However, don’t lose hope, to each problem there is a solution. If you are on Linux or Mac OS X (or really any other UNIX based system), it is quite simple and you have probably already heard about it. Just use the “ln -s” command to create a symbolic link of a folder.

ln -s /path/to/folder linkname

As far as I have tried it didn’t seem to matter whether the actual folder is in you Dropbox and the link on your filesystem or the other way around. I used this for synchronizing my World of Warcraft Interface folder. I had the folder in the Dropbox and created a link in my WoW directory. Even the patches didn’t break this, in contrast to my experiences with Windows XP.

Now, for Windows, my experiences are limited to XP with SP3. Here I came across a few difficulties. First of all, don’t even bother about creating a symbolic link. I found a few sources which told me this could be used with “mklink /D” under XP. The link was even created on the filesystem, but neither XP nor the Dropbox or any of my applications could do anything with it aside from creating errors. Your are, however, able to create hardlinks on the filesystem which work. And in this case it DOES matter which direction you choose. First, you should copy the desired folder into your Dropbox. Then, you should clear the original folder (it won’t work if there are still contents in it). Now you can create the link. Go into the shell and then it’s either

mklink /J C:\path\to\folder\in\Dropbox C:\path\to\original\folder

or

junction C:\path\to\folder\in\Dropbox C:\path\to\original\folder

The mklink.exe or junction.exe has to be placed in the directory from where you invoke the command. You will find the download links below. I tried it the other way around, first, with the result that Dropbox would only sync the files when it was indexing the filesystem during startup. After that, it seemed it just didn’t recognize any changes. There is another catch, though. When I used this with my WoW Interface folder, this link would break every time I installed a new patch. Maybe the folder was being recreated, thus deleting the link, I don’t know. I just had to link it again after each patch.

As far as I know Windows does support symbolic links since Vista. So if you have either Vista or Windows 7 you should probably try those first with “mklink /D”. On XP these programs are not included and you have to download either on of them.
mklink (german, just click on “Jetzt herunterladen”)
junction

If you don’t have a Dropbox account yet and are now interested in syncing your files across multiple computers, you might want to give it a try. You get 2GB free online space and can also access your files via a webinterface. If you use this referral link, you and me both get an extra 250MB

For those of you already using Dropbox be sure to visit the recently launched Votebox, where you can vote which features should be implemented next.

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Recently, I started a new Necromancer in Diablo 2 on the Battle.net. The great thing is, as long as you have an internet connection, you can take your character with you. All you need is a game client. It was great. It’s like a trip to the past and I had a lot of fun, almost like playing it for the first time. However, the visuals are very dated, though they do age quite well. But viewing at a screen with a resolution of 800×600 pixels can get a bit exhausting.

After playing Diablo 2 for the better part of a week I was made aware of Torchlight. I had heard of it before, but I didn’t really pay any attention to it. There were several Diablo clones in the past, some of them good, some them not. But none of them were as much fun to me as the original. However, after hearing a few highly positive opinions, I gave it a shot. There really wasn’t much thinking over involved, since the game only costs about 20$ (which is a little bit more than 13€ here in Europe).

When you start the game, you immediately feel at home. The first thing that will be familiar is probably the music. Also the gameplay works basically the same as in the Blizzard titles, only with a few refinements. A few of them have a big impact, though. I guess it is safe to say that this game feels so much like the Diablo titles because the several of the developers also made those titles. Maybe you also noticed their work at Flagship Studios which, well, is now no more.

You can choose your character from three different classes. The Destroyer focuses on melee combat, the Vanquisher uses ranged weapons to kill enemies at a distance, and the Alchemist has a variety of damage spells and is able to summon minions. The classes are, however, much more flexible than it may seem at the beginning. You can specialize any class in any weapon category, even if some combinations may not make too much sense. For the alchemist, for example, there are talent builds which focus on melee damage while others let you strike from the distance. While creating your character you will also choose a pet – either a dog or a cat – which will accompany you through the game. The plays an important role. It partakes in combat, has it’s own inventory which equals your own in size, and can even wear some equipment, specifically two rings and an amulet. The best feature about the pet is, however, the ability to send it back to town and sell its whole inventory. This way, you won’t have to use a town portal all the time to sell your stuff.

The skills for each character may seem little in number at first, especially once you realize that there is a range of secondary skills which are equal for each class. Those mainly serve the purpose to enhance damage of a specific weapon type or boost the stats of your pet. But in fact, the skills are quite distinct from one another. Whenever you choose to spend points in a new one, you will get a skill which is really different from the ones you already have. Furthermore, if you specialize in the skills you can acquire early on, they will still be useful later in the game. Spells are another way to customize your character. These you find in form of scrolls, which either drop from mobs or can be bought in the town of Torchlight. Your character has four slots (and your pet also has two!) where you can place these. There are three different kinds of spells: offensive, defensive and charm. They range from summoning zombies, controlling enemies, healing, or just shooting fireballs and there are no class restrictions on them. So, if you are playing a destroyer and still want to be able to shoot magic attacks at distant enemies, here you go. The spells can be found in different levels, ranging from I to VI, but they can also be enhanced by certain skills of your character.

The loot is what keeps you going in the game. And this done very well. In fact, it’s much better than in most other loot oriented games I’ve seen, the ones from Blizzard being exception. There are various types of armor and weapons your character can wear. And there are no character specific items. So there is nothing speaking against raising an Alchemist who is dual wielding a sword and a mace. You can even specialize him in those weapon types. It is however not quite clear to me how the damage for the individual spell is calculated. Your stats go into it and also does your weapon. But every time I thought had figured it out, I tried something different and was immediately proven wrong. If you should come across a really great item and think “woahh, this would be great for my other character”…say now more…just go to the town and put it into the shared stash. This way, all your characters will have access to it.

