Trying out a new game is always an adventure. Will it live up to the hype? Will The online gameplay be as good as the reviews say? Will it actually work? Sadly, the answer to all of these questions is invariably, maybe.
It's amazing to me that after almost 2 years since its release game developers still can't
figure out how to put an icon in the start menu of Windows 7. It's equally amazing that the most popular gaming titles for the PC increasingly have horribly complicated menuing systems with incomprehensible controls loosely adapted from console versions.
What else explains moving forward and back through configuration menus using the "U" and "I" keys instead of arrows or Hitting the "F" key to confirm an option choice!
While we're on the topic of bad game system design let's also mention the horrible online options in most PC gaming titles made in the past few years.
Why is it, that I can pay $60 for a game only to be forced to go online to play against an opponent sitting 6 feet away from me? A developer creates the game and then it seems the publisher comes in and mucks it up with their profit driven annoyances.
Why else would I be forced to manually enter a finger twisting CD Key AND have to authenticate to an online server and accept another EULA just to start the game! Let's not forget the requirement to provide a valid email address during this process with promises of privacy and confidentiality.
Yeah, that's great and it worked so well when a hacker broke into Epsilon and stole customer email addresses. I'm getting about 100 bogus Spam emails a day thanks to somebody's lack of due diligence.
Ok, so if you're going to make me jump through all these hoops, have me sit through minute long intros just to get to the game menus then why do you have to make it worse by confounding my efforts to perform the most basic of configuration tasks!
The latest addition to my game library has all of these traits, the much hyped Need For Speed: Shift 2.
Don't get me wrong, the game is gorgeous and works beautifully with my new Radeon HD 6970 card in spite of the fact that I use a joystick and my driving stinks.
Trying to find a friends game, however, is maddening. Everything about connecting to other players seems to center around the "Autolog" That's nice. So how come it makes no sense. Oh yeah another "feature", my friend posts a better score than I do and there's no less than 3 places to remind me of it including an annoying stock ticker like device on the main screen that I still don't know how to shut off.
Oh and don't look to the manual (if you can call a pamphlet a manual) for help. The only thing is says about multiplayer is a half page long diatribe about license restrictions in legalise and a sentence for each of the multiplayer game modes. Nothing about how to join or host a game. Isn't that a basic function? Why do I have to search through some text document buried in an installation folder or google this kind of information?
Apparently I'm not alone as after an hour of trying to figure out how to set up a game with my friend, he found a number of people in EA's (the publisher of Shift 2) forums bemoaning the same problem. That's unacceptable.
We had the same issue with other EA titles like Shift, Undercover, Pro street as well as games from other publishers Like Activision and Valve. All of which suffer from the disease
of console porting and needless online connection to "home base". This isn't about copyright intrusions even if they play a part in ruining the experience. It's about bad game design.
There was a time when a local LAN option was standard fare in PC gaming. Now it seems we're forced onto online servers just to play against our friends in the same room and if those servers go down or the Internet connection is interrupted our play experience is halted. That's stupid, plain and simple.
Earlier Need For Speed titles like the original Hot Pursuit, Porsche Unleashed as well as games like Star Trek Armada 2, Unreal Tournament and host of others had a LAN option that was no more complicated than knowing whether your network was using TCP/IP or Novell's IPX protocol.
History and technical problems aside, the needless complex menuing systems and maddening network play issues need to stop. Even if the PC versions of the most popular games are console ports there's no excuse for bad design. I can't imagine I'd be any more tolerant of a game with these shortcomings on a console. I definitely won't tolerate it on a more flexible platform like a PC.
There's no reason that I shouldn't be able to enjoy a game title with my friends within minutes (not hours) of installation without the frustration of a poorly executed design. The gaming experience is not enhanced by needless complexity and irritation.
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