IDLE BLOGGER » Games

Glyde – Site Review

Jagadish — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:40:41 +0000

Glyde is an online portal which sells pre-owned (used) or NEW video games, music, books and DVDs. As far as I know, the things for sale on the site are entirely user submitted. Glyde only acts as a middle man to make the transaction possible. It is sort of like ebay without the whole bidding process. I had recently purchased an item on the site and I thought it would be a good idea to post a review for others curious about the service.

Glyde follows the minimalistic design made popular by Google. There is a big search box in the middle of the page (hard to miss ). It also comes up with suggestions as you keep typing. This is really quick if you are looking for something specific. However, if you want to browse through categories, you would have to click on all items at the bottom. There is also an option to click through daily deals on top of the site. There is no way to sort the games in alphabetical order or in terms of popularity or even by price. You can only filter them through categories and consoles. Again, let me be clear here: if you are looking for something specific, glyde automatically gives you the cheapest price of that product in different condition categories (New, Excelling, Good, Disc only).

If you are looking to sell your products, then all you do is enter the name of the product and pick one of the options (if your game is multi-platform). Glyde automatically picks a suitable price for you. You can increase or decrease the price to your liking. It also tells you how many people have priced the item lower than that. Considering the fact that there are many people trying to sell the same thing, it might be a good idea to price it lower than the prescribed price. Glyde will also ask you to pick the condition of the game. I am not sure about the payment procedure and such. I think the general idea is that your money gets deposit into your account once you request for it or you could use that money to buy other games on the site. I think the commission is 10% on sale price (again please read the FAQs on site for detailed information).

Coming to my experience with Glyde, I have purchased two games from the site and received one of them. I was a little worried about the purchase because unlike ebay there was no option contact the seller for pictures or get assurances about the condition of the item. There was no feedback score either. So, there was really no way of knowing if the seller’s interpretation of Excellent is same as mine. Also the shipping was painfully slow. For some reason, Glyde decided that they would mail the envelope (ala Netflix style) to the seller with the buyer’s address on it. And the seller would stick his game in that envelop and drop it in the mailbox. This means that there is twice as much shipping time involved compared to ebay. Essentially, most games take about two weeks to arrive. There is no expedited option for shipping either. If you are looking to get something quick, this is not the place to go. This is one of the major gripes I have with the service. I do not understand why Glyde does not just allow the seller to print the mailing receipt and stick it on a “Glyde prescribed envelope”. The bubble wrap media mail envelopes are like $2 or less and are available at every USPS store. I have to say, I did not like the waiting but the game I received allayed all my fears. The game was in great condition. It was “Like New” just as it should be . It made me go and buy another game .

I am not sure if I got lucky but my next purchase would tell. If you don’t mind the waiting time, Glyde is a great service to try. They have tons of games for all the current generation and the previous generation consoles as well as the current gen handhelds. You will definitely find a great price on that game you have been looking for. Make sure you search for Glyde coupons online before you click Buy Now. You could easily save $3 by using on these coupon codes: KOTAKU, UGO, HIATI. You could also follow them on Twitter (@Glyde) to get more deals and coupon codes. Glyde is a good service like ebay’s half.com if you are looking to buy something quickly. Just look at both sites and buy it from the cheaper place.

Pros:

Clean simplistic interface
One click buying.
Automatically finds the cheapest price for the product in each condition category.
Easy-mode selling. (no need to package or buy shipping supplies)
Get better trade-in values for your used games (better than gamestop).

Cons:

Long shipping times (2 weeks)
No option for expedited shipping.
Credibility: No way to trust the seller.
No pictures of the product before purchase (Just the stock picture).
No feedback option.

Things that happened since I last blogged

Jagadish — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:22:28 +0000

As always, there are too many things to write and too less time. I really enjoy teaching a lot and I love it when I teach these kids new things and they are just amazed like I did some magic trick. The thing I hate about teaching is that it takes up a lot of time. It really does not allow me to do other things. I spend a lot of time making homework problems, solutions for them and grading. The grading part of teaching is probably the most aggravating aspect. You see the kind of blunders they make in homeworks after going through all the trouble of explaining things, it really pisses me off.

