Grant Laird, Jr. Blog

Over years, Grant have been enjoyed playing video games from Atari 2600 to Nintendo to Xbox 360. Even he is not biggest player in the world, but he would try to buy few good games and play whenever he could with his busy schedule. He acknowledged that only several games that he would play like crazy. (countless hours and never get tired of it)

Half-Life Screenshot with Subtitle (Picture - Courtesy of DeafGamers.com

In past recent years, he noticed that many games on box cover like Xbox 360 and others with picture on it (beautiful drawing, details, specification and others) but what annoying him the most — it has no screen shot picture on it!! The reason he likes to see the real screen shot picture on a retail box because he likes to play “first-person shooter” (similar to Doom2 or others) style not other game mode style. Not all retail boxes reveal it.

Last weekend, Grant and his friend went to GameStop store. He almost buys a game called Darkness, but he has hard time tell if it is first-person shooter style because it has no screen shot picture and doesn’t say anything. He can’t even check out demo at a store either. As results, he didn’t buy it.

Back of Half-Life Retail Box Coverage - Example: Lack of good screenshot picture with dashboard on it

He feels it is important to have few screen shot pictures on back of a retail game box before he decides to buy it. Let’s say we will look at GameStop.com website — it has some screen shot picture on it, but it doesn’t look like real tho. It would have shown the gun, hands, health status, weapons, all that works. (Sort of dashboard) This is example, it has screenshot pictures but no details on it. He didn’t look at all titles, but you fully understand the issue. Same thing goes to a magazine such as Game Informer. (hard copy version)

Hopefully, some of the game manufacturers saw this message, and maybe they will improve in future printing. Another solution is downloading demo through your Xbox Live account with Internet access and check out games before you purchase. (Note: not all games available in demo)

P.S. Oh yeah, it would be a bonus if they would put “subtitle available” on a retail box along other specifications — it would help deaf gamers very much. There’s another way around by go to http://www.deafgamers.com/ and see if this game has subtitle in it or not.

By the way, if you are first-person shooter fan, you should check it out - list of free games. (Both old and new)

Not too long ago, Grant discovered hidden premium fee on T-Mobile (Sidekick II) thru monthly statement online. Same thing goes with his Sprint Treo 755p, unfortunately.

Grant probably lost few hundred dollars because he’s not paying attention to statement carefully. He looked up Google and discovered that he’s not alone. Many people got scammed out of it, too. He may get some money back but who knows.

This is real example at http://myluvcrush.ca/ and others – you can look at it but do not put your cell phone number on it. It will automatically take small fee from your cell phone bills.

Once a while, please check your statement online (or mail out) from time to time. It shouldn’t be that hard to notice when there’s hidden fee in it. (price difference, etc.)

Does anybody have similar problem as ours?

Grant Laird Jr.
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com

Grant discussed tech news of the week – few things he mentioned in his vlog plus some of his personal comments…

• Yahoo! Company rejected Microsoft’s $44 billion takeover.

• Microsoft is acquiring Danger, maker of the T-Mobile Sidekick for $500 million.

• Starbucks ended its Wi-Fi (Hotspot) partnership with T-Mobile in favor of one with AT&T.

• Netflix announced that it would begin to phase out HD DVD rentals in favor of rival Blu-ray discs. 

• Google released software development kit for its open mobile platform called Android.

Source: Click here

Care to discuss? Feel free to make comment.

Note: This is experimental; please feel free to make suggest. Thanks!

Grant Laird Jr
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com