Why do we all love Star Wars: Battlefront?

For those out of the loop, Star Wars: Battlefront is a game that released in 2004 for the Xbox and PS2 by the now deceased Pandemic Studios, and with the newest game in the series approaching, it seems like the opportune time to look back over the series and see what made the first game the cult classic that it is, and why so many people are dying to get their hands on the new one.

In Star Wars: Battlefront, the player takes the role of a random soldier in several of the key battles in the first five Star Wars films. The player can play as one of 5 classes for each of the four factions that where warring in the movies. Using these classes, they participate in large battles consisting of AI, or player controlled teammates and enemies. The game consist of one mode called ‘Conquest’ which lasts until either all objective points on the map have been captured, or until all reinforcements are killed on either team. Obviously, the team with the remaining reinforcements, or with all the captured objectives wins the battle.

So why is it that a game with such a simple premise has become one of the most remembered titles in the 6^th console generation, and is so beloved by fans and gamers in general that its being remade into one of 2015 biggest game releases?

While at the moment, games like Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation have been hit games, back in 2004 it was a different story. Movie tie ins where like suspect chocolate chip cookies, you where never quite sure if they had chocolate in them, or some dark dried fruit. That's to say, most movie tie ins where either rubbish, or forgettable. After all, this isn’t a video on Star Wars:  Jedi Starfighter or the Matrix: Path of Neo. Yet out of this period of time came Star Wars: Battlefront, a game which many, including myself, claim to be the best Star Wars game ever made, let alone movie tie in!

How on Earth did a game like Battlefront gain so much popularity? With the card all aligned for this game to fail like all the others, how did this chocolate chip cookie ever get the praise it has?

The first is that simplicity mentioned earlier: Battlefront is a ridiculously simple game for a shooter. You can’t switch weapons on the fly, the classes are simple, only varying by main weapon and perhaps an additional buff, if you’re lucky ,and all the weapons handle really easily. In addition, the game uses a ridiculous level of ridicule lock on, even for a console game.

For those unfamiliar, weapon lock on is a system used in console shooters to make it easier to aim with the analogue sticks. All console shooters use this technique, but some use it more than others. What it does is make you’re weapon reticule slightly attracted to the enemies, so it’s easier to aim and track them as they move. Battlefront happens to use this to extreme levels. In some cases the reticule seem almost magnetized to the enemy soldiers. While this may seem like a bad thing, this actually allows the game to be more approachable.

Battlefront was the first shooter I ever played, and the 3^rd game I bought for my Xbox. Anyone who has played a shooter before can tell you, new players typically suck at aiming at things. Analogue stick aiming can be a tricky thing to master for the uninitiated, so for a game to give such a strong crutch to lean on gives the game a very low level of entry for anyone to play.

Along with that, the game is very sparing with its use of instructions and tutorials. Battlefront has no tutorial level, instead only having two 5-minute videos to explain the basics of the main game mode and explaining how Galactic Conquest works. While most shooters like Call of Duty or Halo will bore you to tears with extended tutorials, Battlefront trusts the player to understand the game, which it can do thanks to its limited controls and simple game play.

The simplicity and low entry level makes it a very approachable game for anyone, and with a popular licence like star wars, its exactly what you would want. It's a game that anyone can play and understand with ease.

The game also doesn't tell you what to do, giving players the freedom to do what they want in any given game, even if it’s in the Campaign mode. This freedom does wonders for a game, allowing the player to find their own best approach to a solution and have a level of freedom and agency that most single player games don't allow for.

This approach is still something games today use, but primarily its in the multiplayer component of a game. In recent years since the release of Battlefront and Halo 2, multiplayer shooters have grown immensely in popularity. One of the main reasons for this is the infinitely uncertain nature of a multiplayer game. Because people control all of the characters, this leaves a lot up to chance, due to the unpredictable way that people behave. The players having the freedom to do what they choose allows for a level of personality in the game.

