"It's unavoidable. We're gamers, and our relatives know that, so they overcome their fear and apprehension and venture into the EBs of the world to buy us gifts. Unfortunately, unless they have specific instructions, they're likely to buy us something crazy, like, say, that copy of Daikatana on clearance for $9.99.

"In my case we did the Kris Kringle thing and my sister-in-law did her best for me. Somehow, I have a feeling that the Sports Edtion of Who Wants to be a Millionaire is going back, despite my fervent desire to be a millionaire. So what games did you get that will be returned unopened?"

Share with us that fruitcake-type of game you got.

Star Fleet Command 2 is going back for me.I loved the first one,but this half-baked,bug infested piece o' crap is going back.Dynaverse my ass.


-Monkeybutt

"Dynaverse my ass."

Yeah, Tom was pretty disappointed in the Dynaverse. And I'll avoid the jokes about Klingons and your ass. I'm too mature for that. :)

I've got my family pretty well trained about games, so nothing bad this year. I do have a good story about the tangled path that will eventually end with my video card upgrade.

My wife ordered me a Voodoo 5500 during the last week of October. It was intended to be an Xmas present for me, so she wouldn't let me have it. She ordered it from Amazon because she had about $250 in gift certificates from there (thanks to the much missed Freeride.com Magic Bus).

Exactly 29 days after she ordered it, everyone in the world except for Amazon cut their price on the card from $300 to $200 or less. We wrote to Amazon and asked for a price match. Sorry, they don't do pricematching. We said, fine, then we want to return it. They said that would be OK since we contacted them within 30 days of purchase. I wrote them again and explained that I was going to return it, then wait for the price to drop and reorder. Why not save us all some trouble and credit my account $100? Sorry, can't do that. Argh, fine.

My wife wanted to get this resolved by Xmas, so she immediately boxes up the card and mails it back to Amazon. The very next day, they drop their price to $174.88 from $299.99. She bangs off a very irate email, and Amazon sheepishly agrees to credit the difference and immediately resend the card to us once it arrives. She is now satisfied that she has won the war.

Enter nVidia. They buy 3dfx's assets, and then apparently send around that note asking that all of 3dfx's SKUs be pulled from sale and returned to nVidia. I never confirmed if that was real, but that is irrelevant, since Amazon changed the 5500 order page to show the card was no longer available (not just out-of-stock). Amazon doesn't tell us any of this, but on the 21st, they credit the full amount of the card to the account. I guess this means they aren't sending it back?

We don't discover the extra credit until the 23rd, but we then learn the credit is just a request for a credit. That has to be approved by the Accounting department, and they are out until the 26th. So, though my wife frantically wants to order another card (and it could still arrive on Christmas), she can't unless she wants to pay cash. Argh again.

So, on Christmas morning, there was a videocard-shaped hole under the tree for me. Don't feel too bad for me, though. I am consoling myself with a copy of No One Lives Forever (the best SP FPS since Half-life, I highly recommend it), and she has promised to order me a 64 MB Hercules Geforce2 GTS Pro as soon as they become available at Amazon. Oh, alright, I suppose I can wait for that.

I was a beta tester for Star Fleet Command I. If the testing of SFC2 was anything like the testing for SFC1, I'm not surprised the thing is buggy. There were only a couple of revisions to the beta despite the crapload of bugs we reported. They would tell us stuff was fixed on the version that their internal testers had, but no new beta for us. Tripping on the same old bugs sort of reduced the value of outside beta testers. I had a particularly hard time participating as they put me in the multiplayer section of the test since I had two decent PCs networked. However, one of them was a K6-2 (as I told them on my beta application), and they never fixed a problem with the beta that caused it to crash to the desktop on AMD chips. D'oh!

The testing also showed a game flaw to me that I never really noticed playing the boardgame version (Star Fleet Battles). This is inherent in the design of SFB, not the fault of the programmers or designers of SFC. Most of the weapons in SFB/SFC are pointed forward (as are the heaviest shields), so you spend most of your time trying frantically to turn your nose onto the enemy. If the weapons were instead mounted to fire sideways, as they are in real navies, it would be much, much easier to bring your weapons to bear. If one race was to design a new ship with side-firing weapons, they would spend most of their time firing at the weak side shields of other ships, and would likely dominate and destroy all the other races until they all could refit. Why a simple fact of history (side-mounted naval weapons) escapes all of the geniuses at Star Fleet is beyond me. This bit of enforced silliness was enough to spoil the illusion of the game for me, and turn me off of SFC/SFB completely.

Wizards & Warriors. What a waste, for a game that could have been decent. It has the standard story: some chump comes from the Depths of Despair� to proclaim himself (itself?) Foozle. Ragtag band of adventurers meet up at an Inn (seriously! this is where you form your party), given quest by Mysterious Old Guy, and go out savin' the world. Kill hordes of beasties, collect cool stuff, rinse, repeat.

