The Paradox of Gainful Employment

Before, I had all the time in the world but literally no income. I played games I already owned, but was unable to justify the purchase of new games at full price. I was like a miser, eagerly awaiting Steam sales and price reductions.

Now, I have a great job that gives me a decent amount of disposable income with which I can purchase all the games my heart desires. (And I have a big heart, which has an equally big appetite for games.) Of course, this disposable income is due to my working all the time. In other words now that I have the money for games, I don't have the time!

Life is so paradoxical.

I finally finished playing the first Bioshock. It took me forever to finish it, but this was not by my design.

First of all, let me say that I purchased the original Limited Edition version of Bioshock for one reason, and one reason only: the Big Daddy figurine. I mean, sure, I had heard all the excitement behind the upcoming release and I love me a good FPS game, but (as previously noted) I tend to not purchase new releases.

Since I had it, though, I figured I'd go ahead and play it. Yadda yadda yadda, a few years later it was finally working... but after I had played a few hours I got side-tracked and it was another two years before I could finally revisit the game and put it to rest. I happened to beat it while Bioshock 2 was on sale, and figured that was a pretty good opportunity to continue my adventure in Rapture seamlessly.

Of course, I immediately had issues with trying to get Bioshock 2 working. This time, however, instead of a DRM issue the culprit was Games for Windows Live.

In theory, I like the idea of GFWL. Achievements are fun, and now that I own an Xbox 360 (yet another sacrifice I've made to help fight the recession) I enjoy the integration between the PC and the console.

In practice, however, more than 50% of my experience with GFWL has been with it as a gatekeeper, jealously preventing my access to the games I've paid good currency to obtain. But maybe that's a topic for a whole 'nother day...

Long story short: it took multiple reinstalls (which, in one of the few downsides to digital delivery, means several hours a pop) in addition to hours of consulting The Oracle, and finally an entirely separate download of the GFWL client prior to installation of Bioshock 2 before I could finally get it to let me play the damn game.

All I'm saying is: Anyone else nervous about problems getting Bioshock Infinite to install and run properly?

B-1: First Impressions

There are plenty of hardcore reviews out there with benchmark results and the like. Though I'm an avid gamer, I don't usually bother with that type of stuff. I prefer to focus on the more practical matters... I don't ever monitor my frames per second. I don't overclock my processor. I could go on, but you get the idea.

It isn't for a lack of knowledge, but more a lack of reward compared to time invested. I just want to play games, you know?

So, with that introduction, I give you my casual-user's first impressions of the Asus G73JH-B1.

The laptop is sleek and a pleasure to use. I'm not a big fan of mousepads, never have been, and as I've said previously this is my first laptop. I haven't quite gotten the hang of using it yet, but I won't hold that against this particular laptop.

One of the soft rubber supports that is glued onto the under-side of the laptop was apparently loose and came off the first time I set the laptop down. That was disappointing, though not a big deal by any means.

There are no lazy or dead pixels. Windows 7 is a bit of a learning curve, and already I've ran into some compatibility issues with older games. Bioshock (with the 1.1 patch) in particular seems to be unresolvable; after countless hours spent consulting The Oracle, I failed to find a single effective fix that didn't involve downloading and running myriad third-party software.

Still, that's an OS issue and is neither here nor there... Though I can't say I'm entirely surprised by Bioshock's cantankerous nature.