Game Review: RAGE (PC)

You know what, for games that have been out for a long time, I think I am just going to put out "Game Review" articles rather than the usual "Full Review."  I just find it easier to talk about how I played the game, what I liked about it than have a set form. . .although that sounds easier now that I think about it.  

Fuck it, game review it is!

The first time I booted up RAGE, I was unable to play it due to the game skipping every two or three seconds, which would make any game nigh on impossible to play.  Only after downloading an update for a number of my drivers was I able to play the game.  Prior playing though, I knew a bit of what I was getting myself into: a post apocalyptic FPS from the makers of Doom that included a driving element that received mixed reviews (the reviews that I read anyway).

Looking back at the game, there didn't really seem to be anything "breakthrough" about how the game played.  It was a basic FPS where you were supposed to kill anything when you weren't in a town and everything in the world was out to kill you.  There were a number of additions though to the standard FPS formula which included a few mini-games such as racing one of your three vehicles against computer controlled opponents and a game show where your kills earned you points resulting in monetary winnings.  The problem with the game-show portion was that you were required to use ammunition you bought and I often felt that the money I won from the show simply paid for the amount of ammunition I used.

There was a crafting system in the game that I used quite a bit and currently, that seems to be the "in" thing for adventure based video games.

There were hints of a larger story what with the Arcs (survival pod/structures designed to allow those inside to survive an near-extinction level event caused from the impact by the Apophis asteroid) that the Authority were trying to locate and who took on the roll of omnipresent antagonist who didn't really show up until the last quarter of the game.  The world however seemed to be a lot smaller and more canyon-like than I would have hoped for.  While you could travel between certain settlements and "dungeons," the paths were all very linear with not a whole lot of room for further exploration.  It was like being shown a map and told that you can only travel along the roads and the mountains are off limits.

Something that impressed me a bit was the enemy AI.  While a lot of their animations were programmed, they were still interesting to watch.  While hiding behind a crate, they would often peer over or around the box to get a better look at where you were then the would either lean out from behind the box and shoot at you, run to another source of cover, or just stick the gun out from cover and shoot in your general direction; or they might throw a grenade if they were written to have them equipped.  Even the different factions would have slightly different fighting styles.  The bandit group "The Ghosts" would often jump, roll and climb via monkey-bar-type bars around the stage while charging you making them more difficult to hit.

94.7% sure this is modeled after  Grand Central Station.

RAGE even managed to get around the disappearing bodies by having some of the enemies be mutants (due to crazy-radiation exposure I think) whose corpses would simply dissolve.  The downside to going up against mutants (who would only be in certain areas such as the game show and sewer/underground areas) was that they would never leave behind any loot.  They were fast little buggers too, but nothing a point blank shotgun blast to the face or a bladed boomerang couldn't fix.

So the driving element, I should talk about that before closing out.

Driving in RAGE is a semi-big part of the game as it allows you to get from one settlement/dungeon back to wherever your home base is.  The controls were pretty easy to get used to (WASD) and later vehicles (everything after the ATV here) had some sort of machine gun or rocket launcher.  There are a number of required driving story elements that while never too difficult (some races required repeat attempts), seemed a little bit out of place, but again, it was a nice element to see in an otherwise straight forward FPS.

The only other criticism I have with RAGE was that it seemed a bit short for the story they wanted to tell.  Okay, so ~30 hours may not seem like a short game, but I felt that the ending came rather abruptly and I was left hanging.  It was like finishing the last stage, being shown that you completed your objective. . .then what?  Was all right with the world?  I wanted to know more, or at the very least see a sequel that allowed for further exploration of the world.  Even with the Scorchers and Sewers DLC, I wanted more.

One aspect of the game that I did not explore was the online multiplayer.  It wasn't my sort of thing and I can only assume that one of the racing formats was included, the other being a deathmatch setup, possibly in the game-show arena setting.  I am just making conjectures here.

