TechnocratTechnocrat’s Random Thoughts

I have decided to move the phpBB-Evolution blog from here to a more manageable site. Some people were bitching about all the cursing and funny disgusting things I was posting here while trying to find information on the project.|-|

So now development and info on the project can be found at http://blog.phpbb-evolution.com

I just finished playing Mass Effect on my 360 and shipped it back to GameFly (see my bitch post about them 2 posts down). I have to say that is one of the best games I have ever played. Though not perfect its very entertaining. I highly recommend it if you like RPG games like Knights of the old republic.

PS – Picking the the bad dialog choices has almost no effect on the game other than if you have sex with the blue alien chick or the white human chick. I replayed it doing just that and found it to be way more fun that way and had really no effect on the game. Also when you get the point where you have the standoff with Wrex if you like him and use him in your team do everything you can to defuse the situation. If you don”t he will get smoked.

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I have been a GameFly member now for a few months and I have to say that there are some good things and some bad. I figured I should put my thoughts out there on it.

First the good. They have almost every game for every popular console system in their inventory. So you can find what you are looking for pretty easily. They also have a very comprehensive review system that has not only user views but pulled in reviews from popular game sites like Gamestop. So that makes it really nice when looking into a game to rent. They also have a pretty good setup to give you a nice idea of what the game is about and screen shots. So picking a game is a snap.

It’’s pretty simple to get games into your queue and shuffle your queue around. Plus if you mistakenly are in the playstation 2 game area and you have a PS3 and try to add a PS2 game it will yell at you. This helps keep you safe from getting games you don”t want or cannot run. Just like netflix or any other mailer company you can keep the game for as long as you want.

Now the bad. It’’s expensive. I think they should cut the prices down to be more inline with Netflix. $16 for 1 game a month and $23 for two seems almost unreasonable when you compare it to blockbusters unlimited rentals.

The next issue I have is with their shipping. It takes WAY to long for them to receive in and then ship one back. I live in Northern California and I know how long it takes mail to get from where I am to LA which is where their shipping center is. It should take 1-2 days. Yet it almost always takes 3-4 days before they receive it in. Then they do ship it out the same day (usually) but it again takes 3-4 days to come back. So it takes almost a week to get a game back. That sucks. Maybe I am spoiled with Netflix which takes 3-4 days to get a new DVD back to me. But this just seems way to slow. I had used the EmpireDVD service awhile back to check it out because we got it for free for 3 months and their shipping center is on the East coast (NY I think). And that was how long it took for those to come back. So I can”t understand this at all.

Finally my biggest bitch and one that I find extremely frustrating is their availability and shipping system. Seems like that have like 3 copies of every game because almost all popular or new titles are always low for what seems like forever. Which sucks! For example I filled my queue with every game that I thought I wanted to play for my 360. Looking at my queue every game that I want to play that was released in 2008 is still set to a low to medium availability. Not a single one is a available now. >:XX

But their queue shipping center makes not fucking sense to me and is a source of anger to me. I always stack my queue like I do with Netflix where I put the newest games (which are always low remember) at the top of queue. My thought was that like Netflix when they move from low to medium or even high they would be shipped out. So far that hasn”t happened even once! Even with games with a high availability don”t ship. Make sense?! Not to me either. If it’’s high wouldn”t that mean that they would have a copy in stock? Well if you read their help page that’’s not the case. They ship what is listed as available now to you if the game in top of your queue is not in. What the fuck! Then what is the point of having the queue at all.

I thought why not try an experiment. I changed my queue and put every game that didn”t have a now status to the top of the queue and put all of those that were now at the bottom. Sure enough guess what shipped number 15 in my queue which was the first of the now ones. Are you kidding.>:XX

There seems to be no way to change this either like Netflix. Nice over sight on their part.

My next experiment is to take all the nows out of queue and see what they ship. My guess is I will have to wait for weeks for a game to show up in my mail. If it takes more than 2 days for one to ship I may just close my account because they are pretty shitty if that’’s the case.