iTunes Movies

A few months back, iTunes Canada received TV shows. Which to date, is a laughing stock. It’s chalk full of purely can-con and I can honestly say I’ve heard of about 10% of the shows available… and I live in Canada! None of the shows I watch are available, so I’ve pretty much written off iTunes TV entirely.

When iTunes Movies in Canada was announced earlier this month, I was skeptical to say the least. Surprisingly, there’s a decent amount of content available from the get-go. But more importantly, there’s actually movies I would watch. There looks to be a couple dozen less than the US store to rent. And just over half of the total amount of movies available. The overall selection looks comparable to what you would see on the “previously viewed” wall at the local rental shop, with the odd “just released” title, but it’s an admirable start.

What got me really excited, is the pricing. New releases are $4.99/$5.99 for standard definition and HD, respectively. While “library” titles are $3.99/$4.99. Compare that to Canada’s only other form of multi-platform digital distribution ((Bell recently launched a digital distribution service for movies, but it uses Windows DRM, so is not compatible with Mac, iPods, etc.)) – Xbox Live Marketplace, which charges a ridiculous 440/580 MS points ($7.04/$9.27 CDN) for new releases, and 300/440 ($4.80/$7.04 CDN) for library titles and you’ll see why this is exciting.

iPhone Cometh!

I wasn’t sure if the iPhone was ever going to make it to Canada. It just didn’t seem like Comwave was going to budge on the trademark dispute. Personally, I believe anyone who snatches “iAnything” should have their business licensed revoked, as it’s clearly an Apple thing. Regardless, they seem to have made an agreement and the hotness that is the iPhone is finally going to be available here in Canada on July 11.

The odd part of this whole deal, is how Rogers is handling it. Apple has made it quite clear that Rogers and Fido are carrying the iPhone in Canada, yet Rogers is playing coy. Someone thought it would be a great idea to go with a teaser campaign leading up to release of price plans. Despite Apple and all news outlets already having let the cat out of the bag. What makes them look even more lame though, is the fact that the silhouette they’re using on the teaser campaign is clearly not an iPhone.

I’m definitely not getting my hopes up at this point for a couple reasons. I’m currently half way through a 3 year contract with Telus, and I’m waiting to see how Rogers is going to price the data plans. I have full faith in Rogers to completely blow the pricing as they have with this marketing opportunity, so until I’m proven wrong, I likely won’t be owning an iPhone any time soon.

I hate posting rants, but I wanted to get something online tonight and since WordPress felt my Crackdown write-up wasn’t good enough for your eyes, well, here we are. WordPress can eat a bag of dicks. In the mean time, I’m going to eat some left over lasagna.

Note: I’m not really that mad. It actually took me about 5 minutes to get a picture where I actually looked angry. It didn’t help that I couldn’t stop laughing.

At the end of September, I picked up an HDTV. One of the first things I did was upgrade my digital cable box to an HD PVR. The PVR was only $10 more per month than the standard HD box, so we (my wife and I) decided it would be worth it. Little did we know, there is a list a mile long of known issues that plague said PVR and it proved to be more of a headache than anything else. For anyone that’s wondering, it was the Scientific Atlanta 8500HD – absolute garbage. It would change set recording times on us, simply not record random episodes, cut episodes up into 3 or 4 files among other ridiculously annoying habits. After trying to deal with it for a few weeks, we traded it in for the SA 3250HD, which is simply an HD cable box. Problem solved, right? Not quite.

