DOOM 3 Review

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            DOOM 3

Review by SteerpikeAugust 2004

DOOM 3!

Even people who haven’t heard of computer games have heard of DOOM.  It is one of the seminal events in PC gaming and sparked the stratospheric rise of this medium. Thus, when id Software announced in 2000 that its next project would be a story-driven sequel with a focus on single player, there was plenty of excitement. John Carmack’s new engine was rumored to be far more advanced than anything anyone had imagined, and as the breathtaking screenshots trickled out, excitement grew proportionally. And then id fell largely silent for four years.

While those screenshots still look really good, they are no longer the mind-blowers they were when we first saw them in 2001. Back then, their competition was the Quake 3 and Unreal engines, powering games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein.  Though it’s still the best engine currently available, these days it does face some visual rivalry. And four years is a long, long time to work on a game; generally such a lengthy development cycle implies problems at the studio. Given id’s rocky past and “fire everyone” business model, no rumor is too farfetched.

id Software has matured a lot since the early days, when it grudgingly included stories to appease gamers it considered to be missing the point. John Carmack is famous for saying that “story in a game is like story in a porn movie”—that is, present but unnecessary and kind of stupid. Odd, then, that DOOM 3 sports an intricate, well-written storyline that drives the game forward as much as the action does. DOOM and DOOM 2 are famous for how scary they were despite being “narrative lite”—in this installment, id tries its hand at some emotioneering techniques that really build the fear factor through narrative and environment.

Anticipation reached a fever pitch before the release, with some eager gamers committing felonies to get their hands on a copy a day early. So any review faces this question first: is this game, for which we have waited so long, really worth all the hype? Answer: most definitely.

There’s a magic about the DOOMs we’ve never seen anywhere else, and fans are justifiably curious as to whether DOOM 3 will share that magic. Sure, it looks great, but is it as special as DOOM? Answer: no, because the halcyon days of DOOM are long gone and sepia-toned memories of that game have placed it on a pedestal so high that nothing will ever measure up. But this one is close enough.

DOOM 3’s pedigree has a lot more in common with Half Life and System Shock 2 than it does with its own predecessors.  Conveniently, both of those games are hall of fame–worthy classics, remembered and cherished years after their initial releases. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then those two are blushing—but DOOM 3 retains its own impressive identity.

The Short Version

DOOM 3 is a rare event in PC gaming these days: it’s a game that delivered on all of the promises it made. It’s scary, it’s got a good story, and the writing and voice acting are superb. It’s also action-packed and exciting. The gameplay, while not terrifically different from any other FPS, has that magic something that keeps you coming back for more. You are always challenged but never frustrated by the combat or the puzzles, nor do you sense that any part of the game is there merely as window dressing. Everything serves a purpose in DOOM 3, and serves it well. This is the definition of a five-star game in every respect.

It is not, however, very similar to the DOOMs of old. It is much slower and slightly more cerebral, and it is objective- rather than progress-driven. People who want a pure Serious Sam-style rampage may be disappointed. Having (hopefully) firmly entrenched my admiration for this game in your mind, I’m going to refocus and talk mostly about bad stuff from now on. Because this game is getting too much gushy press and, great as it is, it’s not perfect. But despite those flaws, it remains a real treasure.

Are You Listening, Crytek?

The fantastic new engine under DOOM 3’s hood will be powering a lot of games over the next eighteen months, and some fret that there’s no way plain-Jane systems will be capable of running it.

But DOOM 3 runs great on anything within its requirements.  This was apparently a priority at id. What’s really astonishing is that it also looks great on anything. If you want to run it at a super-high resolution, you will need heftier hardware, but even those requirements are startlingly reasonable considering the graphic syrup you get.

So don’t upgrade your rig to play this game until you’ve actually tried running it on what you’ve already got. If you do have your heart set on an upgrade, your money would be best spent on some combination of a good sound card, a set of 5.1 speakers, more RAM, and a top-notch video card. DOOM 3 is an OpenGL game, and nVidia’s GeForce cards are historically better performers under OpenGL, but ATI is working feverishly to bring its Radeon drivers up to snuff.

