The Save Spot

Fallout 3 Diary: Day 13

 

 

 

I’m playing Fallout 3, and it’s captured my imagination like few other games have.  So instead of writing about the game in a standard “journalist” way, I want to capture my impressions in a more “immersive” way.  Every time I fire up the game, I can’t help but envision myself as a survivor of a post-nuclear world.  How would it feel to roam the wastelands?  How would I respond to the strange, terrifying, and brutal world?  Would I choose to remain faithful to God?  Or would I respond to the horrors around me by becoming a monster myself?

All of those reactions are captured in these diary features. 

 

Today was a hard day.
 
I had a long hike today.  Frankly I never thought I’d make it.  I ran out of water a few clicks back, and I am starting to feel the heat of that thing the upworlders call “the Sun”.  I have to admit, I miss the comforts of the vault.  Living underground wasn’t great, but at least I had food and water. 
 
Eventually I made it to a place called “Germantown police HQ”  I’m not really sure what that means, but it looked like I might be able to scavenge for some parts.  That was a mistake.  Instead of finding parts, I found supermutants.  With clubs.  Why must supermutants always have clubs?  With nails?
 
It took some work, but I found through trial and error that my shotgun was pretty effective.  It only has 2 rounds, so I have to let them get pretty close before I squeeze off a few rounds.  I’m glad my dad taught me how to shoot back in the Vault. 
 
In many ways today was the most disturbing day yet - I hacked into an old computer terminal.  Looks like it was an old abandoned medical facility for people immediately following the nuclear blast.  I found myself surprisingly disturbed by what I read.  For some reason it made all of this miserable wasteland feel more personal.  All those people who died.  Are we humans destined to kill one another for ever?  Am I destined to kill people to survive?
 
Today was a hard day.

   

Classic Gaming

 

 

 

There’s two things I love - video games and good deals.  That’s why I am very excited about a new site called GOG.com. 

GOG.com has taken it upon itself to update classic games (think 1990’s) to make them DRM free and Windows XP/Vista compatible.  Right now they have a limited selection of titles.  With most games costing $5.99.  Which frankly is a steal.  Or as they say, “for less than the cost of a lunch at some lousy diner you can own some of the greatest games of all time.”

Now I haven’t bought any games from this service.  I don’t know if their customer service is awful, or if something fishy is going on.  But I am encouraged by this.  I’ve long thought game companies should distribute old games for cheap prices. 

I also notice that they have a pretty limited selection of games.  But the games they do have are all worth playing.  Here’s hoping Gog.com is everything it’s supposed to be!

    

Power User: a guide to saving money

 

 

 

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an environmentalist. 

I am, however, someone who likes to squeeze every last ounce of efficiency from everything I do.  I may not be an engineer, but I really appreciate a clean design.  I especially like this in my computers and gaming systems.  Because of this philosophy, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to improve the usage of my time, squeeze out some extra gas mileage, or get a bit more performance from my PC. 

Frankly, it’s more fun to me to take an old PC, car, office and see how efficient I can make it than going out and buying something brand new.  But there’s one area that I’ve really been neglecting: power usage.  While I’ve always turned out the lights as I leave the room, I never really decided to get “energy efficient.”  It just wasn’t a major concern for me.

But as the economy tanks, and job prospects look grim, squeezing every nickel out of our lifestyles is becoming more attractive.  So while I may not be an environmentalist, I do like money! 

So how do we get more energy efficient?  Well a good place to start is Google’s power calculator.  According to this calculator, I could save close to $300 just by making a few changes to how I power down my computers and consoles.  Which means I could buy 6 brand new PC games, 30 used games, or 1 new console by this time next year. 

What’s not to like about that?

A couple of useful tips from Green Home Huddle:

• 1.  Unplug your devices
• 2.  Plug your devices and chargers into a power strip
• 3.  Remove chargers from the wall when you’re not charging

  

And then a few not so much from Climate Savers:

• 1.  Turn down the brightness setting on your monitor
• 2.  Use a laptop instead of a desktop
• 3.  Trade in a computer for a rock and some crayons

  

Ok, so maybe that last one wasn’t really their suggestion. 

