F@#k You, Nvidia. Redux

Way back in the old-timey days of 2007, when senators were looking for airport glory holes, the iPhone was pre-fanboy, and China was just poisoning us with lead instead of economic policy₁, this blog was making its first crawl out of the primordial goo.  One of my earliest posts was a juvenile rant directed toward 3D-graphic hardware and software company Nvidia.  Well, it seems a tiger don't change its stripes, and four years later, Nvidia is back to their old tricks of shoving undesired bloat down its customer's throats.

I'll try to keep this brief and to-the-point.  There's no real reason to pad out a rant like this, and most of it would just be excessive fucking cursing anyways.  Basically, with its most recent iterations of ForceWare (Nvidia's drivers for its GeForce series of video cards), Nvidia has seen fit to include HD audio drivers as part of the standard installation.  These would allow you to use the HDMI-out on your video card for audio as well as video output.  Not a terrible feature, in theory.  In practice, it's completely nonsensical.  I realize there are some people out there who want such a feature, but the vast majority of PC gamers are using a dedicated sound card or onboard sound on their computers.  Using the HDMI instead would, afaik, require you hook your computer up to an HD audio receiver, which would then presumably go to some surround sound system.  This would go well with using an HD tv as your monitor.  Because, you know, every PC gamer likes to sit on their living room floor when they play.

Even despite the current impracticality of the feature, it wouldn't be so bad — that is, if it didn't cause your computer to BSOD₂ all the goddamned time.  That's right: due to one of those really difficult-to-isolate driver conflicts, the installation of this superfluous HD audio driver causes computers to say "fuck you," often as soon as you log in to Windows (since the "log in sound" plays).  Other times it will crash when you are watching a video, or sometimes when you are just twiddling your thumbs and admiring your desktop wallpaper.  Basically just whenever the hell it feels like it.

Lest you think this is just some problem isolated to my own PC configuration, go ahead and Google "gtx470 hd audio bsod."  There are message boards full of other angry, ranting nerds.

The worst part about this?  The solution would be incredibly simple: just include it as an option to un-check during the driver installation process.  Nvidia already do this with their 3D Vision drivers (which are useless unless you have a special monitor & glasses).  Yet for some reason, they have forced you to install these HD audio drivers for the entire past year of driver releases.  There are some complex workarounds and processes you can go through to try and fix this problem, as outlined on those aforementioned nerd forums.  I've tried a couple, and the thing still rears its ugly head (plus you have to repeat the painful fix process every time you update the driver).  Thankfully, it never seems to occur during actual gameplay, but it still happens with enough frequency that it is murderous-rage-inducing.

Come on Nvidia.  Seriously.  Fix this bullshit.

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1. For some reason, I originally wrote this section for 1997, saying "Way back in the old-timey days of 1997, when scientists were busy cloning sheep, Heaven's Gate was spiking the punch, and boxers were eating each-others appendages..." Man, 1997 was such a cooler year than 2007.  Oh yeah, China has been screwing us with economics since before 2007, but saying it this way was funnier.

2. BSOD = Black screen of death (formerly, blue screen of death). Basically a system crash where your monitor goes black and you are forced to restart your computer.

More Feces Flung at PC Gamers

UPDATE 8.20.2011

Since originally writing this post, significant more information has come out about Origin and other EA games, namely the highly anticipated Battlefield 3.

Origin is not only a DD storefront, but it is also apparently a DRM system for EA games.  Great, just what PC gamers need, another DRM system.  We already have Steam, Ubisoft's UPlay, and GFWL, the latter two of which frequently cause endless problems (and sometimes the inability to play the game they paid for) for a whole lot of users.

Oh, and as many had predicted, BF3 will not be sold on Steam.  It is increasingly looking like no major EA titles will be sold on Steam any longer, unless they resolve a dispute they are having over the distribution of DLC.

But that's not the worst of it.  The diarrhea icing on this shit cake is that no matter where you buy BF3, even if you get a brick & mortar boxed retail copy, you will be required to install and use Origin.  Hooray!  I'm all but done with this game now.

