I'm currently playing Deus EX: Human Revolution (awesome game), and since I'm in a blogging mood I thought I'd share the tale of how I ended up getting it for free courtesy of Gametap.

Most of you are probably thinking "What the heck is Gametap?" or "Why are you even shopping there"? Well, it's very simple. I'm stuck in Norway (btw I love Norway and I used the word "stuck" just to express my frustration with the outrageous prices), Europe's most expensive country without the benefit of Europe's highest salary, and the digital stores I know (Steam, Gamersgate, Impulse) are priced in Euros/Pounds/Kroner, which means they tend to be considerably more expensive than their U.S dollars counterparts. Happily, I stumbled upon Gametap, where games are priced in U.S dollars even in Europe.

Some time ago they had Deus EX on sale for $17 while Steam still had it for €50, and I jumped at the chance. It even activated on Steam as well, so it was a no-brainer. I bought it, but instead of getting the CD Key I got just the confirmation and the promise I'd get the key as soon as they validated my order.

The next day I get an e-mail from them telling me I need to fill out a form confirming some information so they can verify it and validate the order. I do it, and about 10 hours later I get the CD key, activate it on Steam, and my purchase is finally complete.

Much to my surprise, the next day I get an e-mail from them saying that they are unable to process my order unless I reply to the e-mail confirming some of my Pay Pal information "for my own security". I reply, somewhat bemused, that I my order had already been processed, I'd already gotten the key and it worked just fine.

Now comes the best part: several hours later another e-mail tells me that, since they couldn't verify my order, it had been canceled and my credit card refunded and if I wanted to make further purchases with them I needed to fill out yet another form. Surely the "refunded" part was a mistake, right? Well, it turns out that my credit card statement did indeed grace me with the refund and I ended up paying nothing for the game.

So there you have it. Gametap has such bad customer service they may refund you even if you tell them that they have already delivered your purchase!

I love the possibilities Tim Shaffer's Double Fine opened with Kickstarter, and they have the potential to give us great games we wouldn't otherwise get. We soon had another industry luminary Kicktstart another project, one I myself pledged to, and all was right with the world.

However, it seems hardly a day goes by now without a new game being kickstarted (the latest being Grim Dawn, a game that has already been in development for two years) and I fear the rush to capitalize on the Kickstarter craze may potentially ruin a great thing.

For one thing, the Kickstarter market is a tiny market. There is a reason why those game are relying on Kickstarter: because they aren't mass-market friendly. If we have dozens of games vying for a limited amount of dollars, most will likely fail and developers might conclude Kickstater no longer works.

Then there is the matter of trust. We can't lose sight that Kickstarter is largely an honor-based system. Kickstarter doesn't audit pledge recipients and we have no way of knowing how our money is being used. There is no guarantee a developer won't use half our pledge money to buy a house or simply vanish with the pledge money altogether. We trust that big names like Shaffer and Brian Fargo won't do that, but it's only a matter of time until someone does, especially if fans get carried away and start backing projects indiscriminately.

And let's not forget that we won't see anything out of those efforts until at least the end of the year, and expectations are high, perhaps unrealistically high. I get the feeling at least some people are hoping that, freed from the shackles of the publishers, developers will inevitably make great games, but let's face it: on any given field, most efforts are average, some are bad and only a few are truly great, and there is no reason to believe it will be any different with Kickstarter. What happens when people enthusiastically give 2 million dollars to fund their dream game and end up disappointed with the final product?

In short, I think Kickstarter is a godsend to our industry and the trail Double Fine blazed can truly lead to great things, but only if everyone, gamers and developers alike, does their part to make sure it is not squandered.

Not too long ago I remember feeling a slight discomfort when thinking about casual games. Not because I hate them or because they "aren't real games" or anything like it. No, it was because seemingly everybody was proclaiming (and some still are) that the rise of the $0,99 app meant certain doom for the kind of rich, complex and engrossing single-player games I love. While I never really felt the threat was real, and by any objective measure it is complete nonsense, I did feel slightly uneasy at the thought (the fact that the kinds of games I like the most have long since faded from the spotlight probably didn't help matters).

