I'm back... but you are gone!

Hi SuperViv!

It's strange how things change in a short amount of time. Four days ago, you were sitting in front of me in the office. Now you are gone, and you'll be in Australia soon... It's strange. Will you still be playing games there? Or maybe you'll spend your whole time in the desert, catching snakes and photographing kangaroos? (By the way, the first and only time I ate a "kangaroo burger" was here in Frankfurt!) My best friend spent a whole year in Australia too, but he came back. I was fearing he would get to love Australia (and/or Australian girls) and stay there forever! But that could also happen to you, you know.

Even with your new life, I suspect you'll probably have more time than me to play games. I've been struggling to find time to play the really short campaign for Modern Warfare 2. I'll probably wait until I'm done with it to say more, but I'm definitely underwhelmed. It feels like an "expansion pack" for the previous game. Which for many people is probably a great thing.

For your travels, sites like Steam or GOG.com (especially GOG!) are just perfect. You can download your games anywhere in the world, so you can have 500 games (like me!) and you can play them anywhere in the world (well, almost... Steam is blocking some games in certain territories) but you don't have to carry the discs with you. You just need a decent internet connection!

And now, let me catch up with you:

So you fell from your GTA IV bike many times! Well, I think they fixed that in The Lost and the Damned (well done!). I used to ride a motorbike a few years ago. I really enjoyed it, at first. Then I started hating it... but then I had to do it for my job! Thank god I'm doing what I do now so I don't have to go back.

Sadly, DJ Hero bombed. I guess manhandling a turntable hasn't got the same pull as pretending to be a rock god.

I have Dragon Age: Origins, but it's the last one in my RPG Chain of Play. It goes like this:

-Family 1: FALLOUT -> FALLOUT 2 -> FALLOUT TACTICS -> MORROWIND -> OBLIVION -> FALLOUT 3
-Family 2: KOTOR -> [KOTOR 2] -> JADE EMPIRE -> MASS EFFECT -> MASS EFFECT 2 -> DRAGON AGE

I probably won't play Knights of the Old Republic 2 because it's not available on Steam.

There's a thing I really hate about Bioware's new releases: they offer some great "exclusive items" if you pre-purchase the game. That's just nasty! So if you don't have the money now, or you are on vacation and you don't have an internet connection, you lose the chance to get an advantage forever. And then you also have to pay $10 extra for the "Digital Deluxe Edition", which gives you more great items. It's so unfair! I wish someone would just hack the game to give those items for everybody.

I wasn't impressed by Avatar. It was just like "Dances with Wolves" dumbed down for kids. And I wasn't that impressed by the 3D effect. But maybe that was just me.

But it's not me who says that the Avatar game is terrible. All the reviews are terrible, so I'm sure it really sucks! I will still play it when I can get it for $5, though.

After saying this, let me prepare our own special GOTY post! Too bad I haven't heard from JR in a while, but I'll include him somehow...

Later,
Danda

Will Avatar (the game) end in Oblivion?

Hi Danda!

Happy new year!

I'm happy to report that in the last week or so, I have finally had a lot of time to just sit in front of my PC and play games. I mostly played Oblivion all day and it was great fun and I have now finished the main quest. It's good that you can keep on playing after you finish, but it kind of made me lose my motivation to finish any more quests. Which is good for a casual core gamer, as this way I have finished a game and don't have to spend any more time on it. ;)
At any rate, it's a great game, it looks great and the game world is great.

Now the new year started and I have another week before I have to go back to work. I'm not sure if I should spend it playing games or maybe rather shift my attention to reading more. Then again, maybe I should try to finish GTA IV finally. We'll see.

Since Christmas, I have a brand new Eee PC which will be a big help for staying in touch when I'm Down Under. I have already started looking for some games that might work on it (for the times spent on airports or traveling from city to city) and I'm glad to report that The Longest Journey works well on it. Gamespot.com lists this as the best adventure game of all time, so it's about time I played it. This was another game that I bought for a few Euros when it was on a magazine DVD but then got too busy to play it (or preferred other games).

Last but not least I want to tell you that I watched Avatar in 3D a few days ago and I thought it was really awesome. The 3D effect was great, and I felt that it worked really well even in quieter scenes that didn't have a lot of action. I think that's the first new 3D movie I've seen with real actors and not just animation. (Remember when they had 3D shows maybe 15 years ago where the camera had to be in constant motion?) While the plot was quite predictable at times, I think the beautiful world they created for the movie entirely made up for it. I for one at least thought it was quite epic.
To stay on topic, though, I read about the Avatar game they made while making the movie, and while I think it looks rather cool in gameplay videos, apparently it's rather boring and disappointing. If you have the correct type of TV, you can play it in 3D, though. Now that's a technology I look forward to becoming ubiquitous (and therefore affordable).

Game on,
-- SuperViv