You know what?  For all the shit Activision and Modern Warfare take for being terrible, greedy, evil, diabolical bastards, they haven't pulled anything this retarded.  I'm not going to support them because I don't like their other practices, but at the very least, they are not shoving additional DRM and storefronts down PC gamers throats.  Maybe because... I don't know... they want to increase the level of user accessibility, not make it more restrictive?  Since something like low-barrier entry to playing the game is better for sales?

Original Post:

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In the past day or so, two news stories have come out that, as a PC gamer₁, really irk me.

The first is from id Software about their upcoming shooter Rage.  The gist of it is that because the console market makes up 2/3 of their projected sales, id are designing the game specifically for consoles, and the PC version will be more of an afterthought.

Ok, so by now, pretty much everyone knows that, yes, console game sales generally more than eclipse PC sales.  That's fine.  Devs and publishers are businesses, they need to make money, etc etc, it's been said.  We get it.

What bothers me is the dismissive and callous nature with which this treats the PC market.  In the first quote, CEO Todd Hollenshead seems to sarcastically imply that the PC market will be a third if they are lucky.  Well, Holesinhead, how do you think pompous statements about console priority will reflect on your PC sales?  Positively?  No, I don't think so.  By the very act of making such statements, you are only compounding the low-pc-sales problem. 

It galls me that developers and publishers are constantly making such obviously insulting press statements, and constantly neglecting their PC user base, and yet still sit there going "Hmm, I wonder why our PC sales are so low?" Oblivious much?

Do you think that a PC gamer who is on the fence about buying this game is going to be convinced to buy it after hearing how their platform of choice is the redheadded stepchild in the eyes of the game's developer?  Piracy is a problem, to be sure, but it becomes an even larger problem when game makers do things of this nature, because it gives people the excuse they are looking for to "justify" their illegal download.

This particular case makes even less sense to me, as it states that PC is roughly 1/3 of the sales.  The other 2/3 are split by PS3 and Xbox.  For the sake of argument, let's say that PS3 and Xbox are also each an even third.  One third of your entire sales market is nothing to sneeze at.  Why is it okay to treat that third unequally to the other two thirds?  To me, this is the same thing as them saying "Well, PS3 only makes up 1/3 of our projected sales, so we are developing priority for Xbox and PC, and then porting to PS3 from there."  It's not as if the PS3 and Xbox share the same development environment.  They are completely different systems.  If anything, developing for PC and Xbox are a more similar process.  This almost feels like an arbitrary "screw you" to the PC crowd.  This is also especially upsetting coming from id, who were once a bastion of PC gaming.

Add to this facts like Rage being sold for $60 on PC, despite there being no $12 Xbox/PS3 per-disc fee associated with it.  Is it really any wonder that PC sales are low?  This type of treatment will only cause them to plummet further.

Well, thank god all developers do not share this mentality (although it is becoming increasingly more prevalent).  Earlier this year, I was extremely happy to hear that EA/DICE were developing Battlefield 3 with the PC as platform of priority.  They essentially said that developing for the lowest common denominator for a high-quality game is an absurd premise, and that they want to develop the best quality possible, then scale back where necessary for consoles.  Not only did this give me joy as a PC gamer, but it filled me with some pride for the video game industry as a whole to see that a high-profile developer was pushing things to the limit and taking the high road.  I was feeling all set to support EA/DICE with my hard-earned money this fall.

Oh, but then this happened...

Yes, that's right, EA is setting up their own digital distribution service and possibly making it the only place to buy EA games digitally.  Now, so far it's only with Crysis 2 (perhaps to test the waters), but as the article mentioned, they might be doing the same for BF3 and other future releases.

Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water, and that EA actually understood what PC gamers want, they make this stupid blunder.  Pulling games from Steam?  Really?

