The Way They Think

A few years ago I've started working at a new place. Several days later, a guy (that I knew by then was driving E30 M3) approached me, and the following conversation followed:

- [him] I saw your car.
- [me] And?
- I looked inside.
- And?
- You drive a stick.
- And?
- Otherwise I would've had to stop talking to you.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

THIRTY FIVE new Justice Courts...

One opinion I've heard was that the simplest way to kill the camera program would be for every person receiving the ticket to actually show up in court - then, the burden put on the judicial system will be so high, the idiocy of it will become obvious.

This was over a year ago. Apparently, this is how much time the public and the government need to wake up and realize what they're doing.

And the other consideration is - well, you know, I would have preferred the police to have served and protected me instead of watching the safety of speed cameras at the same exact moment my car was being broken into... While I was paying for them to do so.

AdSense Immigration Fail

Good timing, isn't it?

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Demo Review

PC gaming is not dead. However, significant efforts to make it dead are underway.

Project Origin demo sucks. Apparently, the game itself sucks too, judging by reviews at Amazon and Newegg.

First of all, it's a poor PC port of a console game. Excuse me, folks, but if I wanted to play a console game, I would've bought a console version of it.

It's not only the dialogues that are obviously built for a console, it's even the mouse behaviour (note, the menu doesn't even call it "mouse" any more, it's "aim" now. Move the mouse a bit too sharp even on the minimum "aim" sensitivity setting, and the game performs a dizzying spin, and you're no longer sure where the hell you're looking. Smells with motion control tuned for the console controller and reused for mouse - unacceptable.

What used to be scary is now simply annoying. Just like Doom 3, every time they jump from behind the corner you think "Damn, I knew they would be here!".

Save is gone, replaced by checkpoints now. I don't know how many checkpoints the actual game has, but the demo has one. And the end of the demo for me was... when I got stuck in a puddle next to the place where the sniper rifle is, unable to move. An attempt to "reload last save" popped me up right there, stuck. That was the end of it, 'cause the other option ("exit to menu") obliterated all the process made, and I'm not going to repeat this exercise in humility again. (update: the game also has one save slot - now, that is dumb, what exactly do you do if you get stuck like I did in the demo?)

Maybe I'll buy the game when it drops to $14.99, though probably not. And it is definitely not worth the price it's being offered for today.

Too bad, I was looking forward to it.