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Capcom Announces Unreplayable Game

Hatta writes "Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS will be an experience that can be completed once per customer. Using a single, unwipable save slot Capcom ensures that a second hand customer gets a second rate experience. If you buy this game used, you will be stuck with the previous owner's progress, unable to start the game fresh."

26 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. First! by Xerotope · · Score: 5, Funny

    Everybody else must continue this comment.

    1. Re:First! by DemoLiter3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You wouldn't buy a used car...

    2. Re:First! by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I read it as "unplayable" game the first time. Might as well be true. Capcom is dead to me anyway, I'm over arcade gaming and they don't do anything else competently.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:First! by glassware · · Score: 3, Informative

      A more nuanced description of the save game system is here:
      http://gamasutra.com/view/news/35476/Capcom_Used_Sales_Not_A_Factor_In_The_Mercenaries_Save_System.php

      Just keep in mind this isn't an RPG, where saved data prevents you from seeing the beginning. This is a shooter game where your high scores and unlocks are permanently saved to the card. I suppose it's sad that you can't restore everything back to its original locked state and get the pleasure of unlocking each item individually, but I doubt it's as bad as everyone fears.

  2. The Bickering by Quantus347 · · Score: 5, Funny

    And I thought the childhood fights over the Zelda save slots were bad...

    --
    Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
    1. Re:The Bickering by Tharsman · · Score: 4, Informative

      One important thing missing from the summary:

      This is an arcade game were the save file only keeps high scores and unlocked content, similar to unlocking characters in a Street Fighter game.

      Although some may prefer to unlock everything themselves, I can also see many would love to buy a used and fully u locked copy of the game over a new one.

      This instance of the feature does not deserve any real doom crying.

  3. I appreciate the warning by reimero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That kind of move is a deal-breaker for me. I don't buy games often, but when I do, this is precisely the sort of thing that puts a game on my "do not ever buy" list. And it puts Capcom firmly on my "do not buy" list.

    --

    ----------

    Something clever
    1. Re:I appreciate the warning by nitehawk214 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't always buy games, but when I do, I buy from publishers that are not idiots.

      FTFY

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    2. Re:I appreciate the warning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I don't buy games often, but when I do..."

      For a second there I thought this was going to be a joke about "The Most Interesting Gamer In the World"...

      "He drove Desert Bus for a month -- to show that it could be done."
      "He collected every hat in Team Fortress 2 -- but never wore them."
      "He carried the gnome all the way through Half-Life Episode 2 -- without a single saved game."

      "He is... The Most Interesting Gamer In The World."

      "I don't buy games often, but when I do, I don't buy Capcom."
      "Stay frosty, my friends."

    3. Re:I appreciate the warning by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Funny

      Was I supposed to read that in Jeremy Clarkson's voice? Because I did.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  4. First Sale by EricWright · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, not the doctrine ... this policy just decreases the likelihood of garnering first sales. What a clever plan. If nobody buys the game in the first place, they've effectively wiped out the after-market.

    Brilliant!

  5. Second-hand??? by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if, uh, the original owner wants to start fresh?

    Dear CapCom: DIAF.

    Thanks.

    1. Re:Second-hand??? by uncanny · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What do they care? they already have your money!

  6. Boycott it by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do not support these types of games.

    I don't care if this is device-specific or if it's the second time the original person plays it. Just say no.

  7. Oh the irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Second hand customers will get a second rate experience, yet pirates will get an even better experience than the original customer since they will be able to manage their saves from the flashcard.

    Good job, Capcom.

    1. Re:Oh the irony by Superken7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Plus, stuff like this is what motivates hackers to break security and remove unpopular restrictions, which in turn enables piracy.
      It suffices for one hacker to triumph so that anyone can be a pirate.

      Well played, Capcom.

  8. I can't say this strongly enough. by Sparx139 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fuck. That. Shit.

    --
    Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
  9. Re:Will anybody buy this lemon? by AnotherBrian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course they will. Capcom wouldn't be retarded enough to publicize this anti-feature or disclose it anywhere on the box.

