This week it seems I am the victim of a rather tragic happening. For almost a year now I’ve been the proud owner of a Dell Inspiron 1720 and I’ve loved that laptop, whenever I was sitting around the house I always had my laptop close at hand. However there was always one slight problem I had and that was that there was a particularly weak section in the power cable for my laptop’s charger and this has gradually worn away over time. I suppose I always knew that one day my slowly disintegrating charger cable would eventually leave me with half a wire between me and the power source and that my laptop would be rendered completely useless, but none the less it’s still quite saddening to see the wire laying there, it’s shining conductive innards exposed to the outside world as my laptop sits next to it helpless, without a power source to draw from. My laptop has served so many purposes; I would use it to chat with friends, check my emails, watch videos, read web comics, research anything I needed to, program software, read articles, visit forums, listen to music and (most relevantly) play video games among other things. Now that I am without my laptop, even for a day or two this does present somewhat of an inconvenience.
For now I’m making do with my family’s old desktop but this is an old and very sluggish PC. Despite all my compressing, uncompressing, deleting, virus scanning and defragmentation, this machine still has occasional problems when just navigating the web and the frame rate it’s giving me on flash videos has scared me away from watching them on here altogether. I was even a little worried about updating the instant messenger and web browser on here in case they put a further dent in the computer’s poor performance. Hopefully I can replace my old laptop charger soon and all will be well, but I don’t really know when I’ll have the opportunity to do that as if I want to get to the shop where I bought my laptop I’ll need someone to drive me there and I’m rather wary about buying a replacement online. So I could have my new charger tomorrow or I could have it in three weeks. I suppose the one thing I can be grateful about is that at least it was only the charger that broke and my laptop itself is still entirely intact.
Before my laptop broke I didn’t do that much gaming with it but I did manage to play through a few things. I played some more Team Fortress 2 and that game continues to be consistently entertaining, but I also tried out a fairly new free MMORPG called Dragonica. It’s no secret that the internet is currently sprawling with these kinds of games but this game was recommended to me by someone I know and there wasn’t anything to be lost in giving it a try. The thing that probably comes across best about the game is the 3D chibi art style, but as for the gameplay itself it’s probably best described as a cross between World of Warcraft and Maplestory. That’s not to say the game doesn’t have some interesting features in its arsenal that keep it from being just a clone of those games and the various gameplay elements of the game do mesh together quite well, but when I realise it is comprised of more or less what I’ve already played the game seems to lose its charm somewhat. Still, I think I’m confident I’ll return to the game sooner or later and if I don’t it was still all free so overall it’s been quite a success for Dragonica.
I’ve also taken a bit of a look at the upcoming FPS-RPG game Borderlands. I’d heard a lot of talk about Borderlands but outside of the famed overhaul of the game’s art style I didn’t really know a lot about it and I wanted to check out what all the fuss was about. From what I’ve read and seen Borderlands seems to be exactly what I’d want from a game like this. Although it has an endearing graphical style, what really impressed me was the gameplay; the way the shooter-based combat and RPG game mechanics blend so well and the incorporation of the millions of different weapons and pieces of equipment seem to be what really make Borderlands look like an amazing game. It’ll be great to get my hands on it.
Speaking of getting my hands on games it seems that there have been yet more games which have had their release dates pushed back. When this fate befell Bioshock 2 I was a little frustrated but I accept if the game needed more work then it needed more work. It’s a bit disheartening however to see the same thing happen to Starcraft 2 which looked like it was shaping up very nicely. Also as is typical it looks like Europe is getting the short straw for another release: Dark Void. I’m actually quite happy I’m not super-hyped about Dark Void because while over in the States the game is being promptly delivered this September it looks like it’s not going to hit this continent until February 2010, a whole 5 months later.
That’s all for this blog. A special thanks to Jeb800e though for creating my new Gamespot profile banner. This week I’ll leave you with this look at Halo 3: ODST which seems to have garnered some very positive attention on Giant Bomb.
-Gamer_152
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