Hotel Dusk Has Quantum Roadblocks

Originally posted 2007-05-25.

I finished Hotel Dusk: Room 215 last night, after about 19 hours of play over the last 8 days. It was one of the more charming and memorable games I’ve played, but I have a couple of gripes about it:

First: At the beginning, the game felt nice and challenging. I was solving puzzles, wandering around, trying to figure people out. But partway through, the script started holding my hand on every little thing. I’d pick something up and the dude would say (I’m making this up), “I got a key; what could it possibly be for!? And for that matter, how in the world can I get into room 319!?”

Femblem

Originally posted 2006-12-05.

Lady L’Arachel

Phantasy Star Universe Works Fine on a MacBook

Originally posted 2007-01-22.

My coworker James was getting a bit burnt out on WoW and was looking for a new online game to play. I plugged RF Online, Phantasy Star Universe, and some other games to him, and then started researching them myself. I’d heard my friends on IRC talking about PSU and how much fun they were having, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that I could boot into Windows and play with them. Once I got the idea in my head there was no stopping me: I would get and play PSU.

Even though I was to leave the country in 2 days, we went out and picked up two copies of the game. I came home with my copy, booted Windows, updated my anti-virus software, waited through the installation sequence, and excitedly started the game. But nothing happened. No matter what I tried, the game just failed to launch. It took all evening to figure it out. I even popped open the MacBook at the airport while waiting for Jules to emerge at the baggage claim. After reading Sega’s warnings on their site that the game wasn’t guaranteed to work with embedded graphics hardware, especially on notebook computers, I almost resigned myself to having wasted $60 on the game and a month’s subscription.