SWAT 4 Review

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            SWAT 4

Review by SteerpikeApril 2005

Fun with Advertising

I worked in advertising for many years before moving on to my current career. In addition to utterly crushing my soul, it taught me discernment in the matter of quality creative across all media. While there’s no doubt that a healthy dollop of luck is involved, a game studio’s ability to reliably and consistently produce good creative is a major factor in its survival probability. This is why Irrational Games is in high summer while studio after studio goes gentle into the good night.

An ignorant person might accuse Irrational of creative retardation, because it has become well-known for gobbling up existing franchises and releasing new sequels. This started with System Shock 2 and will carry on with the upcoming Bioshock. Tribes Vengeance is another example. The trend continues here in SWAT 4—these games spun off from the Police Quest franchise, owned by Sierra.  But Irrational has also demonstrated its ability to produce excellent original creative with Freedom Force. Even so, the grouchy might claim that Irrational needs someone else’s cleverness before they can produce.

The grouchy are in error.

I was enjoying SWAT 4—the first of the franchise that I’ve ever played—but it wasn’t until the middle of the game that I came to really admire it. This is due not so much to how good it is, though it’s quite good; it’s because one of the best print ad campaigns I’ve ever seen appears during a mission in a dot.com office. Here is a campaign that will never run, created for a fictional company, used as nominal window dressing for a mission so lengthy and so complex that I suspect 93% of gamers won’t even notice it … and yet there it is. Irrational is not lacking in the creative department, licensed franchises or no.

The nation’s Special Weapons and Tactics units are the ones who deal with truly deadly police encounters, and in SWAT 4 you get to command a team (called an element) of the best, making the city safe for taxpayers one barricaded psycho at a time. SWAT 4 does a very good job of making you think and act like a SWAT cop—working in extraordinarily dangerous conditions with highly unpredictable opponents, helpless innocents, and exactly zero margin for error. Overall, this is another success for Irrational, with just a few problems marring an otherwise top-notch shooter.

Keepin’ it Real

SWAT 4 and Tribes Vengeance both use versions of the Unreal engine, apparently sufficiently modified by Irrational to warrant a new “Vengeance Technology” moniker. Unreal is an amazingly versatile engine—actually it’s more of a complete game-development environment than a 3D renderer—but it may not have been the best choice for SWAT 4.

The fact is Unreal 2.0 is getting a bit long in the tooth. Graphics in SWAT 4 aren’t exactly subpar, but they’re noticeably inferior to some alternatives. Minor tearing, seaming, and collision problems plus modest polygon counts contribute to the vague but persistent sense that SWAT 4 would have been a lot better if it had used Half Life 2‘s Source engine. Add to this the very peculiar decision to implement only token Havok physics and you have a game that manages to simultaneously seem both modern and dated.

Meanwhile, the sound is awesome, and the chief reason for its awesomeness is the extraordinary talent of Eric Brosius, who joined Irrational after Looking Glass fell apart in 2000. Brosius is one of the most incredibly gifted sound designers ever to grace gaming, able to manipulate player emotions like so much Silly Putty. His sound design is responsible for the choking suspense of the Thief games, the desperate terror and loneliness of System Shock 2, the operatic melodrama of Tribes Vengeance, the goofball cheer of Freedom Force, and now the gritty urban intensity of SWAT 4. The trick with this game’s audio is the fine line between enough and too much, and as usual Brosius hit it on the nose.

Like a Heavily Armed Village Person

SWAT 4 doesn’t follow a linear storyline (sorry, Jen); each mission is a vignette, a sort of Cop-land novella with no bearing on the others. It’s not the SWAT team’s role to investigate crimes or close cases. They go where other cops fear to tread, pummel the bad guys, and then it’s Miller time, so a multimission narrative would have been contrived. These ministories also allowed the developers to throw in an assortment of environments and mission types without the extreme variance jarring us out of the game.

You get a basic overview from Dispatch prior to each mission, then the element leader (that’s you) gives the team a more detailed briefing on the situation. If there is corollary intel such as a 911 call, you can play that as well. Clues are very subtly embedded in the briefings, so it’s imperative that you listen carefully. Planning is an important part of SWAT 4, though not to the level of Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six. Here you listen to the briefing, decide on an entry strategy, select equipment for the team and go.

The equipment list is varied enough to give plenty of options without being ridiculously huge. Element members carry a primary and secondary firearm, some tactical equipment, and breaching tools for getting past recalcitrant doors. You can equip each officer individually, load one of several presets, or create and save your own. Equipment loadout is a major contributing factor to success. If Dispatch happens to mention that the suspects are wearing gas masks, for example, there’s little reason to burden your element with teargas, while armored suspects will just chuckle at hollow-point rounds.