The 3250HD has its own issues that almost out-weigh that of the 8500HD. The main problem being that it doesn’t seem to up-convert standard definition channels at all. They look absolutely horrible. Similar to heavily compressed streaming videos you’ll see online, there is noticeable pixellation of the image, miscellaneous artifacts all over the image, poor colour contrast and the channel guide is all pixellated to shit. But probably the most annoying thing about the 3250HD is the fact that the bars to the left and right of standard def. 4:3 channels are grey, not black. Not only that, they flicker from scene to scene, getting brighter and darker depending on the image on screen. I’ve had two Rogers Cable technicians come to our apartment to check things out, both stating that they’re not familiar with the HD boxes within 30 seconds of being here. The first tried to tell me that it was our TV that was producing the grey bars, not the cable box. Even after showing him the setting to change the brightness of those bars on the cable box and demonstrating that a 4:3 movie played via my Xbox 360 produces black bars, he was still insisting that the TV was at fault. His solution was to have the image stretch to fit the screen. You can imagine how this looked given the already terrible picture. Now we have a stretched, pixellated image. Thanks buddy! Being totally unsatisfied with the first technician we immediately called Rogers when he left and requested another one come by that has experience with the HD boxes. The following morning, technician 2 showed up and gave us the “oh, I haven’t really spent much time with the HD boxes” routine. Great start! He spent some time running diagnostics and flipping through different channels and basically told us this is how SD channels look on HD TVs. Even after telling him how much better they looked when we had the PVR. He pretty much just shrugged it off.

Between my wife and I, we’ve had a total of five conversations with Rogers tech support over the phone and the two technicians have come by our home. I’ve also spoken with two different reps at the Rogers Video store just up the street and no one has any sort of resolution for us. We’re stuck with this garbage picture on 98% (guesstimate) of our channels. Needless to say, the only TV I watch these days is the news in the morning (which airs in HD) and the few series Deanna and I watch, but I’ve gone back to downloading the episodes as we’re not around when they air.

So, to sum it up. We’re stuck paying more for an HD cable box that produces a horrendous image with a handful of other annoyances. Remind me, why? Oh right – because we live in Canada and the alternatives aren’t any better.

I would love to hear from someone that’s had a better experience in Canada, or better yet Ontario. Anyone out there? I’m dying over here!

While I thoroughly enjoyed the demo, there were some glaring bugs and missing features that I simply assumed would be corrected in the retail release. Oh, how I was wrong!

Within 10 seconds of joining my first game, I was met by a screaming announcer – “THE ENEMY HAS TAKEN FLAG 4!!!” Holy hell, I was so caught off guard I nearly fell off the couch. I immediately jumped into the Settings menu to turn it down, but to my dismay, no option for it. There were some vague voice related options that I fiddled with, but nothing shut that bastard up. This dude is so loud that you actually hear it echoed as it’s picked up through other people’s mics. When I came home with the retail version of the game, the first thing I did was check for an option for the announcer – no dice. I thought for sure they had corrected this as every match I played in the demo, a handful of people would complain about it. No such luck. Complaining about this might sound petty, but when it wakes your daughter up who’s been sleeping for over an hour, you would complain about it too.

Another major annoyance is the fact that you can’t customize the controls. This wouldn’t be too bad if the game used the typical Xbox layout, but it’s anything but typical. Let’s just say this – duck/prone is the left trigger. Again, I thought for sure this would be an option in the retail game. Disappointment #2.

Since I bought the game, I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I was determined to enjoy this game as I have waited so long to just fucking play Battlefield 2. So, I’m playing along – manning the gun of some dude’s tank. I spot a couple enemies sneaking up along side us between some crates and I start shouting at my comrade to take them out. Dude keeps rolling forward. “Dude, WTF? We’re gonna get smoked!” Sure enough, both enemies just happened to be touting rocket launchers and blew us both to hell. Turns out, the in-game chat system is a little buggy and just doesn’t work at times. Nice.

After a couple days of frustration, I jumped online to see if anyone else was having problems with the game. I found endless threads of complaints about every issue mentioned above and a whole lot more I had yet to encounter. Luckily for us, EA quickly posted a community update informing us that a patch will be released soon to fix the chat issues. No mention of the other problems people had been mentioning, though – that was on April 13.

