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The third episode of Max Payne has been announced, but it’s not being developed by Remedy Entertainment (the developers of the first two Max Payne games). Instead, it’s being developed by Rockstar Games- famous for Grand Theft Auto IV, Bully and and Midnight Club.

From my perspective this is bad news.

GTA IV was massive in it’s hype, but at the end of the day I could only force myself through 50% of it before I traded it in. Graphics were average with the occasional nice effect. It tries to tell a story but it’s certainly no RPG. It tries to have car and bike racing, but the physics are awful. It tries a little to be a third-person shooter, but clearly it isn’t. It is the game that survives on the reputation built from it’s former editions and does little to entertain.

Midnight Club: Los Angeles had nice graphics – a vast improvement on GTA IV. But the driving parts still suck (a fatal flaw for a driving game). I think I managed to get through about 4% – it got traded in within a week of buying it. If you want a driving game, check out Burnout Paradise, Grid and Gran Turismo. Forget Midnight Club.

I’ve not played Bully, so I can’t comment.  I do not intend on purchasing it – perhaps if a friend has it I’ll give it a shot.

Rockstar Games seem to make games that sell despite their lack of playability.

I will keep an eye out on the reviews for Max Payne 3, but based upon past experience with this developer, I won’t be buying it.

Telstra can’t seem to work out how to cancel my phone service. Foxtel can’t seem to work out how to cancel my pay-tv service.

I’ve had Foxtel (Australian pay-TV service) for about two years and decided to cancel it about two months ago.

To cancel is easy. Just phone Foxtel, tell them you want to disconnect then argue with the call centre operator while they try and convince you that you should stay – perhaps offering a month free or something else as a sweetener. Once they finally give in, they’ll organise a courier to pick up the equipment on a certain date. The courier arrives, grabs the equipment, scans the barcode label on the SIM from inside the set top box, give you a receipt and away he goes. Simple.

Then, proceed to ignore all the bills that continue to arrive. Yes. They still send me bills for a service I cannot get any more. I did try to phone them to alert them to this fact, but I sat on hold for so long I gave up.

At about the same time, I also installed a new phone line and had it activated as a “Naked” DSL service. I use VoIP exclusively in the home now. I phoned Telstra and asked them to disconnect the phone. This was a simple process and only slightly less painful than cancelling Foxtel. You still have to dance with the operator while they tell you why you should stay. In the end, they give up and cancel the service.

Then, proceed to ignore the bills that continue to arrive. Yes, Telstra still bill me for a service that I don’t use.

I am fucking sick of this shit. The catch with Telstra, of course, is that if I don’t dance for them and jump through all their stupid hoops then there is a chance that all telephony services to my premises will be cancelled. (Actually, not sure if the naked DSL service would get cancelled, but then I don’t want to find out either).

So I try to phone, but they call centre has gone home for the evening. I email a complaint, but I did this more to relieve my annoyance – I don’t expect it to actually achieve anything positive. I log onto their crappy online web site, but I can’t cancel the service there. Naturally I email a complaint about that, too.

The only way to resolve this is to phone the company, jump through their hoops, wait in line, finally get to speak to someone and hope that they actually do what I ask them to do. I’ve already done this once, so what hope is there that they’ll get it right the second time?

Is it co-incidence that Telstra own 50% of Foxtel, and both of their accounts departments seem to be just as incompetent as each other? I have the same problem with both of them.

The Australian Government were fuckwits to sell Telstra in the first place (Thanks Johnny, you little shit monkey!).