Gamers: Devour the game or Experience it?

So I was just reading a couple articles where there were conflicting opinions that resulted in some hurt feelings and odd name calling coupled with lengthy justifications regarding their own personal gaming styles. It is inevitable that we will encounter people who simply view the same game under a totally different lens than we do and it might generate this kind of friction, sure, but we can't go and rag on people for playing games in a way the fits with their approach to games.

I find myself wondering how gamers would classify themselves when it comes what angle you approach games at. Do you find yourself seeking to devour whatever game you take on? Is your goal in playing to simply conquer everything in your path, surmount every mountain the game presents to you? Is accomplishing everything more important to you than experiencing what the developers wanted you to experience? I feel like when you enter into a game studio that is committed to their craft you'll find yourself in the middle of a lot of people who are putting their blood, sweat, and tears into tailoring together a story. Sure you'll have projects you aren't exactly psyched to be working on but when you're creating an entire world from scratch that you know people will be expected to interact with you're a part of a very long-term art project. So what happens? Certain games don't exactly fit with crowds outside of their dedicated player base. If someone plays RPGs their entire life and then they are forced to go play an FPS chances are they won't enjoy it as much.

So this is sort of where this jumbled rant will hopefully become clear, my main question here is: Is there a way to play a game wrong? My personal answer to this is no, no you cannot play a game wrong it is simply impossible. You can do things wrong whilst playing the game but you are given a degree of sovereignty over part (or all of) the world you're experiencing. While playing Halo I can say screw this alien fighting crap I want to run away into the mountains and be the most awesome hermit ever. You can do that. Chances are you'll get bored pretty fast or fall and die and not have fun but you're allowed to do that.

Personally I would classify myself under the "Devourer" category since my main goal in whatever game I'm playing is to conquer anything worthwhile. I also try to find ways to break games to a certain degree. If I'm told no, I say why not and try to find a way around it. Example: Aion, there are skills you can use that lock your character into place, you aren't supposed to be able to move around at all while using these skills for various reasons. I defied that rule and found a way to avoid this mechanic without actually exiting the rules of the game itself (no cheats involved). That being said I still do enjoy a good story and am a hardcore RPG fan for that reason alone, I love watching events unfold and understanding my role within a world much larger than my character. I also happen to enjoy getting that fancy little 100% completion on certain games. I apologize to my abused Tales of Symphonia discs, Persona 3/4 discs, Legend of Dragoon/Legaia/Legaia 2 discs. They deserved better.

So I'll conclude this post with a question, what kind of gamer do you consider yourself? Feel free to make up your own categories that describe your habits, comment if you'd like or just think about it, whatever works for you.

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Opening Thoughts on Batman: Arkham City

After getting a disgustingly amazing deal on Arkham city and Skyward Sword on black Friday (got them both new for 70 bucks somehow along with some wii cords) I played around with both of them a bit and decided that I would work my way through Arkham city first. This post will basically be my opening thoughts on the game and things that stuck out to me.

The first thing I want to say is that I freaking love the design of the Arkham City world. It is visually amazing and quite large...and covered in Riddler signs. It has been quite a while since I've played Arkham Asylum but if I remember correctly it is a relatively open world and there is definitely a feel of freedom but it is nothing compared to having an entire city to roam around at your leisure (there might be consequences for my slacking later, who knows). So there is a cool city to explore and tool around in when you want to avoid the main missions but whats the point? Well they added a ton, and I mean a ton of various groups of inmates all over the city for you to practice your combat skills or just grind through levels on. Another thing that the city offers is a plethora of side quests that become available to you either randomly or get reported to you after completing certain missions as well as a chance to meet some of the other supervillains in the Batman universe, which brings me to my next point.

Arkham City contains essentially every villain ever and you're able to interact with some of them on a non-threatening level (Such as Bane) as well as hunt various killers down (Such as Riddler, Deadshot, Zsassz). Each villain will have particular quests you can do the hunt them down or help them out. Zsassz has you chase his calls around the city in a timed race-type missions and Bane asks you to help destroy the remaining Titan containers which are typically well guarded.

The Combat: The combat in Arkham City is great, it uses the same type of mechanics as the first game except it allows you even more freedom and I'm sure there is even more that I haven't discovered yet since I'm not very far into the game (Trying to find Freeze right now).

What I didn't like: I found myself having a bit more trouble ambushing guards as easily as Arkham Asylum, this might be due to a lack of perks or something but even the basic takedowns seem a bit spotty to me. Perhaps I just haven't gotten the hang of it quite yet but it is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with armed opponents and since I am playing on hard mode from the start it essentially means death if I am detected by two or more armed opponents.

Summary: I love the city, the combat, the movement, the gadgets, the characters, and all the side missions. I'll just need to give my silent takedowns some extra practice.

Thanks for reading, more to come after I've completed the game!

Edit: I'm alright with the takedowns now...the game has become more fun :D

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Daedric Quests: Mephala - Ebony Blade - ????

Alright so basically I wanted to do a short post on this very odd weapon called the "Ebony Blade". It basically looks like a larger version of the Blade's sword and is classified as a greatsword, it also has a leech health enchantment on it. So that all sounds normal whats weird about that? Well upon receiving the blade you're instructed by Mephala to return the blade to its former glory by slaughtering your followers. Sinister. I had no problem doing this so I went by all the people who liked me and starting killing them off one by one and the blade powered up from 19 base to about 23 base. Not a huge improvement. However, in addition to the slight base attack power going up you also get a rather large bump in the amount of health that the blade leeches from your opponents. I read that the max drain for the blade is 30 points so that makes it about 54 total damage per hit if you have it maxed out.

