Video games are pretty popular here at Humourisms Towers but there are times when they just don’t get it right. Guest Stephen Colfer takes a look at some of the more recent examples of this.
Somebody put a Tutorial in Classic Sonic.
Remember in the days of old when a game didn’t pause every five seconds to teach you how to do the next thing you had to do? Ever wonder how we figured out how to even play a game without a little dude that followed us around, interrupting the game to tell us “Press A to Jump?” The answer is simple really. First of all it was assumed we weren’t the complete idiots most games assume we are you today, I’m looking at you, COD and your “FOLLOW ME STUPID” icon that’s present for the entire single player. Secondly if you actually cast your mind back to the first stage of Super Mario Bros or Sonic The Hedgehog you might remember that earlier stages are in fact step by step obstacle courses designed to teach you new mechanics as the game introduces them. It’s a subtle and much more effective way of teaching a player how to play a game and most importantly it’s built into the level design so players don’t even notice. So what did Sonic Generations do when making a duplicate of Green Hill Zone from Sonic 2? I think the first 30 seconds of this video does a better job of conveying the stupidity.
Look, Sonic can run left or right, there’s one button that makes him jump and one that makes him spin faster and jump. We’ll probably figure out that in order to play the game we might have to press some of the buttons on the button device in our hands.
Sony Stores Everyone’s Passwords in Plain Text.
Take a moment to do something. If you’re reading this in Chrome go to settings up there in the top right. Then Options, Personal Stuff, Manage Saved Passwords. Now Hoover that mouse over the blanked out passwords and you see the option to display each one. Turn a few of them on, the important ones, the passwords you type everyday but never actually see typed out in plain text. Feels weird doesn’t it? It’s like looking at naked photos of yourself. Well that’s exactly what the hackers who took down Sony’s Playstation Network last year. Only they weren’t just naked pictures of you, they were naked pictures of everybody and they weren’t naked pictures, they were passwords. Passwords that had literally been dumped in plain text files with no encryption. If the font had been set to Wingdings it would have increased security by infinity, because that’s what you get when you divide Wingdings by fuck all.
I don’t know why my Tech Security Firm hasn’t taken off yet.
Battlefield 3 is released before it’s finished.
Battlefield 3 is a sequel to Battlefield 2, which was released six years ago in 2005. Between now and last October, when Battlefield 3 was actually released every patch has gradually added features that should have been in the game in the first place. How do we know they should have been in the release? Because they were in Battlefield 2, Six Years Ago. I get that DICE spent ages on their lovely looking Frostbite 2 engine and as we found out in the BETA test there were plenty of basic problems that had to be ironed out of it. But right now, four months after release, you still can’t quit a multiplayer game if you have recently died. If you try and access the pause menu while alive so you can quit and if somebody should shoot you before you reach the quit button, the game DRAGS YOU BACK from the pause menu and makes you watch your killer teabag your corpse. Colourblind mode was standard in Bad Company 2 but it took a month to be patched into Battlefield 3. See Battlefield 3’s Multiplayer is all based around Squad Tactics and Capturing objectives, but it’s as if they released it when enough of it was finished that it could at least be played like Call of Duty. I like to imagine this purely hypothetical scenario is the exact reason for all of this:
DICE: I’m just going to take two minutes to stick in Colourblind mode so colourblind players won’t confused their squad members with enemies.
EA: Will it help racist thirteen year olds run at each other and die over and over again?
DICE: No.
EA: Patch it in later.
Games for Windows Live is Still not Dead.
Look at it, eating your babies.
This one’s a little more personal. Games for Windows Live has become notorious amongst PC Gamers for ruining their day. In order to be able to even save your game In Batman: Arkham City, the player has to sign into Games For Windows Live. Live then decrypts the save files that are stored on your own hard drive anyway and lets you play them. Even if it worked it would be pointlessly stupid. But it doesn’t even work. In fact twice now my entire Arkham City save files have turned up as corrupted data. I can’t even think of jokes to make here, I feel like just saying “Games for Windows Live still exists” out loud should have people rolling on the floor. Arkham City’s entire lasting value is based around challenge maps that you need a completed save file to even access. I paid MONEY for a THING and you’re actively blocking me from enjoying my THING. Oh and in the meantime the Pirated version suffers from none of these problems. If I was bothered to play through Arkham City for the third time, which I’m not, my best bet would be steal something I’ve already paid for just so it’s makers will stop punishing me for paying for it.
This is a Screenshot from Resident Evil 6
It’s Resident Evil! You can have ANYTHING as an enemy, a flaming unicorn that vomits tentacle grenades, a ten foot teddy bear that kills with hugs but instead you opt for Men… with guns. Wonder where they got that idea.
Stephen Colfer runs the Irish video games site Chronic Reload and can also be found on Twitter.
