I've become concerned lately by the emphasis game developers have put on the console games, sometimes at the expense of the PC ones. There have been several multi platform games that came out on everything but the PC. The Spider Man 2 game used a bait and switch to deliver a completely different game for the PC. What really bugs me, is when developers lower the graphics or focus the controls on the consoles rather than the PC. I've seen several games that just have checkpoint saves, designed for the console versions, rather than the quicksaves common on the PC. I would much rather have quicksaves on a game, and not have to repeat everything a dozen times. That's just my thoughts on it.

To of you idiot game developers out there. I do not like stupid jumping puzzles. Even the Xen levels of Half-Life were terrible because of this fact. I want to save whenever and where ever the heck I want to save in a game. I don't like check point saves (Bungie, please take note of this) and I don't like having only a few save points. I like quicksaves. There is a reason for this fact. Namely, I do not like to have to repeat the same part of a game time and time and time and time again because of these stupid jumping puzzles. I have been playing God of War for the past several days. Overall, it is a good game. But, just when I hit a point in which the action is moving along and it is fun, along comes some idiot jumping puzzle that stops everything for several hours. Of course there are no quicksaves on a console, so I have to keep repeating the same freaking thing.

It is for these reasons that I am very hesitant to spend $50 on a console game. Give me a cheaper PC game with a quicksave any day.

"He's more like 'French prison porno remake of Shawshank Redemption' material." Now the trick is to try not to imagine exactly what a "French prison porno" really would be like.

Lately I've been trying to figure out the most cost-effective way to upgrade my computer. I was actually hoping to not upgrade it right now, but to maybe wait a few more months until a few of the up and coming things (PCI-Express, the new graphics cards) had come out and stabilized price-wise. I had even figured out that my current machine, with a 2100+ AMD XP Chip, an ATI Radeon 9800, and 1 Gig of PC2700 Ram, would run Doom III okay. But then just when I had come to that conclusion, my CPU goes out (and I still haven't figured out why). So, I've been debating over whether to spend a little to just upgrade the CPU to an AMD XP 2400+, a little more to upgrade the CPU to an AMD XP 2800+ (along with the motherboard), or a decent amount more (but still less than a new machine) for a new motherboard and an AMD 64 3000+ CPU (plus some new ram down the road). Still debating about it though, and trying to figure out if it is worth it.

Another issue that bugs me, is why is it taking them so long to finish Half-Life 2?? I know games take a lot of time, work and effort, but you would think at some point, Valve would kick it into gear, start pulling some extra shifts, and just get the thing finished. The delay is getting ridiculous, and I would be embarrassed if I was Valve. I mean the Pyramids were probably built in less time. They need to get with it.

More thoughts later.

- Tom