Spreading the love!

...and by love I mean bitching.

Today's update revolves around a lesser known company by the name of Tilted Mill Entertainment. They are hereby found guilty of failing to follow through to this end-users expectations. May mighty Jeebus have mercy on their souls, 'cus i sure as fuck won't.

TME(or just TM) released a game known as Hinterland. Hinterland is a cheaper game, typically about $20 but none the less they made hyped up promises and yet failed to live up to them. They promised "continued content updates" to Hinterland and did manage to provide a small Halloween update and another small itemization update, but otherwise they haven't done much o'nothin!

Hinterland is one of those games you play once or twice and think "wow this is a pretty sweet game here!" then you rapidly realize that the replay value is a lot less than you think. specifically, there is really not much difference in game to game. Oh it "seems" there's tons of variables to change with many building choices and varieties of characters with varied attributes to play with, however, by your second game you should start to see that the ultimate end result is practically the same every freaking game. There is way more room in the town than you need to have to pick & choose between character types and the few types that are mutually exclusive can be tested in literally 2 separate games or even in a single game (with very little effort) by destroying an already built structure and building the alternative. The same applies to graphics used in the game. There really is not much variation in what you will see every game as far as enemies go and your allies are as well out of a very narrow list. Weapons & armors have very few varieties as you will use the same items with a different set of random set of stats every game.

Now I know what some of you are probably thinking, "well for fuck sake man, what do you expect for a $20 game?!" and in many ways, you are right! However, not only have TM failed to live up to most players expectations (the two content releases are not_very_noticeable to say the least, and posts can be found on their forums asking "what gives?" with the content) but now there has been some sort of power shift in the ownership of TM (or somthing?no public information that I've been able to dig up here) and Hinterland is being repackaged as Hinterland:Orclords with, according to what limited information is available, is practically the same as the original! So, essentially, take this post as a warning. If you bought Hinterland, you really should take care before buying Hinterland:OrcLords, as you are the guy they are ultimately screwing over. See, the new content in OrcLords is the shit they have been developing for the regular old Hinterland you and I bought and was supposed to be given for free via content releases but has been abandonware for the last 6 months. As always now days, some trouser-pilot in suit has decided "hey, what the fuck are we paying man-hours for free content? fuck that shit! repackage and sell! sell! sell!"

Fuckers.

Empire:TW, yes the AI sucks that much...

Todays amusement brought to you by the comedians over at Creative Assembly.

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/sreply/745519/t/The-Daily-Update.html

So! This game, which has been repeatedly claimed as "finished", has such poorly functioning AI that they are removing a very large complex portion of it to try out a new untested method. Sweet! so can we "officially" call ourselves public beta testers who were dumb enough to pay for the privilege now? Personally I've known I was beta testing a product for quite awhile now but every-time you think CA must surely be done sinking lower they continue to surprise!

The question I'm left with is, if Empire:TW is finished as the Dev's claim and has such a massive and complex AI system driving it, then why months into public release when the game is STILL at best in a 0.90 state are we replacing CA's grand creation with a brand new (very likely buggy) AI?

I would ask this question on their forums, my only method for speaking to the developers directly, yet such question are not welcome there.

Fucking lier's and spinmaster's.

Scumbag Game Companies

Today's rant is brought to you by the letter S, for the Shit game companies knowingly release to the public unproperly tested and malfunctional.

My specific target of bitching is Empire: Total War.
CreativeAssembly released E:TW far to early. If you've bought this game and assuming you were one of the supposed many it worked for, then you already know this. This game is plagued by so many crash to desktop bugs that I have still not been able to successfully complete a Grand Campaign. The crashes are hardly the only thing wrong however, this game is also loaded with deficiencies such as limited troop varieties, piss-poor battlemap pathing,and some of the worst AI to ever grace a professionally produced strategy game. I mean really folks, you (CA) harp on how great your in house testing and Sega testing is but yet nobody noticed the AI couldn't even commit to a sea-born invasion? Same goes for the half dozen unit selection crash bugs.

Now, I'm well aware that the previous paragraph is hardly a revelation to anyone who has followed the game but had to get it outa the way!

Whats pissing me off specifically for today is this latest set of updates from the folks in charge of ETW and more directly this post.

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/sreply/744381/t/The-Daily-Update.html

Oh I'm not whining about the belief some have that they're working on "extra content" rather than fixxing major issues in the game, what I'm pissed about is that these jackanapes are calling these "free units" and treating it like they're doing something nice for us, the gamers. The only thing they're doing is releasing stuff that should have been in the game from the beginning but got left out in the rush. This is a joke. I mean whats next...they going to release the Mughals as a playable faction and claim it as a bonus also? (just fyi as surely not everyone is aware, the Mughals are almost completely done already in the existing game but its locked away.)

Its frightening as a consumer that games in such a poor state of implayability can get such high reviews from game mags and web pages, but i suppose that's what the companies like CA/Sega pay them for. You can say it doesn't happen if you want to, but long ago people notice that writers who give poor reviews on high budget games find themselves offered less opportunities to write about others in the future. Always go by the public opinions on games kids!

Hopefully one day soon legislators will step in and force gaming companies and the vendors that distribute them to accept returns on opened malfunctional materials, only then will scumbag companies be broken from the concept of cashing in on unfinished/poorly tested products with the plan to just patch everything up later.

So it begins...

adieu to all censors!

and fuck you.

So that's how he starts this eh? In the words of Isaac Hayes: "you daaaaamn right"

I've always been one of those guys who thought blogs were kinda lame, like myspace lame, yet here we find ourselves. The reason for this great travesty that is my writing ability is I'm tired of not being able to vent properly on a public forum. I mean, I would not be there unless i had something i felt needed to be said right? I obviously must care about the topic hmm? I have little enough free time these latter days and I'm not posting often vehement feelings on mostly gaming forums for jollys! So, now that you know why I'm here, then the only thing that remains is why the hell are you here?!

If you are indeed still here, I can only hope its because just "maybe" you too feel passionate about the subject of whatever rant you peruse.