Resident Evil 5: Versus Comments by Kristan Reed

@ Kangarootoo

That's fair enough but I don't think anyone really cares where the new data comes from, they just care about when it was ready. If it's on the disc to be unlocked then it was ready for the games release and should have been included with the game. I know we can get into all budget talk and whatnot, but I couldn't be arsed :)

Excellent job avoiding the spoilers. Shame about the screenshot of Wesker and Jill.

Why, if it was on the disc, should it be included with the game? Just because it was ready in time? What if it was ready in time, but was always meant to be offered as DLC, and the mere fact it was on the disc was to save the consumer (ie: you) from having to download masses of information in order to access it (for instance, if the game was completed ahead of schedule. As unlikely as that would be...)? If the versus mode was on the disc, but revolutionised gaming and offered 100 hours of extra content, would you still complain about it? Would you still expect it to be included with the original game?

I'm 100% with kangarootoo on this. Location of data has nothing to do with anything.

The only questions that need to be asked are: "Is this any good?" and "If it is any good, is it worth the money offered?" That's it.

@redneon
@sneetch:

"That said, coders have gotten less and less concerned with memory..."

Application coders are becoming less and less concerned with memory but certainly not game coders (take it from one). With the advent of in-built memory management and GC into most managed languages these days they don't really need to, either. Low level concerns like that don't need to be considered when developing most applications.

Well yes, people who code for console and other devices with limited memory have little enough wiggle-room so therefore they can't be wasteful but, in my experience, in-built memory management and GC have just made people think they don't need to worry about memory management which is the main reason why simple applications end up either using ridiculous amounts of memory or simply leaking memory and is precisely what I was talking about. Knowing how the memory management or GC works is enough to avoid most of those problems.

Whether or not you need to be concerned does, of course, depend on the application you're developing but as the vast majority of developers in the world are developing applications rather than games and those applications are increasingly wasteful of resources I stand by my statement. :)

LOUD NOISES!!

oh and screw you capcom. Online co-op is all the multiplayer I need or want for this game until you give us 'Dead Rising - like' controls.
havent finished it yet, refuse to play it single player, have to wait for my brother to have free time too so we can finish it :P

@dk0

A friend of mine avoids reading articles about certain games or films if he adamantly wants to avoid any risk whatsoever of a spoiler.

Seems like a fair plan to me.

@OmagnusPrime
@sneech

I'm a relatively young coder, but I still hugely appreciate efficient code, even more so once I started working with embedded and low-memory devices. But you're right, many people these days have little appreciation for anything vaguely resembling efficiency, seemingly thinking it's acceptable to allow hardware to hide their laziness.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks that: I thought I was just turning into an increasingly grumpy old man, now I see that it's not just my age-related grumpiness. ;)

I've been developing software for over 13 years now and the quality of the code I've seen produced by my co-workers ranges fantastically, some code absolute travesties, others truly get what it means to develop code and design and develop some beautiful work, which then gets shoe-horned/integrated into the travesties forming this hideous mish-mash.

So while redneon is undoubtedly right that people in the games industry (especially console developers) are more cautious about their memory usage I don't think there's some sort of universal law that the game industry produces more efficient code than the more boring business side: I dare say a fair share of hacking occurs (and not the good meaning of hack, the bad one) the terrible quality of a lot of launches would support that.

@Grogmonkey

"The only questions that need to be asked are: "Is this any good?" and "If it is any good, is it worth the money offered?" That's it."

Holy cow. Its like I've been cloned :D



And can people stop with the Anchorman quotes. The joke is old, its tired, let it sleep so it can manage to stay awake through Emmerdale.

Even though we've pretty well covered that location isn't important (+1 to both kangarootoo and Grogmonkey), one thing I wanted to point out: even if the content was on the disc, that doesn't mean it was ready for release. It may have been 99% there, but required bug fixes or additional work to finish off. This doesn't mean that no work was required, or that it isn't worth your money.

It amuses me that Capcom could have saved themselves all this nonsense just by waiting until the game was released to announce that they were working on DLC. Like it or not DLC is part of the way the gaming industry works now, and any sensible company will start planning and working on DLC before the actual game hits retail shelves (not least of all because the game has to go gold and be mass-produced some time before we as consumers ever see copies), but just because they started working on it before you got to play the game doesn't entitle you to the work for free.