This engine has undergone massive optimization and requires little input from you. Tweak your resolution and quality settings, but leave the advanced options on their defaults. If you simply must mess with something advanced, fiddle with the anti-aliasing. Set it as high as you’re able while still retaining a solid frame rate.  Also, be advised that the four quality choices apply to both graphics and sound, so you will not be able to tweak individual audio settings from this menu. Irritatingly, you have to restart DOOM 3 before any changes are applied.

It’s clear that id spent thousands of man-hours optimizing for the ideal combination of fast and pretty, and it paid off. Development studios like Crytek—responsible for the ridiculously clunky and unnecessarily computer-punishing Far Cry—should take note. Both Crytek and id peddle their game engines, and if Crytek doesn’t get its act together fast, DOOM 3 will walk all over it. I have what can only qualify as a midrange gaming PC these days: an Athlon 2800+, a Radeon 9700 Pro, and a gigabyte of PC2700 memory. To my great surprise, I was able to run DOOM 3 out of the box at 1280×1024 on “high” quality, with 2x anti-aliasing, and still average a frame rate in the high thirties. I can’t say the same for Far Cry.

Why Science Is Bad

Veteran game writer Matthew Costello—who also wrote The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour—wrote the script for a game that id CEO Todd Hollenshead described as “a walking tour of Mars with a brief stopover in Hell.” DOOM 3 is not actually a sequel, but a “retelling” of the original DOOM, which everyone except Toger probably knows is the tale of a disastrous experiment in teleportation that opens up a gate to Hades. Demons come swarming through, your character is the only one left alive, and hilarity ensues.

While DOOM took place on the twin Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos (that’s “Fear” and “Dread” to Greek-speakers), the setting for DOOM 3 is an enormous research installation on the surface of Mars. The Union Aerospace Corporation employs this out-of-the-way facility to conduct dangerous or inhumane experiments best kept off the world’s front pages. Doctor Malcolm Betruger runs the place, but he seems more interested in continuing his teleportation research than in the base’s alarming number of accidental deaths and incidents of psychosis.

You play a marine assigned to the lab’s security detail, and on your very first day, before you even get a chance to put your socks in your sock drawer, the teleporter goes haywire and the Kingdom of Satan pours forth into the base. The story unfolds through emails, video logs, and various communiqués from the (increasingly few) survivors of the demonic invasion. These are collected on your PDA, which manages your mission objectives and keeps your email organized.

As in System Shock 2, your character is a nameless, voiceless, and lonely cipher who must jump through assorted hoops in order to set things right. You’ll need to get the power back on, send some “help us” messages to the fleet, close up the portal to Hell, and—most importantly—figure out a way to keep the demons from reaching the human buffet that is Earth.

This is an objective-driven game, but, unlike the sprawly System Shock 2, it is quite linear. You seldom have more than one objective at a time, and there’s rarely more than one path open to you, so it’s really about going from point A to point B without getting shot, pulverized, or eaten. The journey is what matters in DOOM 3, however, and it’s just so good that even its stark linearity and relative simplicity compared to the game on which it is so obviously based are forgivable.

It’s as If You Were Blind

The lovely graphics are even more wondrous to behold when in motion, and yet at the same time they are also significantly more disappointing.  They were going for fear and suspense in this game, and to a certain degree they were successful. DOOM 3 has more than its share of jump-out-of-your-seat moments, and its environments range from the really eerie to the scary as (quite literally) Hell. One of the ways they accomplished this was by making the game dark and providing a flashlight on which you will depend utterly. Flashlight and I become very close friends, but the game is too dark for its own good.

DOOM 3 makes Thief: Deadly Shadows look like a sunny day in a meadow filled with 6,000-watt Klieg lamps. It is so gloomy that it’s usually impossible to see what’s going on during combat, and the brightness controls do not affect most shadows. “Pitch black” is too minimal a term to describe the lumen-sucking vortex of darkness that is this game. Even worse, at one point you and Flashlight are briefly parted.

You can’t have Flashlight and a gun out at the same time (there’s a mod that changes this, download it here).  You generally just shoot at glowing eyes. Also, your enemies move really fast. At most you’ll usually register a blur—just enough to identify what it is—before a creature is upon you. This is a pity, because many attacks are part of in-game scripted sequences that are really cool and deserve more screen time.

