Tech Support 2.0: Konami hates PC gamers

Previously on Encompassing Everything:  Robyn's iPod falls to a mysterious bug which reduced it to only being useable as a door-stop or paperweight. 

The iPod has now been replaced with a shiny new one, with about 20 gigabytes less in memory because Apple doesn't make the 140gig version anymore, the idiots. This may seem like a strange measure, but to those who do not own iPods (about 2 in 500 people) , it's a hell of a lot better than getting it repaired by Apple because like everything else they do, it costs way more than it's worth.

Anyhoo, I have another technological gripe, this time against the gaming industry. To be more specific, Konami and Valve.

              

                  

Possibly my two favourite developers of fine digital distractions,  Valve and Konami  have teamed up recently to unleash Silent Hill Homecoming, the latest instalment of the Silent Hill franchise, upon the world through Valve's online PC game provider widget, Steam. Or at least, they've tried to.

Now, I bloody love Silent Hill, me, and I've thrown more cash at this series of games than I'd sometimes care to think about.  So hearing that Konami wouldn't be porting Silent Hill 5 to PCs gutted me immensely and made me wish I'd asked for  a PS3 or an Xbox 360 instead of a new bass guitar at Christmas.  Obviously I wasn't the only one feeling bruised, because Konami soon announced that they would be releasing the game through Steam at the same times as the console versions in September 2008. Yay! I suddenly had a reason to save my money up.

But September came and went; no Silent Hill. Then Konami announced that the PC and console versions would be delayed for Europe and would be released in November. Ah well, it happens eh? November passed as well. Then this bombshell was dropped; no Silent Hill 5 for Steam users in Europe until February 27th, for no reason at all. What?

Now it's February, and it's a day since the game was supposed to be out. Not a single piece of news on Steam or anywhere else about why it still hasn't been released, while the rest of the world has had this game for 5 months. Talk about unfair. I've been taunted by the Internet for living in The Netherlands through countless screenshots, reviews and playthroughs for the game which, try as I might, I just can't buy. I even downloaded a illegal Russian version of it, in the hope that it would work, but the damn thing had no sound and was terribly buggy. I am really beginning to think that I may never get to play the game at all.

Please Konami, get your bloody act together and give all of us PC owning Silent Hill fans some joy.

Valve, I will only forgive you if Left 4 Dead, which is waiting to be played even as I write this, is as good as everyone says.

Tech Support

I'm  rather sick of technology right now. My iPod, my sleek, black 140 gig baby who has given me almost a year of loyal audio-visual  service has decided to stop working properly.  For good, it seems. 

I was happily uploading a couple of songs on Saturday, when I rather hastily disconnected my iPod before both it and my laptop told me it was ok to do so (I was in a hurry) and suddenly it came up with an error message and then wiped itself clean of all 2700 songs and 75 videos stored on there,  some of which I'll never get back.  It had done this little trick before, so I thought "Meh, big deal, I'll just re-connect it and reformat it and it'll be fine". Hah, fat chance.

Now whenever I try and connect the damn thing to any computer, it recognises that it is indeed connected to something, but the iTunes program does not recognise the iPod. Neither does the computer system, which crashes My Computer when I try to view the iPod's files, and tells me something along the lines of  "The file  cannot be rewritten, please save somewhere else". Of course, Apple Inc.  have been less than helpful- their online troubleshooting guide for iPods essentially says "turn it off and on again and hope it works" . Thank you Apple, nice to see I'm not the only person with no clue here.

I've given up for the moment and decided to give my old first generation iPod Nano some love and attention. I used to love the little thing, but I've been spoiled by my iPod Classic's huge screen and massive hard drive, so I no longer appreciate it. In fact, I hate it because for the first time in a year I've had to choose what music I want on my iPod. I just can't decide, I love all of my music! I'll just have to leave my poor broken one for a few days and hope it magically fixes itself before crawling to my Dad for the warranty and hope Apple gives me a new one before I got to uni.

Incidentally, if anyone out there has any idea what has gone wrong with my iPod, please let me know. I'll send you a picture of a pigeon or a cookie or something as a reward.