Graphics, Dead Space and some more GTA IV

Hi Danda!

Ah yes, I still have your Tex Murphy: Overseer DVD. I have to make a list with what games to play in the near future. I think I still have a whole game box from you!

Last weekend, I played some GTA IV on my sister's PC, and while my graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 3600 with - I believe - 256 MBs of RAM, my sister has twice that and so on her system, GTA IV looks a LOT better. My PC is only one year old, so I'm a little bummed out, and I'm wondering if I should buy a new graphics card for it. Then of course the question would be which one and who knows what problems a new graphics card would bring. But since I have a super-fast CPU, it just seems a waste to only have a slow graphics card.

At any rate, I've never heard of Raven Squad before, but the screenshots on Gamespot look interesting. You don't seem impressed by it, though.

Another game I recently read about and watched a review to is Dead Space, which is supposed to be really good, very immersive, and extremely creepy. Have you ever played it? I'm very tempted to get it, if only because they say it's great how the HUD is integrated into the game and doesn't distract. However, I get scared very easily and this doesn't sound like a game I would want to play in a dark, empty apartment. (That's also why I only read House Of Leaves in daylight.)

As for GTA IV - remember how I told you that I wasn't impressed with their "moral decisions" that much? Well, saving that one guy at the beginning now gave me lots of missions with him, so that's nice. But now I'm in a much bigger pickle, as I have two friends who want to kill each other, or rather, they want me to kill the other one for them. That's an interesting development, and I haven't decided yet what to do about it.

I believe a good way of introducing morals into a game would be to actually have to decide between doing the "good" thing and having big disadvantages because of it, or doing the "bad" thing and being rewarded for it. That would be much better than making the "right" decision and being rewarded for that, because as they said in one of my favorite films, The Contender, "Principles only mean something when you stick to them when its inconvenient."

On that note, have a good day!

Later,
-- SuperViv