Rabish12

Just to make sure this is clear: the title of the original article was "EA: our games won't be Origin exclusive". The quote in the article isn't an attempt by EA to downplay the fact that some of their games are Origin exclusive, it's an attempt to respond to the fact that they only offer their own games through Origin right now. Pretty much the entire article here is misleading.

@KazamaSogetsu It was Valve's decision to take the games off Steam, not EA's. If it were EA doing it, they would have removed all of their games from the service, not just a handful of them.

Common sense, people.

@Dhexodus No. Because of Valve. It wasn't EA's decision not to release Battlefield 3 on Steam, Valve won't allow EA to put a game on Steam that serves updates, DLC, or other content through Origin. Basically, EA wants to be able to control the content releases for their game, and because of that Valve will not allow the game to be released on their service.

@wcarnation "They have no legal rights in any of this - permission is at best a courtesy, but it is nowhere required in the black and white. These guys have no lawyers or no power at all, it is clear the legal talk is just a pleasantry - it's an extension of their own entrenched sense of self worth."

That's actually entirely false. The minute you create an original work (and as I've explained here, something relying on something else to function doesn't make it cease to be an original work) you have a copyright for that work, and as a result you have legal rights to defend that work from any redistribution or excess derivation done without your permission. The modders may have no lawyers, but if you think that they have no legal rights in this case then you likely have a very poor understanding of copyright law and what it entails.

It's also more than a little odd that you'd call the modders greedy, given that the work they did on their mods was done without any payment or profit whatsoever and that they don't stand to gain anything especially significant by stopping this new mod from being distributed.

@TheDarkWayne Not at all the same sort of situation. With a painting restoration, you're modifying a single, unique product. With mods, you're creating entirely new products (whether it's code, texturing, models, animations, stories, sounds, dialogue or what have you) that happen to rely on an existing product to function.

@Wolfgun Copyright laws aren't just about preserving the profitability of works. They're also about giving the creators of those works control over how they're used and how they're distributed. Even if the original mods were free and this new mod is also free, it's still not fair use at all.

@The MAZZTer To be fair, as far as I know he did always present it as a collection of other mods. The fact that he didn't bother to credit the people who made those mods still puts him pretty clearly in the wrong here, though.

@(Unverified) That's a bit of a borderline case (I'd say "don't use it", but that's just me), but it's not really the situation here. This is someone who compiled a collection of mods without bothering to put the incredibly small amount of effort involved in crediting the modders whose works he was using and without bothering to so much as try to contact the modders to seek permission. It's not really a case of "I couldn't get in touch with them", but rather of "I didn't bother to try getting in touch with them".

@McDude Whether or not something relies on another product (like a mod does) isn't really relevant. If you create an original work, even if that work is in some sense derived from/a modification of something else (so long as the derivation isn't something like plagiarism), that work is automatically copyrighted and that copyright is enforceable.

Wow. I haven't felt a need to post a comment on this site in a very long time, but when I agree with a review and STILL think it's horrible? That's pretty bad.

The reviewer playing this game didn't seem to have any real idea of what it is he was going into. This is a game made for fans of Fist of the North Star, something he seemed to be fairly unfamiliar with and that he spent the first part of the review more or less directly mocking rather than explaining whether or not it's really maintained the appeal of the franchise it's trying to imitate (spoilers: it doesn't, with a lot of key moments and many, MANY less significant parts of the plot either removed entirely, cut down into text or meaningless fighting, or turned into boss battles that are hilarious caricatures of the dramatic moments they should have been).

And along those lines, why were Dynasty Warriors fans given only a single mention in a review of a game that's more or less a part of the same franchise? Why didn't this review explain how much BETTER than Dynasty Warriors this game is, how the lowered number of characters allows them to be far more differentiated and unique, or how the combat system seems to flow at least slightly better? People who like Dynasty Warriors aren't going to be reading reviews of this game so they can see how much the reviewer hates the game, they're going to be reading reviews of this game so they can see whether or not it's worth picking up for them. It's still fine to say this game's bad, but at least SOME real comparison to Dynasty Warriors should have been in there somewhere.

Besides all that, calling the bosses cheap because you don't know how to deal with them? Unacceptable. They aren't cheap. They aren't even really difficult, except in comparison with the game's constant flood of random mobs (since those random mobs will often stand in place doing absolutely nothing and waiting for you to murder them). Learn the game's combat system (it's not very hard - even the review itself harps on about its simplicity) and you shouldn't have any problem with them, but for goodness's sake, don't blame your lack of skill on the game. That's what sunk God Hand when it got reviews.

I mean, honestly. This game really is terrible. The different styles and abilities of the characters is a very nice touch, but the combat still feels extremely stiff, clunky, and unpolished. The game itself is fairly ugly, the levels are a constant grind through enemies that offer zero resistance and feel like little more than a way of padding out the game with constant tedium, the boss battles are repetitive and formulaic, and it isn't especially faithful to its source material. This is basically a better version of Dynasty Warriors, one that adds a few welcome features but fails to correct any of the flaws that series has had since it started beating the dead horse that is its inexplicable and constant success. All that said, this review somehow manages to be worse than the game it's trying to review. Really, even if this were a site like IGN I'd expect better.