To echo the sentiment again: The only questions that need to be asked are: "Is this any good?" and "If it is any good, is it worth the money offered?" That's it.

Hey this is a convenient opportunity to ask a question about RE5 - was there a bug in the demo that made it borderline unplayable? It seemed like every time I tried to equip ammo, I'd get stuck in this loop where the game would insist I was trying to trade equipment with the partner. I thought it was me, but then watched a friend have the same difficulty. Frustrating enough to keep me from buying the game. Did I miss some subtlety in the controls, or was this a legitimate issue - and is it present in the commercial game?

@Darren re: "Well I'm always deeply suspicious of publishers who announce DLC to come out within weeks of their games' release BEFORE said games have even been released, as Capcom did with RE5, so I wouldn't be at all suprised to know that RE5's Versus mode is actually on the disc."

You've got to understand how games are staffed during development to realise why this happens. Games start out with a skeleton crew that get things up and running. They ramp up to full production with a full set of staff until they hit a "content-complete" milestone, at which point they suddenly have a shedload of staff that aren't really needed anymore. They just need enough people to fix bugs and add polish. So you either need another project to move them on to, or you could - you know - get 'em to do more of the same. That's why DLC is so attractive for developers - they find themseleves at the arse-end of a project with a whole bunch of staff with nowhere to go and nothing to do. An add-on for a project they're already familiar with is ideal. So, chances are the DLC gets started whilst the game is still being finished, and since it's likely a much smaller project will be ready much quicker, require less testing, and have fewer problems going through the submission process. Net result is DLC ready shortly after game launch. Looks cynical to the consumer, makes sound business sense to the developer.

Why are people bitching about file sizes? Back in the day we used to Spend £30 on a 10byte pacman game :p

I'm baffled by people defending this. When it happens again, we'll know who to blame! :p

Anyhow, if enough people pass on this, then there won't be any point in buying because there won't be anybody to play against.

For me the issue isn't so much that the content's on the disc already. EA's been doing that nonsense for years - and it makes sense to publishers, as they avoid the extra charges of putting DLC up on PSN and XBL.

For me the issue is more about charging for content that 99.9% of games come with out of the box. THAT is exploitation.

@ronuds and others.

I think there are a lot of people attacking Versus mode who haven't actually played it. There should be a distinction between feeling aggreieved at the notion of being charged/charged too much for something and disliking the gameplay. It's quite fun - not likely to win any awards any time soon, but certainly fun.

Capcom can fuck off, I'm saving my money for the Valkyria Chronicles DLC...

arsenal will beat chelsea to win the champions league,
i have forseen it

Actually, no matter if the content is already on the disc, Capcom is written on my black list for the way they try to milk us, customers.
And to those who defend such actions, it won't be long till they charge you for every new patch of X or Y game no matter if all it does is fix bugs.

DLC has an ugly side. I guess whoever has been a gamer for quite a while, so that he can remember how things were before the whole DLC hype, understands the bad things that come along with the good ones. As a customer, I will do my duty and not buy anything that promotes such tactics.

@ronuds

"THAT is exploitation."

I agree that its not good practice, but its not exploitation.

If this extra feature had never been released, loads of players would be perfectly happy with the game that they took home on purchase day.

If you don't like the pricing of this feature, my advice is pretend it doesn't exist. Exploitation indeed.

thinking about it now though...

RE 5 was only 40 Euro in my local gamestop... way below the 60 average...

So I guess you could say, yeah this should have been on the disc, but because it wasn't they cut the price... which I suppose is more than fair....


60 Euro for RE 5 with Multiplayer?

or

40 Euro for RE 5 without multiplayer + 4 Euro extra for multiplayer?

yeah, I think I prefer it the way it is!

"For a few quid you'll get a fair bit of enjoyment, but the fact remains that there's a putrid whiff of exploitation about this one."

Very nicely put!

Its awful. Truely awful. Terrible matching, really shonky menus dumping you back to the beginning if you inevitably fail to match using the quick match function. the actual mechanics are terrible as you cant party up or join with friends which is a shame as it could have been a laugh 2 vs2 with mates.

Plus if the opposition have unlocked other characters you are basically fucked from the off.

Really poor stuff. the worst DLC I have paid for in a long time. I have buyers remorse....

Loved the main game but this really has a sour taste to it.

