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This was meant to be a Fallout 3 DLC review
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 31st January 2009
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Comments 51 to 70 of 70
lmao, better then my comeback!
Fallout 3 and no exchanging saved games? im sorry, not bought.
GTA4 was a huge disappointment in not able to share my 100% saved game.
and DoW2 will not be bought by me.
XP was the perfect gaming platform where everything is simple and nothing is being configured by the "big brother".
Vista "Games" folder is a piece of crap, no one uses it and no one will ever want it taking up the few MB of hard drive space. (for the record, im using Vista, and i love it)
when will Microsoft learn that simplicity is what end user wants, NOT over the top holding-hand. eg, the Home group in Win7.
Awww you beat me to the your mum joke :(
Also - LOL
Also - double LOL at av
i personally can't see why so many people are having problems with GFWL. it has worked absolutely flawlessly for me, as well as XBL in fact. the only complaint i have is that it can be a little slow to respond to mouseovers, and that not enough companies are putting their PC games out under GFWL. Call me an achievement whore, but its something i like and actually influences my buying decisions quite a bit.
i'll admit that the GFWL system is still a little clunky atm, even after the big update since the Halo 2 and GoW games, but its an application running on top of a game which is running on top of one of (now, or at least soon to be) 3 operating systems. ideally it would be integrated into the OS ala XBL, or at least part of the platform the game ran on, however it would be a bit complex, and something not many people will stand for (cries about lack of privacy etc will be heard, surely).
also, not sure why anyone was expecting their save games to be stored online. Everything is still stored locally (even with the xbox 360), lately alot of games have been very good about sticking it all in the "My Games" folder in your "Documents" directory. If you dualboot, just make sure your Documents both point to the same folder (can be set in the properties box) and that its a location accessible to both OSs (like a seperate partition/hard drive).
But saying you steal a game just because u hate tre producer is the biggest bunch of bull manure ever! It's just like saying you steal a Zonda because you hate Pagani! Wtf is that?
Back onto other news: Please, Joe, update you photo ;)
bought it legit, with enough points for the next pack, however if things do not improve I doubt I will be doing so for the final one.
I wish GFWL would roll over on it's side and die. It's a prime example of MS trying to do a hostile take-over of a market they don't have a clue how to act on.
I used to adore Rockstar for GTA... Now I pity their greed and lack of quality awareness.
I'm not supporter of "conspiracy theories" but I have to agree with you, absolutely. It seems that MS is trying to convert PC gamers to XBox. Maybe M$ felt too overconfident about GFWL & it's sway over PC gaming and purposefuly screwed it up too soon.
The word "extort" is actually the best description of xbox pricing system.
i would say the contrary actually - GFWL is an attempt to draw xbox 360 owners to the PC by way of offering the same/similar features, or at least some sort of integration between the two services
Secondly, despite GFWL having issues (as big projects such as this unfortunately do in their early stages), I can't believe how most of the posters here on this thread can have the audacity to completely reject it and call it "crapware", compare it to DRM, and say it's "pointless" when meanwhile it's perfectly welcomed on the Xbox Live front. I think we all just need to bite the bullet it for now and deal with it until they iron out a lot of its problems; then can we at least take an objective look at GFWL 3.0 and finally praise it as Xbox Live done right for the PC?
And there in is the problem with PC gaming, companies are allowed to release crappy programmes in barely finished states with the implicit objective to fix it later and we put up with it so the need to improve it reduces and reduces and the drive to get things out the door in what ever state increases.
QFT.
Joe:
Don't write articles in the heat of the moment. You just end up regreting it. No matter how bad your experience with GFWL was you just did yourself and the PC gaming community/industry a huge diservice by promoting priacy. Well done...I never expected to see this kind of crap on bit-tech.
For the record my first experience with GFWL was with the DoW II Beta and I think it's great. Messaging my friends playing on their consoles and using it for matchmaking. It was seemless and never intrusive. What's not to like.
So you didn't see the news about Gears of War's GFWL certificate expiring? The huge complaints surrounding GTA IV's GFWL implementation? This isn't the first time PC gamers have had to put up with this crap - far from it in fact - it's part of a long line of problems with it in recent history. DOW2's match making service is hit and miss, but it is a beta at the moment - it's the best GFWL implementation yet, though.
GFWL has the potential to be great, but it needs to treat PC gamers like people... That means paying for things like DLC with real money, not getting in the way of the gaming experience for no reason (saving games to your hard drive in GTA IV requires you to be signed into GFWL and they're not available online - eh?) and just letting the gamer focus on playing the game they've paid for, rather than having to jumping through hoops just to get it started.