That was then. Now? Much to my surprise, I find myself wishing AAA publishers really, really felt threatened. Allow me to elaborate.

We gamers are a passionate, enthusiastic lot, willing to fork out top money and to put up with a lot of crap (perhaps too willing) to enjoy our favorite hobby. But that goodwill is being abused, and I for one have had enough.

The big problem is that AAA publishers these days are going out of their way to make our gaming experience as expensive and inconvenient as possible, while social games thrive on making the consumer's life as easy as possible. Let's use mobile phones as an example. I don't have a smartphone or a tablet and the only ithingy I have is an ipod touch that is apparently too old to run games, so correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know any itunes app is purchased and accessed the same way. The price is the same anywhere in the world, fierce competition drove prices to rock bottom and you can buy every app from anywhere in the world. All you have to do is log in to your itunes account, pay, download and play. That's it. Simple, easy, convenient.

Now compare that to what we put up with to play the latest and greatest core games. For starters, there is price. No, I don't think games AAA games should cost $0,99. Heck, I don't even think they are "too expensive". In fact they are cheaper than they have ever been, and if anything only $60 for something like Skyrim is a bargain. Not to mention I'd happily play $80 for Baldur's Gate 3!

What doesn't make sense is having virtually no competition on price because every retail game costs the same, much like a cartel. We are told games cost $60 dollars because they are very expensive to make and are sold to a niche audience (sorry folks, core games are still niche, albeit a big one. Even Call of Duty), and we accept that. But how come every game, irrespective of production costs, has the same price? For instance, I'm playing El Shaddai now, and I love it. It's beautiful, it's fun, it's original, it's psychedelic... and there is no way in hell I'd pay full price for it. I have no idea how much it cost to make, but the production values are clearly a fraction of those found in the likes of Mass Effect 3. That doesn't diminish the game in any way, and may even enhance it by forcing developers to think creatively in order to cope with a limited budget, but it does mean it is not $60 material. Who knows, perhaps it would have been a lot more profitable had it been released digitally for $20 or $30.

Even worse, consider the latest game to get a 1/10 from Destructoid, Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir. Look at those screenshots, then look at some Infinity Blade screens. Of course graphics are only part of a game's costs, but it's a big one. I could be wrong, but I have no doubt in my mind that Epic spent more to make Infinity Blade than Tecmo did on Spirit Camera. How much is Epic charging for Infinity Blade? $7. Worldwide. So far that has translated into a cool $30 million in revenue, enough to make even many core console games profitable). How about Spirit Camera? That's $40 in the U.S and a lot more in Europe, Australia and Brazil (if it is released in those regions). Why? Because we are stup, er, I mean, because that's the "standard price" for traditional handheld games.

But that's okay. After all, things are really hard for the publishers, right? I mean, merely manufacturing a game and getting it to stores is a 6-digit expense. Then those evil platform holders take a significant chunk in royalties. Worst of all, wicked, disloyal gamers buy used and deprive publishers of significant revenue. Surely if the poor publishers didn't have to contend with manufacturing and shipping costs, royalties or cannibalization from the used market they would pass on those savings to us. Right? Right?

And then there are all the unnecessary inconveniences and outright lies we are sadly familiar with. Region-locked devices? Check. Region-specific digital stores (seriously, it doesn't get any more absurd than that)? Check. Online passes that don't work? Check. Publishers lying to our faces? Check. Draconian DRM schemes that punishes paying customers and reward pirates? Check. Content chopped from the main game and sold as DLC? Check.

