crossing the line (with style)

Sometimes it’s just not enough to win. You need to send a clear signal. You need to stand up and make the world acknowledge your supreme victory. You need to cross that finish line with style.

The tiny computer people applauded my work and even remained unconcerned about their possible deaths, so much was their faith in my awesome car control ability. There’s still a line, however. Yes, the finish line itself, but also a line that even style should not cross.

But first, as you may have noticed, this was in my Steam list last night:

Woo! I enjoyed Dirt 2, even though I never found it that difficult (and used Flashbacks maybe twice), so I had this pre-ordered for PC a while ago. Dirt 2 I found cheap for the PS3 and, although I can use my Logitech Driving Force GT on both PS3 and PC, Sony has lost my business for a while for being wholly incompetent. Go Steam! Except when Steam sucks to because Games For Windows Live is close to an abomination. Way back when, Dirt 2 would crash instantly upon launch. No good reason for it. Launch, boom, dead. After some forum diving, turns out that you had to manually install GFW if you’ve never had it on your system before. Ugh, but then it worked.

I didn’t intend to boot Dirt 3 last night, if I’m honest. I was saving it for the weekend when I could get really into it instead of just tooling around for an hour before bed. Then, a friend had a problem with the Dirt 3 launcher attempting to launch and then…. nothing. “Not again!”, right? I was unable to help him much since my version somehow unlocked and installed mostly without issue. Mostly. GFW would absolutely not let me through with my CD Key. It kept launching a page, repeatedly, to explain server-side authentication and never progress from there. GFW wouldn’t even accept mouse navigation, so I had to do everything through the keyboard, multiple times, before it deigned to proceed to authenticate me and I could get to the game.

Well, that was the hope. You know what would be great? To start a game, get past all the logos, then actually be able to play something right away.

It’s a racing game. Not everyone plays for tour mode. Some people want to get in, get online, and get going. With only a short time before I had to nod off, that’s what I wanted. Yes, it’s nice that I can be an unseen (which is fine with me) girl and Canadian. It’s less nice that I can’t tell the slow talking lady “Shut up for a sec and I’ll get to it later”. A minor complaint, I know. Dirt 3 is far from the worst offender when it comes to ‘There’s a game in here somewhere, right?’ so I’ll cut it some slack because it decided that it likes my PC and let me run everything blasted to highest settings.

It even decided it liked my wheel, eventually. It’s not Codemaster’s fault that the DFGT freaks out on my computer, oh, every time I press a button. Most PC racing games I play — iRacing, Richard Burns Rally, Live For Speed, F1 2010 — seem to calm the wheel down and things are normal. Dirt 3 wasn’t able to achieve this, but I was by launching the game through the Logitech Game Profiler. Problem solved! With that open, the wheel doesn’t spin out of my hands every time something is pressed, even on the desktop. Victoly!

With that settled, you can make sure that the game uses your wheel by going through Options > Controls > Choose Preset > Logitech Driving Force GT USB (or whatever wheel / controller you use)

What time is it? It’s Style Time. I like Style Time. Style Time is any old time you feel like, as long as you are prepared for the consequences.

Race 2: TOO MUCH STYLE.

I don’t think I could do that again if I tried. Most people would be disappointed with a finish like that: killing it, way in first place, across the line, then dead. Oops. I was (and am) giggling like a crazy person. Then it was bed time and I will have to resume my illustrious rally career another day ;)