Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. And the argument about 'well I was going to buy it day one anyway' doesn't hold any water with me because the big publishers release so many broken and and bad games these days that committing to buying anything before the reviews come in is a poor decision.

Or the inevitable day 1 server crashes if it's a multiplayer game.

I'm more forgiving of that because I suspect scaling these things correctly (without just buying up shitloads of capacity you don't need anyway) is pretty difficult and is something a company can legitimately claim isn't an entirely known factor prior to launch. If your core product is buggy or just plain shit though then you can fuck off because often these things couldn't possibly be unknown at the time they make the decision to screw the customer by going ahead with the release anyway.

Aside from the anti-consumer shite the entire pre-order practise encourages, the idea of committing to giving someone money for something when you've literally no idea how good it is just seems like madness to me. I wouldn't part with money for anything else without checking, as far as one can, the quality of it up-front so I don't see what's different about computer games.

You can cancel them when the review come in, you know.

Yeah but reviews for wonky games are almost invariably embargoed until the night before it comes out.

Distance selling regulations it away.

They get cancelled as soon as I find that out.

Which is annoying as the first Batman cost me an extra £10 to get.

Ubisoft says "We're being totally open with you about this. Everyone in the gaming press has non-disclosure orders that don't lapse until sometime after the game has released to the public."

So there you go, no reviews until the game has been released because they're scared of negative press and negative press is probably what they're going to get because it looks shit.

I request that the jury recalls Batman:Arkham Asylum, which had some hideous conditions for review, using screenshots, mag covers, etc.

And, of course, was one of the best games of that generation.

I'm confused, that's not what that article says and the bit you quoted isn't even in there any where? What it does say is, "reviewers will start playing the game along with everyone else when it’s released on March 8" which, to me, says simply that no one will be given a final copy of the game for review purposes before the public get their hands on it as is the norm. It's not an embargo, they can presumably post their reviews whenever they want, it's just that they'll need to spend some time actually playing the game before any worthwhile conclusions can be drawn. I mean obviously it's not great if you wanted to buy the game day one but wanted to know what it's like before plonking down the cash but I can kind of sort of understand it from Ubisoft's point of view if you assume the gameplay does genuinely rely on having a fully populated world to work with.

Unless you've got some other source of info about their reasons aside from that link?

The entire 360/PS3/Wii generation? Nah.

Nah. Speculation, init. But, come on, the amount of pages it's been getting in magazines, the gaming press going off to events to play it and so on? What is so different to this and, say, Destiny, which managed to get reviewed on release without some developer saying "You can't review our game because you just won't get the experience, man." And how has it been playable at these events and during the beta? They couldn't provide a single server for press to play it online or something (Bear in mind I know nothing about servers and stuff)? There's no single player mode? You can't ever, ever, EVER play it offline? I mean, really? EVER? Is that what's so great about it?

I can't remember anyone anywhere saying the campaign was online only? Is it? Genuine question.

That definitely means Ubisoft think it's shit, though. Otherwise why do this?

Well the other possible option is that they do think you'll need fully populated servers to really see the game at it's best so are essentially forcing reviewers to comment from that point of view. I'm not saying that's actually the case and have honestly no idea if it's any cop or not, I'm just offering up an option. Really I was just reacting to Sat's post which said some stuff that wasn't actually backed up by the link he provided. It might well actually be shit.

The timing couldn't be worse given the impending release date. I'd suggest that this is a measure by Ubisoft to get the most sales from a game that has largely had a tepid response from the gaming press.

It does sound dodgy but on the other hand if they thought it really was utter dogshit that everyone was going to hate I can't imagine that they would have run an open beta for a weekend. To me it just seemed a bit dull but it's not really my sort of thing anyway so I had no strong feelings one way or the other.

It's a MMORPG, of course it's online only. Your pretty relevant comparison there of Destiny is also online only, I'm not sure why you expected any different here? That's the reason I've been paying very little attention to it from pretty much right after the initial reveal videos because it's basically not for me.

