PC Mailbag Looking to warrior some Mechs, monkey pains, Invisible criticism, and still more...

Organizational Monkeys Good site, but the way stuff is organized is horrendous :( Consider organizing it in a fashion along the lines of IGN, or Action Trip, either way is good.

By the way Ivan, i would really appreciate it if you responded this because i find you degradation of just about anyone absolutely hilarious :D Hell i dont care if its me, but just post this :D

Do you truly care who this is from?

-- Bruce

I've never been more proud in my entire life. One of my readers managed to refrain from making his submission silly by including an excess of smiley faces. You only had three smileys, Bruce! That's fantastic. It's way below the average. And, when I see all those meticulously lowercased letters you thoughtfully included, I just want to embrace your face with a flaming axe. I'm so proud. So very, very proud.

I love you, but what's your problem? The six monkeys we have physically stacking our coded punch cards in no particular order and screaming at telephones isn't a good enough organizational scheme for you? We planned ahead! They're very healthy monkeys that will live long, productive lives of hopeless servitude. And so you know, I used to work at IGN. They may have had eight or nine monkeys, but theirs were way sicker than ours.

Don't worry, all jest aside (save the flaming axe bit), I promise we'll soon have a much better, monkey-free site (it'll be cool and new and stuff). Right now we're trying to get you fools in so we can generate some quick ad revenue to fund this beastly child's bigger, better, newer and neater adulthood. The quicker you click on ads, the quicker the monkeys get sent back to the Starfish Tuna factory and we get some actual honest to goodness Calecos up in this piece to replace them.

And Bruce, don't belittle yourself. That's no way to end a letter. Of course I care about you and the rest of my readers. All of the insulting and horrible teasing I do is out of kindness, and isn't at all a reflection of the consuming, undying hatred I harbor toward you. I promise, sweetie.

-- Ivan "Deez Nuts" Sulic

Preference? Ivan, for what it's worth, I would prefer a CD over a DVD. I agree with the one letter that you posted on the CGW web site - I have never found a need for a DVD player in a computer. I do not know of any games that come on that format. I watch movies on a TV screen, not a computer screen - more people can see it that way. I saved my cash for a better video card instead of an unneeded DVD.

You could have spread the "five free games" over several months of CDs. As it stands now, the subscription that I bought now comes with DVDs that are useless for me.

Would it be possible to provide the games in from a download from CGW?

Also, are you going to switch back to CDs for future "demo discs" or are you now always going with DVD?

Thanks for your time,

-- Dave

It's possible to find DVD drives for less than $40, so don't try and convince me that cars are of no use just because you own a perfectly good horse. From a gaming standpoint, DVD affords more space for developers to work with, which translates to higher-resolution video, higher quality audio, higher quality artwork, and generally more content. Cut back on the multiple Swank and Perfect 10 subscriptions and invest already. You can be happy with three porn rags a month -- I'm doing just fine.

As for CGW's pack-in, the whole reason behind offering a DVD is because the content provided is simply too much to post online in one shot or to burn onto any single CD. Yes, CGW could have technically spread it across a few CDs bundled with a few different issues, but then people would complain about not getting all that delicious DOOM 3 video they so desperately wanted, and the value of the offer would drop dramatically.

Like I said before, it was a tough decision, and the future of DVD bundles is still unknown. For the time being, master the art of plugging one end of an IDE cable into your new $40 drive and the other into the motherboard and get with the program already.

-- Ivan

Swelling Ape Head Yo that snow plow driving monkey is awesome!

-- Jon

People like you are the reason why his ego is so large. I am glad you enjoyed Christmas Monkey. We pride ourselves on being able to satisfy our audiences' snow plow driving monkey needs. If you're looking for anything else, however, get the hell out.

-- Ivan

Invisible War IVAN SULIC!!! YOU'RE THE BEARER OF MY UNBORN CHILD!!!

oh, wait.. no, nevermind. I am male and so are you, and as bitter as you can get sometimes, that doesn't make you a complete girl. Not anatomically speaking, at least.

Anyway, I can't really believe I found you (or you showed up anyway) so soon.

Damn, now there's a reason to keep loving ziff media.

Sulic, you're the best mailbag updater the world has ever known.

You know what's funny? I just bought the "GotY" Deus Ex edition. Had I known your magazine included it, I'd have printed the manual and kept your dvd instead. Well, at least i got a nice boxed copy, eh?

Oh, and frangoat still s0x0rs.

Finally, as a real update question, what do you think of DX:Invisible War? Do you really think they dumbed it down for consoles and now it sucks on the pc? I really haven't played the demo yet (i'm in the middle of a lot of stuff). And if you think they did, do you really think it's possible for them to change all that with future patches?

Thanks for being there for me. Life was beginning to feel like a carebear movie since you left IGN. Have fun!

-- Mauricio

I don't know if I like Invisible War just yet. I love Deus Ex and System Shock remains one of my most favorite games of all time, so I believe I have some credibility when it comes to sizing up offerings in the sci-fi, first-person RPG sub genre.

My problems? Where Deus Ex was open-ended, Invisible War feels claustrophobic, simplistic, and limited to puzzles that involve the finding of a ventilation shaft or the circumventing of something big and mean by way of a thoughtfully placed ventilation shaft. The interface has been butchered, and by omitting many of the minute gameplay details, it seems as if a giant chunk of the overall appeal is also gone. Furthermore, all choice is through action, is often not clearly defined, and even comes with some unpredictable and downright illogical consequences.

