Enter the Matrix Review

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            Enter the Matrix

Review by SteerpikeMay 2003

The World’s Longest and Most Meaningless Movie

Being a red-blooded American male who likes hot women dressed in leather, kung fu, clever plotlines, and big gunfights, I naturally enjoyed The Matrix. Being an educated individual with little patience for intellectual patronization, endless expository dialogue, and lectures about the nature of causality, I naturally found The Matrix Reloaded hugely disappointing. Being a Sacrifice fan who is still mad at Shiny Entertainment for failing to make a sequel, and a student of gaming history who knows how good movie-franchise games usually turn out to be, I was dubious at best about Enter the Matrix. And this game, by far the most expensive ever made and sporting a plotline nearly integral to understanding the second movie, is indeed the mediocrity that I feared it might be.

Enter the Matrix follows the adventures of Captain Niobe and the crew of the hovercraft Logos. Niobe, played in the game as in the movie by the delectable Jada Pinkett-Smith (indeed, the whole cast of the movie appears in the game at some point or another), along with her first officer Ghost, are the two principals in a story written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, who quite frankly flexed their narrative muscles much more expertly in this game than they did in The Matrix Reloaded.

Twisting in and out of the movie’s plot, Enter the Matrix immerses you in adventures corollary to—and occasionally directly alongside—the travails of Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo. An army of crazed machines is digging toward Zion, the last human city, and it’s up to you playing as either Niobe or Ghost to do what you can to save humanity from its own fiendish creation: a savage artificial intelligence that has enslaved the species by plugging it into a computer program that simulates normal existence while drawing power from the heat generated by six billion human bodies in tanks of pink goo. The handful of “free minds” not enthralled by the Matrix computer program move freely between the virtual and real worlds, combating the nefarious programmatic constructs of the AI.

Niobe and Ghost follow somewhat different paths through the game; each is an expert at different things and you’ll have to play Enter the Matrix twice to enjoy everything. Enough of each course is similar that you will find yourself replaying a significant portion of it if you choose to go through the game a second time to see both stories. Niobe is the pilot/driver; some of the more thrilling levels in Enter the Matrix deal with piloting either land vehicles (in the Matrix itself) or your hovercraft, Logos. Ghost, who does get the opportunity to drive now and then, is really best when it comes to riding shotgun and providing support for Niobe.  Outside the vehicle levels, both seem more or less equal to the tasks at hand.

This review is of the PC version. Console players, I’d be curious to hear your take on the myriad ports—a massive worldwide release on May 14 included all major platforms—so shoot me an email at Steerpike@fourfatchicks.com if you found your experience to be notably different from my own.

Hello, Cray Supercomputers? I Need to Place an Order

Enter the Matrix wins the award for the most staggering system requirements of any PC game. Minimum processor speed, at 800 MHz, isn’t so bad; GeForce 4/Radeon 8500 and 4.3 gigabytes of hard drive space, on the other hand, are going to limit the potential PC audience for this game. The tradeoffs for these demands are blisteringly fast load times, comfortably high frame rates, and a relaxingly smooth gaming experience implying that the requirements were a conscious decision intended to enhance immersiveness, not the product of bloated code. But I wouldn’t recommend that anyone spend money to upgrade specifically for this title. Because though Enter the Matrix is a vaguely entertaining game, it is by no means spend-money-to-upgrade good.

If you liked the hand-to-hand combat of Oni and the slo-mo gunplay of Max Payne, then Enter the Matrix is the game for you. Despite serious flaws, it elegantly combines elements of the two with sufficient artistry to escape overt comparison but brings little else that is stylistically new to the table. Gamers should prepare themselves for frenetic action, a cleverly constructed storyline, and thematic tie-in to the movies that marks Enter the Matrix as the first game that truly builds on an existing cinematic experience, rather than being a mere product of a franchise.

Machines Don’t Need Testers

Game developers could stand to learn a lot from Enter the Matrix, especially on the subject of securing good writing, talent, and effects sequences for cinematic games. Because the entirely professional movie cast and crew is employed, the game features slick production values unrivaled by anything else out there. It’s a good example of the nebulous line between cinema and mediated interactive environments such as games.

But the problem is not with the story or the script, or even with the talent. Problems with Enter the Matrix fall into two distinct and equally crippling categories: first, it contains bugs of nearly every description, from the minor to the crashworthy.  Second, it sports ill-conceived design that keeps players focused on the deleterious aspects of the game rather than enthralled by other, superior, sections. Since these two aspects of the game fall entirely under Shiny’s purview, I lay all the blame at the feet of a company still occasionally hailed as a leader in the evolution of games as a new narrative art form. Enter the Matrix comes across as a sloppy game, with flaws that would have been corrected in testing had the release not been timed to coincide with the movie.

