PC GameSource Blog

The Scenario: You really love Steam, Valve Software’s online game marketplace, distribution platform, and community tool. You purchase all of your games there and rely on it for nearly all of your gaming needs.

You have even gone so far as to re-purchase many games you already own, just to have them on Steam. You’ve spent thousands and have well over 400 games in your Steam collection.

The Problem: During a sale, you buy a $9.99 game bundle with Click-n-Buy, which is literally as easy as clicking and buying from within Steam. But you spend that $10 before the payment clears, and Valve is then charged back for $9.99 on your account.

Roll ahead a couple of days when you return from Christmas vacation and want to play some games over New Years break. But when you restart Steam, you find out your account has been disabled and you have lost access to all of your precious games.

The Solution: There isn’t one. Pay Click-n-Buy back, who will pay Valve back, who will hopefully enable your account again after they get their money.

This is the problem inherent in digital distribution today. If you want the convenience of having your game library managed by a third party, you need to rely on the to give you access to what you would otherwise own outright. If you get on their bad side, they usually have the right to take it all away with little to no notice to the user at all.

I didn’t mean to charge Valve back $9.99, and that would be stupid to do, given that I have happily given them thousands of dollars for my current Steam-powered game collection. None-the-less, I had no games over New Years break, and am still waiting for my personal Steam account to be enabled again.

I am no hacker. I am no fraud. I am a loyal patron, game developer, and industry fan who has spent thousands on Steam and made one small $9.99 mistake. While it will likely be corrected and all will be back to normal, it is still a scary thought, and it still makes me cherish the few games that I do have boxes and discs for–even in hard financial times, I can always get them out and play them no matter what.

But I still love Steam. And I encourage everyone who likes the idea of digital distribution to utilize the service to its fullest. Just don’t ever mess with the distributor because they truly do have the power.

Like any faithful and long-standing RPG enthusiast who still cannot get enough of the great Infinity Engine titles of yore (Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale…), I was very excited to finally get to play the spiritual successor to the beloved Baldur’s Gate games, Dragon Age: Origins by BioWare.

First and foremost, I am happy to report that I am not disappointed in the least–and I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface of this deep and emotional fantasy masterpiece. The graphics are not necessarily representative of today’s triple-A titles, but they are high-fidelity and of a quality and fine detail not often seen fully realized in an RPG of such massive scale. It’s because of this that I would not hold any minor graphical glitches or shortcomings against it.

The audio is excellent, and the music is simply outstanding–the soundtrack is befitting of a Hollywood fantasy blockbuster and comes in at all the right times. The sound feels spot-on and contributes to the general feeling of calculated mayhem of the melee battles in the game.

The story even so far, in the first parts of the game, is top-notch and fully engrossing. As soon as you start to know the characters, you start to experience pains of treachery and tragedy of loss that often not portrayed to this level of effectiveness. You truly feel for these characters, and you never feel like you know them quite well enough (which is a huge compliment).

Many game impressions contain comparisons–how they match up, or how similar they are to other games, or other types of media altogether. While this is quite subjective, I will start by saying if this were a movie with the same plot, same characters, same soundtrack, and similar pacing, I would thoroughly enjoy it.

One can easily find traces of The Witcher by CD Projekt Red in the game’s adult setting, difficult moral choices, and less-fantastical and more political style of fantasy.

You can also see a lot of influence from the Lord of the Rings books and movies, especially with regard to how the story is laid out and the pacing and soundtrack.

But more-so than anything else, and more importantly than anything else, you can see a lot of BioWare’s previous RPGs in there–you can witness for yourself that they have learned their lessons with each successive title while introducing new concepts and refining old mechanics to make a smoother and more fun gaming experience.

This is dialog-driven RPG perfection and is already one of my candidates for Best RPG of the new millennium–we have yet to see if the rest of the game continues at this level or if our impressions change as we progress further. Look for a full review soon!

Major online distributor Steam has moved their release date for Alpha Protocol from this month out to March of 2010.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the delay is inevitable, or accurate in any sense of the word, but it does mean that the publisher does not plan on releasing the game on Steam this month.

While this is sad news for those eagerly awaiting the release (like us), we are also grateful that the publisher is not forcing Obsidian to release an unfinished game, as seems to be a growing trend these days with games that take longer than expected.

We’re still hoping for official word from Sega and/or Obsidian to confirm or deny the delay. Look for more news as it is made available.

In its unsurprisingly quiet fashion, Sega seems to be blowing off all attempts to discover any official updates on the Alpha Protocol release date.

