The PC Centric Extravaganza 08.23.08
Posted by Chris Evans on 09.23.2008
A lot of DRM chatter and a heap of other great PC news, read on.
The PC Centric Extravaganza 23rd September 2008
Welcome to another edition of The PC Centric Extravaganza, the best place on 411 for your PC gaming needs. This week I have loads of shit to talk about, got a chunk of writing on DRM, a Portal mod along with a whole host of other news and the last (for now) piece of the Thornhill F.C. saga. Read on friends.
Peggle Nights Out Now
I have just received word that the sequel to the immensely popular Peggle has now been released on PopCap.com Peggle Nights is the name of the game, and thanks to some sneaky back handers I have already had the pleasure of playing this game. I must say it is just as good as Peggle, if not even better. There is an amazing selection of new adventure and challenge levels along with a new character and new awards. Expect more on this from me within the next few weeks, for now Press Release awesomeness follows!
PopCap Launches Peggle Nights for PC
Extreme Fever Imminent
DUBLIN, Ireland September 16, 2008 PopCap Games, the leading developer and publisher of casual games, today announced the immediate availability of Peggle Nights at www.popcap.com. The game is the much-anticipated follow-up to the original Peggle game - named one of the top twenty videogames of 2007 according to the Guinness World Records 2008 Gamers Edition.
Peggle Nights sports 60 all-new Adventure Mode levels and 60 new Challenge Mode hurdles, along with a new "Peggle Master" power-up, new kinds of style shots, achievements, and other special bonuses. In addition, Peggle Nights takes players into the "dream worlds" of each of the eleven Peggle Masters, providing five beautifully rendered and themed levels for each character's secret dreams and aspirations.
"We at PopCap love the Peggle master' characters as much as anyone, so we decided to delve into their personalities a bit further and take a peek inside each one's dream states," explained Sukhbir Sidhu, studio director in charge of Peggle and Peggle Nights at PopCap. "We also took the opportunity to incorporate user feedback from the original game by adding more challenges and style shots and ultimately making the game even more achievement- and skill-oriented."
Peggle has been downloaded from the web more than 20 million times since its introduction in February 2007, and has spawned dozens of Facebook groups and clubs and hundreds of YouTube videos. Due to the public intense passion for Peggle, Popcap, who ordinarily shy away from talking about future plans, has had to promise to bring the game both to mobile phones and Nintendo DS over the coming months.
In the game, players fire a metallic silver ball from the top of the screen, relying on gravity to propel the ball downwards while it ricochets off orange and blue "pegs". The goal is to clear all the orange pegs from the screen before running out of balls. A moving "bucket" at the bottom of the screen offers free balls, while green power-up pegs give the player special abilities via the Peggle Masters who guide players through the game. These power-ups include explosive area-clearing blasts, lobster claws that serve as pinball-type flippers and "fireballs" that cut through all pegs in their path.
New features in Peggle Nights include:
New Peggle Master/power-up: "Marina," the electric squid, brings the number of Peggle Masters / power-ups to 11; her "Shockwave" effect arcs between the first peg hit and the bucket at the bottom, clearing all intervening pegs with a jolt of electricity
New Trophy/Achievement: In addition to the original game's "all clear" achievement, Peggle Nights sets an "ace" score for each level; "acing" each level earns a special trophy
More Trophies: The new game offers four different trophies for the various achievements: completing Adventure Mode, completing Challenge Mode, clearing all levels of all pegs, and "acing" all levels. Oh, and a new trophy room to keep 'em in!
60 Newly Designed Levels: Each Peggle Master has five themed "dream state" levels in the game's main Adventure mode, plus a final five Master levels in which the player chooses the Master/power-up
60 New Challenges: Five dozen new Challenge Mode levels, with many fiendishly tricky objectives for players to reach; new types of challenges include "low ball" challenges in which the player tries to get the lowest possible score, Style Shot based challenges and challenges involving specific or combined power-ups
New Style Shots: More ways to score bonus points based on the player's aim and timing acumen: "Off the Wall," "Double Long Shot" and more
All-New Soundtrack: Maintaining the cultured sensibilities of the original Peggle, the new game offers a mix of original tunes and well-known classical music including a fully-orchestrated introduction by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra
Admire Your Skillz: You can now drag and drop replays of your top shots into the open game window to view them
Power-Up Improvements: Existing power-ups including Tula's "flower power," Kat Tut's "pyramid" and Lord Cinderbottom's "fireball" have been tweaked to optimize their effectiveness
Level Packs (Coming Soon): Peggle Nights is designed to accept additional levels and PopCap plans to begin issuing custom-made, in some cases themed, Level Packs
This free version places the player in the role of the campaign manager for McCain or Obama (the two US Presidential candidates) and gives them 21 weeks to win the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.