I don’t mean to speak ill of DOOM 3’s graphics. They are astounding, breathtaking, head and shoulders above everything else out there right now. Attention to detail on environments and monsters is impeccable; every bump map, every surface, every texture is the product of obvious loving care. Flashlight and I felt humbled by the beauty of DOOM 3. It’s just that the game is so dark, and the action is so fast, that you don’t really get to savor it.

Steerpike’s Annoying Audio Problem

The sound of DOOM 3 is worthy of a review by itself.  Dolby 5.1 surround pumps out spatial effects the likes of which we’ve never heard before. This is one of those games that makes you look nervously behind you and even jump in terror and swivel around when those rear speakers blare something unexpected or particularly frightening.

There’s little music to speak of in DOOM 3; the soundtrack is mostly environmental. The ambient sound goes a long, long way toward making it scary. Before long, you and Flashlight are alone in a vast, dark complex, and every noise makes you jump and squeak.  You’d do well to shut off the lights, crank up the volume, and play this game as it’s meant to be played—there’s even a card in the box that says as much.

The sound has major bugs, though. It kept quitting on me without warning. Other times it got staticky and out of sync. In both instances, it’s necessary to drop out and restart the game from Windows. This is annoying, and it happens every ten minutes or so. It would seem that lots of people are having problems with the sound, and right now all Activision can recommend is updating the sound drivers.  Everyone’s done that, and the problems haven’t gone away.

Top Ten Reasons Not to Open a Portal to Hell

There really wasn’t much story in the original DOOM to be faithful to, so DOOM 3 is faithful in other ways. All of your favorite monsters from the originals reappear, from the humble Fire Imp to the run-for-cover Hell Knight. Because this game is much more System Shock than Serious Sam, you generally only see one or two opponents at a time. This is a thinking man’s DOOM.

It’s also a very, very difficult DOOM, more “be careful” than “blast everything,” and opponents have been tweaked to mirror that. Even the little Fire Imps are no longer just chaff—they are dangerous in the extreme, fast, crafty, and capable of scuttling along ceilings and on walls, then attacking from the darkness. Other favorites like the pink pig-demons are so fast and so lethal that your first instinct is to run rather than fight.

Unfortunately, you can’t do that. I would have liked the opportunity for a little more evasion in DOOM 3, and it’s not there.  Monsters are stationary and don’t move until they see you. It gives the game a predetermined feel that worked in 1994 but doesn’t today.  I’d much rather that all the creatures had the run of the base, like the opponents in System Shock 2. This would make for more intense firefights and probably more tension while moving through previously visited areas.

Throughout the game, secret doors will slide open, revealing demons that were apparently lurking in tiny, featureless cubicles until you walked by. If a monster flings itself out of a closet to eat me, I want to know what it was doing in there in the first place.  This game is make-you-jump scary rather than beside-yourself-with-terror scary. The Shalebridge Cradle mission from Thief: Deadly Shadows is that, and comparing that two-hour shriekfest to the “Boo!”  of DOOM 3 is like comparing Dracula to the Count from Sesame Street. There are scary moments, even terrifying ones, but they often feel manufactured. DOOM 3 also has the nasty habit of spawning enemies to punish you for completing objectives or for picking up objects such as weapons and health packs. What was supposed to be always scary comes off instead as often scary and sometimes cheesy.

Alas also that Hell itself, when you get there, is somewhat derivative.  Painkiller was much more creative and avant-garde in its portrayal of the Nether World; id went with tentacles and ugly gothic stonework and stuff that glistens and breathing walls and lots of lava, but we’ve seen that Hell in a zillion video games.

Like the monsters, the weapons from the original make a return appearance. You’ve got your pistol, shotgun, chaingun, plasma rifle, a cool new BFG, even the chainsaw. It’s funny how these mundane weapons are perfectly fine when they’re part of a good game. I felt no desire for more weapons or for more unique ones. They look great, they sound great, and they do the job. The new hand grenades bounce like superballs and are very difficult to aim—another example of “too much physics” in a game—but I depended on them nonetheless. Big props to id for staying faithful to much of the DOOM legend.