I let a couple weeks go by before trying to get into the game again. Hoping a patch would be released as promised, but it never came. I fired up BF2 MC once again with the volume nearly off without my headset. The first round was good. I came in first and score like 23 points. Nice! I can deal with this. Then something strange happened during the following round. I wasn’t quite sure what, but one dude’s score was climbing rapidly and yet, he didn’t have any kills or flag captures. By the end of the match, he had racked up well over 100 points without a single kill, death or flag capture. W.T.F? Again, I hit the forums to see what’s happening and it appears some people have discovered a way of cheating the points system without actually playing the game. Well, that was the final straw. To have to deal with some shitty bugs is one thing. But to have to deal with some shitty bugs and people cheating is just out of hand. The game is no longer playable.

A lot of people who were posting on the forums had mentioned that they had contacted EA, either by phone or email and complained about the various bugs and cheating. Once again, they were assured that a patch is on it’s way to correct the various issues. Having waited nearly a month for this mysterious patch, I decided to get in touch with EA myself. The first response I received was not a generic FAQ response, which is super awesome. But still not entirely helpful…

Hi Matt,

Thanks for writing us at Electronic Arts Technical Support. I understand that you are currently having issues with playing Battlefield 2 online and you wish to know if there will be a patch for it. I’m sorry for the frustration this may have caused you. Where did you hear about the patch? Have you found it from the official website?

Please be informed that we’re not informed of any patch for the issues you encounter with the game. If you wish to report cheaters because they affect your online stats when playing Battlefield 2 online, send us the following information so we can forward this to the accounts department and have them check the status of your account.

ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¡Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¬ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’ƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ Your username
ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¡Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¬ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’ƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ The email address registered with the game
ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¡Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¬ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’ƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ Your opponentÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¡Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¬ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¾Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢s username
ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¡Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¬ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’ƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ Brief description of the anomaly

As soon as we receive this, we will be able to assist you further.

As for other issues you encounter with the game, please tell us more so we can learn more about the issues and help you fix it.

Should you require further assistance with this game or other Electronic Arts games in the future, please visit our website and review our extensive Self Help knowledgebase at (http://support.ea.com/).

Thank you,

EA Technical Support

I replied with gratitude and some helpful pointers…

Hi there,

Thanks for getting back to me – I appreciate a non-standard FAQ reply as well. So thank you for that!

Yes, I officially heard about the patch when it was posted on the official BF2MC site on April 14. There were many people stating on the forums that they had talked to EA tech support personel who mentioned a patch coming as early as the day after the game was released. Naturally, I took these claims with a grain of salt.

http://www.battlefield.ea.com/BF2MC/news/view.asp?id=7435ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¦ÃƒÆ’ƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¾Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢ÃƒÆ’ƒƒâ€Å¡Ãƒƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚©=us

If you guys aren’t aware of the issues players are having, you should really have someone take a look at the forums. The majority of the posts are complaining about a handful of bugs that are massively affecting gameplay.

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/forum.jspa?forumID=2164&start=0

One thing for me personally that is preventing me from playing the game is the flag capture announcements. They’re at least 2-3x times louder than the music and sound effects and there’s no setting to turn them down or disable them. My 360 is in the living room and one of the first nights I had the game I was playing online only to wake my daughter who’s room is down the hall and around the corner. If I turn the master volume down to where the announcements are at an acceptable level, I can no longer hear the regular sound effects. I thought for sure this would be fixed for the retail game as a lot of people were complaining about it when the demo was released on the Marketplace. Here’s a post regarding this issue…

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=59055&messageID=508300ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚±ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’ƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¼ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’‚¬Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚ ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¦ÃƒÆ’ƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¾Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢

But by far the worst problem right now is the cheating. People have found a way to boost their scores to ridiculous levels (120+ points in a single match) without a single kill or flag capture. Lots of people talking about this, but here’s one of the first threads I came across from a couple weeks ago…

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=64740&messageID=559858ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚²ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¹ÃƒÆ’ƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’‚ ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’ƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚«ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚¡ÃƒÆ’ƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚²

Aside from that, there’s still the VOIP issues where people can’t communicate at all. I’ve experienced this myself several times, but from what I’ve read on the official site, EA is aware of this.

Thanks again. I hope this issues are resolved soon. I’d really like to play this game.