In the end, RAGE was definitely worth whatever I paid for it during a past Steam sale even without having played any of the multiplayer content because as you all know, that is just not my bag of Fritos.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Something With A Bit More Of A Beat

And they all lived happily ever after.  Right?

MIDI Week Singles: "Dragonborn" - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC)

I could really do a Game Scores post about the music from this soundtrack, but I would find it nearly impossible as I tend to limit myself to three to four tracks, so I decided to post an article for the MIDI Week Singles instead.

"Dragonborn" from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PC (2011)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Original Game Soundtrack

Composer: Jeremy Soule

Record Label: DirectSong

Game Developer: Bethesda Game Studios

By now I'm sure that a lot of you have heard this song and/or are at least familiar with its existence.  For those of you who have never heard this song before, you're welcome.

As would be the case with any long running series, there will be people who say that this song is better than that song or that this song sucks because this is when the series became too commercialized or even that that one song is terrible because the composer slept with more than five people in a ten year span and they're totally a whore, because my cousin said so.  All of that aside, I find that this song still gives me chills.

I will still listen to this song all the way through whenever I start up Skyrim, which, honestly, hasn't been too often recently, but that's because I have a queue that needs whittling down.

Really, this is one of the reasons why I started doing the MWS posts, for songs that could exist away from their respective video game and be enjoyed for the music experiences that they offer.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

Game Scores: The Elder Scrolls Online (PC)

Just to get this out of the way beforehand, yes I enjoy this soundtrack and yes, I believe that it fits in very well with the music from the rest of the Elder Scroll series.

Now that that's out of the way, we can get down to brass tacks.

Jeremy Soule, the composer of the scores from the other games in the Elder Scroll series composed only the main theme, "For Blood, For Glory, For Honor."  This theme does not contain any semblance of the "Nerevar Rising" theme that has become the theme that most people know from The Elder Scroll series.  I feel like Jeremy Soule's contribution is to get the player into the mood to play an Elder Scrolls game in the 2nd Era, that this will be an epic adventure in a familiar world during an unfamiliar period of history.  It's basically an overture in the perfect sense of the word.  

The rest of the 47 soundtrack is broken up between three other artists. 

Brad Derrick, who wrote 43 of the 47 tracks is the most obscure composer on this soundtrack.  By "obscure" I do not mean that his music does not fit in with the overall tone of the game or with the setting that Jeremy Soule set with the main theme, but that there is very little information that I could find about him.  His last.fm profile is pretty stark while what looks to be the right Brad Derrick's website simply has "meep."  I was unable find a listing on IMDb.  All the obscurity aside, what Brad Derrick has composed fits very well within the Elder Scrolls universe.  Simply listening to his music, and not knowing that it is him, you might easily assume that you were listening to a Jeremy Soule score.  Similar to how if you listen to the score from Speed or Transformers you might assume that you were listening to Hans Zimmer and not Mark Mancina and Steve Jablonksy, respectively. 

Back to Brad Derrick, sorry for the diversion.  While I do feel that what Mr. Derrick has composed fits very well within the world, what he has written is not overly memorable.  That is not to say that the music is not any good, but I could not hum you one theme from any of the songs.  Now when a particular song comes on, say "Y'ffre in Every Leaf" or "The Tower Casts Long Shadows," I'll recognize certain elements and be able to hum/sing/whisper parts of the song.  But, but, BUT, there are a few songs that move beyond the usual "atmospheres" such as "Weapons Drawn" and "A Peril Upon the Sands," which sound more action oriented.

Rik Schaffer, the second composer wrote only two songs that appear on the album.  Rik Schaffer on the other hand has a bit more of a discoverable background when compared to Brad Derrick.  That fact aside, his contributions to The Elder Scrolls Online soundtrack is no less because of only two songs being included.  Both "The Heart of Nirn" and "Northern Nocturne" compliment both the Elder Scrolls as a whole and the music that Brad Derrick wrote.  I would almost go so far to say that their two styles are so very similar hear that they are practically indistinguishable, but maybe I just haven't listened to the soundtrack as much as previous soundtracks.

The final artist included on the soundtrack is also the final track on the album.  The song "Beauty of Dawn" was composed and performed by Malukah, a Mexican musician known online for her guitar and vocal covers of video game music from series such as The Elder Scrolls, Halo,  Mass Effect and more.  She posted a video back in November 2011 of a cover she did of "The Dragonborn Comes" from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim which, to date, has 12,009,584 views.  Apparently she attracted the attention of Zenimax Online Studios and was hired (?) to write an original song for The Elder Scrolls Online.  "Beauty of Dawn," while itself is a pretty song, I do nott feel that it has the *oomph* that her covers of "The Dragonborn Comes" or even "The Age of Aggression," both from Skyrim.  I have heard both this song and another (not included on the soundtrack) sung by a bard in-game while wandering around one of the various towns/villages in TESO, but a stripped down version that doesn't include the vocal layering that Malukah often includes in her compositions.

As a whole, I really enjoy the soundtrack and am very happy having purchased it from the store that sold it to me.  I first saw the album advertised through one of Bethesda/Zenimax's newsletters as being on sale through the iTunes store which had it (and still does) priced at $15.99.  I then thought I would check Amazon and they have the exact same album, all 47 tracks for only $8.99.  While I refrain from pandering to one storefront over another, I will not say were I bought the soundtrack, but as previously stated, I am very glad that I did and am satisfied with the price that I paid.

I will say that the soundtrack falls very heavily into the atmospheric category.  Maybe with the exception of the main theme, most of the tracks work well as background music for adventuring and exploring the landscapes of Tamriel, so I do not think that many people will be blasting the music during a backyard barbeque with the bros.  Maybe I'm wrong though.

If you are looking for a rollicking soundtrack that's akin to Hans Zimmer's King Arthur score, then you should and go and buy that album because that is an awesome soundtrack.  However, if you are looking for beautiful background music to put you near 950 years in the past before your 250+ hour video game, then this will probably be perfect for your collection.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

My Time With The Elder Scrolls Online Beta Testing (PC)

Now that Bethesda and Zenimax have officially lifted the Non-Disclosure Agreement, I am now able to babble to my hearts content.  Keep in mind though that this will end up being a longer post than usual as I will be blabbing about experiences from three different beta tests going back to November of 2013.

With that in mind, I present to you:

The first of many loading screens, since updated.

First off, I am not exactly sure how many beta tests Bethesda/Zenimax have run, but I was able to take part in the last three (November 2013, January & February 2014).  The current word is that there will be one last beta test before the game is released on April 4th of this year.  My experience that I will relate to you in frustratingly bad detail will be from only those three beta tests.

Secondly, before November 2013, I had never played an MMO of any kind.  I never played World of Warcraft at any point even though I loved Warcraft I and II (still sad that I never played III).  I never played Final Fantasy XI despite my general love of the Final Fantasy franchise, although that love began to wain with Final Fantasy's VII, VIII and X, so it's no surprise that I didn't do anything with XI.  With all of this in mind, it will be pretty obvious that I am not hep with all of the lingo and understanding of acronyms and verbiage.  During the post play survey, I had to look up what LFG meant and I am still not 100% on what "aggro" means in the context of a battle and how it works.  Maybe I do know but I don't know it.  Even though I find it hilarious, this rant that I first saw as a flash back in 2006 doesn't mean a whole lot to me.

Thirdly, with the exception of the last beta test, each session was over a weekend that I had to work. At least two of the days of the test.  In November, I didn't work the first day, but the test did not start until 12pm PST, but as to be expected during a stress test, the server was overloaded at many stages.  The above picture I took after I had logged on.  The progress bar got about as far as the circular band before if froze and I had to restart.  Three hours in I was finally able to make it to the character generation portion, but I was booted out a handful of times before I could create my character:

Bosmer Nightblade, part of the Aldmeri Dominion (November)

In the forums (where the majority of people were very cool with not everyone coming from an MMO background), a lot of people were coming up with names that would be based on the race of character they were playing while I chose a name that people might recognize me by as opposed to a name that would blend in with the world.  So, I chose to be a male Bosmer (Wood Elf) and I was immediately excited that the heights of the races was restored to something more similar to their respective heights in Morrowind; that Orsimer (Orcs) are larger than Humans who are larger than Dunmer (Dark Elves) who are larger than Bosmer, et cetera.  While I am usually not a fan of tattooing my characters, I early on decided that I would give all of my characters the same tattoo pattern, just because.

Because I am lame, I didn't take any pictures during the character creation process, but I will say that it is somewhat similar to the process in Skyrim, but different in other ways.  For instance, you are able to change the general shape/look of the body to be muscular, large or thin and the face to be soft, heroic or angular.  The video put out by Zenimax Online does a good quick job of describing the process.

Moving onto the beta test.  While playing each time, I always had the fact in the back of my mind that what I was playing was not a finished product.  There were going to be errors, which was the whole point of the beta existing.  We were there to find bugs, problems, glitches and whatnot with the game so that it would be as bug-free as possible come launch day.  

My first time though, I initially felt that the controls (keyboard & mouse) felt very loose, almost as if I wasn't totally in control of my character.  Granted I was coming from playing Morrowind which has somewhat sluggish controls and your player does run pretty slowly, even when sprinting, but after a while, I became used to how the character moved/ran/interacted with the environment.

Battles/Fighting in the game is something that I have not noticed any changes to since November.  The fighting has seemed, for lack of a better adjective, weak.  Yes, when you swing your weapon and it comes into contact with an enemy damage is done, except that the contact part does not feel real.  I know that is an odd sentence but I cannot find an easier way to explain what it is that I am trying to say.  Here's another go: when your sword (or your weapon of choice) comes into contact with an enemy, the weapon passes through them as if they were not there, but damage is still done, but the feeling that you have inflicted damage is not there.

My first playthrough, I encountered a number of animation glitches while trying to draw my bow back.  I don't have any pictures or a capture card, but my character would draw the arrow and then begin to rotate very rapidly in a 90 degree arc.  When I released the arrow I would hit my mark, but the character was still wigging out.  In the last beta test, the main animation glitch was that my character would use a long range attack and the animation would stick at the end with the last bit of sound effect that accompanied so the effect sounded like buzzing tin foil.

The most frequent bug that I came across was that while exiting out of a conversation with an NPC, the dialogue options would be gone (as they were supposed to be), but I would be stuck in the same frame, unable to move, re-establish dialogue.  My only option at that point was to submit a bug report (by typing /bug in the chat window) and then killing myself (/stuck) so that I could respawn at a "wayshrine."  A random bug/glitch/error that I encountered and that I actually took a picture of was during the January beta test.  I was playing as a Breton Templar (Cleric) and running around part of the island and came across a missing graphic:

Just in case one "Missing" didn't get the point across.

Mainly because this didn't turn out to be the Dwarven Part that I was searching for, I thought this was pretty funny.

The last bug that I encountered with my Breton Templar, which was a game killing bug, was that I accidentally did a quest in a closed off area out of order and as a result, I was unable to leave the area or proceed with the quest line.

How many Orsimer does it take to kill an invisible prisoner?

What is going on here, is that you are in a memory.  The Orc with the arrow above his head should be standing next to a prisoner.  Upon talking to the Orc he states the prisoners crimes and you decide if they should live or die.  Being an Orc (in the memory I was an Orc), I felt that the prisoners should die, so I found four prisoners and had them all killed.  Only after the fact did I talk to the person who gave me the quest for the area.  The arrows above the specific Orcs appeared but the prisoners remained dead.  I was unable to reload the quest and even after I killed myself (/stuck) I was permanently stuck.  I submitted my /bug report but I was unable to use this character for the remainder of the beta test.

Over the course of the three beta tests, I did see some changes.  First there was a sound effect of coins dropping after purchasing or selling an item that was not present in the November test.  The second was the inclusion of two enemies that greatly expanded the first tutorial area, but I won't say anymore to prevent spoilers, of which I am trying to be somewhat vigilant.

The music!  I just realized I haven't said anything about the music.  From what I can tell, based on the music in the menus and in game music, Jeremy Soule is still the composer for the Elder Scrolls Online, although that is not confirmed.  The credits in the game consists of "Credits Text 1" through "Credits Text 3."  After listening to the music, I do believe that Jeremy Soule is still the composer.  At some point between the January and February beta tests, a lot of the menu music changed and while it does sound less dark than the previous versions, there is a lot more use of a choir, which in my book is very rarely a bad thing.  

And while we are on the topic of sound, Bethesda and Zenimax have gathered quite a cast to handle some of the voice acting.  The "only" voices that I came across, due to my inability to reach Level 10, was that of Michael Gambon and John Cleese.  Again, I will not say in what capacity they offered their vocal talents, but I will say that they were used very well.  I am told that this cast also includes Bill Nighy, Kate Beckinsale, Alfred Molina, Malcolm McDowell and Lynda Carter.  Not that just because the vocal cast is notable will make the writing any good, but the vocal notables do do a great job with the material that they have been given.

That being said, there was not as much reading material as one might have found in any of the previous Elder Scrolls games.  Books were few and far between and when you were able to read a book, it most likely came from a bookshelf full of books rather than a single volume.  This is something that saddened me greatly during all of the beta tests.    Because The Elder Scrolls Online takes place in an era that has, as of yet, been unplayable (ie the Second Era), I never really felt that I was playing roughly 700 years before the events in The Elder Scrolls: The Arena begin or nearly 900 years before the events in Skyrim.  Reading books is what helped me solidify my immersion in the Elder Scrolls games so I was a little sad to find out that, at least, as of the February test, literature would be somewhat scarce.  Or, maybe I am just not looking hard enough, which is always a possibility.

There is a lot that I have not touched on that is present in The Elder Scrolls Online.  There is a crafting system where you can create items related to your specific ethnicity and learn those of other groups as well.  I did not do anything in the way of crafting as I tried to spend the majority of my time doing story and side quests to raise levels.  There are group dungeons that you can only explore with three other people.  I am sure that voice chat is a thing, but I never looked into it as I primarily played by myself and didn't bother with anyone else.  And finally, there is the whole of the mass battles in the PvP area of Cyrodiil.  As briefly stated somewhere up there in all those words, I said that I never made it to level 10 (to note, level 17 was the goal and max for the last three beta tests) which is the minimum level required to enter Cyrodiil and the massive PvP areas.  I did not.  I also do not know about controller support for the PC as I only played with keyboard & mouse.  It would seem like controller support of PC should be a thing as there are plenty of people who simply prefer this way of playing a video game.  I guess these will all just be wait and see.

In closing (because it's late for me and I still need to sleep, as of the writing of this), I will say that I have (so far) enjoyed my time with the Elder Scrolls Online beta tests.  There have been a number of bugs/glitches that have hampered progress and some occurred frequently enough to make me turn the game off because of having to kill myself to become "unstuck."  The beginning areas, which act as tutorials were very linear, almost annoyingly so when compared to other games in the series, but I figure that they are simply that, tutorial areas, for you to become used to your character and to build their levels and abilities up a bit before putting you out in the big bad scary world of people yelling over the internet.

To date, I have had a very fun time playing, despite all the bugs/glitches that I would expect to be present in a beta test and I know that both Conklederp and myself are looking forward to the end of March when the game will launch for pre-orders and April for the rest of the PC market.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
People Running 'round, It's Five O'Clock


P.S.
I wanted to share some of the other pictures I took during the three beta sessions.  Sadly though, I did not take many pictures of bugs that occurred during game play as most were either based around animations that would not translate to pictures or because the glitch would not have looked interesting in picture form.  So here are some others which you may or may not be interested in.

Breton Templar, part of the Daggerfall Covenant (January)

Dunmer Kightblade (Theif) as part of the Ebonheart Pact (February)

Mudcrabs feasting on a washed up corpse of an NPC.

It's never a good thing to see and/or be near a portal that leads to Oblivion.

First Impressions: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a sordid history with me, which is why I didn't jump on the bandwagon back in 2006 when the game first came out.  Prior to 2006, I had heard nothing about The Elder Scrolls series on any platform, most likely due to the fact that I wasn't a big PC gamer until recently and I didn't own a 360 or PS3.  

The symbol for the school of Conjuration.

I recall seeing the boxes in Target and upon first inspection, I thought that I had stumbled across a video game series based around H.P. Lovecraft's Cthuhlu mythos.  The cues for me were the similarity between the "Elder Gods" and the "Elder Scrolls," as well as "Oblivion" being a frequent theme of sorts in Lovecraft's writings about the various.  Even the logo I thought was an artistic relic based around the image of Cthulhu.  Granted the symbol looks a bit more like fangs, but now that you have Lovecraft in your mind, seeing what I had thought might become a bit more clear.  So at this point, I figured I would get around to playing this Oblivion game.

The house I live in during 2006, we had a housemate whom we will simply call OnlineGamblerGuyWhoLivesInAMercedes, or Axe for short talked a bit about the game then showed myself and Chreekat what the game was like.  He described it as a kind of fun fantasy game played in first person and I immediatly thought of the Neo Geo game, Crossed Swords.  Axe said that by the end of the game it had gotten repetitious and that you can simply jump while moving and you raise in experience levels.  He said that it while it was a decent game, just that by the end, it got pretty boring.

This was my first impression of not only Oblivion, but of this apparent Elder Scrolls series.  It was not a favorable impression.

Ring in 2012.   Skyrim had been out a year by the time I bought the game and delved deep into it's depths (not nearly as much as Conklederp has mind you).  Thus my impression of The Elder Scrolls forever changed and for the better at that.  In March of 2013 I began playing Morrowind (Chapter III) and this January (just over a month ago), I began playing Oblivion.  

My feelings about this game continue to be conflicted.  I understand the immense leap from Morrowind to Obilivion, the changes in gameplay mechanics (the ones I know about anyway), the graphical improvements over the four years between the two games.  However, in the back of my mind are those first feelings of negativity because of the review of a housemate and finding out that the conjuration sigil had nothing to do with anything related to H.P. Lovecraft.

One other sad thing, for me at least, is that I'm not a fan of the intro song, which is just a fanfaric and slightly sped up version of "Nerevar Rising" from Morrowind.  Yes, I know it was used again in "Dragonborn" from Skyrim, but there it's done with a choir and all bombastic, which I tend to like.  Basically the song, "Reign of the Septims" using the "Nerevar Rising" theme, plays it too fast for what the song is doing.  I don't know if that really makes much sense, but that's how I feel.  The rest of the music in the world I do enjoy as it is very Jeremy Soule and fitting for Cyrodiil.

Presently, I am 14 hours into the game, which isn't far by Elder Scroll standards and for those of you who know, I just joined The Blades at Cloud Ruler Temple and that is where I have left the game since the middle of January.  Rather than be all rhetorical, I have not stopped playing, but felt that I could now diverge from the main storyline to do any half dozen of those side quests that always populate these open world games.

There are certain things that I do like so far in Obilivion such as the lushness of the land.  I mean, just look at all these lupins (??)

and I just escaped (was allowed to escape) from prison!  I like the facial feature-thing mechanic that I will/might get to in a later post.  I like building my character and having them focus their abilities along certain paths.  And as is the case with any game, there are certain aspects that I'm not too fond of such as the menu system, the pudginess of faces due to the facial feature-thing mechanic, the ability to fast travel to locations you have not yet gone to but know of their existence and how small Cyrodiil feels, but maybe this last part is normal having come from such a vast expanse in Vvardenfell.

I will come back to Obilivion very soon, I think I just needed some time to figure out my current feelings for the game and how they conflict with how I first felt about the game.  Well, that's about my quota for the month for talking about feelings.  


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Shall Return From Out Of The Fire
P.S.  Have a good (snowy?) weekend all.

First Impressions: The Elder Scrolls Chapter One: The Arena

Yes, you read that correctly.  The Arena, being the first installment in The Elder Scrolls series.  Briefly, the game was created by Bethesda back in 1994 and it very much looks like it came out of 1994.  From what I've played (made it through the first dungeon/sewer), the game's graphics haven't aged too well, but that's something that I don't care too much about.  It's the story, mythology and world that I've been playing in Skyrim, that brought me to The Arena and are what are going to keep me here for sometime.

The Arena is available free of charge from Bethesda, which is extremely awesome on their part.  The initial intimidating thing though is that the game is still run on DOS and requires a DOS operated window to play the game through.  So, I had to download DOSBox, a freeware program that took a minute to wrap my head around.  I grew up using an Apple IIe followed by a Macintosh 5125CD and I only started using Windows with Windows98, so I never really had to deal with DOS as a way of navigating a computer.  For this, I had to learn some simple jargon that will make a number of my friends laugh.  For myself, it was a quick test of, "How much do I want to play this game."  So now, every time I want to play The Arena, this is what I do:

This was after I found out that, for simplicity sake, I had to put the folder for Arena directly on the C Drive as opposed to a complicated (normal) series of folders, but it's actually pretty simple, now that I've loaded the game a few times, and I'm sure I could go into the CONFIG file (with step-by-step instructions) and alter the the start ups so that it automatically loads with the C: drive "mounted" so that I don't have to do it every time, as well as running it at ~13,000 cycles instead of the default 3,000 (control+F12).  The point is, doing all this through a DOS window quickly puts me in the right frame of mind for a game that looks like this:

And honestly, I like the way the game looks.  I like that the first game in this series is a POV action/adventure/fantasy game.  I like that to swing your sword you have to hold the right mouse button and move the mouse in the direction you want your sword to swing.  I love that there are different animations based on how you swing your sword: horizontal slash (R/L), diagonal slash (R/L), vertical slash and stabbing.  I don't know if there's a damage difference based on how you swing your sword against a particular type of monster, but I don't care (at least not right now I don't care).  Just the fact that there are six different animations (for the sword alone) to kill something instead of a simple left click, that's the kind of attention I love to see in video games.

At the moment, I'm currently wandering around whatever city it is that you come upon after exiting the jail.  Since I chose to be a Nord, I think it's North Keep.  The game is a bit difficult in that people in towns are constantly moving (as they right should be), but I find myself chasing down someone just to ask them where the nearest place to purchase goods is, since your map of the city only shows buildings, but not what those buildings are.  There's a lot of running.  Thankfully you can make notes on your map and if you're close by a desired building, one of the citizens will make locations on your ,map.  That's honestly all I've done so far: errands for various people in town and was attacked by some crazy guy and his wolf/rats after it became dark.  Then I quickly found an inn and slept until the morning.

Do I like the game?  Sure.  Am I going to plug 75 hours into it as I've done with other video games?  I might, I don't know how long it takes to finish Arena, and by "finish," I mean "finish" the storyline, not every single side quest in the game.  I'm sure to do that you'd have to go through with each one of the eight races.  I am, at the moment, 89% sure that I will finish (at least) the Nord storyline for this game.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Bring It On


P.S.  Apparently, 1994 was a massive year for video games:

SNES
Super Metroid
Final Fantasy VI (III)
Earthworm Jim
Mother 2 (EarthBound)
Mortal Kombat 2
Donkey Kong Country

PC
Warcraft: Humans vs. Orcs
Doom II: Hell on Earth
Marathon
TIE Fighter

Arcade
Killer Instinct
Tekken

Skyrim = Sinkhole of Time

My experience with The Elder Scrolls games has been very limited, so much so that I've only witnessed a former roommate playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  All I could say about the game was that the guy's character jumped everywhere, occasionally killed a city guard and that it was an FPS-type game.  I wasn't overly impressed.  My own personal experience with first person (POV) hack-and-slash swording fantasy games was limited to an old arcade game that I thought was in a Neo-Geo cabinate, but I can't find anything about it anywhere.  So there's that.

During Steam's most recent Fall/Autumn/Thanksgiving sale, I purchased The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  I did this for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, the game was 50% off, which still meant that it was $30.  The second reason comes in three parts, but is part of the larger whole, which is that I'm lacking in fantasy realms to be in.  I'm not a subscriber to HBO so I don't/can't watch Game of Thrones until it's released on DVD and Amazon just gave a release date for season 2 as February 13th, 2013 (assuming the world doesn't end in a few weeks).  I'm also reading Shadow Moon, which to pretty much everyone, is the first book in a trilogy that takes place in the same world as the film Willow.  The third part of the second reason is that I'm eagerly awaiting the release of The Hobbit.  So as you can see, I needed a medieval high-fantasy world to play in.

So yes, Skyrim was purchased.  But that is not the point.  The point is, is that I've only played the game for two days, which were my two days off this week, and I managed to clock in about 13 1/2 hours.  Jump ahead two more days and I've now clocked in just over 19 hours.  Granted probably about 30 minutes of that was just creating my character.  I can also figure out how/why I've been playing for this long.  

I don't know if it's something in current large world RPG's and I know I've seen it in a few other games, but Skyrim allows you to in a sense, warp between locations you've already been to.  The required amount of time will pass during your split second journey as if you actually walked it, but you'll be as fast as it takes for the loading screen to finish loading.  I'm not a fan of this "fast travelling" nonsense, something that I felt plagued Final Fantasy XII, but I'm not getting into FFXII right now.  If I'm going from one village to a cave on the other side of the mountains, by golly, I'm going to have my character run the whole god damn way!

A big (as in fucking huge) part of this game for me, is looking at the environment (pun sort of intended).  Anytime I'm travelling, I'll back the camera out to a 3rd person view so that I can rotate the camera and just watch the gorgeous scenery:

Keep in mind that I'm running this game at about mid-level so there aren't all the textures and layers that could be there if I were running on Alienware or something equivalent.  There are mods available designed to make the game look even better, but I'm not going to touch those, again because I don't have the set up for it.  There is this guy though who apparently has 100+ mods running at any given time for some amazing visuals.

The gist is that I like walking.  I like exploring.  So what if I get sidetracked from the main story line and want to find out what's on the other side of that mountain and end up swimming in a lake.  I love being able to look at a mountain range way off in the distance, run towards it and seeing it get larger and larger until there I am, running up the side of it.  I will admit thought that I have on a couple of occasions "Fast Traveled" to a location, but that was because I was strapped for time and knew I wouldn't be able to make the trek to the city to disenchant my non-usable gear before I had to leave for work.  Because in this world, work comes first.

At the moment, I don't see this game taking as much time as say, Goldeneye 007 took, as that was the only game I played on the N64 for just over six months after I bought it.  Some people will scoff at that satement, but I do plan on playing other games, both on my computer and either on the 3DS or PSP if I'm not playing Skyrim.  And besides, I've still got to get through Penumbra Overture.  You hear that Skyrim, you're  not the only game in the box!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Now If Only They Would Listen

P.S.  And in case you're wondering, I created a female Wood Elf named Allinesea.  She's based off a character I created for a D&D campaign that I have never run.  I also thought it would be more interesting having the lead character as a woman rather than the stereotypical male fighter character.  Although I've also thought about doing a male character and having him be a mage...... I'm sure I'll come up with something later.

And just because, here's a picture of Barbas the wolf hound photo bombing one of my pictures: