Archive for Western RPGs

Motion Sickness

November 1, 2008 · Filed under Gaming, Western RPGs · Tagged ,

Well, we got Fallout 3. He bought it regardless of my qualms, so there’s no harm done, I suppose. However…

I can’t play it.

This is the first time my motion sickness has gotten in the way of a game that I actually want to play. It would be fine, if, say, it was the kind which appeared after a while, and I could ignore for a while and went away not long after coming off the game. But it’s not. It’s the kind that rears it’s ugly head after I’ve been playing for 5 minutes, and kicks me to the floor with severe nausea and headaches and dizzy spells. Which doesn’t go away until I’ve slept it off.

I still don’t know what causes it. As of today, there are three games that cause my motion sickness to go severe: Fallout 3, Duke Nukem 3D, and any 3D Spyro game. Oh, and two-player on Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise. The only thing these games have in common are that they’re 3D. That’s it. It’s highly frustrating.

As far as I can tell, there is no real solution to motion sickness; that it can only be ‘managed’, and to be honest, that upsets me greatly. It means I will never be able to play a game I’ve been anticipating for a long time.

I can only see it getting worse, to be honest. As games get more advanced, the less I will be able to play of them. I could miss out on what could be the greatest game of all time because it makes me sick. I’m already missing out on Fallout. I already refuse to play Mario Galaxy because I know from experience with Sonic Adventure 2 it will make me sick. What else will I not be able to play?

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DRM, or how I have to choose between something I love and my principles

October 31, 2008 · Filed under DRM, Gaming, Western RPGs · Tagged , ,

I absolutely adore Fallout. This may or may not come as a surprise to you depending on how well you know me. Today, Fallout 3 is released, and I was going to go right out and buy it (or rather, get the boyfriend to). Last night, however, I had an unpleasant shock.

The PC version of Fallout 3 comes with SecuROM.

I absolutely refuse to buy anything that has SecuROM included in any of it’s versions.

Now, I’m going to hazard a guess that few of you know what SecuROM does. Let me explain.

SecuROM is DRM, obviously designed to make sure pirates can’t do what pirates do (it doesn’t work, but that’s beside the point). There are several versions of it, and the one that has me riled it the one that installs itself on your PC without telling you it’s doing so. That’s bad enough as it is. However, that’s not all it does.

If you have any number of CD burning software or “piracy” software like Nero or Daemon Tools installed on your PC, SecuROM won’t let your £40 (~$80) game run. Nero is often installed on your PC by the manufacturer so you don’t have to depend on Windows native software to burn files onto a CD. But SecuROM assumes that instead of backing up the data from your hard-drive that you need to keep but don’t have room for, you’re making copies of games and distributing them to your friends.

It’s also next-to-impossible to uninstall without expert knowledge of PCs. For the average user, the only way to get rid of it is to reformat your PC. This is because it digs itself into folders that you’re probably not even aware exist. It gives itself permissions that only your operating system should have. And more insiduously? It pretends it hasn’t. If you realise it’s been installed, it only appears to have been installed to the same level as the rest of your software. This website explains it far better than I ever could.

I am going to say at this point that at the moment, Bethesda aren’t so stupid as to use the full version of SecuROM. At the moment, they are using the CD-check version. -But.

“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.” -Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

I’m not even going to pretend that it’s anywhere near as serious as that, but the idea is the same. If I do not speak out against a lesser version of SecuROM, how long is it before they start using the worse version?

I do not want them to think it’s ok to treat me like a criminal. But if I refuse to buy Fallout 3 on principle, then I will be losing out on a game I’ve wanted for years, maybe the game of the decade, and my protest will fall on deaf ears because most people will buy it anyway because it doesn’t have the version of SecuROM that invades your PC.

I have two hours to decide whether or not to stand for what I believe in regardless of what others are doing.

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