The Mystery of the Nautilus Review

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Mystery of the Nautilus

Review by Jenwith commentary by Mike Phillips May 2002

Do you fancy yourself a real man? A big game hunter? How about a big pixel hunter? The Mystery of the Nautilus is a veritable pixel-hunting African safari of a game, and if you are a master of monitor minutiae, a scholar of the screen sweep, a fearless finder of photons … somebody stop me!

Helga, please stop her!

Okay, if you like looking for little teeny hotspots on a great big screen, then this game’s for you. Ah, you query, surely she exaggerates? Fear not, dear reader, say I, I shan’t lead you astray.

You surely shan’t, Jen. T-bot Interactive introduced a new concept here. Pixel hunting is redefined in this game, as you literally are hunting one pixel at a time.

When first I began playing Nautilus, I was ever so disheartened.  I could not progress past the very opening part of the game because I did not locate the precise point to point my pointer, not just once, but twice, to find the needed items to continue.

I know those items well. Thankfully, Dreamcatcher included a “First Five Minutes of Gameplay” in the miniscule manual, the teeny twenty pages, the dwarfish document … somebody stop me!

But I am a patient gamer and my only other option was to struggle for another five hours trying to install the game I had really hoped to play instead of playing this one that was all loaded up and ready to go. No real choice there, right? So I buckled down to some serious stipple scouting and sallied forth.

I considered elective bypass surgery as an alternative, but I too eventually followed Sally Forth’s lead and stippled along with sincerity.

Turns out the game wasn’t so bad after all. Sure, it has its highs and lows, but overall I wound up having fun with it.

A brief opening cutscene shows your character going AWOL from an exploratory submarine mission to investigate the find of a lifetime, the Nautilus, lying on the sea floor. He climbs aboard and finds himself trapped, unable to open the hatch to which his minisub is docked. This is the only third-person part of the whole game; from now on it’s man against machine, through your eyes.  So you get your bearings, interfacewise, and quickly figure out how to open the first door. That was the easy part.

Henceforth you attempt to escape from this machine, all the while exploring it, full of awe at this unique creation Captain Nemo had wrought. His specter appears from time to time to ruminate upon what went wrong or to crow about his achievements.

Beyond a doubt, the premise for the game was a solid one.  I only wished the designers had included more of Nemo’s notes, or visions of him explaining in more depth the reasoning behind what he had done, to expand the plot. Instead, they resorted to cheap tricks seemingly to lengthen the game, a horrible idea.

The Nautilus was an experiment gone badly awry. The onboard artificial intelligence had begun to think for itself to some extent, its main goal being the preservation and security of the Nautilus.  In order to protect the ship, the computer had been killing off the Nautilus’s sailors in the most devious of fashions for the most minor of transgressions, and the rest of the crew abandoned ship and left it in an undersea location where they never expected it to be found.

This artificial intelligence is still alive and well, and she is your nemesis. At first she thinks you are Captain Nemo but it doesn’t take long for her to realize you are an intruder. She is, of course, entirely mechanical, but tracking her down and doing her in may prove to be your undoing. She is sneaky, she is relentless, and you are trapped fathoms underwater with only her for company.

You continue to unlock new areas of the Nautilus, sometimes in a race against time to defeat the security mechanisms, other times trying to avoid collisions and other disasters. Don’t get me wrong, this is in no wise an action game, but there are many parts with time limits and you will die and die often.

All of the puzzles are mechanical, and all are logical. You never do something and wonder what was the point; you generally have a clear idea of what to do if not how to do it, and a successful action usually results in an immediate, clearly visible result.  There are exceptions; one of the megapuzzles involves setting up a booby trap for an evil robot, and in that case you take actions because you can, not because you know what will happen.

My feelings differed a bit here as I found the puzzles a bit … well … puzzling at times. For me, the megapuzzle you mentioned was brilliant. There was a very subtle clue given as to its solution, but you weren’t quite clear as to its execution until the trap is almost entirely set. It was an inventory-based, MacGyver-type puzzle if you will, my personal favorite—scavenge for seemingly useless items lying about and combine them in such a way as to accomplish your goal.

Yet not long after that, there was a puzzle whose solution was quite ridiculous. If getting a shock from a wire brought about a decline in your health meter, surely the way you had to open a particular door should have meant instantaneous death … but it did not—your character suffers nary a scratch.  Beyond that, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in metallurgy to realize how inane the solution was while aboard a submarine.  I’m a picky, prudent puzzle postulator … what can I say?

The Nautilus floor maps are laid out in a way that makes sense, and the areas open to you at any one time are always small enough that you don’t get disoriented. The game is very linear; once you solve all of the puzzles in a portion of the ship and move on to the next, there is no going back.

There are many timed sequences, but they are fairly lengthy for the most part, and you can save at any time during the middle of them. Generally I found myself playing these through twice, once more slowly with a focus on figuring out what to do and where to do it, then restoring an earlier save and taking the required actions quickly and creating a new save, leapfrogging in this fashion throughout the entire sequence. Doing it this way always left me with plenty of time but the resultant repetition was not my cup of tea. I must admit, however, this was a very suspenseful game as a result of these, and after two or three of the longer timed sequences, I felt a sense of urgency even in the untimed parts of the game.

