AlisterCat's Blog

Blog #058 - Finished Skyrim, No Diablo, Golden Duder Award

Added by AlisterCat on May 15, 2012 | |

I finished Skyrim after 377 hours.

MOVING ON.

Diablo 3

Diablo III Box Art

I don't have a history with the Diablo series but I really enjoy those style of games. Torchlight is amazing, and that has satisfied me up until this point. I played the open beta and couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it. I expected it to be good, of course, but not enjoy it all that much. I chose a monk and spent the next 4 hours PUNCHING FOOLS IN THE FACE.

See, that's the most satisfying thing. Forget your swords and spells, how about ROUND HOUSE KICKING A SKELETON KING IN HIS STUPID BONY JAW. I may have already selected my class for the full game. I think the game has an excellent sense of style in that dark, gothic fantasy kind of way. Excellent art design all around.

For that reason, when it came time for me to get a new mouse and keyboard I decided to go with the Razer Black Widow (I always wanted a mechanical keyboard) and the SteelSeries Diablo 3 mouse. It is a sexy piece of hardware. The tribal/gothic markings, the pulsing red light behind the diablo 3 logo and even just the weight of mouse. Feels great.

Took this with my phone. Instagram Hipster filters.

Unfortunately... I can no longer afford to buy the actual game! ARGH! Frustrating, sitting her with a Diablo 3 mouse and no Diablo. :/

Golden Duder Award

Winternet is running the Golden Duder Awards all month long. Such a great idea, I don't know how nobody decided to do this before. Get voting while you can, the second round is so close. My money is on one of the tested crew winning. I love those guys, even if I don't visit tested much any more.

Anyway, I decided to butt in and help out by making the official banner for the awards, because I was bored. Check it out, and leave some comments. Whatever you like. Abuse, even.

Bonus photo, I found some Gears of War 2 figures under my bed from a birthday years ago. I'm not in to action figures but they're pretty cool.

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Blog #057 - Three Hundred Hours in Skyrim

Added by AlisterCat on April 22, 2012 | |

It has been 5 months since the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , and over those 5 months I have put in 300 hours across 3 characters. Am I done? Not even close. I haven't touched the story. I haven't done any guilds. There is so much content I might never get around to the main quest. Well, that's not likely as that is what I am most excited about doing next. So what have I been doing? Exploring. I play on Master difficulty which made things challenging at first but now that I am at level 77 most of the combat is trivial.

Walk around and before long you'll find a number of beautiful ruins

Previously my favourite game of all time was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion , and I spent 300 hours on that game over 5 years. Now with Skyrim I've covered the same amount of time in just 5 months and Skyrim has replaced Oblivion. I'm not exactly proud, but I had a lot of free time on my hands. I became unemployed and went in to hospital in October, and Skyrim helped me perk up and enjoy my free time. As I said in a previous blog, unemployment sucks kids.

Before I share my final thoughts about the game, here are the previous blogs I've written involving Skyrim.

First I suppose I should show you my character. I name my RPG character after one of two things. Phoenix Wright characters or Fonts. My first female character was called Maya Fey, and my current character is named after the font Bebas Neue an old, bearded high elf. I have always played high elves in Elder Scrolls. I'm not sure why, I don't normally like elves but they have an incredible proficiency for magic. Especially in Oblivion.

Looking like a Ninja

Maya Fey

Skyrim has a very balanced approach to gameplay in that it doesn't limit you, unlike something such as Kingdoms of Amalur. Sure, you can respec in that but in Skyrim you can be the best at everything all at once. That is what my character is. At level 77 everything except archery and two handed are maxed out. It is so liberating having such choice.

My previous characters were pure mages but this time I went from an archer to a pure mage, to a mage/sword fighter combo. Chopping and burning are a satisfying combo. My weapon of choice is the daedric sword Dawnbreaker and a mod spell called 'massive sparks'. Even on Master difficulty I kill almost everything in one or two hits with the sword. I am using modded armour, a retextured version of the Nightingale Armour.

