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Tonight — actually, just a few minutes ago — I crossed the million dollar mark in Grand Theft Auto III.

I did it on my favorite GTA III habit, "Messing with the Cartel," by taking advantage of my irresistability to the Colombians.

To be clear, I'm talking about the group of non-player characters whose role in the game is that they're members of a Colombian drug cartel. Not real people — just characters in the game Grand Theft Auto III.

In the story, the cartel were operating out of a cargo ship anchored at Liberty City, manufacturing a drug called "spank." The Colombians are putting "spank" on the streets, and the mafia — another group of non-player characters — find the cartel's intrusion bad for business. My character (who I recently learned is named "Claude") has been working as a "fixer" for the mafia boss, and is asked to destroy the ship to restore the mafia's illicit revenue stream. The successful completion of that mission has meant that every time Claude is in the proximity of a cartel member, Claude gets shot at — sometimes, enough to make the vehicle he's driving catch fire.

So I decided to capitalize on that virtual vitriol to make some extra cash. I set my goal for $1M — and I just hit it.

To be honest, I got there by cheating — I put the cheats for armor, health, and wanted level to very good use. There is also a cheat for wealth — I've seen it on a list — but I didn't want to use it, because the whole point of shooting them and setting them on fire was taking their money.

See details on how I played the "game" in a previous post.

Again, I'm talking about a strategy inside of a video game — not real violence, not real people, and wistfully, not real money. Please don't take anything I've written in this post out of the context in which it was written.

I've kinda hit pause on the main game for a while, because I've fallen into a habit I'll call "Messing with the Cartel."

To be clear, I'm talking about the group of non-player characters whose role in the game is that they're members of a Colombian drug cartel. Not real people — just characters in the game Grand Theft Auto III.

In the story, the cartel were operating out of a cargo ship anchored at Liberty City, manufacturing a drug called "spank." The Colombians are putting "spank" on the streets, and the mafia — another group of non-player characters — find the cartel's intrusion bad for business. My character (who I recently learned is named "Claude") has been working as a "fixer" for the mafia boss, and is asked to destroy the ship to restore the mafia's illicit revenue stream. The successful completion of that mission has meant that every time Claude is in the proximity of a cartel member, Claude gets shot at — sometimes, enough to make the vehicle he's driving catch fire.

So I've decided to capitalize on that virtual vitriol to make some extra cash.

Even though the cargo ship mission occurred on the Liberty City map, my fun little game takes place on Staunton Island. The Pan-Ocean Construction company is apparently a cartel enterprise — or, at least, employs a lot of cartel members. Claude's hideout is about a block away from one of their construction sites. This site has a gated entrance at the corner closest to the hideout, but has an open entrance further down the block. There are health and armor power-ups on the second floor of a building on the site. There are also vehicles on the site — a Cartel Cruiser (a dark blue pickup truck with a roll bar) and a company mini-van. Finally, there's a little gatehouse to the left of the gate inside the fence perimeter. (It'll be on your right as you drive into the site.) That fence is what makes the construction site KEY to this little game, because the gate opening will control cartel access to Claude. As long as Claude remains inside the construction site, the cartel attacks are completely manageable.

A big part of GTA-III is stealing vehicles. The Staunton Island hideout can store two vehicles for you. You'll want to steal and maintain (meaning, store it in your garage when you save your game) a vehicle strong enough that you can bust through the gate at the construction site. A Cartel Cruiser handles the job well — plus, it's a little irony bonus. Accelerate your vehicle through the gate so the gate smashes. If you're not moving fast enough, the bar may remain intact but get knocked off its posts... some of the cartel NPCs may have trouble navigating around the fallen pipe, so it's better to smash it to bits.

When you bust through the gate, turn to the right and park your vehicle along the fence beside the gate house. This gives you easy access to the vehicle in case your health and armor run low and need a quick getaway.

So the idea here is to simply collect as much money as you can by killing the cartel NPCs. I find the best time of day in the game to do this is starting at about 8 PM, with peak time between 3 AM and 7 AM — that's when the cartel characters will be carrying the most money.

It doesn't take much to attract the cartel's attention. Simply stand on the sidewalk just outside the gate, with your back to the street. You should see bullets flying in your direction within seconds. Run back into the construction site and the cartel will follow you. Gun them down inside the construction site to minimize the chances of hitting, say, a police officer walking the sidewalk outside. I find its best to use the Uzi for single targets, and the shotgun for multiple targets.

Keep a very close eye on Claude's health, and manage his exposure to the Liberty City police. If it's time to jet, get back in your car and drive down to the open gate area at the opposite end of the block -- your vehicle should be pointed toward that exit anyway. At the open gate, you can turn left to head to the hospital or turn right to return to your hideout. If you're going to your hideout, you can avoid the giant mess you made by following these directions:

1. Turn right out of the open gate
2. Turn right at the intersection, then
3. Make a very quick left onto the overpass
4. Get into the right lane and make a very quick right into the alley
5. You should see a minivan parked in an open garage directly in front of you in case you need to switch cars (for example, if the one you're driving is on fire)
6. Drive through the alley and turn left onto the street
7. Cut through the courtyard in front of the yellow building with the steps to get to your street. You can drive on the wide sidewalk. Watch out for the trees, though.
8. Your hideout is in the alley on the left

Save your game often. I've come to feel like as long as I've earned more than $1,000, it was worth the effort. Sometimes I've gotten greedy (earning up to around $4,000) and then gotten busted or killed. When Claude wakes up at the hospital door, you're out some money AND all of your weapons are gone. I would rather load the previous save and start over again than proceed with the loss and without my weapons stockpile.

