Mammoth Coughed Up The Dough
That's right - Mammoth refunded my money last week. I wrote a nasty e-mail to them a few days after it happened but didn't hear anything for two weeks. I then wrote back asking what was going on, and later that day received a very detailed and apologetic e-mail. The woman who responded acknowledged the inadequacy of the website's explanation of driving directions from the Bay area, and said that she would be meeting with the website administrator later in the week to discuss improving it (although I just checked and there's been no change yet). She offered to refund not only my lift ticket, but also the snowboard rental too, so I got back all one-hundred-ten bucks. She did, however, go out of her way to point out that she was offering the refund "because it's the right thing to do", and not because I mentioned complaining to the Better Business Bureau. Heh, whatever!
So I feel much better about the whole thing now. Actually this is not really a victory; I just got what I rightfully deserved from the beginning, as far as I'm concerned.
While most of my leftover money each week goes to buying plane tickets to Phoenix or paying off credit cards, this little bit o' scrill was burning a hole in my pocket and today I bought myself an Xbox360 controller that works on the PC. Why, you ask? Well, for three reasons:
1) I spent Sunday afternoon at the house of a friend from work, playing on his Xbox360 (GRAW2 and Crackdown, for those in the know) with a bunch of other guys. Just like the last time I was there, after the initial adjustment to the gamepad - cuz I'm really a keyboard-and-mouse kinda guy - I fell in love with the ergonomics of the controller. It's maybe a bit small for my hands, but other than that has just a ton of functionality crammed into it.
2) This purchase put me on the path to maybe, possibly, potentially living out my virgin console gaming fantasy, where I buy an Xbox360. I've wrestled with it since the console came out, and have resisted thus far. But the controller that I bought works on both the Xbox and the PC; so if I were to buy an Xbox in the future, and since I'd most likely get the Core system, which only includes one controller, then the one I bought would complete the near-obligatory pair.
3) Since, uh, obtaining Test Drive Unlimited over the weekend (it's been released as a 'digital download' but doesn't hit retail until next week), I've become almost obsessed with the game, as it's allowed me to reclaim some of my racing glory from the Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed days. This game claims to model 1000 miles of road in Hawaii, and you compete in various races, car deliveries, timed taxi-type missions, and other assorted tasks to earn money that you can spend on houses, clothes (yes, really) and of course new rides. It's not just a racing game; it's got an RPG angle to it that I really dig. I don't anticipate spending much time with the house and clothes buying, but there are 125 different cars modeled in the game from which to choose. There are dealerships all over the island at which you can do test drives, and you can rent cars too. Anyway, I'm having a blast with it but my current Saitek gamepad just wasn't cutting it for controlling the cars ... and so, enter the slick Xbox360 controller.
It's a good month for PC gaming - next week this game comes out, as does Silent Hunter 4 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the latter being a shooter whose development I've been following for years (I have trailers for it dating back to August 2003) and am really looking forward to.
So I feel much better about the whole thing now. Actually this is not really a victory; I just got what I rightfully deserved from the beginning, as far as I'm concerned.
While most of my leftover money each week goes to buying plane tickets to Phoenix or paying off credit cards, this little bit o' scrill was burning a hole in my pocket and today I bought myself an Xbox360 controller that works on the PC. Why, you ask? Well, for three reasons:
1) I spent Sunday afternoon at the house of a friend from work, playing on his Xbox360 (GRAW2 and Crackdown, for those in the know) with a bunch of other guys. Just like the last time I was there, after the initial adjustment to the gamepad - cuz I'm really a keyboard-and-mouse kinda guy - I fell in love with the ergonomics of the controller. It's maybe a bit small for my hands, but other than that has just a ton of functionality crammed into it.
2) This purchase put me on the path to maybe, possibly, potentially living out my virgin console gaming fantasy, where I buy an Xbox360. I've wrestled with it since the console came out, and have resisted thus far. But the controller that I bought works on both the Xbox and the PC; so if I were to buy an Xbox in the future, and since I'd most likely get the Core system, which only includes one controller, then the one I bought would complete the near-obligatory pair.
3) Since, uh, obtaining Test Drive Unlimited over the weekend (it's been released as a 'digital download' but doesn't hit retail until next week), I've become almost obsessed with the game, as it's allowed me to reclaim some of my racing glory from the Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed days. This game claims to model 1000 miles of road in Hawaii, and you compete in various races, car deliveries, timed taxi-type missions, and other assorted tasks to earn money that you can spend on houses, clothes (yes, really) and of course new rides. It's not just a racing game; it's got an RPG angle to it that I really dig. I don't anticipate spending much time with the house and clothes buying, but there are 125 different cars modeled in the game from which to choose. There are dealerships all over the island at which you can do test drives, and you can rent cars too. Anyway, I'm having a blast with it but my current Saitek gamepad just wasn't cutting it for controlling the cars ... and so, enter the slick Xbox360 controller.
It's a good month for PC gaming - next week this game comes out, as does Silent Hunter 4 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the latter being a shooter whose development I've been following for years (I have trailers for it dating back to August 2003) and am really looking forward to.
posted by GregP at 10:23 PM
2 Comments:
Didn't you rail on me for playing a racing game on the XBox and sarcastically commenting on how "mature" of a game it was (I have the voice mail message to prove this by the way)? Now here you are obsessing over Test Drive and explaining the merits of playing a game similar to the one that you criticized me for playing just last year. What's that about?
By the way, I remember playing the original Test Drive on my C-64 nearly 20 years ago. Man, I'm old.
I'm afraid I don't recall the incident you accuse me of here, but rest assured that partaking in such hypocrisy goes against everything I stand for and have ever done, in my entire life. Doing something like that would be WAY out of character for me.
However, hypothetically speaking, if I *had* done such a thing, I would expect it would be rationalized along the lines of the fact that your game was a silly console games for kids, whereas my game is a mature, serious game on the respectable PC.
Which brings me to my last point here, which is that if you ever decide to get back into PC gaming, you ought to pick up TDU, as it's an awesome game.
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