Necrotech

oh dear god.
Necrotech is a sci-fi “cyberpunk” RPG that takes place in a dark and grim future, a future in which our cities have been taken over by hordes of identical Poser models and random white untextured polygons constantly fly all over the place for some unexplained and probably nonexistent reason. But wait, I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. Before I had a chance to actually play the game, I had to navigate through the website of the publisher, Game Thoughts, to download the demo. While at their website I had a lapse in my extremely lapse-prone judgment and decided to check out their mission statement, which smashes together various corporate “We value the customer!” cliches but manages to make them interesting through the miracle of really bad writing:

Our commitment to quality is unwavering and inflexible. Whether devoloped in-house or elsewhere, all Game Thoughts™ products are thoroughly tested for technical accuracy as well as artistic integrity.

Game Thoughts products hinge on technology. By utilizing the latest in software and hardware technologies, we are able to expand previously conceived notions of "video games" and breathe a special life into each title that is unparalleled in scope. Each title has the potential to redefine the industry, and most certainly will.

When I saw that the author of a budget game publisher’s mission statement was bragging about their everlasting commitment to quality, and that this commitment apparently left them enough leeway to invent words like “devoloped”, I could already tell that whoever wrote this wasn’t the brightest monkey in the barrel. I also think that using a sentence like “Each title has the potential to redefine the industry, and most certainly will” should be an offense punishable by having all of your computer and writing equipment rounded up, dumped into a lake and destroyed by depth charges, at which point all the shards should be hauled back out of the lake, loaded into a giant cannon and shot to the moon.

For being hardcore gangsta thugs, these guys sure have shitty aim.

When I loaded up the game, I-....oh wait, shit. I’m getting ahead of myself again. Sorry, folks! I wasn’t able to play the full version of Necrotech yet because I had not yet purchased an “Init Code.” You see, the trial version that you can download from the Game Thoughts website only allows you five uses, and merely looking at the “Unlock, Run Trial Version or Exit” screen counts as a use. In order to unlock the full version you need to pay $15 online and they will email you a Security Code. Then you’re supposed to take this Security Code, along with the “MID” and “Site Code” that are generated by the trial software, and enter all three codes into their website to receive a fourth code that you can enter to unlock the full version.

However, the way things are supposed to work and the way things actually work are often two very different things, particularly when you’re dealing with a company that looks through gardens for illegal immigrant workers and then pays them to come inside and write mission statements. After purchasing my “Security Code” and entering all three codes into the website, I was greeted by a good ol’ “Page not found” error message. I emailed them to ask what was going on and they gave this explanation:

We did a total site conversion over the weekend and we apparently forgot to copy the page that actually gives you the code.

I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t tried to purchase the game then this error would have gone unnoticed for months, since the only people who voluntarily purchase games like Necrotech are SA writers and people who don’t listen to SA writers when we warn you not to buy something. But fortunately their server issue is all cleared up now so they can go back to twiddling their thumbs and waiting for their next customer like a forlorn child selling lemonade.