As to the rest of your chat there, I doubt anyone's claiming that it couldn't be played on smaller press-only servers or anything (I certainly haven't said that) but obviously they don't want those to be the review conditions. Which could obviously be because it's pish and they want to delay that message getting out, but I don't think we can claim that as a fact at this point. Certainly your claims of a review embargo are untrue; you can't(/don't need to) put an embargo on a review of something which isn't actually available.

Nah, running a beta is pretty much a requirement for any massively online game these days. If you don't run one all you're really inviting is that your game gets a savaging when it collapses under the weight of the full player base right at the start. If that happens you're in trouble no matter how good your game is and if it's already potentially a bit crap then you're pretty much totally fucked at that point.

tl;dr: running a beta of an MMO game is an indication of nothing except your desire for your game not to instantly fall over.

It couldn't care less if it pretends to be a MightMorphinewhatevs, it apparently has a campaign and can be played single player.

Magnus Jenson, the creative Director said in January 2016



So if it's that great, let the reviewers review.

Sauce: http://wccftech.com/division-gameplay-s ... solo-play/

Single player doesn't mean offline in this case. And even if it did it would be like reviewing Cod by playing only the campaign.

http://www.onlysp.com/the-division-can- ... -seamless/

Funny, because that last sentence of your article certainly suggests offline.

And you're talking like the multiplayer will be a completely different aspect of the game, like CoD, whereas the multiplayer is integrated into the campaign experience, like Destiny.

“there won’t be any offline support” seems pretty unambiguous to me but whatever. And if the multiplayer is integrated then how is the single player even really a single player at all? And wasn't I the one that said it's like Destiny so aren't you agreeing with me by also making the comparison yourself? And doesn't that mean having a fully populated world could genuinely be considered a necessity for a fair appraisal of the game? And do you actually know what we're arguing about any more? And why do I have a massive feeling of deva vu as I tap these sentences out?

Weird I completely missed the headline of that article and then missed the same sentence only three paragraphs down. That article was from 2014 anyway, so, it wasn't exactly up to date. Anyway, I'm watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine so I'm not exactly concentrating. Pimento is great and his flirting with Diaz was fan-tastic.

In reply to your questions:

1) as I understand it, there's two facets to the game - playing the campaign and the Dark Zone. The campaign has a linear mission structure, do missions, go here, go there and, if you want, take your mates along - co-op multiplayer. So you could do without the co-op and you're playing the campaign. So is that aspect truly a single player? Yes it is. Next the Dark Zone where you have the high loot and is basically you fighting for the best loot against humans - competitive shooter part. Is it truly single player when it's against actual people? Probably not. So why not add bots. Anyhoo.

2) No. I used Destiny as an example since the mechanics are similar.

3) No. Destiny was similar and they still managed to push out their reviews and give reviewers enough time to get through it. But, sure, you could say the same of any game with multiplayer content. So why don't the CoD's of the world and every other game with multiplayer content (eg most console games) hold back review copies until after release?

4) Something to do with Amiga Power not being given copies of Alien Breed 3D?

5) Something to do with Amiga Power not being given copies of Alien Breed 3D?

Lulz doirways

i keep laughing about this... epople queing up in video game..

A friend of mine played this last night but he barged to the front.

Shameless.

They apparently patched it out pretty quickly

Fastest selling Ubisoft game in history:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/0 ... Shotgun%29

I will probably pick this up when I've wrung everything out of Destiny. They seem too similar to play both concurrently.

Jim Sterling's review makes this sound pretty miserable, even more so if you try to play it on your own:

http://www.thejimquisition.com/2016/03/ ... on-review/

Nothing about the reviews has persuaded me on this one, and having watched a fair few gameplay videos my overarching impression is that the whole affair seems rather dull.

For starters it's missing one of the main appeals of MMO style games which is different classes, (melee, ranged, caster, pet class etc), in this everyone has a gun and you shoot at baddies with it. (Appalling bullet sponge enemies at that, at least with a mage lobbing fireballs at baddies there are no real-world metrics as to how many it should take to kill a Rumbling Elemental, so four or five seems quite reasonable. But with assault rifles and SMGs against human opponents all our instincts tell us that it shouldn't take two clips to take down one enemy with nothing more in the way of armour than a bag on his head.)

