There Are No Refunds for this Item

Joystiq’s always-interesting Indie Pitch alerted me tonight to a game called DLC Quest. Wearing its satire on its sleeve, the game is one about a planet where games are literally mechanic- and feature-free until players pony up money for downloadable content, or DLC. Except THE PLANET IS EARTH!

If you found that punchline somehow a surprise, you’re in for a barrel of laughs from DLC Quest.

When you begin the game, after a demonstration of Bad Guy kidnapping Princess Macguffin (actual game terms, not me being snide), your character is left to… travel to the right. And not do anything until he reaches the end of a little path. See, advanced features like “jumping” and “moving to the left” are provided only as DLC, so you have to collect in-game coins in order to unlock them and continue playing.

Get it? GET IT?!

You progress around a 2d platforming environment, collecting coins to unlock other features such as sprite animations, a pause menu, and sounds/BGM. You also need more coins for things like the double jump upgrade, a map to travel through a thick forest, or a Psychological Warfare pack to outsmart an enemy NPC. Such gameplay, though, isn’t really any fun. It’s a mild exploration element, and the player’s default incentive to collect coins and then return to the central shopkeeper character to spend them says more about RPGs and Metroidvania-style platform/exploration games than it does DLC. That might sound like praise, but just because the game has a “satire” label on it doesn’t mean all actual thoughts generated from it get tacked on in the positive column; I have trouble believing that any of my pondering about the nature of gaming that took place was inherent to the game.

In the end the game being enjoyable is dependent on whether you can sit there feeling smug as you play. Maybe it’s my own consumption of game titles that don’t always include the AAA Battlefields and Mass Effects, but I’ve never felt somehow wronged by DLC, or that I’ve had a gameplay experience that was somehow less than complete because I did not shell out five to ten dollars. On the contrary, I have paid money on several occasions for Actual Content and been happy with it.

Maybe there’s a crazy twist at the end of DLC Quest and I missed it – after all, I certainly didn’t finish the game. Xbox Live Indie Games have an eight minute time limit on the demo, and after that time had elapsed, the big Game Developer lobby – who has to be the villain for the metanarrative space this game enjoys to make any sense – was asking me to pony up. He even held out on the Psychological Warfare DLC for me to progress within that eight minutes unless I’d upgraded from the demo! When it came time to pay real money for the promise of more, I said no. I have to vote with my wallet, and after the incredibly spartan gameplay experience and somewhat hamfisted satire I’d had, paying for more wasn’t an option. Not paying makes me the good guy in this scenario, right?

In fact, I should probably go pirate DLC Quest, obviously. That’d show ‘em somehow.

Verdict: Just go play Upgrade Complete instead.

P.S.: I’m looking forward to the Alternate Ending DLC, where you get a choice at the beginning of the game – spend your coins on the DLC needed to move left and jump, or refuse to buy the DLC and proceed forward to the computer desk, where you can talk about how you’re not going to be treated like a sheep and how you’re entitled to a better game than the one you’re in. You’re trapped in the pit with the computer desk until Gabe Newell or maybe Notch saves you.

That idea’s yours free, Going Loud Studios. Just a gift from me to you.

Inauspicious

Oh, Kyle Orton. On top of your terrible year for the Broncos, you–

Oh. Sorry.

Today Kyle Orland published a story on Ars Technica, a site which I generally find reputable and trustworthy, about the sky falling. In the upcoming game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – the reckoning, I assume, being for whoever wrote that title — those who buy the game new will gain free access to a one-time code for a bonus quest chain. Those who buy the game used will have to pay (presumably $10) for the content. This is newsworthy, because for single player games it’s never – Oh, wait, Dragon Age 1 did this over two years ago. 

So apparently, Kyle Orton is mad because EA wants you to pay -them- for the content they made. First sale doctrine and consumer rights are important, but this isn’t really an unsympathetic stance on EA’s part. Especially when a community rep from the dev team came out and said that this content was cancelled originally, but they then decided to make it DLC, and then give that free to those who bought new. 

How does this wrong me as a consumer? Either I pay the people that made and marketed the game for the game, or I buy used don’t, and then I still get the whole storyline and gameplay function of the game for much cheaper. 

Orland, instead of discussing the situation rationally – perhaps in the context of this article from his predecessor I found in under five seconds by googling “price of games versus inflation” – uses the psuedojournalistic practice of asking wild questions.