Some of the graphic work is terrific, including particles, fogging, and fire effects. Niobe and Ghost are both heavily motion-captured but would look better if their joints would quit popping so badly; what few shaders are used are employed to great effect: subtle reflections off a pair of sunglasses or a snakeskin jacket. And the cinematic cutscenes are so obviously the work of the Wachowski brothers that watching them is almost like watching another Matrix movie.  Everything from the slow motion segments to the moving camera freeze frame technique that won them a special technical achievement award is present in this game.

But the graphics, while good, do feature console port leftovers such as ugly joint-popping and minimal use of shading technology.  Shadows cast by objects are few and far between (the game has no dynamic light) and flicker so badly that they’d have been better off without them. Shifting textures and clipping problems cause entire objects to disappear into one another both in the game and during cutscenes—honestly, developers, is it that hard to create a good collision algorithm?

The sound, too, suffers from a Januslike schizophrenia also caused by this game’s rushed production schedule. Musical sequences pulled right from the movie help enhance the action and further underscore that this is very much a Matrix game; sound effects, voices, and the like are well-synced and employ some really spectacular environmental effects. But sound crashes infuriatingly often, blaring into a static feedback so deafening that people down the street know I’m playing this game. The only escape is to quit the app altogether, start over, and hope for the best. The designers also fell in love with music and reverb, so voices are often drowned out by the soundtrack or are too echoey to understand, and the voice volume slider in the game options defaults to maximum.

Enter the Matrix also crashes—a lot—either freezing up or dropping out to Windows unexpectedly. I imagine a patch is on the way; even the most damning reviews (and this is not intended to be one of them, though they will be out there) won’t stop the Matrix juggernaut from carrying on. Millions are seeing the movie despite damning reviews; the same will happen with the video game.

Ultimately, this game is a console port. The inability to save at any time is proof of this (the game offers to save for you between segments), and obtuse controls that would be far better suited to a gamepad than a mouse cement the issue. Enter the Matrix doesn’t take advantage of most of a PC’s vastly more advanced technical capabilities, from graphics to memory to saves, and the result is a highly unsatisfying game that I imagine will also be highly unsatisfying to console gamers.

Like in a movie, there are warning signs for a bad game. In a movie, if the studio denies a filmmaker nothing (to the point of looking the other way while they blow $60 million on a 14-minute chase scene), that should set off alarm bells with potential viewers. In a game, the inability to save at any time and, much more egregious, making game cheats available in the Main Menu (as they are in Enter the Matrix) should do the same. Any time a game is so weakly constructed as to allow cheating from the Main Menu (cleverly called “Hacking” here), we should know that what’s under the hood will be seriously lacking.

Pow! Biff! Sock! Blam!

Enter the Matrix is a third-person game, but it sports such obtuse camera control (or, rather, a complete lack of camera control) that the player is often at the mercy of foes that cannot be seen.  If the camera were a more trustworthy ally, the game would receive much higher marks for general control, as I’m pleased to report that Enter the Matrix is the very first game I’ve played where I’ve felt no desire to remap the default keys in any way.  Despite the complexity of what’s happening on screen, the actual control scheme is quite simple—WASD, the mouse, and a handful of other keys are ample.

Like The Matrix Reloaded, Enter the Matrix tends to focus more on chop-socky combat than techno-powered gunfights. Firearms are available, of course; ammunition, however, tends to be limited.  And while you have the opportunity to pull off some of the supercool movie moves like the cartwheel-while-shooting or dodge-bullets-in-slow-motion, flaws in the gun combat system make such maneuvers rather inane.

There is, for example, no clear method of aiming. You shoot wildly at opponents. When you “focus your mind,” Enter the Matrix-speak for Max Payne-like Bullet Time, you shoot better. But unlike Max Payne, a game in which you shoot where you’re looking, the mouse has nothing to do with what you’re aiming at in Enter the Matrix.

Meanwhile, the kung fu elements of the game are much more expertly implemented, if it weren’t for a desperately thick camera that inevitably fails to be where you need it to be in order to see what you’re doing. Since both Niobe and Ghost are motion-captured, the combat engine works hard to make all hand-to-hand encounters look very cool—it never seems like you’re repeating the same move over and over again, even though in point of fact that’s exactly what you’re doing. Left mouse is punch. Right mouse is kick. Hand-to-hand combat is just a lot of clicking.

