Never buy a piece of crap!

Hi SuperViv!

I'm sorry that I took so long to answer. My wife was about to leave to Spain and I wanted to spend all the time I could with her. I didn't even touch any videogame these days. But I intend to catch up now!

So we all agree. Never buy an Acer laptop! You can quote me if you want! :D Next time I'll probably buy a Toshiba.

I can't play games like The Sims, I just can't. I don't like those games where you don't have a clear goal, and you just do it to improve your character, or the way you play. That's why I can't stand those fighting games in a fixed setting. You play, you get better at playing, then you play again, you get even better... And there's no end. I prefer if they say, "this is point A, get to point B", not going in circles while "having fun". For me, that's the same as sitting in a rocking chair. I need a story in my game, or at least a progression.

I also get bored with the Minesweeper. It's fun, but just for ten minutes. But I love Picross, which is basically the same thing but with a point, because after every puzzle you get an image with a funny animation. It's my favourite DS game so far. Well, or it was until I knew Rhythm Paradise! (wink, wink!)

I know some people disagree, but Ghostbusters is not a very good game. The design choices in some cases are dead wrong. I was stuck for two weeks in a boss fight because its attack patterns made it unwinnable if you were hit only once when your AI partners were down. That's bad design!

But if you tried the Wii version... Well, it follows the same template as the other versions, but in fact it's a different game. It reminds me of what Ubisoft did with Splinter Cell: Double Agent. With almost the same script and dialogues, they created two different games. I played the Wii version of SCDA and I really enjoyed it, and I was surprised to read reviews saying that "the changes to the Splinter Cell formula were disappointing". They were referring to the "bigger" versions, because the Wii game looks and feels exactly like the previous titles, so I bought the PS3 version to check what they complained about. I still haven't tried it, though.

Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to send an email to JR. He never replies because he's too busy (he just moved to a new place, and you now how exhausting that is), but I like writing letters to him anyway.

See you soon!

- Danda

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Hi JR!

So you decided to buy the new Painkiller compilation on Steam! I already own the GOG.com version, and everybody says that the sequel is not as good as the original. Often, when the original developers move on, the sequels just stop being any good. But you know, I'm such a completist that I'll have to buy it too :D

There's also a new Painkiller-like game in town: Dreamkiller. It's intended as a "spiritual successor" (the title makes it very obvious), but there's a catch: it was developed by the same people who... developed the sequel that nobody liked. Bummer! Of course, the reviews are not very favorable. Well, I wasn't going to buy it anyway...

What I'm definitely going to buy is this week's big new release, Uncharted 2. I really love the first title, quite possibly the finest PS3 release so far. The gameplay was great (some Prince of Persia/Tomb Raider platforming, a lot of shooting from cover), the acting was very good (note: I played with Spanish audio), and the music was amazing! It even has a title track that would be great in a movie. I don't usually buy full-prize, new releases, but this one definitely deserves it.

There are other new releases this week. We have Brütal Legend, which looks promising, but we'll see. Oh, and next week we have Borderlands. This doesn't look as good. I don't mean its look, because I like cell shading (I was one of the only ten people who liked Ubisoft's shooter XIII). No, I'm more worried about it's mechanichs. If I'm playing any FPS, I like being able to kill someone with a single headshot. Here, everybody has "health bars" floating above their heads, and I've seen some videos where you laboriously chip away the enemies' health emptying magazine after magazine on them. How stupid! But I'm being unfair, because I'm judging it as an FPS, when it's actually a "dungeon crawler" RPG in disguise. When you kill enemies, they will drop weapons with random statistics. That's something I don't like in Guild Wars and similar games: you have to check all the weapons left after you kill someone to see if it's slightly better than yours. After a while playing GW, I stopped checking or caring.

I don't know... I've never loved any game made by Gearbox Software. Half Life: Opposing Force was really disappointing, Brothers in Arms is an acquired taste, and in some ways it really annoyed me... But maybe Aliens: Colonial Marines will change everything. I certainly don't expect Borderlands to do that. Will I be wrong?

Now I'm looking forward to playing Uncharted 2. The buzz is really good about this one!

The Sim that cooked itself and the ubiquitous GTA IV

Hi Danda!

Oh yeah, I've heard a lot of bad things about Acer. This girl I knew had a laptop by them, too, and after a while it kept switching off randomly. I suppose it also was related to an overheating graphics card, even though she probably didn't have the best of the best, since the only games she was ever interested in playing were Minesweeper and The Sims. (I think she got annoyed with The Sims and stopped playing when she finally found her Sim a husband, who then promptly set himself on fire and burned to death when he tried to cook a meal.)

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 and I've had it since 2003 or 2004, I believe. A few months ago it broke, showing graphic errors and not loading correctly. Customer service told me it was most likely the graphics card (duh) but that they didn't have parts for such an old machine anymore, so they couldn't fix it. Then, a few weeks ago, my brother took it apart, cleaned everything out with a brush and put it back together, and miraculously, it worked again for a few days before it once more refused to start up. At any rate, it was a good laptop and I was happy with it for a long time. Maybe I'll find a used graphics card for it on eBay.

As for Beyond Good & Evil, I actually played it for a while before I had to reinstall Windows. However, I didn't find it particularly gripping, or at least the first hour wasn't. But I suppose I should give it another shot, since you seem to like it so much!

I think the city and the cars in GTA IV do look really nice, and it's fun to see the effects on your car that come from crashing into stuff. The other day I crashed into a concrete block on the road and the car headlight broke and the concrete block got cracks. As for the characters, I suppose some look better than others but I find they're generally nicely animated. Maybe the style isn't entirely aesthetically pleasing for everyone. Maybe it's your projector's fault! (Kidding.)

As for some of the negative things about GTA IV, my brother pointed out recently that sometimes there is a lot going on at the same time (someone talking, you have to watch the map, instructions show up on the screen that you have to read), and he found that rather annoying about the game. However, I for one will keep playing!

You're the second person to tell me that Ghostbusters is awkward. Someone told me it doesn't look nice and most of the time you have to use some device that slows you down, which he finds annoying. I've watched the movies way back when, but from the two minutes of the game I played in a game store once, it didn't seem like something I'd want to get. Then again, it was the Wii version I tried, and I suppose you shouldn't judge a game by its Wii version.

Well, let me know what you think of Jade Empire. I haven't played it, but it looks promising on Gametrailers.com.

So long!
-- SuperViv