As many of you are aware, many major retailers have changed the release date they list for the highly-anticipated espionage RPG from Obsidian to October, and in some cases even June 2010. Yet Sega still holds fast to their October 6 release date, however that seems very unlikely given that no retailers seem to be expecting the game in early October any longer.

The official site simply states “October 2009″, and while it is the least specific, I can only assume the rest of the PC gaming community joins me in genuinely hoping it remains accurate.

In all honesty, however, wouldn’t you be happier playing the game late (even 8 months late) if it meant Obsidian had the time they needed to polish the game and deliver a product that actually lives up to its hype (which is surprising at all given the lack of a respectable marketing campaign thus far)?

While I eagerly await this title, just as I eagerly await just about everything Obsidian does, I also applaud them for their efforts and hope that Sega gives them the time they need to do what they set out to do, and does not force them to release an unfinished or buggy product just to meet a deadline.

When I saw the first advertisements for Batman: Arkham Asylum I thought, “Great, another mediocre Batman title pops out of nowhere and will fall through the cracks just as fast.” But as I looked a little bit more into it, I was surprised to see a very high quality title containing an excellent presentation and some amazing fighting. But what was even more surprising, is it only got better from there!

I have very few qualms with the new Batman title from Rocksteady Studios. It’s a tighter and more polished game than I could have imagined, given past game offerings with our favorite caped crusader that left a lot to be desired.

The look of the game resembles the latest Batman flick (Dark Knight) a bit, however the setting is different, the voice acting is different, the story is different, and I’m happy to report that the game is entirely original!

Anyone remember those old Batman cartoons that were so huge in the ’90s? If so, you’ll be ecstatic to know that many of the voice actors are the same! Batman, the Joker, and other characters’ familiar voices don’t take long to bring back that sense of nostalgia.

The story, while decidedly darker and more violent than the cartoons, is well-written and flows well throughout at least the first part of the game (we’ll have to give our full review at another time–this reviewer is still thoroughly enjoying the 10 to 12-hour single player campaign).

During my initial couple of fights, I was not overly impressed with the fight mechanics, although the graphics and the way the fight animations are chained together is awe-inspiring. Once you get more combo moves and realize there are a lot of other mechanics going on to be aware of, the fighting itself becomes less of a button-mash, and feels really great.

“No downsides then?” you ask.  Well, almost. I was a tiny bit put off by the whole notion of Batman absorbing “bats” from the enemies he floors. What lore is that from? None-the-less, it’s an interesting concept, and it’s a game, so you just have to let a few minor details slide in favor of a great gaming experience.

Look for our full review soon, however if you’re at all interested in this game, or Batman in general, don’t wait to buy it–I can already highly recommend this game to anyone and everyone interested in Batman or superhero games, and anyone looking for a great new gaming experience.

This is already the greatest Batman video game ever released, and it is my opinion that everyone should get to experience it.

Let’s face it–whether or not you’re a fan, it’s hard to pass up all of the massively multiplayer online games both in beta and being released this season. Just to name a few, check the below lists.

Recently released MMOs:

• Champions Online by Cryptic
• CrimeCraft by Vogster

MMOs Coming Soon:

• Aion (Release: September 22) by NCsoft
• Fallen Earth (Release: September 22) by Icarus Studios
• Global Agenda by Hi-Rez Studios
• Huxley: The Dystopia (Release: November)
• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion by Blizzard
• Alganon by Quest Online

Other MMOs probably not releasing this fall:

• Star Trek Online by Cryptic
• Star Wars: The Old Republic by BioWare
• Stargate Worlds by FireSky
• A new Lord of the Rings Online expansion

As we have the chance to try out all of these exciting titles, we will post our thoughts, and eventually our full reviews here. Check back for updates!

It’s been several days since the start of Aion‘s Open Beta, following closely their highly-successful Closed Beta, and I must say–so far, so good! As is expected with an MMO launch, and even more-so a Beta launch, Aion has had, and continues to have, its fair share of issues.

The number of people pounding the game login servers, Aion’s Open Beta forums, and NCsoft’s Account site brought each of those services to their knees for a while. These issues were cleared up in a matter of a couple of hours for most people.

Next, there was random spikes of terrible and debilitating latency upwards of several seconds that prevented some users from playing the game for periods of time. Most of these issues have been resolved, but there are still reports of random lag throughout. I’m sure the developers will continue to tune their servers up until and continuing after the official launch in less than two weeks (September 22).

Some players were unhappy about some of the changes made to the game (PvP damage has been lowered significantly, many balance changes have been made, etc), but the general consensus is that almost all of them have made the game better and more fun overall.

In the Closed Beta I focused on the Asmodians, and thoroughly enjoyed leveling my characters. Now, in the Open Beta, I am focusing on an Elyos character, attempting to experience as much of the game as possible from the other side of the Abyss before the official launch.

