Questionable

I'm not usually one to speak ill of businesses that like to showcase exceptional buisnesses or business people but my latest dealings with the Cambridge Who's Who have been something of a let down from all the good things I've heard about them.

I had a charge put on my card in the amount of around $200 that I had informed them I might not be able to afford. The appointed day rolls around where I should have gotten a phone call from them and I heard nothing, the next day I had forgotten all about it because I had other things I had needed to do which as anyone who has things to do around the house knows that things get away from you.

Well I get the card bill in the mail and a package the same day and decide to go dispute the charge. The representatives were alright, well mannered and very tolerable of me and I tried my best not to sound like a raving lunatic so much as a distressed and poor person trying to get by [which I am just that actually]. However something in the conversations we had struck me as wrong. I couldn't tell what it was at the time but it was a feeling that the person on the other end of the phone was lying through her teeth at me. The conversation consisted of me being told that at the appointed day they had tried to contact me at ALL phone numbers they had listed for me which included my cell [and while I detest that thing I'll explain one thing I do like about it in a moment]. They had told me that ALL the phone numbers just kept ringing which threw a red flag up so I asked them if they had called my Cell and they swore that they had and didn't even get a voice mail. At that point the second red flag went up and I told them that it was impossible for them not to have gotten a voice mail from my cell phone, it just doesn't work that way. At this point I could tell the woman as trying to get rid of me and we agreed that no further charges would be put on the card without me giving them a phone call first but the $200 charge was going to stay.

Now the rest of the day went on with that nagging feeling that they lied to me and so I rolled out of bed and got online to check my phone records back to the first call they had with me in May. I found the number and searched the day in question to find out that they had indeed NOT done as they had said and called my cell phone. I saw some other number that was best identified as a phone company number but the Cambridge Who's Who number could not be found at all.

So if you get a call from these people I would suggest you just hang up or ask for forms in writing. I'm pretty disappointed in their business practices if they're going to lie about their actions to people over the phone.

Well, there goes all my E-Cred

As I sit here reading The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein, a book that decries social networking as one of the worst things to happen to today's youth I am also signing up for Facebook. Fuck. I used to be able to say I didn't have a myspace, a facebook, a blog, any of that shit. Then came one small concession, a blog, a great place to rant about whatever's bugging me that no one reads. Then E3 hit and I wanted to follow the coverage, well, most of the gaming journalists I like were covering it live with Twitter as well as the articles at the end of every presentation. So I broke down and got a twitter account. Nice service actually... useful for bitching about something via cellphone in semi-real time.

And then Microsoft announced its partnership with Twitter (great, I already have one) Last.FM (Again, awesome, I've got one that I don't use!) and Facebook. Now it's going to be even easier to use facebook since I can catch updates from my 360. And of course, everyone at work uses the damn program. Bloody Everyone! I feel like an ass because I missed the birthday of a co-worker a couple of weeks back that I would have known about had I actually used Facebook... And so my resolve faltered...

Now, in another tab I'm signing up. There goes all the cred I got for scorning the social networking bullshit. Ah well, 'least I don't play WoW...

Damnation: First Impressions

This is a hard review to write, on the one hand I want to love Damnation, it is an interesting game that has loads of potential and a lot of style. On the other hand, the devs are obviously fucking retarded. Right off the bat I saw that something was very, very wrong. There are only two difficulty settings unlocked: Casual and Hardcore. I may not game in every minute of my spare time but I'm not a casual player, I play shooters for fun. Hell, I'm anything but an unskilled player, give me half a chance and while I'm not a gaming Savant I'll still kick a little ass. But... Hardcore? Where's the "normal" setting?

Ya see, on Hardcore, it takes two rounds from a sniper rifle or two medium range blasts from a shotgun to kill you (one if you're right up close), and while that is wonderfully realistic I'm not playing Rainbow Six here. I am some nigh mythical badass steampunk cowboy! But it seems that physical agility and upper body strength are all that was covered in Badass training with this game since I can't shoot for shit, aiming sucks, and the screen goes black and white from damage in about half a second flat. And that's not fucking right. Did anyone playtest this and say, yeah, I think the player should be killed for just rounding a corner, that's a good idea!

