Can't get excited about Bioshock

MOH

Steez wrote:

If that's the case then you should (technically) be able to reinstall it as many times as you want, albeit just on your own pc. Could be a bitch if people upgrade or do whatnot though.

Just been reading through the 2kgames forums, and it doesn't seem to be as clever as binding itself to your hardware, it just counts the number of times the activation key is used.

So if you install the game, then later reinstall windows and reinstall the game, that's your lot. If you later reinstall windows for any reason, or upgrade your PC, you can't play your legally bought copy of Bioshock.

That's insane. They're going to drive tons of legitimate buyers away. There's a load saying they're going to pirate it, there's more saying give them a chance to fix it - but sure what's to fix, they publishers made a conscious decision to release it this way.

Stinks of a suit somewhere thinking it's a good idea. Can't see any developers thinking it's a good idea - the backlash is obvious.

koneko

Well 2k haven't responded yet so who knows what will happen, if the response is so negative they may want to change it.

You're not stuck with 2 times though, you can contact their support (it tells you that in the message) and get more activations. Someone has already done that on the 2K forums. Still, bit of a dim idea to start with.

MOH

koneko wrote:

Well 2k haven't responded yet so who knows what will happen, if the response is so negative they may want to change it.

You're not stuck with 2 times though, you can contact their support (it tells you that in the message) and get more activations. Someone has already done that on the 2K forums. Still, bit of a dim idea to start with.

Yeah but you can only do that during business hours (where's their support based?).

Kiith

I dont see how thats legal. You have bought a legit copy of a game, and they only allow you to install it twice? Thats redicilous. Some of my older games (and not so old games) have been installed, played, deleted, and later reinstalled a load of times. It wont really effect me to much (as i'll crack it), but it will effect some people.

Bad thinking by 2k. They'll have to fix it.

MOH

Aside from this, what happens when they stop supporting the game?

Or how are you supposed to sell it second hand?

MooseJam

*Worst pc launch ever* they are not getting my money

koneko

Yes, keep repeating that, something about noses, knives and faces springs to mind.

I'm interested to see what 2K say later today.

MooseJam

I didn't say I won't play it just that I won't buy it, 2 installs will affect everybody who buys the game thats ridiculous, calling up tech supp at midnight to activate a game you payed for yea right, and imagine a few years down the line when securerom go out of business how are you gonna play it then, or as somebody was saying what about trying to sell it, it's a joke

MOH

MooseJam wrote:

*Worst pc launch ever* they are not getting my money

If they had got it, they might give it back if you complain to them enough

Moojuice

Glad Ill be getting the 360 version then. It seems to be the best option so far.

TwoShedsJackson

This 'can only install it twice' thing is bollo<ks. You can only use the key twice if you bought and downloaded it from Direct2Drive. Retail has no limitations I've heard of, apart from having to have an internet connection to activate it.

koneko

Official response on the activation thing:

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=125418&postcount=120

MooseJam

So officialy the max you can install this game on is two machines, what if I have a dual boot and a laptop ?.

It counts the number of times you install/uninstall and if it goes over 2 you are screwed. If you have it installed twice and a hard drive dies - sorry can't install it again. It also implies you need an internet connection to uninstall

These people must actually want you to get a pirate version of the game , because thats all this bullsh1t is going to do - drive customers away , treating legitimate paying customers like criminals is not the way to go.

mewso

Well played the demo last night. Was well impressed but I need to sort out my audio. I don't know if it's the game or what but some sounds seemed very low or the timing of things seemed to clash like an enemy starts shouting at you while Ryan is telling you something. If there is any mention of hacking bots I missed it. Walked right into a room with security sending bots, splicers all over the place and a security gun in the jacks. wtf? I was running around like a maniac thinking this couldn't be intentional.

It ran smooth as silk (I have Core 2 Due E6600, 2Gig RAM, Radeon x1950) and I suspect it may have alot to do with this game using both cores. Who knows.

If you are a fan of System Shock 2 (probably in my all time top 5 yada yada) then this is the game for you. To me it felt like a modern version of SS2 in a different environment. Friendly person helping you (I wonder), audio diaries lying around and so on. Obviously it's much more than that but you know what I mean.

I'll check back later to see what the latest reason for not buying it is.

JCDenton

Out of interest; I know there's no poll (could there be?), what kind of a split is there between people playing this on a 360 vs. a PC?

Auvers

Oh goddamnit. The Steam version has the same damn limits! Two installs is all you get :mad:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=589874

Maximilian

musician wrote:

Well played the demo last night. Was well impressed but I need to sort out my audio. I don't know if it's the game or what but some sounds seemed very low or the timing of things seemed to clash like an enemy starts shouting at you while Ryan is telling you something. If there is any mention of hacking bots I missed it. Walked right into a room with security sending bots, splicers all over the place and a security gun in the jacks. wtf? I was running around like a maniac thinking this couldn't be intentional.

It ran smooth as silk (I have Core 2 Due E6600, 2Gig RAM, Radeon x1950) and I suspect it may have alot to do with this game using both cores. Who knows.

If you are a fan of System Shock 2 (probably in my all time top 5 yada yada) then this is the game for you. To me it felt like a modern version of SS2 in a different environment. Friendly person helping you (I wonder), audio diaries lying around and so on. Obviously it's much more than that but you know what I mean.

I'll check back later to see what the latest reason for not buying it is.

Had the same problem - just fiddle with the audio settings, turn the music & ambient down a notch and you should hear Ryan just fine.

tuxy

It's funny that the only people that won't have to go through this activation crap are people that have illegal copies.

Edit: I can confirm that there is a warez version of the pc game available already. (won't say where because of forum rules)

TwoShedsJackson

tuxy wrote:

It's funny that the only people that won't have to go through this activation crap are people that have illegal copies.

