Risen 3 review: Menial labor drags down this pirate adventure

Risen 3 Risen 3 isn't particularly strong in any category, but it exists. And if that's reason enough to play a game, then Risen 3 has hours of content for you to play through.

Buy Now

Many times I've sat here, reviewing video games, and lamented the downfall of the "B-Game." See, when I was growing up, there was no such thing as "Indie" yet. Games were either big-budget AAA affairs or, more often than not, B-games.

B-games were a bit cheaper, a bit smaller—but also, by that same token, you occasionally got a B-game that took massive risks because hey, the consequences for failure were smaller.

On the other hand, playing Risen 3: The Titan Lords has reminded me of the other type of B-game—the ones where you thought to yourself, "Hey, I feel like I've played this game before...only better." It's not bad in any traditional sense. It's not broken, it's not particularly buggy, it's not offensive. In fact, it's perfectly inoffensive—the game equivalent of a bag of chips, consumed for no reason other than it's around and you're hungry.

And that's fine. It's just not very inspiring.

Risen is a massive third-person RPG, set across multiple islands in some sort of pseudo-Caribbean setting. You're a pirate, but you're also kind of a knight—the Risen series still can't quite shake the trappings of developer Piranha Bytes's old Gothic series. In fact, the overwhelming feeling with Risen 3 is that Piranha Bytes just keeps on making the same game over and over, never quite fixing its mistakes.

People complained because Risen 2 threw you into the story without recapping the original Risen in any way. Risen 3 does the same, immediately propelling you into a narrative involving Captains Crow and Steelbeard, expecting you both to know and remember the lore of the previous two installments. Woe betide any character who recurs from an earlier game, because you'll also be expected to remember seemingly insignificant details about those characters or else feel lost and confused.

It doesn't really matter though, because Risen 3's story isn't particularly strong—another hallmark of Piranha Bytes games. Most quests are inane, "Kill X Amount of Y" quests or—even worse—fetch quests. In many cases you'll finish a half-dozen or so before you're even assigned these tasks, just by wandering randomly around the island. Suddenly, you'll see text popping up—"Scavenger 1/3," "Scavenger 2/3," "Quest Completed: Kill the Scavengers"—before anyone tells you to go kill said animals, making it pretty awkward when someone says "Hey, go kill these things that are terrifying our small island village," and you reply, "Oh, sorry, I already did."

Oh yeah, the story. The Shadows are invading, and it's up to you to stop the realm of the dead from spreading across the land—except you die in the prologue and are subsequently brought back to life, so you're also on a quest to regain your soul.

This latter fact seems to not faze a single person in the game, despite apparently being a rare occurrence. Even your dear ol' sister, who buried your body in the prologue, responds with barely an eyebrow-raise when you meet up with her later. "You're alive," she says nonchalantly, "but I buried you."

Yeah, thanks for that. My mouth still has dirt in it.

Another thing: Risen's world hasn't gotten any less awkward in its handling of the so-called natives. They're still an awkward caricature of South American tribes, like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. It's...well, it's just weird.

True to form, Piranha Bytes also failed to improve combat in any meaningful way here. It's harder to get stuck in a knockdown loop (a.k.a. where an enemy attacks you a second time faster than you can recover from the first attack, trapping you in a feedback loop that results in your death) than it was in Risen 2, but combat's still not very fun or interesting.

The game is punishing to start. You're going to die a lot. You're going to forget to save, die, and lose a lot of progress. You will be annoyed.

You don't have a traditional "class" per se, and are free to mix it up with magic and swords and pistols at will. Each enemy you defeat, each quest you complete, gives you "Glory," which is a lofty name for experience points. You upgrade your stats by spending Glory, with each level of a stat costing progressively more. For example, raising your Melee skill from 20 to 25 might cost 500 Glory, while raising it from 50 to 55 might cost 7,500.

You'll basically end up focusing on one or two skills to start, then eventually get tired of waiting between levels and start filling in the rest of your skills. It's a great class-free system, though it also makes it a bit easy for every character you make to feel the same.