GoW was more than likely an f-up by a human element, like what happened the last couple of days with Google and it listing all sites as unsafe. Otherwise it would be resolved quickly by, for example, MS or Epic issuing a new or renewing the certificate. And though I haven't played GTA IV, from what I've read seems to be mistakes or bad judgements on Rockstar's part. Rockstar made the decision to only allow people to play under a GFWL account. Rockstar were also the one's who made the decision to require players to create an account for their seperate (from GFWL) application. Why can't anyone look at this rationally instead of jumping the gun and assuming its all big, bad Microsoft's fault? More importantly, why can't trusted, rational journalists (such as you, bit-tech) look at this rationally? Or is that an oxymoron, "rational journalist"?
As for the currency used, its much easier to keep with the current "Microsoft Points" system. 1) Its a global currency, and to purchase more in whichever territory is always a fixed price. 2) The Microsoft Points is for your LIVE account, so points purchased can be used on both XBL and GFWL (another form of "global"). I'd in fact implore Microsoft to find some way to use the points for purchasing music and movies too. For them to change GFWL to region-specific currencies, it breaks the way its shared between the two LIVE services.
I, for one, have faith in Microsoft. GFWL 2.0 is a huge step up from its first iteration, and v3 is likely to improve even more. Remember what the original XBL was like? Compare that to what XBL is today, and I'm sure you can see that GFWL will reach the same standard given time, and more importantly, feedback. Without feedback, how do developers know what they're doing right or wrong with a product? Bit-Tech themselves continually show what sort of difference their feedback makes with several hardware products, so why isn't the same respect shown for some of these software companies?
He wasn't promoting piracy. Bit-tech never does. He was highlighting how it's alot easier to install and run the DLC through piracy than it is the legitimate way thanks to GFWL. You would think the platform would be more seamless and easier to use. On the contrary; maybe you shouldn't post in the heat of the moment?
I appreciate your point of view, but it's wrong. If I was promoting piracy then I'd be posting the links - not constantly fighting against piracy in the forums. Hell, if Beth later release the DLC on disc or without GFWL then I'll buy it. As it was, all I was doing was pointing out how futile the whole GFWL thing was in this instance.
You can disagree with my point of view obviously; but if you're doing it based only on your experience with the DOW beta then you have to admit that you're doing it without all the information, especially considering I've used it on a number of games. All that is irrelevant though as the important issue for me here is that you're accusing me of promoting something I actively fight against often - piracy.
I appreciate what you're saying... but it would be nice to be able to buy the right amount of points to buy a game - or some DLC - rather than buying more than is required. Not everyone uses both Xbox Live and Games For Windows Live, so the fact they're global doesn't matter to any gamer who plays games exclusively on the PC. The amount of DLC on the PC is limited, so the benefit of paying more isn't there... yet. That doesn't mean it won't be there eventually and it works quite well on the Xbox 360 - that's years ahead of GFWL though and the PC isn't controlled by one party.
The common interest is Windows, but once you get down to digital distribution there are a whole load of ways to get games legitimately. You've got the aforementioned Games for Windows Live, Steam, Direct2Drive, EA Store and many more. Microsoft wants to control content distribution which is fair enough, but the problem is that there are more established alternatives out there. Had Microsoft come along before Steam got even remotely good (as a platform - let's forget about pricing for one moment), they'd have a chance of gaining that level of control.
Right now though, they just don't have anything compelling enough for PC gamers that will get into the controlling position on 'their' platform (i.e. Windows). What needs to happen is that Microsoft needs to step up to the table with something that is compelling and the development team needs to be bolstered so that goals can be reached faster - that's the only way it'll catch up to - or surpass - the other options available to consumers. Microsoft has the ability to do it, but it's a case of how much it wants it.
Major Xbox Live updates have been fairly slow and the reason for that is there's no pressure on Microsoft to really deliver - they have exclusivity on their own platform, which is something that is not possible on Windows without the anti-trust lawyers getting involved all over again. By the same token, Games For Windows Live updates have been slow too - there's been one major update since its inception and that still has its share of quite serious problems.
I don't doubt that Microsoft can get there... but it's a matter of how long it is going to take and how high the competition's wall is built when Microsoft gets feature-comparable with something like Steam.
IMHO, where Steam falls down is the pricing structure - the prices in the US are pretty good, but they appear to be ridiculously overpriced in Europe. That's where a unified currency (like Microsoft points) would work... as long as the cost of those points remains consistent regardless of the exchange rate.
I've nothing against the idea of GFWL but from the perspective of someone working regularly with software releases, albeit for a significantly smaller number of people, there is no way this should be outside of a scratch or UAT environment yet. That's not even going into the fact that forcing an update to install it in the first place is basically admitting "Oops! We totally screwed the pooch and didn't do any regression testing (AGAIN!)"
I have nothing against MS personally but they qualify for epic fail as you don't get a choice about installing the bug ridden, malodorous, festering heap of parrot droppings that is GFWL at present if you want to play the games. If they gave people a choice or some kind of real benefit from using it (e.g. it worked as intended or there were perks given, possibly free MS points, for testing it) then people would put up with odd quirks and crashes. Instead, we have yet another compulsory massively multiplayer beta test from the powers that be at Redmond.