Dancing with Dragons

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Just Cause 2 Just Needs More Ammo

I picked up Just Cause 2 on the Summer Steam sale for a grand total of $4.99 (plus $0.66 for a DLC weapon).  The game is an extremely fun mix of Grand Theft Auto and Batman.  The game is set in an open world sandbox where the player can do pretty much anything they want.  On top of this, the player is equipped with a Batman-like grappling hook that expands the game play past the traditional Grand Theft Auto car jacking and hooker killing. Also the games narrative pits the protagonist, Rico, against the local island government giving him plenty of opportunities to cause CHAOS (as the game calls it).

Also, it's a beautiful game when it wants to be:

I've enjoyed my stint so far with the game and I've definitely gotten my five dollars worth.  However, there is a glaring  hole in the game play that kills the game: the lack of ammunition.  To make this even more infuriating, the DLC weapon packs (which you pay real money for) require the player to then buy the weapon from the in-game black market, but the game does not provide any ammunition from within the game world with which to refill these weapons.  So the player is stuck always having to waste all their in-game money on restocking weapons from the black market meaning they miss out on all the other neat toys that could be purchased.

The DLC weapons are clearly the worst offenders and a black-eye for DLC everywhere, but the regular weapons are always short on ammo as well.  The only way to get ammo is to kill enemies and rarely is there an enemy around with the weapon type the player is needing ammo for, resulting in the player constantly having to juggle weapon swaps.  Its an obvious game design blunder that should have been fixed by adding ammo drops from the black market.  If the black market helicopter can air drop me everything from a fucking motorcycle to a private jet, it sure as hell could drop me an ammo crate.

But this is why cheats exist and I can continue happily along my way now with unlimited ammo.

Global Agenda: Free 2 Play works

Global Agenda launched as a subscription game, but has since gone Free 2 Play (F2P).  I jumped on board when the game came to Steam and while I haven't spent any money myself, I have played with several players that are enjoying the money they have spent with the new F2P model introduced with Free Agent.  Most of those players joined at the same time I did and bought into the Elite Agent one-time $20 ($15 with coupon) micro-transaction.  From what I can tell, this is the path most players are taking once they determine they want to stick around for a while.  After that they start picking up the occasional Boost for an extended play session which puts more money in Global Agenda's pockets.

The studio behind Global Agenda, Hi-Rez Studios, are quite pleased with Free Agent's success as well. In this interview with PC Gamer they had this to say:

“We have many many more people creating accounts every day, many more people playing concurrently, our revenues are higher than they ever have been before which means we can develop content and put it into the game faster than ever before.”

This is just more evidence that the F2P model is the way for new MMOGs to go, even when they are MMO-lite such as Global Agenda.

Fixed: Just Cause 2 crashes on Steam

Like many gamers, I bought a copy of Just Cause 2 during the Steam Summer Sale and if the forums are any indications, I was not alone with Just Cause 2 crashing repeatedly.  Specifically it would crash on fullscreen settings.

The immediate fix was to open Steam's game library and right click on Just Cause 2 and then select Set Launch Options and enter /failsafe.  This forces the game to launch in windowed mode.  The game ran just fine for me in windowed mode.

However, I was not satisfied that I couldn't play this game in fullscreen so I did the normal checks to see what may be causing the issue.  First I verified the game files on Steam and the check completed without error. Next, I made sure it wasn't Steam community causing the issue and with the community overlay disabled, it still crashed.

The final step I took was to upgrade my nVidia drivers.  I opted to not only upgrade my drivers, but also to do a clean install of the driver in the process (which is available with the nVidia installer now).  This cleared out all old profiles and other settings.

After the upgrade and a couple PC reboots, Just Cause 2 started and ran just fine in fullscreen.  I hope this post helps anyone else having this issue.

Bye-bye Facebook, Hello Google+

I hate to admit that I have a Facebook page that I update on a monthly basis.  My most recent monthly update involved the elation I had seeing my 2-year old son's reaction to a handful of worms I had picked up in the backyard.  As you can probably tell, I'm not your average Facebook user.  I really don't use Facebook to "connect" with anyone on a regular basis.  The only redeeming factor I see in Facebook is Facebook Connect, but as not much of what I'm involved with uses it, it's kind of pointless (I had hoped maybe some games would start using it instead of requiring me to register a new account with their own system).

This leads me to Google's new project; Google+.  While it won't be a true replacement to Facebook, I feel it will fill my "social network" needs and I suspect I will be able to maintain a completely anonymous profile along with a more personal profile via different Google accounts (Facebook bans users posting under pseudonyms such as heartlessgamer). On top of this, Google is a big proponent of OpenID and I much prefer that to Facebook Connect (but still run into the problem of many people NOT using it in the gaming community).

However, there is more to why I am going to use Google+ and chiefly among that is explained in this article at PC World:

5. You Can Get Your Data Back

Facebook is notorious for its poor stewardship of personal data. You are forced to make certain parts of your personal data "public" for example, and It is very hard to permanently delete your Facebook profile. Google, on the other hand, makes it possible for you to pick up all the data you’ve banked at Google+ and walk away. This is done through a Google+ tool called “Data Liberation.” With just a few clicks you can download data from your Picasa Web Albums, Google profile, Google+ stream, Buzz and contacts.

This feature is HUGE. This is the reason I use Google's Blogger service: I control my data and have several years worth of backups of my content, all achieved via a couple of clicks. Facebook has nothing on this and never will.  Facebook can't exist as a company without selling it's users data.  I understand that and accepted that fact when I started using Facebook. 

Google+ won't kill Facebook.  Facebook is a doomed model.  Google+ is a value add to Google's core product line and that will allow it to succeed (or be sheltered if it fails because Google doesn't need it to survive).

Note: Yes, I've been denying the fact I have a Facebook profile on this blog because, no, I don't want you to friend request me.  Sorry.  No hard feelings.

Note2: No, I don't have any plans to use Google Buzz over Twitter at this point, but I am willing to entertain the idea depending on Google+'s integration options with Buzz.