G2Play.net? Legit but please be cautious

Recently I was told by a friend that online game key stores such as G2play.net is selling games for cheap. Apparently there are also a lot of similar websites offering such service. So I started wondering if this kind of sites are legit. After some googleing I found out that the reception has been pretty mixed up. Some said they have no problem since day one; Some said their keys work, but they got blocked/disabled after a while; Or even worse, some of them got keys that are already in use. My immediate thought of it that it's all luck based and is not reliable.

This site (G2play.net) has a lot of games in their game catalog. Apparently they get their cdkeys cheap from retail stores from some Europe or Asia countries in bulk for cheap. They only sell the scan of game cdkeys and no retail box available. All games that have been purchased there must be activated via their respective platform (Steam, EA, Blizzard etc). Also the most tempting feature is the word "Instant Delivery".

Until yesterday when I was told again by my friend that they (G2play.net) have Counter-Strike (1.6 version not Source) for sale for 3.49 EUR. That was really a tempting offer. He asked me if the site could be trusted and I told him to give it a try. No big deal losing 3.49 EUR even if it's a scam right? So he registered for an account there and purchased the game with his PayPal.

After about 30 minutes, they finally e-mailed my friend. But instead of the game cdkey that he supposed to get, he got a reply below:

Hello sir/madam

Please send scan or photo of ID card, passport or driving license (valid goverment document not expired - in colour) with your order number.
We must confirm your identity.
It's nothing personal really. We must be very careful because we have many frauds...
It is important to provide any document proving your identity.
This is a one time procedure.
You will not be asked for it again in the future.
Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
Thank you for cooperation.

Best Regards
G2Play.net Team

First impression is, are they serious with their English? Now here comes the real problem, why would they need such information for such a simple transaction? So I told my friend to send them an e-mail to ask for their purpose of doing this. Here's their reply.

Hello sir/madam
Don't worry. We have to verify you, our system just show high risk. It's nothing personal really.
I promise we delete your ID card after that.
We want only see your name, surname, city you live, your date of birth and expiry date.
You can write on that it's for g2play.net, blank out your eyes etc.
It can be also photo using your cell phone.

So what the hell is this? Why would they need such a thing? I understand their intention to keep a copy of their customers identity, in case for fraud cases. But wow, really? They seem to be trustworthy, but not trustworthy enough to give your ID cards to. He sent another e-mail asking for further explanation and this is their reply:

If you dont wish to send Id we can refund your payment
Regards

Alright if they insist, then the deal is off. No further consideration needed. Luckily they are kind enough to offer full refund. At least they are not a scam.

My conclusion is this site (G2play.net) is surely legit, they are pretty fast at replying e-mails. But with this ridiculous ID scans thing, I cannot give them any better feedback than being lame. What good does it do to them? What difference does it make to them? I thought it was supposed to be a completely digital transaction without the need of real life identity proof, the buyer should be able to remain anonymous. Some more the payment has already been done. If you wish to purchase games for cheap and don't mind giving your personal details to them, I say go ahead and have fun. After all, they offer really cheap games; If you concern about your privacy, stay away from it by all mean!

Alessandro MS-1i

I'm no audiophile, but I do enjoy musics. Last month I bought an Audio Technica AD700. I absolutely loved it. But then I found out that these cans are not really good for the music I listen to the most (rock/metal). So in the search for a second pair of headphones, I found Grado. They are said to be very good for rock music. After more research, I finally decided to get this Alessandro MS1i, which is also a Grado Labs product.

I ordered it along with Grado GS1000 bowl pads from Jaben Malaysia. They also gave me a free Hippo Safari which is really cute. These cans aren't as huge as my AD700, but they are definitely not portable either. With the GS1000 pads they look funny but they are so much more comfortable than the stock flat pads. The headband does hurt a bit but it's not a big deal to me. The sound quality? No comment yet, I need some time to burn in before I could really judge. But they already sound awesome out of the box. This is a really valuable purchase and I have no regret. For rock music listeners, Grado surely don't disappoint!