Don't misunderstand me — I'm all for a competitive marketplace.  The more places there are to buy something, the better for the consumer.  However, project Origin (coincidentally the name of an evil science experiment in a popular FPS franchise...lol) appears to be going the exact opposite route.  Thus far, it is apparently only pulling a game from Steam, and not other digital distributors such as Impulse, but it seems reasonable to assume that they will extend this exclusionary practice to cover all venues in the future.

Why this bothers me so much:

PC gamers have enough crap to deal with these days.  They already have to overcome the obnoxious hurdles of multifaceted DRM, multiple "community" log ins, and some people already use several DD stores.  Adding another to the pile isn't helping the situation.  Steam managed to somewhat ameliorate many of these issues, while simultaneously providing a pleasurable user experience.  But many publishers don't seem to give a crap about user experience these days.  They focus increasingly on maximizing profit and nothing else — taking the "we don't care if we annoy or offend people, as long as it manages to net us an extra half-cent per sale" approach.  So, when EA sees Valve becoming wildly successful off of Steam, they think "why not me?"

Well, perhaps because Steam has been built up slowly over the better part of a decade, and was not just some overnight get-rich-quick scheme.  At its inception, Steam was merely a tool for Valve to uniformly distribute patches and prevent cheating on its own games, such as Counter-Strike.  Over its eight years of operation, Steam has evolved in to much more than that.  It now hosts robust user community features, unprecedented inter-connectivity between online players on games using Steam servers, and one of the most streamlined and user-friendly DD stores I've encountered (not to mention $ALES $ALES $ALES!).

All this is to say, no EA, you cannot be Steam.  Your prior EA online store was pathetic and terribly unintuitive to use, so if you are using that as a basis for Origin, it just makes the possibilities even worse.    Steam is already well-established, has a massive user base, and a very loyal following.  As stated above, they also offer a lot more than just a storefront.  People generally do not want to have to sign in to multiple things, download multiple things, manage multiple accounts, when they can do most of it in one place.  Even without all the vitriol now directed towards you as as result of this, your exposure on your own proprietary EA-only storefront is going to be far smaller than with Steam, so I can't imagine it boosting profits, even if you no longer have to sell through a middleman.

Another thing EA doesn't seem to understand is that Steam is run by Valve, and unlike EA, PC gamers like and, more importantly, trust Valve.  Valve has built up a plethora of goodwill from PC gamers over the years by treating them right, and this carries over to Steam.  Up until the evil grinning face of Bobby Kotick₂ replaced it, EA sat prominently on the throne of publishers that people really hated.  They were only just recently beginning to recoup people's trust.

The idea of Origin further annoys me because publishers are constantly trying out their new half-baked schemes almost exclusively on PC users.  Why are we the lab rats?  Why is it okay to screw with our gaming experience, but not with console users?  Would EA ever pull games from PSN or XBLA and start their own service directly against them?  Probably not.  Of course there are multiple reasons for this, but the feeling of constantly experimented on is very strong as a PC user.

On the flipside, my predictions could be completely wrong, and there is always the chance that project Origin will be a huge windfall for EA, and manages to beat Steam at its own game. I see this as the worst possible outcome.  Why?  Because of the monkey-see monkey-do approach of game publishers that I previously alluded to.  If Origin is a big success for EA, then the next thing you know Activision, Ubisoft, and every other major publisher is going to think that starting up their own exclusive DD stores is a brilliant idea.  Call me insane, but the thought of having to contend with multiple storefront accounts, multiple types of proprietary DRM, multiple software installations, etc — just to play different games on the same platform — makes me want to projectile vomit.  Sometimes I feel like there is a conspiracy by publishers to make PC gaming such a miserable experience that everyone begrudgingly switches to consoles.

One final bit, which I find kind of perplexing.  As you may or may not know, EA is the distributor for Valve's releases on consoles (ironic, right?).  Valve is (was?) one of several digital distributors for EA on PC.  This seems like it would be some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement.  I of course don't know the details behind it, but I almost have the feeling that this announcement of Origin could just be the knee-jerk result of some petty contract disagreement between the two companies.  Hell, it's not like there's been another recent example of EA completely missing the point due to misguided competitiveness.  I mean, aside from almost their entire Battlefield 3 marketing campaign, that is.

