Most important ist the navigation system, the seamless bluetooth integration (for cell phones) and the iPod integration.

Wish me good luck. I am awaiting the offer this week.

So I tried to stay calm and was looking for a place to find a safe rest. I was lucky that there was an exit to a parking lot 1000m ahead. So I decided to change to the right lane and then taking the exit to the parking lot. I felt immediately that it must have been more than the electric generator. I barely had brakes and the power steering was also gone.

Oh, oh.. what was wrong with Zara?

Once I came to a rest I opened up the hud and found out that the fan-belt was completely smashed. I knew that I was stuck now. 100km away from Stuttgart, my destination.

So I called Nissan Assistance to get me some help. Since I bought the car new I had all kinds of warranties. The first assistant responded. He barely spoke any German nor English. French speaking guy I was at least able to communicate that my car broke and that I wanted him to call a towing service, and at the same time to get me a rental car.

Now the real story begins.

The towing service came 30mins later. I was originally promised that the towing service would call me to give me an arrival time. I found out that Nissan Assistance did not give them the right telephone number. First FAIL.

While the towing guy was loading Zara onto his truck I called Nissan Assistance again. They did not call back regarding the rental. I found out that they could not get me a rental at 8:30pm. Sencon FAIL.

I still wonder why they did not call me to tell me. Really bad. Now again I had a French speaking guy on the phone. This was getting annoying. He explained to me that there is no chance to get a rental car but he could get me a hotel in the town where the towing service brought my car to. The nearest Nissan garage, of course. Guess what, it was the Nissan garage in Spaichingen. Ever heard of it? No? Me neither. I realized that I was screwed now. No way of getting a rental from them and only stupid options. Third FAIL.

Now I was trying to find alternatives with them. It was 10pm already now. They said that the nearest rental car company they could get me a car was in Stuttgart on the next day. Oh, and things were getting even worse. I had the option of getting a rental car for three days and no further help from Nissan Assistance in this matter. So if the repair would take longer I would have to pay the car myself. Awesome, right? Alternatively they offered a train ticket home and one back to get the car once it was repaired. I couldn’t make clear to them that I was not on my way home but rather my journey started when the car broke. So I had two useless options. Rental car for three days but no further assistance if I chose this option or the train ticket from nowhere to home and back to nowhere to get my car. They do not even pay for a taxi if the destination if further away than 50km. In my case 100km. Forth FAIL.

I agreed with them that I would take the rental car form Sunday on. That meant that I could keep it until Wednesday and hope that the car was repaired by then.

While stuck in Spaichingen I asked the friendly road side assistant if he could drive me to the next bigger town, Rottweil. While on my way there I called up my sister to come and pick me up. This was my best option. Poor sister. Driving 100km to get me and 100km back. Just because Nissan couldnt help me.

Sunday came and I got my rental car, from AVIS. I had 3 further calls with Nissan assistance – oh, did I mention that I had all the calls with my cell phone in a foreign country? Cost me a fortune. Fifth FAIL.

On Tuesday my car was ready.. yay. I was able to get home from work early to go to pick up my car in Spaichingen. Guess what. There was no AVIS rental service in Spaichingen. The nearest AVIS was 25km away from the garage. So I phoned up the Nissan garage, where my car was being repaired to ask them if they could pick me up at AVIS. They did not. They did not feel responsible at all I had to return the car and get to Spaichingen by train.

It took me freaking 2h to get from AVIS to the Nissan garage. Worst public transportation ever I have seen.

Finally I got to my car. Grabbed my steering wheel and drove off as quickly as possible. Everything was good again. The Lady felt awesome, esp. compared to my small rental, a Merc A180

So guys… I really hope that nobody of you will ever have a problem with a Nissan car far away from a major city. Because Nissan Assistance won’t really help you.

The only good news is that I did not have to pay for the repair.

Sad, sad story.

Apparently  this video cannot be played in some countries.

The good news first The Griever is actually easier to kill, compared to Tiamat. So what do you have to do?

First of all you will realize that there is a wagon in the room and a few ice blocks. This fight consists of three stages.

1. The Griever will fire a lase beam at you. If you hide behind the wagon or one of the ice blocks the Griever cannot hit you. But that doesn’t help you since you need to smash all ice blocks with your new glove. The trick here is that you can only smash the ice blocks as long as they appear blue – that means that the griever didn’t heat the ice block up (turning orange) with his laser while you hide behind the ice block. So try and smash as many as possible as fast as possible in the beginning of the fight. The ice blocks that remain you need to avoid so that the Griever aims at you instead of the ice block and lets it stay blue for you to be able to smash it. I found out that if the Griever hits an ice block and therefore doesn’t allow you to smash it, it helps if you approach the Griever. He then does not fire a laser but instead blows you away. This doesn’t hurt you so much and buys you time to let the ice blocks cool down. Once they turn blue rush to them and smash them… until you smashed all.
2. Now the rails for the wagon are free. Rush behind the wagon and drag it (circle) while using your glove (triangle) to accelerate it towards the griever. First time the wagon hits the Griever it does not hurt him too much. So rush back and do this again. But hurry up. If you wait too long stones will drop on you and hurt you. As soon as the Griever gets hit a second time, he will go down and you need to run to him and smash the blue bubble with your glove, which protects his heart (what we are after). The blue shell around his heart breaks and he becomes vulnerable. The problem now is that he sends out some flying thingies after you.
3. Rush back behind the wagon and send it back to him. If you are fast enough it will kill most of the flying mobs. Kill the  rest and repeat hitting the Griever with the wagon. Do this around three times and the Griever dies.