Multis and Mods

Though primarily a single-player game, DOOM 3 does include blah deathmatch multiplay. A maximum of four players can try to kill each other rather than demons, provided they all have a broadband connection. Multiplayer DOOM 3 is okay, but it’s neither as entertaining nor as varied as Unreal Tournament 2004, and the four-player minimum makes finding a game quite a challenge, since most servers are always full.

A mod is in the works to increase that player limit to 32, which will be welcome; there’s also a mod to address the glaring lack of cooperative play. I’d love to play through DOOM 3’s single-player story in cooperative multiplay.

All of id’s games are famous for their moddability, so we’ll doubtless see plenty of interesting tweaks in the days to come. DOOM 3 must be easy to work with, considering that the first mods for the game were available the day it landed on shelves. The DOOM 3 engine is even being considered by a group of indie modders who want to use it for a total conversion of—get this—System Shock 2.

DOOM 3!

Despite good replay potential, DOOM 3 could stand to be a little longer. Any game four years in development ought to sport more than 25 hours of play. In FPS titles, the change from discrete levels to more persistent, objective-based environments has contributed to this, as its harder to test a persistent game for length. Still, given that this was a “retelling” of the 50-hour DOOM, I don’t see why they couldn’t have stuck with the more episodic structure of that original.

id farmed out all responsibility for DOOM 3’s Xbox incarnation. Recognizing that its strength was the PC platform, it handed over all assets to Crash Bandicoot developer Vicarious Visions and took little further interest in DOOM 3 for the Xbox. The result is that the PC version doesn’t play like a console port and the console version won’t play like a PC port, and everyone is happy.

id Software and DOOM have a lot to do with the enormous success and acclaim that the medium is currently enjoying. DOOM and Myst are arguably the two games that really sparked mainstream interest in PC gaming in the 1990s. With luck, the release of DOOM 3—and, in September, Half Life 2—will be just what the flagging PC platform needs. Even developers are acting like the PC is dead, so when id unapologetically creates this new sure-to-be-a-bestseller game for the PC and fobs off the console responsibilities, it’s a powerful statement. People watch what id does.

No one really knows what the future holds for John Carmack, the driving force behind id’s success. He doesn’t play the games he makes; indeed, he only makes games because that’s where the exciting programming is going on. He is deeply committed to winning the X Prize (though a recent crash has all but put his team out of the running) and has devoted a significant part of his fortune to it. More and more, the X Prize seems to be his priority, which is part of the reason DOOM 3 took so long to ship. Thus, many speculated that it would be his last game and that he’d pull a Ground Control to Major Tom on us shortly after its release; but id just announced that it’s working on an original new property with Carmack developing an entirely new engine.  Other than that, all they’re saying is that this next game will not take four years.

2004 has been a loser year for PC games. Titles we expected to be great sucked; other titles never appeared at all. DOOM 3 joins the tiny handful of games we’ve seen this year that really are all they’re cracked up to be. It’s got fun, excitement, good looks—everything people look for both in a potential mate and in a video game. Replay and moddability guarantee that it will stay on hard drives for years to come. It was a long wait, but now that it’s here, there’s no doubt that it was worth it. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: id software Publisher: Activision (PC); Vicarious Visions (Xbox) Release Date: August 2004 (PC); TBA (Xbox)

Available for: Windows Xbox

Four Fat Chicks Links

Player FeedbackSteerpike’s Resurrection of Evil (Expansion Pack) Review

Screenshots

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System Requirements

Windows 2000/XP Pentium IV 1.5 GHz or AMD Athlon 1.7 GHz XP processor or higher 384 MB RAM 8x CD-ROM drive 1.7 GB free hard disk space 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card 100% Windows 2000/XP compatible mouse and keyboard 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible 64MB hardware accelerated video card Internet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported; Internet play requires broadband connection; LAN play requires network interface

Where to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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29 Responses to The Long, Sordid Tail of DRM

  • Meho

    Good one.

