I received an invitation on spam account to join GameSpot Fuse, the beta anyway. I got all excited because I have been downloading and trying out Steam alternatives for tracking achievements, IMing and other services inside games. I tried X-Fire, the most fugly piece of software I’ve ever used, including their website.
I then moved to Raptr because there services seemed better, and so far I’m pretty happy with it, especially since they now allow in game instant messaging. When I read this in my inbox I thought that GameSpot was coming out with an alternative to these products and I signed up to test it out.
It turns out, or so it seems at the moment, that it just integrated into your Raptr account and tracks those statistics on your GameSpot site. This is useless to me. I don’t hang around and friend people on GameSpot and I doubt ever go there unless I am following a random link. I wanted a client to download that would do this, and I already have the client they use apparently.
I’ll continue messing with it to see if there are other features I’m missing, but if not it seems rather limited. There ARE special GameSpot achievements, but I couldn’t care less about them. I only enjoy achievements that I randomly get while playing and I never go out of my way to even find out what achievements are out there. Except in MMO’s, where I will go FAR FAR out of my way to achieve Deeds or other “achievement” type trophies.
Let me know if you have found a different use for it, I’d be interested to know.
On a completely unrelated note I’ve been reading my favorite book trilogy again, in omnibus form, The Faded Sun Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh. I am a lover of settings. I don’t care what the story is (though the story is great in these books) if it has a good setting, and this plays over into movies, books and games. I’ll pick up pen and paper role-playing books with no intention of playing them, just to read up on the setting. I create settings in my free time and try to breathe as much life into them as I can, without ever creating anything resembling a story. C. J. Cherryh puts my efforts to shame in this science fiction trilogy that creates two VERY unique alien races that have amazing depth, relatable to us enough that you can understand them, but different enough that you don’t read them as being human.
I’m also preparing Fallout 3 for another playthrough. This entails a lot of searching on mod sites and downloading random things to improve the game. I have the same several day adventure whenever I try and play Morrowind or Oblivion too. Got any mods you’d recommend for Fallout 3? Leave them in the comments.
Never fear though, I shall return to MMO’s shortly. I have a Star Trek Online post I’m putting the finishing touches on, as well as a few other little things that are in the works. Now I’m going back to my book.
Manifest Pixel 
I’ve actually been thinking about getting a Raptr account. Been weighing the pros and cons, and I think maybe this weekend I’ll set one up.
I suggest it. It’s just kind of nice to have all of your stuff tracked in one place, and it’s interesting to see all the hours you’ve played in certain games. The main thing is the instant messaging inside games though, even single player games. You CAN turn it off for each game individually, in case it’s very atmospheric or hectic and you can’t have an IM popping up in the corner.
I have one, I really just wanted it as a way to keep track of what I’m playing and how much for blogging purposes. Having a friends list is pretty nice though.
I used Xfire for a bit but it did so many things like video capture and voice chat that I really didn’t want. Raptr was originally much slimmer, although they’re continuing to add features so eventually I may have to switch again.
Yeah, I was originally debating Xfire, but it seems WAAAYYY too heavy for me, I don’t need all those features. Raptr it is.