What Would Matt Do

If you have no idea who/what I’m talking about, you’re probably not alone. You see, Dum doesn’t like to pimp his stuff or do it for a job (he’s turned down offers). But the good part is that he can’t stop posting new reviews..slowly. For today’s viewing pleasure, I bring you the review of Assassin’s Creed. Having never played AC (I know, I know), I now feel that I have a REALLY good idea of what’s good and bad about the game. Unlike most reviews, these are actually informative and smart and always funny. Oh, and if you look at the main site, you’ll see they don’t come out often…they sure are worth the wait though.

Assassin’s Creed Review

I included some older reviews below because every single review he’s created so far has been worth reading.

Stalker Review

Crysis Review

What Would Matt Do: Were it up to me, Dum would be hired by some gaming website and make some money doing this. But since it’s not and he’s turned down similar offers, I’m just going to wish him the best and wish he would review more.

I have no idea on the stats or even if it’s really for serious true (I saw it on Kotaku), but if you have a PS3, you might want to hold off a bit on updating to the latest version. Apparently, 2.40 is bricking some systems.

Owners of PS3s in all shapes and sizes have been reporting that their systems were loading to the initial PlayStation wave screen and simply hanging there after applying 2.40. No icons, no controller functions, no nothing, just the wave across the middle of the screen.

I also see a couple of forum posts around the web very similar to this one on Eurogamer:

Downloaded the update, installed, and it restarted itself. It made the usual start sound, and just stopped and wouldn’t go past the waves.

Didn’t show any user accounts. It stayed on the waves for a good five minutes.

I decided its already installed the firmware, so switching it off wouldn’t make a difference.

And it didn’t. I switched it back on, and it still stopped at the waves. I switched it off again, and held my finger on the power button to reset the display settings (being that’s the only thing that I can actually do) and now it just display a black screen.

Controllers don’t connect (didn’t since the beginning), they just flash red and turn off.

What do you think? Fucked?

Yeah, I’d probably go with fucked.

Kotaku also mentions that some more tech savvy users have found out that if you take the HD out of the PS3 and format it, it’ll work again after the ps3 formats the driver when you put it back in. Which means you lose all of your saved games and installs, but at least you don’t have to send it in for weeks. Does removing the HD on a PS3 void the warranty? I doubt it, but it’s something you should consider. I know it doesn’t on the 360.

Oh, and Sony? Good fucking job. Do me a big favor, be sure to publicize whatever jackass QA firm you’re using to test your updates so I never go near them.

What Would Matt Do: Being that I don’t own a PS3, I’ll just shake my head sadly at Sony and wish the PS3 owners out there well. On the plus side, you’re probably just playing Blu Ray discs on the thing anyway so maybe you won’t lose anything with the format!

I say that it might take more than a few weeks. (I couldn’t resist)

Seriously though, I was going to let this one go, since I’m not playing AoC, but in reality that’s never stopped me before. I can’t really say much about the specifics of it, other than, test much? Funcom, did your QA department take a break for a couple of months? Did your developers decide women are inherently slower? Do you hate the womens?

"I know that many of you will probably be disappointed to hear that it might take us as much as another three to four weeks to solve this issue, for which I can only apologize, but we want to make sure that we devote the amount of time that an issue of this magnitude and importance deserves … I have to stress that even with our internal goal set and everything currently proceeding on schedule I cannot currently promise that this will be patched to Live at the projected date."

Sure, I’m poking some tongue in cheek fun at Funcom, but in reality, this just stops me from playing a bit longer. Sure, it’s not stopping me as much as their being no demo, but if their was a demo today, I wouldn’t play and wait for them to fix up the women’s animation. So I’m still in no big hurry to play AoC. Probably for the best, since I’m really busy doing nothing these days.

Back to Funcom…You’d think they’d be working over time to fix this problem. It’s literally made half the choices in character creation not as good. How come they can’t kludge in a fix for the animation while they fix it up? How come they can’t come up with some solution that isn’t at least a month away (and probably more, knowing MMOs and schedules)? You’d think this wouldn’t be the kind of press they’d want at a time when they are rocking it with 700k subs.

And as a former QA guy, I’m dumbfounded that such an easy to find bug got through the process. I’m wondering, is there a process?

Oh, one more question that I can’t figure out. Why in the fuck is damage tied to the animations in any way? Is there an actual technical reason for this? It sounds pretty iffy, at best, to me. As a friend pointed out, doesn’t this mean ANYTIME you want to adjust the speed of an attack, you have to fuck with the animation? That’s plain retarded and suggests that maybe they never thought about the future and how things might change.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll continue to not play AoC. Maybe in a couple of months after they’ve got the launch bugs figured out, I’ll give it a shot. Oh, and after they quit hating women.

Yeah, Microsoft makes noises about supporting the PC gaming industry from time to time. They even joined the PC Gaming Alliance. Do they really care though? Do they really want PC gaming to succeed as a whole, or do they just want the game they release to still have decent market after they’ve been on the 360 for awhile…? Evidence points to the latter:

"If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing the German market to choose to play the PC version – because they are more likely to buy that than spend their money on the Xbox 360."

"If we launched a Halo game on PC and 360 in Germany simultaneously, 80 per cent of sales would be on the PC," he added.

Hmmm…that’s pretty damning. I don’t even need to translate that. Based on that statement, what they’d really like is for everyone to have enough money to buy a 360, buy all their games on the 360 first and then buy them on the PC too. Or at the very least, just buy the 360 version. So instead of releasing games on multiple platforms, they push their main focus, the 360. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone with half a brain.

So they are happy to support PC gaming as long as it’s not cutting into their real business in games, the XBox. I wonder what that makes studios like Ensemble feel…are they making games that are now 360 first, then PC, like most other Microsoft studios?

What Would Matt Do: I use Microsoft technology in work and play, constantly. Some of their decisions aren’t making sense though. Word to MS, quit competing against yourself. It’s not helping us, the gamer/consumer.

Oh my. Not only is there going to be a Diablo 3 (duh), we already have screenshots, gameplay video, and more. And it appears to be made of the super awesome.

It being Sunday, I’m sure everyone has already heard about it, but since this site it really my selfish forray into the great wild internet, I’m going to now post about it. And admit while I think Diablo 1 and 2 are very simplistic games, they are pretty fun coop and my wife absolutely loves them. It’s one of the coop games we’d both sit down and love to play for long hours. Were it up to my woman, we’d STILL be playing Diablo 2 + expansion pretty much every day. Damn obsessed gamers.

So yeah, I’m really looking forward to this one. In four years when they release it, I’ll be playing it for many hours I’m sure.

What Would Matt Do: What I’m really going to do is try not to be amazed at how awesome the engine looks. Dear god man.