The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena for the PC in 5 Seconds

I’ve actually had a computer since I was twelve.

And learning to use the keyboard for playing roms was pretty difficult in and of itself, even with custom key settings. Ever play Super Metroid on an emulator? Let me put it this way… You feel GODLY for being able to Wall-Jump or even do the simple Grapple-Hook swings. Especially when the emulators only let you have TWO buttons pressed down at the same time, and no more. And yet, I still managed to beat the game in under 3:30 hours on my first runthrough of it on emulator.

What I have problems with on the computer controls when you use a mouse and keyboard at the same time… Is most definately the key bindings. I do not have problems using the mouse to look around or fire a weapon. What gets confusing as crap is when you also have to use the right mouse button, click the mouse wheel as well as ROLL the mouse wheel to do different things.

Combine that with using the arrow keys to strafe and move foward or backward and it quickly becomes a mess. And it’s even MORE of a mess when you also have to use letter keys to do other functions. I’ll use Halo as an example, since I’m familiar with that.

You can bind most/all of your attack functions to the mouse which helps a lot… So, your melee is bound to your right click or the mouse scroll because it’s easiest access that way… And then you can bound the grenade to the other function… But then where you do you bind “change weapon” or “activate”? Where do you bind “change grenades”? Where do you bind “jump”? Well, I suppose since you use jump a lot, you could bind it to the mouse wheel click… But then you have the problem of accidently hitting “jump/melee” when you dont’ mean to. Or “jump/throw grenade’ when you don’t mean to.

Okay, so that configuration is incredibly difficult, especially with the arrow keys. So, you pull those out and perhaps assign letter keys, or the number pad to the things you need. But, that’s a lot of area to cover for a single hand, especially when a lot of action is going on. And sometimes, you have to pull your fingers off of movement just to do things like change your grenades in the middle of a firefight.

And this is HALO we’re talking about. It is by no means complicated in terms of controls. It’s one of the least complicated FPS games out there. So what do you do when you have to play an FPS which has a LOT MORE key bindings than that? Games where you have to use upwards of ten keys on the keyboard AS WELL as the mouse.

And what about the games that require you to hit the F Buttons? My those are way out of the way and can make a fast-paced game incredibly difficult to play and confusing as hell.

Maybe you don’t notice it because you PC game a LOT. But I’d rather my controls not be so convoluted and crazy. I like my controls to make sense and to be “easy access”.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/5961-10-Ways-to-Fight-Piracy

Um, where have you been the last decade or so? People already pirate console games. It’s called “emulation” and “roms”. It’s called “making copies of CDs”.

Piracy ALREADY exists on the consoles.

The difference is, consoles handle it better than PC companies do.

And some console companies have figured out how to prosecute the people doing the pirating without hindering the actual consumers at all. I knew a lot of people who got Halo 2 waaaayyyy too early and spoiled the ending. And a bunch of them were caught by Microsoft and sued.

It’s especially easy to catch pirates when all you have to do is have a P2P networking system or access to a search engine. You can type in a few words and BAM, pirated copies like crazy. From there, you can easily track down the original pirate.

It’s just that the consoles aren’t losing money from the pirating (or enough of it TO MATTER in the long run) and the PC companies are losing a lot more money (enough to matter and warrent all these new security hoops).

Companies aren’t losing any money at all from pirates. Why?
Because no actual thing was taken, no money was stolen. Plus, there’s a large chance that a “pirate” would not have bought anything, anyway.

It’s better to just treat your customers like customers, not like they might be criminals. If they were actually criminals, they wouldn’t be buying your god damn product!

I will never, ever understand the mentality of companies who treat their customers like they’re idiots or the enemy. Look, I sympathise, they don’t want their stuff illegally copied like any company would. But instead of, oh, LISTENING to the consumers and working out a way that makes everyone happy, they just spoon out this DRM bullshit and expect people to eat it up.

Christ, a lot of gamers are programmers themselves, why not encourage them to give their advice? Trial run free games to test the copyright protection and listen to feedback? You know, actually work with your customers?

But seriously, this makes me glad I don’t buy a lot of PC games – I’m not buying from people who already assume I’m a criminal and treat me like one.

