I know I have not been posting. It's been weeks! I'm sorry! It's just... but... I'm dragonborn! And the taste of dragon souls is just delicious. Even if a bear decides to charge me while I'm happily sucking up a dragon soul and mauls me in my low HP state.
Skyrim is the first of the Elder Scrolls series that I've had the pleasure to play. The game is fantastic. I'm level (EDIT!) 17 and have begun to avoid the main story line quest. There is so much to explore, so much to collect and create. It fulfills all the things I would like in a single player RPG: slaughtering things, constant ego stroking, making things, hoarding things, and shouting things to death. I always respected the power of voice, so how much cooler can it get? Not much!
I promise I will not put any spoilers in this post. My fellow Skyrim addicts know I've been pretty bitchy and whiny about spoilers. I made my own channel that I could hide in when folks would start talking about the game, even about the equipment they find. Technically, that is not a spoiler, but lalalalalaaaa I just don't wanna know alalalalalalalaaaa...
The game is (almost)endless. Just the perks section is this circle of possible main categories, and each category then has an entire tree of its own, unlocked by category level and also by getting the preceding perks of that tree. You can find perk details here on a wiki page, if you want to see the perks and haven't got the game yourself. While you're leveling up, there is a main mission tree, but also tons, absolute TONS, of side quests, misc missions, locations to explore on the map, respawning dungeons and things to kill and destroy. Everywhere you go, you can pick up respawning ingredients to brew pots, hunt for food and materials to craft gear. You can explore endlessly, and I'm sure that was the intent.
NPC interactions are generally a bit predictable, but I have had some VERY pleasant surprises. During one mission (not going to say which or what), you enter the rendezvous point and overhear your mission giver talking to some others about you. While the other are yakking on about how they predict you'll be complete crap and never make it to the rendezvous, he turns around and basically says, "Oh yeah? Well look what we have here!" I know its programmed for when you enter, but its a great touch and immersion points are deserved. Plus, see my previous mention of ego stroking. The game basically strokes your ego the entire time and we all need that from time to time! (Is it sad that it makes me happy to be awesome and envied and respected in a game? I mean... I'm dragonborn! I deserve it!)
On the PC, the game is just stunning. I am able to run it on ultra with the crossfire enabled, but I do still get frame freezes if I try to give myself whiplash. I have not seen it on console, but my prediction is it just is not going to look as good. If you have a console, feel free to send me some screenshot links to prove me wrong, but I really just can not see how it can be matched. Anyway, did I mention the game is stunning? Facial features are ridiculously smooth, the stuff that doesn't matter are gracefully lower quality so your eyes can focus on the stuff that you can actually interact with. I love that! Instead of making it extremely obvious 'outline-it-in-neon-and-make-it-glow', the game gives more focus to elements you can interact with. Immersion +1point. Salmon jump over the crests of waterfalls, which was a sweet thing I noticed that actually caught my attention. How detailed is that!? I spent a good minute just watching these salmon swimming and leaping against the current.
Finding missions isn't really difficult. You can expect to be able to pick up at least a couple of missions from any npc location you go to. I have a hefty stack of side quests already and I haven't really been actively trying to pick them all up. This is probably the most mechanical part of the game, you can walk up to the npc equivalents of every town and expect to get missions from them. Some people will walk past you and complain about this or that, and if you really want to, you can stop and talk to them. Though some just want more alcohol. Typical.
I haven't really gotten that far (I'm level (EDIT)17 still!) so I'm sure I will encounter plenty of new things to slap around, or get slapped about by, soon enough. So far, the combat has been generally challenging. I've died plenty of times and had to run from a good few fights in the beginning. The sneak mechanic is a very cool and lets you gauge how alerted the enemy is to your presence. You can expect to find the usual encounter mechanics, aka, enter a large open room, step forward, and trigger things that want to axe you. See a room of goodies, walk forward, and get slammed in the face by a grid of spikes. That sort of thing. A few bosses I have encountered have probably been above my level, skill level and player capabilities, but I've been able to cheat the game a bit and get myself into difficult/impossible to get to positions in order to poke them to death with arrows. To date, my record is 112 arrows for one boss. No, there really was no other way for me to kill him.
