As much as that cynical little devil on our collective shoulder insists that it's inevitably going to be just another game, much like the last one, that moment when the plastic shrink-wrapping finally gives way is what keeps the industry alive. There's so much promise, right in those few seconds. Those moments represent some kind of unsullied ideal of what video gaming could, and should, be.
It's astonishing, then, how often that little glowing orange ball of optimism gets vigorously crushed within seconds, often before we've even got anywhere near the game itself. I'm primarily a PC gamer but it gives me absolutely no pleasure at all to hear that Halo 3 has apparently been shipped with a large number of scratched and unreadable game DVDs, due to substandard packaging of the Limited Edition. It's safe to assume that the troubles aren't quite as severe or widespread as the forums might have you believe, but that scream of frustration is all too familiar. There's something indescribably cruel about hyping a game like Halo 3 to the heavens, and then deflating the whole thing for hundreds of people with by forgetting to secure the DVD within the packaging. Oops!
These kind of gaming landmines, strewn either by design or accident, are far from a new thing. I'm not the only one who can remember that special feeling of waiting half an hour for a game to load off cassette tape into my C64, only to have it fail in the last few minutes. No Spy Hunter for you, young man. The leap from cassette to 5.25 inch floppy was like suddenly learning how to breathe. Talk about fast! And also, talk about disc errors! Even so, the experience of loading up my first game off a floppy - Pinball Construction Set, I believe - was just so dizzingly high-tech that, if I'd actually had any friends at the time, I would have called them up and squealed down the phone.
Another successful installation.
I'm the first to admit that I am occasionally my own worst enemy. It must have been around 1988 when I found myself waiting at a bus stop, clutching a brand new copy of Starglider 2 for the Amiga 500. I actually felt sorry for those people around me who were oblivious to such things as computer games and wouldn't get to head off into space that evening. Video gaming was still a furtive, slightly embarrassing pursuit at the time, but seeing as I was a furtive, slightly embarrassing person, I couldn't see the problem. Anyway, that night saw me spend a wonderful couple of hours wafting about a virtual universe before, inexplicably, deciding to save my game on the actual game floppy. The next few months saw a some little white lies - I din't do nuffink guv'nor, I swear! - get me absolutely nowhere with technical support in both Australia and the UK, before chucking the whole lot in the bin and getting a new copy.
Fast forward to 1995. I'd started buying PC gaming magazines about a year before I ever owned a PC, mainly because I knew that once I actually bought the machine, I'd be way too broke to buy any games for it. So those shiny cover discs were my salvation. And if there's one thing that says 'The Future Is Now', it's something shiny. Odd as it may seem, that was a vaguely magical year, compulsively reading gaming magazines from cover to cover without actually playing any of the games I was reading about. It was all promise, with everything essentially preserved in that perfect, unplayed state.
Which is not to say that I wasn't giddy with joy when I finally unpacked my PC, set it all up and loaded up a friend's copy of Dark Forces. It was awesome. Once I got it to run. Most games of the day ran under DOS, what with Windows 95 still being a gurgling newborn. Two words that will immediately summon up both a feeling a joy and horror for many of you: config.sys and autoexec.bat. Good times, yes? That desperate battle to free up 640k of memory while keeping mouse.sys alive. Character building, that's what it was. Real men make bootdisks.
Copy protection, in all its manifestations, has probably been the most frequent bane of my (and your) gaming life. I mentioned on the podcast a few weeks ago that after placing the install disc of Neverwinter Nights into my CD drive, I heard exactly the kind of sound you get after revving a small, hard disc up to several thousand RPMs and then letting it free inside a metal box. I'd been looking forward to NWN from the very second I first heard about it and, finally, here it was. Untold adventure at my fingertips! Incredible online functionality, breathtaking graphics and then GRIND! WHIZZ! THWANG! No NWN for you, young man, but now would be a good time to pick up a new CD drive, yes? I don't know for certain that dodgy DRM was to blame, but I remain deeply suspicious to this day.
Blue Screens and Red Rings of Death. Rootkits. Read errors. Registration, initialisation and activation. Failure to connect. Internet not found. Please download new drivers. Call this number and have your details ready. You are 27th in line. NTSC or PAL? Composite or component? 50 or 60Mhz? Did you face north during the installation process? RTFM, consult the EULA, YMMV, AFAIK, noob.
Sigh. Anyone for tiddlywinks?
How much does a gigabyte weigh?
I'm a big fan of digital downloads. I love being able to drag a game out of thin air and (in theory at least) start playing only a hour or two after first stumbling across a game. The fact that most downloads are cheaper than their cardboard and plastic version only sweetens the deal.
Tell you what, though, I do like the heft of a store-bought game. Or, I should say I did like the heft, seeing as most games sitting on the shelves these days lack any real weight. I fully understand the move to standardised DVD-sized packaging and the benefits it brings to shop owners, but it's been ages since I brought anything home that had a good, brick-sized manual in it. Bit of a manual whore, I am. It wasn't that long ago that the actual physical weight of a game box could sway a purchase one way or the other for me. 'Perceived Value' is, I believe, the term used by marketing types. Weight sells.
There's an argument to be made that games don't really need chunky manuals these days. In-game tutorials are more thorough and comprehensive now that DVD and HD space is so abundant, and a well designed game shouldn't really need to explain itself over a few hundred pages, should it? No, not if we're talking about Peggle but in a lot of cases, not providing a decent manual reeks of publishers' penny-pinching contempt for their customers.
The original manual for Minesweeper. Honest.
I was - still, am, I guess - a military sim fan. Subs, tanks, planes, whatever - I'm up for it. Something to do with being an easily pummelled flyweight in the real world, I think, tends to propel me towards these simulated machineries of death. Nobody messes with you when you're wearing an A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. Anyway, these kind of games always came with brick-sized manuals, and I loved them. If the box didn't weigh a few kilos, there was no way I'd buy it. A generous manual meant I could play a game for ages, then stagger off to bed with the after-image of the screen burned into my eyeballs and spend a few more hours thumbing through the manual. Brilliant.
Outside of Collector's Editions you might get a pamphlet or, even worse, a PDF chucked on the game disc. I don't want my game to exist solely on the screen. Put it in my hands, let me carry a chunk of it around on the bus or have it with me when one of my nearest and dearest insists than, for God's sake, I go outside and get some fresh air for a change.
I'm not interested in getting gouged for Limited Editions with packed-in miniatures, cloth maps, stickers, helmets and comic books. Just give me a good, well written manual - with an index, please - as standard and I'll be happy.
Go Team!
In an effort to prove that I do not just complain relentlessly about Things Wot Annoys Me, let's end on a positive note. The Team Fortess 2 'beta' has gone a long way to restoring my faith in online gaming. I'll be doing a full review of TF2 as soon as the game is officially released but at the moment, it's been an absolute joy to be able to leap into an online game and have, um, what's it called? Oh yes, fun. Maybe the cartoony design has created a more relaxed, less gung-ho atmosphere, but so far I've encountered far fewer dickheads than expected. That's 'fewer', not 'none', but I'm not going to be picky. The character design also very cleverly accomodates a range of playing styles, which is an absolute blessing for those, like myself, who are chronically twitch-deficient.
So three cheers for Valve for making 8 years of development pay off and a big, smiley thumbs-up to the TF2 community-at-large for not immediately devolving into a pack of tantrum hurling pre-schoolers. Nice.
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