Luckily the story forces you to join one of three factions midway through the game, and each faction plays a bit differently. This is the main way you'll differentiate your character, and the key factor in the "replayability" of Risen 3.

As I said, combat is punishing when you start. Enemies almost always come at you in gangs. You'll spend most of your time dodging—because for some reason, you're invulnerable when rolling. Your first companion is named Bones, and he'll periodically take time away from fighting creatures to heal you. Use Bones. He will save your life over and over again. Low on health? Just roll around in circles until Bones heals you!

It's exploitable. It's broken. It's awkward. Risen 3: Titan Lords could be retitled Risen 3: Kiting Lords because I kited every single enemy I encountered in the game. For hours upon hours.

You have to purchase most of your high-level skills, but then things go the other way—combat is overly easy once you're ten hours in with a few sword skills under your belt. Too hard, too easy—Risen 3 never feels balanced. And that makes combat a chore, either because you're constantly dying and reloading, or because you're plowing through enemies without a hint of danger.

But I said Risen 3 is like a bag of chips, and I meant it. You know what? We humans love filling up bars and completing quests, even if those quests aren't exactly the loftiest of affairs.

You play a few hours of Risen 3 and you have moderate amounts of fun. It's enjoyable! You finish some quests, you kill some monsters, you earn some gold. If somebody came up to you 24 hours later, though, and asked what you did in Risen yesterday, you'd probably draw a blank. You might be able to name one or two quests, but even the main storyline is mostly elaborate fetch quests. Nothing really sticks with you. It's the game equivalent of empty carbs.

That's totally fine. There are better games out there, but maybe you don't want to play a better game, or maybe you've already played those better games. If you're looking for a time-killer—a game to sink hours upon hours into with very little real commitment—then Risen 3 is one of those.

And that's why Risen 3 is unequivocally a B-game.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Apple Severs Ties With Supplier for Using Underage Labor

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Will Third-Party Inspections Solve Apple’s Labor Problems?

Under increased public scrutiny for its suppliers’ sometimes-harsh working conditions, Apple announced that it has invited third-party inspectors from the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to conduct a massive audit beginning this week. Yet despite this unprecedented step, labor advocates worry that the inspections will only improve Apple’s image, not alleviate harsh working conditions.

“This is, at best, a decent first step and, at worst, the beginning of a white washing operation,” said Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of the activist group SumOfUs, which delivered a 250,000-signature petition to Apple just last week.

In a press release, Apple said that the FLA will inspect work areas, dormitories, and other facilities at 90 percent of its Chinese suppliers’ factories, beginning with Foxconn’s plants in Shenzhen and Chengdu, the latter of which was the site of a fatal explosion last year. The association also plans to interview thousands of employees about their experiences, before it begins posting the results of its reports on the fairlabor.org website in early March. 

No stranger to inspections, Apple has conducted over 500 of its own supplier audits since 2006. Unlike Dell, HP and most other competitors the company issues a full report on its findings each year, including a detailed list of violations and the actions it took to correct them. 

Despite Apple’s transparency in its own reports, labor activists take issue with both the objectivity of the FLA  inspectors and the broader notion that third-party factory inspections alone can fix conditions that range from forced labor to unsafe conditions, underage labor, abusive supervisors and 12-hour shifts without bathroom breaks. According to both Stinebrickner-Kauffman and China Labor Watch Founder Li Qiang, the FLA is too close to its corporate members to truly protect the workers.

“The position FLA is taking now is at the company’s perspective, not the worker’s. Most of the time, FLA speaks on behalf of the companies, not the workers,” Li said.

Li advised Apple to talk  with groups that represent the workers, rather than just sending inspectors to visit the factories. In a previous interview, he voiced concerns about the integrity of the inspection agencies FLA employs to conduct its audits. He told us that the association sometimes uses Intertek, a company whose inspectors China Labor Watch claims to have caught taking bribes, to do inspections, though there’s no evidence Intertek is involved in the Apple audits. We reached out to the FLA to ask who is conducting its Apple inspections, but didn’t hear back in time for this article.

