Visited a friend today and had the chance to play LA Noire. Really nice game. Wanted to try out Red Dead Redemption but there was only so much time. Anyhow I still can try this out next time. Also I suck with PS3 controllers since I am unable to use the sticks and the L1&L2 keys properly.... one more reason I prefer PC versions.... I'm more comfortable with keyboard and mouse and rebinding some keys.

My driving style was kinda like that of Tobustine, I also hit the same wall as Tobustine. iJustine @ minute 6:45 can't find it on tobuscus' playlist for la noire that quick ... so sorry. if you watch it and see it you can tell me where and when and I link it. ^^

Civ V released two new DLCs. Korea and Wonders of the Ancient World.

quote: "The Wonders of the Ancient World Scenario Pack adds three new wonders to Sid Meier’s Civilization V: The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Statue of Zeus, and the Temple of Artemis."

Korea was in Civ IV so was Statue of Zeus and the Temple of Artemis. I can't tell if they had proper replacement with other wonders to omit these, since I didn't liked the demo.

But for me this just sounds like Sims3 style printing of money. Recreating what gamers already had. Ok I omit the existence of the campaigns but replay value for campaigns is minimal and the only campaign I enjoyed in Civ IV was Rhye's and Fall.

Civ V currently runs for 30-50 EUR but has already DLC that sums up to 38 EUR.

There was a TES pack on Valves Quakecon Steam Sales. The package includes Oblivion + all official DLC and TES III Morrowind + both DLC or in other words Oblivion GOTY deluxe + Morrowind GOTY. Two awesome games at 15 EUR.

I had only finished knight of the nines and was half through shivering islands way back when (because I wanted the golden saint armour maxed). Did not played any DLC for Morrowind. So since I find coaster version more and more annoying because I don't like cds/dvds. They brake and make ugly sounds when spinning up. boxes are sometimes nice but mostly they just clutter your place. Books look better in a shelf.

Anyhow said coaster version was also only in German. So I grabbed my 2nd copy, now in English and with all DLC, plus I did not had Morrwind since I got that borrowed by Merzmensch, send him his commission money for this sale and the original full price purchase of Oblivion.

Skyrim most likely will not run on that poor 3yo laptops gfx card... at least not that well that I see the need to pay $$$ to play it with sliders all to the left... sorry Bethesda. I still like you very much. Maybe a demo will change my mind and ruin my bank account >_<.

So yes I started playing Oblivion again. Because of Skyrim, wanting to finish shivering islands and because of deadendthrills. I follow the approach of not picking the skills you use most as mayor to control leveling (i.e. always get +5, max endurance first, don't do quest with leveld items I like). The game is vanilla though apart from the unofficial patches, for now.

So this is my character:

Sorane Nin, young, female, Breton, custom Mage
download (before exiting sewers)

.att..skill............. L2 L1 L0
[END] armorer........... -- -- 25
[STR] blunt............. -- -- 25
[STR] hand to hand...... -- -- 25
[END] heavy armor....... -- -- 25
[SPE] light armor....... -- -- 25
[AGI] marksman.......... -- -- 25
[AGI] sneak............. -- -- 25
---------------------------------
[SPE] athletics......... -- -- 05
[STR] blade............. -- -- 05
[END] block............. -- -- 05
[INT] alchemy........... -- -- 15
[WIL] alteration........ -- -- 15
[INT] conjuration....... -- -- 20
[WIL] destruction....... -- -- 10
[PER] illusion.......... -- -- 15
[INT] mysticism......... -- -- 20
[WIL] restoration....... -- -- 20
[SPE] acrobatics........ -- -- 05
[PER] mercantile........ -- -- 05
[AGI] security.......... -- -- 05
[PER] speechcraft....... -- -- 05

Oh and since I now have an extra copy of Oblivion + Shivering Island (beware securom).... who else wants to get hooked up with the series?

downgraded to xp for several reasons

- fix refreshrate in dxdiag (I still run a crt)
- no annoying delays when starting things
- the security popup that warns me that something wants to do changes to my computer sometimes takes like forever
- the new taskbar is a #fail compared to the mac dock
- ...

now I'm going back thanks to starcraft.

ok could try to find what does the hick hack, but I expect that on a clean install and everything updated that things should run like a charm if they did on win7. The sad part, they don't.