“As time goes on, what’s to stop publishers from expanding the concept further, locking ever larger portions of a game behind a downloadable pass? Will we soon see a game that prevents used purchasers from finishing the single-player quest unless they pay to download a required mission? Where’s the cut-off?”

Goodness gracious. Next we’ll see games where all of your data is stored online and you have to play some kind of monthly fee to access and play it!

Remember horse armor, Kyle, and how people rebelled and didn’t buy it because they’re not complete idiots? Remember how game companies can’t really hold anything hostage because we are neither entitled to a game nor forced to buy it? “Aw, no, I can’t play the highly anticipated Dungeon Guy 3 because I don’t want to shell out for DLC after my used copy.” That doesn’t really suck for you, consumer, because there are a zillion other good games out there you can play with your twenty hours of Dungeon Guy 3 time. That sucks for the publisher of Dungeon Guy 3 more than it does for you, because he’s the one not getting paid. 

Orland then goes on to use the phrase “used games fans,” which would ostensibly describe a demographic of people that are proud of their crafty ways of keeping money away from the people that make the content they clamor for. I assume these same people also complain that when they record music off the radio, they’re not getting the whole album-length track, and they dream of being bootleg CafePress superstars someday. 

Your slippery slope argument doesn’t work, Kyle Orland, because it’s not a slope when companies are using the same practices they used two years ago. It also doesn’t work because we’ve seen where the slope stops before (horse armor) and because there are entire platforms that exist (XBLA, PSN, Steam and even boxed PC titles) where buying used is a non-option in the first place. People will buy content they feel has value. Complaining that the people who make a game are giving you a better deal on all of its parts than the people that scrape finished game away from consumers and resell it makes you look insane. Best of luck with the editorship. 

Cartoon Evil

Good lord, the Sith in the Old Republic are dumb. Everyone’s unnecessarily mean to everyone else, it comes across as “How to Win Friends and Succeed at House Slytherin,” and the default tone makes it seem like even a good – Light or otherwise – Sith would at BEST be a hero for the kind of 16 year old guy that thinks that Tyler Durden is someone to be emulated.

I’ve been wanting to play a Jedi Shadow, and thought I might try a Sith Assassin instead, but it’s so grating that I would rather play my class story over again than keep going with that for 47 more levels. And I didn’t think my class story was that great!

The 1st Annual Cloudie Awards

2011 was a good year for gaming. Lots of big name blockbusters from Modern Warfare Whatever to Sigh-rim. I am not just trolling, thank you; I have a history of not liking popular things and liking unpopular ones, so my top games of 2011 is really just carrying on that tradition.

Without further ado: Taylor Vincent’s Top 10 of 2011:

10. World of Warcraft

It seems odd to have a sort of ‘honorary’ place on a top 10 list, but that’s half of what this is. WoW and I had a terribly unceremonious breakup toward the end of this year over her insistence on putting her writers into a food processor and smearing what came out on a page. But the fact is that Cataclysm’s improvements to the 1-60 gameplay were pretty much stellar, and you really felt good about yourself going past level 80. But then there was the Groundhog Day Hyjal, and the weird difficulty hop to heroics, and the four hour troll dungeons… it’s been downhill in a bit of a hurry. Maybe Mists of Pandaria will wow everyone (apologies for that), we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, don’t feel any pity if you continue to see subscriber numbers decrease.

9. Forza Motorsport 4

Any game that can make me care about cars is doing something right. Forza 4 is definitely a sequel, it’s definitely just an iteration atop Forza 3, but goodness gracious does it do a ton of things right. Whether it’s the actual gameplay that’s been polished to a sheen or the fact that the inclusion of the Top Gear test track makes the whole thing feel more authentic, it’s the best pseudo-realistic racing experience out there.

8. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

I feel like I could make someone cry by saying this, but when are Japanese medieval fantasy games going to get writers that know how to do anything new? Story’s really not the strong suit in M&M:CoH, but that’s not why you’re playing it. You’re playing it because there are big 2d sprites of dragons and trees, djinni and gryphons that are going to carve through your opponent in a weird mix of Tetris, Chess, and Advance Wars that is totally addictive. It’s out on Steam now, so if you can’t be persuaded to give it a go at full price, there’ll have to be a sale someday. Don’t let it pass you by.

