As a gamer from the Philippines, I have a different perspective than most people when it comes to gaming. I come from a country where people who love video games and do their best to purchase their games legitimately have to contend with a lack of official support from various sources and slow connection speeds.

Despite these setbacks, I try to do my very best to go through the hoops needed to get a game I want in the state that I want it in. Sometimes, to get to that particular state that I want a game to be in, I have to live with downloadable content and the troubles that come with trying to get it, from region specificity and support to plain old connection slowness.


Broken Hearted for Broken Steel



When the Broken Steel expansion for Fallout 3 came out on the PC, I was thoroughly excited for it. Here's an expansion I was willing to pay good money for, as it extended the life of a game I liked to play. First things first though: I needed a gamertag and the Games for Windows Live client.

I tried to create a gamertag for myself, only to realize that the Philippines wasn't a selectable country for the gamertag. I thought it was a minor thing at the time, and tried using the nearest country I could think of to my country to suffice for the creation of a gamertag.

After downloading the GFW Live client, I thought it would be easy, except a thought occurred to me: would the patch even work with the international version of the game that I picked up? Slowly, more questions popped into my head about Microsoft Points and if they were region-specific, and if I could use the ones sold here (which appear to be for the Asian region) to purchase a digital copy of Broken Steel from what I assumed to be America.

I made some inquiries on the net and did a bit of digging myself, and found disappointment via the Games for Windows Live forums. According to one of the forum posts there, “If you are from a country that is not on this list, you will not be able to connect to the LIVE services, and we will not be able to provide you with assistance or a workaround.” True enough, that little hint from the gamertag country selection came back to bite me.

It's a good thing Bethesda decided to come out with a boxed version of the expansion, or I'd be thoroughly miffed.


Patches are Sacred: Pray you get them



Regardless of the platform, content patches are nice additions to gameplay that bring extra value to existing games while removing bugs and other things left behind by tired coders at two in the morning.

If you can get them, that is.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, for example is a great game with extra content served up for the PC version in the form of content patches. I recently got back into the game and wanted to try my hand at updating my game and found that, while finding the right patch can be tough at times (multiple versions of release, and different patch versions), what's tougher is making sure the full patch actually gets downloaded.

In Sacred 2's case, the issue here isn't that the patch won't download. Instead, it's making sure that your connection doesn't force the download to time out or prematurely cut off. With a 1 Gigabyte file being downloaded at 340kb/sec, usually less, this also means that you have to watch the computer constantly making a token click to a new page every couple of minutes just to make sure the connection keeps going.

This would be nice if there was a torrent, but sadly, such isn't the case. And download managers? I tried those to no effect, as they botch the file after downloading, making it unusable.

What does it boil down to then? LUCK. Lots of luck.

Apparently, one afternoon I was extremely lucky, as I managed to grab the patch after my 14th failed attempt, with a couple of botched complete downloads. Total time wasted for the bugfixes and extra characters: approximately 10 hours. Still, the game was worth it, and my Temple Guardian is doing fine.

Of course, there are no tried and tested universal solutions for these two problems, other than a one-world region for media and the use of torrents or resumable downloads for patches. Which would be nice, but hard to come by in this day and age.

Till then, I suppose I should either move to a different country and get a faster connection, or just grin and bear it.

My take: a whole lot of grinning, and some bearing as well.

In my heart, I do not know whether to respect him or hate him.

It's been 22 days since the explosion, and I don't know what to make of the man who destroyed Empire City. He's killed thousands, left people without homes and families, and yet he's doing what he can to make a difference.

I don't understand it. Is he trying to atone for his acts? Was he really the man who set off the bomb? So many questions race through my head, and the only thing I can do is watch him reap the praise and adoration of my fellow man. Do I forgive him for that, or hate him more?

Empire City is a shell of its former self because of Cole MacGrath, and yet, because of that very same man, it feels like a better place than when the bomb stripped us of our dignity. People are helping each other out, and the police and doctors are doing everything they can to keep the city together. Food may be scarce, but people are sharing rather than killing each other for it. Strangest of all, the villain we want to hate is the same man others have grown to love.



I remember when the first airdrops of food came to the Neon District, how he fended off the Reapers and, instead of hoarding the food for himself, kept watch as people scrambled to take what they could. He's restored power to the city after the Reapers destroyed the main substation. He's escorted prisoners for interrogation by the police. He's even rescued hostages from Reapers who had taken over the El train.

His exploits, it seems, have always been fraught with choice. I wonder if he stops every time a man is dying on the street, or if he climbs onto rooftops and rides power lines to avoid seeing our faces. Maybe he wasn't given a choice when he started, I don't know, but the more I think about it, the more I believe that he chooses to be the man he is now.



Does that exonerate him from genocide? I wonder... Did he lose anyone in the blast, or in the ensuing chaos that came from it? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I may not be able to look him in the eye without shooting him first.

Perhaps I've been rambling like a man waiting for justice to come. It's been a long three weeks, and while the worst seems to be over, the world has still all but abandoned us. I wonder, will Cole MacGrath abandon us too?

I hate him, I respect him... it's all a blur to me now. If I can forgive him now, maybe I can live with myself for not dying as well. Till the day my end comes, I'll watch him, and pray for him, and maybe, just maybe, I'll offer him my peace while I still can.

After all the helpful advice I got from the community members here, I finally took the big step forward and bought myself a PS3, along with three games: Valkyria Chronicles, Burnout Paradise, and Enchanted Arms.

One of the nice things about Philippine gaming is that some stores sell the PS3 with packages; that is to say a set of predetermined free games you can choose from. INstead of paying 7100 pesos for three games, picking up two good games from the older set of releases plus buying Valkyria only sets me back 6,300 pesos instead, which amounts to some savings, since I mostly play games by myself.

