Painkiller Review

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            Painkiller

Review by SteerpikeJune 2004

Depth Perception

I was a bit leery about Painkiller when we saw the first ads a few months ago. Aside from the inclusion of a weapon that flings sharpened wooden stakes, it didn’t really seem to bring much that was new or innovative to the FPS world. But I downloaded the demo because I wanted to see the new engine, and within two minutes I was hooked—it’s that good. If video games got drunk and had one-night stands that resulted in pregnancy, Painkiller would be the product of the frenzied, S&M-laden coupling of DOOM and Serious Sam.

This is the first game from the folks at the new Polish studio People Can Fly. Much of the team worked at Metropolis in 1999, creating a well-intentioned flop called Odium—a game that came this close to being a worthy successor to the small-squad combat of X-Com (actually, if X-Com and Fallout got drunk and made a baby, it would be Odium). Called Gorky-17 everywhere but here in the States, it was saddled with a clumsy and oftentimes nonsensical movement interface that pretty much ruined the game. Still, its repellently violent gameplay dripped with atmosphere, and it was a pretty unique and original narrative idea.

But Odium bombed and Metropolis sank and the developers moved on to start People Can Fly—and if Painkiller is any indication of the general quality we can expect from this studio, we’re going to be hearing about them for a long, long time. It has the gore of a snuff film and the frantic intensity of a war zone, and it is quite frankly one of the most beautiful and satisfying shooters I have ever played.

By distilling the FPS rulebook down to the most basic essentials (move and shoot), Painkiller wipes away the patina of complexity that so burdens, and sometimes so overwhelms, modern first-person action games. There are times when you just want to kill and kill, without restrictions or addendums, and that’s what this game is about.

Which is not to say it’s lacking in depth. Painkiller’s art direction and thematic intent is intricate and powerful. What would appear to the casual observer to be a string of meaningless, logically disconnected killing fields is in fact a stirring artistic reflection on the nature of the afterlife, specifically the madness-gripped waiting room that some believe stands between this mortal coil and Heaven. It is only when all the pieces have come together, when you play the kaleidoscope of horror that is the game’s perspective-shattering final confrontation, that you realize the philosophical scope of this casual shooter. To stand bewildered in that final level, to spend a good two or three minutes wondering what it is you’re looking at before the light bulb pops and you whisper, “oh my God …  they’re right. This is exactly what Hell would be like”—it’s quite an experience.

Don’t Hate Me, Jen

We have a simple rule at Four Fat Chicks: the games we review have to be story-driven. As rules go, it’s not really unjust or difficult to follow, but for some reason I take a sadistic glee in pushing it to the very limit. My coda of reviews, while containing a nice crop of very story-intensive games, does reveal the occasional, shall we say, somewhat out-of-scope title that could arguably be called less than narrative.

I’m saying this in the review rather than in a conversation with the boss because by the time Jen learns of my most recent and egregious crime, the work will be done, and her heart is too big and too good to refuse something that one of her people has worked on, even if it doesn’t quite follow The Rule. To call Painkiller story-driven is reaching. It has a story, the same way as, say, a porn movie has a story, but that story is strictly confined to the back seat.  Honestly, why they tolerate my presence around here is beyond me.

Here’s the story: you’re a nice fellow named Daniel who is married to a nice woman named Catherine. It’s Catherine’s birthday, so Daniel stuffs her in the car and whisks her off to a fancy dinner despite the wrath-of-God thunderstorm roiling around them. In a cinematic moment as sweet-hearted as it is tragic, Daniel reaches across to take her hand and give her one of those “what a great wife I’ve got” smiles, thereby taking his eyes off the road just long enough to plow into an eighteen-wheeler that pulverizes the car and its occupants.

Catherine gets into Heaven. Daniel does not. For reasons totally inexplicable to him, he’s stuck waiting in an in-between world while his wife plays her harp without him. Along comes a surprisingly creepy angel named Sammael, who offers to move Daniel to the front of the line if he’ll do God the teeny favor of killing Lucifer’s four generals. They, along with an army of demons, have invaded this limbo and are preparing to launch an all-out assault on Heaven—an assault that, given their numbers and Heaven’s apparent France-in-the-1930s military preparedness, they’ll almost certainly win. Daniel, lacking anything else to do that day, agrees.

Though Sammael warns Daniel that killing these generals may not be very easy, he neglects to mention that they’re about three hundred feet tall and so well protected that even getting near them is a labor worthy of Hercules. (Sammael’s actually kind of a jerk.) As Daniel makes his way toward his goal, he enlists the help of Eve—of Adam-and- fame—who offers advice only slightly less nebulous than Sammael’s but seems to genuinely want to see him succeed. Unfortunately, People Can Fly fell into the usual video game trap of making this one female character an implausibly stacked, shirtless woman dressed only in a translucent linen sarong—an ensemble that doesn’t make much sense considering all the claw-festooned demons running around. Plus, there are places in Purgatory that look cold.