What Battlefront does is that it causes even a single player game to feel as though it has that level of infinite possibility, by giving the freedom to the player, as well as to the AI. This makes each battle feel slightly random and out of the players control. While one approach may have lead to victory on a map once, this randomness means that I may not do again. Anyone who has played the game knows what I mean: Each battle has its own sense of personality and a story to it. This lack of agency to the player to permanently assure victory also forces a level of realism to the game, after all, no tow battles in the real world would likely go the exact same way.

But we’re ignoring the main reason that Battlefront is the phenomenon that it is, and that's the ‘Star Wars’ bit of the title. I don't think that anyone who saw this game on a store shelf would have bought it if those words where not on the title. After all, who doesn't love Star Wars, and when it comes to Star Wars this game has is all.

From the title screen this game oozes music and iconography from the classic films! The beginning of each of the two campaigns stars with the main theme and a title crawl almost identical to that of the movies! Too add to that, the sound design of Battlefront is superb!

Sound design is often forgotten when it comes to talking about a game, but Battlefront shows us how important it truly is. Each weapon in the game sounds like it does in the movies, each of the soldiers sounds like they do in the movies. You know what? Each map in the game uses music that is used in that area in the movies! It’s something that most people would miss, and I missed it until doing this review. It seems like it would be more practical for the designers to randomise the songs played in each level, to add diversity, but after noticing the same song playing on Endor near the end of the game I went back and compared them.

Now even if you didn't notice that while playing the game, I assure you, your brain did. I’m not a neuroscientist, but I’m fairly sure that you’re brain associates the music with the scenes in the movies. This was a genius design choice because it causes each area to be linked with those classic moments.

Hell, to add to that, each of the levels is built to replicate things you see in the movie! Watch the Battle of Hoth in Empire, and then play the Echo Base level! Echo base is the same, the turrets and their location from the base is the same, everything feels like its part of the movie and you can identify where thing happen from the movie! Sometimes they aren’t 100% film accurate, the cantina in Mos Eisley is way to small, but this kind of thing does amazingly for a games immersion.

Most games based on movies released at this time failed in a sense because a lot of them felt like an imitation of a story that had already been told, and the places you went to didn't feel real. This is something a lot of games use these days: by making areas feel fleshed out and lived in, you feel a sense of presence in a larger world. This counteracts the feeling of falseness and helps you’re brain with the suspension of disbelief.

Atmosphere is something a lot of games have trouble with. Trying to make a fake world that seems real can be incredibly difficult. But, Battlefront is filled to the brim with this kind of stuff, and it does wonders for the game.

In a hypothetical situation where Battlefront isn’t a Star Wars game and instead is a new IP, I doubt it would have done as well as it did. This isn’t a bad thing, and makes for a very good design choice.

People don't really love this game because its got amazing gameplay, or unlocks that keep you coming back for more, or any of that addictive skinner box kind of stuff. Star Wars: Battlefront has remained a game that’s popular because it brings something to the table that most games don't. What it brings is the childhood fantasy to be able to live in the world of Star Wars, to rekindle that hope that maybe you could be a Jedi, or fly an X-Wing and save the galaxy from the Empire!   

When people talk about the new Battlefront game, and the features and the modes, I don't think that those of us who buy it an play it to death will care about that stuff, because at the end of the day all we want is to be back in that galaxy far far away.

Who leaked Bloodborne?

It should come to no surprise to anyone that knows me that I'm a big fan of the 'Souls' series, From Software's "Trilogy" of brutally hard RPGs; Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2. From that, it should also come as no surprise that I am incredibly excited for Hidetaka Miyazaki's (the director of Demon's and Dark Souls 1) new masterpiece Bloodborne.

"But Will!" I hear you saying, "With the game still 9 days away from release, how do you know it's a masterpiece?" Well my friends, approximately 3 days ago, if my calculations are correct, at least 1 copy of Bloodborne was leaked to the public, and as the wannabe journalist I am, in conjunction with my love of LA Noire, decided to do some digging to get to the truth of who has the leaked copy of Bloodborne.

Like me, these customized messengers are useful, and strange

First off I should state this, this is really more of a profiling than actually talking about Bloodborne, I'm really excited for the game, and this leaker has shown some really awesome stuff from the game, as much as Sony tries to stop him. If you are here for info on the game, you've come to the wrong place. Here, we're on a manhunt!