Matt Brett

The next reply was a slap in the face (notice how they addressed me as well)…

Hello Brett,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Technical Support.

Unfortunately, we here at technical support does not have any information as to when the patch will be released, as technical support is mainly concerned with troubleshooting technical issues. However, we recommend that you visit the official site again http://www.battlefield.ea.com/BF2MC/news/view.asp?id=7435ÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÃ¢Ã¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¦ÃƒÆ’ƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¾Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢ÃƒÆ’ƒƒâ€Å¡Ãƒƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚©= for tentative release dates. I apologize for the inconvenience.

You may also want to check detailed reviews of the game at www.gamespot.com or www.ign.com and www.gamefaqs.com for more information regarding gameplay.

For further assistance about any Electronic Arts games please visit our extensive Self Help knowledge base. (http://support.ea.com)

Thank you,

EA Technical Support

After letting them know how displeased I was with this generic response and requesting to speak with the person who sent the first reply, I received another…

Hi Matt,

Thanks for writing us back at Electronic Arts Technical Support. I’m glad to hear back from you. I’m sorry if I wasn’t able to attend to you before; I got sick so I was unable to check emails for a while. Rest assured as IÃÃâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¡Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¬ÃƒƒÂ¢ÃƒÂ¢Ãƒ¢Ã¢Ã¢â€š¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…¾Ãƒâہ¡ÃƒÆ’‚¢m back and I’ll be glad to attend to you again.

I forwarded your email to one of our senior techs to note the issue and forwarded it to the game developers for them to review and read. As for a patch for this, right now the best thing to do would be to post your comments and suggestions to our forum sites so that the game developers who checks them is notified of this and will be aware of it so they can find a fix for it.

As for now, what I could suggest as a precaution with cheaters is take note of their usernames so they can be reported and we will forward your report to the accounts department for investigation. You can follow the format I provided on my previous response about reporting cheaters.

You may also send comments & suggestions to the public forums. These forums are maintained and monitored by the community leaders and production team. By posting on these forums you will be able to submit direct feedback to the appropriate person. Please make sure that you follow the EA terms of service when posting. http://www.ea.com/global/legal/tos.jsp

I hope this helps and that it eases your frustration with this issue. I sincerely hope we can find a workaround for this so that gamers like you can get back on the battlefield and enjoy the game.

Should you require further assistance with this game or other Electronic Arts games in the future, please visit our website and review our extensive Self Help knowledgebase at (http://support.ea.com/).

Thank you,

EA Technical Support

And that’s where it stands. I guess it’s good that my email was forwarded to their tech team and the game developer, if it in fact was. But the comment about posting on the message board really angered me. Clearly, the complaints made on the forum are not reaching the people they need to. Or they would have known about all of these issues already. I waited weeks before contacting EA and in that time, saw hundreds of posts complaining about the state of this game.

At this point, I’m sick and tired of waiting. I’ve lost any interest I had in the game and am going to sell it and pick up something else. Oh, New Super Mario Bros. next week!

You may have wondered why I hadn’t done a review of Battlefield 2 Modern Combat yet – there you have it.

/rant

Shut up! Shut up! Just, shut up!

I’m in the market for a capture device so I can grab video from consoles. I have it narrowed down to a few that I have to order as no local stores carry them. I was in a local independent shop the other day and as I was making my way towards the checkout, I decided to ask if they had any decent capture devices. They normally only carry Allinwonder’s or those cheesy firewire PCI cards. Sure enough, that’s all they had. When I told the guy what I was looking for, he immediately jumped into a pitch for this 9800 Allinwonder. I stopped him in his tracks immediately as I’m not a fan of ATI – had some wicked bad experiences with them in the past which resulted in me taking a picture of my ATI card amongst some rotting food in the garbage and sending it to them with some carefully worded hate mail. But anyway, the guy just would not let it go. He was determined to sell me this 3 year old videocard. As I’m walking away he jumps in front of me with this Pinnacle firewire PCI card. The rest of the conversation went something like this.. oh, and keep in mind, the entire time I’m trying to get around him so I could fuckin’ leave!