You get your own house(s). You can even get it decorated for you and there is so much storage space! The bookshelves don't store a ton of books, but of the books you can store, it arranges them on the shelf for you. But I've still dozens of books that sit in a chest somewhere. I collect them for when I'm bored and want to read the contents. Some of the books actually can be helpful (and long winded) tips for your in game encounters. My only complaint about the house is its pretty much impossible to decorate it yourself without the contents of your home flinging themselves in random directions every time you turn around. I can't count how many times I've put that jumpy bit of seared slaughterfish back on that kitchen plate. I'm not eating that.
Obligatory summary on my play style. I have not been planning my perks or really picking anything in particular to skill in. I assign points in whatever I enjoy using and choose perks from point to point. I might regret it in the end if I'm not powerful enough, but I'm not worried about that until it happens! My perks usually go into conjuration, restoration and destruction. My combat begins with conjuration and maybe a bit of destruction if the fight is particularly tough. Otherwise I run around macing everything. Generally on a boss/dragon fight, I will lay down an atronach, put a few poisoned arrows into my target if I have the chance to, charge up to it while it is (hopefully) distracted with my atronach and give it dual poisoned maces to the face. Stamina drained, I circle back to using destruction/restoration until I sink my mana, then frantically start sucking down potions/food so I can do it all over again. Typically the end of a dragon fight involves me macing it to death. Of course, this also often ends in the dragon getting a nifty cinematic kill move involving my lifeless body being thrown around in its jaws.
Tomorrow is my last day of work before the Thanksgiving weekend. If I don't manage to clock at least 40 hours on Skyrim during this holiday, I'm going to be sad.
EDIT: Opps. Apparently I'm level 17 still. Not 19... Eh...
Nov 22, 2011
Nov 6, 2011
The Minecraft, it spreads!
This is not a Battlefield 3 post. Sorry! I simply have not been playing that much to have a good amount to say. Unfortunately, not all in our group have been able to get copies of the game due to financial issues. When you're short on money, 60 bucks is a lot to just drop on a game. Hopefully, as the holiday season gets nearer, everyone will be able to get a copy.
This past week I was gifted a copy of Minecraft (yay! thanks!) and have been caught up exploring that. I find it quite fun and think the idea is a great one. My favorite part of the game is the initial survival. Sadly, as you progress in the game, it become less challenging since it is too easy to find food and resources to be able to survive, the creatures are not aggressive enough to pose a problem and even if you die you respawn with full health and food bar. So yes, I do think the game is too "easy." Usually the only ways I'm worried that I might die is getting stalked by a creeper and getting blown to bits before I realize it's there, or falling off a cliff. My biggest disappointment is the limited number of recipes available. For a game such as this, the things you can create are the most important, and looking at the wiki the list just isn't as long as I expect it to be. For all those copies sold, I certainly expect there to be more! Hey, Minecraft devs, make some more creatures and recipes, please!
That said, I absolutely love the idea of a giant sandbox of randomly generated landscape and being given the means to just meddle with it, altering it to fit my taste, building things and coming up with ways to entertain myself and personalize the world. I appreciate that it can go on pretty much forever, as far as your creativity can go. I understand the game isn't centered around being difficult as a survival game but I hope the developers realize that it shouldn't rely so much on the player creativity. The more complex your world becomes, the harder it should be to progress. And when you die you should not respawn with full health and food bar, you should not be able to retrieve all of y our gear and you should not explode into so many XP orbs that you can crash your friend's server. Sorry!
The game is more fun in multiplayer, so we are running a few private servers. It seems like an obvious fact. When you are building a world, it's just good to have some friends around to laugh with and talk about potential projects and things to do. Otherwise it's just you, the rain, and MOOO! and BAAA! and SSSSSSSSS BOOM!
Enough talk... here's a quick tour of my own single player world:
In the first night, I had dug my shelter into the ground and enclosed it. As I explored, I found a fantastic underground cave system and decided that, though it would mean the top level of my home would have to be pretty small, the cave would be great to live above. I reshaped the cave a bit to make the edges smoother and lit it so the archers wouldn't come at me out of the dark. I even have an underground pool! How cool is that? To make my location even sweeter, there was another pool just outside my door. I used that for a small, covered wheat field. I can survive in this sheltered zone indefinitely (too easy, Mojang!)
