Bungie Penalizes Ragequitters, Console Corporate Hacking, and Making Your Fable 3 Villager? – Welcome to the column that is the president of Ragejoiners of America known as Dare to Play the Game.
Most of you will be happy to know that I started a new game this week while finishing off some achievements for Marvel vs Capcom 2. As mentioned last week, I finally broke through the barrier and beat the arcade mode with a Street Fighter themed team. Apparently, I found the formula to beating the arcade mode and then repeated the same method to an Avengers, X-Men and even Dark Stalkers team.
The Dark Stalkers team was particularly difficult since there are actually only four characters you can choose from. Morrigan Aensland, Felicia, B.B. Hood, and Anakaris. Anakaris is practically useless and moves with the same intensity of a dead turtle. Morrigan and Felicia are certainly competent but B.B. Hood (who looks like Red Riding Hood) was the big question. As it turns out, the girl has some major firepower (and by firepower, I mean army soldiers come out and shoot up your opponent).
With that done, I completed all of the arcade mode related achievements. The rest exist in multiplayer which I don’t have the patience for or honestly the skill. I’m fantastic at figuring out patterns, but I don’t do so well against these ten year olds who spend twelve hours a day playing the same game. I exaggerate of course, but there are games I rather spend my time with as you will see below.
This is Alodia Gosiengfiao. Say that three times fast, I dare you. This girl is pretty popular among cosplayers and has her own Facebook page with over 100,000 followers. She is working on her goal of being a blood elf in the World of Warcraft flick. Now many of us know that a WoW movie is probably a few years off, but Alodia isn’t content with waiting.
So, she took the bold movie and had a recent meeting with Legendary Pictures CEO & Founder Thomas Tull and Sr. Vice President Alex Garcia who will be making the movie, eventually. I’d say she’s got a good shot with that initiative. (and her looks don’t hurt either). Personally I’m willing to put in my name in the hat to play a night elf hunter named Eazymode. The jokes should write themselves.
Hacking
At the Defcon security conference in Vegas last week, a pair of hackers has shown that the humble Nintendo Wii can leave large companies vulnerable to attack.
How? Well, because many companies like to have a Wii in the office for downtime, that’s how. Seems a lot of offices know that controls need to be put in place for things like computers, laptops and phones, but will then leave a Wii just lying around in the common room, where it’s able to connect to the office network.
The hackers showed that it’s quite simple to upload some Malware to the Wii, where from there it can attack every inch of an office’s (or indeed large company’s) network. They also showed how it’s possible to upload a virus to either a Wii or a DS, and jump onto a network using them, with the same end result.
You could of course use another machine like a 360 or smartphone to do the same thing, but the demo focused on the DS and Wii. Those after a more technical explanation, you can check out the demos above and below.
The first question I have is: where is this magical workplace I can play a Wii at? (Nintendo nor affiliate game companies don’t count) Heck, if my work place actually let me read gaming news sites I would be much more productive. Productive at getting gaming news to you guys quicker, not work productive pssssh. Anyway, it is hard to believe that somebody didn’t figure out how to do this sooner, we are after all dealing with a product that isn’t exactly the height of network security.
Think about it, consoles automatically log in to the wireless (or wired) network. They then have access to the company’s network. Remember folks, anything and everything can be hacked. However, I would think that if a company was willing to have a Wii for those down times then they would give it the strictest of access and perhaps just keep it offline to begin with. If the company’s IT is anything like mine, seeing a device with the name Wii on the network isn’t exactly going to make top executives very happy.
Fable III
Get a head-start on populating the world of Fable III with the Fable III Villager Maker, an easy way to add a new non-player character to your game without having to be a virtual slut.
If you played Fable II like I did, by the time the game was over, 80% of the non-player characters in the game were related to you somehow. Well you don’t have to be the Genghis Khan of Albion to populate Fable III, thanks to a quick and dirty little character generator you can find right now at Xbox.com.
The character maker establishes your NPC’s gender and then asks a series of questions to determine his or her personality. After that you choose a face and some clothes, and presto, Lady Dave is born.
You can share your creations on Facebook and Twitter, but only by pre-ordering the game at participating retailers will you get the code allowing you to import the character into Fable III when it launches later this year. That means once the game comes out, I can sleep with Dave. It’s just like Weird Science, only I don’t have to wear my underwear on my head. Don’t like Dave? Head over to the creator and see if you can do better.
I’m still playing around with the idea that I want to pre-order this thing. Fable is one of those rare games where I have played both of them and loved them. Perhaps something like this (albeit a minor reason) could put me over the top when you take in all of the other reasons. But the idea is pretty neat and it certainly adds an element of hey, that’s my guy (or gal in the game).
Here is perhaps an interesting application for it based on personal experience. In game, I married a sweet, innocent girl and named her Sarah after my wife. We had kids, bought our own house but it didn’t fully represent Sarah as I had felt. So, I went to another town, picked out something a little wilder and married her as well. Yep, named her Sarah too. This utility could actually let me create one wife and not have to worry about keeping up appearances with two.
Interestingly enough, my real life Sarah eventually caught wind of it and I believe I had to chop the head off one of them. So messy. “Yes honey, I would like to go to bed with you…*walk walk walk*, do you have to go to bed with an ax? *SLICE*. *sigh*, I hope the blood doesn’t ruin the luxury bed. Those things aren’t easy to acquire you know.