Here are some other hints to help you along the way:

• Cheat codes can be your friend. Type "tortoise" for armor, "gesundheit" for health, and "nopoliceplease" to reset your wanted level. Note: after using the "nopoliceplease" cheat, type "c" to reset your camera angle to normal.
  
  
• There's a group of Jamaican NPCs that are constantly mixing it up with the cartel NPCs. They'll fight in the streets. You can take advantage of their rivalry to earn some extra dough. Just know that if the fighting strays too far from the construction site, the gate you busted may have restored itself upon your return.
  
  
• To really drum up business, shoot at the Cartel Cruisers that drive by.
  
  
• I find that when I start, cartel guys are only carrying their weapon, or maybe their weapon and one or two little stacks of money. But every now again — particularly within the peak hours — you can recover a BUNCH of money stacks around one guy. Also, I'm not sure, but the weapon you use may matter — anecdotally, I've found that I seem to earn more when I use the shotgun as opposed to using the Uzi.
  
  
• Using the shotgun is slower than using the Uzi. I try to reserve the shotgun for when I have plenty of distance between me and multiple approaching cartel targets. If I'm going out onto the street, I try to switch to the Uzi, in case I get swarmed. About that...
  
  
• The cartel will swarm you. If you're creating mayhem in the street, cartel will show up out of nowhere and make very quick work of your armor and health. Keep an eye on these and get behind cover to use the cheats to refresh them.
  
  
• Get invested in finding as many of the drug packages scattered across the maps as you can — with every 10 packages you find, you get a new type of weapon delivered to your hideout. Collect enough to have shotgun ammo and Molotov cocktails delivered. (Note: There may be a cheat code to give you access to these weapons.)
  
  
• You'll notice the cartel will accumulate outside of the fence — especially the fence to the right as you face the gate you drove through. The best way I've found to make a safe cash grab (safe for Claude, anyway) is by throwing a Molotov cocktail at the fence where they've congregated. Wait until several have gathered -- you'll hear them all yelling at you, and you'll likely see the brims of their hats and other parts poking through the fence. Stay a good distance away from the fence and throw one of the cocktails (they look like bottles with rags sticking out of the tops). When it explodes, it will burn for a few seconds, and you'll see the cartel's weapons and cash. Don't approach these while the fire's still burning, or you'll catch Claude on fire and it'll burn through his armor and at least some of his health, at best. You can collect all of the weapons and probably some of the cash by running along the inside perimeter where the fire had burned, but you'll probably find more cash on the sidewalk outside of the fence.
  
  
• Don't completely trust the perimeter fence. Being a virtual object, I have seen some cartel members move through it. Generally not the case, but it does happen sometimes.
  
  
• You'll earn extra money for blowing up police cars. As emergency vehicles will tend to accumulate outside the construction site perimeter, you might want to clear up traffic a bit by stealing them and driving them down into the site. Added bonus: you can use them to bust through the gate again if the gate has refreshed. As you're about to leave the site to save your game again, you can blow them up to earn a few more bucks. Hand grenades and Molotovs are pretty effective. Note: Your wanted level will increase the moment you swipe one of these vehicles. It'll also go up when grenades detonate.
  
  
• When cartel members are revived by the medics (usually a pair of characters in green jumpsuits), you can shoot them again and get more money from them. Shooting them inside the construction site keeps them relatively confined, so they can be the gift that keeps on giving. Be careful, though — shooting the medics increases your wanted level.
  
  

I've built Claude's wealth up to over $800,000 by playing this little game. Since I discovered the cheat codes, I've been trying to earn about $4,000 over each night. I've gotten pretty good at typing "nopolicepleasec" and "tortoise" fast.

Again, I'm talking about a strategy inside of a video game — not real violence, not real people. Please don't take anything I've written in this post out of the context in which it was written.

See it in a larger size

I don't even own this game and I'm highly pissed about what I saw from the developer.

Here's what I saw: A giant mea culpa letter, posted on Twitter, promising to fix all the issues the game is having on PS4 and XBOX ONE consoles. It reads in part,

We would like to start by apologizing to you... we should have paid more attention to making it play better on PlayStation 4 and XBOX ONE.... We will fix bugs and crashes and improve the overall experience. The first round of updates has just been released and the second is coming within the next 7 days... we'll release two large patches [in January and February]. They won't make the game on last-gen look like it's running on a high-spec PC or next-gen console, but it will be closer to that experience than it is now.... We would appreciate it if you would give us a chance, but... you can opt to refund your copy

These assholes built the game using next-gen technology which, as far as consoles go, pretty much nobody can get their mitts on — at least in the case of the new XBOX Series X/S. They received so much money in preorders that they recouped their entire production budget and marketing costs. ¹

When the public, who had been waiting for the game since 2012, bought it to play on the last-gen devices they have, it looked and played like shit. The Wikipedia article I previously cited reports that sales plummeted four days after release, when word got out about all of the technical issues — that is, when people realized they'd bought a complete shitburger of a game.