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1. I play the vast majority of my games on PC, but I also own a PS3 on which I play games. (I also also own an SNES, Dreamcast, DS, and co-own NES, Gamecube, Wii with my girlfriend).
ps: I fucking hate the terminology "PC."  What, a Mac isn't a personal computer?

2. Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Activision, EA's biggest competitor.  He is infamous for his greed and making ridiculous statements that offend gamers across the board.

My Intitial Thoughts on the Deus Ex: Human Revolution "Leaked Beta"

Two days ago I read about a "beta" 8-hour demo version of the forthcoming Deus Ex game being released on the internet. I normally don't bother with these sorts of things, but Human Revolution is a game I have really high hopes for, and was very interested in seeing how it is going to turn out. Mostly, my great concern for it is the fact that the PC version is going to be a port of the console version. That the original Deus Ex is a seminal and important representation of PC games of yore makes this factor all the more relevant. With Human Revolution the series has the chance to restore its former glory, and hopefully make everyone forget about Invisible War. I also read that Eidos apparently was not attempting to shut it down and that they were actually welcoming feedback about it on their forums. This spurred me on. So I said, why not. I'll download it, play it, and it will help inform my purchase decision. If it's great, I still have time to pre-order. If it sucks, then I will know to wait until several months after release and it goes on sale.

Last night I installed it, and began playing.

(Note: Scroll to the bottom for updates/corrections)

I have only thus far played it for little over an hour, so I will treat this review as if I was playing a demo of the game (they usually run about an hour). For the most part it doesn’t feel much different than your average modern shooter, that is to say very formulaic.

The intro level is split in to two parts:
Part 1 – you float around behind an NPC (“on rails” and unable to move) while they lead you through a facility.
Part 2 – you run down a linear corridor and shoot some generic NPC baddies.

This is interspersed with some FMV cutscenes (making the game feel all the more dated). Really, FMV cutscenes that pop in and out of gameplay, in this day and age, feel like poor game design more than anything else. At least have cutscenes play in-engine so there isn’t the awkward contrast of: here’s a “realer” looking version of your characters, and here’s a less real one. I guess this is a Squenix production after all…

If this doesn’t sound like every recent shooter you’ve ever played, then you haven’t played any recent shooters. As I continue to play, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there aren’t any more npc-leading-you-by-the-hand moments. To compare it to something else more closely related, the entire intro actually felt very much like the intro level in Invisible War. In case you hadn’t heard, Invisible War was, by most accounts, a completely terrible game that shat all over the Deus Ex name. In IW’s defense, at least it didn’t take away player control in the intro at all. HR does this with alarming frequency.

Something else that has me worried about the linearity of the game – there is only a checkpoint system. No manual saving. In my book, manual saving is a must for any game that hopes to convey any sense of openness. (See update #1)

This experience is a stark contrast to the intro level/ first mission in the original Deus Ex. In that game you are plopped in to a large open level with little guidance other than a mission briefing. Games these days seem to design to the lowest common denominator, insisting on always having an introductory mission that holds your hand, and prompts you every two seconds reminding you what your keybinds are (by having a place to jump, a place to duck, and a place to shoot!). I had hoped that the developers of Deus Ex would think more highly of their audience. I guess this is what happens when you go for a multi-platform wide release. It was also hilarious to note that the tutorial videos used Xbox controller buttons in their demonstrations. Assuming I didn’t, for some idiotic reason, know what my keybinds were, this would be immensely unhelpful. I’m assuming that this is only a “Beta version” oversight and will be gone by full release.

Otherwise, Nixxes seems to have done a fairly admirable job of providing a competent PC control scheme. I have yet to encounter any unchangeable default keybinds (as I have in many other ports), and the various menus are all mappable to separate keys. I haven’t had a chance to use the augs in gameplay yet, so hopefully that proves to be effortless as well.