Halo Reach
If you’re one of those who dashboards out of multiplayer after getting backstabbed or headshot three times, take note: Bungie told Xbox 360 Achievements that it wants to remove ragequitters from the population so they won’t ruin everyone else’s fun.
Brian Jarrard, the Bungie community director, said the measures will be “one of the new things people will be excited about. [Ragequitting] isn’t exactly cheating, but it creates a really negative experience for everybody else in the game.”
Jarrard didn’t get much more specific, just said that they have advanced ragequit recognition heuristics to make sure they’re not cracking down on people who accidentally drop their net connection. The penalties themselves were not discussed, so it’s unclear whether this is a ban, a timeout, or a special temper-tantrum lobby where ragequitters can ragequit on each other.
“We actually have new tools now to detect that and eventually, people who do this habitually will actually be penalized,” Jarrard said, “We want to be able to remove them from the population so they can’t make everyone else keep having a bad time.”
Just so long as I can still ragequit out of singleplayer.
I admit, I’ve ragequitted before. It’s probably only happened a couple of times, but it is something that can happen. We gamers tend to be a competitive bunch and nobody likes to lose. However, over the years it is something that most people tend to mellow out about. Anyway, it is mostly a good idea that the people at Bungie are coming up with ways of weeding out the angry players of Halo.
Ragequitters do take away from the game. Your team might be doing fantastic minus the one ragequitter and his quitting might unbalance the game enough to make your team lose. Or he might just start shooting up his teammates and then quit. However, it can be a bit hard to swallow if you are learning the game and somebody shoots you ten times in a row.
It can happen, especially if you just started the game and naturally are pitted against the online equivalent of Master Chief. It’s a good idea, just need to make sure that you don’t penalize the people who just give up. Again, you shouldn’t ragequit but defeat (and multiple times) can be a hard pill to swallow. So hopefully, Bungie’s promise of advanced recognition heuristics is truth in advertising.
Screenshot from Reach. I won’t be preordering it like I did the last one. Sadly, I was only good with melee weapons (sword, hammer). I never ragequitted in that particular game but I wasn’t anything special either.
Normally, I would be quite excited to play a Castlevania game but it seems like this one lost its way. It’s the same basic story of any Castlevania and even looks like a typical 2d adventure. However, the experience mode of prior games like SOTN has been completely stripped out and multiplayer has been added as well. There are plenty of characters to choose from such as Alucard, Jonathan Morris and Shanoa but as reviews have mentioned it seems to be Castlevania Lite with multiplayer. Blah, and most likely not worth 1200 points.
Well, it was a genre basically untouched by the WiiWare service, so I reckon it was coming. Fantasy slots will give you 6 different adventure themed five-reel games and also include classic Cherries and Diamonds mode. Among the included games are Gold Rush, Power of Zeus, Pirate Cove, Wild Safari, Excalibur and the Rising Sun.
Play well enough and you will be able to buy items for your VIP room. There are unlockables as well as achievements in this one. Honestly, if I had 700 points right now (I think I have 500), I might be tempted to buy this one. Electronic slots (you see traditional slots all the time) are an area of casino gaming that’s been largely ignored. Hopefully I can remember this one the next time I buy a points card.
It’s really hard to take a hunting game seriously when it mentions immersive hunting experience and its only 500 points in the same paragraph. However, you can choose from a rifle or a crossbow and be able to shoot deer, hares and kites. Kites? Isn’t that what lightening is for? Tie a key to the end of it and there you go. *It’s a type of bird* Ohhhh, see that’s why I have a research staff. Anyway, please don’t let me stop you the reader from going out there and killing poor little innocent rabbits. Did I mention I owned a rabbit at one point? You heartless bastards.
PS3
Disney Sing It: Family Hits
Wii
Disney Sing It: Family Hits
DS
Mystery Tales Time Travel
Monster Rancher
Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Big Birthday Adventure
Calvin Tucker’s Redneck Racing
Honestly, if you wanted to totally ignore this section for this week, I would understand. Really, what’s being released? Dora the Explorer and some Disney Sing It. *snore* *snore*, oh I’m sorry. I’ve got a column to finish. Turn in next week when Madden 11 comes out. It’s really sad when the best thing in the release column this week is the mention of what’s coming next week.
As mentioned in the header, I actually started a game this week and then proceeded to babble about Marvel vs Capcom 2 for about three paragraphs. Anyway, I was looking for something that not only I could play but get my wife into as well. I went through my pile of shame and went back to a familiar face: the world of Lego. Or more importantly, we decided to give a go at Lego Indiana Jones (360 version).
This was probably inspired by the fact that we played Lego Harry Potter a few weeks ago at a local Best Buy. Unfortunately, we will probably wait for Potter to come down some in price before purchasing it. Upon booting up the game, it did feel like an old hat. We finished up the first four levels and plan to try and play it each weekend, at least for a little bit. During the week, we’ll screw around in Free Play trying to gain those ever so wonderful Artifacts (or better known in Lego Star Wars as Mini-Kits).
We enjoyed it a lot actually. There were a few frustrating points but thankfully nothing we couldn’t work through. I think we already have close to ten achievements. Nothing special sure, but it was nice to hit a groove and play a game together again. I can easily seeing us beating this game and working the achievements like we did with Lego Batman and Lego Star Wars. It was also wonderful to play something new. Hopefully you kiddoes out there find something new this week to play too. Enjoy.
As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)
