Another Opinion - In Pursuit of Batman

From the Author: This article is somewhat different from others - it will have fewer thoughts and more action. Initially, it wasn't intended to be published, but people found it entertaining and worthy of discussion. The article describes about a day in my life related to the purchase of the game [Batman: Arkham City](/games?search=Batman: Arkham City), supplemented by some small lyrical digressions on the topic of piracy and its role in my gaming life. Those expecting to hear yet another praise for the new game about the rabbit in rubber can close this work immediately - it's not about that, although it indirectly touches upon this game.

Prologue

Strangely enough, the first games I owned were licensed versions from 1C: [Max Payne](/games?search=Max Payne), [Serious Sam](/games?search=Serious Sam): Second Encounter, plus smaller games like Legion and Legion 2. My next game the following day was the pirated Heroes of Might & Magic III, which, by the way, did not install (the disc was faulty). After that, I started accumulating those famous Fargus discs, multiplayer games, and other pirated ones. The moral side of the matter concerned me even then, but I had in my defense an irrefutable thesis: in our provincial town of 30,000 people, it was simply impossible to buy a license, as they weren't available for sale at all. Sometimes my brother brought licenses from Omsk, for instance, Europe Universal and Victoria. One day, when I visited my brother, I discovered a hundred multiplayer games cozily settled on a shelf. When the topic of piracy came up, I hinted to him that he had deceived the publisher for a good fifty thousand. The response was genuine surprise: "But I bought them in a store, not from small stalls! That makes them licensed!". Hearing the real cost of those games, he looked down, spat... and continued to buy them, and with the arrival of broadband internet - downloaded from torrents. I, too, filled my hard drive with games from the internet. This continued until recently when studying, creativity, and my girlfriend took away the time that would have been enough to play everything (I even had to skip [TES 5: Skyrim](/games?search=TES 5: Skyrim), [Battlefield 3](/games?search=Battlefield 3)). But I simply couldn't miss one game - [Batman: Arkham City](/games?search=Batman: Arkham City), and I was planning to not just buy a license with my scholarship, but to purchase a collector's edition (which is quite poor, by the way, if we talk about the Russian edition). I didn't suspect what this delightful, and oddly legal decision would lead to...

It's too late to drink Borjomi...

After yet another physical education class, my classmate and I decided to stop by the toy store: Roman wanted to buy a license for Might & Magic Heroes IV, since without the dynasty mode the game isn’t worth playing. A large cardboard Batman filled my soul with happiness: "He's out! He's out, my beloved Bats!"

- How much is Batman?

- 490 rubles for the jewel version.

- Is there a collector's edition?

- A thousand rubles, want to see it?

Studying the pleasantly white box with the Dark Knight, I learned that inside there was an art book, a mousepad, and a keychain, which made me a little upset, but I reached for my pocket for my card... I forgot it at home! Oh well, I’ll just run back and buy it. But first, I needed to buy fabric for a dress and gifts for my brother and future mother-in-law’s birthday.

Spending over 5 hours on this, as I had to help my brother load a dresser, I finally arrived at the store with a friend. And there was no sign of the collector's edition... FUUUUUUUU!!!!!One!11! СREATONIKZLPLTPMOV!!! My article about the unboxing of the collector's edition of the game was ruined! Gloomy, I handed over 500 rubles and bought the standard version. But it was my favorite Bats! With a smile on my face, imagining how I would play all night, I headed home, grabbing some booze since I still had money left. Oh how wise this decision about the alcohol turned out to be a few hours later...

Only 4 human lives left until installation completes..

And here I am home... Eagerly inserting the disk and meticulously entering the key, praying not to make a mistake. And I didn’t! Seeing the info that the game requires 17GB of free space, I prepared for an hour of waiting. Clicking "Start", I settled into my chair, with the satisfying snap opened the first can...

