autocratic for the people.

George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People.

Last week the eagerly-awaited Dead Rising was released for the 360. I bought it last Friday and, along with a crew of experienced zombie-hunters, plunged in. A complete review is not my intent here; rather, I want to address an issue that quickly cropped up for us (and others), prevented us from playing the game, and has so far been dismissed by both the developer (directly) and Microsoft (tacitly).

The issue is pretty straightforward: some of the game's on-screen text is tiny. Really, really tiny. Tiny to the point that it's completely unreadable on normal, non-HD televisions. Now, normally some unreadable text isn't that big a deal; you can usually ignore it and just muddle through. In this case, though, the unreadable text provides the most critical game information possible: it describes the tasks you're supposed to complete.

Part of the problem is that Dead Rising is a sandbox-style, as opposed to a linear-style, game. In a linear-style game, you're presented with a series of challenges to perform, one after another, with each new challenge presented after the previous one is completed. An example of a linear-style game would be Super Mario Bros.: upon completion of a level, you proceed to the next. The other style, sandbox, which has become much more popular lately, instead presents a number of challenges simultaneously, and lets you decide which ones you want to complete, and in what order. Since Dead Rising is a sandbox-style game, the text describing the tasks to complete is absolutely critical. The game can't be played without it.

I mentioned above that we played on a "normal", non-HD, TV. This is important. The legibility problems apparently disappear on HDTVs, as their higher-quality displays make the text much more sharp. This illustrates the real problem here: nobody ever tested this game with a normal television.

It may surprise you to learn that this is not a new problem, and in fact, it's not even a new problem for the 360. Last fall, one of the 360's launch titles was also problematic when played on a normal TV. And that problem was never fixed. It's funny; the last time a number of games exhibited problems for a number of customers, the console manufacturer stepped up and implemented an official approval system in order to make it clear to customers that there was, in fact, a quality control process applied to games that bear the approval seal. It pretty well solved the problem, and it restored faith in software for the system in question.

Of course, Microsoft has an approval process for the 360, too .. and both Dead Rising and King Kong were approved. So apparently Microsoft doesn't consider playability on a normal television to be a criteria for certification. That's interesting. Last year, the Executive Producer for XBox went out of his way to state that the 360 "will look great on both high-def and standard-def televisions because we built in enough graphics horsepower that Xbox 360 in real time can scale down high-def images to standard def." That's pretty explicit; hell, that's calling out playability on normal televisions as a feature.

In any event, it'd be easy to distribute a fix for this problem. Since Microsoft has managed to introduce the wonderful world of software updates to console gaming, the developer of Dead Rising could issue an upgrade automatically via XBox Live. So far, though, they've issued only a statement. This statement is mostly notable for its failure to provide a solution, or even to promise that one's coming. To be clear, though, they do already have our money.

What can we conclude? Only this: Nintendo's new system won't have this problem, as it doesn't support HD. It's amazing to think that that might actually be a selling point.

posted by avixe @ 11:25 PM