I'm interested in trying out the online functions though for games, so I wanted to see if I could participate in the Destructoid community's Friday Night Fights. To that end, I have a couple of questions:

Is there a primer for the FNF that I should read prior to trying to join?
Do the games used in FNF change on a monthly basis?
What are some recommended games that use the online functions to play with other people?
Lastly, and perhaps least importantly, is Home worth installing and trying out? I'd rather not install unnecessary or relatively boring stuff just yet, so I can save the hard drive for future game installs. :)

It's been a while since I posted, and since I did say back in another cblog post that I would go and write more, I decided to go and put up a blog post here about the gaming revolution that's currently on my mind, which is the PS3.

First off though, a short update about my current work status (which is apparently, gaming related). After my two years for the gaming website I used to work for, I thought to try something else related to gaming but wasn't exactly a writing job. That said, I went into a call center... dealing with technical support for one of the big consoles out there. Boy, was that a big mistake.

I did well enough on my tests to secure a spot on the floor, but now, on my fourth month, I realize it wasn't for me. Too much stress, too many variables to handle, and not enough mental and physical fortitude on my end to cope with it, so much so that just a few days ago, I got hypertension from working at the place. I'm currently looking for another job, preferably in teaching or writing (and hopefully, with less uncertainty to consider), though I'm hoping a communications coach position opens up so I don't have to take calls anymore, lessening my stress considerably.

What does that have to do with wanting a PS3? Well, if you take enough calls regarding a console, you eventually wander off during the free time wondering about what it'd be like to have a new console (not necessarily the one you take calls for) under your belt.

That's my dilemma now. As I live in the Philippines, circumstances surrounding the consoles are a bit different. Modded Wiis and 360s abound, and I have an original Wii and a modded 360 (sorry... no one sells unmodded 360s here to my knowledge) for gaming purposes. The thing is, I constantly worry about the day when my Xbox 360 will die, so I thought to think of the long-term and try to sell off the 360 or earn enough money for a PS3, even if the games cost well... a lot, considering how much I pay for 360 games.

That said, I'd like to make an informed decision though, and who better to provide information than the people who own the thing. I know the PS3 is a quality console, with some great games, but I have to be very picky with what games I buy for the console, as well as which version I should look for.

NOTES:
1. Not very tech-savvy here, so I can't replace the hard drive... should I look for the 20 GB one if it still exists, or go for the (supposedly) more common 60 GB one?

2. I'm an RPG gamer at heart, so I'm excited for White Knight Chronicles. What other high-level RPG titles are out there for the PS3?

3. What games are awesome enough to play through more than once? MGS4 seems like a good buy, but replayability is a factor for me if I'm trading in the Xbox 360.

4. While google is my friend, sites you trust to give yourself information on the console of your choice seems to be a better friend than google. Can you recommend some sites that offer information on the PS3?

Anyway, I apologize if long post is long. I do hope you can help me out here, as I'd like to make a decision based on the information you've offered up. :) Many thanks!

I got inspired by Yojimbo-sama's post... so I decided to make this to the tune of the Discovery World theme, "I Love the World."

Blogger 1: It never gets old, huh?
Blogger 2: Nope.
Blogger 1: It kinda makes you want to...
Blogger 2: Break into song?
Blogger 1: Yep.

I hate fake mountains
I hate the clear blue skies
I hate those mazes
I hate how ragdolls fly
I hate the game world
And all its sights and sounds

Boom-de-Yadda (x4)

I hate the lens flares
I hate the browns and greys
I hate the framerate
I hate all of EA
I hate the game world
For all its craziness.

Boom-de-Yadda (x4)

I hate the fanboys
I hate the pay-to-play
I hate WoW botters
I hate communit-ay!
I hate the game world
It's such a sucky place

Boom-de-Yadda till the song ends.

There are many strange gameplay mechanics I can understand and accept when it comes to a videogame, but the one thing I absolutely hate in any videogame is a gameplay mechanic I'm calling disorientation.

What is disorientation in this sense? Well, to put it very simply, it's a gameplay mechanic where the developer tries to effectively force you into a situation where you're piloting your character blind.

This comes in many forms, the most notable of which happen to come in early RPGs. Allow me to offer this scenario.

You are in an adventuring party which is tasked with reaching point B from point A. Between the two points is a cursed forest. shrouded in fog, where you can only enter or exit from the north, south, east, and west directions. You are given the vaguest of hints as to how to traverse the forest without getting lost... and so begins your trek through the forest.

In top-down RPGs, this would be represented as a forest area with four openings, with you in the middle of the screen. To exit the forest at Point B, you'd have to direct your character in one of the cardinal directions multiple times, until you "unlock" the exit screen for the forest. Unless you grabbed a clue about escaping the forest beforehand, you could expect to see the same damned forest screen an almost infinite number of times.

Of course, that is only one example. This also happens with enchanted labyrinths where traversing a screen always changes your facing, or where you're in a single, humongous area that's covered in snow (this is FFVII, to be sure). You could even count top-down roguelikes that don't let you zoom out into this mix, especially if the camera turns around a lot.

While the desired effect is perhaps to cause the player a sense of unease, it also adds a layer of frustration into a game. It also pads the game with a one-time gimmicky device that usually isn't even part of the main plot.

Of course, so long as there are video games, there will also be frustrating game mechanics, but I'd like to think that, as the technology in video game creation develops, we'd see less of this disorientation mechanic happening. While this might be replaced with other frustrating game mechanics, I'd still put this single gameplay mechanic somewhere near the top of the list of annoying things to avoid in a new-generation videogame.

Picture taken from Wikimedia Commons. Author: Mila Zinkova