    Of course, it will be very interesting to see the battle between crackers and UBI’s cryptographers. PC version of Assassin’s Creed II is already circulating the warez scene, although as yet uncracked. Everybody seems to think it will be cracked in a couple of weeks time at worst, which, admittedly is better for UBI than what usually happens (games cracked before release). Of course, I won’t be buying it because I find this practice unnacceptable (and I do have the console version anyway) but the success of this game and its DRM might mean quite a lot in the future. Of course, we ARE moving towards the age where you will be required to be connected to do any playing at all, whatwith the Gaikai and OnLive systems rearing their heads on the horizon. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, eh?

  • Spike

    I went to the Ubisoft website and looked at their list of published games.  It seems that the last of their games I played was the last Myst game in 2005.  In fact the only Ubisoft games I’ve played have been Myst games.  So I don’t see that their new DRM crime-against-my-privacy will have much of an effect on me.  But I hate the idea.  It’s an “Off with their heads!” kind of development.  Reminds me of the idea that people will put up with lost privacy in exchange for security.  In this case the security is only to benefit Ubisoft.  Yes, I allow my privacy to be violated every day – each time I visit Amazon, or read Google News -the list goes on and on.  BUT THOSE ARE MY CHOICES.  I also have a choice about where and how I spend my money, and I’d refrain from buying a game that allows so much intrusion into my computer/life.  A game that tells me how I must live my life even in the smallest of ways such as always being connected to the internet is a game I can forgo.

  • Jason O

    Consoles CAN be connected to the internet 100% of the time, but there are still many consoles that never go online. Modern Warfare 2 sold over 11 million copies, yet XBox Live only shows 840,000 users that have been on-line with it. That’s not played online, that means they played the game in any mode while connected to XBox Live.

    Games that have required an internet connection and were multiplayer only have a history of vanishing quickly from the console marketplace. Phantasy Star ONLINE did much better on the Gamecube then it did on the XBox. What was the difference? Oh yeah, you could play PSO without an internet connection on the Gamecube, the XBox version require a live account and an internet connection. That’s hardly the only example but one that is near and dear to my heart.

  • Bennet

    No, no, you don’t get it! Ubisoft’s “always connected” requirement isn’t DRM, it’s value-add for you, the beloved customer. Just like the Albertsons supermarket chain requires employees to plaster obnoxiously bright orange “Thank you for shopping with us!” stickers on your Coke and milk not because they think you’re stealing them but to express their sincere gratitude for your patronage.

    Maybe my memories of a time when consumers paid for a product and got the product, unadorned by FBI warnings and impossible to open wrappings and authentication servers that can vanish at any time without warning were planted by aliens. In the current cultural climate it’s certainly difficult to believe that time ever existed.

  • Meho

    But Steerpike makes a good point: business model, retail model is lagging behind the times. And developers, instead of researching ways to use the existing systems to sell more games rather research new ways to piss off their paying customers.

    Seriously, in my opinion, pirates pirate games because they are better value than retail games. Not just in the sense that they get to spend less money on them, but they get them faster, do not have to go through any hassle with DRM and have full control over the game. I think that Gabe Newell put it best saying that Valve sees pirates as customers who haven’t been served yet.

    I think UBI and their ilk should look for ways to make retail games more valuable to their customers than (free) warez copies. Yes, stuff like achievements/ trophies helps a little, sure. There are other ways too and one of them is resale value. But, oh, what a surprise, used games market pisses publishers off MORE than pirates do. In fact most of the current DRM schemes are only effective against resales. EA’s ten dollar project and all other free DLC on day one initiatives. So, honestly, I’m afraid that UBI’s online-all-the-time-or-no-service DRM is basically only going to affect sales of used games. The crackers are going to bring their games to pirates eventually. I believe that draconic DRM schemes such as this will only inspire people like GeoHot, Dark Alex and Yoshihiro to spend more of their time on circumvention. Their street cred is going to be huge after all…

    What Valve seem to understand is that playing games through Steam should make playing MORE valuable/ comfortable than not playing games through Steam (which is, at the end of the day a DRM system). Being able to instal a game on as many machines as you want and not having to have a disc in the drive is exactly what pirated games give us too, but with Steam you also retain all your stats, friends lists, achievements and everything. So it’s BETTER than playing pirated games. I only hope that UBI wake up and realise they have to ADD value, not just subtract freedoms.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not really sure I see their DRM as a huge problem.  If my PC is turned on, so is my internet.  I’m fully aware that my name is probably on a million data bases already, and although it might be annoying knowing that Ubisoft have implemented such a security feature, if you don’t physically notice it, I don’t particularly care.