Given how formulaic W&W is, and how much I like the formula, why does it suck in a way that even M&M 8 didn't suck? Well, M&M 8 was an enjoyable diversion, albeit a complete waste of time. W&W is painful to play. First, you have to target the creature to slash. No prob', the M&M series made you do the same thing. The difference is that in M&M you could always click on the monster doomed to die. You have no guarantee of that in W (abbreviated 'cause I'm sick of finding the ampersand). The creatures in W move around in a jerky animation, and have a microscopic hot spot. You chase the stupid thing around with your mouse, with the cursor flickering in and out of fight mode. It's taken 10 seconds sometimes for me to swing at a beast. Worse, you have no idea if it's in range, until you actually swing. "Oh what fun it is to swing at a beast that's too far away..." (sing in holiday-appropriate melody).

Next, some of the townspeople and NPC's talk. Normally that's cool, but in this case there's no way to fast forward through a speech even if you've already heard it a dozen times or so. The mayor of the first village takes even longer to say a lamer speech then the average Crow speech in Longest Journey. I stopped going to see the mayor after I couldn't take anymore of his stupid speeches, forgoing some quests. Unfortunately, there's no way to skip the smith/shoppekeeper (creatively named Smitty). On Sunday I was reading the NY Times during visits to town just to kill the dead time.

As irritating as the speeches are, things get worse: the idiot NPCs don't always recognize that you've said things (even though you pick possible responses from a list), and the game engine doesn't always trigger certain conversation-related events! Twice I had to run through the same three options before a speech-related event (a door getting unlocked) actually fired. I had to stop playing when the two quests I was on both depended on a speech event firing, which never happened. Actual game conversation:

Me to Toad Shaman: So, I'm the Ukubu you've been looking for. Whassup?
Toad Shaman: You Ukubu? Ukubu friend of Toad People. Toad people need warm skins to fight great Evil haunting Toadem [ed: actual f*cked up spelling] Poles. Ukubu fight evil!
Me: 'K. I'm on my way.

(Me passing a Toad guard) Toad Guard: Toad Guard honored by Ukubu.

(I click on the Shaman's door to the Toadem grounds. Game: The Shaman's door is inoperable at this time...)

(Me to Toad Shaman): So, like, ummm, how about fixing me up with the door?
Toad Shaman: Ukubu know what to do. Ukubu fight evil! Ukubu go to Toadem Poles!

Game: The Shaman's door is inoperable at this time...

Repeat ad infinitum.

Well, there it was -- the gamebox-shaped package under the tree. I heft it. It's a large box but pretty light-weight, which means it's not another copy of BG2. That's good. BG2 is a great game, but I don't have any use for a second copy. It also means it's not Icewind Dale. Too bad. That's one of the games on my list of wanted to play but never got around to.

I peel off the wrapping paper and .... OMIGOD! It's NEW WORLDS! I reviewed New Worlds for CGO. The review, for some strange reason, is still featured in their strategy section under "How Not to Make an RTS Game." So with the review copy and this one, I now have TWO copies of a leading candidate for Coaster of the Year. Does EB take returns without a receipt? ;)

"I peel off the wrapping paper and .... OMIGOD! It's NEW WORLDS!"

Heh heh -- a real life horror story. Take that Stephen King! You were probably a victim of the non-gamer's mind at work. "He likes games and he likes Star Trek...this is perfect!"

Hey, if you can't return it somewhere, maybe you can sell it on eBay or make a trade with someone. Of course it would be hard to trade it without at least warning a potential trader. Maybe a Star Trek completist would want it.

"Maybe a Star Trek completist would want it."

I'm suddenly reminded of that William Shatner appearance on Saturday Night Live years ago. Remember the one where they spoofed a Star Trek convention and he told all the Trekkies to "Get a life?"

I can't think of anyone else that I could in good conscience foist this piece of drek on. :)

If you pay me 15 dollars I'll take it.I want to put model glue on it and burn it in the back yard next to Dickatana and Jetfighter 4.

A nice ritual burning of crap games gets rid of stress. :)

-monkeybutt

"A nice ritual burning of crap games gets rid of stress. :) "

Burning's fun, but the best method I remember hearing about was a guy who was so furious about Conquest Earth that he smashed it into little pieces, threw it in his toilet, and then in his words, "took a dump on it." Heh.

"W&W is painful to play."

Chris,

I'm not sure I'd disagree with anything you've written about W&W. I had to play through the whole thing to review it for CGW. If I hadn't been reviewing it, I would have given up in disgust, like you.

