I’m curious … why do so many people dismiss Microsoft’s Project Natal as being casual? Of course it’s casual. Remember: we as “hardcore gamers” are an absolute minority. We aren’t even the tip of the iceberg, we are merely the ice cube put on the tip of the iceberg. Plus, we actually happen to enjoy the casual stuff as well – if only we weren’t so dickheaded and would actually admit it. First and foremost to ourselves.
And in this light Penny Arcade’s comic hits it straight on (pun intended):
UPDATE: i find it interesting how many people find my blog and specifically this post in search for the keyphrases Natal sucks. Wow, you just really hate the fact that Microsoft is about to release an additional device for your Xbox360! How about just ignoring Natal if you don’t like it? There’s no need to buy it then, right? It won’t affect your gaming experience. It doesn’t have to if you don’t allow it. It’s completely optional. Or do you hate the thought that suddenly your mom might want to occupy your Xbox360? And did you also search for “pink Xbox 360 controller sucks”? No, according to google you did not.
In a way it reminds me of the all too common criticism against EA’s sports titles. It’s the same every year and costs as much as any other game. I’m not going to buy it. Whine, whine. So, you don’t buy it, maybe only every other year as i did most of the time. Then you get enough fresh new material for your money. In the meantime, shut up. It’s just a business model that works, it doesn’t mean that the millions of players buying the same game every year are the same buyers. There are a lot of them, and if that’s what they do, let them. But there’s also a lot more who don’t buy the same sports game each and every year but when they buy it, they want to buy the current version. Not the one that’s two or three years old.
There’s no denying after 20+ hours of running and riding around in Ancaria – i’m all into Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. 
However, a disclaimer: i’ve tried the PC version when it came out and i was heavily disappointed. The user interface and generally how playing the game felt somewhat awkward with mouse and keyboard made me put the game away. Now with the Xbox 360 version out, i gave it another shot and to my surprise it plays a lot smoother and just feels more natural on the console!
But it doesn’t come without it’s flaws, i would have almost put it away in the first two hours. The RPG part is completely overdone. You get so many different stats thrown at you that – quite frankly, i stopped caring about the stats. If there are so many, i don’t care for them anymore because each one of them can’t make a big difference anyway and i don’t want to finetune my RPG character like a Formula 1 racing car. And i’d rather enjoy walking around the world, exploring the countryside and completing quests. In addition the tutorial was stuck onto their existing quest interface with a few additional text messages. They don’t help much to understand the intricacies of the game’s design and features, and the game throws too much information at you at the beginning. This is a great example of where less would have been more. Much more.
What got me hooked then? Well, for me personally it was the world itself. Even though the sheer size of it was daunting at first (a more linear start would have helped) i became to love it because it is so beautifully crafted. And in addition, it reminded me of the great level design work that has been done for SpellForce. No wonder if you consider that our Lead Map Designer joined forces with Ascaron.
Then, there’s just a lot of little things to do in this world. It has this “oh, just one more quest” feeling going for it. It is also very relaxing to play being that it rarely throws really dangerous enemies at you. And for me, exploring the world and finding new places is already half the fun, progressing my character and completing quests the other. Even though the writing is … well, i wouldn’t say “lame” per se but it isn’t good writing (english version). The problem with the quests is that it doesn’t get the motives across in a compelling way. Want an example? Ok, so the typical drama in the quest texts goes like this: “You’re back! And you found my daughter. She’s dead, you say? Oh well, at least i now know i don’t have to worry anymore. Thank you anyway.” … errr, no, i’m not exaggerating here! But luckily, the story or dialogue isn’t what’s most important in a hack & slash (some prefer: hack & slay) game – sadly though because i believe it would have added a lot to the world’s “liveliness” or “believability”. Am i making up words here?
Sadly, Ascaron is now insolvent and it’s unsure wether a Sacred 3 will ever see the light – but you know how things go in this business. Maybe JoWooD picks it up and produces an addon for it, developed by a team located in India. They’ve done it with Gothic 3, they’re doing it with SpellForce – producing an addon 3.5 years after release of the original is just … weird – so it wouldn’t be so out of place to think they would do the same with Sacred 2. 
And if there’s one thing i would change about this game right now, it would be to add more teleporters. If there’s anything we learned from SpellForce is that you can’t have enough teleporters. Never!
Also, if you were wondering why i haven’t been writing much lately, Sacred 2 is one reason for that. The other i’m going to blog about in a few days.
Microsoft is banning users from their Xbox Live online service for having their consoles modded.
In most cases this involves opening the case and flashing the DVD drive with a firmware that allows to play backup copies of retail games.
Now word has it that Microsoft has also banned unmodified consoles and some people were able to get them unbanned.
There’s something about this whole Microsoft vs Modders thing that i find fascinating, and it’s not David vs Goliath. I see a lot of the elements of a “4th Generation War“ as defined on Wikipedia at play:
- High Technology (the Xbox360 hardware and the Xbox Live online service)
- Terrorism (hmmmm, Modders calling Microsoft Tech Support?)
- A non-national or transnational base (Microsoft)
- A direct attack on the enemy’s culture (Microsoft banning the Modders, plus apparently collateral damage)
- Highly sophisticated psychological warfare, especially through manipulation of the media (withholding information, maybe active misinformation, countless banning theories)
Now you might not actually see the Microsoft vs Modders thing as a war but there’s something intriguing to be noticed: a lot of people try to come up with theories about how Microsoft detects modded consoles. There’s a lot of uncertainty, even more speculation and no one knows for sure. But one thing is for certain: Microsoft does not want the Modders to find out what criteria they use to detect them. This is the last element at play: psychological warfare.
Contrary to the Xbox Microsoft now bans Xbox 360 consoles in waves, meaning a lot of people get banned on the same day. But they might have been banned days, weeks or even months before that date, the ban just didn’t go live until that very day. Which makes it very hard for the community to figure out what is causing the bans, and when they get banned it’s already too late for countermeasures. Microsoft might even let a small percentage of banned consoles still go online on purpose. They will get banned on one of the next waves, making it hard for Modders to judge if the now-in-place countermeasures are actually working. It is no longer as simple as “I replaced my console’s hard disk with a bigger one today, and the next day i was banned.” and then trying to find a fix for that. There are numerous theories, such as Microsoft might be able to log playing with backups even when not connected to Xbox Live, or Microsoft being able to read the DVD drive’s firmware or even detecting the absence of the DVD drive during the flash process.
Fact is, no one knows for sure. But there’s one thing i find noteworthy: Microsoft doesn’t catch all modded consoles. This can mean one of two things:
- Microsoft is unable to catch them all.
- Microsoft doesn’t want to catch them all.
The latter point may sound odd, why would they even allow Modders to go online? Especially if they had all the resources to ban them all? Because there are some positive effects as well:
- Word of mouth. The modding community has a strong voice, they could even be the opinion leaders.
- More hardware sales. Modders do tend to break their consoles, and more casual modders are more likely to buy a console if they don’t have to pay as much for the games.
In the end i believe that Microsoft is merely trying to keep the balance with their so called ”banhammers”. They probably don’t care enough to ban all of the modded consoles but they do want to keep the uncertainty because that is enough to keep most users from modding their console. All the others will just go out, buy a new console and mod it again anyway the instant they get banned. For them it’s just like buying another game or two or three (price difference between new console and selling the used and banned console).
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