NOT recommended: Pete Sampras’s memoir. It’s every bit as boring as you think it would be. You can tell his writing partner took great pains to make things interesting, but it was impossible because the man is too simple and arrogant (bad combo!). Looking forward to reading Agassi’s memoir; should be quite a contrast.

In my personal case, from late ‘94 to 2000 I was a sort of a cheathead. But it had a reason, I didn’t had the most essential tactic and strategic skills that one must learn on the real world before sitting up to enjoy a PC game.

I know, I know, games are just entertainment and shouldn’t be taken so seriously. But while I lacked the theory of politics (war) I played 1st person shooters and more or less all other games (eg: Warcraft Tides of War) cheating it each time the game frustrated me one or two times, killing me.

But in those years of ‘94-’00 I had to cope with the, each time more and more palpable, fact that PC games weren’t satisfying me at all.

I took some time off to rethink my way of playing and realized that I needed to come up with some sort of own rules to organize my videogaming. In 2004 when I returned to videogaming I didn’t cheat anymore unless I was badly stuck and in a loop of frustration for more than one hour, meaning stuck in a place where I couldn’t advance. Other thing I stopped doing that I think is cheating was saving the game all the time; this was one of my most common ways of cheating back in the nineties. Now I only save a game when it is thirty minutes since I started playing. That’s my way of keeping a steady progress without spoiling the game with cheats or constant saving.

But with DLC developers are still exposing their game to be cracked. If the culture changed to distributed games (MMOwhatever) developers doesn’t have to run that risk.

Life As We Knew It
Super! I can only imagine how much I would’ve enjoyed reading it as a teen. The sequel, The Dead and The Gone, which takes place in New York City during the same time period, is equally enthralling.

The Magicians
The first hundred-or-so pages were great. After that, I started to get a bad feeling that the main character wasn’t developing as much as I liked. That trend continued until the end, and as a result the book was very disappointing.

Swordspoint
Good, but not great. Very socially progressive for a fantasy book written in the late 1980s. Plus, it was nice to read a fantasy book with no magic and that could also stand alone. Not every book needs to be a trilogy!

Nice reviews, Gregor!

I’m not a fan of games that have infinite guards or police or pedestrians. If you’re pushing for realism, then have a way to eliminate all the guards in a town without them re-spawning. Have them actually send reinforcements from other towns, diminishing ‘their’ numbers. That would be cool.

Another retarded thing was when you beat enough guards, the other ones would flee. And one time when a guard was fleeing, I put on my throwing daggers and took him out and then my health went down to nothing for assassinating a fleeing person, even though it was a guard who had recently tried to kill me. I guess I’m supposed to forgive those who repent even if they are murderers. Hmm.

Losing health for killing civilians is stupid. So I’m assuming Altair is a holy assassin then? And, yet, he is killing templars which are like paladins. You’re right when you say there is little logic in this game. And it ‘is’ very very repetitive.

Plus there are civilians in the town that deliberately try to piss you off. Crazy people shove you, but do the guards care? No. But if you push them, you get a warning not to do it again. And I think if they push you into the guards, you’re still the one that gets in shit for it. Beggars will constantly harass you for money saying the same thing over and over again (and it’s always the same exact woman with the same exact voice). As if the game didn’t have enough repetition already.

This game was practically given to me by a friend. I’m sure glad I didn’t shell out $30 for it. This is not a game that’s meant to be played for hours on end; not unless you want to make a Frisbee out of it.

Every time I play this game and try to get something out of it, it’s like trying to beat a dead horse. I’m always left feeling overworked and unsatisfied.

The current Starbuck is going out not with a bang, but a whimper, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot.

Look at me getting all English Major-ey.