Held Hostage

I had some really tough times uninstalling programs yesterday. I thought uninstalling was supposed to be easy! Yesterday, I tried to get rid of Hellgate, but somehow this borked my BF2142 install. BF2142 would never get to the splash screen, it would adjust the screen resolution and then crash right to the desktop (no error message). I tried uninstalling and reinstalling. When I reinstalled, I realized I didn’t have the booklet with the serial number, but I found a sneaky trick on a website that showed how to use System Restore to go back to before the uninstallation and use Regedit to find the serial number.

Reinstallation didn’t fix the problem, but using System Restore to go back to before the uninstallation of Hellgate did. Unfortunately, now I cannot see my mouse pointer in the starting screens, making it rather difficult to log in (fortunately the buttons light up when you hover over them). I have no clue how to fix this!

Bored, Bored, Bored

I feel like I’ve been in such a funk the last few weeks, and I’m sure it’s partly because of the usual suspects. The weather has been mostly overcast, and the days seem so much shorter. Also, classes start up again today. However, what has really been getting me down is this damned writers’ strike! Now I don’t think of myself as a big TV enthusiast, but I like to supplement my daily activities with a show or two. Also, I suspect that Bunky’s boredom is rubbing off on me, in spite of her new DS (probably the only thing keeping her sane at this point).

The other problem is that I’ve reached a bit of a lull in my other hobbies as well. Right now is the sort of dead period in between anime seasons, so I don’t have anything to really watch or write about. I’ve also tired somewhat of Hellgate:London, because Normal mode was fun but playing all the same levels again is not that great. The monsters don’t really have any new tactics, so only loot collection keeps me going. I saw Ender revert back to some BF2142, and I may consider storming some Titans in the near future (u c wut I did there).

I was having fun with Mario Kart for a while on the DS, but after beating 50cc and 100cc, I met my match at 150cc. I’m not really that good at racing games, and I swear the computer cheats on Hard difficulty. It is just so heartbreaking to be in first place on the last lap of the last race, only to get hit by a spined blue shell, then a red shell, then a green shell right before the finish line (causing your character to finish second overall in the Grand Prix, meaning no new unlocks). Plus, my hands hurt after playing DS too long.

Yesterday was the first big TV night in a while. I watched two really enjoyable reruns of Iron Chef: America, where Wolfgang Puck and Ming Tsai defeated their Iron Chef competitors. It was cool watching some famous chefs for once, and the Iron Chefs were working much harder than usual. Wolfgang did a tremendous job (though Morimoto fumbled with his dish choice), while Tsai got thrown a nice soft underhand lob with the choice of duck as the secret ingredient. Desperate Housewives was ok, with several new twists this episode, but I’m not that big a DH fan. Bunky and I also caught the premiere of Cashmere Mafia. I wasn’t wowed by it, but it wasn’t that bad either. I told Bunky it felt like Big Shots, but with female main characters. She agreed, but I think it could do really well against the weakened competition, sorta like the Knicks in the lockout-shortened season of 1999.

Hellgate Tetris

Flagship posted up the winner of the Halloween contest. The first part wasn’t that great (first 1.5 minutes), but there really is a limit to what you can do with the HG:L characters. There’s no model viewer, so no green screening like in WoW. However, the commercial part was amusing, especially when they mention the inventory and the lack of respecs.

Hellgate Initial Impressions

I’ve gotten a Guardian to level 20, and an Engineer to level 12 (I got him to level 10, then rerolled when I found out how bad the construct drone was), and an Evoker to level 6. I think HG:L will eventually be quite good, but like so many of these MMO games, HG:L shipped with a number of issues.

The Good:

• Quests: The story so far is pretty good, and some of the characters are very funny. Also, I have yet to grind, as the quests take you everywhere you need to go, and net you all the experience you need.
• Party Portal: It’s such a simple idea, but the ability to open a party portal at almost any time (except in Hell, interestingly) and instantly beam over to your party is amazing. This eliminates all the waiting for party members to assemble, and prevents people from getting lost.
• Fun: When things are working smoothly, HG:L is fast-paced and enjoyable. I think HG:L has a very strong foundation. There are a number of really cool moments like the pitch-black level where you wear headpiece flashlights, and the Gundown battle where you have to shoot down the squid ship. A few of the innovative parts are less impressive (like the lame RTS event), but props to Flagship for trying.
• Light Death Penalty: When you die, you can pay a small fee to pop right back up (BATTLE REZ!!!). If you are that cheap, you can also respawn at the last base, or return as a ghost at the beginning of the zone. The last two options are free.

The Bad:

• Chat UI: It doesn’t affect me as much since Velius, Ender, and I use TeamSpeak, but the Chat UI is bad, and has many users complaining. The overall UI is good, but there are some annoying issues that will probably get fixed in the initial patches (like party portraits not showing up sometimes).
• Inventory Management: There is no auto-sort feature, so your inventory frequently gets clogged up. Even worse, the special holiday/event items will continue to drop even when you have already completed the quest. In some ways, being a subscriber could actually be more annoying!
• Subscriber Perks: Unless you must have PVP, I see almost zero reason to subscribe. Compare what you get in WOW with what you get in HG:L when you subscribe, and it’s clear the value just isn’t there.

The Ugly:

• The Memory Leak: This is a bad bad bug, and no matter how epic your computer is, the program will crash at least once every 1-2 hours. The bug is rumored to be related to HG:L taking all the textures in and never really removing them, but even with all settings set to low you will still crash. In some cases, your computer will completely freeze up. With the light death penalty and the shrewd use of party portals, this won’t mess up your progress too much, but it is really annoying to constantly have to exit HG:L and restart your computer. The memory leak should have been resolved before, and it seems that Flagship has not figured out what causes it.
• Quest Bugs: I have not gotten this far, but apparently there are some bugs with a later story-critical quest that will prevent you from progressing. This is a bad bug as well, but it will probably be fixed pretty quickly.