Companies rush software to market all the time, thinking they can just release patches afterwards to fix the problems they ignored beforehand. I promised that I'd never buy another EA game ever because of all the bullshit I saw in their Battlefront II title — and I bought that game like two years after it debuted — plenty of time for them to patch whatever needed to be patched. I tweeted to EA every bug I found and never once saw any reply. I saw so many bugs it became a labor to track them. That game could have been amazing, but it wasn't. It was a complete shitshow, and for that, they'll not receive another penny from me.

I don't know if CD Projekt Red (the studio that made the game, which I'll abbreviate to CDPR) rushed their product to market, or if they just concentrated so much on consoles nobody fucking has (perhaps anticipating Microsoft and Sony would have no problem sourcing and distributing their next-gen consoles) that it simply never crossed their minds that people would play them on the last-gen consoles they already own. What a colossal oversight this would be.

But the real problem with that scenario is that they released the game specifically FOR last-gen consoles last week. Hell, their release for the next-gen consoles isn't planned until sometime next year. So there's the answer to the question: it's both — CDPR didn't perform appropriate QA testing using last-gen consoles, AND they released a last-gen version of the game hoping to capture holiday sales.

So, knowing that they released a version of the game strictly for last-gen tech, WHY include a warning in the letter about how when it's fixed it won't look as good as it does on next-gen consoles? It's like selling a used car, then promising to do a ton of work to fix it, and then saying "well, I mean, it's never gonna run like a new car." Would I go back to a dealership that did that? Nope.

A reviewer of the game has published a sort of a retrospective on his experience. He claims that CDPR only showed the PC version of the game (likely running on a tricked out machine) and never showed customers the last-gen console versions — something CDPR cops to in its letter. The reviewer suggests that CDPR manipulated testing by only offering codes for PC users, and not allowing critics to post images or footage of bugs and crashes until two days after CDPR published "glowing reviews" of its new game. ²

I'm livid. And IMHO, CDPR deserves all the shit they get for this. They had a fan base of people thirsty for this game since 2012, who paid for it in advance, and CDPR made these people a shitburger.

All of this could have been avoided had they only released it for next-gen consoles and PCs with high requirements. Then you'd only have people bitching about how they have to buy a new machine to play it on, but at least they'd maybe get the game they paid for. Instead, CDPR released it for older consoles, and people were pissed when it kept breaking. Imagine that!

I've worked for a company like CDPR. In fact, the company closed and we all lost our jobs because the company president made an outlandish contract with an automotive manufacturer. He bet the house on this application, making a deal that was so one-sided, the client would double their money by not accepting our product. So the client didn't accept it (duh) and doubled their money, and we all lost our jobs.

But at least my company was up front about its stupidity. People who are trying to get their money back apparently aren't even hearing back from the company! In fact, the Venturebeat article (cited above) claims that CDPR has essentially placed refund processing responsibility onto Microsoft and Sony; Sony is denying those refunds.

I've just discovered something in the game I hadn't noticed before: When Arthur is killed, the game takes $150 from him.

I noticed this because I started picking fights with (well, I mean killing, really) members of a gang of former Confederate soldiers inhabiting the ruins of a church. Each time they'd come out en masse and whoop my ass, my character would be dropped someplace nearby with all the stuff it had before, minus $150.

I'm calling it "the death tax."

Considering I'm recovering like $.89 from each NPC I kill, death is really expensive.

I'm late for jumping on the bandwagon (I've been dying to use that pun) for Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption II for the XBOX ONE.

If you're looking for something different than the usual kill-kill-kill game, Give this a shot (see what I did there?) — I just bought the ultimate edition on sale for $40 through the Microsoft Store on my XBOX ONE. And It. Is. Different.

First and foremost, the graphics are amazing. The opening scenes are of winter in the mountains. Take a cue from how the horses move through the deep snow — this is about the pace of the game, for at least as far as I've gotten. But the weird thing is, it's this slow pace that makes the game engaging. There's a lot going on — you just have to ignore how slowly things move to appreciate them. And, just like Bill Cosby used to say on his show, if you're not careful you may learn something.

Know what? I'm tired of it.

I didn't spend money on the Microsoft Windows 10 Pro operating system just so you could make me spend even more to not see adds on your blasted revamped pork- stuffed Solitaire game. And YOU didn't EITHER.

No, thanks.

Behold, the nuclear option: YouTuber Craig Weinhold shows us how to use Windows Defender to block the program from communicating to the Internet. If it can't talk to the outside world, it damn sure can't download its annoying ads.

Like I said, it's a pretty blunt-force approach, and enabling the rule will cut off all communication from the program. I have a feeling one's scores and progress are kept in the cloud, so if you're serious about leveling up, this could kill that capability. But, if you're a casual player who's just using it to kill time in 5 to 7 minute increments, read on.

1. Open the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, and start a game of Solitaire. If you like playing against the clock, pause it by opening up the options menu or something.

2. Open Task Manager, view details, then click the Details tab. Scroll until you see Solitaire.exe. Now right-click on it, and select the option to open it in Windows Explorer. It'll take you to an unusual path, like this (you may have to click in the search bar to make it read this way):
   
   C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_4.7.5012.0_x64__6jolb2ks9cfq2
   
   Keep that window open... you'll need it in a moment.

