes). Then I was forced to exit the game via Ctrl-Alt-Delete (again no proper exit option).

8. After the update installing in Windows and having to restart for the 3rd time and log in AGAIN, I was forced to create another profile on the XBox site. Firstly I don't own and will never own an XBox, and secondly this profile sign in came with marketing email options pre-selected. Given all I was trying to do was to play a game I had just purchased, having to avoid getting spam advertising email as part of the whole tedious rigmarole was not welcome.

9. After creating this account (which didn't give any obvious confirmation I'd created it) and thankfully not having to restart a 4th time, I then had to log in / download profile yet again. This meant that a game I bought in 2 minutes, installed in 5 minutes, and should have been able to start playing in 30 seconds, took me 30 minutes to get started.

10. Finally there was no email contact for PC Games with Windows Live on the Xbox Live site nor the main Microsoft site, and the staff on the XBox Live phone support tried to get me to discuss the problem rather than just telling me the email address.

In response I want to know the following things:

> Why was I forced to sign in to Windows Live for single player??

> Why, if Windows Live was ""necessary"", was there no integration with my current Messenger sign in??

> Why was the signing in / password validation process so slow and cumbersome??

> Why were there no options to exit when I was told to??

> Why was the whole process made so bloody long-winded for a paying customer to play the game they've just purchased?? 

Ah was fun getting Windows Live working with Dirt 2. Same issue. You have to spend ages loading the game up, watch all their unskippable intro shit, make it update and quit again, MULTIPLE TIMES to fully update it. No single download for microsoft no sir.

And after all this shit it still doesn't save your progress remotely, so when I switched PCs I forgot to copy an up to date save and thus lost about 15 hours of progress.

Thankfully doing it all before meant Arkham Asylum wasn't such a pain in the arse. 

 

http://kotaku.com/5835867/prize-winning-something-unreal-mod-the-haunted-coming-to-a-pc-ps3--xbox-360/gallery/1

GJ Drev 

30mins is a pretty normal install time for me once you've found all the patches to apply and then found actual working no-dvd cracks without getting a cunting virus. i never use steam though. that microsoft signing in process is ridiculous though. 

Steam has been good to me, automatic updates, no hassles etc. Only thing that bothers me is the checking and reinstalling of DirectX components every time a new game is installed. Although they explained this a few mths ago, there surely is a betetr option around.

Windlows Live, which I've only had to use for Arkham Asylum, is a pain. AFAIK, it only saves games per user id and has no other function in SP. 

Windows LIVE needs to be murdered in the most horrific way possible. Possibly involving bees. 

On one of the live screens you can just scroll down and select an option 'play without logging in'.

The screen itself doesn't look scrollable, and the windows people don't make any mention of which one it is or how to access it, although they allude to its existence.

Figured it out with DOW2. 

by getting a mac. Now just have to solve the no-games-to-play problem. Zwiffle please elaborate on your bees-based murder method, sounds quite pleasant. 

It's not supposed to, it's meant to sound quite unpleasant. :( 

I think thats what I had to eventually do for Batman AA. 

The worst of annoying DRM shall happen to Zwiffle for keeping reading and linking to the fucking Gawker media websites. 

... were survival horrors :( 

Last game i recall being true survival horror must be Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the Earth, Penumbra series and Amnesia...

I want to say Dead Space 1 and 2, but those have significantly more action in them, to be considered pure survival horror games...

Are there any obscure examples out there that should be known ..? 

Did what it said on the tin. Fun gameplay, good weapons, pretty enviroments. Well, as Yahtzee so aptly put it - pretty skyboxes. Probably the least immersive game I've ever played, what with the neanderthal dialogue, pre-school plot, uber-on-rails-interactive-cartoon progress, lack of jumping, clipped everything. But the controls and weapons and gore and explosions and kicking the shit out of enemy, as juvenile as it was, was pretty good fun (especially with the stupid dickskill notifications turned off). Very limited as a game, but good to dip into for a bit of easy action. 

http://deadcyborg.com/ 

Tried to give Splinter Cell Double Agent a shot. Mouse buttons can't be bound unless through the confusing config files, which then somehow breaks almost all my config even though I only changed 4 keys. I can't even quit the game without ctrl-alt-del. The loading takes forever, i'm forced to put up with a crappy low quality video every time the menu comes up, and the whole menu GUI looks like shit as well. And on top of that the first 30secs of the game looks like ugly shit and far too dark.

I'm skipping this crap game, it's already wasted an hour of my life. 

see my post, I played it all the way through and found it to be very disappointing.

Conviction looks more action packed (but also more consoley) though. 

Couldn't see your post on Double Agent, nitin. But anyway I'm now playing MOH Airborne instead, and put it on easy difficulty since you said you died alot and I have no inclination at all to play from checkpoints with repopulated enemies. The checkpoints are way too far apart!

Agree with what you said about it so far, 2 levels completed. I guess i'm 1/3 done already!

I'll probably give conviction a try - surely they would have fixed the key config issues by then. 

must not have posted my comments on Double Agent here. Anyway, found it to be a very annoying game with subpar level design. 

Reviewed a Minecraft mod, The Aether, for anyone interested. http://taw.duke4.net/2011/09/minecraft/the-aether/ 

looks like minecraft has a new shading system? surprisingly, it makes a huge difference, even though it's still just cubes. very cool. 

yeah, they seem to have added some sort of ambient occlusion system, i've been seeing it in screenshots for a while now. (still not playing it myself) 

... and 1.8 is going to have a newer lighting system, better day and night transitions and coloured lights. 

Medal of Honor: Airborne is the pefect example of a game that could have been great, but was left stumbling over it's own feet in an unfinished product. I can only assume it's because Activision's Call Of Duty was jumping ahead of them in the WWII shooter market. The last MOH effort in 2004, Pacific Assault, was an average game and since then Activision released a successful Call Of Duty 2 in 2006 and was set to release Call Of Duty 3 in time for the 2007 christmas.

So EA release Airborne; their third PC game in the franchise, a game that really needed another year of development in my opinion. Only then it'd be competing against the likes of Far Cry 2, Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead 2 and another Call Of Duty title. Airborne is what happens when you make something half-assed. In my opinion EA LA shouldn't be given the MOH franchise to develop in future. Pacific Assault was a disappointment and too short. The original MOH was created by 2015 Inc, not EA. And what happened to 2015? Most went on to create a new studio named Infinity Ward, developers of the Call Of Duty franchise. That being said, EA actually started this game in 2004, giving them three years to make it. How on earth they could have spent three years creating six levels is beyond me. Perhaps they only had a single level designer and the rest were there to make coffee? Has building a single level evolved so much that it takes around 10 level designers six months to create a single level?

Enough about the politics and developmento of modern games, because I really don't know, and on to what is bad about Airborne from a gamers perspective. The most prominent problem being that the game is only about five hours long. As I said above, only six levels and while they are large, there should be twice that many for a full priced game. There are some epic moments, this is Unreal Engine 3 afterall. The final level is a great finale on a huge war tower full of AA's and the like to destroy. Walk to the partly destroyed outer-edges of the tower you can look out over a bomb-ravaged city. It's absolutely epic and probably one of the best levels of 2007 for any action game. Although the inside of the tower doesn't look all that good at all.

The other levels look almost as great too, but they are all very similar looking European towns full of debris and destruction. And none of them can catch that imposing feeling you get from the tower; of being just small dot in a huge city. Some of the levels aren't really as big as they really appear when you're parachuting down either.

Overall I'd give the design an 8/10. The job was half-done with UE3, but the levels all look good and are well constructed.