Now to add a bit more weirdness to this thing I can't seem to upgrade it (It won't even show up on the grindstone) and it doesn't get a bonus from the "Barbarian" perk (Boosts damage with two handed weapons). That was a tad bit frustrating since if you could upgrade the damage on this via perks or smithing (or both /godmode) you'd end up with a massively powerful weapon with a heavy leech enchantment. Disappointing. So, right now we have a weapon classified as a "weapon", "greatsword", "unpredictable life sucking rape-stick", and yet it doesn't get a boost from anything that says it boosts those things (I wish there was a perk to upgrade rape-stick damage). I also noticed that over time the sword will power back down to its original 19 base but I am not positive if the leech enchantment weakens as well and since you have a limited amount of followers to murder this means you'll have to keep making friends to feed your blade.

Solution to this problem: Marriage

Getting married will allow you to have a prime target for your cursed blade to feed on. Murdering your spouse will cause the sword to jump up to it's max power and you'll hear Mephala say something like "Excellent work..." notifying you that you've powered the blade up.

Last thing about this weird ass weapon: It seems to have a vastly superior attack speed in comparison to its other greatsword counterparts and appears to have a speed closer to that of a regular sword rather than a two-handed weapon. I'll need to experiment more with this weapon to make sure I learned everything but that is essentially it for now.

How do I get this damned weapon?

Simple quest. Talk to the inn keeper in Whiterun about rumors until she tell you that the Jarl's child is sick. After you begin the quest talk to the Jarl either in Whiterun or in the basement of Solitude's Blue Palace (It's where he goes if you oust him from his throne in Whiterun during the Stormcloak campaign). After asking him about his son you're sent to talk to him in Dragon Reach and the weird kid directs you to Mephala's door and she basically tells you to go back to the kid and find a way to unlock the seal on the door. After talking to the kid again he directs you to either the Jarl or his court mage. You can steal the key from either one of them but if you're like me and have a bounty of 20k+ in every region you can just murder the mage and take the key from him that way. After unlocking the door you get your cursed blade to do whatever you want with. Enjoy!

Feel free to comment on any other aspect of the blade I don't know about yet. I'll update this if I find anything else out about it!

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Whats coming up? (Some stuff I wanna say)

Right now I'm playing through Batman: Arkham City as well as Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and finishing up various side stuff on Skyrim. So the next few posts can be expected to be on any of those three things depending on what I want to talk about (Probably Batman first but who knows).

I'm also working on putting together an Aion PvP video from my massive backlog of fraps so that is eating up a ton of my time I'll be posting that on here when it is complete as well as my Youtube channel Fest1277.

Twitter: So I guess I decided to start tweeting again today and you can follow me at http://twitter.com/#!/TeamInfestation I guess. I'll post updates about the blog as well as random crap!

Comments: Anyone who reads this please feel free to comment even if it is just to let me know you stopped by. I am totally open to suggestions about what people would like to hear about as well as questions concerning games I have posted up on here, I love hearing from people and being able to help out in any game related problems.

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Skyrim Daedric Quests: Sheogorath & Boethia

Just a short little update on two more of the Daedric item quests that I finished yesterday. Enjoy!

Sheogorath - Wabbajack - Staff

So, Wabbajack. Want to cause random explosions? Want to turn people into harmless chickens/bunnies/cakes? Want to occasionally turn people into Dremora? <-- Bad luck on this one. The Wabbajack does all that and more. It's description is "causes an unpredictable effect" and boy does that not even come close to doing it justice. The first time I used this on an enemy he turned into a chicken and just wandered around for a while before poofing back into his previous state. Unfortunately just because they look like chickens doesn't mean they'll just die (that would be a bit ridiculous) and when you hit them they will revert back to their original form, or you can Wabbajack them again and see what else they turn into. The best one I've gotten so far was an explosion that took down about 80% of a dwarven centurion in one hit and then on the next hit, killed and turned him into a sweet cake. Mmmmmmmmm.

Where do I get my chicken morphing staff of cakes?

In solitude outside of the Jarl's palace (The Blue Palace) you'll see a homeless guy ranting and raving about how his master left him. Indulging the clearly disturbed hobo in conversation leads you to begin a quest called "The mind of madness". You're asked to find this guy's master who apparently went into the abandoned wing of the blue palace, you'll need a key which you can ask one of the servants in the palace to give you (They are marked). Oh, and the hobo gives you a hip bone too, he says you'll need it, sounds like good advice to me. Upon entering the abandoned section of the mansion you're quickly teleported into another dimension where you see Sheogorath and Pelagius the Mad having a meal in a very Alice-In-Wonderland type setting. After interrupting their meal Sheogorath agrees to return to reality if you can use Wabbajack to heal some of Pelagius' madness. You're sent to several areas with incredibly strange puzzles which really aren't very difficult and are quite entertaining so I'll leave out the full description here, the only thing you'll need to really know is just to be creative.

Once you finish these tasks Sheogorath returns you to the house and allows you to keep Wabbajack to do with what you will. It is actually quite an effective weapon that only has one negative effect that I've seen (Being the dremora transformation) so enjoy your new toy!