Daniel has access to the Black Tarot board, which is Painkiller’s one and only nod to anything other than splatterfest violence.  Each level has an objective that, if met, unlocks one Black Tarot card. These cards can be “played” on the board between each level to provide you with various advantages—some are permanent, some can only be activated once per mission. Playing these cards costs gold coins, which you’ll find in nearly every destroyable object in the game. These cards are sufficiently varied to add real spice, and the objectives to unlock them are at times so incredibly challenging (and at other times so laughably easy) as to significantly increase Painkiller’s replay value. Maintaining your card collection is a lot of fun; the only problem is that you have to play your cards prior to each level, before you really know what sort of challenges you’ll be facing. The trick, therefore, is to play cards that will help you meet the objective necessary to get another card.

Painkiller presents Purgatory in a very unique and compelling way: an unsettling, dreamlike landscape where your location, and the geography, seems to vary depending on your state of mind. Thus a posh opera house could be next door to a collapsing factory; a throat-lumpingly beautiful Venetian city could stand inches from the very gates of Hell, and so forth. Despite an initial sense of unrelation, the levels in each of Painkiller’s five episodes exhibit a common thread, however subtle, that ties the otherwise disconnected locales together.

Where you are ain’t no good unless you can get out: Purgatory is a bad place to be for two reasons. One, it’s not Heaven, and two, it’s swarming with demons because of the big war that Lucifer’s plotting. And if one of those demons kills you while you’re there, you go to Hell.

Max Pain

Painkiller employs a completely new codebase to handle rendering tasks. Called the Pain Engine, it’s easily competitive with Lithtech, Crytek, Gamebryo, and Unreal 2.0, the four major licensable engine properties on the market today. Indeed, I can only assume that People Can Fly plans to market this bad boy as a standalone game engine; if it’s easy to develop for, they’ll make mad money.

Within three months we’ll be seeing the next holy trinity of game engines to beat: Source will power Half-Life 2, and Serious 2.0 will hum underneath Serious Sam 2. But it’s the long-awaited DOOM 3 engine that represents the biggest wildcard in FPS today; if DOOM 3 runs smoothly with moderate hardware (which I highly doubt), nothing will have a chance against it.

It’s unheard of to have eight standalone engines available for game development, but it looks poised to happen by the end of the year. Lithtech, Crytek, Source, Gamebryo, Pain, Serious 2.0, Unreal 2.0, and DOOM 3 will all vie for attention over the next eighteen months. Amazingly, the virginal People Can Fly has developed a game engine that is easily powerful enough to swim with the big fish.

Pain has the lighting and texture prowess of Unreal 2.0 and Gamebryo, the vivid palette and stunning water effects of Lithtech, and the obscene draw distance of Crytek. Better still, it runs like butter on machines only nominally within its recommended specifications.  We pay a price for that—level load times exceed five minutes—but further optimization may even grind that complaint down.

Painkiller is, quite simply, gorgeous. My screen caps do not, cannot, do it justice; the Pain Engine’s magic is only visible when it’s in motion. The flapping of a demon’s paisley robe (yes, demons do wear paisley—who’d have thunk it?), the subtle flicker of a torch against a blood-spattered brick wall, the sudden crumbling of a towering Doric column—not to mention the holy-crap enormity of the game’s five boss monsters, creatures so huge that you literally don’t reach their ankle; Painkiller is graphic splendor pure and simple.

The Havok floodgates are wide open now, and the lapdance of Painkiller’s graphics is made all the more arousing by the addition of this mighty middleware physics engine. People Can Fly dodged the usual problems we see in Havok by limiting it to explosions, flying bodies (and body parts), and scripted crumbling of buildings. The game doesn’t bother with chairs and wastebaskets you can knock over, so none of the bizarre mass problems of Invisible War or Deadly Shadows exist here.

The aforementioned stake gun hurls sharpened wooden shafts the size of telephone poles into your enemies, and there is little more satisfying than watching an opponent transfixed on the end of a stake, picked up by its force, hurled back into a wall, and stapled there, twitching. Until developers really master the complexities of working with Havok, they’d be well advised to employ it for effects like this rather than more easily botched “realistic” weights and measures.

A couple of patches are available for Painkiller, and it’s in your best interest to download the latest. It improves stability and load times, corrects some weird texture problems with the GeForce 4 4200, and gives the overall game a general spit and polish. The multiplayer element is also patched, though frankly I don’t see anyone playing Painkiller online much. It’s pure run-and-gun deathmatch, so fast and so furious that only the most Quake-d gamers will be able to keep track of the action. This is a single-player game and is probably best when viewed as that alone.

Welcome to Limbo, Here’s Your Atlas

Gameplay in Painkiller is almost painfully linear. There are no mazes or wrong turns; what appear at first to be satisfyingly open levels are compartmented killing boxes. You enter an area and all points of egress seal. Kill everything in that area and the exits open up again, usually leaving behind a game-saving checkpoint that, on some difficulty levels, also tosses you a bit of health.  You can also save at any time throughout.

Now, normally there would be points off for this compartmentalization, because in a way it’s a sign of clumsy level design. But even a casual glance at Painkiller’s levels is proof that they’re not clumsy—they’re designed very specifically and very intentionally to work the way they do. Painkiller is not about exploration, or locating an exit or a specific item, it’s not about the stuff that normal FPS games are about. It’s about entering a room, killing everything there, and moving on to the next room. What seems like heavy-handed game control is in fact just good organization. One drawback to the system is that it is possible, on occasion, to inadvertently escape the region you’re in and enter the next one before the game is expecting it. If you manage this, chances are you’ll be stuck there, so you’re better off following the path that it sets for you.

On the subject of control, those in Painkiller are among the most mappable and friendly you’ll find in a shooter. Each of the game’s five weapons has a primary and alternate fire mode, and you can even switch one for the other. Pretty much every key on the board can be mapped, but since the gameplay is so straightforward it’s not like you’ll have a lot to remember. You can’t even crouch in this game. When I say they stripped out everything that makes FPS games overburdened with complexity, I mean it. Yet that doesn’t make Painkiller simplistic—far from it.

When monsters die, they leave their souls behind. In addition to being a good way to minimize memory clutter by vanishing the 3D models of corpses in the level, each soul returns one hit point to Daniel’s pool. Collect sixty-six and you morph into an invulnerable demonic form for twenty seconds or so. If you time your collection right, you can take this form when you’re literally swarmed by enemies and then really clean up.

Painkiller has five episodes, each with four or five levels apiece. Its bestiary is so huge that you’ll never feel as though the game overuses its monsters. Better yet, the monsters themselves—and even, to a degree, the locations—are tied to the particular general they serve. This consistency is limited, but in a general sort of way you’ll find medieval/gothic architecture, gritty urban nightmare, wide-open spaces, nature gone horribly wrong, and so forth grouped logically.

Monsters demonstrate admirable AI, at times using one another as shields and certainly appearing to learn your stratagems. They generally make it a point to approach with vastly superior numbers and firepower, so it can be tough to decide whether they’re getting smarter or whether there are just more of them about, but you’ll find the game challenging from many perspectives. As is the trend in today’s games, some difficulty levels only unlock once you’ve completed the game or some other objective, and I’m told that a secret ending awaits those who manage to finish Painkiller on its highest level.

Paradise Lost (and Regained)

The game is not entirely perfect. Though the levels are extraordinarily compartmentalized, there are times when it’s not clear where you’re supposed to go next. A compass that points you in the right direction is provided to offset this difficulty, but at times it seems to freeze up for no good reason. On a few rare occasions, I found myself wandering through an area I’d cleared out for the better part of ten minutes, wondering where I was supposed to go and why the compass wasn’t moving. Areas only reopen when you’ve killed every opponent in them, so sometimes you think you’re trapped when really there’s just a tiny monster high up on a balcony or something.

The arsenal, while excellent in the extreme, could be a little more numerous. I applaud the inclusion of some entirely unique weapons—stake gun, shuriken cannon, and my personal favorite, the eponymous painkiller weapon, add flavor alongside the shotgun and minigun/rocket launcher.  These weapons are wonderfully balanced, all have a distinct purpose, and all are deeply satisfying on an ass-kicking front. It’s just that five isn’t many, and I wouldn’t have said no to a few more.

The acting is bad. Especially, and as usual, from the protagonist.  Why studios always choose to give the worst actor the biggest part is beyond me. Eve is okay, but she’s so offensively drawn that the words coming out of her mouth are less important than what’s scarcely concealed by her flowing tresses and naught else. The rest are mediocre to sucky, with the single exception of the charming demon lord Alastor, who sounded like a good actor, but his voice was so distorted that it’s hard to tell.

The difficulty levels could also use a bit of a tweak. Daydream (read: “easy”) is far too dreamy; Insomnia is still pretty dreamy, and Nightmare is, well, a nightmare. Also, there are secret items and areas lurking throughout each level, and in most cases they’re just ridiculously hard to find. One of the best ways to “break” the linear pathing system is to wander into the wrong place while exploring for secret areas.

None of these are dealbreakers. Heck, none of them are that serious.  Painkiller is the most fulfilling ultraviolent experience I’ve had on a computer in ages, and anyone looking for a good, straightforward shooter could do a lot worse.

This game is the sort of which I’d like to see more: breathtaking attention to detail, deeply satisfying gameplay, and a focus on pure, simple fun that doesn’t in any way defeat or diminish a richly powerful thematic narrative. My own review can now be added to the pile of glowing kudos from all walks of the industry. Far Cry, though popular and successful, was so shackled to its crushing system requirements and moronic save interface that we had little choice but to focus on the negatives of what would be an otherwise excellent game. Painkiller, meanwhile, never deviated from its original concept and goal. It is relentless in its focus on being exactly what it is intended to be, and the result is a colossal achievement in gaming, and one that I suspect will be thought of highly for many years to come. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: People Can Fly Publisher: Dreamcatcher Release Date: April 2004

Available for: Windows Xbox

Four Fat Chicks Links

Player FeedbackPainkiller: Battle out of Hell Review

Screenshots

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System Requirements

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP 1.5 GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor 384 MB RAM 4x CD-ROM 1.2 GB free hard disk space 64 MB DirectX 8.1 compatible video card (NVIDIA GeForce 3 or better) DirectX 8.1b or better compatible sound card Keyboard and mouse

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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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