Open ‘letter’ to Square Enix regarding Final Fantasy.

Dear Square Enix. Or, as I like to call them; Squaresoft: Please fix your once beloved Final Fantasy franchise.

Wait, that’s a horrible way to start an ‘article’ almost 5 months after the previous one? I know. But I don’t use this space for daily updates concerning what my breakfast consists of, or which shoes I should pick today. If you’re looking for that blog, I hear great things about other blogs.

Skipping to the point, however.

Since I was circa 13-14 years old, I’ve been a fan of Final Fantasy. The first one I picked up was a platinum version of Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation. I didn’t quite know what to expect of it. Up until then I mostly played games like Tekken or Gran Turismo, so Final Fantasy was quite the leap. I guess the Platinum bit helped; it was cheap. And back in the day, that mattered. Anyway, I had no idea what I was throwing myself into, but I played it almost exclusively for months. I invested in game guides, browsed game magazines for tips and tricks, and cleared it 100% sooner or later. Probably later. Game was huge. 3 goddamn discs!

Okay, so the adventure continued in Final Fantasy 8, and while it’s vastly different, I enjoyed the story and combat game play enough to look past the aggravating ‘draw’ and ‘GF’ systems. This was when I started thinking I should probably pick up the older games in the series. I started with I, and worked my way up to VI, not counting III, as it wasn’t, at the time, released in the west. I even played TACTICS, dammit!

And I loved every single one of them. They all had their bits, their own characters, worlds, systems and deep, intricate stories, some of them better than others (I’m looking at you, IV and VI).

So, I suppose it comes as no surprise that I was there when IX launched. It was a great blend between new and old; new graphics(PS1 style), but with a world and characters that were very much like the original NES/SNES games. Black mages, white mages, thieves etc, it had it all. It was the first in the series that *really* latched itself onto the jap-stamp(cross-dressing males, graphical letters during overdrives/trances and such), but I still think it’s one of the strongest games they made.

Then came X. New console, new system, new graphics engine, voice acting, and a full-on 3D world. Boy, was I excited. Now, before you say anything, I was overwhelmed. Sure, it was a tad straight forward, and lacking in some parts, as well as suffering from voice acting directly copied from the Japanese track, meaning we’d get Anime-style dialogue, with moans and grunts all over the place. I got over that. It didn’t matter.

I even enjoyed X-2. Sure, it was mounted against female players, but the fighting system was a ‘fresh’ welcome, the story continuation from X was actually quite intriguing, and the fact that it had several endings was great.

 

But this is where the shit hits the fan. A big pile of elephant dung hitting a wind tunnel. Someone putting an air compressor inside a guano pile. You get the picture. It’s pretty much downhill from here.

We’re going to ignore XI here, as it’s an online game not valid in my humble opinion, and as with most online games, it always results in more grinding and hording than it does in actual story-based game play.

But let’s continue onto XII, shall we? Oh yes. On the outside, it looks great. A great desert-like city with more races than ever before, a kingdom falling, another invading, et cetera, et cetera. Oh go fuck yourself, Square. The gambit system was horrible. Just an excuse for not wanting to let the player control 3 people(or more) at the same time. Thinking that gamers have become too stupid or just too damn lazy to be stressed out during a boss fight. And let’s not forget about sound. XII had the most forgettable soundtrack to date, and the sound quality in general was horrible, compared to X. The entire game felt like an MMO reject, and it didn’t help that the final bosses were still as jap-inspired as ever(ever evolving, going bigger and badder every time you defeat them etc). Vaan as a main character lacked an actual personality. Most of the cast in general were underdeveloped, but the protagonist himself lacked everything. He’s just cannon fodder you happen to play as.

BORING.

Now.. It’s time to talk unlucky numbers. 13. XIII.

OH MY GOD what a train wreck.

Do I even have to elaborate, here? Read the reviews, play it yourself, but don’t hold me accountable for your emotional scars, mate.

Okay, I’ll admit it; I actually enjoyed the game. Or at least I thought I did. I lived in a reality-isolated bubble in which I was omitted to love the game so much I actually believed I did. Didn’t take too long until I hated it with passion.

It wasn’t until I completed it my brain rebooted and actually informed me what just happened. I’ve not picked it up since, and it doesn’t help at all that there’s a sequel out there.