Though Apple touted the FLA’s intention to interview workers, Stinebrickner-Kauffman said that the association doesn’t always protect their anonymity, conducting the interviews right at the factory where supervisors can see who is saying what. “Inspections can help [resolve workers' problems], but the question is whether FLA inspections can help,” she said. “They have in the past done a better job of white-washing labor abuses than they have of ending them.”

Having the FLA visit factories and catalog abuses could be a step forward for transparency, but can inspections really help improve working conditions? Apple clearly thinks so, as the company proudly lists the ways it resolved each conduct  violation it found in its annual report. For example, in 2011, the company says it found 58 facilities where workers were not using appropriate personal protective equipment  and required them to train their workers to use protective gear and hold managers responsible for its use. Apple doesn’t go so far as to say which 58 facilities they were and whether they have been reinspected since, but the FLA audits are designed to double-check all of the supplier’s progress. 

The activists we spoke to don’t agree that more audits are the answer. Li even posited that such inspections are designed to shift responsibility onto suppliers like Foxconn and away from a world-renowned brand. 

“What Apple should do now is to take action to solve the problems and improve the labor conditions in their supplier factories, not to conduct inspections and put the factories into the media and public’s attention,” Li said. “It is Apple, not the factories who should take the main responsibility.”

While suppliers run the factories and employ the workers, critics feel that Apple’s continued efforts to lower costs and increase production encourage the suppliers to cut corners when it comes to worker safety and human rights. They also believe Apple can set an example for other vendors, because it is the most successful beneficiary of low-cost Chinese labor. However, to do so, they say the Cupertino company will have to pony up a bit more cash. 

“It’s hard to imagine FLA will come back and say that ‘what you really need to do is pay this company lot more money.’” Stinebrickner-Kauffman said. “That is really at the crux of a lot of these issues and Apple has to address that. It’s just gonna have to pay a little bit more to its suppliers to make sure that they have the margins to be able to create safe working conditions.” 

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Protesters: As 800-Pound Gorilla, Apple Best Target for Labor Reform

“This is a lot heavier than I’d thought,” said Sarah Ryan, 23, an organizer with Change.org, as she lifted a cardboard box with printouts of 250,000 names to deliver to the Apple Store in Grand Central Station in New York City. All the people had signed an online petition hosted by Change.org and another organization, SumOfUs, asking Apple to reform its labor practices in China.

 This wasn’t the first time Change.org has visited the store. They showed up at the grand opening Dec. 9 to protest Apple’s use of “conflict minerals” – which are mined by warring factions and under conditions constituting abuse of human rights, primarily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They joined with The Enough Project and Delly Mawazo Sesete, a Congolese activist who created a Change.org petition that has gathered over 60,000 signatures urging Apple to stop using conflict minerals.

Protest theater is a regular activity for Change.org. On Wednesday in California, activists dressed as trees protested plans by the California Codorniu’s Artesa Napa Winery to expand by clearing a stand of coastal redwood trees. And recently the group delivered to the State Capitol in Texas a petition to protest state policy of eradicating wild burros. They were accompanied by several of the animals.

The best-known recent Change.org campaign is likely the one that stopped Bank of America’s plan to charge a $5 monthly fee for customers using its debit cards. Amanda Kloer, the director of Change.org, believes that influenced the whole banking industry. “When they saw the incredible pushback against Bank of America, there haven’t been any other companies considering such fees,” she said.

In another recent campaign, Change.org won a small victory with Hershey, which agreed to use Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa for all of its Bliss Chocolate products. Among other things, the certification is to ensure that products are harvested humanely. “In the cocoa industry, there’s definitely child labor, there’s child slavery,” said Kloer.

Like Apple, Hershey became a target because of its size. “They have an opportunity to lift up the chocolate industry and make sure that it’s responding to workers’ rights and human rights around the world,” said Kloer.

But other electronics companies may not be safe from citizen ire. At the action, Ryan was joined by 25-year-old Shelby Knox, the director of organizing for women’s rights at Change.org, who was wearing a costume that made her look like a curly haired iPhone.

Knox proudly brandished a Google Nexus Android phone. “Apple has a terrible record on worker rights,” she said. Though she added later, “I think that they all have shoddy practices, and they all could be a target [of protests].”

