I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Friday, March 30, 2012

This ain't your Dad's Apple

So, the other day a friend pointed me towards the Mac App Store and Neverwinter Nights 2. The game was on sale for $1. NWN has been a game I've wanted to play, but at $45, it was too rich for me. And, you know, I'm trying to write so I could keep that distraction at arms length. But $1? Oh yeah, downloaded it that night.

So, two weeks later and I finally had some moment to play it. I went all the way through the tutorial. It's okay. The controls are bit wonky, but I could get used to it. But then as I tried to start the actual game it froze. And it kept freezing in exactly the same place. Well, it turns out the game doesn't support the graphics card we have in our iMac.

In the old days, this would never have happened. Not that there weren't troubles, but mostly that was an OS version problem. I have all the proper software, memory, processor, etc. It's just the graphics card. WTF.

2 comments:

Eric said...

I'm afraid NWN2 kinda sucks. And one factor is that the controls are wonky in the PC version, too.

The original Neverwinter Nights remains awesome. Not so much for the original official quest (which is mediocre), but for the fairly good official quest in the expansions (Shadows Of Undrentide (which isn't a sequel to the original NWN main quest, starting you with a new Level 1 character) and Hordes Of The Underdark (which, notably, is a direct sequel to SOU, not the NWN main quest), and especially for the user-created modules. The NWN user-created-content community remained active long after NWN2 came out and probably outlasted it.

You may want to look for a cheap copy of the first game and its expansions. The graphics are very mid-90s, but it's superior to its sequel in every other way.

Steve Buchheit said...

Hey Eric, yeah, I played the demo of the first NWN and was stoked, but never saw the price drop below $40 (for a Mac version), even on clearance. So when my friend sent the link saying NWN2 was only a $1, I was on that like white on rice.

And a quick look on Amazon shows used, NWN is still going for more than $20. Sigh.

I guess the benefit is I keep all that time to study, plan, and write.