Homefront

I hate Homefront and I haven’t even played it.  Once again I’ve had to learn an important lesson: don’t buy new PC games, you just get screwed.  Looking at my PC games collection, the newest one (excluding Homefront) is Modern Warfare 2, and even that pissed me off at the time.  Most of my PC games are five years old at the newest.  Why?  Because they don’t come packaged with bullshit.

Sadly, PC gaming is dying a slow death.  Like Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, it’s lying in a pool of it’s own blood, not quite dead, but past the point of no return.  And it really is a shame too, because some game types just play better on a PC format.  First person shooters work a lot better with a mouse than analogue sticks and the point and click interface of strategy games and never been bested by a controller.

Sadly what once started off as an understandable need to protect games has morphed into bullshit that screws over the honest consumer.  Here I am, six hours after first putting the disk in the computer and I still haven’t played it.  Why?  Because of bullshit.

Take a look at the cover.

You will notice in the top right hand corner it says “Internet connection required for online activation.”  Okay, fine, most games do that these days, it’s not the same issue it was a few years ago.  What’s irked my is that this is deceptive.  Online activation is not all that is required for this game.  Part of the installation process requires a download of four gigs.  What will become clear to you during this process is that only half of the game is installed, the four gig download is the second half of the game.  Yes, you can’t even install the entire game from the disk.  There is no way around it.  You install half the game, you download the other half.

Stuff like this has a tendency to piss me right off:  Why did it have to be fifty per cent, why couldn’t have been ten?  It would have been an irritation, yes, it would have been bullshit but it would have been manageable.  I have a copy of Button Man: Killer Killer sitting by my computer, I could have sat back and read.  I would have waited for you, Homefront, but you insist on downloading four gigs?

Yes, I’m pissed because by internet connection falls somewhere between pathetic and shite.

Six hours is a hell of a long time to wait for your first shot at a game.  I feel like such a cranky old woman every time I try to fire up a new game now because I reminisce about the good old days when you put the disk in and away you went, you didn’t sit around waiting for bullshit downloads.

But here’s what really gets me.  Here is the first screen you see during the beginning of the installation process:

We are told a total of nine gigs will be installed.  Once the actual installation begins, we get this screen telling us that a total of five gigs, not nine, is being installed.

Once this is over it tells you any “updates” that need to be downloaded will begin.  This is when the extra four gigs begins downloading Now, without sounding like a primary teacher, five gigs plus four gigs equals nine gigs.  So, I can only come to two conclusions.  Either:

a) I’ve bought a disk with half a game on it, and the nine gigs refers to the total after the so-called “update” has downloaded.

Or:

b) The entire game is on the disk, and THQ and Steam and dicking us over.

I have  a sneaking suspicion it’s the latter.

I hate THQ, I hate Steam and I hate Homefront, even though I haven’t even played it yet.  Whatever moron thought this was a good idea is a cunt and is everything that is wrong with modern gaming.