PC PC GAMES

So…. IGN loves BF3, PC Gamer likes it a lot and nearly all my friends have purchased it. Matter of fact I was a LAN this weekend and that gave me the chance to watch people play, see the game in action and talk with people that like it.

At past lan’s I even timed the date of the event on or shortly after the release of a game. You guys remember Modern Warfare?! Just wow! The action, the fun and the hoot and hollering of 15-20 people blowing stuff up and learning how to use the perks.

Timing of this lan was perfect. Battlefield 3 released just a few days before. People still tweaking systems, starting to work out how the game works and see all that shiny new frostbite engine in action.

Well… you would think. I think at the most I saw 3 people play the game at the same time. While we all more or less sat in the same room you heard more chatter about the one or two round of CS that was played than you ever heard about BF3. And ask me what was the HOT game that nearly everyone played?… Dungeon Defenders

Jup, you heard right the little Indie game you can buy for $15 stole he show big time and was fired up multiplayer and single player almost all the time. But I don’t want to talk about Dungeon Defenders, but of BF3 so lets move on.

I honestly think that BF3 is very very pretty. I can’t say more than the environments look awesome. And aside from some weird issues with dead bodies floating mid air on occasion I didn’t see a whole lot of glitches (aside from one computer where it wouldn’t start anymore for the rest of the weekend).

I did see quite a few people dying without ever knowing where a shot came from and I wonder if all that HD is starting to work against us. Not saying games should be more low res, but man it was hard to make things out sometime. But is was pretty…

So I wonder, why did we not see people play the game. After all this is THE triple A game and BeerJedi who was at the lan and already made his point about the game and Simon also at the lan now posted that the game is a “Must Buy” if you are into FPS. I have my theories but I would love to hear from you guys. Are you playing with your friends, do you join on favorite servers and how does the environment help or hinder playing with friends?

As most of you know I am a FPS fan, but I have been clear that I will sit this one out and not compromise on my position. Here are the reasons:

• Origin is required

EA may also use this information combined with personal information for marketing purposes and to improve our products and services. We may also share that data with our third party service providers in a form that does not personally identify you. 

I will not and can not compromise on my privacy. To write yourself a blank check to my data and the right to use said data is a no go. I am hugely surprised that all it takes is a few shiny moving pictures to sell their private data. I know people that rant and rave how they hate Facebook, but find it of no concern to install Origin on their system.

• Origin as Steam substitute
  The point of Origin is to compete with STEAM and I am all for competition. While Origin certainly has it’s shinny side and  things that work it also has quite a few half baked ideas that can and will hurt the customer.Case in point, if you get caught using a hack/cheat playing CS you lose that game (VAC ban) and your penalty if you want to play on protected servers again would have to be to buy that game again. All the while all your other STEAM purchases are unaffected.

  Now lets do that on Origin. Lets say you lose your cool because the one bug that is affecting your system and ability to use a product you paid $60 for is not addressed or even mentioned as low priority. You vent, you go onto Origins forums and give the devs a piece of your mind… maybe pushed the language a little to hard or the mod had a bad day and you get banned from forums. But wait…. everything is tied together. A ban from one aspect of Origin means a band from every aspect that will include your games! Be that one, two or in my chase with STEAM 195. Not a big issue now… maybe while you only have one or two games, but what about down the road?

  A little challenge for you. Contact support for STEAM and ORIGIN right now. I mean a real live human being that can help you with a hacked account. I bet I know who wins! I have had issue with my EA account before and I have spoken with STEAM support live and on the phone. But don’t let me spoil it for you… spend a minute or two and try to find support for both companies. No really, go ahead and do it right now… I wait here…

• I don’t trust EA
  STEAM has years of reputation, started 2002 and over the years has shown nothing but good will to it’s fans and developers alike. The amount of small Indie titles that gets sold on steam is amazing. In our talks with people that have worked with STEAM it was clear that they are happy with the value they are getting. There is a reason people like Gabe Newell and he feels like someone I want to hang out with. His comments about serving “me” the customer and first do no harm to fans are well known and plenty and over the years backed up by actions.
  Can you imagine the CEO of EA to do this?
  EA… I’d some up with a love hate relationship with the occasional feeling of an abusive spouse. Their stocks do well, but the choices that are good for the stocks sure aren’t always good for me the fan of a game, franchise or developer that got purchased by them. EA has a horrible reputation of buying some dev because of a hit game, running it trough the sequel mill, trying to make them do something that is “cool” and all the while doing the best to alienate the loyal fans.
  Worse yet, very often a game is poorly supported if at all and patches are few and far between. Don’t even get me talking about the shutting down of game servers. EA is well know for it and not just on the PC but also with console.
• Always on…
  To my knowledge if EA’s webserver has issues you won’t be playing your purchase, online or offline. Sounds like a bad idea! But over the last couple years we have given UBI such a hard time and again here this didn’t seem to factor in for anybody. I guess we can be made to like anything if the treat is sweet enough.