As mentioned above, Enter the Matrix will endure a lot of comparisons to two games: Oni and Max Payne. The hand-to-hand combat in this game is much simpler than the complex, multi-button combos of Oni; falling into the category of “minutes to learn, a lifetime to master.” Yet despite Oni’s occasionally ridiculously complex fighting moves, its camera and controls are sufficiently tight to limit the frustration factor. The clickfest that is hand-to-hand combat in Enter the Matrix makes you feel like you’re watching the game, not playing it.

Focus, Baby, Focus

Moving back to “focus.” The cool factor of this power would be significantly greater had we all not already played Max Payne; essentially, you hit shift and time slows down. When you’re “focused” you tend to be better at things than when you’re not; your attacks do more damage, you shoot more accurately, and of course you can run around on the walls and perform some of the more amazing wire acts we remember from the films. Like Bullet Time, focus exists in limited quantity and replenishes slowly. There is almost always ample focus available for quick use (I, at least, tended to use it in very short spurts), but once again the uncooperative camera and simplistic controls makes mastery of focus very difficult.

The camera’s unpredictability is comparable to the unpredictability of how you behave near surfaces such as walls or crates. In most cases, you can lean against them for cover and even peek (and shoot) around them while still protecting most of your body; however, in some cases you can’t—even when it seems perfectly plausible.  Surfaces don’t adhere to reliable laws of game physics. Rather than a glaring flaw, minor issues like this strike me as further proof that Enter the Matrix was very rushed and released with insufficient testing.

I also wonder about some of Shiny’s decisions involving powers available inside and outside the Matrix. While most of the game takes place inside the Matrix, your character’s health slowly replenishes over time, along with focus. That’s great. Yet you can still fall to your death in the Matrix, despite access to focus; you can jump farther when focused, but you can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound; and you’re generally better at pretty much everything you try, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to how much better you really are. Compared to the Bullet Time in Max Payne, focus has a lot of deficiencies.

It Ain’t All Bad

Much of Enter the Matrix resonates more effectively with the overall Matrix mythos than the second movie did. The cast tends to look and act cooler in the game than the movie; there are fewer grueling bouts of creaky exposition. Jada Pinkett-Smith has the perfect attitude for a Matrix character, and Anthony Wong’s smooth and unrufflable portrayal of Ghost lends adequate emotional attachment to his role.

The story is so expertly interwoven into that of The Matrix Reloaded that it’s clear why the Wachowskis prefer to see the game and movie as little more than two halves of a whole. It’s also interesting to observe the activities of a group seen only briefly in the film, because this sort of sideways narrative is useful for reminding the audience that dozens of stories are going on around us all the time, and those we actually experience are limited to those we are fully privy to.

Though I think it would be difficult to overstate the clumsiness of the game’s level design, which is labyrinthine for the sake of labyrinthinism, or the maddening camera, it’s also necessary to point out that everyone came out of The Matrix wishing they could emulate those cool chop-socky moves, run around on walls, dodge bullets, and so forth. The fact that gamers already had the opportunity to do so with Max Payne doesn’t necessarily diminish the cool factor you feel when engaged in some combats, especially those involving the inimical and ubiquitous Agents—who are significantly more threatening in this game than they seemed to be in The Matrix Reloaded.

There Are No Rabbit Hole Metaphors in this Review

So Enter the Matrix is not an abject failure; it fails on many levels, is irritating on many more, but ultimately its ratio comes out to about 60:40 bad to good. That’s not a very impressive score, especially from a company as revered as the mighty Shiny Entertainment, producer of some of the greatest and most fascinating creative executions of gaming in the past five years. What really burns my boys is that the Wachowskis, ostensibly filmmakers, made a mediocre movie and a great game; Shiny, ostensibly a game development house, made a mediocre game that would have been a great movie.  Go figure.

For the inability to save at any point, for obtuse camera and fighting controls, for subpar level design, for irritating crash and sound bugs, and for the failure to make any effort to improve the technology behind this console port, Enter the Matrix enjoys the dubious distinction of a Rotten Egg award. And for Shiny Entertainment, a loud “shame on you” for kowtowing to a surefire movie franchise with a game of inferior quality rather than sticking to creative guns and bringing us more of the work we’ve come to expect from such a body of talent. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Shiny Entertainment Publisher: Infogrames/Atari Release Date: May 2003

Available for: Game Cube Windows Xbox PlayStation 2

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System Requirements

Windows 98/Me/2000/XP PIII 800 MHz/AMD Duron 800 MHz (PIII 1.2 GHz/AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz recommended) 128 MB RAM (256 MB RAM recommended) 4.3 GB free hard disk space (7200 RPM or faster recommended) GeForce 2 256/Radeon 8500 Sound card 4X CD-ROM drive DirectX 9.0 (included)

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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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