Here we need to step a bit away from the immediate topic and look back a week. I’m on WinXP - I still haven’t managed to switch to 7. Plus, a month ago my computer swallowed a nasty virus - my careless Avast! let it through, and only the deployment of the notorious pig butcher trial of Kaspersky was able to stop the malicious filth. And now the trial period is over, and I haven’t installed a new antivirus yet. I mean, I’m going to install Seven tomorrow, right? And I kept feeding my computer with these tomorrows, while it had already started to glitch, unprotected from the foulness of the antivirus light...

An hour passed... The installation didn’t even request the second disk... Another hour passed... Where, damn it, is the end of the installation!!!??? Let me restart and begin the installation again. I press cancel... Bingo-bingo-bingo! Blue screen of death! After rebooting, errors poured in like from a cornucopia, blocking the entire screen, like banners that close a coveted porn site. The internet slowed down to such a degree that the Download Manager warned that downloading CureIt (and I had been on the spider doctor site for 30 minutes) would take more than 6 days. To hell with it! I grabbed my phone and called Yevgeny (who is actually prozorov) demanding him to quickly download and make a Seven installation flash drive. Taking my beloved by the hand, we got dressed and went to the bus stop.

Internet speed dropped below zero and crashed my hard drive...

Arriving at Zhenya's, I found out that only 60 percent had been downloaded and it would take another 15 minutes. Nothing serious! We went into the store and bought another couple of cans. Fifteen minutes later, a call:

- Listen, the speed has dropped significantly, it says it will take two more hours!

- Press stop, then restart! It helps me.

- Hm, it really helps. I’ll call you back!

We wandered for another 15 minutes...

- Something strange is happening! My download percentage goes up to 99.8 then drops back to 99.3

- Some glitch! Turn off the torrent and turn it on again!

After another 30 minutes, our hands and feet froze...

- The seeds have disappeared!

And here, dear reader, I resigned to my fate. With plans to finish everything tomorrow, I made my way to the bus stop. Just as I was about to board the shuttle, the phone rang from Zhenya:

- It’s downloaded! Come over, I’ve almost finished the flash drive!

By the way, these jumps in download percentage found their explanation - with an image size of 4GB, there were over a thousand hash errors and 6.5GB of extra downloaded data... What a mess... I was afraid that Bill Gates himself was downloading Seven back!

The Empire Strikes Back

And here we are home. I boot the BIOS, set the boot from flash drive. I reboot the computer... The screen filled with familiar tables to start...

And once again, a small lyrical digression so that you, dear reader, can take a break from the tension (at least my nerves were on edge).

If we take all my little experience with licensed games, I have always regarded them very poorly. Starforce stubbornly glitched, not allowing me to play my dearly loved Heroes of Might & Magic V. And I don’t even want to remind you of the story with Assassin’s Creed 2 - such a hellish punishment I wouldn’t wish even upon my enemy. Starforce is probably the most hated protection system of all time. But you can also understand the publisher; piracy prevents them from getting full profit. It’s just that they vastly overestimate the lost profit. They seem to think that if there was no piracy, I would buy all the games. Yeah right! Where would I take all that money? But that’s a completely different topic, the debates around which will not subside until Judgment Day....

To start loading the Piggy! Maybe I misplaced the boot priority? Seven troubles - one Reset! Having explored the BIOS, and confirmed my settings were correct, I rebooted again... Windows starts loading! Damn it! So many curses directed at me I haven’t heard since the last competition at Kvester. Almost in tears, I watched as XP, that suffering wretch, loaded and battled with a multitude of errors...

Battling through to My Computer, I entered the flash drive and joyfully discovered Setup.exe. Oh, miracle! The installation started! Another long hour of meditating over the installation progress bar...

P.S. Uncle Billy, the downloaded version of Seven was only needed for review, and I promise to delete it within 30 days, and then buy a license! True-True \trollface**

And here are the final stages of installation. Fanfare, and popping champagne! SHAZZZ!!! "The installation was completed with errors, please wait." And the bar jumps back and forth... Who knows why! Well then... Let’s wait... And I went to sharpen a knife, to find a virgin in the cold autumn night and offer her as a sacrifice to the bloody gods of Chaos...