If you want to turn down your monitor’s brightness or use a laptop instead of a PC, go for it.  But that’s just not for me.  Energy is made to be used, and so I intend to use it to power my entertainment.  I’m all for saving money and reducing the impact to the environment, but not at the cost of my gaming experience. 

How about you?  Do you have any good power saving techniques? 

 

Diablo: a donut shaped universe?

 

 

 

Here’s an interesting video from the original Diablo that I forgot about. If you look closely at the guy laying on the floor after Diablo “dissolves” you can see that he did the same thing you end up doing – cramming the soul stone into his head.  Which makes me wonder, why would you do it in the first place if that’s what you saw?

Do you do it because you think you are stronger? Or do you do it because you feel there’s no other choice? Or is the soul stone possessing you already, and thereby forcing you to do it?

It raises some interesting questions about just how many times a warrior has “saved” the world from evil, only to become that evil himself.

I wonder if they will address any of it in Diablo 3.

       

DOg - Papercraft

 

 

 

I am hardly artistic.  I can barely draw a circle.  I hate making models or even painting.  And yet, I find myself continually facinated by papercraft.  I don’t know what it is about this medium.  Maybe it’s the fact that I have no shot at ever producing something like this.  Whatever it is, I’m drawn to it.

Now where is my papercraft gravity gun?

 

Flagship going under?

 

 

 

Well color me surprised.  The rumor on the internet says that Flagship went under this last week.  Which puts Hellgate: London in serious jeopardy.

Hellgate has had a very troubled history.  And the fact that they appeared to focus more on the pay model of the game than the actual development caused serious concerns.  So much so that I never bought the game, despite drooling over the fact that I might get my Diablo-esque fix.

As Bill Harris (Dubious Quality) said back in 2007, “Sometimes, you just get a good vibe about an upcoming game.  BioShock had a good vibe before it was released. Mass Effect has a good vibe.  Rock Band has a good vibe.

Then there’s Hellgate: London. Bad vibe.

What’s interesting about Hellgate is that the bad vibe doesn’t come from the game itself, necessarily, but it seems that the developers have spent more time thinking about the revenue models than the game”

Seems like he might have been on to something there.

This is one of my biggest “fears” of the MMO / online / downloadable content monster that’s been created. If the company goes under all your time and money is totally gone.  When you rely on a company’s servers to play the game, when those servers close that’s it.  No more game.

For me that risk isn’t worth it. I don’t want to waste my money (and more importantly my time) on something I can’t control.  There are better options out there.  And right now I’m very happy I didn’t buy Hellgate.

Diablo 3

 

 

 

There are important moments in history. The Revolutionary War. The first man on the moon. And the development of Diablo 3.

Diablo has been part of my gaming make up for as long as I can remember. In fact, I can’t even recall when I first started playing some iteration of it. As far as I know, I’ve always been playing.

Last week Blizzard began teasing the world with a “major announcement” on June 29th. There was a lot of speculation. Some thought it was another StarCraft game, others wondered if it had something to do with Warcraft, and even a few (myself included) wondered if it might be a sequel to Lost Vikings. Kotaku even made fun of people who thought it was going to be Diablo 3.

Fortunately Blizzard finally announced Diablo 3. After years of rumors, denials, and more rumors, we get to start counting down to its release. It’s too early to have any idea if Diablo 3 will be any good. But it’s made by Blizzard and they always seem to release good stuff.

But as a busy gamer, this poses a challenge for me. I find myself consumed with thoughts of a game that probably won’t be released until 2010 at the earliest. That’s a long time to wait and think about what might be.

Do I have the stamina for that? More importantly do I have the patience for that?

I suppose only time will tell. One can only hope that someone will have built a time machine by then…

 

You’ve got mail!

 

 

 

 

If you’re like me, you probably have a bunch of old computers lying around your house, office, or car.  So what do you do with all of those old PC’s? 

Well you could be responsible and recycle.

Or you could be responsible and recycle it yourself…