Atari kicks another one out the door

Fan reaction to the Temple of Elemental Evil has been extremely passionate - both positive and negative. But after reading some of the comments I think perhaps Atari should have waited the extra week and stuck with the original release date, to allow a more complete review of the game before unleashing it onto the unsuspecting gamer. Some of the bug descriptions sound like they are absolute showstoppers - crash-to-desktop (CTDs), refresh problems, quest and rules glitches, errors in quick save/reloads...it's extremely disconcerting. After the the harsh criticism for releasing Enter the Matrix in an unfinished state, you'd think they'd have learned. The worst of it though is the copy protection Atari used - the infamous SecuRom - which has wreaked havoc previously with both ETM and Neverwinter Nights. In fact I believe it was so bad on NWN they had to release a patch to disable it so the game would start.

In an apparent move to appease the gaming masses, Atari has offered a full version of the game that is only playable for six hours with an unlimited number of executions. After the six hours is up, the game will not load until a product key is purchased for about the same as the boxed game. Strangely enough, the file is being offered on Kazaa, which I suppose spreads the load around. But what about bit torrent? With sites like 3DGamers offering that type of service you'd think Atari would want to take advantage and send this demo out to all of the community sites. In light of these developments, I think I'm gonna cool my heels and wait until a patch for the retail version becomes available. That will give me time to finish Tron 2.0 at least.

On another note, losing the results of a decisive Clan victory in FFTA because of a dead battery is not on my list of "Cool things that happen at 2:30 am".