My first theory was obvious dear reader. About 5 days ago, Edge magazine did a cover of Bloodborne, not a full review, but they seemed to be in the process of playing the game. The figure "40 hours in" was thrown around a lot, which, coincidentally, was the same rough amount of time our leaker mentioned they had played when they posted in the Bloodborne subreddit. Could this writer for Edge be trying to leak some vital information to the public? After all, most of the information this leaker has shown us has been information that FromSoftware have not want shared yet, but as part of the 'Souls' community, our reviewer feels obliged to share. This may also be supported by the fact that our leaker mysteriously disappeared from reddit shortly after his post was made, leaving someone else to repost his evidence, which he had saved to notepad.

While my first lead sounds probable, I feel it's, however, unlikely. Edge is a highly prestigious gaming magazine, and if my research turned up anything, its that Edge are the only magazine actually telling people they have a copy of the game. To me this suggests that Sony trust them enough not to break embargo and leak information. You could suggest that the other reviews have it aswell, but if that's the case then why arent they sharing that info with us? I feel like the leads don't add up.

So clearly Miyazaki has been playing Bioshock...

This leads me to my second theory: Currently Bloodborne seems to be in a finished state, after all, it's on a disc and all that needs to be done with the game is the day 1 patch. This means that it's likely that gaming stores, EB Games or JB Hi Fi (see Best Buy if American) already have copies of the game. 

I used to work in a retail store like these, and I was around for the release of Tomb Raider and the Temple of Osiris. We had that game in the back for about a week before it was on shelves. This happens because the physical discs have to be shipped in and arrive before the games release, so the store has copies, as well as allowing time for the store to shrink wrap the games and get them ready for sale. All of this is a lengthy process, and so this time can vary. It's incredibly likely that Bloodborne is IN your usual gaming store today just waiting for the 25th to come.

I want this, like so much.

My second theory is thus: Someone who works in one of these stores has either stolen, or more likely, gotten permission from their manager to take one of the copies and play it. This isn't uncommon, in the place I worked part of my contract said that this may be a possibility, but I couldn't break embargo on the information. This is so they people who work in the store know about the game when it comes out, and so on the day of release they can be knowledgeable about whats going on, and I doubt that's uncommon. However, like the Edge situation before, breaking embargo could have serious penalties for these people, so again, it's unlikely.

Confirmed!! Bloodborne has weapons!!

Now, Sony knows the game has been leaked. Streams of it on Twitch have been pulled, as have videos on YouTube. I managed to get myself a copy of a recorded stream of it, and by Jove, it was no easy task.

Then I found a lead that lead to my answers. A user on reddit had been reposing everything from the leaker. The leaker had supposedly been posting on the website Playstationtrophies.net under the alias rmchiva925 (Chiva). Chiva had been posting screenshots on the website and claimed that the copy he had bought had arrived early, and being a good member of the 'Souls' community, he shared his information online. Aswell as that, Chiva also shared some information about how he got the game to the users of this site, and so the rabbit hole went deeper.

Unfortunately, Chiva has yet to find this crying baby

As I started to investigate Mr. R. M. Chiva, I began to learn a few things. Firstly, it seems he shares a similar view with the games developers and has only shared some small amounts of information about the game. Aswell as that, he has alerted Sony to his ownership of the game, which might explain how easily it has been for them to take down anything they find appropriate, but has had a few missteps along the way, such as the stream I manages to get my hands on. Finally, I got the pieces on information I had been looking for.

Our unknowing friend Chiva has also told us that the he got the copy of Bloodbornes from a man on the Canadian Classifieds website Kijiji for $90 Canadian. It seems to me that street date wasn't broken by stores, but by private sellers who managed to get their hands on some early copies and are selling them online. From the look of it, Kijiji looks fairly unloved and people seem to be still selling copies there. I searched more major sites like this, and it seems that they are all being policed as to not break embargo.

