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Friday 3 November 2006

EA scum part 1587 [Lurks]

EA are scum. If you want to save time, more on to the next blog. This latest thing that annoys me is their attempt to go up against Valve's Steam. Course it really must have chapped EA seeing someone else successful at digital downloads so they launched their own service called EA Link. I unwittingly installed this so I could download BF2142. For a start I think it's hiliarious that you have to pay full whack for the game via digital download, despite the fact you get no box, manual, DVD and so on. They try sweaten the deal with extras but I really don't think they get it.
The thing that really annoys me though, which is something of a recurring theme and which I generally refer to as 'EA bullshit' is how this fucking EA Link thing basically fires up every time Windows loads up and proceeds to download advert shite and try flog me stuff. Surely the twats would make a simple place, some options somewhere, where you could tell EA Link not to start up every time Windows starts, right? Wrong!
In the end I had to get down and dirty with the registry editor, after scratching my head trying to find what the hell it was. They've called it 'Core.exe' like a nice bit of stealthed spywhere shite. Still, it's gone now.
EA are just fucking unreal. They watch someone else do somethng well and then they get in after but do it just that bit more commercially aggressive with absolutely no regard for their customers convienience. I shudder to think how many Windows boxes around the world are booting up with EA Link and I bet deep within the Evil Headquarters of EA, they're loving that concept.
Still, EA aren't the only ones that suck. Other shit things this week in gaming would include Dark Messiah: Might and Magic. This game takes the Source engine and manages to break it somehow. It's buggy, crashy and has a massive memory leak. Oh and you can't alt-tab because that's obviously some entirely fucking superfluous feature that no-one would want to use. Many people can't get out of the tutorial at all. I'm not sure what the hell is going on, don't these wankers do any testing any more?!
What else sucks this week, oh yes an actual good amazing game was released. Neverwinter Nights 2. Ace, I head over to the only digital download store in the world that has it, Direct2Drive, and start buying it. Naturally they let me get all the way through setting up an account before curting informing me that the game is removed from my basket because of a country restriction. Eg, I've said I'm in the UK and these fucking morons have once again not released the game in the UK for a couple of days yet.
Nice one guys. There I was with my 50 bucks, right there, and you told me I couldn't have the game. So I fucking warezed it instead.
To be fair it's amazing so I'll buy it because I'm probably one of the last remaining moral game buyers, despite how fucking shoddily the industry treats us. However had this not been an amazing game, I would have played it for a bit on the warez and you'd not have seen a penny. When I was willing to get my wallet out. Dark Messiah being the perfect example. If I couldn't download it, I would have warezed it, realised it was fucked and not bought it.
The moral of the story is simple for you games industry cretins, world-wide English release on digital distribution on DAY ONE and we'll come with wallets open and this isn't a license to install hard-to-remove adware shite on my PC either. I'm not naive enough to think I'm getting through to them but it helps to rant eh?

6 comments:

  1. Couldn't agree more (Although there is an option in the EA downcrapper to stop the autostart with windows). I went with the physical media as I'm a bit old fashioned. Must admit though, it still has a CD check which the downloadable obviously dosen't.If this gets on your moobs, you can mount the iso, but you'll have to disable your EIDE optical drives. Download devcon from microsoft here.To disable or enable a drive, run: devcon disable @ideCDROMPIONEER* or devcon enable @ideCDROMPIONEER*To get the right device name (the CDROMPIONEER bit above), use devcon status @ide*I've just got 3 shortcuts on a quickstart menu to do this, enable, 2142 & disable. Or you could chuck it into a vb script or batch file. Bosh. Just be careful you don't do something daft with devcon like disable all the devices on your system, heh.Does this mean that Me Pod & Muz have another recruit to the squad? We had top fun last night. A walker plus a tank each with two up makes a pretty efficient killing combo!If you want to add us to your 2142 buddy tracker then we're playing as:Spiny (engineer), Podbod, MuzsterIf we're going to squad up regularly then we could do with someone specialising in support or recon. The support class gets some nice unlockables including "robot minigun turrets of death".I prefer launching the game (at least initially from) an external server browser. Of the current crop Qtracker seems to offer the best support. There's a filter pack you can download from the qtracker forums that can filter 2142 on umpteen different parameters. It can filter by geographical region & has it's own useful buddy tracker. The way it refreshes servers is a little esoteric though so don't get caught out thinking it's not working. It gets the list of servers, refreshes the player/server info, then pings the servers in three seperate operations. If you have any ping (e.g. It's pretty well supported with regular updates & a large number of it's users seem to have moved over from The All Seeing Eye which Yahoo! let! go! to! seed!.

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  2. 2142 does rock. There's still EA peonity, like the lack of support for LCD res, 'optimising shaders' on a graphics settings change, 20 seconds to load the menu, etc etc. But... it's fun.
    Re: specialisations. I've thus far spent my unlocks on grenades (class agnostic), detpacks (sniper/spec ops), EMP mines (engineer) and deployable shield (support). I guess support is the way ahead for me - the turrets look God Damned Cool. Recon has some cool stuff like an uber CQB assault rifle and active camouflage, but on of that is useful for squad based play really.
    For those who are interested, a full list of unlocks (including weapon stats) is available here.

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  3. I've so far unlocked the grenades and stam boost from the general unlocks and the resuscitator from the assult unlocks.I'm not sure where to go next. I like playing in a squad but I also get frustrated at the one hit kills people get with snipers when I need 2-3 with the default rifle. But you're right muz, all the recon unlocks are very lone wolf. I guess we need some kind of cheat to try them out in single player. Theres another bit of gamedesign stupidity right there.

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  4. Yeah, I'm not convinced of the usefullness of recon, especially when the engineer gets the bat helmet upgrades to transmit enemy vehicle positions to the team. Assault is more useful for the medic kit & defib unlock. It's a quick way to gain XP^H^H rank points too.
    Some of the common upgrades are worth having though. Especially the sprint & recovery. (Or should I say stamina & speed are char attributes you can level up? ;))

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  5. I dunno though, recon has it's uses. The detpacks especially - they can be used to destroy enemy radar/supply things etc; sniper + detpacks lets a single recon guy cover a capture point on his own to a certain extent, and the detpacks come in dead handy when attacking an enemy titan. But those are all very specific circumstances, and require someone clued up.

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  6. I've been doing a mixed approach. I've unlocked 3 items from recon, 2 from engy and 1 from assault so far. Gives me a nice mix for all occasions but I'm desporate to get some higer powered weaps. Once I have floaty mines I'll go for the heavy sniper I think. Been having a ton of fun today trying out the commander and squad leader roles. Commander goes to the higest ranked person so I get it about 1/2 rounds when I want it

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