Game Dev PR Fiasco Roadshow

Mass Effect 3 spoiler warning.

Game dev makes ill judged post on forum:

Instant demotivational poster in the most unfortunate way imaginable.

Battlefield 3 Limited Edition is Limited

I picked it up, only to find the much touted "Back to Karkand" maps aren't actually included as DLC codes - no, they're included as DLC "coming soon" flyers because they don't actually arrive until sometime in the future (as the flyer put it, "when it is released". Thanks for that).

I mean crap, at least give me a horrifically overpriced statue, half a soundtrack or a set of night vision goggles. I'm going to break out a marker pen and rename it the Complete Lack of Anything Extra addition.

Soundtracks and Special Editions

Oh dear, it seems people with the expensive editions of Deus Ex are rather annoyed that the Augmented Edition version only has a handful of songs.

I'm a little dissapointed at how limited the Augemented Edition's soundtrack is. It's missing a ton of good tracks, almost all of the ambient music, most of the combat music, the only boss theme on it is the weakest one (Yelena's track is fantastic but Barret's is really weak), and doesn't have any of the character's liefmotifs on it, Icarus notwithstanding. The hell? - Link

Fuck this. My Aug Ed has half as many songs. =/

Worst special edition ever. - Link

"Well that's some fantastic gouging, advertising that the limited edition has the soundtrack when it's less than a third of the actual music, and then releasing a separate one..."

"I think it's more cause people liked the OST alot and there was enough demand to warrant an actual full OST. Don't think there were plans at first to release a seperate soundtrack." - Link

Bolded my me. Special Editions sometimes use OSTs as a hook to buy the game, but include only a handful of tracks - the buyer then watches as the full thing is released a little while after.

Me, I was schooled in the art of "never buying a special edition again" when I picked up the LE of Dragon Age. The main hook for me was the bundled OST - what I got for my money was a "free special plastic case" (hahaha etc), some poor DLC and a crippled soundtrack that only included 18 random tracks - any marginal value I got from paying extra was negated when the OST dropped containing 35 pieces of music, also here's an additional collection based around DLC.

I don't think an OST was included with the Mass Effect 2 special editions, but I steered clear just to be on the safe side - I didn't want a repeat performance of the above. Even disregarding the notion of low content OST bundles in Special Editions, look at how the music is broken up anyway: a main soundtrack is released, and then additional collections appear that could easily have been included (Combat and Atmospheric). Then we get more music appearing as the DLC packs for the game are released - Kasumi, Shadow Broker and Overlord (ah, DLC - you don't just break up games anymore, you do it to soundtracks too!)

Of course, you could argue the music for the DLC packs hadn't been put together at the same time as the main music but even so, you'll have to buy six different albums to get the complete Mass Effect 2 experience - and there's no reason why Combat and Atmospheric couldn't have been on the main album.

Interestingly, the Special Edition of Dragon Age 2 came with 29 tracks - however, trying to buy DA 2 music will mean you have to purchase this, this and this in order to get the full experience. It seems even when most (or all) of the music is included on a Special Edition, the soundtrack is then split up afterwards to ensure multiple purchases are required.

I don't know if Mass Effect 3 Special Editions come with a soundtrack, but I'd suggest you at least try to find out how many tracks are included before purchasing - and the same goes for all Special Editions touting an OST as a major selling point. Unfortunately, it's often impossible to obtain details of what makes up the Special Edition nitty gritty, which makes the problem of limited music tracks included in these collections much worse.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and hug my six billion tracks per disc OSTs of Final Fantasy 7 to 10 while the words of this person ring in your ears like so much absent music...

Mental note: never try a Beta again

I'm sort of "meh" on hacker games really, as they all pretty much do the same thing: reduce it to "click a box, watch a meter count down and then you've hacked it". Uplink is entertaining for a while, but hack one machine and you've hacked them all. Thought I'd try Duality - after ten seconds, I have a crazy mouse pattern onscreen and I've completed a level.

I didn't do anything.

Maybe I beat the hidden "Draw a picture with my mouse" level or whatever.

Atom Zombie Smasher Review

 

15 hours in two weeks (less, actually) pretty much tells you all you need to know about Atom Zombie Smasher (£5.99 on Steam).

1) I like it.

2) It has zombies in it.

3) I get to kill millions of zombies.

Atom Zombie Smasher is a cheap and entertaining top down “make the little dots move around and kill other dots” strategy / resource management effort. The pink dots are the zombies. The yellow dots are the people. Save x amount of people before the time runs out with your helicopter or they all get eaten, or finish the level by wiping out the zombies before nightfall.

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The campaign gives you a map filled with terrorities (they all look the same though, which is a bit of a wasted opportunity).

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Each one has a number attached to it, the higher the number the more zombies you’ll find. As the game progresses, the game will change things up a bit with landscape hazards, tougher zombies, equipment malfunctions, shorter days and so on. You'll also gain XP for your units, unlock better skills and so on. You'll also see certain cities filled with valuable scientists, who will allow you - quite literally - drop some science on the zombie hordes.

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At the end of each level, you’re given a score and then all the territories owned by humans Vs zombies give points added to the Campaign total. First one past the post wins.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to win this game or even come close. No matter what you do, the zombie outbreak keeps spilling into new zones. The 1s become 2s, the 2s become 3s, and then you get a 4 and it’s basically game over at that point. A 4 is an outbreak that turns into 1s in adjacent zones at the start of the turn. After a couple of turns, an otherwise level pegging map with no claimed territories will quickly resemble six billion zombies hunting you down with chainsaws. There is NO WAY BACK from this, and the campaign score descends into farce as a quarter length Zombie bar screams towards the finish line leaving you wondering what the Hell just happened.

Another annoyance which doesn’t help: the squads / weapons you get is randomly allocated before you enter a map. You can guarantee that when you need your best assets the most, you’ll be left with 2 smoke bombs, a road barricade and some C4 to wipe out hundreds of zombies in a very tight time limit.

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Good luck with that.

In fact, many of the 15 hours of gamplay may well be me just sitting there wondering what to do once the Level 4 outbreaks start appearing. Besides swearing loudly, I mean. I think I may well just do that when a real zombie outbreak begins, because the tools you’re given here to do the job certainly don’t cut the mustard. Now the game does let you mod it, and I guess you can probably skew the odds in your favour but I tend to think something is going wrong when you have to resort to that.

I did also consider the possibility that I just might not be very good at this game, but everything was going fine until the Level 4 outbreaks hit. Then it became a random guessing game, the guessing part being how long it'd take to flash up the "Game Over" screen. If you think you can bluff your way through those odds from about halfway through your campaign, or you just want to mash some zombie skulls - and really, who doesn't - then you could do much worse than give it a go.

The music is great, too. But you're not here for that, you're here to mash some zombie skulls. Right?

The Humble Indie Bundle: Some Interesting Stats

http://www.humblebundle.com/

Now that you've clicked the above link, bought some games and donated your money to whoever you like (game devs, EFF, Child's Play and so on) I think this is worth looking at:

We need to have a little talk, Windows users.