BRINK - 1st impressions

Got Brink yesterday, at last. Played for couple of hours so thought I share my first impressions with you.

Game presentation looks good. Menus and few cut scenes look very nice. You set you character and then choose which side you want to join - rebels or the authority. Won't spoil it and tell you what the difference is but will tell you that the game looks like it is split in two halves. You play it start to finish as a rebel and then again start to finish as authority troop.

Had 3 options to choose from: campaign, challenges and free play I think. I tried campaign and challenges. You get unlocks for completing challenges. There are many things to unlock and they seem to be unlocking very quickly ie finish one mission and you get 6 unlocks.

Campaign can be played on easy, normal or hard. I decided to go for normal as didn't want to get stuck and didn't want to have totally dumb opponents. It turned up AI is mostly very dumb. Most of the time I was struggling to find my way around and working out what I need to do. I failed the second mission because I did not know what to do. I could activate objective (use up in the D pad) and got to it but was in the wrong class because pressing X was not doing it.

In the end I can only echo what many others said. If you have friends to play it with, it can be a good fun. If you end up playing with AI, it is only a weekend fling and back in the shop it should go.

Lag in games

Gears 3 Beat just finished and major discussing issues was the LAG. Are we on dedicated servers or P2P?, host advantage, blla blla...

It is true Gears 2 and most probably Gears 1 too, had some major issues with lag and host advantage. Often I could see these things in Gears 3 Beta too. But I'm more or less convinced that the lag we get in gears is no worse than what we get any other game. so why is it people complain lot more in gears than any other game about the lag (or so it seams to me)?

Looking forward to LA Noire

Another ten days or so and I'll be able to shift myself back one century using LA Noire. Hopefully Amazon will send it a bit sooner so I get it on the release day which will give me full weekend of LA magic. Need to book it with my kids and wife so I don't get the looks when I'm playing for hours. 

I've been playing Gears 3 Beta a lot for the last 3 weeks and I feel the time has come for something different. Can't wait for the full release though, campaign will most definitely be awesome.

I played some Fallout New Vegas last night and it felt painfully slow after Gears but I did need it. Needed to chill a bit, which you can't really do when you're playing Gears MP. :)

I hate eBay

I've been using eBay since 2003 and never had a problem as a seller or a buyer. I saw charges going up and up for selling items and that was about the only thing I could complain about. Until now that is.

I sold this headset online to this dodgy character for £36. eBay and PayPal together charged me £5. In the mean time the dodgy guy got his account blocked/removed (says no longer registered but it doesn't tell you why). Then he reports he never received the headset. I say fine, got proof of postage will get Royal Mail to refund. He complaints to eBay who takes £36 from my account and refunds the dodgy guy and still keep charging me £5 for selling it! Apparently they couldn't care less if I have a proof of postage or not. If you don't send it recorded,  then you're screwed!

So now I'm £5 down, no headset, with a proof of postage which I will frame and put on the wall to remind me how it is to get screwed by eBay! ARGH!!!