Here is some unboxing photos:






Comparing to my AD700:

Custom game modes in Audiosurf

Love Audiosurf? I do. Bored with the game? Yes pretty much to me as I've been a fan for almost 2 years now. But I've discovered custom game modes that keep the game still interesting & mind blowing to me. I love puzzle modes but I'm a ninja mode player for most of the time, as it is absolutely chilling & fun to me.

Here's a list of all the available keywords for you to experiment with however you want. For the ones with an X, such as [as-monoptX] put a number there, like 3 or 127. You can use many at a time, but only one from each group can be used. Note that these keywords are removed before Audiosurf sends the song's title to last.fm.

* [as-4lane] Play with 4 lanes

* [as-monoonly] Mono characters required
* [as-everybodymono] All characters have only 2 block colors

* [as-lessgrey] Mono characters have less grey blocks
* [as-allgrey] Mono all greys. Scores start at 1000 and go down with each hit.
* [as-nogrey] Mono characters have no grey blocks

* [as-monoptX] Base points for Mono characters (default 3)

* [as-nostlth] Remove Stealth and cumulative hit bonuses

* [as-swind] Sidewinder camera mode
* [as-bankcam] Banking camera mode
* [as-first] First-person camera mode

* [as-caterp] Big strings of blocks instead of only solo blocks

* [as-mszX] Minimimum match size (number for X)

* [as-wbX] Percentage of white/black blocks

* [as-mtX] Match collection ticks (default 10-25)

* [as-prowsX] Puzzle row count (0-8)

* [as-hidepuz] Play with an invisible puzzle grid

* [as-steep] For slow songs, dramatically increase slope and speed of the track (added in the 2/09 International Update)

To edit your song's tags, you could use this nice free program Mp3tag. You could get more infos on the original page here.

How to use a Dual Shock controller in Beat Hazard

Last month, I came across to know about this newly launched game called Beat Hazard. The demo was really great so I decided to purchase it. It's a shooter game based on music of your own choice, it's like Geometry Wars + your music. The input methods for the game are keyboard + mouse or a Xbox 360 controller for Windows version.

I was playing it with keyboard + mouse until I found an old China made dual shock controller in the storage. So I hooked it up with my computer and decide to give it a try with Beat Hazard. Unfortunately it wasn't recognized by the game because it wasn't a Xbox controller.

So I google'd around and I found out an interesting controller emulator to emulate my dual shock controller into a Xbox 360 controller. You can get it in here.

To make it work, just download the file from the link above and extract everything in it into your Beat Hazard's folder ("The default would be C:/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/beat hazard"). You can run XInputTest.exe to verify the button maps, if necessary, you could change it by editing x360ce.ini in the same folder. Also make sure that xinput1_3.dll is in the same folder. If nothing goes wrong, you should be able to use a controller for your Beat Hazard game now.

More info here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1232832

How to purchase Steam games with region lock?

Steam is having a Sega sales week this week. I found out that Alien vs Predator was on sales for £12.50 in the UK. But too bad it was only available in the UK as well. But I managed to find out a way to bypass the region lock. I will post a simple tutorial to get it done.

First you will have to get yourself an UK IP address. How do you do that? Well you could use UK proxy or VPN. Because there aren't so much free proxy servers that could support HTTPS, so I went with the latter. I managed to find a free UK VPN that is offering an hour trial. You could get a trial account here. After registration you should be emailed about the login info & configuration method if you don't know how to set it up. After you have an UK IP, now you can process to the next step

Now that you have an UK IP, your Steam store page should be in the UK region automatically (the currency should appear in £). Now proceed and go to add your game to the cart. When you're done, go to your Steam profile page, change your country to UK, then proceed to payment. Change your country in the billing information to UK. From my experience, you don't have to have an UK street address. The transaction should be done if nothing went wrong. Now you can enjoy your game!