I can’t comment yet on PvP or any sort of end-game experience, but working my way up to it has sure been a fun ride, and is thus far recommended for any MMO player looking for their next fix–especially WoW players wanting something a bit different that has a similar charm to it.

For years we have been enjoying a well-sorted list of Oblivion mods thanks to the wonderful BOSS (formerly fcomhelper). But Fallout 3 users have been left in the cold, with sparse, scattered, and/or conflicting information about where their mods should go in their load order.

Early on this year, the developers at our partner SingularityShift (eg. mostly myself) released the first pre-beta of FOMS, whose final version (0.6.6.1) was released in April. FOMS used XML templates to facilitate sorting and management of conflicts, dependencies, and related information for Fallout 3 mods. It was very basic with a very limited UI that provided just enough functionality to sort and manage mods, but it had some inherent issues in the fact that it was developed with hand-written tools in a scripting language that has some serious limitations.

Recently, SingularityShift released the first alpha (Alpha 1) of FOMS 2, which is a complete rewrite taking advantage of the robust features of the .NET Framework and WPF to provide a greatly-enhanced sorting experience, including a Template Manager to create and manage XML templates, live conflict/dependency/message tracking, robust backup/restore options, and more all driven by a flexible Preferences system that will ultimately allow users to customize many aspects of the application.

Given that it was a first release, users have uncovered many bugs and submitted many wishlist items and feature requests. Now, FOMS 2 Alpha 2 is nearing its release, and some of its new features that have been recently unveiled are:

• Refactored windows and unified resources for a smaller size, tighter code, and better performance and stability
• The Template Manager is being dumped and replaced by Template Studio, allowing much-enhanced functionality such as template downloads, backups, merging, cleaning, upgrading, and much more.
• Conflict/Dependency recommendations and resolving are now included, so you don’t need to hunt through your list to find and fix the conflicts/dependencies yourself.
• Many smaller fixes and improvements for a better overall experience.

Keep your eyes peeled for the new release!

As always, you can follow along with the software’s development at its project site.
You can discuss it with other Fallout 3 users at Fallout3Nexus and don’t forget to watch the official site at falloutmodsorter.com for release information and more details!

(If I have some shame, can it really be considered a shameless plug?)

The new self-titled shooter in the Wolfenstein franchise, developed cooperatively between Raven Software (single player) and Endrant Studios (multiplayer), has been received fairly well by the press. Many enjoy its sounds, animations, and presentation, while criticizing other aspects. This First Look will focus on my impressions of the game and my thoughts on these aspects.

First and foremost, any and all issues aside, I am truly enjoying the single-player game–it brings up many fond memories of the first Soldier of Fortune game (also by Raven), and it has almost everything I truly enjoy in an action shooter–good pacing, gripping action, great-sounding weapons, excellent gore, a weapon upgrade system.

The pacing was spot-on–the missions are almost non-stop action and/or suspense, depending on your objective. You never really feel lost or frustrated, and the adrenaline usually doesn’t stop until the mission is over. In-between missions you have as much time as you need to explore the city of Eisenstadt, interact with the members of the safehouses, deal in black market weapon upgrades, and more.

This brings me to further discussion about the hub city of Eisenstadt. You are not always just thrust from one mission to the next–often you first return to the city of Eisenstadt, which is essentially a very basic open world where you can choose your next objective, you can choose how to get where you’re going, and you encounter random battles that vary depending on how far into the game you are. Strangely, this is one of the most highly-criticized elements of the game. I, however, find this to be one of the most appealing parts of the game–it keeps the action fresh by giving you a chance to breathe and prepare before each mission, changing your weapon upgrades, speaking to others about your mission, and more.

The presentation of the game is also top-notch. I find myself pushing further forward if for no other reason than to run into the next firefight and satisfyingly slaughter the next group of Nazis (‘et al). The animation and artwork is great, and again really reminds me of the classic SoF violence. You can blow off limbs, causing enemies to hop around on one leg or writhe in pain or any number of other interesting animations. Eisenstadt and your missions all seem authentic enough for this style of game (how much time do you really spend admiring the scenery in a game like this?). My main gripe in this area is that the cutscenes seem somewhat low-quality, especially when playing the game in high resolution on a widescreen monitor–the game looks far better than the cutscenes on my rig. But that’s better than having it the other way around, so I can’t complain too much.

While this is only a partial review based on my initial impressions, PC GameSource should have the full scoop as soon as I finish the game, experience more of the multiplayer, and collect my opinions.

As always, feel free to post your own comments and opinions about the game here, and let me know what your experiences were, or if this First Look helped you.