Sin Episodes: Emergence Review

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            Sin Episodes: Emergence

Review by SteerpikeJune 2006

Sort of Like the Mortal Kombat Movie

You’ve got a problem when the best thing about your game is its theme song. And that’s certainly the case in Sin Episodes: Emergence, Ritual’s first installment of the planned nine-part epic that follows up 1998’s critically acclaimed but dismally selling Sin.  Greeted at the main menu by sound designer Zak Belica’s haunting “What’s the World Come To,” you can’t help but feel optimistic about the game. Then you play it.

Despite intergalactic hype, Emergence can’t quite deliver.  Its biggest crime is that it promises six hours of play and weighs in a lot closer to three, which is unacceptable for $20. Those three hours are reasonably fun; as shooters go, Emergence is satisfactory, ridiculously challenging, and unoriginal. Level design is competent, storyline is competent, gameplay is … competent. And Ritual, despite making my beloved Heavy Metal FAKK2, has never really been more than competent.

Not having played Sin, I was coming into this somewhat blind.  It’s the future, and you’re a quasi-military lawman with dreadlocks, a soul patch, weird glasses and the unlikely name of John Blade.  This musclebound fellow has spent much of his career battling the criminal element in Freeport City, a futuristic demilitarized zone that’s a little bit Metropolis, a little bit City-17 and a lot Gary, Indiana.

Colonel Blade heads up an elite unit called—ahem—HardCorps.  I’m guessing this organization’s motto is “enforcing the law in ten million bullets or less,” because though there’s a brief and fruitless discussion of warrants at the beginning (along the lines of “you don’t have one”), no one in HardCorps ever actually bothers to arrest anybody. In fairness, the villains don’t seem like the type to surrender if ordered to.

HardCorps’s principal targets are scientist-cum-businesswoman Elexis Sinclaire and her company, SinTEK Industries. Elexis has invented a green fluid that causes a variety of hideous effects when injected into a human host, and in her enormous-boobed lunacy (more on boobs in a second), she’s on a mission to reshape humanity in a way that would horrify any legitimate plastic surgeon or chiropractor. Freeport City drug kingpin Viktor Radek is also involved, though exactly how is unclear at this point. As Emergence begins, Blade has been taken hostage and injected with one of Sinclaire’s bubbly concoctions. Most of this episode deals with your escape and subsequent quest to depoison yourself before you grow flippers or something.

Nice Cannons

The story, while not exactly Tolstoy, has some nice stuff going for it. Emergence, and Sin before it, explores the dangerous vulgarities of runaway science—a theme common in video games—and does so more effectively than some. The great risk of science, of course, is that when coupled with hubris and a lack of restraint it ceases to become a pursuit of something and becomes merely a pursuit, a blind race to an imaginary finish without pause to contemplate the benefits and drawbacks of innovation or indeed the wisdom of peeping into the toothy maw of the undiscovered. SinTEK, with Elexis at the helm, has lost its Ernst Blofeld “let’s take over the world” direction. It’s just doing evil science in a general sort of way, because with each new evil discovery, something even more evil beckons on the horizon.  But none of it is really put to evil use according to a master plan; Elexis just unleashes whatever her most recent abomination happens to be. Even principal villains like Radek frankly admit that they have no idea what SinTEK is doing, beyond the vague sense that it’s green and will change the world for the worse.

Unfortunately, the potential thematic enormity of this plotline is rather diluted by some of the most sophomoric writing and juvenile characterization this side of Dan Brown. Ritual has what it takes to come up with a rich concept, but the flower is prevented from opening by shoddy characters and amateurish narrative mistakes.  Heavy Metal was supposed to be sexist and puerile—it wouldn’t have been Heavy Metal otherwise, and there was a great game in there as well. Emergence is sexist, puerile, and mediocre.

Elexis Sinclaire, the supposedly sinister villain of the game, is apparently both the CEO of a multinational corporation and a streetwalker. Between the bra-exposing business suit, the bizarre bikini dream sequence and the Pussycat Girl demeanor, it’s not easy to take Elexis seriously as a threat to the human race. Why a male villain can be frightening in a full suit but a female villain has to wear something like this (that’s Elexis in her Sin incarnation) is well beyond my small mind’s ability to comprehend.

And there’s more. Blade’s partner in crimefighting is a flame-haired, potty-mouthed, trigger-happy little firecracker of a rookie named Jessica Cannon (I am not making these names up). Jessica rescues you at the beginning of the game, cracks wise on your communicator throughout and turns up periodically to dispense a most unpolicelike hail of bullets and vulgarity at your enemies. Like Elexis, she’s also everything that’s wrong with today’s games industry.

Break it down with me: young cop, barely out of training. A bit short-tempered. Knows words a sailor wouldn’t. Enjoys shooting people.  Rock-solid sense of right and wrong. Eager to do well on the job.  Assigned, through some freak of providence, to partner with the commander of a super-elite unit: a stroke of fortune that gives her a leading role in the criminal investigation of the century.

Just like the overall plot, that’s not going to win any awards, but we’ve got something to work with. We have the ingredients there for a pretty interesting character with some internal conflict and a thirst to prove herself peppered liberally by self-doubt. Instead, we got a latex-clad, midriffy silicone model in platform combat boots and whale-tail panties.

Look, as a guy, I’m in favor of hot women. And if you want hot female characters who don’t wear much, I’m all for it. But give me a reason. Explain it. Create purpose. What is Jessica’s motivation for dressing like an S&M cosmonaut? Elexis’s motivation for displaying her lacies when it’s not casual Friday? Truth is, there isn’t one. It’s just that the guys at Ritual have apparently never, ever been laid and manifest their lust by drawing women this way. This is sadly true of much of the game development industry.  I can’t help but wonder how much better Emergence would have been if they’d spent more time discussing level design and less time wistfully pondering what the characters looked like naked.