I also got the idea that I would like to have some farm animals. Though you can't build your own animal farm yet, I did it any way with much pushing and shoving. Now I can hear moo! and baaa! anytime, anyday.
On one of my first days, I got lost in the woods, died, and could not find my way back. I had built a stone pillar about 10 blocks high, but it simply was not enough to see over the trees. So I exchanged the stone pillar for something a bit more visible. I have a terrible sense of direction, everyone knows this. Hopefully, with this tower, I will be able to explore out a bit futher without losing all of my gear, as challenging as that would be. I built a perimeter around the tower that I can shoot out from. Somehow the creeper got in there. First time firing the bow - fail!
I'm more into the multiplayer worlds we have right now. I's sure I'd still run the singleplayer world when no one is around, but I'm actually pondering running a multiplayer world constantly on my old PC....
Anyway...thanks for visiting!
This past week I was gifted a copy of Minecraft (yay! thanks!) and have been caught up exploring that. I find it quite fun and think the idea is a great one. My favorite part of the game is the initial survival. Sadly, as you progress in the game, it become less challenging since it is too easy to find food and resources to be able to survive, the creatures are not aggressive enough to pose a problem and even if you die you respawn with full health and food bar. So yes, I do think the game is too "easy." Usually the only ways I'm worried that I might die is getting stalked by a creeper and getting blown to bits before I realize it's there, or falling off a cliff. My biggest disappointment is the limited number of recipes available. For a game such as this, the things you can create are the most important, and looking at the wiki the list just isn't as long as I expect it to be. For all those copies sold, I certainly expect there to be more! Hey, Minecraft devs, make some more creatures and recipes, please!
That said, I absolutely love the idea of a giant sandbox of randomly generated landscape and being given the means to just meddle with it, altering it to fit my taste, building things and coming up with ways to entertain myself and personalize the world. I appreciate that it can go on pretty much forever, as far as your creativity can go. I understand the game isn't centered around being difficult as a survival game but I hope the developers realize that it shouldn't rely so much on the player creativity. The more complex your world becomes, the harder it should be to progress. And when you die you should not respawn with full health and food bar, you should not be able to retrieve all of y our gear and you should not explode into so many XP orbs that you can crash your friend's server. Sorry!
The game is more fun in multiplayer, so we are running a few private servers. It seems like an obvious fact. When you are building a world, it's just good to have some friends around to laugh with and talk about potential projects and things to do. Otherwise it's just you, the rain, and MOOO! and BAAA! and SSSSSSSSS BOOM!
Enough talk... here's a quick tour of my own single player world:
In the first night, I had dug my shelter into the ground and enclosed it. As I explored, I found a fantastic underground cave system and decided that, though it would mean the top level of my home would have to be pretty small, the cave would be great to live above. I reshaped the cave a bit to make the edges smoother and lit it so the archers wouldn't come at me out of the dark. I even have an underground pool! How cool is that? To make my location even sweeter, there was another pool just outside my door. I used that for a small, covered wheat field. I can survive in this sheltered zone indefinitely (too easy, Mojang!)
I also got the idea that I would like to have some farm animals. Though you can't build your own animal farm yet, I did it any way with much pushing and shoving. Now I can hear moo! and baaa! anytime, anyday.
On one of my first days, I got lost in the woods, died, and could not find my way back. I had built a stone pillar about 10 blocks high, but it simply was not enough to see over the trees. So I exchanged the stone pillar for something a bit more visible. I have a terrible sense of direction, everyone knows this. Hopefully, with this tower, I will be able to explore out a bit futher without losing all of my gear, as challenging as that would be. I built a perimeter around the tower that I can shoot out from. Somehow the creeper got in there. First time firing the bow - fail!
I'm more into the multiplayer worlds we have right now. I's sure I'd still run the singleplayer world when no one is around, but I'm actually pondering running a multiplayer world constantly on my old PC....
Anyway...thanks for visiting!
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