I’m sure everyone concerned has learned that only a list of 20 or so countries from North America and Europe get to pre-order the game and will be the first ones to have access to it while the rest of the world has to wait for an undisclosed period of time. After all these years, more waiting… but worse! A lot of people will be waiting while people from the luckier countries or people like me who pre-ordered copies from overseas get to play it while they don’t.

I woke up this morning and was checking my news-feeds on my newly bought Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, just chilling in bed since I’m on my mid-year break from uni… and there it was, the big pre-order announcements all over the net for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Hell yeah! I was excited and immediately checked for information about the Australian release of the game… wait… wait… what? I can’t seem to find anything relating to Australia… oh.

By this time I was pretty damn PISSED OFF with the whole fiasco unfolding in front of me, as was a lot of people posting their rage posts on the official TOR forum. Of course, despite being pissed off about it, I wasn’t surprised at all by what was happening. Again Australia, New Zealand and other regions and countries are being shafted. It just makes me feel even more justified for not bothering to buy Australian versions of video games because there’s just no point any more when shit like this can happen.

After a moment I collected my thoughts and with the help of Jeff, came up with a plan. By this time Amazon had already sold out of their pre-order allotments of the game, however I was able to pre-order through GameStop but it’ll apparently take up to 2 days for them to email me my early access codes, bah!

I’m not going to bother going on a huge rant about this, I’m just pissed off that EA, LucasArts and BioWare can’t even manage a simultaneous release in western countries at the very least. But what makes matters worse is that there’s a good chance that people in countries not selected for pre-order are going to be waiting A VERY LONG TIME for The Old Republic to be released in their regions.

If my hype level wasn’t as high as it was for The Old Republic before this morning, I probably would have said “nope, that’s it, I’m out” and wouldn’t have bothered to buy the game at all… I’m sure there are people out there who have taken that route which is a shame but understandable.

As good as Xbox Live is, it’s exactly what you want out of a paid online gaming service… but it can be stupid sometimes, especially when it comes to your credit card details.

A long time ago, I renewed my Xbox Live Gold account using a credit card… what I didn’t know was that when you renew the subscription it turns on the auto-renew settings… which you can’t actually turn off anywhere on the settings on your 360 or on the xbox.com site. What makes matters worse is that the credit card is expired so Microsoft’s system is on a continuous loop trying to charge money to that card over and over and over.

I’ve tried to stop it by taking off the credit card details from my account, however their system won’t let me do it while they’re trying to renew the subscription… so basically it’s stuck on this endless cycle I can do jack all about unless I call up Microsoft and do something about it. But fuck that! I mean, it’s their bullshit system and I’ve doing all I can on my end to try to get them to stop doing what they’re doing. I’m too busy doing other more important things than to call Microsoft and wait in their phone queues for some Indian call centre operator to get confused as to what I want to do with my account, probably deleting it in the process… it’s all just so stupid.

So yeah, fuck off Microsoft, I have no reason to renew the Gold subscription because there aren’t really any games I want to play online on the 360 at the moment.

In previous rants, I’ve discussed the lack of an R18+ rating for video games and also censorship in relation to the evil child porn filled internet… one look will turn you into a paedophile, so beware. I think out of the two, it’s probably better to play video games and become a mindless mass murderer than the creepy alternative. It’s almost as if the Australian government has become like a prison security force and is governing a nation of convicts… oh wait.

Of course, the whole issue of censorship is just one of the problems with Australia…

I strongly consider paying $100 (that’s Australian dollars) per game much too expensive. In fact, I refuse to buy any game for that price and of course smart shoppers feel the same way and seek out much more competitive prices from places like JB HiFi, Big W, Target, etc. But if we’re talking full price games, it’s ridiculous to see some of these games being sold for $120 for the standard version.

Australia doesn’t have a very large population, there are around 21 million people and among them are only are handful of gamers. So, it’s no wonder that games end up being so expensive to begin with… in fact, I don’t really blame publishers when it comes to their high prices. It really is just the nature of publishing games in such a small market. That said, it still doesn’t help things when the cost of getting games to the store shelf ends up being so high for publishers. I hear the OFLC classification fee itself is pretty high, so high in fact that a large number of WiiWare games aren’t being released in Australia because of it… or at least being delayed for an undetermined period of time…

Of course, the high prices we pay for video games are only after we end up waiting a billion years for them. Australia tends to wait months for some games to be released while the rest of the world has been enjoying, whatever, for all this time. Again, the lack of population is the reason Australia has to sit around and wait for things to be released. Certain games won’t even get released down here unless they’ve seen significant profits in other regions…

I feel like all of these publishers are doing charity work when it comes to releasing games in Australia… I mean, when I think about it, if every video game just stopped being sold in Australia, would it really make a difference for all of those companies? It’s not like a few thousand units of a game or console really means anything compared to the millions being sold in other countries.