So there you have it internet, the scoop on who leaked Bloodborne, who has it and well, how to get your hands on it if you live in Toronto I guess...

In the end, Sony seems to be keeping an eye on Chiva as long as he keeps his part of the deal in having an early copy. I hope all you Souls fans like me can enjoy what he shares with us, and keep it together for another few days.

Will's Top Seven Reasons Why You Should Play: Super Crate Box

A little bit of a different one this time, instead of a rant about recent treats in gaming or trying to get sued by Sony for defamation, I've decided to write a review (cue dramatic music). However, this isn't your normal review, instead of talking about the pros and cons in a logical manor, I've just done this list of seven reasons why you should play this game. Why you may ask? Well its because I feel its more to the point (and also I'm lazy, but enjoy writing). Oh, and why seven? Actually, that's just because i like the number seven. I mean, ten's alright, but its no seven.

1. Its free. OK, should have mentioned that I'm talking about a game called Super Crate Box, that you can 'buy' on steam for $0.00, which as most things go, is a pretty good price. After all, free is the magic number. And hey, if you don't like it, you haven't spent any money so, eh, whatever man.

2. It's fun as balls. OK, probably not a point, but you get the idea. Basically the game is rather simple, you run around levels that are somewhat reminiscent of the levels in Mario Bros (not to be confused with Super Mario Bros.) in which enemies spawn at the top of the screen and run down a series of ledges until the get to a pit at the bottom, which causes them to agro and respawn at the top, now with a faster speed. Your job as player is to collected randomly spawning crates around the map to get points. Each time you grab a crate, you are equipt with a different weapon in which to kill the monsters to get to the next crate. Sounds easy yeah?

3. DON'T USE THE FLAMETHROWER! Right, not so much a selling point as a tip form a guy who spent all day playing this game. While the flamethrower is a fucking awesome weapon in game, using it would always cause my client to crash and me to loose all my recent progress, but im also using a rather shitty laptop, so use with caution.

4. Them Graphics. So I'm realizing as I write this how childish this 'review' has gotten, but hear me out. The game actually uses a rather simple arcade graphical style, again like Mario Bros, which gives the game a particular charm. If this was made in the '80s, I have no doubt that this game would have stolen all of my coins. The game is simplistic in design as well as gameplay, and thus the pixel art aesthetic really compliments the game design.

5. So if you've read this blog (I prefer to call it a column actually, but whatever), than you may have realised I have an affinity to Dark Souls. In fact, at time of writing, the background image is a Capra Demon from the first game. So it should come as no surprise that I like a good challenge in my games, and boy, does Super Crate Box have that in spades. I mentioned it was a simple game, but it's also very difficult. The game requires you to be constantly vigilant of fast moving enemies and to manage crowd control while going after your coveted crates. This level of enemy management and map control mixed with the desire to collect crates and the random nature of the new weapon you'll receive makes this game devilishly hard to the uninitiated.

6. Right, so this would all be well and good, with one exception. While the game is difficult, that's really the only reason why the game doesn't take about 3 minutes to compete. Unfortunately, Super Crate Box is pretty short, with only 3 levels in the game (but a bunch of unlocks which will keep you busy for a while), and only three enemy types, five if you count agro-ed versions. In fact for me, on of the main reasons it took me so long to finish this game was the aforementioned crashing, which lost me quite a lot of progress many times.

7. OK, but whatever Will, this game is FREE! that's like, the exact amount of money I have because no one reads this gaming column (except for you dear reader). Actually, that is a good point. Basically, SCB is a pretty small game, there isn't all that much to say about it. However, if you have an evening to kill, or are just bored and what to try a new game, or as i did, race a friend to see who can complete is first, you'll be hard pressed to find anything as good as Super Crate Box.

So as a final statement I give this game a 'Great to play by yourself or with a friend for a couple hours' out of 'But seriously, don't give it to someone for Christmas because, geez man, I don't even know if Steam lets you gift free games. And also, you don't have like, a fiver you can spend on a game that actually costs money?'

