Interesting thing, while I’ve had a hard time find an equal after Diablo (one, and only the first episode!) when it comes to action rpg’s, I’ve playtested Sacred 2 in the night from 2nd to 3rd of October, you can fetch a 1.7GB Demo with the Seraphim and I have to say, I enjoyed it pretty much – I mean honestly. I’ve read a review yesterday that mentions the wickedly bad quest-system (questlog) and even worse system for trade in Sacred2. And I have to admit, yes it’s all true (sadly) – but still the game looks very much fun!

So I’ll probably have a more in-depth look into the full version – I’m not 100% convinced yet and I hate copy protections like Securom, for it really doesn’t do any good. I mean – copy protection for single-player isn’t an issue for long these days and never has been. For multi-player you’ve got your (hopefully unique) key and I’m fine with a connection based validation every time – but what do I need (stupid) cd’s every time – honestly? Comfort = 0.

I tend to be a computer gamer, spending too much time in front of my pc during work and at home as well. I have a fable for FPS (shooter) games, like Team Fortress 2, and I love the Steam environment since it’s CD-free. I’ve got the same problem with NWN2 (which always requests a cd), Dawn of War Soulforge (wants a cd as well), Crysis (ok this isn’t my favorite game… still it requests a [stupid]  CD).

But that was too much derived from my original post. If you like action games, Sacred 2 might be interesting for you, give it a try. (or wait for Diablo 3). I’ve stuck with the predecessor and I am looking forward to find out whether the updates of this version might help out with the severe issues they still have.

Or maybe a few…

After all I have to start with my position. I’m a regular computer gamer, mostly a fan of ego-shooters, tend to try strategy games and roleplaying games every now and then and spend a bit of my spare-time with these various games… I am playing solely on my pc (I got a few pc’s at home, not getting rid of my “old”er parts and currently game on a G1S laptop from Asus). I have to admit, I bought for my 25th or 26th birthday a playstation 2, the nice slim design and my personal preference of beat-em-ups just made me do that. I was looking for a console for several years and always decided against it, but back then, I bought one and – it is totally useless – I mean, I am using it every 6-10 months… or in other words I hardly ever use it at all. I got quite a lot games (in relation to the usage, it must be around 10-15 games. But console gaming just lacks the fascination of the PC, you still have less interactivity in most games and I’m not a friend of the controllers after all.

[so much for the introduction]

Now I read a recent article on golem.de (a quite useful news resource for all things computer), with Microsoft announcing they don’t focus on the PC in the european market,  because of their low sales with the X-Box 360. (I’ve read another article before that from the GDC (Game Developer Conference) expressing the frustration of various programmers, that the Windows PC’s are not going further and offering new gadgets, interfaces, ideas, or any developments at all for their programming.

So I have to admit it’s pretty hard not to write four letter words for Microsoft in this regards, honestly – I don’t give a damn whether you sell a lot of your X-Box 360 consoles or not.
But to see you speculating, that if you reduce your support for the PC platform, more players will migrate to the consoles – I pray this will utterly fail.

Again in other news I read about the current status of ReactOS, which is slowly but constantly catching up. I have to admit, after reading the comments of Peter Zetterberg on golem.de – I hope that ReactOS will catch up faster than anyone expect and that it will become a real alternative to Windows as Operating System.
In my opinion a windows compatible operating system like ReactOS, that is fully operational as well as open source could gain a lot of market share if it has a stable base for gaming.

In my view it has to be really short-sighted to expect a lot of the PC gamers to emigrate to the consoles, no matter what console producers are dreaming of and no matter what software will be released for PC on a later point.