Hell, I almost feel like they really should just stop everything down here and just have online stores stock up so that Australians can just order all of their video games from the net and have it all imported. It’s cheaper… you’ll get the game earlier than you would’ve if you wait for the Australian release.

Even now, Wii games are $20-$40 cheaper than PS3 and 360 games down here, but if I went on eBay or some online store, I could fine an EU release of the same game for cheaper including the postage costs… and that’s very sad.

There really isn’t any point in buying Australian, but I guess we’re all stuck with the way things are down here.

The thing that sucks about online gaming is when the companies involved in the production of the game see the need to lock people into separate regions with online play. For some games this isn’t such a big deal, it’s just extremely inconvenient… however there is one game (take a look at the pic and take a guess) where this region locking has pretty much killed the games main selling point.

For those who don’t know, Monster Hunter, although being a series which is playable offline, is primarily an online co-operative game. From my experience with the series, the most the offline sections of the game are good for is to set up your character and the initial tutorial parts at the start of the game. Once you’ve gotten a hang of the game, you get a group of friends together and you go online with it… and there you stay for the rest of your Monster Hunting experience…. unless your internet goes down and you still feel like playing Monster Hunter.

We lucky bunch who live outside of Japan get to play Monster Hunter (3) Tri with absolutely no subscription fees involved. The reason for our luck amounts to the fact that Monster Hunter is nowhere near as popular as it is within Japan. Giving the game free online access ensures that the series will grow in popularity, making it a good investment for the future… even better is the fact that those dreaded Nintendo Friend Codes aren’t used…

I played through the entirety and MORE of Resident Evil 5 with folks from both Europe and the US… I should be able to do the same with Monster Hunter Tri and any other game that locks people out from other continents.

Personally, I believe Monster Hunter Tri would’ve turned out better on Xbox Live or PSN provided that they didn’t region lock those either… or at least just not Berlin wall us into our own playing pens… especially for folks in Australia. Out of around 22 million people, I’m sure only about half a percent will end up buying Monster Hunter Tri at the very most, and even then, not all of those people will end up going online with it.

I guess I’ll just have to enjoy my empty Australian Monster Hunter Tri servers…

I like “special” edition versions of games as much as the next guy. After all, when a game I like comes out that comes in a really nice case with exclusive art comes out, I think it’s a pretty cool thing to get since it’s relevant to my interests. After all, greed isn’t such a bad thing if you have the means to pursue what you want… even if a lot of what you get in the Special Edition packs is pretty useless or will be thrown into some dark corner a week after you get it.

Some are great, others start getting ridiculous and then there are those that go beyond ridiculous with multiple tiered versions of their special editions, each more special than the last.

In the past I found it easy to choose from with these kinds of things. You either got the regular version for a standard price, or you paid a little bit more and got a nice steel book case with some nice exclusive art and maybe even an extra disc with a “making of” video on it.

Nowadays, it’s an entirely different business with many different kinds of versions of the same thing except different… kind of like how there seems to be many different versions of the same console released over a period of time with different price points to confuse and infuriate people who have an older inferior version to the superior release that they just happened to come up with…. *chokes and almost passes out as he tries to take a breath*…

There are a lot of games that do it, but I think the two most recent that come to mind is Assassin’s Creed II and Modern Warfare 2. Black, White, Hardened, Prestige… it is ridiculous, but out of the two, I think AC2 is worse because of its exclusive in-game content that people who buy the regular edition will probably never see… unless they’re released as DLC later on.

In-game exclusives piss me off, and it doesn’t matter if they come from special editions or because it’s some console exclusive. I don’t particularly like the fact that Grand Theft Auto IV has all of the DLC on the 360… Hell, even the Episodes from Liberty City version is 360 only.

I worry about what else they’re going to do to segregate people into different classes depending on how much they choose to spend on buying what should be the exact same game…

Senator Conroy says some internet content is simply not suitable in a civilised society.

The Australian government has put out a media release today announcing that they’re pushing forward with their efforts to censor the Internet. The release titled as “Measures to improve safety of the internet for families” basically states that whatever content that falls under the “Refused Classification” listing in this country will be blocked nationally through every ISP in this country.