Boethia - Ebony Armor - Armor (It's better than it sounds)

Alright, this was pretty cool and mildly surprising since the armor is classified as "heavy" and is enchanted with an effect you'd expect on "light" armor. Whenever you go into "sneak mode" as I'll refer to it here, you're covered in shadows and you move silently. It literally shrouds your character in darkness, its pretty cool to look at. I did this quest on my level 30 warrior so I'm not 100% sure if the reward is the same for each character but I assume it is.

How do I get my shadowy ebony armor?

Somewhere along the line you'll be attacked by a priest of Boethia or something (its totally random) and he'll be carrying a book called "Boethia's Proving" which will instruct you to go to the shrine, which is located just outside of Windhelm. Upon reaching the summit of the mountain that the shrine is on you'll be confronted by a priestess of Boethia who will instruct you to bring someone who trusts you to the altar of sacrifice and then, well, sacrifice him to appease Boethia. At this point you'll just need to go pick up a follower that you've befriended and lead him to the altar, once you reach the sacrificial pillar you need to give your follower an order (interact with him and say "I need you to do something") and have him move to the pillar. He will be magically bound up and all you need to do is stab him/her dead. After he is dead Boethia will contact you and after a short conversation she instructs the entire encampment of people (There are around 10 maybe) to have a battle royale to determine who is fit to carry out her mission. After taking a dump on all of them (they are pretty easy) you're instructed to go to a cave and kill Boethia's current champion and retrieve his armor. After waltzing through the camp of bandits and beating the champion to death you'll have your new shadowy armor along with an entire set of ebony gear with the exception of the helmet. This is a great quest to do if you need an ebony set and aren't pursuing smithing or don't want to spend the money on crafting it yourself.

If I find any other Daedric Quests I'll post them up! Thanks for reading!

Ninja Edit: Wabbajack just blew someone up into a pile of money. <3

Ninja Ninja Edit: The Boethia assailant seems to show up when you hit level 30

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Skyrim: Daedric Quests

Alright, so this isn't exactly a campaign but there are individual quests that can be grouped under the umbrella of "Daedric Weapon Quests". These are some of the best weapons you can get in the game with the coolest looks and unique enchantments. There is at least one for each type of player (Warrior, Thief, Mage). I'll go through all the ones I know about so far and add to this post as I finish up a few. There is one weapon/item per daedric lord.

Mehrunes Dagon: Mehrune's Razor - Dagger

This is a fantastic dagger that looks pretty damn cool as well. It boasts one of the highest attack powers in the game second only to the daedric dagger (smithed) and the blade of woe (DB Quest reward). The only reason it doesn't have as much attack power as the aforementioned daggers is that it cannot be upgraded to "legendary" rank via smithing. So its got pretty good attack power, looks cool, but what else can it do? It has a small chance to instantly kill anything you hit. Yep. That includes "bosses" and of course, dragons. It is quite hilarious to walk up to a dragon and poke it once with a dagger and just have it flop down. This enchantment makes Mehrune's razor a valuable asset for an Thief players.

How do I get this?

Remember the letter you get early in the game? The one asking you to come check out the new museum in Dawnstar? Don't ignore this like I did on my first character. Once you get there and talk to the curator running this Mythic Dawn museum he asks you to find pieces of the dagger scattered in various parts of Skyrim. Once you find all the pieces you and the curator head to the Mehrunes Dagon shrine and call on him to assemble it. He has you murder the curator in exchange for restoring the dagger. After you kill him you get the dagger do as you will BUT WAIT! Mehrunes is an asshole and summons two dremora to assault you. After dispatching them you're free to enter his temple and kill two more dremora and loot nice things out of a few chests.

Important note about this quest: Daedra hearts a rarity in this game and are used to craft some of the best (and coolest) weapons and armor so if you're intending to smith stuff this is a good chance to pick up four daedra hearts.

Meridia: Dawnbreaker - Sword

Dawnbreaker is a sword made for killing the undead. It has good base stats and is a good sword for anyone going dual swords or sword n board. When I say it's good at killing undead I mean that with a decently high chance upon killing an undead it causes an explosion that damages and causes all undead to flee. So, if you'd like a zombie exploding sword that I can only assume is made from beating the sun to death and forging a sword from its molten remains, then this is your sword.

How do I get my zombie exploding sword?

If you head to the temple of Marra (location coming soon) you're greeted by a disembodied voice in your head telling you that you need to go and find Marra's beacon that has been stolen and defiled by a necromancer. So you go kill some baddies in a dungeon to find this jewel or "beacon" and Marra asks you to guide her light through her defiled temple in order to restore her power and retrieve dawnbreaker. Once you complete the simple puzzles you're rewarded with the dawnbreaker, a nice addition to any armory, even for mages since you could burn draugr down with spells and switch to the dawnbreaker for the final blow to cause an explosion for any others.

