BF:Bad Company

[xav 0]

Sums up the situation pretty well... I just hope the new game industry trend of "charging for extra content and online play" won't come over and contaminate the PC gaming industry...

Well at least PC games are still cheaper than consoles'... for how long I wonder.

[Messiah 2]

If they start charging 50 pounds upwards for a PC game, I'll stop buying them. 35 pounds, or there abouts is a nice level to sit at. Although I appreciate that one has to consider inflation and so forth.

Its a sorry state of affairs. I do buy sequels and addon packs, but only if they actually worth the money. I always enjoyed the concept of free extra content with BIS patches, I don't think I've seen that anywhere else before?

I just happen to be one of these guys who still remembers all 330ml cans being 50p. Those were the days.

[Guest RKSL-Rock]

...

I just happen to be one of these guys who still remembers all 330ml cans being 50p. Those were the days.

They were 30p when i was a lad!

Seriously though, its the way of the future. There is so much piracy in the PC market now that ingame/online live content distribution is the only way to ensure you dont get totally ripped off.

[dmitri 0]

I've seen this "piracy is to blame" argument appearing often over the past few weeks. Conveniently after a few high profile developers complained about PC gamers not buying their games due to it.

I can remember many of my teen peers pirating Doom, or whatever game was popular, over a decade ago. Yet PC gaming was doing just fine.

I'm not saying piracy isn't a problem, just that I'm not buying into the line that developers are feeding us. That we as gamers, who paid their salaries for years and put them into the position to make millions off console gamers, are suddenly now the sole reason for the lack sales in PC gaming. I buy my games. I don't buy them when they're bad though, or appear boring. Where are the new intellectual properties?

I've looked real hard at buying a console lately. But I cannot justify it when there are maybe 2 games I actually want to play, and when the majority of "top" games are also available on the PC.

[4 IN 1 0]

clearly i wont buy an addon pack with a price of a full game with contents like a few extra units, a few weapons, a couple of new maps and such

as the matter of fact, i dont even brother to download a piracy copy of game which waste 4GB of my harddisk space

[Guest RKSL-Rock]

I've seen this "piracy is to blame" argument appearing often over the past few weeks. Conveniently after a few high profile developers complained about PC gamers not buying their games due to it.

The sad part is its true. The last few years have seen lots of studios close due to the loss of revenue caused by diminished PC game sales. You only need to look at any Torrent tracker to realise its true.

I can remember many of my teen peers pirating Doom, or whatever game was popular, over a decade ago.

Yup I remember in the early 90’s at uni…. There wasn’t a PC that didn’t have a pirate copy of Doom or Duke Nukem 3d on it!

I'm not saying piracy isn't a problem, just that I'm not buying into the line that developers are feeding us. That we as gamers, who paid their salaries for years and put them into the position to make millions off console gamers, are suddenly now the sole problem for the lack of innovation in PC gaming. I buy my games. I don't buy them when they're bad though.

Well “they†don’t owe us anything. “They†made a product “we†bought it. Now “we†still want a product just a large portion of the market aren’t willing to pay the box price.

Now look at console games:

- You can’t easily pirate them.

- People want them they have to buy them.

- They are cheaper to develop for (ie only 1 hardware set/platform unlike PC which are made from 1000’s of different variations)

- Consoles are fast out selling PCs

Game developers are in the business of making money, not freebies. Consoles offer a more secure investment risk when compared with PC games. I think it’s something like 80:20 Sales to Piracy ratio (if that) on Consoles where as for PC it’s more like 15:85. Faced with those odds no company can really justify staying in the PC game dev business in the long term.

I've looked real hard at buying a console lately. But I cannot justify it when there are maybe 2 games I actually want to play, and when the majority of "top" games are also available on the PC.

My mate recently lent me a WII. I have to say I enjoyed it for the novelty value for a while but I kept returning to my PC to play serious games. Consoles just don’t appeal to me.

[dmitri 0]

Well “they†don’t owe us anything. “They†made a product “we†bought it. Now “we†still want a product just a large portion of the market aren’t willing to pay the box price.

True. It's ironic though that if they owe us nothing, they still take the time to tell us why they're focusing on consoles. If we're a minority, why bother? I know there are many factors, and this might be naive on my part, but I feel this has something to do with them lacking the will to innovate for a more demanding audience (pc gamers). Or perhaps we're not demanding.

Mainstream titles are aimed at hormonal, penniless youth, the least likely to purchase their game, the most likely to have zero taste, instead of at adults who actually possess the finances to purchase their games. But it's a bell curve isn't it. They keep dumbing down, and gamer's "gamer intelligence" will dull along with the games.

[dm 9]

Now look at console games:

- You can’t easily pirate them.

Not really true.