Dude: This thing’s great, it has 2 firewire ports so you could capture from 2 sources at once.

Me: What? No you couldn’t. And what console has firewire ports?

Dude: Oh, well you could use this adapter which has every input imaginable.

Me: Does it have component or s-video? Or just composite?

Dude: All of them! And it even has RCA!

That’s when I pushed my way passed him and booked it out the door. I was looking at the thing while he was bullshitting me and it only had composite.

Asshattery at EB Games

There’s an EB Games just up the street and most of the employees are good, honest people. They play games and I can usually get some solid answers out of them. This new guy however… not the quickest bunny in the forest. As I’m walking out the door, literally, I had the door open – I looked back and said jokingly, “You don’t have any 360s do you?”

Dude: We do actually! We have 2 Core units. They’re $100 cheaper and you don’t have to spend $129 on a harddrive.

Me: But the Premium package which is $100 more comes with the $129 harddrive plus a bunch of other stuff.

Dude: Yeah, but you don’t need it anyway. Just the other night I took my memory unit over to my buddy’s place with 3 demos on it.

Me: Really? What demos? Geometry Wars and shit like that?

Dude: No – Fight Night, Quake 4 and Project Gotham Racing 3.

Me: You’re talking about the 64 MB memory unit, right?

Dude: Yeah, it’s only $30 and is better than paying $12…

Me: Dude, there’s no way! I know for a fact the Quake 4 demo is over 300 MB.

Dude: No it’s not.

Me: *long pause + deep breath* Yeah it is. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about and should probably be flipping burgers instead of spouting bullshit to customers.

I made my exit and as I was getting in my car, looked back to see 2 people that were waiting in line walking out the door empty handed. No doubt, they had been coaxed into buying something that didn’t suit their needs by this red haired asshat.

For my own piece of mind, I asked a friend to look up the sizes of the demos he mentioned and sure enough, that dude had no idea what he was talking about. Fight Night = 486.44 MB, Quake 4 = 600.55 MB (I was a little off!), Project Gotham Racing 3 = 1.25 GB! Hah! You would actually need 36 memory units to hold those 3 demos.

</rant>

I think these experiences may have just turned me into one of those guys who, when asked if they need help, instantly replies with a sharp “No!” Maybe I should just stick to shopping online?

While we’re on the subject – why can’t we customize our experience? I’m not talking about changing the rims on your ride, but how the interface is presented and how we interact with it. Every application I use on a daily basis, whether it be Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Thunderbird (email) or MSN Messenger can be customized – how they look, act, what menu/toolbar items I see and even how things are laid out. In a game, I have absolutely no say in the matter. If there was a standard set of UI preferences – things like “auto-confirm redundant, annoying alerts” in NFS Most Wanted, the experience would be far more pleasant. After all, we are talking about user experience based on our interaction with the user interface.

Hardware

It seems no matter what you put in your case or how much cash you drop on it – you never reach that stage where you can simply fire up any game you feel like playing and get the best experience possible out of it. There’s always tweaking to be done and settings to be changed. Especially the first time you play a new game. Generally, I find the first 15-20 minutes are spent tweaking settings and trying to find the best configuration for my system. Meanwhile, I’ve had to endure a dozen or so loading screens and butchered the opening sequence of the game.

There are ways this can be avoided, of course. But it takes extra work that developers apparently don’t feel is worth their time to invest in. I’m talking about auto-configuration after testing your system’s hardware. I’ve only seen a handful of games that actually include an auto-detect for visual settings, but of those games, only 2 come to mind that really worked. Half-Life 2 was the first. After waiting close to 45 minutes for it to install and verify, I thought I was in for another 30 minutes of tweaking, but that wasn’t the case. The video settings were auto-detected and had been set to the recommended values for my system. Not only that, but I didn’t have to go back once to change anything. F.E.A.R. took this a step further and actually runs a quick benchmark on your system and gives you an average, high and low framerate report before you play. Again, never went back to change anything. On the other end of the spectrum – among those games that do have an auto-detect but simply don’t work. The Call of Duty franchise is the worst culprit I’ve experienced. Even now, when I select ‘optimal settings’ it sets the resolution to 640×480 and most details on medium when my system is over 4 times more powerful than the minimum required setup. I wish I could say this was improved in Call of Duty 2 – or better yet, the United Offensive expansion pack, but this is not the case.