XIII-2 is, evidently, a game. One that’s received outstanding critique, too! Does it help? No. Should it be necessary to fix a game with a sequel? No.

Goddammit, it makes me angry. Too much jap-crap in a game series that should work great outside Japan, too.

It all boils down to what the fans want. A fuckin’ Final Fantasy VII remake. We’ve already seen successful remakes from them in III and IV, so why shouldn’t they redo VII? Well, there are a couple of reasons.

For starters, it’s a daunting task. A game that big remade completely from scratch? That’s a lot of notes to hit correctly. It’s comparable to playing “Through the Fire and Flames” 100% on Expert. You know what I mean. There’s also the graphics. The original game had anime-style characters and settings, whereas the latter games are mostly real-world based geometry and proportions, as far as characters go. Advent Children got the gist of it, so that’s one way to go about things, but that’s not all; FFVII had an open-world style game play. Like the elder ones with their ‘overworld’ maps, VII had their own version of this. Converting it to PS3 would be challenging. Not to fall into the linear game play of X and XIII is tricky, and going with a retro-style overworld just seems silly. Then there’s the voice acting. Should it be there, should it not? It’s hard to say. And of course, the world in itself. It’s hard to recreate the rustic feel of Wall Market in 3D graphics. Or Cosmo Canyon. Even the Northern Crater is hard to recreate now without it being too silly and anime-styled. A game like this should work outside Japan, and should borrow at least SOME features from western games, but that would also mean straying away from the original, right?
See, it’s not easy to do. Even if they decide to go thru with it, it’s a VERY challenging and hard task that needs to hit all notes in order to be loved. If it fails, it’s pretty much bye-bye, Square Enix.

But that put aside, Square has some projects going on now, like Versus XIII. The eluding game that we’ve yet to actually know anything about. Sure, there are some details, some videos and the likes, but we don’t really know anything about it, other than that it’s, according to Square Enix on Twitter, “In development”.

Well, we’ll see about that.

 

In the mean time; Dear Square Enix: Please fix Final Fantasy. It used to be a great genre, but you’re changing too much, adding too much jap-crap, and not thinking of the rest of the world. The games shouldn’t be 90% story and videos, and 10% game play, nor should it take the player 10-20 hours to unlock the full capability of the combat system, and it should have 3-5 PLAYABLE characters in the battles, not just one that relies heavily on pressing X throughout the battle.

 

 

End note: I chose to leave out a few titles from here. Tactics, XIV, XI, Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, XII Agido and other minor, non-successful titles in the EU/NA aren’t mentioned because they’re either sequels, spin-offs or online games, and I wasn’t ever going to play them in the first place.

 

SSX – A historic review

I know it’s a tad late, considering the game was released on February 28th, but I only got it a few days ago, and I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the game.

First off, SSX holds a special place in my heart, as far as game franchises go. Although I don’t own the first one, I own Tricky, 3 and On Tour for the PS2, and I still play them, occasionally. The new iteration, aptly called “SSX”, as an attempt to reboot the series, is a great game, too, it’s just not ‘Tricky’ or ‘SSX 3′.

Tricky had loads of new features. Not only were there more boarders to play as, or faux-dynamic tracks to ride, all the riders had up to 4 different costumes, they spoke in their native tongues(Marty’s “ICH BIN EIN VOGEL!” comes to mind here), they were voice cast by the likes of Macy Gray, Billy Zane, Oliver Platt, Lucy Liu and David Arquette, and their on-screen rivalry was a fresh, sweet addition. The tracks featured kick-ass slopes like Garibaldi and the Elysium Alps, which all had a racing and tricky layout. And of course, let’s not forget the ‘Tricky’-bit. Über tricks were AWESOME. Seriously, kickflipping a snowboard was just the start here, as tricks like Psymon’s Guillotine, Marty’s Walk The Dog, or Zoe’s Pommel me, and JP’s Gutbuster were all slick as hell.

Now, continuing the success on to SSX 3, it featured a larger roster, with the loss of some fan favorites, at least as far as non-cheaters go(Eddie, for instance, was obtainable through cheating, albeit a silent version), had a GREAT soundtrack, even more Über tricks, and featured a big mountain with 3 peaks, that were all available as one long run, clocking in at about 20 minutes from top to bottom. And let’s not forget the fantastic character customization. All characters had, instead of set costumes, a plethora of choices like gloves, pants, tops and goggles to add to the variety, and made them feel much more personalized.