Some of the next part I’m hoping is merely a result of this being an early, un-polished build.

Graphically, the game looks very dated. If you’ve been oohing and ahhing at the gameplay footage you’ve seen online, be assured that at full resolution, it does not look nearly as pretty. Low res textures are everywhere, and the environment has a feel of looking very flat, almost as if we are still using sprites. The environment itself is very static. That is to say, when you shoot stuff, bullet-hole decals appear, but nothing else happens. You cannot move or otherwise affect most objects in any way. There are some specific interactable objects scattered throughout the level, mostly in the form of large crates (but not all of the crates, only certain ones!) that you can throw. I also managed to pull a fire extinguisher off the wall and throw it and have it explode, but I’m pretty sure they did that specifically because everyone expects fire extinguishers in games to explode. That was pretty much the only object besides the “throwing crates” I was able to do anything with.

The art style seems to be on that borderline of “we wanted to make this look realistic but we ran out of time.” Characters have somewhat cartoony features, and skin and hair looks to be made out of shellacked wood. This combined with the atrocious character animation and stock npc death-poses, once again, feels out of place in a modern triple-A game.

These issues become especially glaring in dialogue sequences, when you are forced to stand perfectly still, staring in to the NPC’s dead robot eyes. As they banter at you, they make stiff, jerking movements with their necks and arms. There is no ability to skip or fast-forward through dialogue, either, so you just have to sit there and take it in (see update #1). When you do finally get the chance to interject your own dialogue, your options are pretty limited. I’m hoping this opens up further in to the game, but in the parts I’ve played thus far, you are presented with either an “aggressive” or “passive” dialogue response. This prompt does not come up every time your character speaks, either, just whenever the game feels like it.

The other component to dialogue, voice acting, seems to be hit or miss. Your character is fairly well-acted (although he sounds strangely like Martin Sheen trying to do Solid Snake), but out of the three major NPC’s I interacted with, only one of them felt natural, with the other two sounding as if they were reading from the most boring manual ever, with their French-Canadian accents bleeding through. The writing itself is not bad, although I have already encountered multiple cliché lines (“Are you ready for this?” “Only one way to find out!”).

Combat is a little awkward. During most of the game, you play from a first person perspective. During combat, however, you can shift in to a Splinter Cell-style 3rd person in order to use one of those sticky-cover systems. Mostly it’s a series of odd little things that make it uncomfortable. Such as: you would think that the “down the sights” button and the “aim from cover” button would be the same, but they are different. Note that you can also use the 3rd-person cover system when not in combat, like to sneak around and avoid detection. The transition between the two perspectives is fairly smooth, but I still find myself wishing they would have decided on one or the other. The NPC AI I encountered thus far in combat has felt incredibly stupid (I’m playing on the hardest difficulty), e.g. standing out in the open and shouting canned phrases at you (which recycle within the span of a minute or two). Also rearing its ugly head is the rechargeable health system which every developer these days seems to think is awesome. The screen goes red, and then fades after a while if you don’t get shot for long enough. I guess it’s down to personal preference, but I completely hate that. I suppose if you examine it within the context of the game it’s not terribly unrealistic: your character has cybernetic enhancements and is probably full of nanomachines that could ostensibly repair his wounds given enough time. Maybe if I remind myself of that constantly it won’t be so bad.

I guess a final note would be the soundtrack, which might be one of the few things helping the game feel like Deus Ex. I would describe it as sounding like Mass Effect meets Tron: Legacy. It’s nice at first and helps give the game that Blade Runner atmosphere, but I could see it getting on my nerves after a while.

Like I said, these opinions are only based on a short playthrough of a build that will presumably undergo a lot more tweaking before release. I’m hoping that further in to the game some of the restrictive feeling will open up. I will update with more when I’ve played through a longer portion of the game.

Up ‘till now, however, it’s mostly a disappointment, and doesn’t really feel Deus Ex-like.

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Update 1.

So I'm in the 2nd level now and I need to make a few corrections.