3. Open Windows Defender Firewall. In the menu options listed down the left side, click Advanced Settings. Next, click Outbound Rules in the left panel. In the panel on the right, click New Rule... and the New Outbound Rule Wizard will appear on the screen.

4. Leave the Program radio button selected. Click Next.

5. Leave the This Program Path radio button selected. Click Browse... to open the file dialog. Next, paste into the file dialog the path to Solitaire that you found in Windows Explorer, and add "\Solitaire.exe" on the end.

6. Basically, Click Next until the wizard reaches the point where it asks you to name the new outbound rule.

7. Name your new outbound rule and finish the wizard.

8. Close all that stuff you opened, including the Solitaire game.

9. When you re-open Solitaire, you should see it can't connect to the Internet, and that no ads are loading.

If I can find a better way to do business here, I'll update this post. But, I've restarted my machine and I've moved up a level, so... the only downside I've seen so far is that the app complains about not being able to connect to the cloud from time to time.

Cancel.

UPDATE (2020.07.11):
I find I sometimes have to disable the firewall rule and re-enable it again once I'm playing, because the program complains that the level I've reached requires me to play online.

Because I've disconnected the game from the Internet at the firewall, it will usually complain intermittently that it can't reach the cloud; the program will at times reach a point where it prompts me to play offline -- but that's also the point where I must play online. So I get tangled in a series of prompts until I decide it's just better to disable the firewall rule, restart the program, and, once I'm in a game, I'll re-enable the firewall rule.

But I still think this is better than paying their damn ransom money.

UPDATE (2020.07.22):
One will find that occasional updates to the Solitaire collection software will require adjustments to the outbound firewall rule.

Notice the path to your solitaire executable contains a version number... so as new versions are downloaded to your machine, you'll have to edit your outbound rule to match.

Know what? I'm tired of it.

I didn't spend money on the Microsoft Windows 10 Pro operating system just so you could make me spend even more to not see adds on your blasted revamped pork- stuffed Solitaire game. And YOU didn't EITHER.

No, thanks.

Behold, the nuclear option: YouTuber Craig Weinhold shows us how to use Windows Defender to block the program from communicating to the Internet. If it can't talk to the outside world, it damn sure can't download its annoying ads.

Like I said, it's a pretty blunt-force approach, and enabling the rule will cut off all communication from the program. I have a feeling one's scores and progress are kept in the cloud, so if you're serious about leveling up, this could kill that capability. But, if you're a casual player who's just using it to kill time in 5 to 7 minute increments, read on.

1. Open the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, and start a game of Solitaire. If you like playing against the clock, pause it by opening up the options menu or something.

2. Open Task Manager, view details, then click the Details tab. Scroll until you see Solitaire.exe. Now right-click on it, and select the option to open it in Windows Explorer. It'll take you to an unusual path, like this (you may have to click in the search bar to make it read this way):
   
   C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_4.7.5012.0_x64__6jolb2ks9cfq2
   
   Keep that window open... you'll need it in a moment.

3. Open Windows Defender Firewall. In the menu options listed down the left side, click Advanced Settings. Next, click Outbound Rules in the left panel. In the panel on the right, click New Rule... and the New Outbound Rule Wizard will appear on the screen.

4. Leave the Program radio button selected. Click Next.

5. Leave the This Program Path radio button selected. Click Browse... to open the file dialog. Next, paste into the file dialog the path to Solitaire that you found in Windows Explorer.

6. Basically, Click Next until the wizard reaches the point where it asks you to name the new outbound rule.

7. Name your new outbound rule and finish the wizard.

8. Close all that stuff you opened, including the Solitaire game.

9. When you re-open Solitaire, you should see it can't connect to the Internet, and that no ads are loading.

If I can find a better way to do business here, I'll update this post. But, I've restarted my machine and I've moved up a level, so... the only downside I've seen so far is that the app complains about not being able to connect to the cloud from time to time.

Cancel.

UPDATE:
I find I sometimes have to disable the firewall rule and re-enable it again once I'm playing, because the program complains that the level I've reached requires me to play online.

Because I've disconnected the game from the Internet at the firewall, it will usually complain intermittently that it can't reach the cloud; the program will at times reach a point where it prompts me to play offline -- but that's also the point where I must play online. So I get tangled in a series of prompts until I decide it's just better to disable the firewall rule, restart the program, and, once I'm in a game, I'll re-enable the firewall rule.

But I still think this is better than paying their damn ransom money.

As of this weekend, I've replaced the power supplies on both of our XBOX ONE machines. (To be clear, I'm talking about the external "bricks" that plug into the machine on one end, and plug into a power outlet on the other.)

My Amazon purchase history shows I replaced the first last July. Nearly a year later, it just happened that the product I chose to replace the power supply on the second box is the same one I chose last year.

Both of our model 1540 machines were manufactured in 2015, making the life expectancy of the power supplies, based solely on my experience, between four and five years. Information I saw on a Microsoft Community thread suggested the warranty is only 90 days.

Replacement power bricks on Amazon cost between $25 and $31.

Know what? I'm tired of it.

I didn't spend money on the Microsoft Windows 10 Pro operating system just so you could make me spend even more to not see adds on your blasted revamped pork- stuffed Solitaire game. And YOU didn't EITHER.

No, thanks.