Despite her current campaign, Ryan makes no secret of her love for Apple products. “As I work on my Apple phone,” she said, smiling, while checking messages before the action.

Ryan seemed comfortable reconciling her tech and human rights desires. “Apple is the cooler product. But if they are also the ethical product, that will be another reason to buy an Apple.”

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Labor Activist: Apple Best at Auditing Factories, Still Not Doing Enough

Involuntary Labor: Apple discovered 17 facilities that required their workers to pay excessive recruitment fees, effectively forcing them to work off these debts as indentured servants. The company says it terminated business with one repeat offender and required the rest to reimburse workers for any fees that exceeded Apple’s limits, a total of $3.3 million.Underage Labor: Auditors discovered 19 cases of underage workers at five facilities in 2011, though 13 of those were workers who had either left or aged since their hires. Apple says it required its suppliers to “support the young workers’ return to school.”Lack of Protective Gear: The company found 58 facilities where workers either lacked the proper protective gear, weren’t using the gear, or didn’t know how to use the gear. Apple says it required the facilities to educate the workers and supervisors about the importance of protective gear.Poor Emergency Preparedness: 99 facilities were in some form of non-compliance with fire prevention standards.Too Many Hours: 93 facilities had more than 50-percent of their workers exceeding the 60-hour weekly limit on work time. Apple hired a consultant to help suppliers manage their workers’ time better.Explosions: This wasn’t much of a disclosure, since explosions at two Apple plants were public knowledge before the report, but the company said it has changed its rules about working with toxic dust, the source of the fires.

By comparison, HP’s detailed audit-findings page, which does not yet include information from 2011, only shows a vague percentage of worldwide suppliers who were in conformance with standards categories like “child labor avoidance” and “freely chosen employment,” without providing specific numbers of violations and remedies taken. Dell provides a list of its top suppliers and lists the labor standards it follows, including international conventions like the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC), but doesn’t show a list of specific violations it has uncovered. 

Ironcially, Apple appears to be less concerned about factory conditions than its competitors, because of the company’s unwillingness to talk with advocacy groups like China Labor Watch and Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior. Li said Dell and HP responded to his group’s reports about working conditions in their factories, but Apple ignored them. SACOM’s Debby Chan told us she had had helpful conversations with both Dell and HP, but Apple had refused to meet with her. 

“Dell and Hewlett Packard are not doing as good as Apple is doing right now,” Li Said. “But when we talk about publicity and public relations, it’s another story.”

Though most large hardware makers conduct thousands of supplier audits a year, those audits may not be enough to uncover the truth and correct problems. Li explained that bribery of auditors is common at Chinese factories, because it’s less expensive to make a pay-off than to fix an unsafe condition. He said his company has uncovered at least nine cases of bribery at Intertek, a leading auditing firm and is currently involved in a lawsuit against the company for allegedly publishing the name of a confidential informant who had witnessed incidents of corruption. 

Even when inspectors act in good faith, a simple visit may not be enough to uncover abuses, because supervisors prepare just for the audits. In a very detailed report based on worker interviews and undercover work, China Labor Watch details conditions at 11 factories that make products for a number of suppliers including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Philips, Apple, and others. In the section on  Hongkair Electronic Technology, a supplier that makes components for ASUS, Apple, HP, IBM, China Labor Watch writes: 

The factory often has different customer representatives come visit them to do an inspection of factory facilities. At the time of inspection, the factory will demand workers wear the appropriate safety protection equipment, will turn on all the factory lights, and will make an effort to clean up the factory grounds.

Apple states on its website that it has begun working with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and will allow the association’s inspectors into its factories and allow them to post the results of these audits to the FLA website. “This represents a level of transparency and independent oversight that is unmatched in our industry,” Apple says. 

Li said he’s unimpressed with Apple’s partnership with the FLA, because Intertek conducts some of their inspections. However, Li feels that Apple’s own inspections are probably fairly accurate because of all the embarrassing abuses they’ve detailed.

If audits don’t always uncover the truth, there’s another way to find out what’s going on at the factories: Just ask the workers. Li said a number of advocacy groups are currently testing hotline programs in cooperation with major OEMs. Workers can call these numbers and report abuses, which then get sent straight to the companies involved.