I love The Political Machine so this is a great way for anyone new to the game to get a taste of what it is all about.
Trials 2 Mega Patch
Patch 1.08 has been released for the amazing Trials 2. This is one hell of a big patch that sees a load of new exciting features arrive to the game. First up is the introduction of voice-overs for the game from Brandon DiCamillo, Art Webb and Rake Yohn. These guys are famous for their work on Jackass, Viva La Bam and a whole host of other wacky projects. I haven't had the chance to check out what they sound like in game yet, but when I do I will let you know.
The chat system has been overhauled; there are new chat rooms for the teams in game as well as language specific chats. This goes hand in hand with new multi-language support. I am pleased to see that Welsh wasn't included, I want that language buried.
As ever there have been graphics changes with improved graphics for the higher end users as well as a new mode that has been especially designed for low-end machines and laptops. This also means the game is now compatible with ultra-portable mini-laptops such as the Asus EEE. This is just another reason to add to the growing list of reasons for why I should get myself an EEE.
Finally there are 14 new free tracks bringing the total to over 60. Hells yeah. Can't wait to get my crash helmet back on for some more Trials action.
EA Changes Tact With Spore
EA caused an outrage amongst many with some dubious decisions regarding the DRM that came with Spore. It seems that they are starting to realise the damage they have done to the game with the DRM and are back tracking rapidly in order to appease fans of the game. It emerged a week or so ago that the install limit had been bumped up to 5, now EA are taking things a step further and changing the account system.
The long and short of it is this, you can now have five screen names for one account. You will have to go to the Spore website and set up the screen names there, from then on you will be able to log in to any of the screen names when you log into your account. Creatures will appear in the Sporepedia under the name of the screen name which created them. There is no current timeline for when this will go live, just a matter of waiting I guess. It obviously isn't an ideal improvement, but it is a small improvement. More details can be found here.
Portal Prelude
Portal: Prelude is alas not a new game from Valve, rather it is an ambitious mod that is nearing an end of September/early October release from a team of three French modders. Check the video below for just a taste of what to expect.
Prelude has been in the works since the beginning of this year and the team have purposely kept quiet about it to, I assume focus on work on the mod, or should that be game? Prelude is slated to have more gameplay than Portal had at release with 8 chapters, 19 test chambers, 48 challenges, 6 advanced maps, a brand new storyline and more than 400 lines of speech with English and French subtitles.
The story is based on a time before GLaDOS arrived at the Aperture Labs, a time where subjects were monitored by real Aperture Science employees. How will the addition of other real people affect the Portal experience I don't know, but I am eager to find out. I am sure that these French modders have been able to craft an experience worthy of the Portal name.
This looks exciting and I would love to have even the slightest reason to delve back into the Portal world, I think this will provide it.
I recently had the chance to chat to Nicholas from Portal Prelude about the mod over on hafllife2.net in a lengthy interview covering all kinds of stuff such as:
Chris - How do you feel fans of Portal are going to react to seeing other NPCs in the game?
Our testers were not that annoyed. Because there's no GlaDOS, and because it's in the past. We needed to find something a bit more "realistic" and "familiar" to talk with the player. The former human employees of Aperture Science were a really good idea, because basically, we never really see them during the test. You hear them, and you know they're watching you, just like if it was GlaDOS.
Good Old Games was always going to be a hit with a whole bunch of old classic PC games being made available at good prices with no DRM and plentiful support. However I had one bug-bear on getting into the GOG Beta, you could only use Visa or Mastercard, this prevented me from buying games such as Fallout and Original War.
Fortunately PayPal can now be used to pay for the games on GOG. As such I have gone out and bought Fallout and Original War. Having purchased my first game on GOG I then bought Fallout 2 with my code for a free Interplay game. This offer is only available to those who signed up to the Beta before September 7th and it ends, well it will have ended by the time you read this!
I can see GOG becoming an important place for many gamers to use in the future, it is damn good.
Thornhill F.C. Get a Win
Today is an historic day. Saturday the 8th September 2007 saw Thornhill F.C. win their first game ever in the Blue Square South division. Star man Evo was suspended following a rash sending off in the previosu game, he also received a two week fine for his actions. Facing the prospects of a game without the star player I kept with the same radical formation as in previous games and let the AssMan choose the team.
This was a great game which saw Thornhill record a 3-1 triumph over St. Albans. While following this result the team reamains bottom of the division this may just be the sign of some improvements. Let us hope that players like Jordan Ashley and Jamie Bell can continue in this new found form. This is where I want the post-match Press Conferences that we will get in FM09, they will provide me with a platform to hail my team as future superstars, which they will be.