Behold, the nuclear option: YouTuber Craig Weinhold shows us how to use Windows Defender to block the program from communicating to the Internet. If it can't talk to the outside world, it damn sure can't download its annoying ads.

Like I said, it's a pretty blunt-force approach, and enabling the rule will cut off all communication from the program. I have a feeling one's scores and progress are kept in the cloud, so if you're serious about leveling up, this could kill that capability. But, if you're a casual player who's just using it to kill time in 5 to 7 minute increments, read on.

1. Open the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, and start a game of Solitaire. If you like playing against the clock, pause it by opening up the options menu or something.

2. Open Task Manager, view details, then click the Details tab. Scroll until you see Solitaire.exe. Now right-click on it, and select the option to open it in Windows Explorer. It'll take you to an unusual path, like this (you may have to click in the search bar to make it read this way):
   
   C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_4.7.5012.0_x64__6jolb2ks9cfq2
   
   Keep that window open... you'll need it in a moment.

3. Open Windows Defender Firewall. In the menu options listed down the left side, click Advanced Settings. Next, click Outbound Rules in the left panel. In the panel on the right, click New Rule... and the New Outbound Rule Wizard will appear on the screen.

4. Leave the Program radio button selected. Click Next.

5. Leave the This Program Path radio button selected. Click Browse... to open the file dialog. Next, paste into the file dialog the path to Solitaire that you found in Windows Explorer.

6. Basically, Click Next until the wizard reaches the point where it asks you to name the new outbound rule.

7. Name your new outbound rule and finish the wizard.

8. Close all that stuff you opened, including the Solitaire game.

9. When you re-open Solitaire, you should see it can't connect to the Internet, and that no ads are loading.

If I can find a better way to do business here, I'll update this post. But, I've restarted my machine and I've moved up a level, so... the only downside I've seen so far is that the app complains about not being able to connect to the cloud from time to time.

Cancel.

I didn't love Quake II. More precisely, I didn't love the style of Quake II. It had such a heavy and slow feel about it. But, here I am, still in COVID-19 lockdown, and I've about finished playing through Quake III Arena for the second time in a few weeks, so....

Even when using the Steam platform, Quake II refused to start. Not like the spotty success I have with Quake III Arena — Quake II has NEVER started... until I found the Yamagi + Music patch.

Steam user Butane wrote an easy-to-follow tutorial on downloading and installing the patch, noting: "This is a simple patch made for those who are having issues running Quake II on modern hardware and just want a quick fix. It's merely a self extracting archive which adds the original soundtrack music and a modern source port called Yamagi (version 7.42) to your Steam version of Quake II ... the Yamagi[www.yamagi.org] port ... is very faithful to the original look and feel of Quake II while adding support for higher widescreen resolutions and HUD scaling. It also has a very active development."

The only additional guidance I can offer: (1) Virus scan the executable you download from Dropbox, and (2) get your correct path to the Quake II files as follows: In Steam, right click on Quake II in your games list and select "Properties...". On the form that opens, click on the LOCAL FILES tab, click the BROWSE LOCAL FILES... button, and copy the path on the file explorer window that opens. You'll need that path when you run the patch.

With the patch installed, I was able to open Quake II from Steam and start playing!

Last night was my first look at EA Games' Star Wars: Battlefront II for the XBOX ONE.

This game is historic, in that a comment from EA on a Reddit thread received a Guinness world record- breaking 667,823 downvotes. EA's amazingly unpopular remark was in response to a complaint about how players were essentially coerced into paying to unlock Star Wars' most popular characters (like those from the original trilogy) and other powerful artifacts. ^{1  2} 

What followed should have been disastrous for EA Games. Many fans boycotted the game and EA. Business Insider reports that six months after it launched in late 2017, EA released an update which removed significant items from its "crates," leaving only items that would not affect gameplay. They also shut off all in-game microtransactions — which was huge business for EA the previous year. ³ 

How badly was EA burned by this? Game Revolution reported EA lost over $3BB in value by the end of November that year — the month the game was launched — and opined that suspending the microtransactions would nearly guarantee EA would consider the game a loss regardless of the number of copies it sold. (Subsequent reporting from Gamespot suggested that EA added the microtransactions back in a few months later, and that EA's revenue was up over 6% by the end of the fiscal year.) ^4 5

Bad business decisions aside, the game itself certainly has its pros and cons. Here's what I know so far:

PROS

• Graphics: The characters and ships look beautiful. They look light years better than they do in Star Wars: Battlefront played on the same machine and TV. At one point in the campaign, your character approaches and gets into a TIE fighter; the image looked so good it transported me back to 1978. And playing Kylo Ren was as smooth as melted milk chocolate.

• Campaign: I've played through the original campaign. I don't want to spoil anything here, but I feel EA did a good job using the plot to give players a wide variety of scenarios to play in.

CONS

• Characters: Luke Skywalker does not really resemble Mark Hamill. Recreating faces must be insanely difficult, but I think this one is super important to get right, being the hero of the entire Star Wars brand.

• Prompts: The smaller white text is nearly illegible, and placed against light backgrounds at times. Even wearing my new glasses, I must stand in front of my television set to read instructions or descriptions.

  
  What genius thought small silver text up against an alternating black and white background was a good idea?
  