Apparently in the first level there were a couple things I couldn't do that I now can. First of all there is a manual save option in the main menu. Still no quick-save keybind though. I will have to remember to save more frequently because it's already apparent that the checkpoint system is woefully inadequate.

Second, the mousewheel DOES default to weapon switch. I'm not sure why this wasn't the case during the first level.

Third, the dialogue seems to be opening up a bit, and you CAN indeed skip through it using spacebar (there is no keybind or indication of this, just came upon it by pressing a bunch of buttons in frustration).

Perhaps this is just a case of really terrible design decisions for the game's intro?

Let's hope so...

Oh also, I jumped down what appeared to be a 10 foot drop, and Adam died. Uh... I thought augs were supposed to make you stronger, not enfeebled.

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Update 2.

Alright, I've played a little further in to level 2, so I will mention some more things now that I've played around in a non-intro level a bit more. I got another hour or so under my belt before the game CTD'd.

There was an especially obnoxious bug I encountered. The game kept switching to the sniper rifle as my selected weapon, despite me constantly switching back to and wanting to use the traquilizer gun. I figured switching it out of the quick-use item bar might stop it but then... I couldn't figure out how to switch things out of the quick-use bar.

I'm sure this bug will be gone soon enough, but it alerted me to another issue which is that the inventory is really bizarre. It lets you drag-and-drop items from your inventory in to the quick-use bar, but not drag them back out of the quick-use bar. I *think* you can assign things to slots using various number keys, but this appears to be a clunky system at best. I suppose having a game manual might help out in this case... not sure. It's also bizarre because certain items (such as painkiller pills, energy bars) show up in the quick-use bar, but not in your inventory. Once again, I have no idea how to get them to un-occupy those quick-use slots. It also appears that the only way to select them is via the number keys. This also applies to grenades. There is an assigned key to throw grenades/explosives, but there is no key to select which one you want to use besides the number keys.

I guess this is OK, but I don't use the standard WASD keyboard configuration. I re-map my keys so that the numpad controls all movement and menu functions. However the game seems to have a problem distinguishing between the numpad and the horizontal number keys. This is quite possibly why my sniper rifle kept showing up.

Also about that sniper rifle -- there was a pre-mission cut scene where part of your dialogue choices appear to be for selecting your gear loadout. You are asked how you want to approach the mission (aggressive or stealth, up-close or far away) and are shown weapon choices based on those selections. Except that once the mission started, I was given both the sniper rifle and the tranq rifle, which had been under separate options. So what was the point of that decision anyways?

I have also encountered some more combat/sneaking. The 3rd-person during cover / 1st-person during everything else gameplay is becoming increasingly obnoxious. I had previously compared the cover system to Splinter Cell, but that proved to be somewhat of an inadequate description. Mostly because Splinter Cell's cover system was extremely fluid and intuitive. You could move from cover-to-cover quick and effortlessly, and hop over small barriers and back in to cover. Not so in HR. In this game you must constantly switch back and forth between 1st and 3rd person to move about, which is obnoxious to say the least, especially since you aren't always sure whether you are completely behind cover or not. You also cannot aim through a scoped weapon when in cover for some reason.

Then there is the take-down system. Still not sure how I feel about this. It makes non-lethal stealth take-downs insanely easy. You just press one button, somewhere in the vicinity of an NPC, and the view switches to one of several canned animation sequences of you knocking out the baddie. I feel like this should be much harder to do, but I'm not sure how the martial arts of it could be accomplished without some terrible quick time event (which would most certainly be a worse alternative). The only other basis for comparison I can think of is the CQC system in MGS3 & 4, which was unreliable at best, and often had you doing the exact opposite of what you intended to do. Still, a one-button KO where you only have to be reasonably near the NPC feels far too easy, especially in hard mode.

On the plus side, the game is starting to feel less generic-shootery. Still has a long way to go though.

Final note until I think of other stuff: NPC facial variation appears to be pretty poor. The SWAT guy you talk to before entering the warehouse appears to have the same exact face as one (or more) of the NPC baddies.