Well that's why I was a bit apprehensive when I first loaded this up.

I though it was a hack job.

Like someone damaged or left behind some dlls while attempting to crack the data from an original disk and then quickly and sloppily translated it in an Ed Wood's fashion were first attempt was best attempt and there was no looking back or second takes.

I mean it may be possible that the localization could've damaged it this much.

I'm wondering if Beam Dog's copy is the same as GG's copy and if Beam Dog mighty actually be 'Naughty Dog'. XD

Problem is I've got no idea what kind of support you can expect for this game now. The developer seemed to have cut development of Precursors short and there hasn't been much in the way of signs of life there aside from them striking up the new publishing deal. I'm certainly not aware of any official patches for either game.

Well, it's no biggy for this one because it was a five dollar gamble.

That's why I'm saying if someone spends thirty at GG for this and it is the same thing that I got from Beam Dog, they're not going to be very happy.

Well now you've got a legal copy you can always get the Russian files and see if somewhere out of it all you can piece together a working game. The Deep Shadows forums might have advice on how to fix things up with a Western version. They may even have the necessary Russian files to avert the problems you're experiencing.

Also as Ptah stated

It is playable but takes a lot of patience and frequent saving when you know that it is safe to save.

Because at any time you can accidentally break a mission or dump to desktop.

I was only dumped once and that was from talking to the guy at the very begining who is fishing on the pier. Some multiple choice I selected triggered a crash bug but it wasn't related to my system as an in-game debug menu was thrown up at me.

Also, there is this strange thing where you can only advance conversations by using the ESC key.

Not so problematic but the conversations will eventually advance themselves so if the conversation auto advances to a multiple choice menu while you're hitting ESC, you might dump out of conversation and not be able to get back into it again.

Well just played another 30 min or so and was able to play from a save before the freeze and get through and update the current mission status. I also was able to check some settings and turn a help setting off in game play that stopped the popups during combat. The dialogues are a bit tough to tell if they are going to advance on there own or the esc to progress them. I got a bit further and then while taking to the water to swim around a bandit installation near the beach the game froze again. I might try some compatibility settings on the exe next time I play and see if that helps. The sound going out problem seems to be a common problem in looking at the Deep Shadows forums, but no definite fixes for it on the English version. Wesp5 used a SilentHill v11 patch to fix a similar problem he had in Fallout3 NV and recommended trying it on Xenus, but the post was over a month ago and nothing further on whether that works.

I think what is causing the sound problem is that when they voiced the game over in english they didn't separate the voices from all the other sounds so every time the sound cuts while you're attacking it's probably because a dubbed over voice is overiding the envrionmental sounds.

I'm not sure why they would bother to translate Russians yelling "Argh" "ugh" and "agh" but I'm pretty sure that translated dubbing is what is cutting out the sound of your weapons firing.

If you remember the boat chase at the opening you couldn't hear any of the enemies firing at you, your boat or the rush of waves, all you could hear was your two people in the boat having an Heckle and Jeckyl conversation.

"The scoundrels! They've spilled my tea!"

How does this compare to Far Cry 2, besides the bugs and bad voice acting? The last few open-world games I played (Asscreed, Mercenaries 2) were quite annoying, what with all the hand holding, mundane "collect the object that has absolutely no relevance to the story at all" achievements/side quests, sense of disjointedness (murdered some guys? No problem, hiding for 10 seconds will make them forget), and fake freedom (one big world with really nothing much to do but go through the same motions 105 times). I'm willing to look past the bugs and flaws of this game if it doesn't fall into those traps.

There's a lot of inane and optional convesation quests at the begining ie; "Go talk to my girlfriend for me and I'll give you some cash."

I haven't actually come across any shooting yet but someone wanted to send me scuba diving after a monster in an underwater cave.

It seems like you have to complete a lot of silly things to sort of boost yourself up a bit before taking on larger challenges and quests don't have a time limit so some stuff handed to you right off the bat are probably too big for you from the start.

I've never played Far Cry but if it is an open world shooter I would like to try it because I'm assuming its a lot more polished than White Gold.

The message delivery quests wouldn't be so terrible if the dialogue made sense and wasn't swarming in typos.

Far Cry 2 was great..... for half a game. Once you go to the southern part, the game became a MMO of fetch quests and whatnot.

I love FPSandbox games and White Gold falls into the same rut as all the others. While that's not really a bad thing, it does seem similar.

One of the greatest strengths of White Gold is the size of world. There are several different islands and you get to use a bunch of different vehicles (boats, planes, cars,etc). The combat is solid, graphics are good, but the NPC/voice overs are weak. If you're a fan of FPSandbox games and can get it on sale, check it out. If you're hoping it will reinvent the wheel, it won't. =)

What about the carrot on a stick part, like leveling up and acquiring loot? Is it compelling?

I have quite a few games I am working through, but I am enjoying playing this title. Playing as admin seems to have fixed my freezing problem, but I still have the sound going out after playing for any length of time. I need to look into replacing the sound files with the Russian version of the game apparently. I have found the missions and combat quite good, but you will need to get past the excessive written dialogue, bad spelling and sometimes weird translation. The perk system seems quite good with choices that do help you get through specific missions, a hold breath under water perk to reach an underwater series of caves a ways out from shore. Also perks for carry capacity, aiming to name a few. The loot system is ok but a bit difficult to distinguish what things are until you get use to it. Weapons picked up seem to be damaged so they don't work well. So far I have been just selling them off and usable gear needs to be bought through the trader. Healing can be done through eating some edible items either looted or bought, but small amounts. Also healing through syringes during combat, but this leads to possible chem dependence depending on the syringe strength used. Healing also through a doctor or sleep if you can find a safe spot to sleep.

Leveling up is pretty cool. There are perks you can unlock which better your guy. It's kind of like Fallout 3/New Vegas. Some perks have requirements to unlock other perks, etc. It's pretty cool overall. It's not a pure RPG type system, but for a FPS it offers more than most.

As far as loot goes, every bad guys drops something (health, ammo, guns, etc). There are crates to look into, lockboxes and so forth. There are also shops to buy things, so you're pretty much covered there.

The game is definitely a rough diamond. It might turn off some just due to some poor presentation items and bugs. I rolled the dice with it and Precursors, which is another game Deep Shadows made just set in space and haven't been disappointed.

Thanks, that definitely sounds like its right up my alley.

This game is hilarious :D

Especially the voice acting, sounds so out of place, and gotta love the Maxim intro :)

One neat tidbit is that in the game files there is a file called "protect.dll". On it's info it says "Xenus2 NoDVD by TRiViUM"

:D