    I’m currently playing Myst at the moment, having never before.  What an odd game…

  • Meho

    Well, you know, just from a philosophical standpoint: if the game is unplayable as soon as you don’t have Internet connection (which, I’m afraid, happens to me more regularly than I am comfortable with) for no other reason than making sure you have paid for it then to me this is pretty much unnacceptable. Requiring a connection for something that is a function of the game itself is OK, but enforcing it just for the sake of protection of the publisher, sorry, no sale.

  • Lewis B

    True Meho.  I had 40 minutes the other day before I went out and thought I would have a quick skirmish on Dawn of War II.  Steam (despite my love for it) wouldn’t launch the game because for some reason it kept freezing and refusing to connect or launch in offline mode.  I couldn’t actually locate the source directory either to boot the game up manually. So, I didn’t get to play and instead spent 40 minutes in a fit of rage cursing Valve and all who work under them. 

    Not exactly the same situation, but not hugely dissimilar.

  • Gregg B

    I’m really not concerned about the privacy issue simply because that illusion is just that, and doesn’t really comfort or unsettle me. My problem with this whole thing is that internet connections can be temperamental at the best of times and the idea that if the connection falters I will lose my progress (and thus my invested time which I’d argue is more valuable than my money) then quite frankly Ubi can fuck off. I’ve been pretty placid up to press with DRM simply because it’s not seemed that intrusive but this will affect the paying customers more than the pirates. It devalues the product and I fear it will push otherwise paying customers to download cracked versions that don’t suffer from this shit. Which, of course, will play into Ubi’s hands.

    Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.

    “I wonder if we’ll ever get to a point where a person would be just as likely to invest in a beloved classic as a hot new release.”

    From my experience there are a lot of people who simply can’t stomach old looking games, even some of my friends who’ve been playing games since they were young have turned into total graphics whores. Seriously you want to see the totally underwhelmed look on their faces when I show them XCOM for any period of time. We’re at a stage now where graphics are so advanced that for a lot of people going back so far to sample an allegedly classic title is simply too much. Thankfully GOG is doing a fantastic job of making these titles as accessible, and valuable, as possible.

    EDIT: Spot on Meho. My point exactly.
    See what I mean though Lew? Time. Valuable stuff. A quick skirmish on DoW turned into a 40 minute skirmish with Steam.

  • Mat

    This seems like an awful idea.. or at least one which sounds like a good idea to somebody somewhere, but in reality is unworkable.

    Since I’ve been a paying internet customer I have lived at 3 different addresses and used around 5 different ISP’s. I have ALWAYS had problems with my internet connection. With my current set up it tends to go down if a menacing looking cloud passes overhead..

  • xtal

    Some people may like to play a game offline now and then; this is especially easy with older ones before the dawn of activation codes and online authentication. While those aren’t that annoying, having to maintain a constant internet connection just to play a game that you paid for, which is not specifically a MMO, really bites.

    Gregg B said:
    “Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.”

    I agree with this. Just a few years ago I couldn’t see myself paying for intangible, digital goods. Fast forward to now and it’s really my preferred method of computer gaming, whether it’s GOG, Steam, or elsewhere, I find it’s the model that works best for the customer. If I’m not mistaken, I believe once upon a time that was who the industry was trying to serve, no? The customer?

  • Cesar

    You know, I’m from Brazil and there piracy is HUGE. Maybe for that reason I feel for the industry and understand the efforts to stop it. However, I suspect this crack delay would have a very minor impact in markets like Brazil. People can’t afford the games, so they wouldn’t pay full price anyway.

    It is a shame that we don’t have privacy anymore. The other day a friend of mine on XBox Live sent me a message to congratulate me on a goal I scored in Fifa 10. I didn’t know but apparently not only you can see I’m playing Fifa, but you also see when I score and my avatar cheers! While that sounds very cool, it is also very disturbing. But like Matt points very well, privacy is already gone. And since I don’t have it anymore, why not help stop piracy?

