As a big fan of
Crash Bandicoot (well 2 and 3, I didn't like 1 so much) and original Naughty Dog (under Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin), and as someone who also enjoyed the
N. Sane Trilogy (including the remake of the first game), I must admit I am surprised by how good CB4 is so far, after finally getting a chance to play it. I did have some faith in Toys For Bob since they did an exceptional job with the
Spyro Reignited Trilogy, but after playing through the first few worlds, I gotta say CB4 has exceeded my expectations. Biggest surprise I've had since Doom 2016. I would definitely love to supports the devs for this game, but the first mark against it was Battle.Net. This always-online DRM bullsh1t (for an offline game no less) sealed the deal though. I
want to buy my own copy of this game, but Activision took steps that specifically stop me from doing so. Good job @sshats. They basically said to me "no we don't want your money" with the way they offered this PC version to consumers. They lost a guaranteed sale. Once again, only legitimate, paying customers get screwed over.
I can honestly say that years/decades ago I had games I bought but still sought out hacks to get around troublesome DRM with physical media games.
Brings me back to the days when we bought games on CDs and DVDs, and I always sought out No-CD/No-DVD cracks just so I wouldn't have to bother with throwing the disc in the optical drive just to play the dang game. Also was very handy for LANParties. Use one disc to install multiple copies of the game, and no one needs the disc itself to run the game thanks to the cracks. Sadly we don't have sh1t like Starcraft's spawn copies anymore. Heck we're lucky if we even get LAN support to begin with.
Even these days where console games run of internal HDDs/SSDs, you still need the disc in the drive for DRM purposes (unless you own a digital copy of the game, or you've modded the console). I guess I don't mind that so much, cuz it's not a system that screws over the user like always-online DRM does. Still, it's nice to be able to pop in a console game, install from the disc, but then not need the disc to run the game. You only get that kind of freedom from modding the system. I do appreciate those situations where I own a game on disc, but then free digital copies of that game were given out. I have physical copies of the
Uncharted Collection,
R&C 2016, and
Horizon Zero Dawn, but thanks to Sony giving out those first two games for free (and HZD soon), I no longer have to pop in the discs to play those games. If a game runs from internal storage, I shouldn't need to involve the optical drive at all, except for initial installation.