Anyway, a lot of things happened since I last blogged. A few things I really hated and a very few things I enjoyed. Just thought I’d make a list in no particular order.

Nadal lost
Federer won French Open. I kinda expected this would happen though
Deccan chargers have won the IPL. Chennai kings lost in semis.
My girlfriend bought me a macbook. I don’t know if I should cheer about this or not. I am a windows guy, not a great fan of Mac. But I will have to try to use it and see I guess.
Apple released a new iPhone which I really wanted to get. I even planned to get out of my contract with Sprint but really not a wise move considering AT&T has really bad network. Coming from a Sprint customer that is a huge insult.
Palm pre, the most loved phone since the original iPhone has finally been realeased, it is another phone I still want but I might not get it because I just don’t want to spend all that money and change my existing $30 SERO plan.
E3 has come and gone and soo much to cheer about .
Microsoft – great show, highly impressed with Project Natal but I doubt it would work as well as they showed it would. It is not going to be an easy task pulling it off. And honestly, Peter Molyneux should shut the fuck up. He has a big mouth and I doubt if Milo would work as well he touted he would. Artificial intelligence is a still thing of science fiction and we are far from it. This is coming from a guy who does programming for a living, you better believe it .
Nintendo – probably the most boring show of all three. I am a rabid Nintendo fanboy and even I couldn’t help but yawn a few times but the announcement of Metroid: Other M has completely offset everything. Also I heard that there is a new Zelda in the making, there was a trailor for Super Mario Galaxy 2 and finally Little Big Planet Mario style. All exciting things but Nintendo is still missing that one puzzle piece, Wii-HD. Get it done, Nintendo. Give us HD.
Sony – Sony came up with the regular stuff. They had a brilliant show and very entertaining as well. God of War 3 was amazing, the Last Guardian trailer was awesome as well. Have to say, their motion controller seemed very interesting too. But they only showed a bunch of tech demos and no games yet. This kinda proves that MS and Sony have finally adopted the Nintendo philosophy and they jumped on the bandwagon a little too late. It might still take them a year or two to pull it off but HD is one thing Nintendo is far behind, so unless Nintendo comes up with Wii-HD, MS and Sony will be moving ahead this generation.
India lost the T20 World cup. They didn’t even qualify for the semis. They have been winning a lot lately, so this was expected to happen one day. I had no interest to start with anyway.
Lakers WON!! Enough said!

I guess that covers everything. Maybe I will blog often now that I have gotten that off my chest

My thoughts on Braid

Jagadish — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:02:49 +0000

I finished playing braid yesterday and as always quite late when it comes to finishing games . Given that I spent about less than an hour every day and no use of walkthroughs, it was quite an arduous task. I have to say as frustrating as it gets playing the game, it is really very satisfying when you figure things out on your own. Jonathan Blow has done a marvellous job in making this game. He had put all the right ingredients to make the game look innovative and yet familiar. Most people would confuse Braid to a platformer but it really is a puzzle game with an interesting time travel mechanic. It has a brilliant sound track and great visuals.

The story follows a typical Mario style adventure, an ordinary guy trying to rescue the princess. But when you get to the end of the game, it is kinda anti-climatic. I wouldn’t want to give too much away but it surprised me. I was shocked to say the least. It is for these kind of moments you become a gamer. You want to be surprised even if it is an unpleasant one. It was the shock that made me love FF6 when the world was destroyed half way through the game. It was the kind of shock that made me love KOTOR when I realized the main character was the Sith Lord, Raven. I could go on and on. The ending is, I would say on par with many great games but the game itself is not perfect.

My biggest gripe about the game is the stars that you have to collect at the end of the game. Having Speed runs is an interesting thing but collecting the stars is a really pain staking exercise. Most of them are hidden in really obscure place and takes a long long wait. I might still try to get them when I am absolutely bored but I wouldn’t try to attempt it otherwise. It also a short game for its price. There is very little to go back for once you done playing through once. Very little replay value. Even with all these complaints, I think Braid is a solid 8.5/10.

