The ApocalyPS3 And Ubisoft's New DRM

If you own one of the old fatPS3's, or just like poking fun at them, then chances are good that you are familiar with the ApocalyPS3. That's the catchy phrase that the internets have given to the worldwide PSN foiling bug formally known as Error Code 8001050F. In short it was an internal time clock error having to do with leap years and some other stuff that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that a lot of people lost save data, trophies (it just makes me queasy), and because there was no PSN connection, some games were unplayable. Then in a little over a day everything just worked itself out (well the slim models had no problem: stupid athletic cool kids) and people went back to playing games and ignoring giant earthquakes in foreign countries.

But the whole debacle brings up a good point regarding Ubisoft's recently announced DRM that will be in effect with the PC version of Assassin's Creed II. In another vane attempt to stop software pirating you must at all times be connected to the Ubisoft servers. Any disconnect either on your end or on the servers' end will immediately stop your game. The idea of such a precaution against piracy is insane, especially considering the adolescent state of the country's broadband infrastructure. When players were unable to connect to PSN games like Heavy Rain were completely inaccessible, which was kind of a timely reminder why such a DRM cannot work. When there are a lot of people playing at once the servers will experience hiccups and people will get disconnected, effectively stopping you from playing a game that you purchased.

Now a strong counter argument is that most PC gamers already live with a similar type of DRM in the form of Valve's Steam service, which requires roughly half of the bigger name games to be signed in to their servers to play. To which I reply: Steam has been perfecting this for a long time and in the beginning it sucked eggs. Valve has greatly improved the service over the years by making Steam a gaming platform and blunting the feeling of intrusion, but it still irks me that I have to be connected to the internet to play a single player game. The ApocalyPS3 was a large scale lesson about overestimating conectivity. Ubisoft's new DRM will fail, and it's going to be spectacular.

Dragon Age Is Just Awesome

This isn't going to be a review or anything resembling a critique of Dragon Age: Origins. There are lots of weird little flaws and aspects that might have been better implemented better. But for me those things are easily overlooked because of how the game works as a whole. I purposefully waited weeks after finishing the DA:O before writing this to make sure I still felt the same way, and hey, I do.

So here goes. Playing through this game is a lot like watching Lord of the Rings for the first time. Except it's all rad Orc fighting and no lame introspective talks while strolling through forests. Oh whats that Sam? You made a promise? No one gives a shit. No! This is Aragorn chopping off Uruk Hai heads and Boromir getting all arrowed up. Except that this is even better then LoTR because you have a war hound that loves you and eats everyone you hate. And if you play the game like me there are a lot of things to hate.

The character I created looked like a grizzled old man, but fought like a roided out viking. This was great in the first scene where the character's brown haired father was lecturing his white haired scowling "youngest" son about something soon to be overshadowed by his eminent murder . If it was a possible option to hit the father and mutter "I'm too old for this shit" you can rest assured it would have happened. Throughout the rest of the game I treated every dialog tree as if I was the Murtagh of Middle Earth. Even if there were decisions with good outcomes (there are no good outcomes in DA:O) everyone still would have hated him. It was utterly sublime.

And the ending. OH EM GEE the ending! You have to hack your way through more than 500 (this is an actual figure: I tallied it up) darkspawn in order make your final stand on an ancient god in the body of a dragon. Yeah that was the sound of your heart exploding from too much adrenaline. You're welcome by the way.

Inside is the New Outside

That is one shockingly misleading title I just spontaneously typed. This post has literally nothing to do with the new age adventurers the Indoorsmen. Except, of course, for that last sentence which, now that I think about it, is entirely self defeating. BUT NO. This post is about a fantastic little game called Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story for the Nintendo DS. It is the sequel to the Mario and Luigi series of Game Boy Advance titles which loosely followed up the revered Mario RPG. The difference between the main console Mario RPG type and the Mario and Luigi games is that the latter contains unique dual timing and button press conditions to elevate standard RPG controls. Having never actually played the two GBA games it's hard to judge their worth, but if they're anything like Bowser's Inside Story I can pretty safely say that they are bitch crackers crazy.

You may ask why I would make such an assertion. As an answer let me say that the first cutscene features a giant bloated talking mushroom crashing through a wall of his house, and that he got that way by eating mushrooms. Not crazy enough? Well then, within 10 minutes of having assumed control of Mario and Luigi you are sucked inside Bowser's body (after he ate a different mushroom given to him by a foreigner), where more talking mushrooms have set up a mini mall. If that's still not enough I'm starting to doubt your grasp on reality, but let me just add that Bowser then befriends a Frenchman made of blocks, and the Mario brother's are led throughout Bowser's body by a sentient star. Still not insane enough? Oh my God what do I have to say that will convince you? That there are pipes inside Bowser's body that lead to other preexisting pipes scattered around the Mushroom Kingdom, suggesting some sort of bizarre conspiracy? Nah, that all sounds completely rational huh?. But doesn't it also sound totally rad?

All that aside I have to say that I was struck at just how good the game looks. It's super crisp with tons of frames of animation, and a clear, colorful, 2D art direction. If I could go back in a time machine and jump out of a bush at my 10 year old Sega Genesis playing self to ask him what the future of games looked like he would probably describe something visually simlar to this. Well, he would probably scream and try to run, but several sedatives later I'm sure I could get a coherent answer out of him. Or me. You know this hypothetical is starting to bring up a lot of unsettling issues. The point is that the damn game looks great.

But that is not the only amazing thing about the game. The writing is equally superb as the graphics. Each character has a distinct way of talking, usually complete with a linguistic idiosyncrasy, or a strange grammatical structure. And the jokes throughout the journey are always fresh and above all weird. The first time I ran into a moody cellular character called an Emoglobin I couldn't believe it was game humor. Every time I got into an in-game conversation it felt like a treat because it was all so well written. Except for the plethora (yeah I wrote that) of tutorials the dialog was pert near perfect. That seems a little odd coming from a game about plumbers that can jump. Ha! Fiction.

All in all I spent about 30 hours playing a game I thought would take ten at max. And It's important to note that I was playing Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story while I was too sick to stand, eat, or keep fluids contained in my body. It was seriously that good.