It’s a Steep Price to Be Trendy

February 11th, 2009

The other day I went on a mini-spending sphere on the Wii Virtual Console and Playstation Store, the second time that I’ve done so. My stroll through downloadable content land brought with it two unnecessary grievances that really shouldn’t have to burden me. I guess the new-gen kids would call them commodities, I’m not so sure.

Classic Controller Requirement

The first time I went to the Wii Shop was to buy a trio of 16-bit titles, some of which were keen to inform me on start up that I’d need a Classic Controller to play. “I don’t remember the Wii Shop stating anything about this being mandatory” I thought to myself. Fortunately within a few minutes of trialling the games with the Wiimote and Gamecube pad I realized that this announcement was nothing more than an amusing serving suggestion.

secret-of-mana

The second time around, I realized that I was disappointingly wrong when the copy of Secret of Mana I’d bought for my brother would not operate with the Gamecube pad or Wiimote. What I don’t understand is why didn’t they just map the game to the Gamecube pad, there are enough buttons on the Gamecube controller to accommodate a SNES game. Instead I’m locked out of playing a game I just bought and have to buy another controller.

Daylight Robbery Shrinkrayed

Although I’m about to beat up on it, I honestly have no issues with downloadable expansion packs and other extras, providing they offer reasonable value and incentive to the player. Some of the downloadable content on offer is terribly stingy and it’s almost questionable where DLC is heading too.

What is worse is when there are multiple expansion packs, including bundles of various packs. Sometimes I just want to buy the game and not have to worry about these formalities, particularly when they are on a micro level like this. Case in point with Super Stardust HD. The game has two main expansions; Solo add-on pack and Team Pack. Within the Super Stardust HD category the single game and two expansions are listed, as well as a Double Pack and Complete Pack. From the text descriptions it’s difficult to fathom what exactly each of these packs contain. The Double Pack assumingly has the two expansions at a cheaper price but what about the Complete Pack? The description is ambiguous as to what is included, the prices (in relation to content) aren’t particularly clear either and after Googling and cross checking the official Playstation site for 10 minutes I still couldn’t yield any answers. So I just ended up buying something else.

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