Ok, so with "features" like Live and its equivalents, its getting harder to pirate AND play online, but since the xbox introduced hard drives to consoles, its just as easy as PC to pirate on consoles. God knows my uni flat mates had enough versions of games that kept us going...

Also... holy christ, you mean 330 cans ARENT 50p anymore? Jesus, it only seems like yesterday that the daily can at college was setting me back 50 of my shiny pennies... That was 4 years ago tho...

[4 IN 1 0]

there are also freeloader out there that could make the console read piracy copy disk without touching the console hardware

[Kirby 2]

I'm moving FROM consoles to PC gaming. I only liked consoles cause they didn't required an hour of messing about to play. And almost always worked without having to ask on about 50 forums... Now I can just about figure this crap out on my own.

[AWDrift 0]

I doubt they can push that strategy on pc gamers. There are ways to play pirated games online(Look at WoW and Counter strike) and it won't be long before that extra content ends up on torrent sites like NFS prostreet's extra cars. IMO it's just pushing more people to piracy.

[SHWiiNG 0]

im amazed at how a threasd aimed at bashing the lastest release by EA has materialized into a thread about game piracy.

Meanwhile im going to post my comment about the video

Lol

-Shwiing

[MehMan 0]

I remember reading an interview about somebody who worked at EA for three months, coder feller helped me a lot with my coding problems in CnC Gens ZH, and he said that while he was working there he was surprised at how much creativity is being encouraged. That actually gave me hope that EA might make a game that doesn't suck and that won't have 8 expansion packs and 20 booster packs, but rather something with single player, some more realism, a nice story, an expirence. But this move just proves that my hopes were all wrong. EA is still the greedy, uncreative publisher and destroyer of all hope for good games. Instead we're getting Shooter Game 15, with new face textures every year. If there's ever a reason for a decline in game sales I'd blame the staleness of games, being too bland and repetetive, not trying to move any boundries but rather ripping off the old ones. Also games use same old tricks nowadays, corridor shooters with predictable enemies, bad storylines that leave plotholes the size of the moon, etc etc.

Piracy is a bad reason to justify this. Music is being pirated a whole lot more than PC games, yet sales are better.

[smellyjelly 0]

As far as PC gaming goes, I'd rather have ingame ads than having to pay extra for content that should be standard or no game at all. As long as they're realistically placed, not distracting, or they don't measure the time you look at them, I'm fine.

[lone.wolf 80]

Hi All,

I just finished playing MGS4 and need a new game to play on the PS3 when i am not fooling around with VBS2...

So wanted to hear ya opionions..!

Thanx in advance!!

[Messiah 2]

bought it on reccomendation from a friend.

Its fun... but I'll stress fun. Prepare to leave a lot of what you find realistic out of your head, and then enjoy the prospect of destructable environments and some fun firefights.

In short:

+ Intense firefights at times, can get your heart rate up considerably.

+ Nice selection of weapons, even if I didn't really stray too far from the M16 when I could get my hand on it.

+ Vehicles are ok, but I prefered being on foot. There didn't seem to be a great need for the vehicles on most missions, except for the dune buggy thing later on.

+ AI are average- they're good at taking cover and sometimes move to flank you, but after the first few instances it appears to be the same few routines they use.

+ Sounds are very good, the bullet crack and whiz really adds to the atmosphere.

+ Story line was... well its BF game... I didn't really feel like I was achieving anything, but it was fun.

+ Areas aren't huge like ArmA etc, but once you get past what was a shockingly linear first mission, it becomes a little more open, even if it does keep you fairly linear with the old 'insta death destruction' if you leave the operational area.

+ Creating your own front door with an 40mm HE never gets tiresome.

Personally I wouldn't pay full list price on it, when you compare it to GTA4 or MGS4. If you can pick it up second hand or cheap, then go for it. It should entertain you for a week in SP and MP is pretty good and all, even if it is the usual BF idiocy at times.

[Barely-injured 0]

I think there is a demo on the ps3 network that you can download and try for yourself (if you haven't already) I saw my little brother download it the other day.

otherwise it is just not my cup of tea, the only thing that attracted me to the demo was that the models looked very nice.

[MehMan 0]

What's the SP like? The trailer makes it look like fun, a cheap laugh.

[Messiah 2]

well my report is pretty much based on SP, its fun, entertaining but not much substance in terms of a terrific plot or reason for doing what you're doing.

[Commando84 0]

imo the dialogue in the game makes it worth to buy!

[Placebo 29]

It's fun but it's very arcade and very silly.

[Blackhawk 0]

Only Singleplayer is good, Multiplayers a bit like BF2, Idiots and Screaming kids, If you want to play Online you will have to find a clan or a group.

[Average Joe 0]

The sound and destruction in the game make it, its 'Hi-Def' sound is just mindblowing.