dedicated servers • QSF5

13 Nov 2014

Savestate: AAA Sky Falls

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

AAA games faltering

DRIVECLUB, Halo: Master Chief Collection and Assassin’s Creed: Unity are still suffering from technical issues. They have networking issues, graphical glitches, performance drops and sometimes a combination of all the above. And these are just the high profile titles that have severe issues. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has its own controversy over dedicated servers but it’s being overshadowed.

Instead of dwelling on what is happening, I want to know why this is happening. The easy answer is to blame aggressive publishers that want to make holidays. But we’ve seen plenty of publishers make those timelines in the past.

What’s changed for this year?

Although we’re technically a year into the newest generation of consoles, we’re still not out of the woods yet with regards to console transition issues. Seven years ago, the first Assassin’s Creed debuted to horrible framerate issues and bugs as well.

In the case of DRIVECLUB, you can chalk this up to inexperience with networking. For the folks at 343 Industries, I can’t imagine it’s easy to get four titles humming along nicely (even if they’re remasters).

These are just excuses that I’m making up for these developers. They’re not going to tell us why these games are broken but they’ll continue to ask for forgiveness and patience while you wait.

Consumers are paying money for working products and if they can’t deliver a working product within the launch window, they should be eligible for refunds. It might be tough to convince a retailer to take back an opened game, but those who’ve purchased titles from Sony or Microsoft’s digital stores should receive a refund if they so desire.

Also, thank goodness for built-in recording and screenshot functionality.

Mario Kart 8 DLC Pack #1

Over at Nintendo’s little island of fun awaits Mario Kart 8’s first DLC pack. I bought it the dual pack and look forward to trying the new content. I just don’t know if it’s going to be sooner or later.

Random Thought of the Week

I’m addicted to Florida Natural Fruit Snacks.

4 Feb 2014

Battlefield 4 PS4 MP Report #1

by No_Style | posted in: Reviews | 0

Everything written in this Eurogamer summary of the Battlefield 4 situation is true. The game still has its share of game crashes, lag spikes and other bugs that are unbecoming of a release of its caliber.

Is the game playable? What’s there to like or not like about it? Is it really just Battlefield 3.5? Here are my answers

Is Battlefield 4 (PS4) playable?

Yes and no.

2 Jan 2014

Call of Duty: Ghosts (PS4) Review

by No_Style | posted in: Reviews | 0

I have an illness and it involves me buying Infinity Ward developed Call of Duty games despite my disappointment with their previous instalments. The combination of $40 price tag, high trade-in value and short campaign helps rationalizes such purchases but I usually have a singular reason that convinces me to pull the trigger. What was the tipping point this time? It’s a Call of Duty game for next generation platforms and they finally added dedicated servers for console players.

I didn’t invest much time into the multiplayer but it was what I expected. The foundation was strong. Net code seemed to be on point and the game ran at 1080p resolution and mostly 60FPS. However, I longed for Black Ops 2’s feature set. In many ways Ghosts’ multiplayer felt like a step backwards with the lack of Gun Game or other party modes. It’s ludicrous that such a divide exists; each Call of Duty title should be building upon the features that the previous instalment introduced.

7 Oct 2013

Ghosts will support dedicated servers for all platforms

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

I suspected as much. There was no way one of the industry’s biggest franchises from one of the world’s largest publishers was going to stuff a fundamental feature to just two versions of the game.

Infinity Ward’s Mark Rubin confirmed on Twitter today that “dedicated servers will be used on current gen, next gen and PC” versions of Call of Duty: Ghosts. That’s great news for Call of Duty fans and it only took an additional two months to get that bullet point confirmed.

Why did it take so long though? According to Mr. Rubin, he was not allowed to “call out other platforms by name”. By whom? Microsoft? Would they be that petty? Apparently so.

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