I like how the article takes care not to spoil who the other Mercenaries characters are, then on the same page has a single screenshot showing BOTH of them, nice and clear. Aces!

i concur with the fuck you capcom comments. this stopped me buying resi 5, so fuck you capcom.

Kanga, you made some great points for sure, but at the end of the day, paying for a game should mean you get EVERYTHING on the disc. You wouldn't pay for a car and find it has no engine, would you?

Fallout's stuff for example, I don't mind paying for as it was clearly not on the disc at the time I brought it.

I would like to play the re vs mode to see what it's like, as I truly loved RE5, but this is a matter of principle, so my wallet stays shut.

@ CountFapula

"Kanga, you made some great points for sure, but at the end of the day, paying for a game should mean you get EVERYTHING on the disc. You wouldn't pay for a car and find it has no engine, would you? "

The problem is the entertainment industry (not just the games industry) have latched on to this "physical" thing. You pay for the disc and box, the game/movie/music is THEIRS (No that's not true - the music biz is getting it's act together actually). They want to dictate how/when/where/ you use it and how much you pay. Therefore it's perfectly fine to sell you "patches" like this to unlock modes.

Quite frankly (and even tho I also shamefully took the bait a couple of times - SF4, DS and a couple of LBP costumes) this "whoring" of game modes (which used to be....you know...IN THE GAME) and costumes (which used to be....you know...UNLOCKED IN THE GAME) is disgusting and the more I see it plastered on the online stores the more I switch off....you know...the online stores..

They should have either released this mode for free or made it just available in a patch.
I pity the fool who wastes their money on this. :)

What annoys me, is that they inject the Achievements/Trophies into Resident Evil 5 for *everyone*, even those who aren't going to get the DLC. Really nice, I had almost all the trophies, now I'm back to 69% because new ones are added which I won't be able to unlock unless I (a) pay yearly subscription fees for online play and sacrifice some M$Points (not going to happen) or (b) put my credit card info up for grabs on PSN (not going to happen either).

If you didn't get the DLC, the corresponding Trophies/Achievements shouldn't be visible, period.

DLC for this game is like polishing a turd. Capcom should either take a beginner course in controls, or just play Dead Space.

Go back to the late 90s and tell a gamer that 2009 would see a Resident Evil versus game...you'd be laughed back to the future.

"any of the kind of match customisation you'd find in most online multiplayer games"

Like CoD4?

Getting dumped into a match with two minutes to go. On Wet Work.

Great job Infinity ward! (y)

@sneetch:

"which is the main reason why simple applications end up either using ridiculous amounts of memory or simply leaking memory"

If you're coding in a managed language with GC and it's leaking memory then there's a real problem ;)

Eurogamer readers in "discussing a review number" shocker.

I'm not sure whether or not the content was on this disc is the issue.

I think people are using this (validly) to explore the line between genuine downloads that are worth paying for and lazy cash-ins. I've never played RE5 (except for the demo) so I cant comment on this example but I have paid for some good value downloaded content and I have been ripped off.

We can't return it if we don't like it and we can't sell it on, so there are problems when the content is not perceived to be 'worth it'. And that, I think, is the issue here.

This is all done to discourage trade-ins - to keep the game DVD in the buyers ownership for as long as possible. It'd be nice if they didn't charge, and did what Criterion do, but even they now have to charge.

It all depends on your game's budget, I suppose.

I see - from a business perspective exactly why you'd do this. It will stop many people from trading in the game ala Devil May Cry 4 or Ninja Gaiden II, once they've finished the main campaign.

They should have released it for free, though. Would have been more effective.

yeah can't see the point of a real player on real player shooter where your freaking feet are nailed to the ground.

Seriously, if Re6 has the same old tired stand and attack controls I will not be getting it. I'm sick of it. It was OK with the prerendered cinematic old games but in 3d shooter world, just don't waste my fucking time.

Time to wipe my arse with my custom made Capcom toilet paper

Played this quite a bit now. Must say i love it. It makes the andrenaline go way up. Gears 2 doesnt do that to me. And you dont know the outcome of a match until the game is over. I hate that some people leave in the middle of a match and the game ends. Capcom should fix this. I dont understand why its possible for the host to kick people out of the lobby in ranked matches either. Want to play with your friends - play player matches then.

I have to ask after the darkfall inaccurate review, that was largly written on bias, and with disputes about the reviewer actually playing the game for any length of time can I trust this review as truth? or is this review actually written by someone with an interest in the product or an opposing one?