Back from the cold (for a day!)

Hi SuperViv!

Here I am, trapped in a remote (and rainy!) part of Spain with no internet connection (I had to do a long walk to find a place to type this) and with no games at all. I had my laptop with me for a few days, but then I sent it away to see if I can get it fixed before I return to Germany on January.

But before I keep going, I'll reply to your posts. I know you are a staunch supporter of the Gothic games. So I bought them (twice, actually: in English and in Spanish), but I still haven't had the time to play them. I got them from one of your fellow German translators at the office, who was nice enough to give me a CD with the latest patch for Gothic 3.

Mass Effect is a great game, but it was tough on my crappy laptop, so I could only play for a few hours. I've seen some Alpha Protocol videos and it looks like they rip off that dialogue style and the action-RPG approach. Now the game has been delayed and I wonder if it was a good idea to pre-purchase it on Steam. But I still trust it to be good. I trust Obsidian, even if they took a lot of heat because their KOTOR II was released unfinished. They have a lot of history, and some really talented people worked on this game. That was a misstep, but their other games are very, very good.

But you know how this goes. You make a bad game, you are in trouble. And in these times, you make a really bad game, you are finished. You release an unplayable game like Lair, and you are whistlying your way to bankruptcy. You ship a really promising but obviously previous-gen game like Haze, you are done (Free Radical was absorbed by Crytek). You ship blander-than-bland dreck like Terminator: Salvation, you go under (that's too bad, because Grin had actually really talented people...). And now we have a new (deserving, I think) victim: Pandemic Studios. The creators of the awfully bland, unplayable (in a Just Cause way) Mercenaries 2 just released their final game, The Saboteur, which predictably is... not very good. At least it looks like it's just a mediocre GTA clone, not a complete mess like their previous game. And I love any game that has some naked chicks just for the sake of it, like The Godfather 2 or Conan, but I will wait until I can get it for 10€ or less.

And this leads to one of my own pet peeves... What's the matter with Rebellion? They keep pumping out very bad games, and they never stop. Yes, they had a hit with the first Aliens vs Predator, but after that, their FPS pedigree is dubious at best. Dredd vs Death was loathsome, and their recent Shellshock 2, which I would like to mention some day in one of my "pest patrol" articles along with other disasters like Damnation and Velvet Assassin, was one of the worst games released last year (only utter crap like LSL Box Office Bust was worse). Their latest "jewel" is Rogue Warrior, a should-be-released-as-budget title which is definitely bad. What is going on here? Why are they still releasing games?

I still can't believe SEGA cancelled the Obsidian-made Aliens RPG at the same time they announced a new, obviously quick'n'cheap Rebellion Aliens vs Predator title. A lot of nostalgic fans are drooling over the low-framerate teasers, but the fact is they look cheap and shoddy. For me, SEGA made the videogame equivalent to Fox shutting down a Ridley Scott or James Cameron Alien movie while greenlighting a new Paul W.S. Anderson AvP sequel.

Oh... I've spent too much time on this, and I couldn't say anything about my "survival gaming" practices. Maybe some other day! (Hopefully...)

See you soon,
- Danda

Gothic 3: Should I buy another RPG I won't get to play?

Hey Danda,

What's up in Spain?

The last week or two have been particularly uneventful in terms of gaming and I think I only played Mass Effect for an hour or two and that was it. I've been busy with some stuff and on some evenings I decided to just watch a movie instead and so I have little to report.

Nevertheless, I read today on www.dvd-spiel-film.de, a cool site that reports on what games and movies come with magazines here in Germany, that the magazine PC Games has Gothic 3 this month, and it's only 5,50 EUR.

I've been a big fan of Gothic 1 & 2 back in the day (when I was in college and had all this spare time on my hands), and I thought those games were awesome, even though I played them in reverse order. Now, Gothic 3 is a different story.

When it first came out I was tempted to buy it as soon as the price dropped a little, but then I read all these reports that the game was no fun because of all the bugs. So I didn't get it and forgot about it. Now my interest was re-awakened by this newest offer, and since I'm not as impulsive of you, I decided to research whether it was worth those 5,50 EUR. I came across a German video on YouTube that demonstrates many severe bugs that make the game sound awful, as did a scathing review by GameSpy.

From what I understand, the game was rushed to be released quickly, which is why there are terrible bugs that range from bushes flying in the air, to NPCs that are incapable of walking over bridges, to your character not appearing after loading a savegame, to quests that can't be completed, to constant system crashes. It's a shame, really.

However, there is supposedly a very good patch out by now, the Community Patch 1.70, which fixes many of the bugs (it's 880 MB in size!) that improves the game greatly and fixes a lot of what was broken. So even though I don't really want to support a developer that would release a faulty product like Gothic 3, I think 5,50 EUR for the game (with the most recent patch already included on the DVD) is too good a bargain to resist, even though I might only get to play the game in 2011.

Over and out,
-- SuperViv