Opinion// Dan's Dares - 2013 - Portable Gaming and DLC

Last time we were together I told you what was good in gaming: Gears of War. This time, I’m going to share some of the things that really grind my gears, starting with portable gaming.

First and foremost, staring at a small screen gives me a headache. Headaches hurt. Gaming shouldn’t hurt. Now 5 years ago, when someone said ‘Portable Gaming’, it was all about the PSP or whichever of the 24392472 models of DS was around 5 years ago (STOP MAKING DIFFERENT MODELS). Things have changed a little bit recently, people are all ‘Android phones/tablets and iPhones/iPads are gaming devices’, well, no. No they aren’t.

Some of you will try to tell me "You can play games on them, so that makes them gaming devices." Well, I’d like to dispute that. You could play Snake on a Nokia 3310, you wouldn’t have classed that as a "Gaming Device", would ya?

Claiming that your iPad is a Gaming Device just seems daft to me. You might well play Angry Birds on the 20 minute bus ride in to work, and that’s fine, but it isn’t proper gaming.

And yes, I probably have used a bad example there, let’s say you play GTA on your iPad, it still stands. If you were to sit down long enough to have a good session, where would you be? Yeah, you might take a three-hour train ride to London, but how many times a year do you do that? Enough to justify buying a tablet rather than a 360? I wouldn’t say so.

For the most part, if you’re putting in hours on a tablet, you’re probably sat at home. Why not just use whichever console you own, and if you don’t own one, yet you’re using a tablet for gaming, what are you doing? Sell your tablet and replace it with a 360.

They’re more powerful, graphically advanced, and let’s be fair; it isn’t easy to play a game on a touch screen. My point is, tablets aren’t designed as gaming devices, it’s just a small bonus that you’re able to blow up structures by flinging birds from catapults.

Portable gaming aside, what else doesn’t sit well with me? DLC, that’s what. So a brand new game is released, I don’t know, let’s say CoD 17 (or whatever number we’re up to.)

I go out to my local GAME, pick up a copy, pay the bloke behind the counter £45 and think right then, I’m all sorted and ready to ‘PwN sum n00bz’ (people that speak like that piss me off actually, let’s pretend I didn’t type that). Everything’s fine for maybe seven days? One week after buying my game, I load it up only to find a message – ‘DOWNLOAD DLC NOW FOR NEW MAPS’. Excuse me, DLC?

Yep, DLC. So I’ve paid £45 for my game and now they want me to spend a further £12’s worth of MS points for a few new maps. Obviously they knew these maps were going to be released before the game itself came out – they can’t have developed four or five brand new maps from scratch in one week. So, why do I have to pay extra for them?

Should I bother buying this DLC or not? Well, I found myself in a party with a bunch of friends searching for a game. As the lobby loaded, I found that I’d been chucked out of it? What’s going on here? Well, all my mates had already bought the DLC, and the map that came up was one of the new ones. Great, so now I’ve got to play alone unless I pay the £12.

That’s not the end though! Over the next two months, there’s another two or three map packs to be released! Let’s think about it, 12x3+45 = £81.

£81!

£81!!

£81!!!

£81 for fuck's sake!

(If I could capitalise numbers, I would’ve done) for a game, how can that be justified? Well if you ask me, it can’t. £45 is a fair (if slightly overpriced) cost for a AAA game, and it should include ALL of the game – not splatter DLC about that should’ve been included in the original purchase. Fuck you game companies, fuck you. Oh, and for the record, I haven’t bought a CoD game since World at War, I think they’re shit.

On a separate note, anyone that blames games for child obesity is an absolute dipshit. Dare I say it? Of course I dare - it’s the parents fault. What kind of kid has the cash to buy themselves a console, let alone the aforementioned overpriced games? And if you have bought your kid a console, don’t let them sit on it all day.

See you next time.