Depending on the level of difficulty you’ve chosen, you must achieve a minimum score in order to proceed to the next mission. Points are awarded for following procedure and achieving objectives. They’re subtracted for un-SWATish acts such as failing to report an injured civilian or shooting a fellow officer. The nice thing is that you can choose the difficulty prior to each mission, and the “easy” level has no minimum score—you’ll definitely be allowed to proceed unless you or a hostage gets killed during the mission, though that happens a lot even on the easy level.

There is no in-mission save, but in SWAT 4 it’s really okay.  Allowing you to save within a mission would screw up the game. And though I can guarantee that you’ll be playing some missions over and over again, it’s just … not irritating. Perps and hostages are placed randomly but logically inside each mission, and honestly the game manages to stay fun no matter how many times you’ve done a level.

SWAT is the neurosurgeon of law enforcement: a single tiny error triggers the nightmare scenario. The death of a hostage means automatic failure, even if it’s only indirectly your fault, so naturally you have to be very careful about using force. The game gives you an enormous appreciation of how hard this job is, how careful SWAT needs to be, weighing each pull of the trigger even when time is a factor. When SWAT makes a mistake, people die. SWAT is therefore not allowed to make mistakes. Ever.

Which is part of the savor of this game, and what makes it so challenging—there’s a huge dichotomy of intent in that you control a team of deadly force warriors who have to be very, very careful about using deadly force. To reduce the likelihood of accidents, SWAT teams must cuff and report everyone they encounter, even the innocent. Bystanders don’t always get that “on the ground, hands in the air” applies to them as well, but it’s your job to restrain them, even if it means using a taser to do it. You’re also supposed to arrest suspects, not kill them. To aid you in these tasks, the game offers an assortment of nonlethal weapons designed to hurt or disorient.  But there’s that dichotomy again: using them over real guns is tantamount to playing Go Fish with your element’s lives.

Criminals don’t generally employ beanbag ammunition and don’t need to follow police procedure. Pointing a can of pepper spray at a felon armed with an AK-47 is a huge risk. Perps are rarely in a hurry to surrender if it’s a choice between killing a cop or going to prison. Points are deducted if you kill without provocation, because you’re only allowed to use lethal force if you believe lives are in danger—but you usually have less than a second to make that decision, and it’s easy to get it wrong. It’s also easy, very easy, to mistake a bystander waving his arms in terror for a suspect brandishing a pistol. So the less-lethal versus regular-guns dilemma is a major issue.

Less-lethal solutions are really not very effective, and flaws in the positional damage system make using live ammo to incapacitate rather than kill very difficult. In the real world, SWAT teams will cheerfully shoot a suspect in the leg to disable him. You can theoretically do the same in SWAT 4, usually without penalty. But suspects often won’t surrender after being shot, even multiple times, and many manage to sprint away with a bullet lodged in their knee. Worse still, shooting a suspect in the leg or shoulder is almost as likely to kill him as a shot to the head, which is pretty ridiculous. I once shot a suspect in the leg four times, shouting for him to surrender throughout, and he still didn’t; the fifth bullet killed him. I guess in SWAT 4 many humans keep vital organs in their femurs.

Of course, positional damage works brilliantly for your character.  If you get shot in the leg, you hobble around for the rest of the mission; take one in the arm and you can’t aim for anything. I have no doubt that Irrational tried to implement positional damage on suspects, but they didn’t go far enough. If this is a realistic simulation of SWAT activity, then that realism should extend to the fact that shooting a suspect in the foot is always a nonlethal attack and that a seriously injured suspect is almost certain to surrender when ordered.

Zipcuffs: Not Just for Kinky People

You’d think that controlling a squad of four guys plus yourself in real time with no margin for error would be a logistical nightmare of hot keys and wild clicking. Luckily, Irrational came up with a graceful, elegant system that makes element control easy and pleasurable.  They also included a bunch of interface paradigms from old SWAT games in case you like those better.

Your five-man element is broken into two teams of two plus yourself and color-coded accordingly. You can switch between colors with the touch of a button. Even very complex orders can be managed with just one or two clicks thanks to a command menu whose options vary based on where your crosshair is pointed. Also, the most logical command for any given context is just a spacebar away, meaning you don’t have to conjure the command menu to give quick orders. Robust key-mapping aids the process, but even so I recommend a good five-button mouse, because things happen fast in SWAT 4 and it helps to consolidate your buttons. The game has a nice tutorial that guides you through the basics, though I wish it had included more on SWAT procedure.

You can open view ports to the helmet camera of any officer, effectively letting you see what they see. You can also issue commands through these ports, though you don’t directly control any officer other than yourself. In some missions, snipers will position themselves at strategic locations and radio in if they see a suspect—then it’s up to you whether to take the shot.