And here comes the reboot... And oh God! The Piggy loaded, and without any error messages. But it was clear that the viruses were only slightly shocked by such a turn of events, so I quickly downloaded Avast!

And we dream not of the roar of the spaceport...

Avast! Immediately began scanning the disk, finding the unclean - win32:ramnit and some lesser beasts. Very insistently asking me to reboot the computer, the antivirus burned down all the nonsense. And after another reboot, it began checking all drives before loading. I, with a steadfast desire to wait until the scan was completed and finally install my beloved Batman, lay down on the bed... And immediately fell asleep...

As I was told in the morning - I slept very poorly. And I had a strange dream...

I was running towards the polytechnic, visibility was excellent, but I understood that it was deep night. The cloak billowed in the wind... I needed to gain height. The Batclaw easily secured itself on the roof of a five-story building, and the might of the drive made me leap into the sky, making my stomach turn. My goal was across the street. Oddly, the road was full of passing cars. With a firm step, I leapt into the abyss, and wings caught me, directing me straight into the window of my dear university. Swiftly breaking through the window with my body, I deftly landed on my feet and immediately activated detective mode. Three behind the door, they had weapons... Eight more in the next room, but their pipes didn’t scare me. Strike! My foot smashed the door down. The clowns were dumbfounded. The first was intercepted by my iron fist. The second received a batarang to the forehead. The third stood in shock, watching as my dark figure approached him. Strike! I probably broke a couple of his ribs. Entering the next room, I saw a swinging chandelier right above a crowd of goons. A precise throw of a batarang - the chandelier crushed the entire group with its weight. Strangely, for some reason, the moment of their impact with the floor I saw from another angle, and even in Slo-mo. But there’s no time to get distracted. I blew up the wall with gel and entered a room decorated for a circus.

- Hi, Bats! You've finally found me! But as always, you're late!

The Joker raised a hammer and struck the box with the disk [Batman: Arkham City](/games?search=Batman: Arkham City)

- No!, - I screamed and began falling into the vortex of the abyss...

When I woke up, I was greeted by a peacefully launched desktop. I checked - everything was working perfectly. No viruses.

I began to launch the Batman installation again, re-entered the key. After half an hour, the drive swallowed the second disk, and I finally started the game. SHAZ!!! There’s no Windows Live account! I won't elaborate on how I created it, how slow the registration system worked.

After another game startup, entering a login and password, entering a key for account linking, I finally clicked on the "New Game" button

- Bunny! Get dressed quickly! We’re late for Gena’s birthday! Turn off the computer

A clap! My brains smeared evenly across the old wallpaper...

Epilogue

I only played Batman a whole day later. I liked the game; undoubtedly, it’s my game of the year, though IMHO worse than the first in terms of the plot. Coupled with a huge amount of studies and rehearsals for KVN, by the end of the following week, I fell ill. My idea of playing only a few games and buying collectors is still alive. As I get older, there’s less and less time for such joys as games. So I’ll only play what’s guaranteed to be good. I’m waiting for January; there will be holidays - I’ll play Skyrim. Now, in my free time, I watch the Batman animated series and write articles for "Another Opinion"; it’s a pity the session doesn’t allow me to fully unleash. My pursuit of Batman ended well; I don't regret the money spent; I enjoyed it... Only one thought saddens me - the pirate version came out just a week later... Maybe I should have waited?

P.S. A huge thank you to those who liked, wrote comments, and of course, to those who voted for us in the competition. Thank you for your support. Uncharted 3 we have already won. It remains to win the PlayStation 3))) Thank you so much!

P.P.S. Those who are waiting for new articles from our duo (I hope there are some, heh heh) will soon receive an article on the benefits of HotSeat in dominating over relatives, and the first chapters of our fanfiction in the Warhammer 40K universe. Stay with us!

Your IntelegentBeast