• Bugs: When gameplay resumes on Pillio after the cut scene, Luke appears to fall into endless sky. The only way I found to avoid this was to skip the cut scene. (Problems following cut scenes happened more than once; both times, skipping the cut scene was the workaround.) Pictured above is the view of all of the objects I'd just earned from latest "crate" — they failed to appear on the screen. What really pisses me off about this is I didn't start this game until 2020 — EA has had nearly 3 years to patch stupid shit like this. Luke falling into endless sky right at the start of a scene seems a pretty obvious flaw. It smacks of negligence. Other bugs are catalogued below.

• Complex: The gameplay is involved. There's cards and crystals and a bunch of stuff I don't care about at all (see screenshot above). I'm glad these devices are here for the serious folk; but I'm not about to track all that shit. Besides, the text describing it all is too damn small for me to read anyway (same screenshot). Let me choose whether I want to get into all of that at the start.

Maybe I don't have a right to expect much, considering I bought the game for a small fraction of the standard price over a Black Friday weekend. On the other hand, Luke falling into endless sky probably wasn't a special feature for bargain hunters. People who shelled out the full $59.99 also got that dumb ass bug. So now I'm angry with EA for two reasons — one for their microgreed and the other for letting shitty product out on the market.

Does one scene with the star character falling forever and uncontrollably make Battlefront II a shitty product? In context, yes, it does: It's the first time the campaign player sees Skywalker. Up until that point, you've been playing a nobody — cool story, but still, the character was invented for the game; we haven't had 40 years to care about this character. So here's the first opportunity to control the star of the show, and he falls uncontrollably through the ground into oblivion. Epic fail.

Other than that? You know, it's a better product than Battlefront. The characters look beautiful, the ships look beautiful. I've flown a TIE fighter, I've flown an X-wing. I'm enjoying the gameplay. The game suffers from some design and really stupid QA issues, and I'm very concerned I'll find more as I continue the campaign. Having said that (and I despise that phrase), I'll likely update this post the more I play it, but my bottom line today: I can't believe people would still pay full price for this game approaching three years on, so don't. The frustration you'll experience with the bugs I've mention merits a discount anyway.

UPDATE: For what it's worth, I did attempt to file a bug report with EA. I wanted to talk with somebody to confirm that others have seen the bugs I've listed below. So I entered my contact information on the EA Support site and this what was returned:

"Visit Answers HQ"... which is a crowdsourced Q&A for bug reports. Like there's going to be a FAQ with a question that reads, "Why did EA not use Quality Assurance testers on Battlefront II?" Followed by an answer that would read, "EA lost interest in offering a quality gaming experience to fans of the most lucrative and universally recognized science fiction franchise ever. Once Redditors discovered we were out to screw them out of every dime we could to recoup the production costs, especially because we disconnected microtransactions altogether for months, we knew we would lose a lot of money. Be sure to buy Jedi: Fallen Order today!"

Honestly, there are 143 PAGES of bugs reported here. Seeing them all makes me wonder how long my bug list is going to get. Here's a thought, EA: Take some fucking responsibility for the shitty software you produce. Still, somebody is viewing the tweets I'm sending. The game sends every tweet with a pair of hashtags (I think one of them is "BattlefrontII"... maybe somebody at EA is seeing them.

UPDATE: Bug List

• On the screen one reaches after they've chosen to continue the campaign, my character appeared to suffer spasms: the lifelike, subtle movements one's character makes were dramatically accelerated, suggesting my character suffers from physical tics (insert twitch pun here).

• The X-wing mission to protect the bombers attacking the shield generators on the Imperial star destroyer started a few times with an obscenely overcaffeinated X-wing (jitters). Restarting the mission had no effect; my solution was to restart the XBOX. Space coffee is no joke.

• After the cut scene introducing Han Solo at Maz's castle, Solo is stuck at the entrance to a large room. Attempts to walk him actually lifts him up to the ceiling. Rotate him around to see beyond the walls to the scene outside. (This is the second problem I had operating the game following a cut scene.) Once I came back into the game after uploading the previous video to Twitter, I was able to move Solo around the room, although he moved more like Dr. House than Han Solo... including problems navigating the stairs. The workaround was to restart the mission and skip the cut scene.

• The disappearing crate contents? Happened again tonight. This time I captured video of it.   Here's another instance.   And another one.

• After resuming the game, the AT-ST I'm in suffers from the same uncontrollable jitter the X-wing did.

Upon completing the initial campaign, I was shown an offer for a downloadable content package with skins for characters up through the most recent Star Wars release.

No way in Hell I'm spending any more money on your shitty software, EA.

Set your wayback machine for the era of the original Microsoft® XBOX™. Back then there was a game released by the folks over at Oddworld called Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath.

In the game, you played a bounty hunter named "Stranger". Using a crossbow mounted to your forearm that fired insects and rodents, you would hunt down villians for the townsfolk — which were chickens, by the way — and collect the bounties.

Among the "live ammo" are chipmunks, bees, and skunks. Each have names in Oddworld pretty close to their actual ("stunkz" instead of "skunks"). The chipmunks lure the bad guys to them; bees fire stingers at targets; skunks sort of bomb the whole area with a nasty smell that makes the targets vomit uncontrollably. The game is way too silly to not enjoy.