Great minds think alike; too bad there aren’t any great minds included in this review. I played the game the exact same way, and unfortunately it sucked most of the fun right out of it. Nothing reminds you more that you are simply playing a game more than having to traverse through numerous screens to save/restore your game. A quick-save/quick-restore option would have helped tremendously: one keystroke and the deed is done. Twenty-four save slots was also something I didn’t care for—if an adventurer must deal with death sequences, an unlimited save feature should be included.

A note to adventure game designers: Please scrap the timed and death sequences! I found the untimed sequences much more suspenseful. When that horrid timer kept popping up, it was obvious that I had to save often, and thus the immersion factor was gone. When the music reached creepy crescendos, it was the fear of what the defense system might do to me that got me immersed.  The threat was self-induced—every sound had me panicked; a leaky steam pipe had me wondering if it was a trap. Yet whenever that timer reared its ugly head, ho-hum, time to do the save/restore dance once again.

The music serves well to heighten the suspense, too. Nautilus actually has some of the better music and sound effects in the low-budget game arena. The music changes from room to room, and sometimes the transitions between pieces were jarring. Other than that, no complaints. The music never gets in the way of the game, and often it adds a lot to the experience.

The only voice acting in the game is from the Captain Nemo ghost character and the Nautilus nemesis. Your character does not speak, but he does keep a journal that pops up on the screen in the form of a PDA whenever an entry is made.

The interface is, quite frankly, awful. Your inventory consists of a backpack at the bottom left of the screen. That in itself is not a bad thing, but onscreen panning happens when you move your mouse toward the edges of the screen, and every time you move your mouse over to the inventory, your viewpoint shifts quite a bit while your pointer is on its way down to that corner. Also, only three inventory items are shown at any one time, and it’s difficult to put something back in the same slot where you got it (you have to hunt that pixel, too), so you wind up just putting it back on the backpack itself, which presents a nice big target.  But when you do that, the item goes to the top of the heap, so to speak, and you have to constantly scroll through your items as they are rearranged. This would be tolerable in most games, but when I was trying to find something in a hurry in this game, it was a big pain in my big butt.

The inventory management was a bigger pain in my bigger butt.

Your inventory sits next to your PDA, which is also visible onscreen at all times. The PDA is where you go to review notes and diagrams, as well as save and load games. There are a couple other features of the PDA that only get used once each in the game. But the PDA has the same room-spinning problem as the backpack. All of my saves had pictures of the floor to remind me where I was.

The cursor changes according to what actions you can take, which is a beautiful thing … in theory. But sometimes it got stuck on, for instance, the “use an item here” cursor, and then I had to quit and restore an earlier save to get the stupid stuck cursor to change back to the smart useful cursor.

There were a couple other little glitches, too. In one part of the game, for example, there is a room where you get blasted into oblivion by a fat red laser beam if you aren’t wearing the correct item. I went in there 20 times and died 20 times, and then I put on an incorrect item and was able to go in when I shouldn’t have been allowed yet. This resulted in some confusion on my part because I hadn’t gotten to the point where I was supposed to be in there, and it just wasn’t happening for me baby.

All of these are fairly minor complaints. On the whole, I will say the game ran very well. The installation offers five different options, one for each flavor of Windows that Nautilus will run under. The game ships on one CD, and the full install takes about 545 megabytes of disk space. After that the CD is accessed only for the cutscenes. Aside from the little loading delay in launching these, the whole game played smoothly and crash-free throughout on my aging Windows 2000 computer.

I played it under Windows 98 SE and encountered no bugs.  Some sound acceleration slider manipulation was required to eliminate crashes to the desktop or complete loss of sound on my part. Aside from that, no problems at all, thankfully.

The Mystery of the Nautilus could be improved by some bigger hotspots and fewer timed portions, but on the whole I’d say it’s a worthy expenditure of a few adventure gaming dollars.  I got many hours of entertainment out of the deal. It is in no way a gold star effort, but it is well worth the playing if your distaste for pixel-hunting and -killing doesn’t get in your way.  Some parts are done extremely right, and the wrong things, while wrong throughout, are relatively minor irritants. Besides, these days you just have to love a game with no mazes in it.

Please don’t give them any ideas, Jen—the next iteration of Nautilus may contain timed mazes with death sequences if you make a wrong turn! I can’t be as lenient in recommending this game. The somewhat gauzy graphics can be attributed to budgetary constraints, but many of the mistakes in this game had nothing to do with funding, but rather were simply poor design decisions. Perhaps if you are a die-hard adventure gamer looking for a new fix, it is worth the time. If you are a more general gamer looking for a quality title, there are far too many gold star efforts on the shelves right now to bother with this game. The End

The Verdict

Jen:

Mike:

The Lowdown

Developer: T-Bot Publisher: Dreamcatcher Release Date: March 2002

Available for: Windows

Four Fat Chicks Links

WalkthroughPlayer Feedback

Screenshots

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System Requirements

Windows 95/98/ME/XP/2000 PII 350 MHz 32 MB RAM 8X CD-ROM drive DirectX compatible sound and video cards

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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