Welcome back to Let’s Play.  Last time, O’Malley wiped out some Borg, and now Admiral Quinn wants him to be a ship captain full-time.  How will O’Malley handle this new assignment?  (If you’re new, you might want to start with Episode One.)

Admiral Quinn asked me to return to Earth Starbase and see him about a ship commission.  I’m not too sure how I feel about that; I’d rather just stick with engineering.  He wouldn’t force me to be a captain, would he?  I guess I won’t know until we get there.

Earth Starbase looks pretty big:

We park the ship and I beam in to the lobby outside Admiral Quinn’s office.

Coming out of the transporter room, I turn the corner into the Admiral’s office.

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Welcome back to Let’s Play. Upon beaming back to the U.S.S. Innovation, O’Malley learned that the Borg had killed every single officer on board the Innovation while he was away, leaving him in charge of the ship.  Will the power go to his head, or will he spend most of his time tinkering with ship’s systems? (If you’re new, you might want to start with Episode One.)

Well, I guess I’m in charge of the ship.  I head to the bridge and get my first overview of the situation in space.

It’s pretty bad.  Debris floats everywhere.  Damaged ships drift aimlessly.  I don’t see any Borg ships in the immediate vicinity, which is probably a good thing, since weapons and shields are down.  About the only systems that are functional are engines and navigation.

My first act as captain is an easy decision:

After all, my own replicators are broken, so why not take advantage?

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Welcome back to Let’s Play.  We last left our hero as he beamed from his ship, the U.S.S. Innovation, over to the U.S.S. Khitomer to see how he could be of help.  What will he see when he beams in?  Will he ever be given a security detail?  Will he be forever stuck with his handheld phaser?  And most importantly, will he ever fix the food replicator in his quarters?

I beam into the sick bay of the U.S.S. Khitomer, not quite sure what I’ll see.  Turns out that, despite the Borg invasion, sick bay is doing pretty well.

There aren’t even any explosions or anything, though there are cargo containers stacked haphazardly on either end of the room for some reason.

Out the windows, I can see some crewmen fighting off Borg invaders in the shuttle bay.

(more…)

From The Onion:

My opinion? We need more games of this nature before we can be sure.

I loved Assassin’s Creed.  It was entertaining in its own way, the graphics were stunning, and though the storyline was slightly bland it was not boring.  I bought it on sale on Steam early last year.

I have been quite excited about the sequel.  It’s supposed to come out on the PC next month (it has been out on consoles for a few months already).  From all appearances, they’ve fixed all the problems with the original game’s gameplay, and refined and improved it, until what they had left was pure liquid awesome.

As it turns out, Ubisoft has decided on adding something else to the game: a horrendously draconian DRM scheme.  In order to play Assassin’s Creed 2, you must be online at all times.

What’s worse, if your internet connection drops at any time, for any reason, your game pauses until the connection is restored.  When this happens, Assassin’s Creed 2 will resume at your last checkpoint, which could be anywhere from five seconds ago to five minutes ago (if its checkpoints are spaced anything like the original).

Five minutes might not seem like a big deal.  But what if your connection is flaky?  What if you’re on a weak-signal wireless connection?  It could happen every five minutes.

What if you just don’t have an internet connection for whatever reason?  What if your ISP decides to shut down your connection for maintenance, or reset your modem remotely, or any number of other things that ISPs like to do which interrupt your connection?

It gets worse.  If Ubisoft’s servers go offline, you can’t play.  What’s more, if they go out of business entirely, you can’t play ever again.

And all this for a single-player game.

There is absolutely no reason for them to be informed of every moment I spend playing their game.  And even if they do want to know for some reason, the game could simply cache data until the connection comes back, and allow you to continue playing uninterrupted.

Anyway, I really, really hate invasive DRM, and this rates an 8 out of 10 on the “Invasive DRM” scale.  The only way it could be worse is if they installed CD-ROM-checking drivers even if you buy a digital copy.  (Other games are guilty of that.)

As a result, I’ll be boycotting Assassin’s Creed 2 — a game I was really looking forward to playing, at full purchase price — until such a time as they remove these measures.