To put it in simpler terms: If I load videos of the new Aliens vs Predator game onto this site (whether it be hosted locally on this server or from YouTube), then this web site, or at least that specific page would end up being put on the filter list. The reason for this is because the game has recently been refused classification in this country due to another related issue that I have talked about on Twilight Lynk for quite some time now.

(UPDATE: Aliens vs Predator has since been re-rated to MA15+ in its complete and uncut form.)

Is this web site suitable for civilised society? Whether it is or is not is not the issue, what is the issue and what I absolutely HATE is that the determination, if the government has its way, will no longer be left to free thinking adults themselves. “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free” my ass… in this respect we’ll become no different to China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Those mother fucking white withered and dry cunts, who have been elected into power (by a lot of people who are now regretting it over many different issues), need to be anally raped repeatedly with a cactus.

Yes, I object to Internet censorship, as you may or may not have gathered. I feel my rights as an Australian are slowly being chipped away. The justification for these measures is that it’s to help protect our children. As far as I know, children in this country don’t actively seek out child pornography, bestiality, depictions of rape, etc… those who do are 99.9% of the time adults who most likely happen to know various ways around the filter to begin with.

I love how our government knows that there are uneducated masses it can manipulate with fear mongering. I can feel safe knowing that the Australian government is protecting me from those Aliens… and especially those Predators… the chains are slowly being bound one at a time and the people in this country are letting it happen.

Protect your children. They should be allowed to grow up as free thinking citizens who are able to make their own choices, whatever they may be… even if it means that they’re exposed to some of the more disturbing elements of society.

Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year you bastards. I leave you with this to think upon.

Nintendo of Australia is definitely happy with bringing out Wii Sports Resort down here as well as the Metroid Prime Trilogy later this year. They have much confidence in those and similar titles; however it doesn’t seem to extend to all first party Nintendo games. In fact, there seems to be a couple of games Nintendo of Australia thinks just is not for the Australian market at all.

Okay, so Excitebots: Trick Racing may not be the best or most interesting game ever made, but I still find it interesting that Nintendo of Australia has chosen to simply not sell the game in this country at all. The reasoning is that they just don’t think it’ll sell very well down here, which may be a fair point… however it then makes you wonder why another niche game like Trauma Center: Second Opinion and New Blood have been released down here… with Nintendo as their publisher. Hell, you can even get Club Nintendo stars if you purchase either of those games. Atlus must have shovelled quite a lot of money down Nintendo’s throat to get those two games into the country.

The second game which isn’t seeing much attention down here, though is being treated slightly better than Excitebots, is Punch-Out!! for Wii. Unlike Excitebots, this is a game that has received very favourable reviews and is also from a series long remembered and loved… which is probably why it actually is being released down here. The problem is that it’s only being released at a single retail chain, JB Hi-Fi. The reasoning for this game not having a full release is the same with Excitebots… just not enough interest, apparently.

Well okay, so the general theme from Nintendo of Australia seems to be, “no one really cares, so why bother selling it?” Interesting take… though you’d think that a company like Nintendo would realise that if you advertise these games there is a pretty good chance that you’ll create interest for your products… no?

Either way, I’m kind of nervous about missing out on Punch-Out!! since it does have a “limited release”… it makes me feel like, if I don’t get it on release day then I’ll never be able to find it anywhere and then I’ll miss out completely. I really should pre-order it or something but there’s no JB Hi-Fi anywhere near where I live. Damn.

Well right now I’m wondering if it will ever get to the stage where the Australian government succeeds in its efforts to close off the country to anything they may find objectionable that they end up blocking my access to my own web site… sounds crazy, I know, but then trying to filter the Internet is some crazy stuff to begin with.

Recently I’ve seen some stories posted on the web telling of how the Australian government plans to use their Internet filter to block sites selling mature rated games. These are legitimate sites we’re talking about that are selling products that aren’t even banned in Australia. To add to that, this is a country that deemed DVD region coding to be an unfair restriction of trade practices and allowed PS2′s and other devices to be modded so that they could play discs from other regions (as well as pirated games, though that’s a whole other story).

To top it all off, this also affects online games that may contain adult content, including Second Life… maybe the Australian government just want to keep all the furries out of the country, or maybe they prefer the people to have sex in real life… or maybe it’s just “WON’T SOMEONE PLEEEEEEEAAASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN”… yeah, that sounds about right. Well it’s nothing new I guess, after all Sexy Poker for WiiWare was just the latest game to be denied classification in the country… though it’s not like we should really care about watered down porn where you have to work to get to the watered down porn part…

Meanwhile, whether Australia will ever get an R18+ rating for its video games is still up in the air and not going anywhere at all… but at least I know that the government is doing all it can to try to tell us what we don’t have the right to view/play.

