Posted by Mark on September 26, 2005

So a guy walks into a bar…

Every once in a while something truly surreal happens.

eBay has changed my shift so I now work nights. I’m not complaining- My schedule is great, but nights are tough.

We’ve got a great crew. We all get along, we all help each other, and frequently people bring in food. Troy’s wife made this AMAZING lemon pie. mmmmmm….

What struck me as somehow ironic is that the six people responsible for running the largest e-commerce site in the universe, responsible for the livelyhoods of hundreds of thousands of people, responsible for a truly global marketplace… We’re all laughing hysterically at a potty joke.

Posted by Mark on September 8, 2005

Rainbow Six: Letdown

Dear Ubisoft:

You would figure that by now you know how to release a game. You would figure by now you’d know how to tell if a game is pre or post beta. You would figure that you would have a way of adjusting the sound volume for different aspects of the game.

Let me illustrate to you what is wrong with your just released game, Rainbow Six Lockdown:

1. No mini-map.

There is simply no way to tell where to go, or what to do. You run around in circles for hours trying to figure out where to go. The truth is I must really suck as an elite warrior because obviously guys that make it into the elite Rainbow Six team don’t NEED maps. That or they couldn’t afford them.

2. No compass.

I guess 3L173 killas like Rainbow six don’t need to really be able to tell each other which direction to go. Here is a classic R6L conversation on Xbox Live:

“INCOMMING FIRE!”
“Where?”
“Nor… Uh… I don’t know, by that truck!”
“Damnit, which truck?”
“The one to the left!”
“Who’s left?!”
“Which way are you facing?”
“I’m facing the truck!”
“Shit, I’m dead.”
“Got him. Dude, he hit you in the back of the head, it was sweet.”

3. SOUND VOLUME.

THERE IS AN OPTION TO HAVE THE RAINBOW SIX “ANNOUNCER” (THE GUY WHO TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO NEXT) COME THROUGH THE SPEAKERS OF THE TV (LIKE EVERY OTHER GAME IN THE UNIVERSE) OR THROUGH THE HEADSET, OR BOTH. UBISOFT DECIDED THAT IT WAS IMPORTANT TO GIVE PLAYERS THE OPTION, BUT DECIDED IT WASN’T WORTH MAKING IT WORK.

So basically the jackass that tells you what to do next SCREAMS into your headset, at a volume that acutally causes pain. You figure the fucknuts on the R6L team might have at least done a DRIVE BY ON THE GUYS THAT DID GHOST RECON 2 AND ASK THEM HOW TO MAKE IT WORK. This is so stupid it’s insane.

You also figure they would have given you an option to TURN THE DAMN SOUND DOWN. How tough could that have been? How many of these games had they already released where this was done properly and wasn’t an issue? [sigh]

4. Gamma

R6L is dark. So dark that you have to use some sort of vision enhancement at all times. So I’m sure the graphics are great, but you never get to see them because you’re constantly in night vision or thermal vision mode. Thermal vision is great, by the way- Your screen is completely blue, but you can actually navigate by it. It’s not like Splinter Cell’s thermal vision where you can’t really navigate by it. You can see hot and cold, but other than that the screen is a uniform blue. In R6L you can navigate by it, thus removing all need to acutally use ANY other vision mode.

Result: The graphics in R6L are basically a blue screen with smudges of red/yellow that resemble bad guys. There’s no point in using any other mode.

Let’s see, what else was wrong with this bag of poo…

Oh, this was the best: The mission commander, Rainbow 5 or some other bozo, SCREAMS IN YOUR EAR: “RAINBOW, EXPLORE THE LIBRARY TO THE EAST AND SECURE THE PRISONERS”

To which every single person playing howls “WHICH WAY IS EAST?”

This game really is a late beta. I have no idea how Ubi could release such a piece of crap. We spent a fair bit of time in the “lobby” of R6L trying to figure out how we’d salvage our $55 investment, and the conclusion was that there really was no way we would ever really boot this game again.

Dear gamers:

Don’t buy this piece of junk game.