The Omega Stone Review

|Tap-Repeatedly|FFC Archives

           

Riddle of the Sphinx II: The Omega Stone

Review by Mike PhillipsMay 2003

“Embark on an epic adventure that will take you to the ends of the earth … Immerse yourself in an unforgettable journey as you search for lost cities and ancient civilizations. Decipher clues left by the ancients on a cryptic scroll linking the world’s most mysterious locations to a forgotten past and a hidden code foretelling the end of time. Untangle the myths surrounding the riddle in your quest to discover the secret—The Omega Stone.”

If you happen to be of the adventure gaming persuasion, undoubtedly you have a feeling of deja vu upon reading that encapsulated promotion of The Omega Stone. For good reason—it is a blatantly derivative game, a cliché of a cliché if you will.  So what’s the lowdown on this perplexing puzzler? Is it more akin to a favorite pair of comfortable old shoes or a bottle of Sominex disguised as a game? A little of both, unfortunately.

Love it or hate it, those familiar with Riddle of the Sphinx will collectively admit the graphics in that game were … a bit dated … to be polite. Certainly that was a result of it being the brainchild of a mere duo, a wife/husband team, Karen and Jeff Tobler. This go-round, their alias, Omni Adventures, has added a few employees and has more capital to work with, and with their virgin effort of game design now in hindsight, the results are immediately evident. TOS has that certain professional, polished feel not experienced in garage games. By no means am I insinuating this game is wart-free; it has several that could be considered show-stoppers by many.

A caveat to anyone who feels critiquing a game created by an upstart, shoestring development house or holding it to the same standards as established, corporate-driven conglomerates is blasphemy, read no further. Purchase the game now and enjoy it. Once such a developer places a price tag on its efforts, it plunges it into the same pond, lurking with the big fishes.

Now let’s pop the hood and see what makes this dog hunt.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

A full install of the game is an available option to avoid swapping the four discs, which will happen far too often if you balk on it.  The footprint for said install is 2.7 GB, a paltry amount of real estate by today’s standards. However, if you happen to be a bit impoverished drive-wise, factor in some space for a swap file, 248 KB for each saved game (of which there will be many) and 240 KB for each screenshot (of which there will more than there are pending lawsuits against AOL).

Like many aspects of this game, one step forward, two steps back.  Once a disc has been copied to your hard drive, it auto-ejects.  This was a poor idea when first introduced; ten years later, it is inexcusable. Audio and visual cues are enough to understand that a disc has finished loading. Rendering the unwittingly exposed CD tray FUBAR with a whack from a knee isn’t a great way to get off on the right foot with a game—I know this from personal experience.

If you opt for the full install, put the discs back in the box; they won’t be used again. Every game should offer this choice—bravo to Omni for adding this feature.

Another available option is for either hardware or software rendering.  The difference between the two occurs when panning (360 degrees on the horizontal axis, and 180 degrees on the vertical)—there is little degradation of textures when using your video card to do the grunt work. Also, there are two methods of panning, either via moving the cursor to the edge of a screen or revolving the screen around a fixed cursor, and a speed control for each. A welcome addition for those who believe the Anti-Christ (aka Quicktime VR-mode) was the death-knell of ROTS.

A distant nightmare are those wretched-looking rectangular Quicktime 4 videos pasted on 2D backdrops. The FMV now blends into the environments almost seamlessly, and Mr. Tobler gives a fairly convincing stint (albeit short) as Sir Gil Blythe Geoffreys in this iteration. Also gone are the 640×480 muddy graphics, replaced by 640×480 gauzy graphics. In all sincerity, it is a huge leap forward, but still far from state-of-the-art.

In thirty words or less, the musical score and sound effects can be described as, simply, adequate. They are neither stellar nor irritating—vanilla is an appropriate depiction.

Saved games are unlimited, but there is a slight kink involved.  When using the “Save As” option, you are prompted to name the file; however, the “Save” option overwrites your most recent save without warning.

Inventory and screenshots are accessed via a simple right-click of the mouse. Ingenious as it sounds, this is where the game begins to get mired in a pit of quicksand. Inventory items are displayed in a side-scrolling toolbar at the bottom of the screen, showing five items at a time. By the end of the game, one has an abundance of excess baggage, and scrolling through it becomes a chore. A semitransparent grid system would have worked much better for inventory-juggling, as would simply wiping out the unneeded inventory items once the related puzzle has been solved.

Screenshots via an in-game camera are displayed in the same fashion, five at a time, then it too is a scrolling nightmare. There are a staggering number of etchings, glyphs, and scrolls that you need to take pictures of in order to solve puzzles. The problem is, the camera cannot capture the entire screen. You’ll need four shots in order to see the entire screen, so the equation goes: Four multiplied by a gigantic amount of etchings, glyphs, and scrolls, raised to the power of a horrid scrolling scheme, equals one near disaster. 

The only way around this fiasco is to take pen to paper and draw the clues (for we “artistically challenged” types, this is not an option) or to create a shortcut for the executable and set the properties to run minimized. That enables one to Alt-Tab out of the game if using a third-party screen capture application; then again you’ll be staring at your desktop at a grotesquely huge resolution.

One last note concerning the mechanics of the game: be sure to grab the patch to avoid aggravation.