Media Types

Why in the fuck am I still opening games to find 5 miserable CDs instead of a single DVD? Have DVDs not been around long enough to make the switch? Are DVD drives not cheap enough yet? I’m completely floored by this! Gamers are expected to spend $800 on a videocard, but not $30 on a DVD drive. Maybe it’s production cost? I realize CDs are cheaper than DVDs – but when you factor in printing, it has to work out to be at least close to the same if not cheaper to burn and print a single DVD over 5 CDs.

“Please insert the disc labeled ‘CD 1′ to play”

To make matters worse – after sitting there swapping CD after CD while installing, you’re expected to insert a CD every time you want to play the game. This used to be easy to get around with no-CD patches, but with the inclusion of the god awful anti-piracy software they’ve been using lately (Starforce, I’m looking in your direction), this is no longer possible. Well it is, if you’re willing to jump through hoops for an hour or so to get it to run – usually includes manually unplugging your optical drive(s) each time you want to play. And if this wasn’t enough of an inconvenience, there’s still games being packaged with 5 CDs and no case for them – paper sleeves instead. What do people do that don’t like to hang onto the boxes do with those and how do you access them easily?

A few games have got around the mandatory ‘insert CD’, which I’m happy to see. But there is a price. Half-Life 2 runs through Steam, which checks with their server and verifies your game each time you want to play. Wouldn’t be a problem, if it didn’t take a minimum of 5 minutes from the time you click the icon in your start menu until you’re actually playing the game. City of Heroes is the only game I’ve personally seen do this well. I guess since it’s an online-only game, they verify you when you login.

Controls and Shortcuts

Can this be standardized – PLEASE? If not the controls, at least shortcuts to common functions like quicksave and quickload, and even screenshot. Nothing worse than playing a game for an hour only to find out when you were hitting F5 to save, it wasn’t doing shit cause they decided to move quicksave to another key.

I go through this every few months – where I’m almost ready to give up PC gaming. Then Half-Life 2 comes out… then Battlefield 2, then F.E.A.R…. PC as a platform will always have those games that tower above the rest and lead the pack. That’s about the only thing that keeps me hanging on to this expensive and frustrating hobby of mine. Consoles never seem to have those titles that just blow you away and are so far ahead of the curve – whether it be from a graphical standpoint or technology. Even now, the Xbox 360 is almost upon us and the reviews that have been rolling out are very promising. Call of Duty 2 received the same score from GameSpot on PC and Xbox 360 which is almost unheard of. But let’s put that into perspective – Xbox 360 is at about the same level as PC is now. What’s the life span of a console? 3 to 4 years? Think of how far the PC will have progressed in that time. Or better yet, compare a current PC to an Xbox.

I really wish I could just let it go – pick up an Xbox 360 and never look back. But I just, can’t, do it! I’ve tried so many times and failed each and every time. If anyone has some advice for breaking the habit, so to speak – I’d love to hear it! And since we’re on the topic – anyone planning on picking up a 360 next week?

I downloaded it right away and fired up Half-Life 2… nothing. Steam signed in, I got the ‘preparing to play Half-Life 2′, then nothing. It just sat there. I checked my running processes and hl2.exe was running at 18 MB but the game never started. After troubleshooting for a couple hours (which included reinstalling Steam and HL2, running a spyware scan and virus scan) I found a post on the Steam message boards where a couple users were complaining about the same issue. It turns out that IconPackager (the application I use to change my icons) is the culprit. I know what you’re thinking – something along the lines of ‘WTF?’ My thoughts exactly. Sure enough, after uninstalling IconPackager, HL2 started right up. Unreal! But this isn’t where the story ends. Over the past couple weeks, every single time I shut down or restart, my soundcard driver crashes and has to be shut down manually. Since removing IconPackager, this problem seems to have disappeared.