7. Rock Band 3

Talk about sequel iteration. The basic gameplay for any instrument except keyboards hasn’t changed since 2007, and guitar before that, but it’s still some of the best fun you can have in a social setting, especially when working your way past tipsy and fully into woooooooo. Dance Central’s great, too, but closer to a workout, and it might just be me, but shaking myself to music just doesn’t get me into the sound the way banging on drums does. Here’s hoping from Harmonix sees this list and in exchange for a game of the year nod gets me that Stars and We Are Scientists DLC I’ve been wanting.

6. Portal 2

Portal 2 is so good that it’s made this list without me having finished it. I don’t need to see the credits to know that the writing’s excellent and the gameplay has been properly expanded from the original. I’d be worried about some kind of letdown at the end, but Portal 2 has made enough other end-of-year lists for me to be confident in the third or so of the game I have remaining.

5. Team Fortress 2

You could make an argument that this is the least 2011 of the games to be listed here, as Rock Band was tail-of-2010 and WoW is constantly updated, but durn it, so is this. Team Fortress 2 is still so good that it’s spoiling fans into thinking shooters this good should be free to play instead of costing money, when the fact is that most companies can’t get away with doing what Valve does. I pretty much feel bad for the other companies at times.

4. Star Wars: The Old Republic

It’s a good thing that this list has games other than those released in 2011 on it, because this game, despite its presence on store shelves, isn’t nearly done yet. 2012 is the real release date here, no matter what EA says. That said, what is here in this expensive beta is nearly as fun to play as World of Warcraft, with better writing and quest design that when combined with voice acting makes the characters feel so much more real than any other massive game I’ve played. Also, I can use the Force to punt ten-foot war droids off of platforms in the city and about a mile down to the surface below. That’s a bullet point on its own.

3. Cthulhu Saves the World

I made the joke a few weeks back that there isn’t a demo for Cthulhu Saves the World on Steam; the demo for CStW is an old copy of Dragon Warrior II. This game is everything great about 8-bit era RPGs, but instead of nostalgia with no gameplay updates, we get wit, the expected conveniences of modern games (quick text speed, saving anywhere, et cetera), and a healthy dose of softcore Lovecraft. All for a buck. One American dollar. Can’t really beat that. Well, except with two other things:

2. Bastion

Bastion is everything a downloadable game for a console should be. Great writing, fun gameplay, lovely visuals that don’t require extreme graphical tech. The narration is a great hook without being gimmicky, the ending is top notch, and the whole game succeeds at setting mood in a way that few others do. The fact is that if I was a sane person, this would be my Game of the Year. But I’m not, so there’s one space left for:

1. Atom Zombie Smasher

This hurts, and I don’t mean it in a bad way, but Atom Zombie Smasher doesn’t belong on a game of the year list. There’s no sweeping epic tale, no deep emotional content. There’re no bombastic graphics or cute songs over the credits. What Atom Zombie Smasher is, however, is an RTS game where you evacuate civilians and kill zombies in a Bizarro-world South American junta while listening to surf music. Even that isn’t why it’s on this list, though. The truth is that I can’t explain why this game wowed me so much this year. Maybe it’s the fact that the ability to rename one’s unit squads and level them up enables the circuits in my mind that govern roleplay, and I’ll come up with stories for the little teams of soldiers stopping the end of the world one Zed at a time. Maybe it’s the crazy comic book interludes and the vague allusions to backstory between missions. Maybe it’s because it’s a zombie game where the world isn’t over, and the powers-that-be aren’t inexplicably useless. Maybe it’s the overworld map that makes it feel like a real campaign, a game of Risk against the undead. I haven’t figured it out myself, but the fact is that I’ve dropped over forty hours into this little gem of a game and I still love it.

Strong

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a defensive lineman, but you don’t need to be on the field every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when ball carriers can stiff arm defenders but I can’t concuss somebody intentionally or curb stomp them just because they happen to be under me in a pile.
As NFL Commissioner, I’ll end Goodell’s war on physical football. And I’ll fight against pansy attacks on our gritty heritage.
Borderline assault made the NFL strong. It can make her strong again.
I’m Ndamukong Suh and I approve this message.

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I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Whiterun guard, but you don’t need to be patrolling Dragonsreach every Sundas to know there’s something wrong in Skyrim when thanes can run around like mad but all of my coworkers have retired due to terrible patella injuries.

As Emperor, I’ll end Skyrim’s war on knees. And I’ll fight against arrow attacks on our other joints.

Reinforced armor made Tamriel strong. It can make her strong again.

I’m a Whiterun Guard and I approve this message.

 

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