It's been a hectic past few weeks. As I mentioned in a previous post I started a new job recently and finding time to get some good gaming in let alone keep a blog going that nobody reads can be rough.
That makes those stolen few hours all the more precious.
Lately I've been spending a lot of time with Borderlands and having a great time with it. I've also recently acquired Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (the new version) and been building up that profile. It's a fun game but I'm in it more for the multiplayer than the career mode.
That's a switch!
I mean Co-op multplayer of course! The further I get in the career mode the better variety of cars available to race with friends. Still there is a sick, guilty pleasure in playing the cop and ramming people into oblivion. Maybe I have a secret desire to be a demolition derby driver or maybe I'm just indulging my daily commuting fantasies.
My friends and I have been pretty focused on Borderlands on our game nights but Hot Pursuit is creeping in there now. Although last week I almost gave up on it. Why?
Well, read back over a few of my previous posts and you'll quickly discover that I have zero tolerance for bad game design. I'm not a big fan of EA's recent inclusion of the "autolog" in the newest Need For Speed games and while it seems to work acceptably well in Hot Pursuit it's absolutely broken in Shift 2.
So if I'm going to be saddled with an intrusive multiplayer system that wastes precious game time at least make it useful. Enter the Autolog...
In the newest Need For Speed games, Autolog is a thinly veiled gimmick designed to hide the console roots of a PC game release. It does little more than get in the way of the game with its pseudo-social networking antics and convoluted interface design lifted from some twisted game of scrabble. Most of which fails to deliver on the most basic level by the way and only brings exasperation and ultimately rage. So imagine my thrill when I can't access a saved game profile with it.
Why is it that I'm forced online to compete against players in the same room but have to resort to digging in Window's 7 horrible directory structure (another pet peeve BTW) to find my saved game profile? I bought the game on Steam, Have to start Steam to play it so why do I have to mess with finding savegame files and hope I have the right ones?
This would be a minor annoyance except for the fact that if you copy the wrong files in the save directory you'll effectively kill the game.
(BTW the path is C:\Users\username\Documents\Criterion Games\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit)
It used to be a bad save would just screw up your profile, now it borks the whole game. I couldn't believe a savegame file would crash a game to the desktop. I even rolled back my video drivers thinking I had a compatibility problem.
Why am I subjected to this?!
Why do I have to even worry about savegame files with a game so dependent on an Internet connection? If I have the legal right to play this game on multiple PCs
(just not at the same time according to the license)
then my progress should be automatically saved online or at least offer me the opportunity to download the file without digging through directories and guessing.
C'mon guys, you've already got me trapped on your less than adequate online gaming system, throw me a bone already. Manually moving savegame files is Waaaaaaaaay old school.
I may not be a rabid IPhone or Droid user (My phone is 5 years old and anything but smart) but there's a trend that is undeniable even to a troglodyte like me. People want their information to be portable and that includes their games.
I can watch a movie in one room, pause it and continue it in another room with the right satellite provider. I've seen games played on mobile phones that can be continued on a gaming console! What's the excuse!
Why do you continue to sabotage an otherwise pleasurable gaming experience? Why do you want to give me pause the next time you release the next would-be heir to the gaming throne?!
Needless to say the time wasted and frustration level had an impact on my gaming night and that's not something I take lightly. My time is precious and the fact that I choose to spend it on a game publishers product should be of immeasurable value to them. Sadly, I fear it's not.
It's just a game, you might say.
These things happen...
Yes, yes they do but it seems they happen too often and I'd rather play the game than put on my IT hat and root around registries, file systems and hardware drivers because someone got sloppy...
Yeah, I don't cut no slack when it comes to this. I paid for the privilege and I won't tolerate sloppy design.
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