So what’s the deal with IconPackager that makes it fuck with your system? It prevents a game from running and crashes a driver. All of this from an app that is only suppose to change my icons. Ok…

So, what’s the difference between the game that was rated ‘Mature’ and the new version that’s rated ‘Adults Only’? Sexual intercourse. No, not the mass killing. Not beating down prostitutes and stealing their money. And definitely not the disgusting, racist comments that spew from the mouths of the ignorant characters in the game. The lead character Carl, can have sex with his girlfriend after successfully completing a mission… only if you have the mod installed that unlocks the minigame.

To quote the South Park movie – What’s the big fuckin’ deal, bitch? I really can’t wrap my head around the fact that no one has a problem with all these other things that are right there, in the game, all the time. And that this whole deal is over CJ having consensual sex with his girlfriend.

To top it all off, let’s not forget how horribly bad San Andreas looks. It’s not like you’re watching some sexy, realistic scene here. It’s more like two people who are made of bricks rubbing against each other. After all, CJ doesn’t take his pants off. Last time I checked, that was a requirement if you’re planning to do the deed.

I watch the news as I scrape my eye crust out every morning and I swear, I’ve got their local news brief down…

The heat wave continues as we reach close to 40 degrees when you factor in the humidity and we’re not going to see a break any time soon.

Another smog alert for Toronto and the GTA, so make sure you take it easy if you have to be outside and a warning goes out to children, the elderly and those with respiratory problems.

Ontario topped another energy consumption record yesterday…

Again, none of this is news and whatever you watch, read or listen to – they’re all telling us the same thing. Conserve energy and water wherever you can and try and keep vehicle use down to a minimum. The city of Toronto actually has a 3 minute per hour idling control by-law in effect with a maximum fine of $5,000 – yet on a daily basis, I see dozens of people idling for no good reason.

Just yesterday, Hannah and I made a stop at Toys R Us on the way home and ended up parking in front of Lincoln Navigator – you know, one of those gas guzzling, giant SUVs that soccer Moms like – with the windows up, AC cranked and no one in it! Oh wait, upon further investigation I discovered there was someone in it… the family dog. Roughly 20 minutes later we came out and it was still there.

Tonight after picking Deanna up from work, we stopped at Sobey’s to grab a few things. As the automatic doors opened in front of us we felt a blast of cold air that made us all say ‘Whoa!‘ in sync as if it was rehearsed. We made our rounds and by the time we were done (only spent $14 so we weren’t there long) we were all practically shivering, it was that cold in there.

This last example is great! Ready? This morning as I was mouthing the words to the local news report, I took a double-take when I glanced past the reporter at the luscious, full green lawn she was standing on. Are you kidding me? The people that have been telling the entire Country every day for the past 2 months to conserve, conserve, conserve - have quite obviously been watering the shit out of their grass. I haven’t seen green grass for months!

Yesterday was yet another record breaking day with energy consumption up to 26,160 megawatts. When are people going to smarten up and do their part? People need to stop being so wrapped up in themselves and things they think are important and look at the bigger picture here.

We’re doing what we can to conserve. We’ve kept our AC set to medium, even on the hottest days. Deanna’s been using the run off from the air conditioner to water her plants and flowers every night and we only turn on lights when they’re needed. This is my first week working from home and I’ve been spending my days in the bedroom (furthest room from the AC) with the blinds closed, fan on low and only a desk lamp.

It’s really frustrating and quite astonishing to see the number of asshats that just don’t care. Do everyone a favor, hang up your ignorance and do your part. It might be a little inconvenient, but it’s not forever. But it quite possibly could be, if we all don’t get our shit together.