Azura: Azura's Star: Soulgem

This is probably one of the more useful items in the game since you'll probably have several weapons that need to be recharged quite often (especially if you have the blade of woe, ugh its like they used the worst soulgem on that thing x.x) but essentially you go to the shrine of Azura (Just south of Winterhold on a mountain near the dragon's sanctuary thing/word wall) and a priestess of Azura confronts you saying you were fated to come here and return Azura's star to him/her (It's referred to as a prince but appears to be a female figure). The star itself is a soul gem that doesn't break after you use it, which means you can store a soul in it, use said soul to enchant/recharge something and then still have the gem afterwards. In order to do this quest you're forced to find the necromancer who stole it in order to put his own soul into it and ultimately transfer himself to a new host and gain immortality. After you defeat his underlings and retrieve the star you take it to his friend and he puts your soul in there in order to destroy his old colleague. This is also a good opportunity to kill several dremora and gain daedra hearts (This quest + Mehrunes' Razor quest = enough hearts for a full set of armor and a weapon or two). The fight itself is not very hard, just a few dremora and a powerful-ish mage. After the fight ends you're presented with a choice, return the star to azura and receive the purified star which only holds natural souls (nonhuman) or allow the mage to finish his dead buddy's work and turn the star into a vessel for human souls (like a black soul gem). I personally went with the dark star since it can only contain grand souls and I wouldn't yell a bunny to death and have it fill the star with a petty soul.

Namira: Namira's Ring - Ring

When you arrive in Markarth and head into the Jarl's palace you see a conversation between a nord and priest involving an intruder of sorts violating the hall of the dead. After a little persuasion the priest lets you handle it. Upon entering the crypt you meet a woman who claims you're a closet cannibal and verbally abuses you into helping her clear out Namira's shrine of all draugr (apparently they aren't yummy enough for cannibals to eat). So after doing this you're asked to bring the priest to the shrine of Namira. If you choose to continue this quest, be warned, its pretty disturbing. After leading the priest to the shrine you murder him and eat him, Namira rewards you with her ring (+50 stamina and the ability to gain boosted regenerative properties by feeding on your enemies). I found this quest to be quite jarring and subsequently murdered the congregation of cannibals which had no repurcussions other than making me feel better.

Molag Bal (Baal? Bol?) : Molag Bal's Mace - Mace

This is one of the easier daedric weapons to find/get just because the quest literally jumps right in your face if you walk a few steps into Markarth. The mace itself isn't a half bad weapon for anyone using a warrior setup, it has one or two good enchantments (I'll post the stats once I'm back home) and has pretty good base stats.

How do I get mine?

Well like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, if you walk into Markarth just past the inn you'll see a priest standing outside one of the houses who stops and asks you questions regarding the house. He then asks you if you'll come investigate the house with him which begins the house of horrors quest. Once inside you make your way into the basement and then your priestly buddy determines that it isn't a regular daedra like he thought it was and makes a run for the door. The front door is of course, locked, and you hear a voice inside your head telling you to murder the priest. Listen to the voice or don't, the end result is the same. After a few seconds of waiting the priest says "No, no! I don't want to die here!" and attacks you. After killing him the voice invites you down into the basement and into the shrine of Molag Bal where you see a mace and a pool of blood. Then he traps you in a cage and forces you to go find a priest of Boethia for him to torture. Upon rescuing the priest you goad him into coming back to the shrine with you where Molag Bal traps him in the same cage you were in and instructs you to beat him to death or until he submits. After a couple good thwacks with the mace the priest dies and is subsequently resurrected for you to beat to death all over again. Once the priest finally submits you kill him for good and receive Molag Bal's mace as payment. Enjoy your new sadistic toy.

Mask (Can't remember the lord's name)

This item is a heavy class helmet that gives you better prices on things and looks a bit strange. It's got a decent armor rating but the dragon priest masks are better for the most part but it's a funny quest so I'd recommend doing it for a good laugh.

How do I get my weirdo mask?

Upon entering Falkreath (not that you would ever go there for anything but a quest) you're approached by a guard asking if you saw a dog on the road. After telling the guard you were too busy yelling at bunnies and foxes to notice any dogs he directs you to the town's blacksmith who is the one actually looking for the dog. The blacksmith informs you that he just wants a good companion and thought that this stray dog would be a good pet. He gives you a steak to go put on the road in order to lure the dog out but as soon as you head to the quest marker the dog approaches you on it's own. So, this dog starts talking to you in a very goofy voice asking you to come kill some dudes in order to get back to his master. After following the invincible daedric dog for a long damn time (I watched him fight a snow troll, a bear, and some bandits.) you go into a cave and kill all the vampires that inhabit the shrine. Once you talk to the daedric lord you realize that he's kinda pissed that you brought back the dog that he exiled (for reasons that become apparent after traveling with the little bastard) and he has you go retrieve a mystical axe (it kinda sucks) and once you return from fetching the axe you're asked to kill the dog. A tempting offer, sure, but I chose to let the daedric lord deal with him and he gives you the mask as payment for your services and then disappears to go bother people now that he has his full power back (The dog is the source of his power). Yay masks!

I believe that this is all but two of the daedric quests, the other ones that may be considered daedric items are the nightingale armor/weapons which you can refer to my thieves guild post to find out about.

I'll update this after I get home! Thanks for reading!

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Skyrim Campaigns: The Companions

The Companions are the "fighters guild" substitute for Skyrim with one huge difference, they're all werewolves. The Companion quest-line begins like you'd expect any fighter-ish missions to start, you go to a ruin and beat up some baddies. Then you get trapped in a room while your partner remains in the room completely alone. Suddenly a swarm of bandit looking people rush out and claim they're going to kill him and they close in on him. Farkas (your partner for this mission) then says something along the lines of "There aren't enough of you" or some other mildly badass quote then he transforms into a giant ass werewolf and slaughters the entire group and casually lets you out of the cage. Upon looking at the fallen enemies they're labeled as "Silver Hand" which I automatically interpreted as a werewolf hunting group. So this mission basically sets the tone for the rest of the campaign and you're sent out to begin wiping out these werewolf hunters.

After you're officially invited into the Companions you're given an option to take part in the blood ritual, which will turn you into a werewolf. I believe you can choose to remain human if you so desire but I wanted to give lycanthropy a fair shot. I'll briefly go over the benefits and drawbacks of being a werewolf.

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Pros:

Transformation once a night

Extremely fast run speed (much faster than a horse)

High resistances to various attacks

Large boost in overall attack power

Cool finishers

Ability to heal and extend your transformation by feeding on fallen enemies

Cons:

Must kill and feed on one person a day in order to retain the maximum benefits (I never suffered the consequences of not doing this but I have read that you weaken the longer you don't feed)

It is a major crime if you're seen transforming

Weak to silver weapons (Typically only a problem when dealing with the silver hand)

Impossible to get "Rested" and "Well Rested" bonuses from sleeping

Can't use items or spells

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So after a few missions as a werewolf where you're sent to hunt down various groups of silver hand members, the harbinger of the group (unofficial leader/elder) wants you to go on a mission for him. This mission's purpose is to cure the entire group of the "beast blood" that runs through their veins so you're sent after the witches that gave it to the companions many years ago. So you go into a cave and cut off some hargreave heads to bring back to the harbinger as he had asked. When you return =*SPOILER ALERT*= the silver hand has raided the Companions' base in Whiterun and left the harbinger dead. Following this event you're sent to eliminate the leader of the silver hand in an act of vengeance. Once this is complete, the Companions reassemble the ancient axe used by the original founder Ysgramor and you enter into another ruin in order to attempt to purify the soul of your fallen leader. Once you fight your way to the end you place one of the witch's heads into the fire and summon out the wolf spirit of the harbinger. Its not a hard fight at all and then you purify the harbingers soul and all is well.

After the main story is over the extra missions involve curing the other members of the Companions of their lycanthropy and doing various hunting missions, including dragon hunts. You're also given the option of curing yourself as well (which I did) which is nice so you don't have to be stuck as a werewolf forever.

Ending notes: One of the early benefits of being a Companion is the Skyforge steel weapon you're offered upon joining. These are easily some of the best weapons you can get early on and hold their own against various other higher-than-steel class weapons such as dwarven, orcish, elven etc. You also get really cool looking wolf armor, its not terribly great but it is definitely one of the cooler looking armor sets in the game.

Thanks for reading :)! Daedric quests are next!

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Skyrim Campaigns: The Thieves Guild

The Thieves guild was one of the better campaigns in Skyrim, it kinda made the Civil war stuff that I talked about in previous posts feel like garbage. There are basically two stages in the campaign which is nice because it offers a change of pace about half way through the quest-line. The first stage is just the basic thieving and stealth missions which are pretty fun if not just because Skyrim's typical style is to just absolutely eliminate everything in your way, so this offers a chance to play the game as you would a stealth game. You're essentially required to get into well guarded areas and steal or mess with various objectives and then escape without being noticed, if possible anyway. There are also an unlimited amount of side jobs you can do for quick gold (NOTE: These are not very hard to do and can be a great way to make money at a lower level.) there are also a total of like six types of side jobs including things like Burglary jobs, Heist jobs, Shill jobs, Numbers jobs, Sweep jobs, etc. =*SPOILER ALERT*= As you progress through the campaign you're eventually asked to accompany the guild master into a dungeon to help him hunt down a former member who had murdered the previous guild leader. So you trek through a ruin that is mostly the same as all the rest but with more traps than usual and when you finally get to the last room you're immediately shot with an arrow and you get to watch the scene unfold while on the ground. Then the guild master being the absolute dick that he is, walks over to helpless little you and stabs you. That concludes the first portion of this quest line.

You awaken in the woods with the person you were originally hunting for and she explains that the poison she hit you with earlier had slowed your heart rate enough so she could stop the bleeding before you kicked the bucket. Then you're brought in on the conspiracy that was set up by the current guild master in order to obtain something called the Skeleton Key, a mystical lockpick that is described as being able to open any door, including ones in your mind (woah?). Essentially its implied that you can use the pick to open up a person's hidden potential. You'll notice that prior to him stabbing you the guild master would pick through things like the claw puzzle doors, which is silly. So the consequence of this dude possessing this super lockpick is that it curses the thieves guild by limiting their "luck", or basically making really unfortunate things happen during the night (Like a pick breaking on an easy lock or a guard feels the need to go out of it's way to check those dark shadowy corners he usually neglects). So you begin the hunt for the guild master by translating the previous one's notebook in order to determine what happened that led to all this. Of course the previous guy was an absolute tool and wrote his journal in Falmer language. Yeah, those little blind bat people that live underground, their language. After a semi-difficult stealth mission through dwarven ruins in order to find a translation you're informed about something called the Nightingales.

The Nightingales are a group of three of the most skilled thieves who pledge their eternal souls to a mystical being called Noctournal, essentially the goddess of thieves. So you are offered the chance to become one of these Nightingales in order to stop Mercer (tired of typing "guildmaster"). Now before I talk about finishing this campaign I'd just like to point out that gear-wise this campaign is incredibly rewarding. Once you choose to become a Nightingale you're given a full set of armor that is probably the coolest looking set in the entire game and is incredibly beneficial for stealth players. You're also given a Nightingale blade and bow before the campaign ends, both of which are heavily enchanted and very useful in combat (even better if you have max smithing and can upgrade them). So once you have all the pieces in place you have to trek through another dwarven ruin knocking tons of falmer out of the way as you go and eventually you get to mercer and have a climactic clash. After the fight is over you receive the skeleton key. Okay now a bit of advice here, you now have about 90% of the rewards from the thieves guild quest-line and you have access to a lockpick that is unbreakable. You have no obligation to fork over the key right away and if you want to bolster your funds a bit then go on a crime spree or just raise your lockpicking stat to 100. Once you turn it in it is gone forever, so keep that in mind. After returning the key all is well in the thieving world and your final rewards are the aforementioned bow as well as one of three nightingale skills.

These skills are divided into three types:

1. Agent of Strife: This is my personal favorite since it essentially gives you a skill that fires a soul sucking wall of death at an enemy. This skill immediately absorbs 100 health from a target. Now, in Skyrim, at level 40, I have a little over 200 hp. So this skill instantly inflicts massive damage to a target and then heals half of my hp. Very useful.

2. Agent of Subterfuge: Basically this is just a very strong rage spell and allows you to royally piss someone off. Moderately useful.

3. Agent of Stealth: Probably the second best skill out of the three (in my opinion) it allows you to become completely invisible while in stealth for 120 seconds a day. Perfect for prolonged stealth missions and allows you to keep the Nightingale stuff on without taking any loss in terms of sneaking effectiveness over the Dark Brotherhood gear. Very useful.

The best part: You aren't locked into the skill once you choose one, you're allowed to switch it up once a day. So if you need to switch skills to suit your needs you're allowed to do so.

Last comments: This campaign was decently long and a whole lot of fun. It was about the same as the Dark Brotherhood in terms of length, rewards, and entertainment. Both the DB and TG campaigns give full gear sets and great weapons. I highly recommend this quest-line to anyone playing a thief!

Super long post, thanks for reading. Skyrim week is coming to a close and I'll be talking about the Companions and the main story line sometime in the next few days. Maybe the mages college if I ever get around to finishing my mage.

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Skyrim Campaigns: Civil War (Stormcloaks)

This will be a very short post since the differences between the two sides of this questline are extremely few and far between. Neither civil war rewards you very well at all and the fort sieges get pretty repetitive. The only thing I really liked about the Stormcloak side was the siege on Solitude. It is a larger city and proved to be more visually enticing than Windhelm. Outside of that they essentially just copy the quest-line from the Imperial side and change up the settings a bit. One thing I failed to mention about the civil war campaigns in general was the fact that the scars of the war are displayed in the various cities you siege, namely Whiterun. You can see broken portions of barricades and destroyed scenery, the signs of battle are preserved for the rest of the game which sort of gives you a feeling of influence over how the world develops and allows you to craft it.

Not a long post, not a long campaign. Can't say I enjoyed the civil war stuff very much, it was all kind of a bummer. I feel like they could have fleshed it out a bit more and made the city sieges way more epic.

Thieves Guild Campaign tomorrow! This one was a lot of fun.

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Skyrim Campaigns: Civil War, Imperial side

So I chose to do the Imperial side of this campaign mostly because I like the look of their armor more than the Stormcloak's and I had high hopes that I would be receiving some sort of awesome looking armor set with super cool bonuses and stuff. I was wrong. You receive jack shit for doing this quest line outside of a sort of decent sword and a basic armor set which is nice if you do this right out of the gate and have no smithing skill or the ability to run dungeons to get gear (it really is not hard to get better armor/weapons than this quest line gives you). That is one of the only disappointing parts thankfully and the rest of the campaign is quite fun. Your main missions typically consist of siege style missions where you have to exhaust the enemy troops before they overwhelm you, which is pretty fun, especially for anyone running a warrior class setup since you essentially hack through opponent after opponent with relative ease (if you've got a decent gear situation that is). This also provides you with a great way to level up some skills since one fort siege mission could allow you to tear through about 5 dungeons worth of enemies in quick succession.

Story: The civil war campaign is a pretty straightforward story, you go to each Imperial outpost around Skyrim and systematically push your way through the various regions by taking over key forts and eliminating Stormcloak forces. Eventually you push up to Windhelm and actually siege the city and take on Ulfric himself. Not terribly difficult to do (at least on adept difficulty) but its a visually enticing scene, Windhelm burning and ravaged.

Overall this campaign was not as fun as the DB questline but I am severely biased since my playstyle of choice is the thief setup and this one definitely seemed like it was more of a warrior-type campaign. I thought the siege style missions were pretty nice and a good change of pace from your typical dungeon. I'll be doing the Stormcloak side of this questline probably later today and will post on it once I have completed it.

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Skyrim Campaigns: The Dark Brotherhood

So, I decided that trying to "review" or even talk about Skyrim as a whole just would either turn out to be a small book or be too short to do it justice. So to resolve this little problem I'll just talk about the various campaigns you can do to supplement your experience with Skyrim (does anyone just do the main story..?). I'll start with the only one I have completed 100% which is the Dark Brotherhood or the "Assassin's guild" for those who may not know what it's called.

You can start this campaign chain by heading to Windhelm and finding a boy in his house praying over his mother's corpse (super grim huh?) for the Dark Brotherhood to come and become a tool of vengeance for this boy. You're sent on a mission to assassinate his abusive caretaker at the orphanage he had previously resided in. After you successfully eliminate this mean, child abusing, old hag of a lady you're kidnapped the next time you go to sleep by a masked woman and taken to a shack with three people with bags on their heads. This next part is a test of your judgement or lack thereof, you're ordered to murder one of the three captives and you're supposed to figure out which one is guilty. --SPOILER ALERT-- Your choice probably doesn't matter but I personally decided to murder all three, which turned out to be a potential response as well.

After you've been accepted in you're introduced to the rest of your "family" and you begin the Dark Brotherhood experience. This is filled with murder, stealth, and fun. From dropping statues onto unsuspecting brides to finding a pirate ship and assassinating its captain the Dark Brotherhood offers an incredibly wide range of assassinations that vary in difficulty and complexity. The story revolves around two things:

1. The night mother vs. the current family: The night mother is brought to Skyrim's sanctuary after the one in Bravil was ransacked, this causes a bit of tension between Skyrim's brotherhood (which is the last one by the way) who has abandoned the "old ways" and the call for a return to the nightmother's guidance and the appointment of a listener.

2. An assassination plot against the emperor, this is revealed quite early on so I don't consider it a spoiler but I won't detail the process in which you do this (it's kinda complex). This is an incredibly fun endeavor as you're constantly being put into the line of fire and forced to escape situations that are near impossible to do without heavy resistance from city guards and the like. The story itself is rife with betrayal and conflict between the dwindling members of the brotherhood and the emperor's elite guard. When it comes to dynamic mission concepts, the Dark Brotherhood campaign delivers.

Side notes: There are some side contracts you can take in order to make some extra gold or in my case, just have a little fun. These are a great way to gain a good foothold financially and are pretty fun but typically on the easy side compared to the main line of assassinations.

Shadowmere. This horse is the best. He makes his epic return from Oblivion for you to ride around on and kick all kinds of ass. He is the best distraction ever since he is completely invincible, he takes hits from giants no problem, no trouble from dragons or hordes of guards either (I tend to misbehave). The best part of his invincibility? Things love to attack him. They just can't keep their hands off this horse and they ignore me, which means they have a hot date with some daggers coming.

In closing I would just like to say that the Dark Brotherhood is quite different in Skyrim than it was in Oblivion but I would say that it's a good change and a hell of a lot of fun.

Civil War campaign : Imperial side next!

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Skyrim

I have the hots for this game. Good lord where did the last three days go...Skyrim is possibly the most immersive game I have ever played. Bethesda did a fantastic job with this game no question about it. Just the way they shaped their world is phenomenal, the story is left up to the player, each playstyle has the ability to function well and the dungeons are d0-able with any kind of weapon setup. There is very little to complain about when you are given such a massive world, hundreds of quests and dungeons, and multiple complex campaigns to experience.

One thing I really loved was the new class design. They let us have even more freedom with this than even Oblivion allowed. In Oblivion you were allowed to create a custom class with 7 things you felt were important, this was nice and all but it was hard to be effective in something that wasn't in your top 7. Skyrim lets you do whatever the hell you want. I love that. My current character is a Khajit with mostly thief-class skills. I love the thief playstyle but I also like to add my own twist to things, so I also decided to work on enchanting and conjuration a bit. The purpose of adding that to my thief character was to enhance my overall effectiveness, I didn't feel alchemy would help me a lot so instead, I delved into sort of a 50/50 enchanting and conjuration setup. With conjuration I focused specifically on getting the bound bow spell which eliminates my need for arrows and frees up space that would otherwise be taken up by a bow. Atronarchs also make fantastic distractions when things get messy.

This is an incredibly brief take on the game and there is just so much more to write. But I'll save that until after I "complete" the game. If anyone is reading this, be sure to comment with your character choices/preferences!

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Rusty Hearts

So I was watching some Aion PvP videos on youtube out of boredom and one of the channels had videos of a game called Rusty Hearts. Now, being the well educated MMO player that I am, I had to check it out and see what this unknown game was. So I go to the site and see that its made by the same people who did Perfect World and their slew of cookie cutter MMOs that I could never understand why anyone bothered with. This was a definite put off. Burying my unease about the developer, I decided to download and give Rusty Hearts a try.

RH (Rusty Hearts) is a side scrolling hack n' slash game that provides you with an option of using four characters, each with their own unique weapons, skills, and overall playstyles. I chose to play as the vampire guy with the sword. Not because I like vampires, I like swords and I did not want to play as the gauntlet guy just because his name is "Tude"...I have standards, I'll take angsty vampire over anyone named Tude. The game plays out with horrible voice acting and a very annoying UI but despite that its decently fun to plow through the dungeons on various difficulties. There isn't much to talk about when it comes to combat...you have a basic combo, an air combo you'll never use, and some skills to work with. The enemies are pretty basic, you got your skeletons...fish people...odd looking bosses.

The thing I liked more than anything else is just the way everything looks. It kinda reminds me of an old school hack n slash in a weird vague kinda way. I really liked the skill animations though, they were quite well done and really gave a good sense of impact.

Outside of all that stuff there isn't too much to talk about...I guess I could mention that the towns absolutely blow.

Anyway, RH is a good F2P game if you're into hack n slashes and have some time to kill. I can't see myself playing it much in the future, just wasn't my thing.

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Ambition

So I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of ambition as well as my own ambitions for my life, my career, my personal growth, pretty much thinking about ambition as it applies to all aspects of my life. I feel like I'd feel better if I just put it down somewhere that I could look at whenever I feel uncertain or discouraged. So that place will be here since this has become a personal, yet very open, log of my thoughts as they relate to games. So here it goes.

In regards to career ambitions: Honestly, I'm shooting for the stars when it comes to what I ultimately want to do with my life and my passions. I want, at the end of my career, to be able to own and manage my own game studio. More than anything in the world I want to be the guy in charge of making the things that I love, to be a driving force of change and innovation in the gaming industry in my own way, by doing my own thing. Realistically speaking, my dream is not something that is easily achieved and I acknowledge the difficulty of making something like this a reality, game studios die faster than a homeless puppy on a cold winter evening (grim, colorful, depressingly accurate). I honestly don't even know where to start and even what my first step might be to realizing this ambition, the only thing I do know is: Right here, right now, I am going to begin fostering my talents in order to prepare myself for when opportunity comes knocking so I will be as ready as I'll ever be to make my dream a reality.

Personal Ambitions: I struggle a lot with various aspects in my personal life. Plain and simple. Who doesn't struggle here I wonder? I don't think I'd get along with a person like that...I think that awkwardness you feel when you first meet someone is a good thing, I like the uncertainty of not knowing what this person will do, they could be my best friend next month and then my most hated enemy in 20 years. I just don't know. I feel the need to remind myself that its okay to be myself but I still need to put myself out there and seek connections with those around me. I am very naturally an aloof person, always have been, probably always will be (to some degree at least). I find that I am easily accepted by like-minded peers but I seem to have trouble locating those people to a greater degree than I would like. As an introvert I love my alone time but I am hungry for a connection which is decently difficult to foster in the environment I have taken up residence in. I commute to class every day and return home every night after my work is done, which doesn't exactly leave too much room for a social life outside of my well loved gaming buddies whom I interact with via Aion or Ventrillo. Simply put: Its not enough for me. I miss my friends from Boston, the laughs, the fights, the good, the bad, the constant flux of dorm life was very entertaining for me. So right now, the first thing I want to accomplish in my personal life is finding one good friend and fostering that connection here at Cornerstone.

Regarding Personal Growth: I am a person who is constantly changing, I recognize this aspect of myself, I feel like my state of growth will last until the day I die. I never want to stagnate or become predictable. Its incredibly easy to get into a rhythm and just go through the motions of life and stop growing. For me, growth can be described best by the use of one horrible, terrifying word. Failure. When I fail I am so hard on myself and that critical response is eventually reduced to a dull sting whenever I think back on a particular failure. Since I've returned home to Michigan I feel like I have stopped punishing myself for the times I fall short. Instead of punishing myself I find myself laughing when I have some time alone, its these situations where I fall on my face (figuratively speaking) that I find the most valuable. I think learning to laugh at myself and in the face of failure can be one of my greatest assets, I am incredibly tenacious when I want something but I would find myself shying away from situations where I might fail. Sure I may be "safe" from those hard feelings of failure and inadequacy but I am coming to the point where I'd rather fall on my face doing things I love than sitting in a safe little corner pretending I'm happy with the way things are. Just gotta keep getting up and trying again until you get it right. A simple yet infinitely complex ambition to pursue.

In closing I would just like to say that I appreciate the quote my parents keep tossing around and writing all over the house. "Stand in your vision" I think that's a great idea right now.

-Fest

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Thoughts on Crysis 2

So I finally got around to finishing Crysis 2 this past weekend and just wanted to share a couple of my thoughts in regards to how it measured up to the first. The first thing I'll address here is the undertones that I encountered throughout the game. Being a first person shooter typically guarantees a sub-par story and lackluster character design by falling into the pattern of face-less super soldier blows up gratuitous amounts of aliens. This held true for Crysis 2, you play as Alcatraz, just a normal marine who gets flung into this massive conflict between the Ceph and Humanity. The character from the first Crysis, Prophet, finds this random dying marine laying on the ground completely helpless and decides to give him a second chance at life as well as to complete his work and destroy the Ceph.

I thought that despite the main character being voice-less and face-less there was still some shred of purpose that he displayed over the course of the game. Even his name, Alcatraz, was symbolic of his situation in a pretty big way. You're essentially tossed into this super suit by no desire of your own and forced to fight your way through hordes of hardships all by yourself. You're trapped into a fight that wasn't your own, you're alone for the most part, and you can't get out of the suit no matter what happens to you (even when others try to get him out of it by force it doesn't work). You're essentially trapped in a cage fighting other people's battles the entire game, and while the thought of being trapped in a super nano suit that essentially makes you invincible may sound like the coolest prison experience ever, its still communicated in various ways that your will is never your own.

The game as whole was decently fun and the variation between the human opponents and the alien ones kept the levels interesting. I liked the original Crysis more than I liked this one just due to the way it was designed with an open world and a higher degree of freedom rather than what they did with Crysis 2, which took more of a Halo 2/3/Reach approach to things. You're given a moderate amount of freedom in how you'd like to complete your objectives via stealth or just plowing your way through hoards of opponents which is nice but it lacked the feel that the original had (more of a Far Cry feel).

That's all I have to say about Crysis 2. Its hard to make meaningful connections in a game that is centered on blowing jello-aliens up and running around with a super nano-suit.

-Fest

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