  10. They left their own best comment... by Kamiza+Ikioi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "If you buy this game..."

    Nuff said.

    --
    I8-D
  11. Re:No need to be alarmed... by Moryath · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're too optimistic.

    Some fucked-up suit with his head up his ass came up with this scene. Some other brown-nosing sycophant said "brilliant" and told the programmers to make it happen.

    When it doesn't sell well, they'll blame it on the 3DS's poor install base, or "piracy", or a dozen other things rather than admit Crapcom's been fucking up for the past decade. I could give you a list of reasons Crapcom no longer gets my money unless I rented the game to try first, but I'm pretty sure I'd exceed the character limit on posts.

  12. Re:Book? by WillAdams · · Score: 4, Informative

    That would be William Gibson's _Agrippa_ a memoir of his father:

    http://www.dissemination.dk/research/books/postcard-from-a-dead-future/

    It contained aquatint etchings which would degrade when exposed to light and a _floppy disk_ w/ the text which would encrypt itself as it was displayed (naturally this has since been broken).

    William

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
  13. Re:Dumbest Idea Ever by techsoldaten · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In a way, it might. Cracking games is a long standing tradition and quite a bit of fun.

    Gave up on video games myself a long time ago, but I still remember the joy of circumventing copy protection. I bought a copy of Zork once, it came on a floppy that was copy protected. The secret to copying it was to cut a small hole in the top left side of the disk before putting it in. This allowed copying to happen.

    Mind you, I was never any good at Zork and got eaten continuously by Grues. I wanted a copy because I had a bad habit of throwing disks for games across the room when I lost. As far as I was concerned, I was buying the game, not the disk, and it was abominable that people were not allowing me to enjoy the game in the manner of my choosing (watching it fly when it beat me). Having a copy was about having a backup, and who were they to tell me no? /me fondly remembers the soft feel of floppies, the slight texture on the 5.5s, the way they used to soar...

    Copy II PC was the program I used to copy write protected floppies. I think Wizardry was the first one where I needed to use this. I assumed I was going to be just as bad as I was with Zork and made copies before I played the game. It took me a couple weeks to get down how to use Copy II PC - while I wanted to play the game, I did not want it to end prematurely in a fiasco.

    For whatever reason, one of the Wizardry games was protected against Copy II PC, and that made me leave it on the shelf until something better came along. I think it sat there for a year until I got a copy of PC Tools, which I used for making copies and also hex editing. It was with Pool of Radiance where I really learned to shine with that one, tanking around with a party of people with 18 for all their attributes and all sorts of weapons. I am not sure if you can call it playing the game once you have screwed with all the internals, I remember it did not take me long to get bored with the game itself but I was always fascinated by what I could do with the saved game files.

    Purhased a lot of games that I really hated just to screw with them. I had no interest in any of the flight simulator games that were popular back then, or the SSI simulators like Panzer Commander, or any of the Sierra games (that came along later), or things like Ancient Art of War. I would buy them to add them to a library, and would spend my time screwing with the disks and data files. I probably spent as much money on floppies as I did on actual games, if you can believe that.

    Fun times. If I was a kid again, I would probably buy a copy of this game just to hack it. Hoping there are others who share the same POV.

  14. Re:Will anybody buy this lemon? by delinear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dead right - if they make it inconvenient for legitimate customers to play the game without stripping DRM, they're basically encouraging their paying customers to go learn all the skills they need to pirate. From there surely it's a small step for a lot of people to just cut out the whole payment part of the process. That's especially the case if you live in a jurisdiction where DRM circumvention is illegal anyway - in that case you've already broken the law just to make it easier to play something you legally own, what's the disincentive of going that bit further?

  15. Re:Will anybody buy this lemon? by SilentStaid · · Score: 5, Informative

    The game has already been out for a month. It was not published clearly on the outside of the box, just in the manual (and who RTFM around here?).

    They're treating it as a success at capcom because Gamestop is paying 6$ for it used in the UK and in Japan.

    Source.

  16. Re:Siblings... by KDR_11k · · Score: 3, Informative

    What part of Resident Evil sounds like a game that children should play?

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.