    On the other hand, the plurality of solutions is a different matter, it becomes a hassle. I think the solution should be platform dependent, not publisher dependent. In Brew phones, the control is embedded in the system and you cannot use an app if it cannot be verified, which means if you are not connected to the network you can’t play.

    Unfortunately that cannot be applied to consoles, there’s a considerable number of devices outside the internet umbrella. But if the game constantly checks if you are online and tries to authenticate the copy, online piracy will suffer a big hit and the technological move towards full connectivity will make the practice more and more efficient over time.

  • Andrew

    Not going to buy the game, long tail or not, it sucks to have that kind of persistent connection needed for offline play. Not even just startup authorisation either. I must admit any Game For Windows Live games can be similar (Dawn of War 2 being one of them necessitating it) although most of them allow offline profiles, and most of them allow the saves to be moved easily between any online or offline accounts.

    Oh, and if you’re disconnected it won’t kick you out of the game too, even Microsoft didn’t get that wrong.

    I don’t even understand how privacy comes into it, my main issue is twofold:
    – The above note about simple, offline play (and disconnects for blips in service)
    – The fact it isn’t just your connection that is necessary, it is THEIR connection and servers

    The second point as a partial game historian leads me to wonder how many years (not decades) the servers will be there. Publishers have removed much more necessary servers quickly if they are a cost liability (or they want to push people onto a newer game…). Downtime is also, considering some of the services require payment (Xbox Live for instance) devastatingly poor considering the user base sizes, especially on high load days (and I wonder if we’ll see “Assassins Creed 2 unplayable at launch due to server overload” at all, heh). Lucky it’s “just games” though, no worries if we only have 99% uptime right?! 😉

    (Also, frankly their Assassins Creed 1 port was poor until they patched it, where at least then it was playable (in full on 16:9…for some reason), which makes me wary of any PC release of a console game they do. I wonder also if they still have unskippable cutscenes, I’ve not checked it out on the consoles).

    The fact they’ll never have enough sales of this PC version due to the earlier console release to either say this is a roaring success or roaring failure. It’s the longest end of the tail in the first place. Or they’ll lie about whatever happens anyway. It’s utterly bizarre…I just don’t understand it.

  • Meho

    Cesar: I’m in Serbia and here piracy reigns supreme (much worse than Brazil, I imagine) but still, this is pure and simple bullshit. I purcahsed BioShock 2 today, for my PS3 even though I’d prefer to play it on my PC just because of the stupid DRM that won’t let me control the use of a game I pay for. They can fuck off with that. So, my purchase was influenced by DRM, depsite the game being more natural to play on a PC. Protection measures should not create this kind of bitterness in a human being.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    The issue of server overload on release days is significant. Think about it – a game like Modern Warfare 2? Or any other hotly anticipated release? Of course the servers would go down. It’s not cost-effective to install a server infrastructure capable of handling Day Zero traffic. That would royally piss people off.

    Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.

    Around the holidays here, big stores like Best Buy station a guy at the exit. His job is to go through your bag and consult your receipt to make sure you haven’t stolen anything. That’s a very similar ideology to this one: treat all consumers like thieves in hopes of catching the few who are.

  • Lewis B

    Considering most MMOG servers cannot cope on launch day, I see it as a gaurentee that when the next Modern Warfare is released, if they do follow through with this, would see many unhappy players.

  • lakerz1

    This new DRM policy will totally be screwing me over because I have a wireless internet setup, but my signal is a bit weak so here and there it drops out for a 10-15 second period before it reconnects.  Plus my wireless router is a bit wonky and will just stop working once in awhile until I cycle power to it.  So, until my setup changes, I will be forced to avoid all Ubi PC games that use this.

  • Igor Hardy

    I seriously doubt a person which would normally pirate a game, will pay money for it just because she has to wait a short while longer for the cracked version. This can work only for very cheap games – like 1$ cheap.

  • Meho

    Just for those keeping tabs: the Russian version of Assassin’s Creed II has apparently been successfully cracked, with a fix for the saves too. Of course, I don’t KNOW this for sure but that’s the word circulating through the grapewine.

  • Cesar

    Brazil is a strong competitor in the piracy rates. 95%-97% if I am not mistaken.