My main advice to anyone still waiting to play Skyrim is explore. There is a massive world to explore and unlike Fallout it is filled with ruins, dungeons, cities, inns. Everything you expect in a fantasy RPG. Unlike Oblivion they aren't all the same. They are still constructed from tile sets slotted together, but each place is different and tells its own story. So often you will stumble upon a quest just from entering a dungeon but another feature that I really enjoy is when the story is implied. You won't get something to register in your quest log, but you might stumble upon a journal, or a body and you can work out what went on. So much fun. One that springs to mind is a lighthouse filled with dead bodies and falmer. There is a slight quest hint to help you along but it is fun to just stumble upon and figure out through diaries.

Look at all those locations! That isn't even close to all of them.

Everything in Skyrim is styled very specifically to fit the lore and climate. In Oblivion each town looked very different in terms of architecture but in Skyrim things are very similar in the smaller holds but there is the stone fortress of Winterhold, the regal elegance of Solitude and the ancient dwarven city of Markarth. All very nordic and look appropriately freezing cold. The same can be said for the ruins, which look ancient and filthy. I really do miss something on the scale and design of the Imperial City, or the port town of Anvil... especially when I consider how great they would look in the newer engine.

The Grey Beard's temple, High Hrothgar

The atmosphere from the new and improved lighting and weather effects is incredible. Oblivion gave me a great sense of immersion, like I was living in a fantasy world like I never had before. Skyrim goes much further and really drew me in. Sure, I have a ton of graphical mods enabled that alter pretty much everything from weather patterns to textures and lighting. I don't think that is a comment on me not liking the game as it is, but there is always room for improvement. Bethesda put out a fine product, they couldn't refine it forever or tune it to my preferences. At least with mods I'm free to pick and choose.

Approaching a lit building in the dead of night. Kind of peaceful.

If I had to pick my favourite thing about Skyrim it would definitely be the atmosphere and immersion. A lot of that has to do with graphics as well as game systems that let you and all the NPCs live a 24 hour life. The world itself feels very alive pretty much all the time. Quests and interesting locations all around you, a ton of voice acting and enemies. Patrick already said this on the bombcast, but one of the more interesting experiences is walking in to a dungeon and finding a guy who is drugged up and insane, believing he is a ghost after spending years just pretending so he could find an artefact. At the end of the dungeon you find the exit backs on to the room he was living in. A tragic irony.

A woman with a broom in her boob? Not even the strangest thing I've seen in Skyrim

I've had giants, skeevers and horses try and take down a dragon. Even my dog had a go. I wish there was some gradation of aggression. The AI is either passive, fully aggressive or scared (fleeing). My dog should not just jump in to 'combat' mode and relentlessly attack anything. As hilarious as it is, I might prefer my dog to run away and return home. I think it'd be cool to come home and find my cold, injured dog.

Skyrim is known for being glitchy, and that has led to very sketchy moments like backwards flying dragons, flying drauger, NPCs with wood stuck to their head, bodies flying through the air like a rocket and so much more. The annoying variations are quests glitching, events not triggering, items falling through the world. Thankfully, on the PC you can fix any problem if you know how. The console allows you to spawn an item or person, fly through scenery, force quest checkpoints to trigger, bring dead NPCs back to life (I was told by a daedric prince to go and talk to somebody, and the quest marker lead me to a dead person... so I had to resurrect him).

It would really suck to play this on a console without mods or access to the developer console. It offers so much flexibility.

I have to talk about dragon again. They are the best thing in Skyrim. Incredibly well modelled, animated, though not especially textured (I have a mod that adds 49 more dragon textures so that is no longer a problem). One of the coolest things is the effect of their flesh burning off and leaving behind a skeleton. If only their bones didn't seem so rubbery. I am seriously impressed with the dragons in this game, especially with how dynamic they are and not fixed scripted moments. When I first brought a dragon crashing down to the ground and it slid past me with a cloud of dust I felt incredibly powerful, which Skyrim is good at doing.

Fighting on a snowy mountain top is a great feeling...

Hey! How ya doin'!?

The problem with the dragons in Skyrim is a lack of variety. There are several kind of dragon, scaled to your level. Once you reach level 50 you face the hardest dragons of the 'Ancient' variety. The diverse dragons mod adds quite a few dragon variants that not only look different, but have different abilities. Some can knock you over, others summon daedra, and there are also twins that fly together. Not just the look, but the combat in the battles lack variation and this mod fixes that.

Images

Here are some of the other screenshots I've taken in Skyrim.

Conclusion

Skyrim is easily one of my favourite games of all time. Yeah yeah, you're probably sick of hearing about how great it is and the dirty hipster inside of you wants to hate it because it's cool. It is totally fine to not like the game, however, but that doesn't make it bad. Me liking it doesn't make it good, but Bethesda clearly went above and beyond with this game. The most cynical of publishers wouldn't necessarily let a developer put so much work in to a game that sells for just as much as a 4 hour Call of Duty game. There is so much content it is amazing, and why I can forgive a lot of the faults. They just don't matter to me. I can overcome them.

Now that I have reached the 300 hour mark I feel no need to keep talking about the game. I will soldier on in silence. See you when the first expansion comes out!

Please leave comments and such. Always fun to read.

70 Comments

Blog #056 - Pid. Robots with Hats? or Fez

Added by AlisterCat on April 12, 2012 | |

I really liked the look of Pid when Adam Boyes first showed it here on Giant Bomb.

Pid

Even visually it has a lot of things going on that speak to me. Especially the colours. Going over information for the game there isn't much to go on... but I couldn't help but notice everyone has a hat. The kid you play as wear a hat, almost all the robots have hats built in to them. What's going on there? I really want to know. I also noticed a theme of stars, and on these two themes I made a couple of pieces of 'Fan Art'.

I asked them a question over twitter about the hats and they responded:

First is just a small card for press and trade sows that have a download code for the game. On the back is a nice piece of concept art I dug up from the site.

Didn't mean for it to look baseball themed...

The second is a poster done in the style of an old movie poster. The same treatment I have given some other games in the past.

The torches on the front of the robots scare me

The developers sent me a message on twitter saying they think they're incredible. Probably just being nice, but still, good to hear.

Fez

The only reason I did these was because I needed to keep myself busy while I wait for Fez. WHat do Fez have in common? Cute indie platformers that feature... HATS! I am really excited to play the game. I saw Jeff Green saying on twitter that he's getting tired of faux 8-bit graphics but it looks so great. There are far more polygonal games released with a realistic art style, or cartoony. I'm glad they're keeping it alive and doing it right.

The little Fez on the main characters head is adorable, I wonder if they gave out small promotional Fez at any point. The gameplay will be good from what I've seen in the quicklook but I'll happy just to stare at it and listen to the music. Only 800 points? I expected it to be more. I wish I had impressions to give but it isn't out yet. If they release it on Steam and iOS I'll those too. Seems like a good fit. 3DS too.

That's all for this blog. Not much to add. Comments are welcome!

9 Comments

Blog #055 - Whiskey Media 2012 Calendar

Added by AlisterCat on Feb. 8, 2012 | |

I had an idea for a Whiskey Media calendar.

A real, printed calendar that you can hang on your wall. People still do that, right? My mum does. So if you are over 40 I guess. The photoshop thread would have been a perfect source of money shots for the monthly photo, but they're too low res for print. In the end, I just made a couple of months using the amazing Chat Dragon and Whiskey Warrior by Dave Snider.

Here's a sample that can be used as a wallpaper.

February - Chat Dragon

March - Whiskey Warrior

These are low quality, but you can get the 1920x1080 version by clicking. I'd like to know what people think. Would people buy a physical calendar? Not necessarily of this design of course. My mum has three. In the same room.

Also, a bonus alternative to February.

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Blog #054 - Skyrim: Best Pre-Creation Kit Mods

Added by AlisterCat on Feb. 5, 2012 | |

In my last blog I was 140 hours in to Skyrim. I recently broke 240 hours, so I figured it was time to talk about it again. I took a break for quite a while due to some glitches and wanting to wait for the modding community to mature. The creation Kit isn't out until this tuesday, but modders have already done some amazing stuff. Before the landscape gets crowded I'd like to outline and give credit to what users can enjoy.

The modding community had a horrible reputation as being all about nude mods, and the notorious 'clean faces' meme here on Giant Bomb. It does an incredible injustice to the work put in to make the game better. I don't even object to those mods. Whatever you want to add to the game, that's what modding is about. When people see those however, they roll their eyes.

So, to combat this here are my favourite pre-creation kit mods.

Honourable mention to the mod Skyrim Online which is a WIP mod that essentially adds online multiplayer to the game, allowing you to enter another players world. I don't use it, and it is basic and very buggy at the moment but amazing that somebody has even done it.

Souls To Perks

There are only 80 perk points in the game, as your level caps out at 80, yet there are something like 250 perks in the game. With such a huge game you can easily max out your skills before seeing everything, and I think that is a shame. The abilities given by perks are powerful and even give you abilities you can't get otherwise. By having such a limited amount of points you are forced to min-max and not experiment/choose more of the fun perks.

Yummy, juicy souls...

This mod changes that. You can exchange accumulated dragon souls for perk points (which adds a nice choice between shouts and perks). The default is 10 souls for a perk, but you can change it to your liking and balance it however you like. I recommend 1, 2 or 5. Whatever works for how you play. It'll allow you to widen your play style and enjoy more of the gameplay systems.

Download Dragon Souls to Perk Points here.

Maps, Maps, Maps!

An interactive 3D map was a really nice choice for the world of Skyrim. Old cloth style map was cool in Oblivion, but getting a better feel for the verticality of the landscape is almost essential in Skyrim. So why not go even further? There are quite a few really cool map mods to enhance your experience. Unfortunately, it seems like these two are incompatible, but they offer different things for different people.

A Quality World Map With Roads

Seems like something so simple, doesn't it? A really great addition to help you navigate without having to wander through forest areas all the time. There is also a WIP version that converts the map to a cloth map styled 3D map if you crave something more like Oblivion. There is also a great companion mod for this that makes the meshes on the map slightly better.

Map with roads, in the old cloth map style

Download A High Quality World Map - With Roads here.

3D Map

One of the earliest mods for Skyrim, and an incredible idea. The map in the game loads low res meshes, but imagine the map being a camera zooming around the world. It functions exactly the same but allow you to zoom right the way down to ground level and see all the details as if you were there allowing more exploration and navigational possibilities. Plus it's pretty cool.

Amazing... beautiful... what more could you want?

Download World Map in full 3D here.

Dovahkiin Hideout

One of the first, and best, house mods. The stock houses you can buy in the game are fine, but often don;t have the best assets, layout or utilities. A WIP, this mod gives you a hideout that provides everything Dovahkiin would need. Luxury living, full smithing, enchanting and alchemy tools, copious storage and even a library. Accessible from every in-game house this mod will give you a decent place to relax, store your stuff and improve some skills.

A forge in your house... why not?

Download Dovahkiin Hideout here.

Visual Mods

Always a lot of visual mods for these games. Maybe the textures are too low resolution for you, or you just don't like the way they look. Texture replacements are as easy as chucking files in a folder, and don't even modify the game's files. Just be careful not to overdo it because you will get textures failing to load if you have too many high res textures.

Skyrim HD - 2K Textures
RWT Realistic Water Textures (highly recommended)
Skyrim Flora Overhaul (highly recommended)
Enhanced Blood Textures (highly recommended)
Glowing Ore Veins (essential, and also highly recommended)
Realistic Smoke and Embers (highly recommended)
Skyrim Sunglare (highly recommended)
Xenius Character Enhancement (essential, and also highly recommended)
Lush Trees
Nicer Snowflakes (highly recommended)
Improved Rock and Mountain Textures (highly recommended)
Real Ice
HD Furniture
Better Gold
High Quality Food and Ingredients
Realistic Paper

Misc

These are just some others that I use. You might like them too. Some of them are actually game fixes, specifically the blacksmith mods.

One Day Vendor Restock
Essential Dogs
Essential Horses
Essential Followers
Dragon Bone Weight Reduction
Pickaxe Weight Reduction
Firewood, Ingot and Ore Weight Reduction
Leathers Weight Fix
Smithing Perks Overhaul (highly recommended)
Weapons and Armor Fixes (highly recommended)
Lost Art of the Blacksmith (highly recommended)
Unlimited Rings
Unlimited Amulets
Longer Candlelight Spell
Warmer Magic Lights
I Put A Spell On You - More Enchanting Options (highly recommended)
Pickpocketing Chance Caps (highly recommended)
Player Home Map Markers (highly recommended)
Lightweight Scrolls
Lightweight Potions
Increased Carry Weight From Stamina (highly recommended)

That about does it. Let me know if you found this useful.