I, for one, did some "squawking" about this game to Microsoft back when it released the 360... alas, a patch to play it on the upgraded system never materialized, and I lost hope of playing the game again. I'd feared not many played the original release... but I'm tickled pink that the studio to re-released it for modern gaming platforms and PC just a few years ago!

My favorite thing about this game: I had a specific save spot where Stranger was standing in the middle of a town, armed and surrounded by "cluckers" (chickens). Some days when I came home from work, I'd boot up, load the save spot, and start blasting the cluckers with stunkz until they got mad enough they'd go hide and start shooting back. Hilarious!

At this point, it should be pretty clear that I adore this game. It's available on Steam. You may have to mess with the controls a little bit to get it to run consistently on a Windows 10 laptop. What works for me:

1. Set the resolution to 1280 x 720
2. Uncheck the Full Screen checkbox
3. Set Anti-Aliasing dropdown value to None
4. Use a mouse or a game controller.

That last list item might seem dumb, but my pointing device of choice is a trackball. Mapping the trackball to the game controls was arduous enough that I actually bought a standard mouse for the game. In retrospect, I sort of wish I'd bought the game controller, because I have difficulty jumping using my space bar.

One other thing - I use my laptop with an external monitor. The game always loads onto the laptop screen. Sometimes I can drag the window (because it's not full screen) up onto my external monitor, but I haven't yet figured out how to do this consistently.

Id Software released Quake III Arena in 1999. Fun fact: I actually have a scar on my arm from where I hurt myself while playing this game. I recall I was playing it on a Windows 2000 computer.

So... can I load it from my original disc onto my Windows 10 laptop and play it? I found a walkthrough on how to do that, but haven't yet tried it. My other option is to play it through Steam, using the key from my CD.

Oooooooh can't talk about DOOM without talking about WADs. WAD files are these lovely moddable things that people created to augment the gameplay experience. I had two favorites, back in the day: one for the Simpsons and one for Beavis and Butthead. Both WADs simply substituted themed sounds for those in the standard game WAD file.

I've posted them to a .zip archive here. The ReadMe file is written from the perspective of a Chocolate DOOM user, but the instructions should apply to just about any flavor of DOOM source port you like.

Having just written about Quake because I was so happy to find Quakespasm, I thought I'd look for a similar solution for an even older Id Software game, called "DOOM" (1993). The sequel was released the following year. (Personally, I prefer "DOOM II" because it introduced the Super Shotgun.)

Unlike Quake, I'm unable to play the original DOOM because a legacy component from Windows 95 has since been removed from the operating system. One can download and install the dynamic link library, but that hasn't corrected the problems in my machine.

Enter Chocolate DOOM, a source port intending to accurately reproduce the original game experience. The latest version, 3.0.0, was released in 2017.

Because the source code to DOOM was released years ago, it's possible that one need only download and install Chocolate DOOM to run it — install of the original game may not be necessary.

Years ago, when I was playing across a telephone line with my buddy, we had a number of .WAD files — one of them was of the Simpsons. I wonder if I could find and run those?

Id Software released Quake in 1996. Today, in 2020, I still play the game. I used to play it every so often to waste a little time (see previous post).

On one of those recent occasions I paused to search the Web for any updates or mods that would allow me to play it full screen on my extension monitor. I still have the original game CD, but thought I might try Steam in case their software allowed it. That's where I learned about Quakespasm.

Quakespasm is essentially a mod of the original game. You'll need the original .exe to use it. It is an updated, cross-platform engine for the game that supports widescreen field of view at much higher resolutions than did the original.

And the animations are buttery smooth. The characters are still "blocky," but their movements sure aren't.

Is this retro gaming? When I think "retro," I think Nintendo's "Donkey Kong" (1981) and Williams' "Defender" (1981). But, considering I've been playing Quake for 22 years... You know, when Quake came out I was playing "DOOM", another Id Software release. I can't play "DOOM" natively on my Windows 10 laptop because an essential Windows component doesn't exist anymore in the operating system (this can be rememdied). The only reason I can still play Quake is because Id Software developed its own engine (that doesn't rely on DPLAY.DLL). When one considers those facts, I think one has to include "Quake" in the category, however reluctantly.

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FINALLY.

After enduring weeks of collossal defeats inside the Crucible, and a Hellish reprise of 'Savathun's Song' that nearly saw me crush my controller into tiny black bits using my hands and white-hot frustration, I finally have Thorn, an exotic hand cannon that deals damage over time and uses the souls of its victims to return rounds to its chamber.

Reading the lore behind this fictional weapon actually made me question whether I really want to use this weapon in gameplay. It honestly did. Here's the Reader's Digest condensed version of its history: As a player on a specific question, you recover a burned up hand cannon from a campfire pit, and enlist the help of Banshee-44 to return it to service. That energetically neutral weapon is known as Rose. From there, you're given two quests, which you discover leads you along different paths: one ultimately leads to Lumina; the other — the one I just completed — to Thorn.

The simple fact is, I wouldn't have this weapon now if it wasn't for the help (and I mean, HELP) from my clan — most especially in 'The Chasm of Screams.' I am beyond grateful for their assistance and patience!

Read more about the quest for Thorn here.

I wanted to comment on a situation I find myself in with Shadowkeep.

It seems that in Shadowkeep, BUNGIE made available all of the quests for exotic weapons from previous seasons.

