Artless Gamer

BF:BC 2

Our first Gripe of the Week isn’t really that much of a gripe. At least not for me. For a couple of days, now, people have had access to this new Battlefield Bad Company 2 trailer. And just like in the previous version, they gift early buyers of the limited edition with unlocks that normally have to be earned by playing the campaign or rising in ranks in multiplayer.

The issue I may have with this is why my fair chance in the game should be compromised by a couple of gamers that essentially bought themselves a better chance at dominating the battlefield. Everyone scoffs at the lame kids who buy WoW accounts in order to jump right into their overpowered level 85 character – they get called names, get harassed, reported to Blizzard and shamed on the forums.

“Level your own character, loser.”

How is that any different from people who get very useful unlocks from the get-go without having to earn it, just because they bought a limited edition of the game? The only way it is different from buying WoW accounts on eBay is that the developer encourages it. But that is just marketing. It doesn’t make it one bit more legitimate or acceptable.

These days consumers want to get paid to buy your product. So give them something extra for buying your game and they’ll gladly fork over the money. That’s how you acquire customers these days and the gaming industry isn’t the only industry that works this way. Nobody is to blame, here. Except the consumer, perhaps.

Personally, I don’t have that much of a problem with it. I get pwned no matter what kind of gear I have available and I will gladly earn all these unlocks regardless if some players had it before me just because they bought some special edition with the developer’s golden booger smeared on it. As a matter of fact I will try to get a limited edition of the game, because I am one of those people who never even got to level 60 in WoW and I probably would have bought an account off eBay weren’t I such a pansy and afraid of being banned.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Assassin's Creed

You may have noticed the new video on the sidebar. This is the first part of the new Assassin’s Creed trailers that are going to be officially released on YouTube in the coming days. The first one is already online. These are official videos and show a little bit about the history of the game’s history and character.

I can’t say how excited I am about this game. The first part was amazing to experience, even though the game play was stupendously repetitive and not very enjoyable over longer periods of time. According to many previews, reviews, podcast celebrities and developers, we no longer have to sit on park benches for ages, listening to people and waiting for the right time.

This game is no longer a time sink with questionable fun payout. I don’t have to reiterate the many reviews that are already out there for this game. Just go look for one of them and then watch this very cool video clip.

Click here to watch the clip on YouTube.

Popularity: 57% [?]

ZOMG. So much memory.

As many have already heard, Microsoft is going to ban the use of unauthorized memory cards with the release of the upcoming Dashboard update. This update will introduce some features such as Twitter, Facebook and LastFM support amongst some other useless addons that will keep me from playing games and instead lurking on Twitter.

I can understand the general panic about this change as even myself have had some issues with save game backups and the lack of readily available official memory units. I have opted not to use any unauthorized hardware and have simply abandoned my old save games that were on my RRoDed Xbox 360.

I can deal with it. At least it gives me a good reason to play all these wonderful games again. What worried me most, though was whether I would be able to still plug in a regular HDD to watch movies.

Good news, then. People in the update preview program have already reported that hacked USB HDDs are still working after the update. To me this means that regular USB drives are still accepted by the Xbox and I can still watch my movies. I hate streaming.

TLDR?

USB HDDs still work after the new XBL update that will ban all unauthorized storage devices.

Popularity: 68% [?]

A few updates ago Microsoft added the Games on Demand option to the Xbox360 Dashboard. On top of that, if you have an Xbox Live account, you can also add games to your download queue straight from the Xbox.com Marketplace. Good going, Microsoft. We love the feature and it makes downloading new titles, add-ons or other things much easier when we can’t be in front of our consoles.

However, not all titles are available in all regions. Some titles are region blocked and won’t allow you to download the selected content. If you try to download such a title you may get a message looking something like this “The game’s region does not match this console” or some variation of it. Besides Major Nelson’s blog, which gives a small hint as to which region can download a certain piece of content, there is very little indication as to the availability of a title.

The other day, Streifenhecht decides to download Assassin’s Creed from Games on Demand on his Xbox 360. No luck. Didn’t work. The same thing happened to me when I first tried to download Mass Effect. A few days later I decided to try again – I have no clue why I tried it again but this time around the download started and I was able to download Mass Effect without any issues. The same counted for Fable II. When I told Streifenhecht about this at work, he went to Xbox.com because he knew he could download games from the web based marketplace, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 65% [?]

A typical DMZ

Often enough it will happen that you can’t join a server, or can’t be joined in co-op mode of some game because of firwall issues. Some port is blocking proper communication over the network.

If you’re playing on a PC, the game manual will most commonly tell you which ports you have to open for the connection to work as intended. And if you’re playing on a console, there are usually a set number of ports that you have to forward to the console in order for games to establish a proper connection to the servers.

For new gamers, setting up port forwarding is already a daunting task. Router manufacturers haven’t really done much to make it easier on people who don’t happen to know the difference between a service and a rule, between port mapping, port forwarding and port triggering, or simply what a DMZ ist and how there aren’t really any DMZ’s on routers but instead DMZ Hosts.

You’re ready to play ODST, you fire up co-op play, you send a game and party invite to your buddy and all of a sudden you get the message that the party couldn’t be established because of some network problems. You get a chance to diagnose the issue but the offered solutions are often inane since they always lead to the same two suggestions “Contact support” or “Change the NAT type of your router”. Let’s ignore the fact that you can’t really change the NAT “type” on a common consumer router.

So, if you are a PC gamer you’re screwed. You have to port forward your way along until everything works. And when you think that all ports were configured, you probably still forgot something … like Punk Buster or some such cumbersome anti-cheating software that still isn’t properly integrated into games.

However, if you are a console gamer, then you are in luck. If you want to get rid of all your firewall problems in one quick step, then just place your console into a DMZ host. Most routers have this option and what it does it to pretty much open up all ports for your console, only.

Go here to receive instructions on how to forward ports and make other settings on your router.

I don’t recommend setting your PC into the DMZ, though. It leaves you open to all kinds of foul play. Only do this with consoles as they can’t be accessed by way of the internets.

Popularity: 62% [?]