Thoughts on the Matter

Here’s a very short review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. For the uninitiated, MW3 is basically MW2 with a new maps and a couple of new game modes.

Graphically it’s outdated, reminding me of CoD4. What I mostly noticed about the graphics were the blurry textures. There’s just no excuse to have this poor quality work in a game released in 2011. Relating to graphics criticism is the lack of an ingame POV slider. This is pretty much essential for any FPS on a PC and while you can use dev console to change the setting, there’s no real reason to omit this from the options. Inserting a new slider to the options menu is not that difficult.

Audio is, well, a bit of a meh. Nothing to write home about, just your standard bangs, booms and aaargghs.

The gameplay itself is solid as expected.

Verdict: Unsurprising sequel to an equally unsurprising sequel. There’s no reason to buy this if you’ve got any CoD game from CoD4 onward.

2.5/5

After the abysmal release of Sword of the Stars II and the subsequent apology from the head honcho at Kerberos, there’s what I call the “Be patient and the turd you bought will turn into a pony” sect of fans making the rounds telling people, especially those who have made it clear that they’ve asked for a refund, to put their faith in Kerberos and their dedication to the game. These people can be found in just about any gaming community for any game and these people are what I call being naive and gullible.

People working at Kerberos Productions are not your friends. Kerberos Productions is a company that makes a product that they sell to the consumer. They advertise their product to contain a certain set of features that the consumer can expect to be available on the product they have bought. Kerberos did not deliver on the promised features and now people are asking, rightfully, for a refund.

This is what should be expected and encouraged instead of being dismissed by the fanboys. It is amazing but I feel like the games industry is the only one where this sort of behaviour is by and large considered as acceptable.

What is even more amazing is that these apologists are ignoring all clear signs of a business that’s not doing well financially and might be going under. Considering the state the game was released in and the following quote from the lead writer of the game:

STATE OF ME PERSONALLY: Possibly irrelevant, but…I have mixed feelings. I’m a mother of two children, and no one knows better than I do that birth is a painful business. Even in the absolute best and healthiest deliveries, there can be a good deal of blood, mess and screaming. And if a birth does not go well, it is dangerous to the child AND the mother.

On the other hand, in game development as in life, sometimes there are times when the baby just has to come out or die. Both my children and I are alive today because when it came to a hard decision, the doctor was willing to use a knife to insure our survival. The release of this game was much the same. It was a thing that had to happen, and because of it the game and the team now have a chance to live that they would not otherwise have had.

You can read from between the lines that if they didn’t get the game out now even in its current state the company would have folded there and then. Considering the state of the game it’s pretty obvious that this game still requires several months of work on it and seeing the above quote makes me believe that in several months there might not be a Kerberos Productions anymore.

And maybe, just maybe, that might be the best thing to happen at this point because it would send a strong signal to companies that releasing unfinished products is not acceptable.

Bottom line: Not asking for a refund for a broken product that’s missing what was advertised is silent approval of businesses ripping people off and getting away with it.

My first post on tumblr start off with a short non-specific rant on the latest Paradox Interactive release Sword of the Stars II by Kerberos Productions.

Before I get started though let me first clear up the fact that I was previously a loyal customer of Paradox Interactive up until the release of Europa Universalis 3. With EU3 they lost any goodwill they had accrued with me at that point. The game was released in such a poor condition that I was, frankly, stupified how a company can stay afloat with such a poor track record.

Now fast forward a couple of years and nothing has changed. Sword of the Stars II was released in an unplayable state and here I’m talking about the actual “intended” release and not the “accidental” (parentheses, hell yeah!) alpha/beta version that they originally put on Steam.

From everything that’s available for us at the moment there’s not much difference between the two versions. One major difference seems to be is that the non-working options menu that was in the alpha/beta is now completely unavailable. Think about that for a second. Just take your time and mull it over. The options menu. In a PC game. That’s supposed to be the retail version. Not available. And this is just the peak of the iceberg! How anyone at Paradox or Kerberos could in clear conscience allow a game so clearly unfinished to be released is beyond me.

While Paradox has a history of buggy releases that take time to fix what we’re seeing here seems to be in a completely different ballpark with its advertised features missing, a huge amount of bugs and broken design elements. Reading the overall response from Paradox makes me think that they’ve invested heavily into this game. What has been surprising is that they seem to be in a much heavier damage control mode than I remember them being with their own releases.

Considering that I enjoyed the Sword of the Stars Complete that I got on a Steam sale I’m pretty bummed that this game seems to be firmly in the DO NOT BUY sector. After all, there’s not many games out there for the discerning 4x space strategists.

You can read more on Sword of the Stars II and it’s release issues on:

Something Awful 
Quarter to Three 
Official Forums at Paradox Plaza