Bioshock Infinite: Retrospective Review

Bioshock Infinite was a game that had a lot going for it, as well as high expectations. So it came as no surprise that last year when the game was released it reached critical praise. Critics praised the game for its deep story and innovative gameplay, believing it to be the new savior of the games industry, showing that story telling and innovative design are the way of the future, but does it deserve this praise?

Right, so straight off the bat I should say that on my first playthough of Infinite I too thought it was an amazing game, capable of showing the ability to transcend a medium that all art should be able to reach. However, on subsequent playthroughs I began to realize something, Bioshock Infinite is a little bit, well, shit.

Ok, so before we get into all that, its important we get into some history. See, the Bioshock series is actually the spiritual successor to the System Shock series, specifically System Shock 2, a game that by all rights was pretty amazing. As an early FPS RPG, it definitely had its problems; the shooting wasn't so good and it was unforgiving as all hell, causing you to even restart the game in its late stages if you didn't spec your character properly. But the great thing about SS2 is its ability to transcend those barriers. The game's setting and story seemed to exist to compliment the gameplay. For example, because the shooting was a bit, eh, the game set itself in a horror scenario which used this limitation to build a scene of tension in each of the fights in the game. This use of limitations is something we also see quite well in Bioshock, which also crafted it's whole story around this ideas.

Bio and System Shock also weren't afraid to do the whole RPG thing and let you play as you wanted too, and had ways of challenging the player by raising the tension of a scene rather that making it actually difficult. One of my fondest memories of Bioshock was when I was on my way to Point Prometheus after killing Andrew Ryan, only to realize that all I had was a fully loaded flamethrower, some hacking Plasmids and nine Eve hypos. Having to fight my way through a train station with nothing but fire and hacked drones is perhaps one of the best things I've done in a game, and the reason is because in my mind, I feel like the developers had a very different idea in there heads about how this encounter would go down, and my manipulation of the scenario allowed the moment to become mine.

Bioshock Infinite on the other had, doesn't really give this feel; the whole game feels like it's been made to play through a certain way. So I'll admit that the shooting in Infinite was a hell of a lot better that its predecessor, but that was never really the point. Every encounter in Infinite feels like its all been put together rather lazily, with the main variation being new enemy types or just more bad guys. This isn't much of a problem, but when every section in the city of Columbia feels like a shooting gallery rather than a city, it takes away from the immersion and the sense of reality that the previous games had. Rapture felt real, and your conflicts in it seemed real, in Infinite they do not. Every fight seems to break down into 'get to the other side of the room' or 'kill all the dudes'. In Bioshock and System Shock you didnt need to do this, you could get through a section however you wanted,and that helped make the experience more real.

To me, Infinite feels as like meeting a friend, only to realize half way through a conversation that its someone who looks a lot like your friend pretending to be them. They are alright at acting kind of the same, and the aren't such a dick to you, but something about it just feels really off.

For example, the plot of Bioshock Infinite doesn't seem to make a lick of sense. The games main focus is on a combination of both slavery and the multiverse theorem, which are two ideas that don't really mesh. In fact, for most of the game I felt as though these two ideas where with conflict with each other, as well as with the gameplay in general. I'm quite aware that I keep bringing up the previous Shock games, but its important to get a perspective on this. See, in the first game, the story and the violence of an FPS really existed to serve the story. It goes back to the aforementioned realism of the world. You really believed that the enemies you where fighting where insane splicers who where out to kill you. It was kill or be killed. In Infinite however, Booker's story about wounded knee is in complete opposition to the things he does in the game. As a main story element, a character feeling guild for killing hundreds of innocents doesn't work so well in a game where you spend most, if not all of your time, killing innocent civilians who are trying to protect there city against someone who is completely destroying it and trying to destroy there way of life. To me this use of soldiers as enemies is exactly the same as all the killing of Muslims in modern war shoots; they only exists as a challenge to delay the story and not to provide any depth to the world or game.