I'm not new to this. I've played through roughly ten hours of DXIW and the further I go, the less excited I find myself. I've lost all desire to do anything other than mindlessly slaughter the many inhabitants of the game world. And frankly I'm sick and tired of the perpetual darkness. Even the freaking metro station is nearly pitch black! Atmosphere is not synonymous with eye pain and a future without 60 watt lights. It seems as if shadow was more used to hide graphical defects than it was to enhance the experience. DOOM 3 is a brighter, more vivid game than this. DOOM!

Can it be fixed by patching? Absolutely not. That's an enormous fix we're talking about. It'd be like reworking the entire game from the ground up. An expansion, maybe. A simple patch, however, would not justify the costs involved with making it a reality.

Still, it's a fairly solid play despite my gripes. True fans of the original (both casual and hardcore) will likely not be pleased (the spiky haired sap on the cover is the first of many cold turnoffs), but it'll still wind up being solid, I'm sure.

-- Ivan

Must be Yesterday This was, by far, the most entertaining "mailbag" type thing I have ever read. I hope Ziff Davis pays you lot's-o-money to write for them for the rest of your life. That is all.

-- Me

You're obviously referring to yesterday's update, since I read today's and entertaining it is not. The monkeys, by the way, have yet to find a way to properly sort and store the mailbag, so when I make reference to a publish prior to the one you're presently reading, just assume I'm not lying.

What's all this talk of pay? Are they supposed to be doing that now?

-- Ivan

A Matter of Googling Lately, I've been looking to purchase a Falcon Fragbox. But I need to know two things: 1. Does it come with a monitor? 2. What are its components?

If you can answer these, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks,

-- Ian Baker

I can do better than answer those. I can provide you a valuable life lesson: read more, ask less.

-- Ivan

I Totally Don't Care I plan on getting either GameShark or Action Replay for Xbox. I understand that they are both nothing but other people's saves. Which one do you think I should buy? Which one do you think is the best one?

-- Logan

What exactly is the point of purchasing and playing a game if you're just going to use someone else's saves? If you dated a special girl, prior to having sex would you gleefully run a recording of her doing an ex-boyfriend and then just leave the room to sleep? You buy games for the experience, man! You do things for the experience. To use someone else's experience is defeats the purpose of you doing it yourself. Hell, you might as well be wasting your life away doing something pointless like reading.

Really, does anyone actually buy games to play them anymore? Everyone seems to want saves and cheats and guides and a fairy queen to hold their hands and guide them through every detail of every title. Here's a hint: don't buy crap you're not comfortable with enjoying. If you're incapable of enjoying a videogame without cheating or resorting to saves and guides, perhaps you suck at games and should more wisely hang out at the park until someone kicks your ass in a variety of other activities you also likely suck at.

Pro Action Replay, by the way. It has way better saves and I like it a lot.

-- Ivan

Wisdom for Taco Hey! Your that kid who likes MechWarrior. So what happened to MechWarrior, kid? I read that's gone, which makes you dumb and sad.

-- Taco

Me becoming dumb and sad doesn't require a beloved franchise of mine to disappear off the face of the Earth, Taco. All that is needed to accomplish said dumbening and saddening is for me to wake up in the morning. Score one for confidence through self deprecation.

Once upon a time MechWarrior 5 was in development. The game was to use a new engine and be a sort of Vengeance or even MechAssault meets Mace Griffin hybrid, only good. You read correctly, the original design doc saw a grand game where players would be able to climb in and out of Mechs either at will or in a style more akin to Shogo, with a mech mission followed by on-foot action and so forth. Unfortunately the title never progressed far enough for this to be finalized. Like many things that were good and from Microsoft and for the PC, the MechWarrior series was scrapped and ported to the Xbox, where it was quickly altered to fit the plug and play brain cell deficient tastes of your average console abusing goon that just barely managed to luck out with the whole opposable thumbs deal. Don't give up, though. There is hope at the end of our long, seemingly Mech-free tunnel. At a recent, "Hey, Windows is totally good for games" event, I cornered a few important, powerful Microsoft folks, drink in one hand and aluminum bat in the other, and asked very plainly and forcefully what the hell happened to many of our most cherished franchises. If you notice, we've been shafted on Links, MechWarrior, Crimson Skies and Midtown Madness follow-ups. Even Fever was once ours. Like all good no comments, I got very little information out of the alcohol and smoke fueled interrogation, but my prominent source's glass of Hennessey was held suspiciously high when we said, with a tantalizing tease in his tone, "Do you really think we'd just scrap those franchises on the PC?" When and what were my immediate follow-ups. Still with the no comment he came, but it was inferred that all those franchises, MechWarrior included, would eventually return since Xbox is at its zenith and likely does not require the strong exclusive brand names it once did.

Will it be the same MechWarrior as the proposed MW5? There's no way of knowing.

-- Ivan

Till Next Time Well folks... I lost way too much money playing poker over the weekend. It's the first time in a long while that I've been brutalized so harshly. I'm no Howard Lederer, but I fancy myself a decent hold 'em player -- one who finishes up consistently, anyway. That all ended last week.

I blame devilry. Frankly, I think everyone I play with is cheating in some way or another, but all are certainly under the influence of the prince of lies and his forked tongue. I will overcome. Next week I plan on strutting into my "social" game spell book in hand and pistol in belt. Should any of these demonic tyrants challenge my flop superiority, I'll whip out the Latin chants and expel the beast. If that doesn't work I'll just start shooting wildly until I get some chips.

-- Ivan "Deez Nuts" Sulic

Hug Me, Hold Me, Mail Me Agree or disagree with the big chump on this page? Let your feelings be known. Write to me and I promise to immediately disregard your submission if it expresses anything less than glowing approval.

Copyright © 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in 1UP.