I got realy annoying lags in starcraft II during multiplayer, lasting 3-4 secs and usually one right at the start followed by two more latter during the game. Also I got droped once.

so either my network driver for xp sucks or win 7, once a thing runs, does better to keep it that way.

alright!

ubisoft drm server down for at least 10 hours, according to http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98927-Ubisoft-DRM-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down.

mhh does that help them to convince me that they are totally trustworthy? errr... no, it does not.

oh and while readinga around this topic of always-online-drm someone wrote that steam has an offline mode. sweat. obviously i didn't knew that. really cool for the non 3g data plan laptop crew (or those that rather use their cap for something useful).

so another time to anno 1404 bashing or rather anno 1404 publisher bashing.

so since they patched out the DRM everything should be fine, right? they put it right back in with the add on.

sorry i'm all like eric cartman in the pirate episode from season 14: "teh fcuk?"

oh and ubisoft/tages are of the helpful kind if i'm trusting the problems some users report on steam forums:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1147232

oh, steam. you know the-you-need-to-be-online-to-play-thing did not received the DRM patch. teh fcuk?

oh and on some flame sites they claim that all games after vencie will be online-to-play-games.

seriously? ubisoft go bankrupt already.

lucky for me i cut back on my game spendings only going for weekend madnesses of games that where on my radar like 'torchlight' and 'mount and blade', which i bought recently, since i am doing savings for new hardware. honestly i would be sooo pissed if i bought anno at premium and my hardware not being able to run the huge cities and ubisoft throwing yet another teh fcuk at me.

sounds like i have to wait until they bundle it drm free with some game magazine, by then i should also have decent enough hardware to push every slider to the right.

oh and to end with something positive. really love the screenies of venice and the retro gaming feeling from the demo. guess blue byte did a decent job. to bad they are owned by ubisoft.

Been testing the demo version of Anno 1404, since I'm below the minimum requirements. Worked fine apart from some sound glitches. Maybe larger Cities will crumble my frame rate but oh well. I will get a fast laptop sometime in the near future anyway. And it reminded me a lot of the first Anno I played.

Since I accidentally got a DRM infested version of Oblivion, for $$$, I do check before buying a game now. To Bethesda defence they did not use freaking activations.

To bad for Ubisoft, they are using TAGES which does not sound like something I would like to use. Google for it and see some of their problems from the last holiday season (servers down 2+ days) and ubisoft is allegedly having bad customer service concerning older DRM titles as claimed by users on the steam forums or cd drive problems in X3TC (yeah I read anno does not use cd validation).

I do not oppose DRM completely as long as they are sane.

As you might have read, on twitter, I bought The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition on Steam. I wont be able to pass my copy to a friend or family member after I finished the title, as I did when I was a minor and played Monkey Island the first time. Plus I do not have a nice coaster sitting in my bookshelf after finishing the game.

But steam proved itself of being trustworthy and non intrusive, imho (and Monkey Island is only 10 Euros). Same scheme as iTunes after-all.

On iTunes I bought TV episodes that also bound to my account but are cheaper then the DVD and also available in English. Yet I would not buy non iTunes-Plus music since I can't copy it to my linux or if ever I buy a non apple portable music player.

Egosoft with X3 uses stupid DRM too, but they are trustworthy to provide lots of patches that also contain free updates and after awhile they remove the DRM from the game. One might just wait for the DRM free 2.0 version, if you hate DRM that much. All hail to egosoft. Seriously I like you guys.

That said I'm none of this automatic no-sayers, still I do not like to be fucked with for spending good money on a poor product (non sane DRM, whatsoever). You could at least have a non TAGES steam version. I might have considered buying that.

Well maybe they patch it out or I make up my mind. Until then I got plenty of other games, SimCity4, CivIV,... and maybe pick it for $ instead of $$$ price tag without three online activations later next year.