I haven’t had a computer that can run new games for pretty much a decade. Even that machine I had to upgrade just so it could run Aliens vs. Predator 2 and Planetside in any playable fashion. It’s always been cheaper for me to just buy a console rather than get a desktop capable of playing the latest games for God knows how long. Any computer I could have bought when I started College would have been obsolete within a year or two as all of a sudden dual-core processors were the latest thing!

Yet it seems everyone’s fears of Microsoft and Sony charging out the whazoo for what should be free is becoming relatively true. PC gamers got Crash Course, the latest and first downloadable campaign for Left 4 Dead, as a free add-on. Xbox 360 players were forced to drop $7, by which I mean $12.50 since you have to use Microsoft’s piece of crap points system instead of real money. I was desperately hoping it would be worth the money.

Well, I’ve already spent enough time with the maps to have beaten half a retail game, so I guess that answers the question. However, this is primarily due to the fact that I’ve been achievement hunting, Microsoft’s primary cause for charging money. Yes, people, if you want to add to your gamerscore, an arbitrary number that does nothing but feed one’s completion addiction and fuel the self-esteem, you have to pay money. I’d say we should hold a boycott, but gamers can’t do that sort of thing. It would mean not feeding our loving hobby of playing games, and that just can’t be done. So let’s complain on our blogs and hope someone listens!

In any case, the real grievance is with the sudden flood of glitches that had occurred on Wednesday, the 30th of September. While there were a few issues with the reloading animation not running and the blood splatter from the Hunter continuing even after he’d been knocked off an ally, Wednesday really took the cake. All of a sudden there were indoor environments that weren’t showing up until you stepped into the building, at which point all you saw outside was the level’s skybox instead of the actual map. Truck trailers could be walked through by players and zombies alike. Completely solid ground would suddenly shove you onto the ledge of the cliff.

These glitches and errors only occurred for one day, causing me to believe it was primarily a server side issue. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if the $7 was worth it. Here I was playing a half-hour map that was glitched to Hell and back, and for what? Primarily a few extra gamerscore.

I’m not so sure I’ll be as fired up for the next downloadable Left 4 Dead content, to be honest. It’s not necessarily so much a fault of Valve’s as it is Microsoft’s system, but developers need to let Microsoft know that this shouldn’t be determined by them. If Valve wants to release free content with achievements, let them. Or at the very least make a dashboard update that eliminates this shitty Microsoft Points system and actually makes use of real money so people aren’t paying more than the listed price. If other developers don’t like it, then maybe they ought to reconsider nickel and diming gamers to death just because they haven’t figured out better ways to control their budgets.

Comment on this article