Interestingly enough Evo wasn't playing in that game, though he was playing in my next game, a 6-2 hammering of Havant and Waterlooville. This was a big win which went a fair way to improving my Goal Difference which was shocking.
With a gate of 464, a big win and players such as Evo and Jamie Bell getting on the score sheet it looked like things were on the up for Thornhill F.C. I thought this was the case and took the team down the local for a few drinks to celebrate our famous victory and to encourage them to greater things in the next few games. However this was not to be, two 2-1 defeats followed the Havant match, things weren't looking at all good for the club.
I decide to try and get some good players into the club, I ask the board to find me a parent club. I hoped that I would get a Premiership club who would send me some promising youth players to improve my fortunes. Even better than that I got my local neighbours Cardiff City.
I throw in my signing from City, left back Matt Smith into the fray against Bromley, we earn a credible 1-1 draw putting the team on 7 points in the league, still stuck rock bottom but now level with Dorchester. They are only above me due to their better goal difference, -2 compared to my -17. Obviously the defence is a worry for the club, but since adopting the crazy formation I talked about last time I have been conceeding less.
My next big test is against Boreham Wood in the FA Cup 2nd Qualifying Round. I have never played with a team at this early stage of the FA Cup, the team perform well but after a 0-0 draw we lose 1-0 in the replay. With the board expecting me to reach the Fourth Qualifying Round this obviously puts me in dangerous territory. Looking at the Job Security listing I see that I am 'Insecure' in my position as manager of Thornhill F.C.
My first match after learning that my position is not secure is against Weston-super-mare a small seaside town somewhere in Southern England. The pre-match media comments on low team confidence following a poor run of form. The AssMan tells the boys some bull-crap to try and psyche them up. We play the game and get a goal on the 50th minute, however ten minutes later a very possible off-side goal is allowed by the referee.
Despite this I am pleased enough with the performance, while we may remain bottom of the table at this point there are signs that the players are getting a bit better with some solid 7 and 8s appearing in the player ratings.
Disaster strikes post-match as I learn that Lee Woodward, one of my strikers and left-wingers has a hip injury. I send him to a specialist and will miss him for a couple of months. I tell the press that while I will certainly miss his skills, players such as Brian Foster will be able to cover for him.
It seems however that Woodward and Foster aren't needed, on a wet October Saturday at Thornhill Park my young star Evo scores a hat-trick against Newport County leading us to a 4-2 victory and a climb to one from bottom in the league.
Things are looking up..I hope!
(I don't know when the next piece of the Thornhill F.C. story will appear, you'll just have to wait!)
That DRM Thing
DRM and the Piracy issue in general has been causing a hell of a load of debate, anger and frustration for many people over recent months. The issue has become increasingly pressing since the release of Spore and the announcement of DRM for Red Alert 3. I have seen threads popping up in forums all over the place discussing DRM and piracy within and seperate from the context of Spore.
The first thread, and I the biggest that I am aware of so far is this one from the PC Gamer forums. This thread has spiralled around for over a month now and has featured many arguments on the role of DRM in pushing people into piracy.
Secondly we have this slightly less extensive thread from halflife2.net where many people again deride DRM and the measures implemented in Spore. This has seen a craze of DRM related threads including this one revealing Crysis Warhead will be requiring online activation.
Finally we can see that the madness has even spread to the Football Manager forums with this thread discussing people's fears that Football Manager 2009 will include some draconian DRM measures.
I think it is clear from these (limited) examples that people are getting utterly fed up with DRM, it is something they don't want to see any more. They just go to show that DRM is not helping developers, it anything it is forcing people to either avoid buying a game entirely or to pirate the game to get a better playing experience.
I have gone through this at lengths before that developers should look at why people are pirating games and take their reasons into account. Things like install limits are only harming the every day user, that is the clear opinion of many. However, while I am not a fan of install limit or certain methods of DRM I think that people are over reacting and starting to panic thinking that every game coming out is going to have some god awful DRM.
People (including me I'll admit) are also complaining that install limit will do little to stop piracy, however if you look at it from a different perspective then you can see why companies are using these. Many people will install a game on several PCs around their home, that is not a shock to anyone, however there will also be a large number of people who will let their friends and family install a game without buying their own copy. This is what EA is trying to stop with their install limits, it isn't a good method as it will infringe of many people who want to install of all their home machines and find they have to reformat a machine thus losing an activation.
I must say it is shocking and very interesting to see people who never normally care about DRM and anti-piracy measures throwing their toys out of the pram and refusing to buy a game purely because of some install limits. If enough people followed their example then maybe EA will change their DRM policy, but a lack of sales of PC titles is more likely to cause companies to cut development of PC titles.
That's a wrap!
Thanks for reading another edition of The PC Centric Extravaganza, I hope you enjoyed it and please, check out the rest of the columns here on 411!