    Anyway, I don’t have a problem with the privacy issue. Not even with the assumption that we are all thieves. If you extrapolate that idea, you will conclude we shouldn’t have patrol cars on the streets. They assume people will commit crimes and have to keep watch. Homo homini lupus. Society isn’t perfect and even though losses are part of the model, no one is ready to lose out of good faith alone. I don’t mean to say DRM and police watch are the same thing, I’m just saying it’s not that simple to draw a line where it becomes offensive to monitor society.

    That being said, it is not acceptable to have a DRM impact gameplay at all. I don’t mind it authenticating my copy. But if I am offline it has to work. And if I loose connection during the game I shouldn’t be kicked out.

    And while the efficacy of the solution might be questionable under these circumstances, like I said in the previous comment, it only tends to increase.

  • Andrew

    “Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.”

    I have seen this happen to absolutely zero games ever. The fact that it is nearly impossible to sanction any work on IP if a company is in administration is the key. That and it is non-trivial to get around your own disk DRM by producing an installer that will work with your disk copy to install it.

    I’d love to be proved wrong…this is by far the most worrying thing of the deal, just installed Bioshock 2 and it has online activation (sigh)…worried I might need to download cracked versions to install it in the future!

    Oh, did you see the patch notes of the first patch? It makes the DRM very very very slightly “better” (I mean, better as in “still shit”):

    http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/17456/Assassin%27s+Creed+2+Patch+1.01+-+US

    “Game can now be continued from the exact same point when connection is restored”

    Ho ho ho. Ho.

  • Gregg B

    I like this bit:

    “Only those who purchased a copy of ACII or SHV legally appear to be affected. Pirates playing illegally downloaded cracked versions of the game are able to play without a problem.”

    Is it apparent pirates are having no problems yet? If they’ve properly cracked it then what I feared (above) is true. Last I heard was that the DRM apparently downloads levels or important files as you play. I don’t know whether this is true or not though.

  • Spike

    Meho beat me to it.  I just read a similar article on The Register.  I don’t suppose that the DDoS attack will make Ubi rethink its evil ways, but this might (I can dream, can’t I?):

    “Meanwhile Ubisoft’s much criticised controls have been broken by software hackers. A hacker group called Skid-Row managed to bypass DRM restrictions on Silent Hunter 5 less than 24 hours after the game was published. Skid Row has releasing a crack for the game based on this work, Zdnet reports. ®”

    Full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/ubisoft_anti_drm_hack_attack/

  • Littermate

    Spike.  RE: The Register article
    There is a comment to that article that claims the crack for SH5 is not a complete crack and would only allow an incomplete experience, because not only are save games stored online but some of the game data files are stored online too, implying that the boxed game you buy is incomplete.  This seems plausible and effective IMO, because if I was demanding an internet connection for my software this is how I would do it.  It demands not only that a games code be cracked but that missing data files be supplied too.

  • Spike

    Having just read this article – link below – I’m thinking that DRM will be fine and dandy AND hunky-dory with me as long as the packaging it comes in is “green”.  Yep.  That makes it more palatable.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/1620105/ubisoft-green-recycled-case-digital-manual-sustainable-packaging

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I would kind of like to buy games in potato cases.

  • xtal

    I was thinking… and remembered one of the most creative instances of “DRM” if you can call it that: King’s Quest VI! I looked it up and sure enough it is mentioned on KQVI’s Wikipedia page:

    A booklet titled “Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles” (written by Jane Jensen) is included in the KQVI package. Aside from providing additional background to the game’s setting, this booklet serves as part of the game’s copy-protection. The player will not be able to pass the puzzles on the Cliffs of Logic that guard the Isle of the Sacred Mountain without information from the booklet. The booklet also includes a poem encoding the solution to one of the puzzles in the labyrinth on the Isle of the Sacred Mountain.

    I guess that’s not very feasible today, what with widespread use of the internet around the world. I still think it’s more creative than the “thank you for your money, we intend to treat you like a criminal” method.

  • Bluebogle

    I played the KQVI game with the booklet. I was a kid at the time, and thought the booklet was so cool! It really added to the whole game’s experience.

    The quest for Glory games came with fun booklets as well, though I don’t remember if they had copy protection elements to ’em.

    Ahh, the good old days..

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