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Posted by FatherJack at October 11th, 2004

Writing about web page http://ga.gloriousff.com/forums/

Got it at last, but it took 5 hours to install on Friday night.

7.5GB space needed to be freed on disk, 7 CDs to put in, 5 CD-keys to enter in the correct places, credit card details to be entered, handles, passwords, email addresses and secret codes. Then the updates – 2.5 hours of them!

Finally get to ‘Create Character’ – I spend about an hour in there, too – but that’s my own fault, then into the game and….the control method completely sucks. Using the keyboard my hand starts to ache after about 10 minutes and using the mouse is probably the worse control method I have experienced since that idiot Twinsen in LBA.

So, bought a new gamepad on Saturday – a PS2-a-like one with two analogue sticks and rumblyness and it’s now perfectly controllable – although it feels rather odd sitting at the desk, and I’ve yet to find the most comfortable position.

I don’t know if I can just install it on another machine (without all the credit card/codes nonsense again) but it could go on the laptop which connects to the TV, and be almost like the PS2 version I wanted in the first place.

Anyway the actual game I’ve only played a ‘mere’ 10 hours, and have just got rid of my newbie ‘?’ sign and haven’t really done much yet. Can’t go too far without the monsters getting too hard, and noone around seems to be looking to team up with a little Taru RDM. Plenty to do in the village though with quests that even puny level characters can do.

The link is from a group who gave me a linkshell, which means I can hear them whereever in the world they are – usually it seems to be just chat, but I anticipate it will be useful as I get into the game more and can call for backup.

People in the start town don’t seem to be that talkative, just running to the auctions or (boringly) fishing, and the ones that do talk seem to be trying to chat each other up – I don’t know about anyone else, but that just seems so wrong to me. I haven’t yet found the /emote command to ‘barf all over the fawners’.

I’m still learing stuff and am just trying to discover things for myself, rather than reading guides, hassling the mentors or running around shouting ‘any1 no were 2 get teh hero sheild???’ – fortunately, there’s not too much of that, which did surprise me – but then these are people who have managed that 5-hour install…

Posted by FatherJack at October 4th, 2004

Writing about web page http://snipurl.com/9jb2

Well out of that list I posted nearly a month ago, only Sims2, CoD2 and FFXI are available, and I’ve made an Amazon list (see snipurl link) of all the games it seems I cannot do without. Not that it’s my birthday soon, or anything

Prob give CoD2 a miss for a while, and have only just ordered FFXI (that Amazon ‘1-click order’ is going to ruin me). Bought Sims2 and am quite liking it, bought Burnout 3: which was absolutely brilliant – for a weekend. Having a bit of trouble with Amazon as my ISP seems to be trying to ban all .co.uk addresses – some nonsense about not having paid them for a year. (oops)

Sims2:
It looks a lot fancier, and the complete control over zooming and spinning is most welcome – but after having played all 8 incarnations of the original I would be very short-sighted not to expect imminent add-ons. The aspirations system is a nice addition, but I do find that I concentrate too much on their day-to-day wants and before I know it I’m needing a new generation to take over.
It’s really the same game all over again, with the control mechanisms tweaked to the level you’d expect today in any real-time strategy game.

Burnout3:
This really is a great game, as I have always been far better at crashing into the other cars than actually driving correctly (only in games, of course), but after having played it all weekend last week (the game counter said for a total of 20 hours, which can’t be correct, can it?) there’s not much left to do in it. There is an online mode, but like most games there is a vast difference between beating the computer and testing your skills against real people.