review: Arcanum

Yesterday I spent a couple hours playing Arcanum. It's an older computer RPG that I had played a little of a couple years ago but then got bored of it. So I reinstalled it recently, and tried to play it yesterday. I remembered from my last try at the game that you don't want to play as a "technologist" unless you're in the mood for a frustrating experience lugging around lots of generally-useless junk looking for the perfect spring to complete your 19th century musket. Instead I played as a gnome magician, with some special background so that he was really ugly, but more intelligent. It sounded like a good choice for a magician- I wasn't going to be picking up chicks or trying to smooth talk shopkeepers so I didn't need to be good looking.

Most reviews praise the game's use of multiple dialgoue options depending on your character stats, but they apparently didn't try playing as an ugly character. Good God it sucked to be ugly in the renaissance age. Every shop I walked into I'd be greeted with "What do you want, assface?" Or "You're not welcome here." Nobody had any manners. I was paying customer! How totally unprofessional! What kind of person sees a poor, deformed man enter his shop and jacks his prices way up? I was forced to kiss everyone's ass for a few minutes every time I talked to them before they'd even sell me anything. Even the one follower I had who thought I was the reincarnation of a legendary hero could barely stand my presence. Forget that game.

Just got my ps3 today. It's taking like a half hour to update the software. There must be some kind of internal lag or filter inside the console because it's definitely not utilizing all my bandwidth here.

I'm watching My So Called Life. Love the narration, it's like listening to an emo high schooler's internal monologue.

kate: isn't it great that you have a girlfriend who loves to explore new things
kate: so you do by association
joe: yes, it is great
joe: secretly i've been wanted to see the cherry blossoms, but it's just too touristy for me to make time for myself
kate: are you being sarcastic or serious?
joe: haha
joe: a mixture of both
kate: you jerk
joe: i'm a complicated character
joe: my dialogue has many layers
kate: layers of jerk