Living at the (English) edge of the world

(Note: This is an English version of my original Czech text published on my main blog. If you speak Czech, you might want to read that one instead, though currently, this version is a bit more detailed in certain areas and my notes on force feedback and multiplayer have been added here. I’ll update the Czech version as time allows. Also, do note that even though I try, I’m not a native English speaker, so if there are some mistakes related to that, I apologize.)

Lately, there’s been quite a lot going on in the world of PC rally gaming. The second quarter of last year was marked with the appearance of the amazing Dirt Rally which recently left the Early Access program, is now available as final product and is also coming to consoles in April. Then there was the next installment of the WRC games series, this time made by an entirely different developer. Sadly, WRC 5 was a real disappointment, as the game was pretty bad. And now, the final three of the current rally sims was released – meaning Sébastien Loeb Rally EVO by Milestone, who were also responsible for all of the previous four WRC games and who also don’t have the best reputation within the gaming community. And looking at the reactions on the release, that fact is pretty obvious – should the potential buyer decide solely based on what the people on the internet are saying about SLRE, he’ll probably avoid anything SLRE related entirely. But would that be justified? In my opinion (as you can probably guess), not really. Before diving in further into this post, though, please note that the opinions stated are entirely my own and that the majority of people coming to miscellaneous internet forums would stronly oppose them – though it also needs to be said that a big portion of said people tends to express their opinions in a rather…how to put it exactly…simple way? In any case – consider yourself warned. Maybe my views on SLRE are completely off.

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Well, I realize this is hardly news, given that the game has been out for almost a year now, but for anyone interested, here’s my opinion on Lords of the Fallen as seen from the perspective of someone who came quite late to the original Dark Souls, but has since become a massive fan of the series. Please note that this is a full long review, not just a few words – it was originally written with a different purpose in mind (one of the reasons why I wrote it in English in the first place), but wasn’t actually used. I didn’t want to throw it away, so I decided to post it at least here.

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Whenever I think about what Opera means to me, it always comes to this. One small, simple, cute little GIF smiley I’ve first seen God-knows-how-many years ago:

That’s basically it. For such a simple thing, it really does sum up my feelings spot on. Though it might almost be more accurate to say it DID sum them up. We’re still not quite there, though. There’s some hope left just yet, but it’s getting harder and harder to hold on to it.

That tiny little image right there represents a ton of emotions and memories for me. Sure, some of it is for personal reasons – that image popped up on the internet around 2003. Or, to put it on a more personal level, just around the time I met my girlfriend. I was already an active Opera user back then – I’ve been using Opera as my main browser since around version 3.5 or 3.6, meaning since something like 1998 or 1999. From 2000 up, I was already pretty enthusiastic about Opera – the fastest browser available, jam-packed with revolutionary things and features no other browser had back then, and customizable like nothing you’ve ever seen. So yeah, I was really digging Opera, as they say (or at least I think they do). And I was spreading the word.

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Like many others, I was caught by surprise by the Google+ social network redesign. Since I thought a lot of it simply doesn’t make much sense from the desktop side of things (the key elements are too small and away from the center of your attention) and using Google+ would be much more unpleasant for me, I thought about creating my own CSS user style for Opera, correcting my biggest gripes. Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting into and didn’t really expect to spend several days on it (which could probably be less if I actually knew more about CSS or if I actually was a webdesigner), but I’m rarely seen to back off a challenge. I’m quite pleased with the results, though. And I’ve even managed to workaround some Google+ bugs in Opera – given I’m not a pro at all, I’d say that’s not too shabby.

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