Moving on to the less popular ‘On Tour’, a game that changed the whole aspect of SSX, introduced Twin-tips as an alternative to your trusty ol’ snowboard, had a 70′s inspired rock soundtrack, featuring hip-hop and punk, and felt a lot like a sketchbook, designwise. While I liked the game enough, it’s still not as memorable as SSX3 and Tricky. Gone were the main characters, replaced by ‘you’, a character with sub-par customization, and the skiing was boring and easy, compared to board-carving.

Now, ignoring SSX Blur, 7 years later, came SSX. A fresh reboot for the PS3 and 360.

So where does one begin, really? Let’s just start with the beginning. Unlike previous games, SSX actually has a story. Griff, kidster from SSX3, is all grown up, and competing against Team SSX. Weird, but OK. It’s your job, as Zoe Payne, the team leader, to gather a crew and defeat Griff by beating his ghost data, or meeting up with him, beating him face to face. You’re forced to play as Zoe on all mountain ranges, until you’ve unlocked the ranges’ character. And then you’re stuck with the latter. It’s, to me, not a great change. I quite enjoyed selecting my character, and then taking on the world with him/her. Having not cleared the game, I’m not even sure I can play as Griff at all during the world tour. Granted, there’s the exploration mode, which means you can select characters and mountains at will, not unlike the shred events from On Tour, but the world tour just seems lacking and doesn’t satisfy my as much as it used to.

The menus in SSX feels a lot like 3, smooth, glowing and slick. The menu music is on-par, and you get a sense of nostalgia, thinking that the new development team knows what their doing. And they do, definitely. It all looks and feels like an SSX game should. Once at the menu, you can choose between world tour, exploration and ridernet. The latter can be compared to an options screen though, and without a proper manual in the box, you’re left to figure that out on your own.

Once you’ve figured out how to race, you get to choose an outfit, a board, an equipment piece, some mods, and a geotag. Now this is where my real dissapointment comes into play. Check out this article’s featured image. It’s Zoe Payne, the way she’ll look in SSX, no matter how much you want to change it. Sure, she’s grown up and all, but I’m talking about the outfit here. I chose the top part of it for the image here, because that’s the part that always stays the same, no matter how many outfits you buy, since they’re all just color variations, instead of actual outfits. I remember the zen skirt from SSX3, along with the pigtails, goggles, and a cool, open jacket. Complete with my trusty old dnL board, of course. Here, it’s just color, and the occasional glowing bits. It’s boring, un-creative, and restricts me to like whatever the game throws at me. Which I don’t

Which also brings me to character design. Why on earth is Zoe wearing a mesh-like armor anyway? What happened to Moby’s skin-tight racing suits? Where’s crazy Psymon’s tank tops? I mean, all characters are dressed like they’re actually going snowboarding, unlike before, but taking the über tricks and overall physics of the ssx world, it’s not like a tank top or or bare arms in general would be that weird, right? Exactly. It wasn’t before, so why should it be now?

..Which coincidentally brings me to what seems to be the main event of SSX; The Deadly Descents.

SSX has a grand total of 9 deadly descents. The reason they’re deadly? They’re full of hazards like low oxygen, massive amount of trees, ravines the size of Grand Canyon and avalanches. They need powerups, or, accessories. Armor, Pulse Goggles, Wingsuit, Headlamp, Ice Axes, Oxygen Tanks and Solar Panels are the powerups available to you.

Armor works like you’d think; it protects you from damage. It’s one of the worst upgrades, only being prominent in the deadly descents, and not being at all relevant any other time.

Pulse Goggles are kind of like echo-location. It shows a basic wireframe model of the environment around you, so that even in pitch black darkness, or in whiteouts, you still know where to go. It’s kind of nice.

Wingsuit is my favorite. It helps you through sticky situations where a normal jump just won’t get you across the gap, or helps you gain access to the trickier areas by gliding to them.

The Headlamp is a welcome asset, though. It does exactly what you’d think; lights up the track infront of you(or directly from your characters head, meaning a 720 spin will spin the light too), which is nice in the night levels or blackouts.

The Ice Axes are small axes that help you navigate the icier paths. I’ll be honest; They didn’t really help me, and 3-4 tries later on the courses, complete with rewinding(which I’ll get back to) made me skip the events altogether.

The Oxygen tank is a nice addition that lets you inhale a fresh supply of O2 every now and then on the higher peaks like Everest, to make sure you’re not …well, dead.

Solar Panels are similar to the oxygen tank, meaning that they prevent your imminent death by… cold? Uhm, you lost me. Staying in sunlight recharges it, keeping you warm, whilst hugging shadows will freeze you to death.

 

Okay, so, the wingsuit, the headlamp and the … uhm, well, the…Okay, just those two are cool additions I can live with. Playing in daylight with the sun flaring in your eyes means the headlamp in-game is a nice bonus for those of us with glossy TV sets.

 

There’s a couple of more things we could discuss; the rewinding feature, the geotags, the multiplayer, and …the soundtrack.

The rewinding feature is actually kinda cool. If you’re on a sure way to bail, rewinding your character back to a safe point to try it again is great. Just be careful; you’re the only one rewinding; the clock and your rivals continue like nothing happened, so use it strategically, and only when necessary.

As for the geotags and multiplayer, they’re one and the same. The Geotags are …well, tags you place during your rewind sessions, meant for other players around the globe to find. The trickier places you put them, the longer they’ll stay unscathed, and they give you a feed of money too, depending on how long they stay untouched. You also gain XP/Money for finding them. The multiplayer is relatively abscent. You’ll never REALLY be riding in realtime against anyone, rather their ghost data. It’s good in one way, that you don’t need a stable connection all the time, but on the flipside, I used to play Tricky, 3 and On Tour with friends at home. Splitscreen.

Okay, time to wrap this sucker up, which we’ll do by bringing up the soundtrack. This iteration has a mich of hip-hop, electro and dubstep. Neither are my taste, but I’ll be damned if “Houdini” by Foster The People doesn’t bring out the best of me, as it was with SSX 3. Great soundtrack, that really fits the scheme and theme, but is completely unbearable outside of the game(referring to SSX, not 3)

 

Gah, I’m ranting. Again. Oh well, for what it’s worth I’m playing the game like hell, but I must admit, that when I wrote all this, I was getting nostalgic, and I really feel like getting my PS2 out of the kid’s room, and start playing the other 3 games, which in my humble opinion, are superior.

 

 

2012 is here already?

It’s a new year, and according to some people, maybe even the last one.

Each time a new year comes around, millions of people around the planet think up new(or refurbished) New Year Resolutions. A set of challenges/improvement to themselves they should start off the new year with, to make sure it’s a good one.

Among the clichés are quitting smoking, working out, hiking, stop swearing etc. And from what I’ve seen, they all seem to forget about it soon enough. Take me, for example. Last time around, I was stupid enough to opt to quit smoking. Did I do it? Yeah, for a couple of days, tops. But then I started again, so it wasn’t exactly a success. I think I might’ve thought about starting to work out at one point, but that’s more of a thought that goes year-round, not just in the start of January. I try to keep my morality singular.

So, what’s up this time around? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. I have no resolutions at all. That way, I can keep going like normal.

 

WHOISH! Sequel?

Some posts back, I pimped my latest short on youtube; WHOISH! Part one. In it,we ambitiously claim it will be continued.

The original reason for this, was that we shot about 6 minutes worth more of it, and due to time and technicalities, it was cut short, leaving room for a potential sequel. Recently, however, we tried to deal with how to write and shoot a sequel that would follow the story closely.

But you know what? Fuck it. We tried to do it. We really did, but as it turns out, writing a sequel to a short film that was completely improvised and ad-libbed on the spot is… nigh-impossible. So instead, We’re going about things Hollywood-style. A reboot.

So, instead of making a sequel, prequel or alternate timeline(which was the options we were going for), we’re in the process of writing a Doctor Who Universe short film. We reckon writing will be done in a few months, but you never know with these things. I used to think a short film could be written like short stories in school exams; over the course of 6 hours. But that leaves for a sloppy plot, holes and stuff that doesn’t make sense at all. Instead, we’re taking our time, making sure all loose ends are tied, etc. After all, this is time-lord stuff, which means that loose ends can be a bit… wibbly-wobbly.

I’ll post more about the subject when there’s anything to post.

 

Skyrim, and how I would improve it – PART 1

I’ve been playing Skyrim since launch-date, and, according to Steam I’m clocking in at close to 250 hours, so you could say I’ve had plenty of time to pick on the game’s faults and shortcomings, and, of course, figure out how I mean they could improve vastly.

Now, before I begin, let me remind you that I absolutely love the game. I was, and still am, an avid fan of Oblivion, and played Morrowind a bit back in the day, but I guess back then I wasn’t ready for the whole First-person RPG genre.

To me, Skyrim is great as-is, but read on to find out how I would have gone about making the game(obviously, this is from a non-developer, but I understand how it works, so these things are anything but impossible.) better, to improve the general feel and gameplay. I also know that the game isn’t about all this, but just bear with me, and try to imagine how it could be.

1. Facial Animations

The animations in the game aren’t exactly mind-blowing. Facial animations are bland and boring, and the only reason they are in there, is because it’d look pretty off without them. However, it’d be nice to see some effort put into it. When someone comes running toward you going “You’re DRAGONBORN!”, I feel they should have at least a hint of surprise to their expression, not just some phoneme-generated mouth-animation. It also doesn’t help that the people are either standing in combat or non-combat mode while talking to you, giving no variation or character to any of them, which brings us to my next topic:

2. Character Animations

All the characters, be it Playable or non-playable, have the exact same set of animations, with no variation to them whatsoever. If the developers had spent more time in making the characters more diverse, the world would be a hell of a lot more believable. For instance, it really wouldn’t hurt the game to have some scripted events, instead of all characters just following waypoints with scripts telling them to either walk, run, crouch, and whether or not they should be in combat mode. Entire scenes could be acted out on a MoCap set, and put into the game, rather than making all the quests equal, due to the animations being the exact same on each and every character out there.

3. Dialogue

By far, this is my main concern. All the shopkeepers of various shops out there are the same person, with a different accent, appearance and voice. “Ah, so you’re an alchemist, then?”. Sound familiar? I think the only person who has a personality of his own, is Belethor, in Whiterun. They all have the same dialogue readout, say the same things, and let’s not forget every guard in every hold used to be an adventurer like you, until they all took an arrow in the knee. I think most of them also took a sword to the chest, and wonder if they’re the dragonborn. Location-based lines like “Welcome to Falkreath, elf”, or “You in Solitude to attend the wedding?”, or even “Hey, you were in Helgen too, weren’t you?” Would be kinda neat to have.

There’s also the bit about dialogue deliverance. I don’t believe the characters are saying what they’re feeling, when the actors behind the voices clearly just read dialogue off of a piece of paper, and had no idea of context or situations they might be put into.

Not to mention there are something close to 10 voice actors, which means that a lot of people share identical voices. Kinda bums me out. I would gladly lend my voice to Bethesda, just to add a character or two for variation. Bethesda; if you’re reading this, I’m on Twitter. Contact me.

4. Textures

While the game looks good, it’s suffering from a 32-bit engine, it seems. Limited to 2GB RAM usage, until recently, albeit fixed to address up to 4GB, it still isn’t enough to to impress me, as far as texture resolution goes. As far as I can tell, most textures are 512×512 pixels, and there are loads of mods out there that improve them by quadrupling them. 2048×2048 looks a LOT better, and crispier textures equal sharper looks of.. well, everything. Of course, the downside is the RAM consumption, but I’m sure Bethesda would’ve figured that out, instead of just downscaling all the textures. For examples of what I mean, head on over to skyrimnexus.com and check out some of the texures mods. They work wonders. And as a finishing note on this topic, some of the snow textures are just plain white, with no actual TEXTURE on them. What the hell, Bethesda?

5. Skeleton and Model Variations

No, I’m not talking about Draugr or skeletons in that fashion, I’m talking of the races of Tamriel. My girlfriend is the one who pointed this one out, by the way, and I heartily agree. I never questioned the Khajiit or Argonian races, to be honest, and from what I can tell, they’ve undergone little-to-no changes in appearance in any of the games, but as the miss pointed out; Why the hell are they all not just humanoid, but humans with different textures, hands, faces and tails? I mean, take a look at a game I never really played; World of Warcraft. The Tauren race is not a race that has ox-heads put on human shoulders. They are built like minotaurs, huge torsos, smaller legs, and enourmous heads. The Khajiit and Argonian races are simply humans with some prosthetics applied. Same animation sets and everything. The only thing that actually impresses on this point, are werewolves. They are built great, and move completely different, compared to the humans.

6. Animals

Although it took nearly 6 weeks to encounter a single snow fox, the animal life in Skyrim is sparse. There’s a couple of bear types, Elk, foxes, wolves, skeevers, deer, mammoths, a chicken or two, one cow, an eagle and a horker. Oh, and the goddamn mud crabs. Those are nasty little critters.

Now, when I say one cow, I mean that there is only one type of cow, and one texture for it. There’s also some horses and, obviously creatures like Spriggans and dragons, but the animals of skyrim could use some more variety. Also the people of Skyrim have done a great job of making Pheasants extinct. Those bastards.

7. Inventory

This one is also a nuisance. Seriously, what were the developers thinking? With literally thousands of items in the game, you’d think that they would implement a better way of sorting. Limited to the various categories, it can be a pain to find items you’re looking for. For instance, if you’re playing with God Mode toggled ON, you’ll have no restrictions as far as carrying weight goes, and thus never have to throw a single item away. There should be a way of sorting items by weight, type(think chestplates, gloves, boots etc), value etc. Also, a way of showing quest items, or items relevant to the quest you’re currently embarking wouldn’t hurt either. If you’re lazy like me, you also have a tendency of not throwing away notes or letters, which means that when you’re looking for one, it’ll be pretty tricky to find.

8. A Climbing System

I’m not asking for a system inspired by Assassin’s Creed here, merely something that would allow my character to get onto a rooftop, or even climb up a mountain. It’s weird that a steep hill will just stop my character isntead of making him/her get on all four and continue the hike.

9. Horseback Fighting

Okay, this one pretty much speaks for itself, but still, I’ll elaborate. Whenever you’re riding on a horse, that’s all you can do. You can’t talk to people, pick up items(although that’s not really an issue anyway) or engage in combat. Surely horseback archery’s been done in the history of this planet, and we don’t even have fancy magic or enchanted weapons, let alone bows and arrows that do more/less damage, based on the material they were both made of.

10. Minor, yet effective graphical tweaks

This topic is kinda tricky, but let me explain. Post-process effects are implemented already, in the effecs like blurs, but a simple motion blur when running or turning really helps sell the graphics. As would some, more-or-less realistic lighting. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the fact that I can see perfectly fine during the nights, but it wouldn’t be that bad if you had to carry a torch or a magelight to see anything during those long, cold Skyrim nights, and it sure as hell would make night-traversing that much more dangerous.

Okay, I’m done ranting for now, as I didn’t exactly plan this post out, rather than just jot it down as I remembered all of these. I’m sure I’ll have more soon enough, though.

Also, let me remind you that I know that the game isn’t about all these things, but it’d sure as hell be insanely more compelling(like it isn’t already, right?) with them implemented.

 

WHOISH!

A little while ago, I made me a short film, set in the Doctor Who universe. Now, I’m spreading it like wildfire, because not only does it include a pretty cool regeneration, but there’s even a link to a tutorial on how to do it in the description, and it’s insane that the tutorial preview video has >10x more views than this.

So please, both of you, help me out. Share it on youtube, twitter, reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, Tumblr, Facebook etc. Like it, favorise it, the whole goddamn works.

 

Also, here it is on reddit: http://reddit.com/tb/miybs

Okay? Thanks.

 

Fuckin’ Skyrim.

It’s about that time now, isn’t it?

This year was an interesting year in games. We’ve had LA Noire, Uncharted 3, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim to mention a few. To the avid gamer, this means bankrupcy. To me? Not so much. See, when it comes to FPS games, I shy the fuck away from them, at least as far as console gaming goes. I suppose I could play BF and MW on my PC, but I’m not gonna play either online anyway, which renders it rather pointless.

LA Noire came out just about that week I was broke, and the next week reviews and friends could tell me it was repetitive and boring in the long run. Which ultimately means I’m getting it when there’s a pricedrop on Amazon, or just borrow it when I can.

Then there’s Arkham City. I only got around to playing Asylum a few months back, so I wasn’t at all excited about City. I am now, but not to the extent I’ll get it right away. As far as AC:R goes, I never purchased an AC game on launch date. I mean, the series is great, don’t get me wrong, but I know what I’m getting into, and it’s always been a new-years game for me anyway.

So, let’s move on to the two games I actually did buy this holiday; namely Uncharted 3 and Skyrim, Both insanely solid titles, in their own way.

Uncharted is kind of like that film sequel you’re highly expecting that succeeds your expectations. Uncharted’s first sequel; Among Thieves was a great game I bought on Platinum. I had no idea it was as good as it was, but it had won several awards, so there had to be something about this game. It was. Enough to have me leering outside the local electronics store for a launch-day copy.

But even that game only got me to paly through it twice. Which isn’t saying alot, I suppose, but it’s not a VERY long game.

Enter Skyrim.

Skyrim came out a couple of days after Uncharted, and by that time, I was done anyways. Skyrim’s one of those games you just feel you have to have. I played Oblivion for what it was worth(and more), and I even peered into the region of Morrowind, way back. When I realized the trailer I was watching was for an ‘Elder Scrolls’ game, I was sold. I wouldn’t care about reviews, critics or lacks, this was just one of those titles I had. to. have. And when it came to deciding whether it was a console or PC game, I actually leaned towards console for a bit. A bit. But then I got a computer upgrade. Fuck, I feel like a frickin’ kid upgrading his PC every year to play everything at max all the time. Although in my case, it was more of a needed upgrade anyway, and my prior setup couldn’t even run the game. But it was never really any choice, as I know that Skyrim would be a game filled with great mods, like Oblivion and and Morrowind have been, and still are. Even Morrowind is getting new mods all the time, and the people who make them Make it look damn good, too.

Anyway. If the frostbite 2 engine is what makes you want to play games, Skyrim isn’t for you. It looks damn good, it really does, but there’s vast room for improvement. A lot of mods already address this, with larger textures and lighting/contrast enhancers, and head over to skyrimnexus.com to find them all. There’s even a multiplayer mod in the works, that, seemingly does a decent job too. And that’s even before the official mod tools are released. You gotta love creative people, and game developers that release a game so prone to modding. However, as far as graphics go, I’ll say that both Uncharted and Battlefield have way better engines. But that’s not what skyrim is about.

Skyrim is a role-playing game. The fifth in a series too, I might add, so if you never played the prequels, you won’t get a lot of the references in this one. It’s no big deal, though, but for the people who actually DO, it’s a lot of fun. Comments like “Let me guess, did someone steal your sweetroll?” Is a direct reference to Morrowind, which is fun. You also get to choose a side in the ongoing war between the stormcloaks(Nords) and the Empire. It doesn’t impact the game as much as I’d hope, but you gotta give credit to the developers either way. I for one, would not want to code a game that has literally an infinite amount of quests to make each quest rely on the other. There are some bugs related to other quests, but the game can’t know that you’ve already killed the person you now need to talk to in every damn instance there is.

There is also a main story, which you’ll no doubt discover quickly, but unless you’re cheating, there’s no way you’ll get that done within a day or two, as you won’t have the necessary skill set or experience to even think about it. But that’s no problem at all. You’ll be more than busy enough working for the thieves guild, the mages college, the dark brotherhood, the companions or even the bards college. You will no doubt be picking every bush of snowberries and blue mountain flowers your eyes spot, and I think you might even find yourself cooking food, smithing armors or enchanting swords. At some point, you’ll find yourself using your fine motor skill to place objects you’ve collected on a shelf in your house in Whiterun. You might even get married, or engage in a fun drinking game that winds up with you backtracking across the entire country to find out what the hell happened. At one point you might even run your ass off trying to catch up with a spectral headless horseman.

Oh my, I’m ranting.

But yeah, that’s how much of an impact Skyrim has had in this home. Even my girlfriend is playing it a lot.

 

NOTE: The next post will come shortly, and I’ll share what mods I use, why I use them, and a detailed description of what they do, and why you should add them to your game.