Edit: I can confirm that there is a warez version of the pc game available already. (won't say where because of forum rules)

Hardly surprising. The fact it's a whole day after the retail release is mildly suprising though. Anyway it's just a rip of the game that's up so far, no-one's cracked the protection/internet activation yet. Could take at least, ooooh, another couple of days.

TinCool

Kicked off my demo download this morning. damn this slow 1meg broadband. I miss my 6meg NTL connection Anyways, I should be ready to play in a few hours. Can't wait to play this thing. I haven't had the same level of anticipation for a game since STEAMing Half Life 2. That said, I'll be buying this retail. No way I'm downloading 6+ gigs on a 1 meg connection.

TC

P.S. nice to see the old skoolers crawling out of the wood work and commenting on this post.... Two Sheds, Musician, Max ...

uberpixie

musician wrote:

It ran smooth as silk (I have Core 2 Due E6600, 2Gig RAM, Radeon x1950) and I suspect it may have alot to do with this game using both cores. Who knows.

A dual core of some sort and 2 gig of ram is needed to play this smoothly.

Played this on a mates rig, and monitored the ram and CPU usuage.

Game used 50-75% of each core and 71% of 2gigs of memory and ran smooth as silk @ 1280 x 1024 on high detail settings.
(Socket 939 X2 4200+, 2gig ram, X1950XT)

Any game developed for the Xbox 360 port is more than likely dual core optimised and will take advantage of one.

DiRT being another recent example.

MOH

Been looking for more info about the activation thing, and one site said it even installs some securom stuff when you install the demo? Anyone know if this is true?

orangerooster

Cant wait for this, the demo is fantastic. I wonder if anyone will be breaking the release date tomorrow.

Auvers

Got the following info off another forum, I haven't tried it but if your desperate to play it before Friday give it a shot.

"If you want to BUY it before friday do this:

1) Change your proxy to 206.251.234.35 port:80
2) create a new email address.
3) create a new direct2drive account using US details e.g. 14500 for post code for example
4) verify the email they send you.
5) log into direct2drive
6) purchase it using your normal credit card details and you will get to the download screen
7) turn off your proxy settings.
8) start downloading normally.

I'm halfway through the download. This has been tried and tested by loads of people. Once you get to the download screen you'r home free."


*Edit*

Oh got the lowdown on the install only twice sh1te, its not that bad after all.

What happens is that when you install your copy it gets flagged as "activated". If you install it on another pc, it gets flagged as "activated again". If you add on a third it goes "hold on, you've done it more than twice. ACCESS DENIED"
But when you uninstall the game it lets Securom know its been uninstalled and it then frees up a flag so it can be reinstalled again.

joe_chicken

Auvers wrote:

1) Change your proxy to 206.251.234.35 port:80

Putting your credit card details into a site while going through an unknown proxy is a bad idea

Ciaran500

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/home.html
The first thing we want to make clear is the mode we developed the game on and the optimal mode for playing the game is the widescreen mode. 90% of our development stations were widescreen displays: artists, programmers and designers.

- Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so, we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people’s displays. (This way, everybody is happy…) This does mean that people playing on a standard def display see slightly more vertical space, but, this does not significantly affect the game-play experience and, we felt that it best served our goal of keeping the game experience as close as possible to the original design and art vision on both types of displays. Reports of the widescreen FOV being a crop of the 4:3 FOV are completely false.

I told ya so

Kiith

Even with what they said, alot of people who have used the widescreen fix say it looks alot better, and that this is just an excuse given by 2k for the mistake. I'm not saying thats true, and i dont really get the problem, since i havent played the demo or full version..just repeating what i've read.

Either way...bring on tomorrow!

MOH

Auvers wrote:

Oh got the lowdown on the install only twice sh1te, its not that bad after all.

What happens is that when you install your copy it gets flagged as "activated". If you install it on another pc, it gets flagged as "activated again". If you add on a third it goes "hold on, you've done it more than twice. ACCESS DENIED"
But when you uninstall the game it lets Securom know its been uninstalled and it then frees up a flag so it can be reinstalled again.

Assuming you remember to uninstall it first if you're reinstalling windows or moving to a new machine; and that you have an internet connection at time of uninstall; and that the securom servers are up and register your uninstall properly; and that your hard driver never fails.

And what happens in a few years when they stop supporting the game?

Plus if I bought this now, I could normally sell it in a month or so for at least 15 quid. With all this nonsense going on, who's going to buy it second hand? That's effectively adding fifteen quid to the cost of it.

Something like two install per week would be reasonable and would prevent wholesale pirating - two per lifetime is a joke.

WellyJ

MOH wrote:

Assuming you remember to uninstall it first if you're reinstalling windows or moving to a new machine; and that you have an internet connection at time of uninstall; and that the securom servers are up and register your uninstall properly; and that your hard driver never fails.

And what happens in a few years when they stop supporting the game?

Plus if I bought this now, I could normally sell it in a month or so for at least 15 quid. With all this nonsense going on, who's going to buy it second hand? That's effectively adding fifteen quid to the cost of it.

Something like two install per week would be reasonable and would prevent wholesale pirating - two per lifetime is a joke.

Yeh,

How dare they try to protect their game from piracy,

Damn them!!

:rolleyes:

Just follow the guidelines on uninstalling and you will never have an issue.

Uninstall it before you sell it on for 15 quid

super_furry

WellyJ wrote:

Yeh,

How dare they try to protect their game from piracy,

Damn them!!

:rolleyes:

But it's not even remotely doing that. As of right now, the game is available to download from the regular pirate spots. All it's doing is punishing the normal user who buys games and making life harder for them, so if anything, it's an incentive to pirate.