Jessica Cannon escapes total ruin thanks to the power of actress Jen Taylor’s voice, and Ritual should be thanking its stars that they signed her. Taylor—best known to gamers as Halo’s wry digital vixen Cortana—is frankly too talented to be working in video games, and her performance in Emergence saves Jessica from offensive insipitude and actually creates a pretty likable individual with whom you can somewhat identify. Jessica is an important enough character that by paying attention to Taylor’s performance you can ignore the crappy acting and self-referentially infantile goo slathering the rest of the game.

Unoriginal Sin

Ritual has been around for quite some time despite a long record of retail mediocrity. Much like the equally second-rate Raven Software, their survival is based on a savvy nose for recognizing and partnering with industry bigwigs like Valve and id. As a business strategy, it keeps them alive, but it does little to counter the fact that they’re not wildly talented as game designers.

Every scene, every section of every level, in Emergence shows signs of liberal borrowing from other games. There’s a fight in a crumbling dock/warehouse zone straight out of Painkiller.  A top-of-skyscraper running gun battle that Max Payne did first. A climactic encounter with an aerodynamically dubious fighter plane lifted from Half Life. A series of collapsing-catwalk/crane-use puzzles originally found in Half Life 2. At the end of the day, there is almost nothing in Emergence that’s unique.

Level design is good but lacks brilliance. The designers of Emergence made fine use of large outdoor environments, and their work shows lovely attention to detail and a willingness to develop complex, nonlinear levels that take advantage of elevation and hidden secrets.  But there’s almost no manipulation of the environment, no use of physics, and few if any original locales to be found.

It’s also insanely hard if you move the difficulty slider even a micron to the right. Enemies shoot with such accuracy, and do so much damage, that in many cases you’re dead before you realize you’re being shot at. There’s an advanced statistical system designed to dynamically reduce difficulty when you’re getting your ass kicked and increase it when you’re dominating, but it never seemed to do anything for me.

It’s important to recognize that there’s nothing truly bad about gameplay. The problem lies in the fact that there’s nothing memorably good, either. Sin Episodes is going to have to deliver much more if it hopes to be remembered as one of the first games of the episodic content age. All eyes are now on Half Life 2: Episode 1, and the Sin people had the opportunity to steal a little of that game’s thunder. They failed, delivering instead a capable episode that is astounding mostly in its averageness.

If They’d Made Their Own, It’d Be Called the “Singine”

Sin Episodes is powered by Valve’s Source engine, a versatile codebase that we’ve also seen in Half Life 2 and Vampire: Bloodlines. That latter demonstrated pretty compellingly that if you lack solid artistic capability you’ll turn out an ugly game despite the engine’s capabilities. This is a big mark in Ritual’s plus column, because Emergence is a very pretty game that uses the graphic prowess of Source to great effect.

Wide, sweeping outdoor sequences are interspersed with highly claustrophobic interiors, all packed with vivid colors and rich textures. Though Emergence is serious, the artists managed to put little touches of visual humor here and there to remind us that it is still a game.  And they also dodged the drabby metalism of so many science fiction games without making it Fantasy Zone day-glo.

The game’s available for purchase over Valve’s Steam network, and the entire process was so easy that I’m now sold on episodic content for games. Click, click, credit card number, preload, click, click, wait until the official release, click, play. It’s that simple. Luddites can also buy the game in a quaint boxed form.

Emergence is perfectly stable and will run quite nicely on any computer that managed Half Life 2—which itself was very forgiving of midrange systems.

Steam purchasers have the option to download the first Sin, now optimized for XP. This game was beloved by critics, rich people and few others; that is, those who had the jobs or money that allowed them to play on the supercomputer it required. That’s amusing now, when you consider that Sin used Quake 2 technology, but for the time Ritual pushed the engine farther than anyone had expected it to go. The result was apparently a great game that no one could play. One of these days, I may have to give it a try to see what all the fuss was about.

Steerpike, Who Can Write Five Pages About a Three-Hour Game

You may have sensed, despite my obliqueness and wordy, recursive sentence structure, that I feel ambivalent about Emergence. The only true disappointment, aside from the brevity, is that it was apparently written by a thirteen-year-old boy. There’s otherwise nothing broken, flawed or even unpleasant about the game … nor is there anything that will curl your toes. It is tofu. It is unbuttered, unsalted popcorn. It is oatmeal. The first Sin episode is flavorless but also quite harmless.

Yet despite that, or perhaps because of it, I will buy the second, and the third, and so on, meaning Sin Episodes will wind up setting me back nearly two hundred dollars. I’ll be doing it because I’m a sucker; once I get involved in a story, no matter how clichéd and awful, it’s almost impossible for me to stop until I see how it comes out. This is a personality foible that has condemned me to a life of insipid television dramas, bad web comics, blatheringly pretentious novels and dull video games.

There’s also just something so bite-sized about episodic content, so consumably appealing, like little binary Vienna sausages. Digital distribution may never replace retail sales, and episodic content may never become the standard for all games, but the future of both is startlingly bright. Sin Episodes is among the first to fling itself into that future. Though common in its gameplay, it is also enjoyable: had it been ten bucks instead of twenty, I’d be raving. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Ritual Entertainment Publisher: Valve Release Date: May 10, 2006

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

1.2 GHz Processor (2.4 GHz preferred) 256 MB RAM (512 MB preferred) DirectX 7 capable graphics card (DirectX 9 capable preferred) Windows 2000/XP/ME/98 Mouse, keyboard Internet connection

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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