It should be noted that the game was assembled in less than a year. The graphics look a lot like Warcraft 3 and may be a bit blocky. They are however so stylized that they look real good. Especially the spell effects are great. Still, it runs on broad variety of computers starting in the range of less than a GHz. There even is a netbook mode. In my opinion you get a lot of content for your money, and if you are also waiting for Diablo 3, you should try out the demo. If you should be missing the multiplayer part of the game, be informed that the game is intended to build up the financial backbone for bringing out a free-to-play MMO (yes, no monthly fees, but there will probably be buyable content) in about two years.

From the beginning the game was designed to be highly moddable. In this context, the TorchED, a mod editor, has be released meanwhile. First mods are already available, which for example provide potions to unset skill points you already invested. So, there may be still a lot of things to come in Torchlight.

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The bundle currently contains the apps Shovebox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, Hordes of Orcs. Mariner Write will be unlocked once 500000 participants have signed up for the bundle.

Though I never intended to buy one of these apps I heard, they are quite popular. So this is the best chance to have a look into them.

The offer is open for another six days. So you better get over there and claim your bundle!

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You go into a corridor, the lights are flickering. You here something crawling in the vents above you. Then, everything goes dark. You raise your Plasma Cutter and use the small cone of light it emits to look around, check every corner. Suddenly, you here a loud noise, like something is bending metal. And then, the lights go back on. And so do you. It’s moments like these, in which Dead Space excels. Where other games tend to follow a more or less strict pattern – you go into a room, three enemies spawn in front of you, two behind you – Dead Space toys with you. It teases you, it builds up the tension so that sometimes you fire your gun even without an enemy being in the room. When I played through the game for the first time, I actually was a bit scared of playing. I didn’t think of monsters under my bed, but if I played late hours, I was just too tense to fall asleep. At that time, I always had to squeeze in a session of Phoenix Wright or Professor Layton to cool down. Playing the Dead Space for the first time was one of the best an most intense game experiences I can remember. And there are a number of memorable moments. I even got caught up in reading everything about that universe I could find.

Playing a game for the first time, I usually choose the medium/normal difficulty, since I often feel, this is the way the developer intended the game to be experienced. Most of the time, the harder settings aren’t too hard to handle, but it just feels weird when the enemies turn into bullet sponges or something like that.

After beating the game I had quite a bunch of achievements still open, knowing I wouldn’t even be able to complete them all on the second turn. So I decided to go for the simpler ones first. When you have beaten the game for the first time, you are actually rewarded for it. You get a bunch of power nodes, some money, background info in form of new logs and even a schematic for a military suit, which gives you an armor rating of 30% and the same inventory as the level 5 suit. So I took this save game for another round. As soon as I ran across a store I bought the military suit and at the first bench I fully upgraded my rig as well as the stasis and kinesis modules. The plasma cutter was already fully upgraded in round 1, so the rest of the nodes went into the contact beam (quite an awesome weapon, once you get the hang of it).

Round 2 was a completely different experience. The fear and the tension were basically gone. However, this doesn’t mean it got boring, quite the opposite. Without being as strained as the first time I had the chance to look at all the details and to try out new playing styles. For example I tried to make more use of the stasis and kinesis modules, severed a brutes arm instead of just constantly shooting in his back and I also got more facts of the story straight. Of course, I was also going for achievements. First, I made sure to get the 30 kills with every weapon. Some of the weapons didn’t get much playtime in the first round. Especially the ripper takes much getting used to. But I learned, if you can handle it, you can save quite an amount of ammunition. I guess, this will become more important on the impossible difficulty. Nevertheless, I ended up mainly using the same weapons as before, that being the Plasma Cutter, Force Gun, Line Gun and the Contact Beam. But at least, now I am aware of the other weapons being quite useful in some situations.

One of the major challenges regarding the achievements was when you have to manually override the asteroid defense system. You sit at a cannon and just have to shoot the incoming asteroids. However, there are quite many of them and the pattern in which they approach is more or less random. Playing the game for the first time, I found it already hard just to survive this part of the game, needing many tries to beat it. Now, to get the achievement, you also need to keep your hull integrity at least at 50%. This first seemed impossible to me. However, I found some hints at XBox360Achievements. The pattern of the incoming asteroids may be random, but there are easier ones. Then, you also should prioritize the asteroids. This means, shoot the fast ones first, the big ones, and those close to the center of the screen. The further away from the center they are, the less damage they deal. If you keep that in mind, you just need to be lucky getting an easy pattern and it should be totally doable. There is a second achievement where you practically have to do the same, only this time you are fighting the Slug boss. The goal is still the same: Keep the hull integrity at least at 50%. I felt this is much easier than shooting the asteroids, but maybe I just got an easy pattern. You are done as soon as you destroyed all of the tentacles. It seems to be a good idea to start with the second from the left since it is not too hard to hit. You should try to destroy at least one ore two of the tentacles quite fast since it reduces the amount debris the boss throws at you. Once you have the incoming garbage under control, it should be quite easy.

Now, having beaten the game for the second time I have three achievements still open. Furthermore, they require me to finish the game at least two more times. I still have to upgrade all my equipment, beat the game only using the Plasma Cutter and finish the game on the impossible mode. That’s quite a lot to do. Nonetheless, I’m already looking forward to the next time fighting my way off the Ishimura.

Recently, the prequel – Dead Space: Extraction – has been published for the Wii. As far as I know (I haven’t played it yet) you get to see the events directly before your arrival in the original game. Extraction has been designed as a rail shooter, meaning, you don’t actually move yourself, but rather “just shoot” all the creatures on the screen. I heard it’s a great game like the first one and makes the most out of the Wii’s capacities. I will tell you more once I got my hands on it

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