Quite a few games were effected by the lack of an R18+ rating down here in 2008, and to top it off, the reasoning for some of these games being banned from being sold in Australia are downright confusing… especially when some of these games that were originally refused classification have now been rated MA15+ with little to no change at all.

I recently discovered that both Silent Hill Homecoming and F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin are being released down here in Australia despite failing to receive classifications last year… No cuts have been made to F.E.A.R 2 and it has gone through without a scratch (though a little delayed) with an MA15+ rating. Silent Hill Homecoming, on the other hand, has been edited in an interesting way. From what I’ve heard, the only changes that were made to the game involve some of its cutscenes which have slightly different camera angles and a few effect changes to try to tone down the impact of the violence being shown on-screen. I find it interesting that none of the gameplay elements for Homecoming have been changed. From what I’ve observed, it’s the interactive elements that is the issue for people who are against violence in video games.

Some of what is described to be too graphic in Silent Hill Homecoming also appears in many other games which don’t seem to have a problem being classified and are listed as MA15+ down here. For example, Dead Space which also features graphic content along the lines of “high-impact violence, copious blood spray, decapitations, partial corpse dismemberment, and depictions of torture” has no problems. And for those who are wondering about Resident Evil 5, worry no more… the OFLC finds it to be perfectly acceptable like they did with Resident Evil 4…

The small changes made in Silent Hill Homecoming also remind me of the hilariously funny “edited” version of Grand Theft Auto IV that Australia has. The only difference between the Australian version and versions from most other countries is that you can’t turn the camera while Nico is doing his thing with a prostitute of his choosing while in his (someone else’s) car… Oh, you can still pick up a prostitute and you can still kill them afterward to get your money back, but nope, you can’t try to move the camera around to try to find that small field of view where you can just about see Nico and his lady of the night still fully clothed and bouncing up and down like no tomorrow… yeah, I think I’ve made my point… it’s stupid and confusing.

But while we’re at it, let’s not forget Fallout 3, the game that was banned not because of its violent content, but because of the use of a real world drug, morphine. As we all know now, the name of the drug was changed for all versions of the game around the world and has been released complete and uncut in Australia… All that commotion because of morphine… a drug referred to and shown to be abused in a number of movies and TV shows…

I don’t know, I can’t seem to understand the reasoning behind why some games are refused classification and other games aren’t… or why some games that are originally refused have somehow made it to Australia with no cuts despite the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) being adamant that the content is far too graphic for us to handle. Is it about context? If you’re a “good guy” in the game, are you allowed to perform graphically violent acts that a game starring a “bad guy” can’t? What makes drilling holes into one kind of monster wrong while using a chainsaw to saw another kind of monster in half with a glorious spray of blood all over the screen okay?

What is the use of refusing to allow video games to have an R18+ rating? To me it seems so simple as to why we SHOULD have it. Our rating system is to inform and educate those who buy those forms of media about the content of the media they are buying. The MA15+ and R18+ ratings are also used to restrict minors from being able to buy games with such content in them… and most importantly, having the R18+ rating will allow games like Silent Hill Homecoming and F.E.A.R 2 to be released as R18+ games and distinguish them as something more than just MA15+ games which they are right now.

When I set the alarm on my DS, I’m so afraid of hearing it in the morning that I literally wake up every few hours and CHECK how much time is left for me to wake up… and then when it comes close for the alarm to go off, I wake up and then I wait and stare at my DS until 10 minutes before it goes off I turn it off and get up. Does this make me a strange person? Well yes, but I’ve done stranger things before and anyone who owns a DS will understand why I’m like this…

“BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT! BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT! BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT! BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT-BRZZZZT!“… and then it gets louder and LOUDER and it goes on and on. I don’t know what kind of sick experiments people have run to determine the most annoying sound to use to wake people up in the morning, but the Nintendo DS has by far the most annoying alarm I’ve ever heard. I can stand the BEEP BEEP BEEP watches and other electronic alarms make and don’t really mind the oldskool ringing alarm clocks… though, to be honest, I haven’t heard one of those outside of a movie.

I don’t know why it stresses me out so much… but it does. I just thought I’d share that with everyone for some reason…