Fucktards. Scale back the damage or add a "Normal" difficulty. Shit, I've seen enemies eat half a magazine of the "assault rifle" before going down... Why can't I do that? Supposedly all the enemies are using some fucked up combat drugs. And in one of the opening cinematics the main character took a vial of said drugs off of a dead enemy's belt. Why can't I start injecting that shit? Velvet Assassin gave us Morphine mode...

So... the guns suck. They're cool and interesting but they fucking suck. The "Assault Rifle" is inaccurate as hell and takes a third of the magazine to kill one enemy at close range. The Pistol is the only gun you'll ever use. The shot gun is nice... if you are up close. This rarely seems to be the case. The sniper rifle was your average sniper rifle, but since I'm not seeing any ammo crates around it's a dixie cup (use once and throw away). I found a machine pistol... it replaced my regular pistol... The two types of ammo were not interchangable... Turns out I figured out it was a machine pistol and fired so fast that I would have to reload in about five seconds. Dixie Cup! In my short play I also found a "Railroad Pistol" The name might be a bit different. Same ammo problem as the sniper rifle but you can hold the trigger to charge up the pressure and fire your shot for a lot of damage. Reminds me a lot of the Bow from Gears. (Actually this whole game reminds me a lot of Gears but instead of a really nifty cover system I have a a really nifty platforming system THAT DOES NOTHING TO STOP THE BULLETS!)

That segways really nicely into the Platforming, which is really really good. I only played the Demo of the new Tomb Raider but unless I missed something those games are all about platforming and this definately did it better. Shit, other than some annoyance with the game not explaining itself well enough in tutorial popups it's the best platforming I've seen in a while. Smooth, looks good, and opens up a lot of options. Opens up a lot of options for the enemy as well... Taking cover from the five enemies you just ran into is really hard when two of them are above you and have the angle to fire right into your cover. Still, great system. It's hard to believe that this game started life as an Unreal Tournament 2k4 mod.

Well... it would be except for the graphics. Now, the graphics aren't bad except in cutscenes. Seriously, the voice actor is giving some (half assed) emotion, maybe have that show on the character's face? But honestly, it's Unreal 2k4, not pretty by today's standards but not ugly. The few enviroments I explored were pretty same-y but still had a good feel to them. They were big areas with good views and it was just interesting to look around. I can't honestly complain about the graphics except in the (awful) cinematics... and even those weren't the worst I've ever seen.

The checkpoint system sucks. Fuck you too Devs, fuck you too. The Ally AI is an abomination against AI and gamers but I discovered something wonderful... if you just ignore the fuckers they don't die. Just like in gears an icon pops up saying they're down (although in Damnation the icon doesn't also function as a compass pointing you toward your dead friend. Great work there devteam, drop my ally then make it hard for me to find them!), that doesn't mean anything! You can just leave them and at the next checkpoint they're back up and ready to go. So, I cheerfuly ignored the idiots and used the (awesome) platforming to outflank enemies and do a lot of good.

It's those moments where I see what the game could have been, and it makes me sad. If the shooting had been made a lot tighter, given any coats of polish (at all), and you know... been made to even be as good as Unreal 2k4 it'd be an awesome game. Sure the story is a bit silly... at least to my eyes. Steampunk US, robot soldiers, combat drugs all awesome. Then they added bullshit native american magick. Yeah, you all know how I feel about native americans already. I thought Steampunk meant science but nooooo... gotta add mystic bullshit and native powers. Fuck that shit! Get it out of my game. The voice acting isn't "bad" but it is far from good. No good quotes like those in Gears 2 which were just so over the top they were good. The actual writing is shit. Why more studios don't hire real writers to look over the dialog I will never know.

If gamefly wasn't a monthly fee I'd be disappointed I'd even spent the money to rent this title. Gonna try co-op soon with Burne. Yeah... that'll be fun. If you can find the game for the 5 dollars it's worth... don't fucking bother. So much wasted potential.

On writing

This is a short update, and part of it is stolen from my Twitter. Which, one day, I will get a goddamn Blackberry so I can update it properly. Maybe next month if I save properly.

Either way. Firstly, I saw something awesome at work. Ironically, it was in the bathroom. Someone copied the graffiti from XKCD. They fucked up the punctuation a bit but god damn, they beat me to it! Whatever glorious bastard did this, I salute you.

Secondly, I need to start writing again. Fuck rpol. Fuck people. Fuck video games (until dragon age methinks. I need a good RPG. Might replay Mass Effect soon.). I need to create something worth a damn. And I will...