Lesson Learned: DRM Failure.

After almost a year of searching for a PC copy of Skyrim I thought I had finally found it. I already own it for Xbox 360, but, as I've made abundantly clear, my 360 is a bit of a dead horse, so I needed to find another way to enjoy the world of Skyrim. I picked up a copy of Oblivion for PC years ago from the outlet store, so I figured "What could go wrong if I find a copy of Skyrim too?". Turns out the answer to that question is an unequivocal everything.

I should have learned my lesson four years ago when I bought a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV for PC from a flea market. I really wanted to try out LCPDFR, so I decided to spend $5 on what I could only assume to be a complete copy, as it was sealed in a bag for flea market booth security. Only after the whole installation process was I ever prompted to enter codes that I didn't receive with the game discs, which lead me to assume, at first, that I didn't need codes. Not only did it need a code, it also needed a unique and single use DRM code, meaning I couldn't play the game even if I had the codes. After finding out just how crazy the new DRM measures and codes are, I honestly looked into cracks, hacks and many other ways to allow me to play a game that I rightfully bought, and should rightfully be able to use. Not wanting to deal with all that stuff I've just let it sit in it's case, useless and abandoned for no good reason.

It's exceedingly rare that I find myself unable to play a used PC game that I've picked up from a thrift store, but then again it could be the fact that I'm not really interested in many newer games, which come with the stupid DRM setbacks. I come from a different era where you either bought the game because you wanted to, or you knew someone who had a cracked version and they shared it around the neighborhood. I completely understand that DRM, to an extent, is a necessary evil, but the fact remains that people who want to buy a game brand new will and others won't, no amount of DRM will stop those who won't buy it from cracking, hacking and stealing.

I love owning physical copies of games and I prefer to get them at my own pace, which is often times after they're well out of print and new copies are coveted like treasure. This is where thrift stores supply me with previously played copies of games that I want to own. I am paying for a physical copy of a game, I'm not cracking or hacking or stealing anything, these are previously used, physical copies of games I wish to play and own. What many people are finding out, and very few are saying, is that current DRM measures are a very fatal flaw in the whole PC game market.

Luckily for me I picked it up Skyrim from the Goodwill Outlet store so it's cheap enough that I can throw it away and not lose any sleep, but it's a physical copy of a game that I want to play. Clearly someone had already gotten their use out of the game and no longer wanted it, and it's just not fair that I own a game (two games now) that I can't use. All my life I've been told that as long as I bought an item through fair means I'm entitled to use it however, and whenever I want, which has been utterly destroyed by DRM.

From now on no more Games for Windows labeled games will be coming home with me. It seems that is a common sign of games that just won't work when I get them home. I haven't changed my mind on buying games brand new either, there are plenty of old video games I can still buy used and enjoy without having to deal with the insanity that is current DRM, so I'm not bothered by not having brand new games at all. I'll just stick with physical copies of old games that will allow me to play them without hassling me about stupid codes I don't have.

iFind the Darnedest Things!

Suffice it to say I've never personally seen the appeal that comes with Apple iFandom, nor have I ever really been a fan of their products. The very first Apple products I ever used were two keyboards I picked up from a Goodwill store for $1 each. One could say the results I've received from those keyboards could be because they were used, either way my feelings toward Apple and their products wasn't swayed in a more positive light by these insipid keyboards.

Recently I was surprised to find an Apple Mighty Mouse at the Goodwill outlet store. After weighing it and realizing I would only be paying twenty cents for the thing I figured I may as well, just to take a chance and see. As you may have seen my current mouse is an old Logitech, so I'm not really looking for expensive gaming mice anyway, just something that works. I know someday my Logitech is going to give up the ghost so another reason why I picked up the Mighty Mouse was as a backup for my current one.

After a quick cleaning I tested it and... well, it's a mouse. It works, feels and performs pretty much exactly like every other optical mouse I've ever had. The only gripe I may have is that the wheel, or perhaps roller ball (middle mouse/wheel), isn't exactly precise. I have read that many people don't like the roller ball either as that is usually the first thing to stop working on these mice. Mine seems to work just fine, it's just not very precise.

To be honest I'm not overly impressed with the Apple products I own, but I wouldn't say they're junk. Sure the keyboards have acted up since the day I bought them, but with a little work they function. Sure the mouse's roller ball isn't as precise as the wheel on my Logitech, but otherwise it works just as well as my Logitech. I don't feel as if Apple products are as bad as I wrote them off as being, nor are they superior, they just work as can be expected. I'm not converted, but I can say that I surely won't pass up a deal to have an Apple product as a backup, just in case it's needed.

"I may be able to get an iPhone without giving any money to Apple! I'll be living the dream." - Morris Moss the IT Crowd.

Syphon Filter 2: In Pieces

As a video game nerd I am willing to go through great lengths to find and obtain the video game goodness that I so desire. This includes, and lately has become almost exclusively limited to, the Goodwill outlet, which means such cases of finding and obtaining video game related items can range from fairly simple to fairly odd. A case that transcends from fairly odd to the completely bizarre is the case of myself piecing together Syphon Filter 2 for the Playstation.

What makes this case so weird is the ofttimes occurrence of the bin being caked in a substance that nobody is willing to deal with. I, however, will take a bargain at almost any cost; this includes the bin, and everything within, being covered in baby powder. Yes, that's right, someone had opened a bottle of baby powder and by the time I arrived at the bin it was completely covered, throughout.

The first thing I saw was a black bottom disc, usually indicating a Playstation game, peering out from under the white powder. It just so happened to be disc 2 of Syphon Filter 2, which is a dual disc game meaning it came in one of those weird, thick multi-disc cases. After that I located just the black, middle, part of the dual case, as well as disc 1. After that I found both the front and back inserts of the case (the cover art), which are more than a little sun baked, but still something I wasn't willing to pass up and allow them to stay in a baby powder grave. After sifting through for far too long I sadly couldn't find the manual, but otherwise I was only missing the clear parts where the discs go.

I find it extremely odd that the inserts weren't inside any actual parts of the case, they were just floating around the bin freely, hidden beneath a thin layer of perfume infused talcum powder. Once nearly the whole thing was secured within my purchase bag, I walked over to a bin filled with CDs, where I proceeded to evict said CDs and all their inserts from the cases and snap them securely to the black, dual case part. Everything was looking up, but I still really wished I had found the manual.

Once I got home I cleaned everything as much as possible and tossed it all together. Other than the sun faded front and back covers it looks quite good. There is still some baby powder in the crevasses of the games, but I'll take and clean that all up some other time. For now I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled for a Syphon Filter 2 manual, which may take a while but after seeing the things I've seen I know it's not an impossible feat.

Spicing up an Old Mouse.

I'm not the type of person who needs an expensive mouse or keyboard for PC gaming. Sure, I dabble with PC games ranging from Elder Scrolls Online to the more relaxed things like Minecraft, but even when I play ESO I don't feel like I'm being outdone by someone with a $200 keyboard and a $150 mouse. I'll just stick with my $1 Apple keyboard and my ancient Logitech M-BT96a.

Although I'm perfectly fine with a 10 year old mouse, (at least it's optical) I had been wanting to spice it up, somehow. After a bit of thought I decided to fiddle around with the bland, overused red LED, and decided to replace it with a green LED, for no other reason than just to do so.

After some trial and error, I finally found the right size LED. I did make a slight error in lifting one of the traces that sourced power to the LED, but I quickly bridged it without any further damage. The results are pretty much as I expected; an ancient Logitech mouse that now shines green instead of red.

Was it worth the time and effort? Absolutely! Other than tracking down the right sized LED, the whole project took less than five minutes. It's super simple, besides me being hasty and messing up the trace, but it really is super simple. All I really wanted to do was change the LED color, because almost every stock optical mouse has a boring red light, but mine is different, which makes me feel slightly cooler than I used to. Only slightly though.

Not this again, Salvation Army Thrift Stores!

It's time I give up on Salvation Army thrift stores. A place that once gave me such joy to peruse the shelves of bric-a-brac and yielded me some truly great finds. After going to the Goodwill Outlet blowout sale I decided to stop by and see what Salvation Army could offer. Immediately I am greeted by the sight of a Retro Port Adapter, which allows the user to play NES games on their SNES, through this adapter.

Retailing for $20, sometimes less or only slightly more, I wasn't really interested in it, as I have no need for such a gimmicky device, but if Salvation Army is going to give it to me for a few bucks I may as well buy it just to have. Well this was not to be as Salvation Army slapped a $39.99 price tag on it. First of all it was given to Salvation Army, so any price is pure profit. Secondly this is twice the price of retail, which a thrift store is NOT a retail store.

I used to love Salvation Army as they really didn't care what items sold for, and we both reaped the benefits. Salvation Army's organization got my money and I walked away with a bag of geeky goodness that I took home, cleaned, used and remembered where I got it, with pride. Now I walk into Salvation Army thrift stores and I walk out defeated, humiliated for even walking in, and most of the times laughing at the insane prices they will tag on almost quite literally junk.

We've had some good times together Salvation Army thrift stores, but at this point it's time we part ways. I could give you the cheesy breakup line, but the truth is, in this case, it is you and not me. Good luck selling things at twice the price of retails, and even if you do have fun knowing you fucked over some unknowing customers for your charitable organization.

Patience is key!

If there is one thing I never managed to learn in life it would be patience. I consider myself among the least patient people in the world, to the point where immediately after I make a purchase off Amazon I check incessantly for a tracking number to check incessantly. It does seem, however, that the Goodwill outlet store is slowly teaching me how to be patient, or perhaps it's just my waning memory.

Years ago I would pick up any empty case I could, simply because I hoped I would someday find the game that went along with that case and then have a complete copy. In many cases this has happened, yet in many cases it hasn't. Also I would pick up things such as loose game manuals in the hopes of finding the game in the case without the manual, again, giving me a complete copy of said game.

Many years ago I picked a manual for Super Smash Bros. Melee, which at the time the manual alone was averaging $15 sold on ebay. I figured, if nothing else, I would sell the manual and just simply buy something else that I wanted, or put those funds back into the Goodwill outlet store and possible find another somewhere down the road.

When I found the disc for Super Smash Bros. Melee at the Goodwill outlet store I swore I had the case, but not the manual. When I got home and checked my empty Gamecube case collection I found I was incorrect, in fact I had the manual and not the case. This leads me to believe that I'm not learning patience, rather, I'm simply forgetting what all I have and therefore things come at their own pace and I simply accept them when they arrive.

Now I just need to forget that I own both the game and the manual until I can find an empty case for them to reside in. Sadly, after playing a little bit of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the first time (yes the first time) I don't see it likely that I'll forget I own either. Let's just hope I run into an empty case for the game sooner than later, but no matter when it comes I'll finally be glad that I pieced together a complete copy.

Scraps of Gold!

I love the Goodwill outlet store, but it seems as though I'm picking up the scraps left in the wake of the madness from the more seasoned veterans. Even though it feels like I'm picking up the scraps, I seem to be picking up scraps of gold! This is partly down to knowing what you're looking for, and a little bit of people just overlooking things that I'm willing to look deeper into.

PC games are often overlooked, I think because nobody really wants to take the time and fiddle around with PC games, no matter how complete it may be. This allows me to swoop in and pick up PC games on the extreme cheap and figure out if they're worth playing later. Besides the Nascar Racing 2003 Season that I picked up last month, another example is Axis and Allies, two completely different games made by both Hasbro and Atari using the same name. It seems both versions are fairly sought after, of which I'll only be keeping the Atari version because it looks like a mix between Age of Empires and WWII.

Opening cases and checking inside has paid off too! What I originally thought was just an empty sleeve for Wii Sports actually still had the disc inside, and where the manual should have been was a roughed up copy of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube, which still kind of works. I am concerned about the damage on Super Smash Bros. Melee, but it hopefully isn't too damaged.

Saturday was the Goodwill Outlet Blowout sale and I'm pretty excited about what I got. I also checked a Goodwill store and found two Sega Saturn pack-in games. If you know what you're looking for, even scraps can eventually amount to quite a good haul, sometimes it's the smaller scraps of gold that turn out to be worth more than the large scraps of copper people are hunting.

Goodwill sale day highlights

Sadly Sonic Adventures doesn't work, which can be common with Dreamcast games, but for now Super Smash does work. For the price I paid I'm not concerned with the looks of Super Smash or that Sonic Adventures, even though it looks almost brand new, doesn't. The real thrill was finding these things out from under people's noses and adding them to my collection.

Radica Sega Genesis Plug n Play Sound Fix

DISCLAIMER: I am not the originator of this modification. These are not my instructions, I am merely showing that I did the mod and expressing my opinions on the results. Your results may vary, please don't drink and drive, please solder while in a well ventilated room and eat your vegetables an hour before going swimming,etc.

The Radica Plug n Play Sega Genesis was a quick cash grab at the ever growing popularity in the market for retro video games. It was also a buzzing earache to those who bought it and were anything familiar with how the original Sega Genesis sounded. I didn't mind so much, as I only bought them for the sake of having them, not necessarily for the purpose of constant use.

As it goes with the internet age there are many people out there who are willing to quickly aid in solving problems. Such is the mod that fixes the sound for this thing.

The mod is fairly simple, if you know what you're doing, but the parts are extremely small. I was reluctant to give this mod a try, but once I had pushed L3 off the board with my soldering iron I suppose it was too late to back out now. Lucky for me everything went smoothly and the results are AMAZING.

I'm telling you, these components are tiny!

I found information on this mod through The 8-bit Guy's tutorial. Keep in mind there is a real chance to damage the system, but if you're patient and persistent this mod is fairly easy and, again, the results are well worth the time and effort. Before the mod the sound was far too loud, and the biggest detail was you simply couldn't hear Sonic's jumping sound. After the mod the volume seems much lower, although you can turn up the TV and be just fine because now everything sounds much more like the original Sega Genesis hardware.

COP The Recruit: The GTA the Nintendo DS Needed.

Since I received my 2DS for Christmas I have been on an absolute frenzy to find games for both the DS and 3DS side of the hardware, so I can take full advantage of the system. Besides filling the many empty DS cases I've picked up from the outlet store, one of my immediate searches was for a GTA game on the DS, or at least a decent clone. The clear answer was GTA: Chinatown Wars, which harkens back to the old top down, Playstation style of gameplay, rather than the new 3D style.

Unsatisfied with both the current price of GTA Chinatown Wars and the fact that it was top down, I kept looking. Unsurprisingly the DS didn't get very many GTA clones, although the 3DS did get a handful including Driver: Renegade, which I do plan to get sometime in the future. As for the DS side of things the only thing I found that could remotely fill the GTA need was COP: The Recruit, an Ubisoft game that essentially took Driver: Parallel Lines and crammed it into a DS sized adventure. But how does it stack up to one of my most beloved console games ever?

I've made it abundantly clear that I am a rabid fan of the Xbox version of Driver: Parallel Lines. The Wii version looks slightly better, but falls on it's face with the forced injection of the stupid Wii waggle remote gimmick. So how does COP: The Recruit feel? Well it feels like a truncated version of Parallel Lines. The map has most of the same landmarks, feel and look, but many things are adjusted or just plain not there.

COP: The Recruit feels thrown together with dialog seemingly being written by a twelve year old trying to write a police drama, or a fifty year old trying to write a hip police drama, either way is accurate. Not that I fully understand the story, the dialog scrolls fairly smoothly into the box, but doesn't always stay long enough for me to fully digest what has been said. The dialog just flows, regardless of me pressing a button or not. This doesn't affect missions as they are kept within a log on your police issue handheld device.

What would a driving based video game be without vehicles? Well, COP: The Recruit offers a few different vehicles, most of them sharing the same slippy and sliding controls, with only a few being of any real interest. As an officer of the law you'll find it odd how this game forces you to hijack vehicles, as you'll never be given one after loading up your save. Which isn't that big of an issue really as you can just mash the run button and run almost as fast as vehicles in the game. Yes, you read that correctly, you can run almost as fast as vehicles in the game.

This game also falls a bit into the Nintendo gimmick of using the touchscreen for something that it simply shouldn't; the shooting mechanics. Firstly, using the stylus to aim precisely is an exercise in futility, and even once you're aiming at the perpetrator you still need to unload a full clip or two to get them to go down. While the amount of bullets is Ubisoft's problem, the gimmick of using the touch screen for gun battles is, I'm guessing, Nintendo's fault. It gets the job done, but I'm just not a big fan.

To be fair COP: The Recruit only has a few flaws, and it does fill a gap in the market and really shows what could have been an amazing game, given a few more months of polish. I'm not sure if it's just my copy of the game or not, but the screen does jump around a bit at times, but it's nothing game breaking. The game does offer a handful of things to collect, such as taking photographs of famous landmarks around New York City, and breaking down green flashing barricades hidden throughout alleys in the city.

My only real dislike for this game is that it feels like it wasn't polished, even though it reportedly won "multiple awards at E3". The game had so much promise that it even fell into the evil clutches of offering pre-order exclusive missions from Gamestop, the code for which hasn't surfaced online for some odd reason. COP: The Recruit shows us what the DS could handle and perhaps what GTA Chinatown Wars should have been. Regardless it's a fun little portable version, albeit chopped up, of the Driver game that I adore, and I'm glad that I could have some facsimile on the DS to play with.

A Key to a City

With my Xbox 360 being an extreme problem I wasn't sure when exactly I wanted to spend the money on GTA 5. I knew I was going to purchase it, I just wasn't sure when my Xbox 360 would be usable again, or if perhaps a PS3 would fall into my lap. As the middle of 2015 was snaking it's way to year's end I started watching the massive fluctuations in ShameStop's price of used GTA 5 copies, which was enough to keep me away from wanting to buy the game at all for a few more months.

As things settled into November I decided to keep an eye open for the Black Friday sales and see if I could pick up a brand new copy for cheaper than a used copy, which is exactly what ended up happening. Again, my Xbox 360 is a holy terror, it doesn't know when it wants to work and when it doesn't want to work. I've tried the towel wrap to success, while other times it won't work at all. I mean sometimes the towel wrap works, then it won't, then it works again, making completely no sense.

For six months a brand new, box fresh, still wrapped in plastic copy of GTA 5 for the Xbox 360 sat on my shelf among it's Xbox 360 brothers and sisters. In the back of my mind I debated finding a new 360, but knowing Microsoft it would be just as shit as the two (both broken down) I've already got. So far the Xbox One seems to be holding up well, but I'm not sure I want one of those either, simply because the ONLY game I have seen come out that I want to play on Xbox One is GTA 5.

Excited to play GTA 5 I decided it was time to fiddle with my Xbox 360 one more time and see if it would come to life just long enough to give me a taste of what I had been watching on youtube for nearly three years now. With a string of failures under my belt I gave it one last attempt; the outcome was success... for a mere five hours. Whether or not my Xbox 360 will ever live again is beyond my concern at this point, as I feel the piece of shit should spontaneously combust and disappear entirely. What those five ours did give me, however, was finally a look into the world of GTA 5.

I can honestly say that I played through a good deal of the missions, I customized a car and saved it in Michael's garage. I learned you can no longer safely abandon cars you've spent hard earned money customizing and expect it to show back up in your garage, although the cars that are default for each player will do that without problem.

The feeling of being in Los Santos, the beauty of it all, even on the 360 version, and the sheer space of it all made me feel as if I was playing GTA San Andreas. The vehicles felt amazing to drive, the hustle and bustle of the city, the relaxing coastal waters and various desert towns, it was all there to greet me and draw me in.

I wish my Xbox 360, and the Xbox 360 console in general, wasn't such a piece of shit. Even though I opened my copy for 360, if I found myself faced with a working PS3 that was reliable I would do my best to track down a copy for it too. Even though I prefer to be a step behind in the video game market, because it's cheaper, I still think I waited too longer to find myself lost in Los Santos.