Well done. That’s it. Isn’t too hard, isn’t it?

Navigon did a little better but altogether I can not recommend replacing a real navigation system with the iPhone 3G. Not worth the money, in my opinion.

I really hope that the iPone 3GS does better with GPS than the old 3G.

It was a catastrophe… no really. It could barely position the phone. I had the feeling that it was using triangulation and not GPS. I swore never to trust the iPhone again, when it comes to location services.

After I came home I was still mad but curious if I was the only one on this planet with this problem. After a quick Yahoo query I found that this is actually a common problem. In the Apple discussion boards I found a post, suggesting to turn of 3G (apparently it has an influence on the location service of the iPhone) and then reboot the device. After powering up the Iphone again the posting suggests to go to the Google Maps App and doing a quick self locate. This apparently re-initializes the GPS module and should fix my problem.
The posting also says that turning 3G on again after the self location is safe. I will give this a try. If it fixes my issues with the iPhone GPS I am happy. But really… Apple, this can’t be it. How would one find this solution. How bad is GPS implemented on the Iphone.

Update 1: I tried it out. It does not really work better. The self location service works “OK” fast but it is totally inaccurate. 50m deviation at least. And I can also confirm that 3G has an influence on the GPS signal. Leaving 3G off helps.

After I knew what to do it still took me 10-15 tries until I down’ed her. Damn… it felt so good.

Phase 1: First I had to throw a sticky lava ball at her and then use the blade in ‘homing mode’ in order to bring the lave ball to explode (R3 for aiming mode, and L2 for homing on both targets). You have to be very quick here, because Tiamat starts to throw fireballs at you. As soon as Tiamat flew next to a torch  I quickly threw the blade to first hit the torch and then the lava ball, which was sticking on her. This explosion lets her crash to the ground. Now that she lay on the ground I could hit her a couple of times with the sword (around 12-15 times).She quickly regains strength and starts to fly again.

Phase 2: Then I had to run quickly to the middle, because in the second phase she starts attacking you from the sky with her claws. I found that it greatly helps pressing L2 during this phase because this button refocuses the camera so that you will always see where she is. Once she starts her attack, she will not change direction again. So as soon as she charged me I simply had to dodge with R1. Tiamat does this three times.

Phase 3: Same game as Phase 1. I had to hit her with the lava ball and then throw the blade again. Again, I had to be really quick because she starts to throw fireballs again. Once I brought the lava ball to explosion she – once again – fells to the ground. I charged her quickly and was able to launch a couple of more hits with the sword\

Phase 4: Tiamat now stood on the ground. She basically has three things that she does at this stage of the fight.

1. jumping vertically in the air and land with an explosion. You don’t want to be standing beneath her when she does this.
2. Throw 3 fireballs at you. They hurt badly. REALLY stay away from here.
3. Trying to hit you with the claws.

Between these three events I found it useful to use a mix between R3 to aimfully throw a fully charged blade (hold R2) at her and approaching her quickly and hitting her with the sword a couple of times before start dodging again.
From time to time she charged me during this phase. I had to quickly press O (circle) a couple of times to hit her in the face. When I was not quick enough she threw me in the air and then fired a huge fireball at me. This is what you want to avoid.

Looping through this routine she was down after around 3 minutes (at least that’s how it felt). I had three of these action sequences where I quickly had to press the circle button. I don’t know if this is hardcoded or if you guys had more of these action scenes.

But yeah.. a rewarding fight. I am looking forward to the next boss. Maybe I should really consider platform games in the future.

This is the result, if you are curious. Had to share it

I took these shots in Portugal last summer.

So far I must really say that Vigil did an awesome job with Darksiders (which I shall referr as DS from now on). Pretty neat graphics, awesome animations and very easy for beginners of this genre.

Lots of levels play like a tutorial and the player is being introduced nicely to the game and combat mode.

After around 3h of play I was on my way to Tiamat. The first boss in the game. Before reaching Tiamat I had to face three waves of foes with no checkpoint in between. OMG… I got so frustrated, since I am not used to this kind of games. I will let you guys know how this goes. Enough for now. I will write a short post once I finished my first boss in DS.

I must say that it has an awesome gameplay, nice graphics (although easily topped by Killzone 2 on the PS3) and one of the best setups that I have seen with shooters.

Now that I am done with the single player campaign I am left with multiplayer. My only problem is that I don’t know anybody who plays MW2 on the PS3

So I guess MW2 has to go back to the shelf and make room for Darksiders which is next.