Category Archives: Gaming

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July 4, 2014

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Frostfall & DayZ

When it comes to gaming, my preferences seem to lie in the RPG Genre with Strategy and Simulators coming in second. It is not often that I dabble in First Person shooters. While I have some fond memories of the multiplayer mods that came out of Half Life, I did not find myself curious about the features of Battlefield 4.

The features of DayZ, on the other hand are interesting. While it doesn’t really have any RPG elements, it does seem to have unusual features and when the mod came out, it was noticed for being different… and difficult…

My brother has been trying to get me to play DayZ for a little while and I did try the mod a while back. I found it to be a bit “too real” to be really enjoyable. From the near explosion of similarly themed games recently, it does seem like a popular genre though…

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June 10, 2014

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Elder Scrolls Online – The good, the bad, the ugly

I must have played TESO for at least 200 hours by now. It’s not a heck of a lot in the grand scheme of things – particularly in the world of MMORPG’s. This is however, the first MMO into which I have invested so much time (played WoW and SWToR a fair bit – both got to around level 40). When Skyrim first came out, I took a week off and played it more or less solid through the week. Over the years, Skyrim had me traipse through its landscape for over 150 hours.

While this post will talk about my gripes with the game, it should be noted that I still love this game and look forward to hundreds more hours of playtime. The gripes are on paper to get them off my chest and hope that they will be resolved. Gripes about TESO are not hard to find – the eso forums are rife with complaints and bugs – but that’s really besides the point… :-p

TESO was a game I was very much waiting for; breath baited. Took time off work, got my brother to take time of work and played it in earnest. It is difficult to put my finger on what was expected from this. In all honesty a multiplayer version of Skyrim would have been fine for me. It was not the MMO elements that attracted me but the multiplayer elements.

If they had merged Skyrim and Borderlands (2), it would be a perfect game – or so went the thought process. The features of Elder Scrolls Online do seem to be (on paper at least) a good mix of MMO Features and Elder Scrolls Features.

I don’t care about the “bugs” since they seem to be pretty on the ball with regards to getting them fixed and while there are a ton of them, and they are annoying – let’s be fair – would it be an Elder Scrolls Series without more bugs than a dark and damp cave?

Forced Single Player – Really?

The first gripe with the game and still by far the largest is this. For an MMO, there is an awful lot of content that you are forced to play single player. This makes no sense to me!

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June 2, 2014

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A Renegade in Skyrim (Part 1)

Skyrim has been modded here to include Frostfall, Imps more complex needs, alternate start and a few other mods (which should be largely inconsequential to this log). From alternate start, random was chosen. 

This was not a good start… Floating in freezing water off the shore of skyrim somewhere on the way to Solitude… Brrrr… Grasping at the strands of consciousness seemingly content to float away on the freezing waters, I dived in to find a way out of here.

There was luckily a few things hanging around in the capsized ship, some weapons and some armour – could be worse. One of the crates also had some snowberry extract as luck would have it. Swigging it down, dived down again and slowly traipsed my way out of the ship before the first hit from the extract finished.

Making my way to the bottom of the ship, which was ironically on top, there was an aldmeri lady on top carrying some stuff, which I conveniently lifted 😀

Now was the hard part, it would seem. I was surrounded by the icy ocean and the cold breeze did not help much either. Preparing myself mentally, finished off the last of the snowberry extract, hoped for the best and dived right into the icy blue seas.

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October 10, 2013

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Destructible World in Battlefield 4

Found this video of an entire skyscraper being destroyed in Battlefield 4. My! things have moved on a fair bit in the world of computer games. Here I was enjoying the lush scenery of Skyrim and all of a sudden, an entire world that can be destroyed?

It is a shame that with all of this power, some of the features I have really enjoyed in games like witty banter with your companions (The Baldurs Gate series being a very good example) are still so sorely missed. 😦

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March 25, 2013

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Pulling At My Heart Strings

This the story of a Wood Elf, he woke up in a cart, his memories fuzzy and faded, little knowledge of who he was and what he was doing. He wanders the frozen wastes of Skyrim doing as he feels. Without a clue as to who he was, he discovers who he is. Finding himself at Riften, he joined the thieves guild. He also got Mjoll the Lioness to accompany him on his journeys after finding Grimsever for her. All seemingly through chance.

I found myself in Ivarstead one morning on my way to Whiterun. The walk was largely dull except for me trying to play hunter. Trying to shoot an arrow into a moving deer is more difficult than I imagined. Needless to say, little was achieved more than losing a few arrows.

Walking past the alchemists hut, I snuck in to see if the herbs and grown, ready for another pruning 😉 but it was not. It re-ignited my curiosity about the previous owner of the hut but I got distracted by a deer. After losing another few arrows, I decided to focus on picking some mountain flowers and other alchemical ingredients.

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January 14, 2013

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The Death Of a Follower

Back in 2011, starting from the 11th November, i.e. 11.11.11, I had booked a weeks holiday. I planned to travel a brand new world and so I did – for a whole week. Skyrim was released at midnight and I started playing. Over the week, I spend around 75 hours on the game and I had reached a meagre level 25 and got only about a third of the way through the main quest. Playing through and completing a number of games recently got me to thinking about Skyrim and the Illusionist Diaries inspired me to start again.

I was in front of the daedric lord Clavicus Vile and it was all slowly coming to me. I heard Barbas barking away in the background and Jordis the Sword Maiden was her usual self, prancing about.

I looked for a way to get out and got to a closed gate. Seeing now way to open the gate, I took the long way back out the cave. No biggie, it was a good way to re-acquaint myself with the world again.

Once I got out of the cave, I re-prioritised. I had enough of traipsing around doing whatever I fancied. It was time to put an end to the civil war and of course to put a stop to all this dragon malarkey.

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November 11, 2011

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Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [1111]

I realise that this stretches the concept of a technical blog post but you know what, it doesn’t matter. There are several technical elements that are relevant but I am not necessarily going to focus on. I am going to do what I do best; ramble…

I waited till midnight and on the gong (as it were), I clicked install and instead of it saying that the game was not released yet (and I do wonder why they make us wait until midnight when we have the stuff to be able to play it anyway but that is a whole another blog post), it started to install.

I felt an anticipation and an elation that I have not felt in a very long time. My first foray into the world of Elder Scrolls was daggerfall and this was way after it was released. I had always thought about a world; a living breathing world that was built upon simple foundations that could grow to envelop your imagination.

Elder Scrolls promised to do that and while Daggerfall failed spectacularly to deliver this, it set an expectation. I for one am glad that Bethesda continued on and eventually brought us Morrowind which I played for a while and loved but couldn’t quite get the hang of.

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