Li would not disclose the names of any companies involved in these pilot programs, because they have asked for confidentiality right now. However, he said that companies need to involve all the facilities that make their products, not just a few.

“For example if the company has 100 supplier factories in China, maybe they just wanted to involve like 20 or even less of them to participate in the hotline program,” he said. “They have to consider in the cost of the whole program that as soon as they find out about problems they have to remedy them, which is money-consuming as well.”

According to employees  interviewed by China Labor Watch, the conditions at many suppliers’ factories are far worse than those found at Foxconn, a company that has become infamous because of a series of high-profile incidents such as employee suicides and a fatal explosion. However, according to the China Labor Watch report “Tragedies of Globalization: The Truth Behind Electronics Sweatshops,” workers at the two Foxconn plants they investigated received health and safety training, along with all necessary gear, before starting work. Machines at the plants are reportedly maintained and checked for safety every day. According to the report, Foxconn workers even have a trade union with a workers’ care center hotline for reporting problems.

All of this is not to say Foxconn, which manufactures products for Apple, HP, Dell, and many other OEMs,  is a pleasant place to work. As with other plants, the managers are reportedly verbally abusive, the work is grueling, and one of the Foxconn factories apparently required a lot of overtime with few breaks. However, workers at the Longhua Foxconn plant received better wages and benefits than those at any of the 10 factories China Labor Watch investigated.  

“Foxconn is not good,” Li told the New York Times.  ”But if we compare all industries, electronics, textile, toys, Foxconn is one of the best.”

Meanwhile, at other factories China Labor Watch investigated, workers and undercover agents reported serious health and safety problems, along with even more exploitative wages and poor working conditions. For example, at Catcher Technology, a company that makes notebooks and phones for Acer, Apple, ASUS, Dell, IBM, Motorola, Nokia and Sony, workers are allegedly given no safety training and are then forced to inhale noxious and potentially toxic fumes. Labor Watch writes:

If a worker has an  accident, it is their own problem. There is no systematized health and safety education training . . . Workers wear masks during working hours, although the masks do not serve much of a purpose. Workers report that especially the grinding of the cell phone case creates very fine powder which is extremely easy to inhale into the nose and lungs.

At Compal Electronics, a huge supplier that manufactures notebooks for Dell, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba, workers reported that the company does not provide face masks or ear plugs, despite loud noises. Apparently, there was not even  a first-aid kit available. “In the event of an injury,” Labor Watch writes, “the workshop manager will give the injured worker some cotton to cover up their injury.”

Reading about the abusive managers, poor safety conditions, filthy living accommodations, long hours, and low wages, it’s tempting to blame the suppliers who run the factories or government authorities who are charged with enforcing China’s 2008 Labor Law. According to Li, China’s Bureau of Labor is limited in its abilities by local governments that receive tax revenue from the factories, but don’t have to provide benefits to what they classify migrant workers. The suppliers, he says, are also limited, because of price and production pressures from Apple and the other OEMs.

“If Apple still lowers their prices and doesn’t give enough profits to the factories, then the factories don’t have money to improve the labor conditions,” he said. “So it’s always the problem of Apple and not the problem of factories. We can see that Apple is trying to put all the responsibility on the factories by releasing the supplier factory list and trying to put the factories into the focus of the immediate public, but we think that Apple should do more to make a positive change in the whole system.”

Though he believes that Apple has done a better job of inspecting its factories than others, Li maintains that the public is right to put more pressure on Tim Cook’s company than its competitors who have the same problems. Because Apple makes the most profit, he reasons, it also bears the most responsibility for fixing a broken system. He maintains that it wouldn’t take more than 2-percent of Apple’s profits to dramatically improve workers’ lives in China while companies such as Dell and HP would have to spend more.

“Although we think Apple is among the best in terms of auditing, we still think that Apple can do more because it is the most profitable company in the world,” he said. “As soon as Apple is willing to give a small percentage of its profits, the workers can benefit a lot. But Apple is not willing to do that.” 

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here