When I was a kid the process of obtaining a game included:
A. Buying the game.
B. Taking the game home, opening it, putting it in my console and playing it.
The process of obtaining Mass Effect 2 and the available content today, however, consisted of:
A. Preordering the game at Gamestop in advance to get the preorder bonuses.
B. Worrying that the Gamestop guys would screw up the preorder bonus some way and I wouldn't get it.
C. Paying for the game today and noting with relief that the preorder bonus was attached with a card.
D. Taking the game home and signed into Xbox Live, which I don't have my console set to do automatically. Opening the game and putting it in the console.
E. Being confused by a screen that asks me to make a new EA account or use my old one.
F. Remembering that I had an EA account from Dragon Age but not for sure what it was. To keep from accidentally registering a new one and possibly removing my access to the Blood Dragon armor from Dragon Age I Googled for a few minutes and finally found the place on EAs site where you can test to see if you have an account. I successfully signed in to my account, signed out and then entered it in the box on my screen on my game and hoped it worked. Had to make sure boxes to send me EA spam were unchecked.
G. Happily, it worked. I located the card from my box and entered the code for the Cerebus Network.
H. Cerebus network working, I downloaded the Blood Dragon Armor, which it thankfully recognized automatically, and the Normandy Crash site. Doesn't take too long. I noticed the new character wasn't working and was worried, but after a few more minutes of Googling I found that he had been delayed.
I. Trying to find a place to enter the code from the Gamestop card in the game.
J. Reading the card. Feeling stupid when I saw that I had to go to another Web Site.
K. Finding the place on that site to enter my EA account.
L. Being told that I had to also create a Bioware account, which I did. This process failed once. Had to make sure boxes offering Bioware spam were unchecked.
M. Now registered with both, entering the code in the appropriate place on the Web site.
N. Resetting my console so the Cerebus network would recognize the new DLC.
O. Downloading the new DLC. Quick download, even on my crappy connection.
P. Playing the game. Whee! It's pretty damn good, actually.
Don't get me wrong, it's still fun and it's not a serious gripe, but if they're going to keep including day one DLC and pre-order bonuses to get people to buy new, I hope they'll find a way to make it less of a hassle.
Anyone else find it to be annoying? I know I could just forget about the stuff that's not in the box, but I like to have everything and, especially with Bioware, some of the stuff they're forcing to be downloads now are major things like new characters.