Updated review: Civ 4

Jagadish — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:38:00 +0000

I probably rushed my judgement there. Agreed Civ 4 is a great game and has the juiciest graphics for a turn based Strategy game but it gets too boring and repetitive after awhile. You research more techs, build more farms and cities, build an army to destroy other civilizations and after that, what? You start another game, probably in another map and do all the same. There is ofcourse the challenge of terrain and other things. But these are small variables to change. It becomes awfully boring to watch other civilizations taking their time with their turns. Moving their tanks around in a 3 tile island gets awfully boring. While you know it, 5 turns took 30 minutes to be done with. Frankly those days when I can spend hours on a game are really gone now. I’m into those quick games where I can make decent progress in a couple of hours, save it and come back to finish it off later. So Civilization is not for me. I am sure Sid Meier is awfully disappointed now.

Sid Meiers Civilization 4

Jagadish — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:13:00 +0000

Sid Meier’s Civilization 4 has got to be one of the addictive games I’ve ever played. It is brilliant the way it is made. The way you build up your city in small square blocks and watch your borders grow is really awesome. You develop an unhealthy obsession to obliterate any civilization in and around your vicinity and spread your pink borders all over the map. You would want to go back to the game for another session of 30 minutes, do some more research earn more gold, think of the ways to make your people happy. Its awesome the way the game makes multi-tasking look soo easy. I’m not too far into the game but I can tell this is only going to get better when I invent nuclear technology. I’m getting wicked thoughts already.

Well, there does seem to be some kind of an agenda regarding the addiction that the civilization games cause. There is a site online called Civilization Anonymous. It seemed to some kind of a rehab for all the addicts. It is probably the first of its kind where there is an organization helping addicts of a specific game instead of the gaming in general. While, I agree the game is indeed addictive, I did not find it addictive enough to take all the time off my regular activities to play it. It is good but definitely not that good. So lets hope that everyone keeps it real and instead of blaming the publisher and the game developer for their weakness, it would be nice if they owned up to their irresponsibility and moved on. After all, its just a stupid game. How bad can it get?

Wii on Foxtrot

Jagadish — Sat, 13 May 2006 05:33:00 +0000

Foxtrot takes a dig at the new name for the nintendo’s new console “Wii”. Honestly I think i’m getting used to it. I dont mind it being called Wii. If it does cost as much as they’re saying it will, i would defnitely buy one for myself. It seems like soo much fun . Especiall the tennis game they showed on E3 press conference was truly fun and amazing. It is something I can imagine my girlfriend wanting to play with . Waiting eagerly for its release. For Nintendo’s sake I do hope Wii is a success.

Revolution is now called Wii

Jagadish — Mon, 01 May 2006 11:11:00 +0000

Nintendo’s newest console, which was called Revolution until awhile back would now be called “Wii”. Well, yes, you heard it right.. its a Wii pronounced “wee”. I know I know dont let your mind wander. I’ve seriously heard enough piss jokes over the weekend. Agreed Nintendo had never been a great company to come up with intelligent or creative names(N64 for the first 64-bit gaming console and GameCube for a console shaped like a Cube), but that is no excuse for coming up with a Wii. Compared to Revolution, Wii looks soo weak. The response to the name from every quarter has been really bad. Even the so called fanboys want to rename the console back to Revolution. In Nintendo’s own words,

Wii sounds like ‘we,’ which emphasizes this console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.”

They also insist that the name is unique like Google, iPod. Agreed, its not in the name but the usage would be quite awkward in the future. That list would be quite lewd to post. I suggest you visit Joystiq to read it all.

Sony’s Schizophrenia

Jagadish — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 10:40:00 +0000

Interesting article this one. Talks at length about the current financial situation and choices that go into making a Playstation for sony.

Sony’s Schizophrenia
The problem Sony has (and the source of its neurosis) is that all of its divisions are in big trouble with the exception of the SCEA, the videogames division, and perhaps its computer division. With the exception of the Spider-Man series, Sony’s movies have had mediocre performance at the box office. Their music division has fallen victim to the declining CD sales that have afflicted the entire industry. Sony is no longer the cutting edge producer of high-end TVs—they were overtaken long ago by Sharp and Samsung. And in computers, although the Vaio line is doing quite well, Sony is not nearly as big a player in the industry as Dell or Compaq—even Apple arguably has more mindshare.

Its a long article though. Do read it if you have the time.

Things that happened since I last blogged