However, I do have to point out that it does get some things right. By the time it was over, I had really enjoyed most of my time, mainly because it has a unique and compelling character development system. It also balances carefully that fine line between being frustrating and a cakewalk.

But these days, it's awfully unfair to ask players to endure the kind of stuff W&W does. I'm disappointed that it didn't get a fair shake from a lot of reviewers who couldn't be bothered to play past the opening act, but I can completely understand players like you wanting no part of it.

-Tom

"I peel off the wrapping paper and .... OMIGOD! It's NEW WORLDS!"

Yow. I'd much rather have the lump of coal.

New Worlds is one of those rare games with which a company shows utter and unmitigated contempt for its customers. Absolutely appalling.

-Tom

I wont return any games since I buy mine myself :).

Zeus was a nice surprise in my book. It stole away most of my Christmas. The detail is stunning and it's so immersive and alive. It took me back 15 years to the time when I still found computer games to be exciting.

Marcus

Believe it or not, I didn't return a thing. My wife does a good job of reading the list I hand out as do other relatives. I ended up with Sacrifice and a Microsoft Strategic Commander for the PC. But the real winner was SHENMUE on the Dreamcast. My GOD, have you people played this? It's absolutely stunning. It's got the "real world" thing down. Anyone who thinks they spent too much money on it hasn't played it. This game is the product of years of work through not only the building of the game itself but all the iterations of Virtua Fighter where Yu Suzuki experimented with facial features, head tracking, eye movement, clothing appearance and properties...

I could go on for days. This is a must play game.

I also got Virtua Fighter 3tb, an oldie but a goodie on the DC. It's the 3D hand to hand equivalent of Soul Calibur's 3D weapon based fighting.

But the big surprise is Test Drive Le Mans for Dreamcast. The reviews were universally positive and I couldn't believe it could be that good since I played it on the PC and it was pretty rotten. However, the developer of the DC version is Melbourne House of Dethkarz and (import) GP500 fame. They have an ultra fast racing graphics engine married to expansive environments and perfect control. This is the Dreamcast racer to play maybe even before the fantastic Sega GT and F355 Challenge.

I hate to say it, but I'm slowly fading from the PC arena toward that damn white console. I have to admit, I enjoy seeing Tom's pals heading to the DC for some Virtua Tennis during Shoot Club weekly. There's just too many great games to play on DC. I haven't even tried Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia, etc. I need more time in my day (or less kids... :). Thankfully, my 2 year old can play TD: Le Mans with me.

So it's nothing returned, everything gained here.

I'm still trying to get into Shenmue. I turn it on, watch the opening cutscene, get all enthused, and then start playing and realize that the gameplay is identical to a number of mediocre European adventure games I suffered through five years ago. And some of the voice acting is really amazingly bad... I.E. it sounds like they used some kind of demented computer to make it.

Ryo:
"Hi. Do you know where I can find some sailors?"

Random Woman:
"Well. I. Am Beeeeeeeeeeeesy. Try talkin' to that guy. I think THAT GUY knows some sailors. Sailors?"

Anyway, Skies of Arcadia is an incredible game I can recommend without reservation.

"I hate to say it, but I'm slowly fading from the PC arena toward that damn white console. I have to admit, I enjoy seeing Tom's pals heading to the DC for some Virtua Tennis during Shoot Club weekly. There's just too many great games to play on DC. I haven't even tried Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia, etc."

Man, I just hate gamepads. I don't like third-person games either. I like first-person or a top-down look for strategy and RPG games.

Is there a good RPG for the DC that doesn't have that annoying Japanese console style fighting where the two sides line up? I find that to be extremely tedious after the 20th time. Are there even any strategy games for the DC besides the port of Railroad Tycoon 2?

"I'm still trying to get into Shenmue. I turn it on, watch the opening cutscene, get all enthused, and then start playing and realize that the gameplay is identical to a number of mediocre European adventure games I suffered through five years ago."

Yeah, that's the knock about it I've heard. It's not really as wide-open as it's supposed to be. I don't really like adventure games, so I doubt I'll ever play this.

Man, I just hate gamepads. I don't like third-person games either. I like first-person or a top-down look for strategy and RPG games.

Judging by your tastes, consoles just aren't made for a player like you. Nothing wrong with that either. I went through a period where all I was interested in were strategy and racing games on the PC. I tend to jump around between platforms looking for innovative and fun games in all genres now and the DC has been clogged with innovation and fun throughout the last year.

Is there a good RPG for the DC that doesn't have that annoying Japanese console style fighting where the two sides line up? I find that to be extremely tedious after the 20th time. Are there even any strategy games for the DC besides the port of Railroad Tycoon 2?

