Monster Month of October 2009

  Posted: 30 October, 2009 18:09

Written by Marty Greenwell
Content Monster

I seem to say this every month: the time has flown by, where did October go?

Plenty seems to have happened through the Monster Month of October, with some major releases going on, and your favourite evil empire gimping honest hard working people’s memory cards.

I started the month participating in the Console Monster gamer score challenge. I never really expected to progress in to the finals, but some of the scores gained through the first round where insurmountable. Either my Kung Fu has weakened since I started gaming many years ago, or else people are spending 24/7 sat in front of their televisions waggling joypads, hammering buttons and gaining weight and spots by ordering take-away pizza to avoid too much pause time.

Have you heard of outside people?

Not that I’m bitter or anything. At least I managed to gain a mildly respectable 1400 odd points, and continue my quest to at least rid myself of all my gaming ducks. And I think I got away with the fact my team was Strange Hopefuls In Theory ;)

My main gaming priority this month has been Forza 3. I’ve long been a big fan of the series, and since Forza 1 came out on the original Xbox, I think it’s made inroads to take the crown from GT as the de facto driving simulator, which seems to have been stagnating since Gran Turismo 2 on PlayStation One. With Forza 3, Turn Ten has taken what’s great in previous outings and turtle waxed it good.

It’s not without its niggles of course, and on the official forums there’s huge list of reported bugs. I’m sure Turn Ten are already aware of many of them. In Software Development bugs tend to get prioritised according to severity; in the rush to get something out the door, those low on the list are often left to fester, not because programmers can’t be bothered to fix them, but simply because there isn’t enough time. Hopefully things will be patched up in the future.

On a final note, and something that has gotten me very hot under the collar: Microsoft’s repugnant decision to remove 3rd party memory support from the Xbox360. In Major Nelson’s podcast on Sunday 25th October, it was claimed this has been done to stop game save hacking. Now, if this was only possible on the Datel devices, they might have a valid point ... but it isn’t. The same feats are as easily possible using official Microsoft’s products, so the argument holds very little water. Of course, Microsoft is able to profit greatly by this action because:

a) The memory cards / HDDs have massive mark-up compared to cost
b) Only Microsoft make memory cards that will work
c) You can’t easily get by without having a memory device / HDD

Something I’m sure the bean counters are fully aware of. The only people this is going to hurt are hard working, honest consumers who’ve been supporting the company, and may not even be aware that their profile and saved games are simply going to disappear when the dashboard update goes live next month. Those people who would do evil will merely switch to other methods and laugh at Microsoft for what is a stupid, pointless and anti-consumer move.

Shame on you Microsoft!

Until next month, remember to buy multi-format releases on alternative platforms! Ciao!