On the one hand, it's thrilling; it wasn't until recently I scored The Rat King which is an exotic hand cannon with the ability to fire in full auto. I've waited for years for that weapon because I couldn't fulfill all of the requirements for it.

A couple of weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, I acquired the quests for Lumina and for Thorn. Thorn was from three seasons ago, I think; Lumina, two. These are also exotic hand cannons. If you're one for following the lore, both are derived from the same weapon.

Anyway, part of the grinding (and there is a LOT of grinding) to score Thorn is participation in Crucible competitions using hand cannons and/or void energy. PVP is not really my thing, but I do enjoy working in teams on games like Control and Supremacy. But the task for Thorn notes that playing games like Survival will yield faster progress. So, for the past couple of weeks, I've been playing Crucible matches non-stop, armed with a hand cannon.

For the uninitiated, using a hand cannon in a Crucible match is... dumb. All of your opponents are using automatic weapons like auto rifles and submachine guns. Suffice it to say, my character gets killed a lot, and I usually score not even a handful of kills per match, which inches my progress forward perhaps 2 or 3 percent per match.

Now for the weird part: Even though I'm usually dead last for my team each round (again, contributing only a few kills), my overall score in Crucible is the highest it's ever been — I have a Heroic valor rank, which is the highest — because I'm in those matches so often. One might expect having a ridiculously high valor rank might indicate that player is really good in the Crucible; I'm here to tell you it doesn't. I play in the Crucible so I can get this dumb weapon, and opponents wipe the walls with me every match.

I've no idea what having such a high valor rank can do for my character, but here I am, lookin' like I'm killin' it in games I've avoided since I started playing Destiny years ago. But that's not the reality.

These exotics had better be worth it.

Well, this is new.

I've played so many Crucible matches that my valor has maxed out. I now have the opportunity to reset my valor rank — meaning, start at the bottom again.

I'll have to study up to learn why I would want to do that.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is almost here. BUNGIE is shutting down all of it's Destiny gaming servers this morning at 10:00 for a 24-hour upgrade, after which time, players will get their first look at Shadowkeep.

I'm told much is changing about Destiny 2 for the new version, and I spent yesterday online with my clan taking care of some unfinished business (I FINALLY HAVE THE RAT KING!) and doing some housekeeping. Serious Destiny 2 players will have done the same much earlier than did I.

Housekeeping

The most notable housekeeping item was that exotic weapons and armor in a player's posession (read: either equipped or in the player's vault) would get its power upgraded to 750 — the maximum power in the current season. Now, when a player is awarded an exotic item, that item joins the player's collection, serving as a record for having received it. This is important because most items can be retrieved from your collection should you dismantle it. So the big task was to compare the exotics I had in my character's possession with those in my collection, and retrieve the ones I was missing, so that by Tuesday morning ALL of those exotics would have been upgraded. This is a tremendous bonus, because an exotic weapon like Sturm, which originally had a power of 260, becomes thrice as powerful without you having to dismantle other items and spend legendary shards to do it.

Another part of the housekeeping was to go through and dismantle a number of duplicate and/or non-exotic items in my vault — including objects awarded through Eververse purchases — because of a change in the Destiny 2 economy: all players should know by now that bright dust, which is a currency used exclusively in Eververse purchases, is going away and being converted into some combination of glimmer and legendary shards. When an item purchased with bright dust gets dismantled, the player receives bright dust. The thinking was that, in preparation for the conversion, one should maximize their ROI on those objects by breaking them down into bright dust prior to the conversion. Given how long I've been grinding away at this game, I should be a virtual buzillionaire come Tuesday morning, with more shards and glimmer than I have sense. The great part about this scheme is that I should be able to get all of those shaders back in Shadowkeep for pennies on the virtual dollar -- though I'm told I may not want to, because a new shader system (2.0) is being rolled out which is supposed to be spactacular.

I spent hours doing this yesterday, much to my daughter's chagrin. And I have to say, I'm not anyone's idea of a hardcore gamer. I don't care about stats or PVP all that much. I don't want to dominate; I just want to have fun while I'm doing laundry. But my clan sort of made me care about getting ready for the upgrade.

The Clan

Actually, lately, they've made me care about a few things. It's a small group with some dedication to all the stuff I tend to shy away from, so I'm getting exposed to "new" aspects of the game that I'm learning to enjoy. Through this, though, I realize I'm building a dependency on them — there are so many activities that require group participation, so wanting to do them, more than having to do them, requires me to engage more.

Plus, I'm learning more about gaming culture — a term I use to describe the habits of the hardcore set. I learned a new term yesterday: "rage quit." The term refers to when gamers get so angry they quit out of a scenario, challenge, or game. It's a feeling I know well— I'm comforted knowing that others feel the same frustrations I do at times. Is it comeraderie? Meh... maybe. But it's certainly social, with a lot of laughter; and I think I maybe need more of that.

ROI

So I don't know what Shadowkeep has in store for me. I'm looking forward to the story — Eris Morn, aka "my creepy girlfriend" (I described the character that way to my wife once) is central to the story, as I understand it involves the Hive and earth's moon — all of this was written out of Destiny 2 until now. But more than the story elements, I don't know what it has in store in terms of my playing experience. I've become closer to the clan over recent weeks, and that makes me wonder if I'll get more out of Shadowkeep than I would have otherwise.