The element’s AI is pretty solid and their aim is incredible, befitting a SWAT team. They do ignore commands sometimes, and they have difficulty executing a series of unrelated instructions. Also, they occasionally don’t take the most expeditious route to their intended destination.  Overall, though, you can trust your element to do its job and keep you safe. More than once they popped a guy who was about to kill me, often dropping him before I even realized I was in danger. The one thing they don’t seem to do is use their secondary weapons, and you can’t tell them to switch.

It’s harder to judge the quality of enemy AI, because encounters in SWAT 4 tend to be extremely fast and involve a lot of shouting but very little gunfire—your element understands that killing is a last resort. Most of your time is spent locking down cleared areas and scouting your next move, knowing that multiple suspects could be lurking behind any door. I’ve observed suspects do a lot of realistic stuff when they see the element—run away, seek cover and return fire, shout to their friends, even shoot at hostages. There are no glaring failures in AI, and more than once perps exhibited problem-solving intelligence like getting the drop on the element by circling around and sneaking up behind us, so overall I’ll say it’s solid.

Levels were designed in consultation with a former SWAT commander and show excellent attention to detail. The environments and objectives are well thought out, and the specifics of the mission rightly impact your strategy. You can just crash right into a serial killer’s appropriately Silence of the Lambs-ish house because he’s busy torturing a victim and wasn’t expecting you anyway. Meanwhile, a botched robbery at a diamond wholesaler is a nightmare of metal detectors, locked vaults and labyrinthine cube farms, not to mention heavily armed and armored suspects very much aware of your presence. Overall level design is superb, varied, and very challenging. The one common thread in all of the missions is that if you ever get complacent and start treating the game like a normal shooter, you’ve already failed.

SWAT 4 includes tools to make your own missions by altering the specifics and objectives of existing maps. I think there’s also an editor buried somewhere in the file system—there usually is in Unreal-powered games—but I couldn’t find it. Once you wrap up the game, it’s fun to try the various missions at different difficulties and with different criteria for success.

Finally, SWAT 4 also includes a multiplayer component through GameSpy. If you loathe the obnoxious and intrusive GameSpy Arcade utility as much as I do, you may not find this feature particularly tantalizing. Still, multiplayer games are available and very well-executed.  Multiplay in SWAT 4 is a cooperative team effort not dissimilar to Counterstrike. I don’t believe we’ll see a huge SWAT 4 community online, because it will be unable to compete with UT2K4 and other games more well-known for multiplay. It certainly deserves more attention that it’s likely to get. Hopefully Irrational will release some additional single-player levels to keep the game fresh.

No, It’s Not Like the Movie

Personally, I tend to like the idea of games like SWAT 4 more than the actual execution. I lack the patience for overly tactical shooters and find most team command tools obtuse and frustrating.  Not so in SWAT 4—it has probably the best interface I’ve seen for controlling a team of AI-driven cohorts. Perhaps by the time SWAT 5 turns up, we’ll have a really good mechanism for issuing verbal commands via headset. Even without such frosting, SWAT 4 is very immersive and an elegant play experience.

This game should resonate with a very wide audience, and it deserves the widespread praise it’s enjoying. SWAT 4 is tactical enough that your play style will be drastically different from a normal shooter, but it’s not so ridiculously tactical that they forgot to include a game with the game. You will repeat missions many, many times, but, as I’ve already said, it somehow isn’t frustrating—and it makes the 14-mission single-player campaign seem longer. In many ways, SWAT 4 strikes the perfect balance between action, tactics, and challenge.

There’s a one-level demo floating around out there, and I advise you to try it out before buying this game, just to make sure that this is the sort of thing you like to play. The demo mission is a barricade-hostage situation at an auto shop, and it’s probably the worst and clumsiest mission in the game, so bear that in mind while you play and don’t judge too harshly. Still, it’ll give you an idea of what to expect from the whole package.

I really liked SWAT 4. This is a solid offering that should appeal to a wide audience. I’m playing Stolen at the same time, and though both are tactical action games, Stolen is riddled with flaws while SWAT 4 delivers the goods. I’m taking points off for so-so graphics, problems with positional damage, and a very weak Havok implementation, but the truth is these flaws can’t seriously tarnish what’s destined to be remembered as one of the best tactical shooters yet. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Irrational Games Publisher: Vivendi Universal Release Date: April 5, 2005

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3, Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or later) Celeron 1.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz 256 MB RAM 2 GB free hard disk space DirectX 8.1 compatible audio support nVidia GeForce 2 (MX 200/400 not supported) with 32 MB or ATI Radeon 8500 with 64 MB, with Microsoft DirectX 9 driver installed (nVidia GeForce 4 Ti (not MX) with 128 MB, ATI Radeon 9500 with 128 MB, with Microsoft DirectX 9 driver installed recommended)

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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