Core AAA games these days are selling far more than they ever did before Facebook and smartphones existed, so the market is definitely there, even if other markets are potentially bigger, so I don't worry about core games disappearing. But more and more, rather than fear for the future, I find myself wishing for the day when free-to-play, mobile games and the industry's own short-sighted practices will drive the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Activision into a hole so deep they will have no choice but to adapt or die, much like the music industry did. Alas, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

That's a scary thought. Ever since I played Ocarina of Time, my first Zelda game, I've been wowed and amazed by every single console Zelda since (except Majora's Mask, the only one I missed for some reason. Please remake it for the 3DS Nintendo!). So it was with great anticipation that I sat down to play Skyward Sword this weekend.

Trouble is, I soon found myself frustrated and annoyed instead of wowed and amazed. How can that be? It's a Zelda game, for crying out loud, and it certainly looks the part. It earned a veritable litany of 10s and 9s from the critics, and currently has an impressive 93% average on Metacritic, with 78 positive reviews and only 3 hate, ahem, mixed". The commercial response was also very favorable, with Nintendo quick to trumpet "the fastest selling" Zelda game ever.

So how can I *not* like it? Am I just too old for green caps and cute tikwiks? My love for gaming in general is just as strong as ever, and I fully expect to die at age 100 (one can dream) with a controller in hand. Still, my failure to like Link's latest adventure led me to contemplate a darker future, one where, instead of being the cool "gamer gramps", I become the sadly more familiar grumpy gramps, unable to find joy in anything and forever grumbling about how everything was so much better "in my days".

Or maybe I didn't outgrow anything, I just happened not to like this one Zelda. It certainly has far more problems than I expected given the near universal praise it got. Not being able to properly control the camera is a huge annoyance. The motion controls, unlike Red Steel 2, feel gimmicky and unnecessary. Voice acting, though predictably absent, was sorely missed. And what's up with that big furry thing that knows where Zelda is but can't remember it unless I go around looking for 3 small furry things? Seriously?

Then there is the technology. When I bought my Wii in 2007/2008 I didn't even had an HDTV or an HD console, and while PC games like The Witcher and Mass Effect were beautiful, I was still very much impressed by the graphical prowess of last-gen games like Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime, Final Fantasy XII and Super Mario Galaxy.

Fast forward 4 years, and I'm fully part of the HD generation. Games like Final Fantasy XIII and The Witcher 2 make some early current-gen games look like last-gen material, and the switch to the good old Wii can be rather jarring. It certainly doesn't help matters that SD games at times look outright hideous on an HDTV, and my TV lacks an SD mode.

All things considered, it's likely I'm not "too old" to enjoy a Zelda game that doesn't suffer from all the problem listed above, but the sheer shock of not being able to enjoy Skyward Sword made me contemplating this whole "getting old is scary" thing. Thank you for depressing me, Nintendo!

I guess I'll ditch Skyward Sword altogether and play Ocarina of Time 3D (not that I can actually see 3D, but I digress) instead. Hopefully I can still have fun with it, or I'll start to really worry...

If you still haven't played ME3 and don't want anything spoiled, don't read any further. You've been warned.

I tried pushing the text to the bottom of the page but I just realized the big spoiler still shows up on the front page of the C-blogs, so I'm writing gibberish just to fill space and not spoil anything to anyone. I hope nobody read it before I edited.

I've just reached the point where Mordin dies curing the Genophage... and I'm so sad. It's hard to imagine the Normandy without "the very model of a scientist Salarian". Mordin is easily one of my favorite Bioware characters, and probably joined Minsc in the hall of characters I remember long after I've forgotten about the game. Kudos to Bioware for managing to create such an engaging world filled with characters that genuinely connect with players, or at least with me. Now please join me in a moment of silence in honor of Dr. Solus.

There, thank you. Now I'm back to saving the galaxy. It's a tough job, but it has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong!

Or so Reuters would have us believe. It's amazing how they casually reduce opposition to ACTA to the desire to "download free entertainment". Because that's exactly the kind of thing that motivates thousands to take to the streets in the face of freezing cold. Virtually no mention is made of any other concerns other than "fear it will lead to increased surveillance" and the shameful way and undemocratic way this treaty was deliberately kept hidden from the public is treated as little more than aftertought. Because FREE PRESS folks!