Speaking of depth, I mentioned the story before, and in case you didn't realise, a game in which you spend most of your time shooting dudes in the head doesn't work so well in a a game trying to make you think about quantum mechanics. See, in Bioshock the twist that occurred actually had merit, because not only did it apply to the character of jack,but it applied to the player, but more importantly, it worked in regards to the system of the game. The 'Would You Kindly' twist served to make you question all of your actions so far in the game, mainly because they where your own. It took advantage of the medium it was based in, I doubt such a twist would work nearly as well in film. The golf club scene and the fact that it is one of the only cutscenes in Bioshock and the loss of power it conveyed did a similar thing. In comparison, Infinite's 'twist' seems to only exist for there to be a twist, and the whole ending and reveil may as well have only been a cutscene, as the level of player involvement is highly lacking. In my opinion, I think that Infinite would have worked just as well if it was a film, and from a Shock game, that concerns me.

When Bioshock was released in 2008, Irrational games didn't expect it to become a colossal hit, and so the game they made was made for a more specific audience. It was not made for the COD fans or the shooter frat boys.The main problem with Infinite is that it trys to have the same core as Bioshock, as well as being as appealing to everyone in the market. Because of this, the shooting elements have taken a forefront, and are still lacking, and the story elements have suffered for it. It seems like they made the game and the story seperatly and tried to mesh them together, and it just doesn't feel at all coherent.

All in all, I think Bioshock Infinite is 'fine'. Its not a horrible game at all, but as a game that people are praising for being the next Bioshock, and showing how games can be more than art it strongly fails. I haven't even mentioned all the problems that Elizabeth brings to the gameplay and the fact that the ending is full of paradoxes, I strongly recommend a video by Matthewmitosis on YouTube for that. These are just my views on a gamethat could have just been so much more, but in the end just seems like its being pretentious,and doesn't seem to understand what made the Shock series so appealing. It's not the story or the gameplay or the classic 'twist', its the fact that they leave you with something to think about after the credits roll, in Bioshocks case being 'How much am I really in control of my actions?'. Infinite leaves me with no such feeling. But hey, it's your choice, after all, 'A man chooses, a Slave obeys'.

Old Games: Why do we forget the past?

So it's been a few weeks/months since my last post, mainly because I've had a bit much on my mind to get me too riled up about games, but something struck me today which is an important issue in the gaming community, and to a greater extend our history.

To start with a shitty anecdote, today I decided to play a game of 2048, which for the three of you who don't know (hi dad!) is a game all about sliding number tiles with numbers on them to increase the number on the tile until you reach the converted title '2048'. You can play it for free and I personally think its one of the best games from this year, and Dark Souls 2 came out this year! Anyway, while playing my game, a friend of mine said off handly "Oh, still playing 2048 Will?".

OK, so a lot of you may not see what my apparent problem is, but what that rather boring story was trying to get at is: Why do games have a lifespan?

Lately I've been finding it rather strange that people consider playing an old game a rather odd habit, as if I should always be playing the best and most talked about game at the time. I'm not saying new games are bad, I just bought a copy of Destiny which I'll explain my thoughts on at a later date, probably, but why do people consider it so strange to play and old game?

This problem doesn't even occur in other media. No one would judge you for watching an old film, like Jurassic Park, or even Metropolis, but with games it seems as though most of them have this public interest life span that causes people to forget about them as soon as something new comes along. I mean hell, 2048 was released THIS YEAR! Why is it so odd for me to be playing it?

It really gets on me that, with a few exceptions, people only seem to care about whats new and on the market. As soon as something drops from its day one release price, it drops from the public eye. One major example for all of you it Titanfall. You guys remember Titanfall, that game everyone said would kill Call of Duty and received near perfect review scores? Nope, neither do I. Hell, I'm pretty sure the Halo 3 servers are more busy than the Titanfall ones!

I think this basically comes down to two major problems. Firstly, is reviews. Reveiws are a natural part of any art that gets released, and games are no exception. People want to know if what is new is any good, because new games cost a shit load of money, especially if you live in Australia. New things also excite people. I think that this leads to the second problem, which is that in games, we don't really have a 'Nostalgia Critic' and most old games die with systems. Its a lot harder to have a conversation about the original Legend of Zelda with someone who doesn't own a NES, than someone who hasn't seen Die Hard. If you want someone to see Die Hard, I'm sure netflix or Hulu has it for you: Playing a NES or finding a digital copy on the Wii store is a lot harder. Because of this, the general lifespan of a game is limited by the system. In fact, thats probably why Microsoft is going about re-releasing all the number Halo games this year: So that people new to the series can catch up. As well as making Microsoft an extra buck or two, it allows a series to remain in the public sphere longer.

However, neither of these explain why something released this year, like 2048 or Titanfall is so easily forgotten. I've heard that Titanfall has mainly been forgotten because it really didn't have that much replayability, and most people wouldn't pay that much for only multiplayer (that's the reason I didn't get it).

Well that's my two cents on the issue. Personally I think this is a bigger issue then the fact that it looks like COD 11 (or whatever) is going to just be the same thing all over again, and that the industry is getting stale. There are hundreds of great games out there that people just forget about. If you're sick of current FPS, go play System Shock 2, hell, if you are sick of current games just play Star Wars Battlefront, and remember how good a lot of the things we already have are.

Dear Sony

Right, so I'm going to preface this by saying that today I thought I would be creative and write up something about the Destiny Beta from a few months ago. That said, when I returned home today to check all my internet check-y things, I found that yet again, I've been fucked by Sony.

So that may have come off as a bit extreme, but these guys are really getting to me. So I come home to see if the new DLC for Dark Souls 2, 'Crown of the Old Iron King', is on PSN, you know, because its on Steam and XLBA like it should be as the release date was the 26th of August. Yet again, I find that it isn't there, like last time when I wanted to buy 'Crown of the Sunken King'. Now, I don't know about you guys, but this really pisses me off.

Something about the way that it seems that Sony really doesn't care about their user base buying DLC on the day it is released really fucks with me. This is a whole section of their massive business who's only job it so make sure that things are up and available for people to buy, and yet last time I had to wait two days for it. It bothers me even more when I read on Reddit that people in not only the US, but also Japan have this game already and I don't, considering I live in the same time zone as the Japanese. I know that this may seem a bit rash, "Come on Will, it's only two days", but this is really annoying to me. If I buy a game for your platform (considering I have both) because your platform seems better for the game, then actively support the damn game. I mainly bought a PS3 to play Demon's Souls, and I continue to buy Souls games for the PS3 because you seem to want to support FromSoftware and actually care about these games. Clearly I was mistaken.

Now a lot of you might be thinking this is a bit far, it is only 2 days. But may I remind you that this DLC is already out on the Xbox and on Steam. If I had known Sony would be a bitch about this,  I would have bought Dark Souls 2 on Xbox because at least Microsoft seem to have their shit together when it comes to supporting DLC and arcade releases; they are out when they are supposed to be. Come on Sony, FromSoftware had a release date for this game and I'm certain you had the upload files before the 26th, so why does it take you so long to get it up for all of us who play the game. I'm sure people will be playing Dark Souls 2 long after Destiny, which you seem to be advertising on your front page like a Motherfucker, has faded into obscurity.

IF you are trying to run a business, the least you could do is support your products. Playstation support always seems to be active when ever I have a problem, maybe it's because you don't seem to be able have a product that works properly. Every single time I have gone to buy something on the PSN store I have had a problem, every single time. Just please, fix your product, it's driving me fucking insane. I'm like a housewife who suspects her husband is cheating just because he is late from working, checking her phone and the clock just to make sure he hasn't called, and Googling his name and shit like that. I don't want to spend all night refreshing your damn website so that I know when the damn DLC is live, goddamn it Sony!

So that was all a bit weird, especially for a first post, but hopefully for any of you who are feeling my pain, you can relate, and for all of you who are trying to find where the new Dark Souls 2 DLC is, I hope this has been informative. In short, Sony are pretty useless sometimes.

Note: If you do actually work for Sony, please tell me why the problem seems to exist, I would love to know. Hell, I could even write you a script that would let you auto-update your website for specific locations so that this won't happen. Also, you can't sue, coz this a review.