As many of you know Fallout 3 has already hit shelves and the hype surrounding the game even still is immense. If you take a look a the average review rating for the game you will find that the average rating is staying steady around the 93-94% range. This result from the work on the game is somewhat expected however I find from talking with many friends who own the “next-gen” system that they have absolutely no idea what the game is or what it is about. Coming over a decade after the first release of the game it is expected that many people would have no idea what the game is about. This venture of 'rebooting' a series is not uncommon in many different forms of entertainment. The most prominent sector of the entertainment industry that I can think of that has had reboots of entire an entire series like this has been the comic sector, where it has become common practice when a series becomes either over produced or 'jumped the shark'.

While reboots are not unheard of in the games industry, it is still rather rare. When it has happened it has happened for a good reason, either because the game has some unique value that many other games tend not to offer or due to the amount of the popularity of the game's past or a combination of factors. What has surprised me about this newest reboot is how well the game has been received by Fallout fans. It seems as if the consensus of the fans, reviewers, and newcomers alike is that the reboot was warranted and welcomed. Like with any game however, the game has its faults. If you scan through any review whether it be fan review or critic review you will find the same issues mentioned across all of them. These issues range from things as little as inconsistencies in texturing, collision trigger inconsistencies in sound (shooting wood and making a metal like collision sound), to things as bad as game breaking bugs that cause either a reset or reversion to an older save file.

While they are frustrating to the people experiencing them it seems as if the majority seem to accept them on the basis of the size of the world and quality of the overall experience. It is a valid argument that many people seem to accept as it is very hard to catch every little problem or bug in the game. I have had experience with game testing and I can tell you that it is a fact that one to two million people are much better testers than a 10-100, on average, game testing team. There will always be glaring mistakes in games, all the greatest games have them it's really just a question on whether you can look over them and see the quality that is really there. I am not saying the “bugs are bad” point of view is wrong in the least but you always have to remember when playing any game at all that the people who made the game are real people. These people are just like you and me. They make mistakes, go home to their families every night, and sometimes work multiple jobs to provide for themselves and or their families.

Any person with enough time and effort can poke holes in any piece of entertainment but those people who go about enjoying entertainment like that miss the point. Entertainment is meant to be enjoyed and make you feel like you got your money's worth. If you focus on every flaw in anything in life you cannot truly enjoy yourself with anything. You look at the flaws in everything and then the flaws become the major features of the overall experience luring you down a path of boredom and disappointment. People who test or develop/design games for living will tell you that it is hard to get out of that critical mindset and actually enjoy entertainment in their field. Even John Carmack was quoted as saying “...it is very hard for me to enjoy other first person shooters that I have not made myself because I start seeing things the developer could have done better and then those small errors become giant glaring disappointments” (rough quote). After my testing of games ended I found myself going through the same problems trying to enjoy games because the mindset of a game tester is the ridicule and be critical of errors in a game, which tends to come out of you whether you want it to or not.

I spent a long time trying to get out of that mindset before I could actually get to enjoying games again rather than being so critical about the errors or mistakes. There is the point about the internet giving everyone a voice and turning average people into critics when it comes to entertainment but I find myself recoiling against it because the criticisms that many gamers out there seem to be so caustic or exaggerated. I find myself now agreeing, to a small extent, with Denis Dyack's opinion that we as gamers have become an unruly mob that is ready to cut any game developer's throat at the second their game does not live up to the 'hype train'. There is some truth to the statement that the mob riding the hype train will help you early on but can run you over just as quickly if the product does not live up to the un-Godly amount of hype. There will always be people who slam games on a whim for whatever their reason may be but I hope that the majority changes the way they approach games in the future and remember that nothing is perfect in this world, especially the things we like to consider 'entertainment'.

-

I would love to hear what you think about the issue. Feedback is much appreciated.

As many of you know there has been quite a lot of hype about a new digital distribution service called GOG.com or Good old Games. The service has received rave reviews and seems to be well on it's way to become a staple of the PC digital distribution market. I however have had a completely different experience with GOG that needs to be heard.

I like many other gamers out there was overjoyed at receiving a beta access key to the service after hearing so much chatter and rave reviews about it. The service in the beginning was great. I purchased Fallout 1 and 2 from the store and quickly was already playing the games within 30 minutes of purchasing them. Everything ran smooth for me and since I had the two games that I really came there for I never really went back to check the site until about three to four weeks later when I went back to it to check to see if their catalog had expanded. It had expanded some and I was interested in buying at least one other game. When I went to login it gave me and invalid username/password error. I thought it was odd as I knew for sure I typed in the right login information.

In that situation I did what we all did – use the forgot password/login information tool to reset the password. However it was now telling me that the site did not have a login with that information. It appeared as if my login information and account completely disappeared. I quickly emailed the company asking for help on the issue. I forwarded all of the information needed to verify that I actually had purchased it and the registration email. I did this over two weeks ago. I received several responses from one person in particular, Peter, who in the latest email told me “I'm afraid there's little I can do at the moment with the tools I have and the information you had provided. I will look into your case in detail and ask the devs for assistance on monday.” It is now Friday and I still have not yet received any notification that the issue is being addressed, mind you this is not the first time I have been waiting for assistance on the issue and have not received correspondence back until I start hounding them and sending multiple emails asking for updates on the issue.

To me this seems like the company itself is not currently staffed well enough to deal with customer service issues associated with the website. I can tell you that with the information I provided it verified, with certainty, that I had indeed purchased both games. There should be no issue re-activating the account and assigning the correct games to the account but this seems to be a bigger issue than just a simple website administration issue. As Peter said in the email he claimed that the developers, not him or any other service personnel, could fix or alleviate the problem. There are going to be people who say that this is a beta and that problems like this can and will happen. The only problem I see with that comment is this is not a beta game or application. This is a beta that involves your money. When a company loses your money and tells you that they don't know where it is, that IS a problem. I hope that none of you who are currently using GOG.com have this problem and hope that those who are soon to be customers purchase with caution.

Update: Problem has been solved as of October 16th.