3 installations?
How crappy, however, very easy to avoid.

This is why Apple got rid of DRM shit. Fucking EA. Piracy ftw!

some of these comments are very well thought out, but the last few pages are missing something.

DRM isn’t meant to directly hurt Pirates, unless you make indie games, pirates are not your main concern. DRM is made in more popular games to prevent second-hand sales from things like amazon or gamestop. Second-hand game sales is a major industry, and the publishers and distributors are excluded from that loop. When you’re limited to 3 installs, it gives less of an incentive to sell that game second-hand. This is pretty much why no one sees any major chains that rent out PC games anymore. The closest I can think of that even does this anymore is gametap. With gametap you still miss out on a ton of games simply because it’s not possible to legally distribute some games with things like securom to more than one customer.
Piracy IS still a concern as thousands of people still do it, and if a small-time developer makes a game that isn’t expected to get anymore than a few thousand sales (world of goo, braid, etc.) then that small-time developer is royally screwed.

Reminds me of BIOSHOCK and Y2K (another game which had SecureROM DRM). Y2K released the game with 2 (yes just 2!) activations, and expanded it to 5 when the complaints came flooding in on their forums (a thread of about 170 posts atleast). Also, as a result, they released a program which deactivated a computer (and thus giivng back one of your activations after you’d played the game and uninstalled it) and promised that they would do away with the activation limit after a while – which they did.
Seems to me that doing what Y2K did seems to be a good halfway house between DRM and non-DRM. They get their revenue for the prescribed period where they normally recoup their losses and make profile and eventually the game becomes essentially unDRM’d (and thus resellable in the 2nd hand market and people can install as many times as they like).
Personally, I think DRM in the way Sony’s SecureROM has been implemented in it’s original form is ultimately counterproductive – it drives people in to the hands of the pirates, and/or away from the PC platform, and makes the game companies very unpopular. Of course there are reasons why DRM was introduced – some of them very understandable.

God damn I hate limited installations! It just encourages you to pirate the bloody thing. In fact, my bro pirated Spore one time. What a waste…

Installing this game was a bitch, I had to resert to getting it for the 360, was it worth it…. yes.

True, evilpaul, which is why services like steam are raking it in. Bypassing the entire publisher/distributor fiasco and in turn keeping all the money they make. But even services like steam have games on it that still have drm such as securom. Mostly because it’s much easier to turn in a game to steam for publishing as-is than it is to make a steam-only version without DRM. You have to remember that much of this mess started with people who knew nothing about computers or games having say in how those computers and games were distributed.

Having a CD key for limited installs is essentially what this is. Most services like Securom offer the ability to revoke it but some don’t. It’s up to the publisher to allow people to revoke or not and it costs money to run a service indefinitely that allows infinite reinstalls through revoking.

I have 50 dollars on there being a version with no SuckRom or installation checks out there … as long as you don’t mind pirating

that is why *add drum roll* you crack it TADA!

I hate copy protection. I buy every single game. I have to work hard for my addiction. DRM is like putting broken glass into the DVD case.

Well alot of you guys are saying you just wanna pirate the game because the games cost so much, Well ofc… you can get it free then get it free but then it might be buggy and no Online gameplay so pay 70$? (meh) Seriously you guys should be happy that you get it for such a low price, where i come from a single Game, no special content or anything just the game cost exactly 140$!!! im dead serious… but where i come from we dont use dollars we use something called DKK and 140$ is 700DKK. Just wanted to share that, so always remember you got it abit easier then us people here

Actually,you can only install it on three different machines,BUT you can install it on that machine for unlimited times..

I will enjoy it… but on ps3.

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(Me)
Ohh I see. Ive dealt with that myself. Seems like a old issue but I guess companies or whatever always seem to have new ways or whatever to ‘protect their product’ which to me I hate.
One of the reasons why i’m a consle gamer and why my dad keeps yelling at me ‘NOT TO BUY PC GAMES!’ but I like to update my PC library once in a grey while you know…other than *cough* games.

Direct2drive.com is selling this game for $5 so now you can call it a $5 rental lol

whats DRM?

lol like you couldn't find a cracked version free of charge. The DRM on console games are far worse than on PC games.