Microsoft Reboots Two Classic PC Games 275
An anonymous reader writes "Ever since it launched the Xbox, Microsoft has had a fickle relationship with Windows as a gaming platform. On one hand PC gaming is a major driver of hardware and operating system sales, but on the other hand the PC is inherently less secure than the Xbox console, with piracy much more likely to impact sales of a PC title than a console one. Games for Windows Live has been an attempt to bring some of the success of Xbox Live to the PC, and while many games have shipped with support for Games for Windows Live, it hasn't exactly been a favorite of PC gamers. After all these half-hearted efforts, the last thing anyone expected was for Microsoft to announce new PC-only reboots of two classic game franchises, Flight Simulator and Age of Empires. But yesterday it did just that, announcing a massively multiplayer version of Age of Empires and a new Flight Simulator called Flight. The big question is whether Microsoft can make Games For Windows Live relevant in a market where Steam has taken hold, or if it's too late."
Re:GFWL, no thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow i must be tired (Score:1, Interesting)
Doubtful. Not many people use screen resolutions that low or in 5:4 aspect ratio any more.
Re:Reboot is such a poor word (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GFWL, no thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? Both Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age shipped with only a disc check; no online activation at all,
I believe for Dragon Age you get some additional shit if you bought any of the DLC. Which I didn't, so... Great game, looking forward to DA2 but give the fucking in-game DLC peddlers a dollar sign instead of the usual exclamation mark. I'd ask for an option to completely get rid of them, but I know I won't get it.
Their own fault in the first place. (Score:4, Interesting)
I never stopped playing AOE (specifically AOE2:Conquerors). I *DID* stop playing it online because MS just sucked the life out of the multiplayer aspect by locking it to a single vendor for online matchmaking and then destroying that facility when they got bored of AOE.
So, what's here for *me*, someone that wants to play AOE but was forced by Microsoft's enforced-obsolescence to stop playing it online unless I wanted to faff about with third-party software or entering IP addresses? I won't believe it won't happen again, and I don't believe that a new MMO "reboot" will be anywhere near as good as the AOE2:Conq. And are we talking about a monthly subscription model or can I actually *OWN* the game (or at least my copy of it) forever?
In the meantime, playing the classic version over a private VPN it is.
Re:GFWL, no thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
The only game I have tried through Games for Windows Live is Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II and it has yet to ever be able to connect - it always returns error 0x81051911. The troubleshooting steps Microsoft has you go through include everything from port forwarding a half dozen ports to resetting your TCP/IP stack, yet I can play any other online game with no issues, including connecting to X-Box Live on my sons console. GFWL is a POS and I won't buy any other game that requires it.
Believe it or not I bought Bioshock 2 through steam, and it still required GFWL. I had to go through all that and more just to be able to save my progress in the game. Included in this mess is having to type in a CD Key twice for a digitally downloaded game (once to install the game, and once to tie it to my GFWL account).
Never again. Ever. YMMV, but all two games I've ever purchased that required GFWL have required googling for a solution to their DRM hassles to get the single player up and running. Never ever again.
Re:Games for Windows Live (Score:3, Interesting)
It's particularly sad that PC gaming once meant free of hassle, except perhaps for a CD check. Now it means rootkits and spyware. I have to make sure a game is not sold by Blizzard, is not Steam Powered, and is not part of Games for Windows before I know that I can actually just install and play the game that I paid for.
Yeah I miss the days of Doom and Duke Nukem. Install the game (copies to hard drive), modify my autoexec.bat and config.sys (did this once and added a menu), reboot into Game Mode when I play so I have more than 520kb of conventional (I got up to 740, which is good because Wolf needed 720K and that required some tricks since video sat around 640k). Other than that, sometimes I had to figure with a Setup.exe program or make sure SET BLASTER was right. When I'm done I can reboot into regular mode so Windows has its EMM386.sys and Himem.sys and everything loaded properly, and so my CD driver loads.
It was so easy back then. Nowadays you pop a game in, Windows crashes. You fight with it, it installs, runs, crashes. Update your video card driver, it works but no sound. Update your sound card driver. Fiddle with DirectX. Change some graphics settings and sound suddenly works (WTF?). Now try to uninstall the game and the uninstall fails. Now try to listen to an Audio CD and find out your CD drive is disabled because the uninstall corrupted some weird DRM. Also you have 50 viruses now since the DRM opens a hole in your firewall and lets people remote in and it has bugs and you're now a giant stretched anus waiting for hackers to put it in your ass.
I always loved my NES though. Sometimes I had to reboot it if I unseated the cartridge, but other than that it was just insert cart into deck and press play. Then Sony came up with these CD things for games and it all went down hill with load times and shitty games due to not enough primary storage. The Nintendo 64 could have a 64MB cartridge, which means you could have a 2MB program, 6MB of sound files, and 56MB of level map and textures and models and God knows what else and have it all in one GIANT level (the cartridge is on the memory bus, so everything is effectively "in RAM"). The Playstation had 640MB of storage, but you could load like 2MB into RAM at a time... smaller levels, less detail, load time, etc. And then CDs get scuffed or dirty and read 6 or 8 times before things load, or just fail and the game is dead...
Re:GFWL, no thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
I got GTA4 working to my satisfaction (memory-editing hackery and save-game hacking in single-player mode is fun, and if I paid for the game, who's to say that I can't/shouldn't?) by using a replacement for the GFWL DLL which stubbed out the icky stuff. Sadly, such a thing isn't available for the entire GFWL-based library.
Re:GFWL, no thanks (Score:2, Interesting)
The patching is the biggest issue in my opinion, Steam lets you run the main client in the background and have it download stuff while you do other things on the PC. GFWL requires you to run the game (and I think you can't even minimize it without interrupting the download) while it's downloading the patch as if your computer had no other purpose than displaying the title screen of a game while you wait for a gigabyte or two to pass through your crappy consumer internet connection. The game keeps running but you cannot play it because closing the GFWL overlay aborts the patch download. I srtill wonder why in hell's name publishers voluntarily cripple their games with that garbage.