The XBox guys at work have been getting into it but it hasn't got an unequivocal thumbs-up from them yet, and the reaction from my PC owning chums has been less positive than that.

Also seems to be desperately lacking an endgame or any sort of 'dungeon equivalent' content, or raids, or different paths through the game, large zones to explore, and so on.

So yeah, deffo not persuaded with how it is at the moment. Oh yes, and many bugs and glitches, of course - because UbiSoft.

The bullet sponge-y enemies is actually the part that puts me off the most. Just from watching videos the combat in general reminds me of Uncharted, especially the first game where the combat didn't really have a lot of 'weight' to it, and playing a whole game where that's like 90% of the experience would be horrible.

*perks up* ooh, does this get better in later Uncharteds then? Because I must say I got around halfway through the first one in the HD re-release and couldn't be bothered continuing for that exact reason (given there's so much emphasis on gun play)

Yeah, it definitely gets better in the second game. I mean there are still issues with that aspect of the game to my mind, but with the improvements to the shooting and the generally higher production values for the sequels I enjoyed them both much more than the first game. It's certainly worth trying the second one to see what you think.

Nice, cheers. Will persevere once I've finished Xcom and Talos Principle.

I played Uncharted 1 after 2 and wondered why I bothered. The original felt tired compared to the awesome of the sequel.

Anyway, regarding that review posted above, it is feels like the only negative review out there at the moment.

I did want to pick up on the comments about the kit you pick up, which does seem like all brown trousers, grey trousers, black trousers, brown trousers with a pocket and so on. I was never the type of person in, say, CoD to dress my character as a bleeding muppet in the skin of a multicoloured hedgehog but I appreciated that there was a wide selection of outfits to keep people interested in loot drops so it seems like a large misstep that TD's outfits seem so ... bland. I'd have thought that there would be a huge selection in a MMO-lite game so people could cosplay and all that junk people do.

This has got itself a RECOMMENDED at Eurogamer, so falling short of ESSENTIAL but still, well, recommended.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... ion-review

There are RUMBLINGS that we might give it a test-drive with our Saturday night crew, although it's quite a lot of cash to spend if it turns out to be a bit crap.

Also, uplay, shudder.

I'm fancying this myself. The reviews are positive, and the stuff the reviews say are good appeals to me, and the stuff the reviews don't seem so positive about don't trouble me (e.g. it gets grindy after 40+ hours; I'm unlikely to play anything like that much.)

I might wait for some bug fixes to land, though. Seen some bad things.

I'm firmly in the camp that while this looks excellent, it's not for me.

Tom Clancey is continuing in the tradition of putting his name on games that don't interest me.

As he's been dead for almost three years I don't suppose he minds much.

Good job he won't notice that I spelt his name wrong either.

In that case I call shenanigans on this being called Tom Clancy's The Division.

It's like how you can still buy Bernard Matthews turkey escalopes, I saw them in Shoprite before, and yet he's dead so he clearly isn't making them so it's all LIES.

As for The Division, one of my PC spod chums who's bought the game is currently online and playing WoW (according to the sinister spying battle.net client), which doesn't exactly strike me as a ringing endorsement for the brand new MMO/RPG/SHOOTER thing he's just bought, considering he's had his WoW account for over ten years and it's at the arse end of its current expansion, and that's the game he's choosing to play, instead of The Division.

I noticed and found it quite upsetting on Tom's behalf and that of his bereaved family.

I've seen some breathtaking substitutions of anecdote for data in my time, but that really is something quite magical.

I'm just working with what I've got, which isn't much.

We know mate, we know.

And somehow we've all just gone and bought the £69.99 GOLD EDITION off Steam with a view to enjoying multiplayer hijinks on Saturday.

Not sure what's happened there then....

Currently 62% though the 36GB download.

I shall report back as to it being GOOD or BAD or SOMEWHERE INBETWEEN.