Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

So after the celebration of the month long Block Party on Xbox 360, PC owners finally get a little love from the celebration in the form of Game Room.  The Game Room is a new cross platform title from Microsoft that allows people to create their own virtual arcade that other friends can come and visit, and play classic video games from the arcade, or even home consoles.  In concept, Game Room sounds interesting enough but Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, has made the deal rather sour for users.  I was down with the concept of Game Room after seeing the promos and all the stuff you can do, but after a morning with it on my PC, I feel that I installed a five pound turd of gaming on my laptop.

For the entire month of March, I wondered what Microsoft’s plans were going to be for Game Room on the PC.  I mean, the whole interface was nowhere near what was currently offered with the Games for Windows client.  I mean, GFW Live would have to support Avatars, which it currently does not, and an interactive room setting for other Avatars to come and visit.  So you would think a new client update would be coming down the pike.  Also, we knew what the pricing would be to accesss games on both PC and Xbox 360, but no real idea of how they would handle launch titles.  I for one, thought that a few games would be available as a gift to get the platform heading in the right direction.  I mean you would hate for Game Room to start with no one really participating due to a handful of possibly lackluster titles at launch.

Well, I for one, waited for weeks to see a new Games for Windows Live client download, but nothing ever showed up.  So this morning, I open the less than functional client, and saw Game Room was available as a 400+ MB download.  This was almost twice the size of the Xbox 360 client download, so I figured the client update was part of the Game Room download.  Nope.  That would have been too smart.  Instead, I get into Game Room and instead of my Avatar showing up, I am told to pick an Avatar to represent me in the Game Room on the PC.  That’s right, my Avatar is a racist bastard that will not socialize with my PC.  He is too good for my PC apparently, so I had to choose a less than stellar representation of myself, including the total lack of plaid hat.

I have never been one for the Avatars on the Xbox 360, but I figured that if you are going to do this cross-platform, you would at least import my Avatar from the Xbox 360.  Instead, I have to run around like Two-Face and host two separate identities for myself.  If the achievement system can be linked, why not Avatars Microsoft?

Even more irritating was seeing that the first two game packs were free for download.  Now, why would someone get upset with free?  I mean, after all, that looked like the good will that we were all hoping that Microsoft would show for getting Game Room out of the gate with some fun titles all could enjoy.  Well, my irritation came with the fact that you are just downloading all the cabinets and games, but that is only so you have the opportunity to buy them all in the game.  Instead of picking games from a menu, you have to blindly pick a game pack, download and install it to see what games are in the bundle.  So I now have 30 game cabinets in my arcade, but no way to play them, unless of course I buy them.  God knows, I love Adventure, but do I love it enough to pay $5?

And let us not forget the smooth launch that we got for this title that has been in the planning for months now.  This morning, connecting to Game Room has been intermittant at best, and just plain not functional at worst.  Xbox 360 users had to disconnect their consoles from the Internet after downloading Game Room just to get access to the client.  And PC users were greeted with a crashing front end whenever it was started.  The access issues have been better as the morning progressed, but at this moment, I am staring at a “Cannot connect to Game Room servers” screen.

So, lackluster support, crummy Avatar choices, no cross platform avatars and of course, really horrible launch titles make Game Room another stellar victory for Microsoft and their campaign of giving PC gamers the shaft.  I hope it becomes a better experience, but I have no reason to believe that Microsoft will make it any better for PC gamers.  Could you at least give me my Avatar.  I mean that doesn’t seem like too much to ask for.  Oh well, maybe I can play some Where’s Waldo for achievements instead.