FINALLY finished The Witcher. Now I can get around to that review. I'm going to have to do some kind of combined article with Assassin's Creed or figure something else that combines the two.

Finished Age of Mythology and this was one of the most fun games I've ever played and among the few I've actually completed. A huge variety of missions, some great god powers and a fun cheesy storyline. Highly reccyd.

I must be haunted by Cliver Barker because apart from reading his book Coldheart Canyon, I've been playing Undying. I suspect I'm at half-ways in the game having gone through 3 bosses. It's a decent shooter with some nice additions in the form of customizable ammo (enemy-burning phosphorus shells and silver bullets for werewolves) and spells (including some nifty ones like the self-explanatory Shield, and Invoke, which allows you to resurrect fallen foes to fight for you...although in a twist, they occasionally turn on you again). While Barker's story has degraded significantly since the game started, the (linear as fuck) level design is nice-ish with some truly stunning art direction...I am not one to normally stare at wallpaper and floor patterns but damn if they aren't real purdy and add a lot of period atmosphere to this game. Good thing that, because the cut-scenes and voice acting are laughable.

I am playing at Easy level, which is actually not good because it's too easy...but in medium the accuracy of one's weapons appears to fluctuate wildly even at close range.

Undying was pretty cool, though I never got around to finishing it. That true sight spell sets up some pretty cool scares. I think I was fighting Lizbeth when I got distracted and then never got back to it.

Right now, I'm on Psychonauts. Dear God, it's awesome. A reminder of why I love gaming so much.

Finished Undying as far as I'm concerned. Yea, I couldn't complete the last boss fight. That's because this stupid-ass game directly teleports you into an open "meaning no cover" arena after the previous boss-fight without any opportunity to get health, and I was down to 6 health-points. Fuck off godawful design decision, I'm not going to exert myself playing through the entire previous boss-fight again just to conform to your idiocy.

After spending some time chewing around on what to play, I started on Timeshift. Their USP was to take bullet time and make a whole game out of it. Player has a 'chrono suit' that can slow down pause and even reverse time (albeit in limited doses). So far, the going has been pretty easy while heavily reliant on the time tricks. Let's see if the novelty wears off anytime soon. Review ought to happen after I get through it.

Fallout 3, bitches!
So far, so good - don't think I can kill kids, but I'll it slide. Updates if I get a chance to play some more.

Some screenies of my post-apocalyptic trip. Doesn't seem to have a time limit like the last two games, so that's a relief. Still, there's something intimidating about these open-ended games. In two hours of play, I've already caused the death of a town sheriff. Oops.

And that's the last fucking time I buy original games. Loaded Dawn of War on my computer and the cunt of a CD kept giving me guff about how i should no be using a copy. Turns out THQ is using the infamous fuckheaded securom software that randomly takes value calls on whether I ought to be allowed to play a game (one which I had bought legitimately) basis other software it finds on the computer. I had to uninstall Daemon Tools and turn off DVD Ghost (another software that's present because the legitimate DVD industry is so determined to screw customers globally) and finally after much coughing and sputtering it began to work. I'm going to reinstall Daemon Tools cause its a very useful thing to have around.and see if it still works.

In other comprehensively dicklike behaviour, I bought the expansion pack for C&C3 cause I remember the original had an assload of patches to make it a more stable balanced game. Now one of the main uses for an expansion pack so far - especially one that REQUIRES the main game to play is that it patches the game good and proper besides giving you extra content. This is the way it has pretty much always fucking been. Except Kane's Wrath needs its own updates and C&C remains its old buggy self.

One of the main reasons I began buying original games - apart from being able to afford them - was they were very convenient. You were more or less sure it would run, didn't have to worry about the pirate 'forgetting' to put in the crack, or trawling through dubious sites looking for keygens. Except the gaming industry in general and in India in particular seems intent on raping the customer in all existing holes and tearing a few new ones while they are at it. My copy of the Civilization IV expansion doesn't have a key - and i found this several months after I bought it, so replacing it is OOTQ now.

So yeah, suffer you gaming company (edit: no offense Chax!) fuckers! You are not going to get one red dime off me in the future.

Actually it's not the software itself, but how the code is implemented. id software uses Securom too, but one has NEVER had problems on their games, and id always releases a NoCD patch a few months after the game's release...which is something every fucking company should do, since it's a pretty much known fact that most piracy occurs within the first couple of weeks of a game's release (or even beforehand, when some company flunky leaks it out to the sea-dogs)

Yea, these are really bad experiences...from what I hear the DoW thing is mainly happening in the consolidated DVD where the expansions are also bundled. I guess QA goes for a toss in these budget releases (assuming it was there in the first place).

IMP Edit: Apparently the v1.5 patch for Dawn of War REMOVES the CD check.

Ha! Dude I wish it was AT LEAST a consolidated DVD. I got this AFTER spinning through some 5 different discs to get the game and its expansion installed. You are just fucked coming and going for no good reason.

So is your game version 1.5 and above? If not, try the patch and play without the disc.

It's 1.4. Will Try 1.5 as soon as I get home. Thanks for the heads up. I should have checked for another patch, but at the time it happened my main aim was getting Securom off my machine without uninstalling the game (it's apparently possible only if you have a No CD crack on hand. strangely enough none of the forums mentioned the 1.5 patch. It was probably a later development). Also Crysis (thanks again, guys!)

Ouch. My sympathies, man. My original 3-CD copy of the game (before Winter Assault came out) had no problems of the sort. Let's see if I can find a copy to send you through the Mayor.

Fallout 3 is full blown addiction material. Just for example, I shall give you this series of incidents - I was on my way doing a main story quest - patching up a satellite tower for this revolutionary-type radio jockey and during one of my many wrong turns trying to find the Washington monument, where the satellite was located, I caught a random radio signal. Tuning in to that channel, turned out it was a distress call from some stranded scout mercenaries who were holed up on a hotel terrace, fending off waves of super mutants.

So, after doing my patchwork, I headed out in that general direction, only to come across another firefight between some other mercs and super mutants. Picking my way slowly through the battlefield (my specialty is sneaking), I looted all the corpses that were in safe reach. Looking up, I saw the Capitol Building was towering over me, so I took a chance and sneaked in. War was also being waged inside between mercs and muties, and it was easy enough for me to hang back as they thinned each other's ranks and then pick off the survivors with sneak critical kills. Got a ton of loot there, and I was easily lurking around that building for 2 hours in realtime, never bored a single moment.

Finally, I got back on track, found my way to the hotel, using a long section of underground metro tunnels first, exiting through a hospital next to the hotel and crossing to the hotel over a fallen radio tower that was straddling the two buildings. Cleared out the remaining supermutants in the area, rescued the team and when I visited them at their base later (a good distance away), they were grateful enough to gift me some kickass combat armor, a great upgrade from the glorified pajamas I'd been wearing up till then. Plus, I got a freelance mission from them to map out the Waste ruins, which basically means getting paid for each map marker I uncovered. Since I'd been a wanderlust-stricken vagrant so far, that resulted in a neat 960 caps right off the bat.

Another cool moment was how, after talking to a woman at some ramshackle outpost settlement, I got info about some potential locations of interest not too far away. Scouting them out, I nearly filled my pants after stumbling into a Deathclaw lair en route (this was fairly early in the game, absolutely no shot of surviving a head-on encounter with one), but had enough sense to sneak away and give it a wide berth from then on. Carrying on, it turns out one of the locations was an abandoned church, and sneaking around the side and through a hole in the wall, I found a solitary mark watching the window with a sniper and he was easy enough to take out when his guard was down. Thus, I acquired possession of the uber-satisfying Reservist's Rifle (that's the sniper, in case you were wondering) - one shot from this baby can take out even a minigun-wielding Supermutant Brute with a sneak critical headshot, if you're careful enough.

All these are just a fraction of the game. This mofo is huge. Some resized pictures I managed to take on the way: