1 Year in Skyrim

I made this video to commemorate the 1 year anniversary of one of Bethesda's greatest, and definitely most beautiful looking games. This isn't meant to be a complex or professional grade video, just something to invoke memories from the game.

What were you doing, while waiting for Skyrim this time last year?

Borderlands 2, DLC first look review.

So yesterday I finally got around to getting that DLC. I played through the first little bit myself then went on joining random games, swapping between my Assassin or my Mechromancer every once in a while and so far I have to say it's got some pretty good content, but there's a lot to take in. So for this review I'm going to explain 3 of the major highlights of the Dee Ell Seh.

Seraph Crystals

Well, first off we should touch down on Seraph Crystals. This is some kind of new currency Gearbox wants to have players rely on for powerful Seraph weapons, and trades. The crystals only drop from bosses, and they drop a random amount each time. You then take the crystals to the town of Oasis and trade them into some sketchy looking, non-animated, retextured version of Crazy Earl for weapons that aren't Blue, or Green... Or Purple OR ORANGE. But Pink. Yeah, you can tell a Seraph weapon apart from others because it's nametext is Pink. I thought it was some kind of health gun.. or something at first because the colours of the gun and health tubes are almost the same. Now since you can only get crystals from bosses, let's talk about them. SHALL WE!?

Raid Bosses

Awesomely, the DLC features TWO Raid Bosses, which are boss characters that, like Terramorphous, are apparently very hard to kill. Well, I haven't killed either one yet, but I've been in the fight with Master Gee and it's actually pretty tough from what I've seen. And this is coming from someone who farms Terramorphous like it's playthrough 1.

Master Gee the Invincible- This is the fight that I was in. Essentially, you've got this mummy, ninja thing who sits in the middle of this big arena. You enter the arena with your buddies, organize, plan etc etc. Then someone goes up and melees him. After that, worms start POPPIN' OUTTA THE GROUND, MAN. And you have to shoot them, creating a puddle of acid. Lure Gee into the acid, he loses health/shield. Repeat. Oh yeah and you're steadily losing health and shield while this is going on too.

Hyperius the Invincible- So basically, for this guy you've got a pumped up Hyperion engineer who every so often creates explosions to kill you, while he is shielded from all elemental damage from four loaders, who also fire rockets and have shields. I haven't tried it, but it sounds like an annoying fight. Both these Raid Bosses drop Seraph Crystals, along with the final boss for the DLC and maybe a couple other random ones, not sure.

Anyway, so far so good with Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty. If you like powerful guns and enemies, by all means this DLC should help you out.

Are the good days coming back?

The worlds are offline

Wildy PK parties, item scamming, dragon being one of the best armours in the game... This is what 2006scape offers. If you played Runescape (2) in the early days like 2003+ you probably, or probably not I guess, remember it as a game you could actually respect. Something fun and challenging with a sometimes rough, pixel eat pixel world of things like item scamming and Wildy luring.

       2006scape is an exact replica-in-progress of Jagex's Runescape, but captured in the year 2006 at the height of the game's success and enjoyability. 2006scape offers players a portal to the good 'ol days and all the features it did and didn't include. Thank god for no trade limit of Grand Exchange

       Now, I haven't had much time to play it myself, being busy with other games, school and work. However, I can say that as of a couple days ago the game was up and running with just 2 worlds online and only a couple hundred players. If you were a new account it would spawn you in Castle Wars (as the game is not technically finished yet) and you would start as the basic bald guy with a goatee and green pants. All worlds are labeled as "free" but they are really members worlds. They can't charge you a membership fee, now can they? The worlds are occasionally online, but considering the game is in stabilization test mode means that they aren't always online. So if the game is down, just check back later when they boot their servers back up. Since it's a tough kind of thing to get up and running, you might just want to check back every few weeks to see the progress, if you really want to play.

      Unfortunately there's a bit of a downside. Players that had donated to the site via PayPal before the stabilization test were gifted with a special tool that would allow them to spawn any item in the game. I'm not sure how long they can utilize this, or how many spawns they get, but it can be considered both fair and unfair. It would help get trade going, and they did donate their own cash to play a game that would otherwise be free. Either way, 2006scape might be worth checking out if you aren't ashamed to admit you used to play Runescape.

Dishonoured 1 week review

So to kick off the new blog I've decided to go with a 1 week since launch review of the new action-stealth game, Dishonoured, designed by Arkane and published by Bethesda.

Dishonoured in a word, is awesome. It's been getting a lot of criticism from the elitists of the gaming world who are never satisfied by anything, but that doesn't mean it's not a good game. It's a game where sure, you can run and gun your way through the entire level and complete the game in little over 7 hours, if you really wanted to. Then again, most games are like that. When you play Dishonoured, it's much more exciting and worthwhile to treat it like the stealth game it is, the whole point is to not be seen or detected and that's the challenge. Exploring the map and scouting for small advantages consumes (in a good way) most of the game time. Not to mention the creative killing. The guard down on that bridge? You could either call in a swarm of rats to attack and eventually devour him, shoot him from afar with your crossbow (any weapon can be zoomed in the same due to the mask that you wear being able to zoom) or you could instantly teleport behind him and slit his throat.

The game also beckons for creative ways to get around the map, and past deadly obstacles such as the Walls of Light; which are checkpoints set in narrow streets that will turn anything besides the guards into dust if it passes through. This means bullets, rats, containers, apples, bottles, anything (which I thought was a neat little surprise). Rewire those Walls however, and they'll work the other way around.

As far as the technical aspects of the game go, such as graphics, sound and functionality, it runs pretty well and I've caught no major bugs yet so far. I have the game for the PC and it runs at 60fps at max settings and resolution. The visuals are nice, and have a nice style that reminds me of Brink and Fable combined. There are a lot of little sound effects and small noises to hear while in game as well. The replay ability is pretty good, considering I waited months for Borderlands 2 and after playing it a bit... Got bored.. and I'm probably halfway through Dishonoured and I'm excited to replay the game on Hard mode with my own rules thrown in. (I never want it to end, that's the problem) There aren't many notable stealth games these days and most people just think of the Thief series or Assassins Creed when you say "Stealth Game", but hopefully Dishonoured makes the list. Seeming to combine positive elements from Bioshock, Brink, Fable, Thief, and Assassins Creed in it's own unique way makes it a downright fun game to play.

That concludes my first post, and technically my first formal review so it'll probably be a little sloppy. Next I'll be reviewing Borderlands 2, and later on Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC as well as what I think of the new Trinity APUs by AMD.