I think both Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II have a turn based fighting method where they're lined up, but Grandia II uses a timed attack method with constant time flow. Most of the stuff I've read from people on USENET indicates that the fighting system is one of the best and the battles can be huge.

As for strategy, Hundred Swords looks like a great strategy game from the makers of Jet Grind Radio that's on the way in 2001. Look at this and this. If you want more, just plug Hundred Swords into dreamcast.ign.com's search thingy. Strategy games don't sell too well on consoles in general, so asking for them is kind of like asking for action platform games like Sonic on the PC. Most of the time it isn't the right audience.

Yeah, that's the knock about it (SHENMUE) I've heard. It's not really as wide-open as it's supposed to be. I don't really like adventure games, so I doubt I'll ever play this.

Well, that depends what you mean by wide open. In the first three "Shenmue days" I have talked to a number of people, drank a few sodas, took a walk around the house, two towns, peered into many a drawer or cabinet and played Space Harrier and Hang-On. I have yet to pressed into really doing anything, though I've found out some more about who killed my father and fed a kitty cat. If I never bothered to get into the storyline, I don't think it'd matter and there's plenty of places to go and see.

But that's really not the point of Shenmue either. The way the world is structured, you finally feel like despite the fact you're told to talk to this person or find that object, you do it in a fully realized game world. No part of it seems like a game save the sometimes stilted vocal deliveries which hey, almost all games haven't gotten past yet. Add in the fairly complex fighting engine that I'll most assuredly use later in the game (You have to learn moves in the Dojo) and the quick timer events that keep things moving and it's a compelling way to tell a story.

It's one of those games that even if you can't appreciate the plot, you can certainly appreciate the effort, innovation and sheer love of game design that went into it. I find myself supporting (and in this case enjoying) games like this immensely.

--Dave

Hundred Swords looks really interesting. I just wonder how I will control an army with a gamepad?

As to my gaming tastes, I tend to go for strategy (RTS and turn-based), RPGs, and FPS. Whenever I play a third-person game like Alice, I always think it would be better as a first-person game. I just don't see the advantage of going third person for a PC title.

No idea really on how they have the control set up in Hundred Swords. It's being released first as an arcade game, so somehow they're probably using a lever and buttons rather than a mouselike device. Should be interesting to say the least.

I'm not convinced that first-person is the only perspective. If you've got a lot of jumping, it's much easier to do that with a 3rd person perspective. There is also a lot to be said for having a character on screen to give the game context. Tomb Raider would be just another game without Lara's bum in your face.

--Dave

"I'm not convinced that first-person is the only perspective. If you've got a lot of jumping, it's much easier to do that with a 3rd person perspective. There is also a lot to be said for having a character on screen to give the game context. Tomb Raider would be just another game without Lara's bum in your face."

I agree. Third-person works great with a gamepad and not so great with a PC. I agree about the jumping too. Of course I'm not really fond of jumping in games anymore.

Have there been any third-person games that have done as well on the PC as Lara? I'm wondering if Tomb Raider on the PC isn't more of a fluke hit like Myst?

I just received a late present in the mail, and it looks like I will be returning an extra copy of No One Lives Forever! As Minsc says, "That's not riiight!" At least it came with a copy of Virtua Tennis for my DC!

The question is, what should I get instead?

Wow... that's as much as $40 toward something else. Depends what you want to play Supertanker. Is it going to be PC or DC? :) Given my own current leanings, I'd take it back for Sega GT, but then I'm stuck on obtaining the "big 3" racers on the DC right now. Virtua Tennis is a definite score!

I agree about the jumping too. Of course I'm not really fond of jumping in games anymore.

I still very much enjoy action platform games that are made well. Sonic Adventure 2 looks fantastic. 60 frames per second with huge levels, lots of secrets and some cool new moves really floats my boat. Rayman 2 is another great action/plat game whether you play it on the DC or in gorgeous D3D FSAA on the PC. It's a living cartoon.

As for Lara, I've always chalked it up to the first game being a very good design from top to bottom. It's too bad the two guys responsible for creating her and the game left Core right after it was done. The first game is a landmark title for graphics and 3D level design. If you go back and play it now, it's still great. I remember reading in Next Generation that they made it a girl because they didn't want to look at a guy's butt. Made sense to me...

I don't think it's a Myst-like release though. Alice, FAKK2, these are really strange settings for games or just about any mainstream hopeful entertainment. Even Heretic II which is greatly underrated, has its history as a FPS game stacked against it. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine was a mediocre game, but that suffered from some bad level design, dated graphics and a slow moving plot. (As an aside to Tom, I read your 2 star review of IJATIM but I didn't think it was as bad as your review read and gave it 2 1/2 stars at Evil Avatar :)

No, it's going to take a No One Lives Forever-like attempt in 3rd person to put that perspective on the map again on the PC.