The Good, the Lame, and the Weaksauce: 2008

It’s tough to write a decent end-of-year summary for the games industry. So immense is the whole damned thing, that one has to stop thinking about any one game and concentrate on what affects the entire industry, or at least, what’s deemed an important shift or event. Two of my three entries for this feature (despite naming one game publisher in particular) live up to that lofty standard. The last one is something that I and a few other select consumers took personally, and I felt it had to be covered with a hyper critical eye. With that minute introduction out of the way, I present the good, the lame, and the weaksauce happenings of 2008.


The Good: EA Gets Original
Hell’s a little chilly these days, what with EA taking the time to stop churning out Maddens and Sims expansions to publish original titles. Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, Warhammer Online, Skate- it’s like EA heard every snide comment I ever made while passing through the software section at Best Buy and decided to try and one up me. Sure, the new titles didn’t do stellar sales wise, and EA’s looking at a losses across the board this year, but just like every terrible gift ever given to you, it’s the thought that counts, and will hopefully continue to count as EA’s 2009 lineup is revealed. With titles like Dante’s Inferno, Brutal Legend, and Dragon Age Origins on deck, EA stands to break my ill will toward them with straight up IP bribery. Clever girl.


The Lame: DRM Psychosis
Did you honestly think that just because EA brandished a few great titles at me this year, they’d escape a tongue lashing over their consumer-oppressive DRM practices? Hells no. In fact, hellz no, with a ‘Z.’ Instead of standing as the ultimate testament to Will Wright’s brilliant approach to game design, Spore stands as a testament to how far people will go to reject the downright filthy practice of intrusive DRM practices by downloading the bejesus out of it, and liberally down voting the game on Amazon.com. The incessant consumer cries of “unfair,” “intrusive,” and “easily bypassed” have obviously yet to reach the thick skulled corporate higher ups at EA and other major publishers. Sure, companies like Stardock and Valve have their distribution models right, and give this concerned consumer some personal reassurance that not every game publisher is run by silver haired corporate leeches- but as long as said leeches have a home in large publishers like EA, Securom will find its way on to more computers than it ever should.


The Weaksauce: Rockstar's Stumble
The console versions of GTA IV rocked sales charts last spring, and rightfully so: with a leading man more believable and likable than ever, a living, breathing New York city knock off to roam around/destroy, and a grittier than grit story direction, the game was a commercial powerhouse. The aging RenderWare engine was stripped out in favor of the in-house developed RAGE engine (which, funnily enough, made its sneaky debut in Rockstar’s Table Tennis). GTA IV was as beautifully animated, textured, and bump mapped as it was playable. GTA-Starved PC users eyed the visuals with a holier-than-thou sort of glee; we pictured huge resolutions, amazing draw distances, and insane texture detail well above what console rats could ever hope to enjoy.

What Rockstar ended up vomiting up on us just in time for the holiday season, however, was as far from that as could be. Schizophrenic pop-in, instability, and an annoying registration process is all that awaited us, accompanied by actual system requirements for rigs that don’t exist yet. Rockstar patched its abortion of a game in a staged showing of post product support, but most of us are still unable to run the game in the native resolution of our monitors without tremendous rendering problems.

The grand tradition of the computer port of the current iteration of GTA being the best of the bunch has been broken by what I can only imagine to be Rockstar’s drunken, heroine fueled rush to get the game out the door for Christmas. Like its namesake, Rockstar rode its crest of quality PC ports face down into the gutter, the glass of a broken forty ounce sticking out of its back, track marks adorning its arms. Rockstar has garnered the reviled position of Weaksauce of 2008 because it turned its back on its most dedicated fans and sold out for absolutely no gain whatsoever. They pissed it all away into the gutter, mate. OI!

-John