Walk Like An Egyptian … or an Atlantean … or a Mayan …  or a …

During the introduction, we’re back at the Giza Plateau, barely conscious, inside Sir Geoffrey’s tent. He informs us that the world is in grave danger, as he has learned from translating a major portion of the mysterious second scroll. The story isn’t exactly worthy of an award; besides, the people who will play this game are puzzle fanatics, i.e., no plot needed. Good thing as there isn’t much of one, an original one at least. It’s 2014, and Stonehenge is about to be turned into an amusement park (I’m not kidding); the ancients deliberately misaligned the stone formations to signal the end of the world in … yep, you guessed it … 2014. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to save the world. Of course, the Ark of the Covenant, Druids, and Templar Knights get thrown into the mix, as does Atlantis. I’m amazed Dreamcatcher didn’t rename this game Atlantis XXXIV: The Final Chapter. One can hope, but we all know in our hearts this dead horse will be beaten again …  and again … and again …

As the game proper begins, we’re inside the Sphinx. A small, self-contained, somewhat challenging puzzle awaits, then it’s time to trek outside.  Upon exiting the tunnels, the view is nothing short of amazing.  Vibrant colors abound, and looking up at the ominous figure gives one a feeling of actually being there. Lens flare has been added when looking in the direction of the sun, but it does look rather cheesy and is overused. The other locales are just as stunning—initially, they include Chichen Itza, the Devil’s Triangle, Easter Island, and Stonehenge. Deja vu all over again. Despite the feeling that we’ve vacationed at these locales far too often, they are presented with a great deal of accuracy that serves to heighten the mystery involved with their enigmatic existence.

The story is unraveled slowly in numerous journals, books, and letters left for you by Sir Geoffreys and his associates. Yet again there is a problem—the aforementioned gauzy graphics. Deciphering much of the text is an eye-straining task. If you happen to have perfect vision, by the end of this game you won’t.

But a puzzle game is all about the puzzles, so on to that aspect. 

Glyphs and Mazes and Calendars … Oh My!

The puzzle structure of TOS undoubtedly is its strong point, as it should be. Instead of opting for endless, disjointed, twiddle-ware puzzles, the designers crafted a nested approach. You’ll be working on subpuzzles in order to find a clue for a much larger, extravagant variety of bewilderment. This aspect alone should get pupils of puzzling all giddy with glee.

By no means are the solutions easy—it takes an abundance of thought and scouring for clues to solve them. They are, however, very fair. All of the information you need is given, along with some red herrings to increase the challenge factor. No existential leaps away from grounded logic are needed, though.

The downside of using familiar locales proposes a vexing issue.  Upon arriving at Chichen Itza, one finds a book describing the Mayan calendar and numerical system; this information is used extensively when exploring the tunnels under the El Castillo pyramid. Any adventure gamer worth his or her salt should be able to comprehend differential equations using the Mayan system, as we’ve seen it so often.

There are also a few duds included, most notably a hedge maze that has to be traversed twice. It is a fairly simplistic maze, especially for a seasoned player who has been treated like a lab rat searching for the elusive cheese far too often in adventure games.

As inventive as the puzzle design is, the implementation is a polar opposite, perhaps the worst I’ve ever suffered through in any game to date. Although quality assurance testers are listed in the manual, I sincerely doubt the game was actually play-tested by an unbiased team in order to submit feedback on the positive and negative aspects of gameplay.

After gathering clues for a particularly clever puzzle and pondering the solution, naturally one is excited to see if the solution works.  Crash and burn time—to keep it spoiler-free, let’s say basically you have to follow a recipe. What snatches this puzzle from the jaws of brilliance and vomits it into an abyss of mediocrity is the execution. Over forty painfully mundane, tedious, repetitious moves have to be performed to see if you have figured it out. One slip of your mouse finger? Start it over and try again. On a scale from one to ten, the enjoyment level is about a negative fifty.  I imagine working on an assembly line manufacturing those plastic things that keep box lids from crushing a pizza has about the same fun factor.

Turn out the Lights, the Party’s Over

What really turns this game into an overpriced frisbee is the series of puzzles in the tunnels under El Castillo. The tunnels are dark, very dark. So dark that no way, no how, can you play this game until vampires lurk. Pump up the gamma settings for your video card, and you’ll be staring at chalky, washed-looking graphics. It only goes downhill from there, folks—the designers purposely made the node-based movement a maze, and remember this all happens in the dark.

How could one possibly make this scenario worse, you ask? How about having to walk through these tunnels several times in search of a clue that triggers the next event, all while pixel-hunting for inventory items? Yes, it is that bad—game design at an all-time low.

All of this brings up the million-dollar question, or perhaps the thirty-dollar question: is this game for you? If you still haven’t decided, here’s a subjective opinion. If you love solving puzzles, story be damned—go for it, as there isn’t much out there of late. If you’re looking for interaction, character development, and an involving plot, you’re not going to find it here. Want an edutainment game giving factual information concerning locales that are still enigmas to this day? Give it a go—the accuracy of the dig sites will grab you and won’t let go. Want to play a fun game? Run, Forrest, run … run as fast as you can away from TOS!

Simply stated, TOS is a mediocre puzzle game at best. It really is a shame because the designers came so close to crafting a game that would forever reside on your shelf with the classics.  Due to a few incredibly inept flaws, and channeling of energies into creating an accurate game in lieu of a fun one, TOS will fade into obscurity in a few months, if it hasn’t already.

Hopefully, Omni Adventures will continue refining its skills and offer us a third game … but please, give us something unique.  Build it, and they will come. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Omni Adventures, LLC Publisher: The Adventure Company Release Date: March 2003

Available for: Windows

Four Fat Chicks Links

Player Feedback

Screenshots

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge

System Requirements

Windows 98/2000/ME/XP Pentium II 300 MHz or equivalent processor 64 MB RAM 12x CD-ROM drive DirectX compatible video card DirectX compatible sound card

Where to Find It

GoGamer 27.90

Prices/links current as of 11/16/02Links 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.

Pages

Top

Category Archives

Top

Blog Posts

Top

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..

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.