Why Skyrim is not the number one game of the year!

This may be seen as a controversial thing to say at the moment, especially when Skyrim mania is at its all-time high.

This game has been voted number one game of 2011 by many online and off line magazines; I can understand the reasoning behind all this. I was excited about this Bethesda release, so much so I had to play oblivion beforehand to get me in the mood. I watched countless trailers and read many articles about this game before it had hit the shelves. I almost squealed when I got my copy of the game.

The graphics in the opening scene were immense, I remember sitting on my sofa not being able to move, they took my breath away, even more so when you go into the village and you encounter the dragon. Wow!

But from that moment on it just turned into another RPG.

The Dragon battles are all the same, running about to find various locations can get mundane, The characters still feel a little static to say the least, and I hate it when you are having a conversation with someone and a guard walks past telling you about the dragon attacks when you are mid conversation. I don’t know if it’s my TV but it always happens at such a high volume I miss what it is the other person is saying. But what gets me the most is all the bugs.

The game is glitchy and I find games like this tedious and hard to play. Landmarks disappear, grass is up in the air, and I saw an elk walking over my head. Weapons of enemies that you kill are stuck in the air; some trees don’t even seem to grow in the ground! There are plenty of issues with this game and I would be here all night if I was to mention them all.

I know there has been patches made to fix these problems but call me old fashioned I don’t think you should release a game when you haven’t finished it. They must have had a quick run though thought well the graphic are amazing people will overlook the glitches. The worst thing is is that this train of thought has seemed to of worked.

I look at gaming sites pretty much all the time, I have 1 up and IGN open constantly and I have read reviews that they have made about other games that have had far less glitches than this game and pretty much slammed them to the ground. So what makes Skyrim different? They at least acknowledge the glitches, but they don’t see it as a problem with this game.

If I am to spend 100+ hours on a game I would like it to be enjoyable but I find myself putting off playing it because I get fed up with strange things happening. I don’t like not being able to not fully complete a mission because the game has glitched and the object is not there anymore.

So why moan about a game that I will still continue to play?

Well the answer is this…

I know that Bethesda have shown us what they are capable of creating and yes it is a huge world they have done and I commend them for it, but for the time they have put into the game, they could of put the release date back until they have made it perfect!

 

Maybe I am too much of a perfectionist, but would batman or Gears of War done so will if they released what feels like a game that has only been 75% completed? I don’t think so.

The quests also are a little too much, it seems to me that they have tried to compile a game that people will have a never ending list of things to do, many of these tasks are menial quests like please take a letter half way across the world to a dead man and then make you way back to me to tell me that he is dead! Why?!?!? It doesn’t even seem like the character was even shocked by the fact that this person had died and just carried on cooking! I didn’t even get anything out of this quest!

If they had concentrated on making bigger and better quests ones where people could immerse themselves fully into I think the game would have been a bigger success. I feel that this game has been unfairly favouritised in the eyes of the media.

One last point – Bethesda has also added in the idea of marriage and other tasks. I’m playing Skyrim not the Sims!! Anyway, the marriage concept worked ok in Fable II (I won’t even get onto the topic of Fable III that is another post all together!) And I say OK because even in fable it didn’t feel right. But at least there seemed to be more point to it than in Skyrim.

With this said, I will complete the game I do think it’s an okay game. I really like the levelling up idea and the constellations! And  I am currently stuck in a dungeon and my aim for tonight is to complete this quest!

/rant.

 

Portal Review

Portal Review

I know this is an old game and I know that by now many people have played this game and the seconded one for that matter. But because I am not reviewing games on a commercial basis I don’t feel the need to post reviews for the most recent game released. One reason being I am a student and cannot afford to pay £40 every time a new game is released.

As this is just a hobby of mine, I will be writing reviews for games that I play as and when.  Although I have completed portal numerous times I thought it was high time I wrote my opinions on the game. After all this is why I have created this blog!

I digress, so without any further ado, let’s continue.

Portal is a genius idea put into an hour and a half game play. You are in a science facility and presented with ‘tests’ that you have to solve by using your only piece of equipment you are given – a portal gun.  With this gun you can shoot out a blue portal and an orange portal, what this does is open up opportunities for you to walk though objects such as walls and floors, say you enter the blue portal you will come out of the orange portal. These portals can only be made on certain walls and floors’ so finding a place to shoot at proves a little tricky at times, but that is all fun of the game.

Throughout the rooms you find many different puzzles to overcome, these mainly come in the form of companion cubes for buttons or/ and lasers. The aim is to place portals in certain places to move objects and lasers to the correct places so the door will open and you can continue on to the next puzzle. As you progress in the game, you come across some more advanced challenges which contain turrets who employ a shoot to kill MO. However they are cute, well, as cute as a turret can be and I found myself feeling bad when knocking them over.

I think what makes the game is GLaDOS and her comical interludes while you are going onto the next level.

Although the 6 advance levels are a lot harder than the levels that you are presented with in the game they are well worth doing as you will find yourself sitting there scratching your head trying to figure out which way is best to solve the puzzle. They also have different level types such as least footsteps and least portals. This is a nice touch to a game that is incredibly easy to play.

In summary, I find it hard to fault this game it’s entertaining, funny and relatively easy to complete. My only criticism would be that it is too short but, on the other hand, It is a nice length that you can just play it in a night and feel satisfied.

Unlike most valve games there is not the boxy feel to it, maybe because there is no real outdoor scene. This is a bonus in my books.

I’d like to just conclude by saying, well done valve you have done it again!

After my night of gaming.

Last night I spent roughly 10 hours on WOW. As you can imagine i am pretty exhausted. But Life must go on, So I Have started my Uni work. (try and get it out of the way fo when i work nights over the weekend I am not worrying about it and obviously it will give me more time for my games )

So I looked in my book today and found an interesting task.

Give 10 Top Tips on how to make your business recession proof.

So seeing as This is my blog about my life and everything that I currently do I decided that I am going to Blog about this.  (can you tell its my new years resolution to blog more?!?) 

Recession Planning: How to Bullet Proof your business

 “The scaremongers are out in force, and words such as recession and Downturn are being recklessly bandied about. Through the sage advice of those who recall harder times, we provide some proverbial armour to help your business weather the storm”

(extract from Growing Business: 1.3.08)

1. Look for ways that you can wither re-position your product in the market. This could be done by creating a stronger bond between your customer and yourselves. For example, go the extra mile to deliver quality customer care including after care.
2. Look at trends within the market and maybe try a new distribution channel to make your product more accessible. I.e. e-commerce.
3.  Do not buy products that your business does not need. If your competitor has just forked out £2000 on a website, but you can’t make your cash stretch that far, try cheaper marketing solutions and better deals. Be frugal with your cash flow.
4.  If your company is struggling, try asking your customers for feedback. This will tell you where your business can improve and what strategies are not working. In a recession you cannot afford to pour your money into something that is not working.
5. Look at what the completion is doing; have they stopped advertising to a market that you depend on heavily? Where are they making cuts? Is this something that you can profit from? Capitalise from where they are missing out.  Make sure you take every open opportunity to make your business grow.
6. Keep your customers, employees and suppliers loyal to your company. This can be done a number of ways. Make sure you make them feel special and deliver good customer service to internal and external customers.
7. Ensure that your incoming is more than your outgoings. If you have a loan then endeavour to pay it off as quickly as you can. Retain your assets.
8. Do some comparisons with suppliers. If X supply you good cheaper than Y with the same quality that you are getting then use the cheaper supplier. For example, office goods. Do not monopolise with one supplier. If a company does this then it is likely that they are not getting the best deals, if you let your supplier know that you have seen a better deal elsewhere  9 times out of 10 they will try and beat that offer. In a recession, all companies are aiming to retain their customers.
9. If your company allows credit to customers, be extra vigilant to whom you are offering credit too, make sure you have done all relevant checks to ensure that you will get your money back. Also if you have outstanding debtors then do your utmost to get your money back as soon as possible. Thus meaning that you have to keep in regular contact with your customers so you know what position they are in and when they can pay you back.
10. Make sure you have a strong team behind you and that they will support your company no matter which direction you feel you have to take it. If you have the right people, the right cornerstones in place then you have a stronger chance of success throughout the depression.

My First WOW Entry!

So, as you can see from my last entry I am playing WOW while keeping a diary of events that occours, from in the game and in reality. I have tried to mask this as a social experiement, but im not too sure if deep down i have a yearning to play!

you may recall I used to take the piss out of people who played WOW and had a thought that anyone who played PC games were more of a geek than I.

Lets face it Xbox is the only platform worth playing!

Right, I took the night tonight to play WOW mainly because I needed to play something other than Skyrim, and I have had my hands around Gordon Freemen’s Red Crowbar too much recently. -edit- Was not intended to be an innuendo! 

(For the Record I Logged on at 20:50 it is currently 04:40)

I wasn’t off to a good start. I forgot my Password, and I then got onto a server, but it wouldn’t connect me, when it finally connected it was saying I didn’t have a character so I had to recreate one. there goes 10 minutes.  But I did and she is a Dwarf. She is a bit on the fat side though and she seems to have grey hair. But all that aside, she is a rogue Shaman. Pretty cool huh?

After what seemed like forever, the game loaded and i was thrown into battle. Then – the server crashed. Yay, So I was on the verge of throwing in the towel, but out of shear determination I continued. (I think maybe the Nicotine had made me go slightly made, or maybe it was the wind making me Giddy, whatever)

So, after some pretty intense fighting action I levelled up to Lv.3 Pretty quickly. To my relief I got some scavaging quests and I learnt more skills such as;

• Primal Strike! and
• Strength of Earth Totem! (WTF!?!)

All while doing tasks that didn’t feel too much unlike genocide, i.e. slaughtering trolls and Rockjaws, even though from the sounds of things, the dwarfs moved in on their land. I was not impressed but Do what you will to Level up!

So anyway, I levelled up to Lv. 5 and managed to leave the base.  I soon realised I shouldn’t of been so hasty to leave because what came next really stressed me out!

I spent roughly 3 hours trying to kill Wendigos. This seems like a long time! maybe I am so totally lame at this game, but my character wouldn’t do melee attacks, there was 2 or 3 of them on me at once.  It was a Hard and LONG Mission. But I over came it Levelling up in the process, so this took me onto Lv. 8.

So I am now sitting comfortably at lv. 8 as we speek, I have made a deal with myself that I will sleep when i get to Lv. 10 Is this a bit extreme for the first sitting?

No i didnt think so either!!!

Do I like the game?

Its hard to say! I dont like the fact that 3 massive monsters will be on you and then the game thinks this is a good time to glitch.

I also was less than impressed with the farce at the beginning.

I will give it a good go, and try and get into it a bit more. Fingers crossed I get to Lv. 10 tonight.

oo! my Character, Kalmahr, as well as being fat she has a very odd voice. It seems to me that someone wanted to give the dwarfs a scottish/ Irish accent and this scares me a little!

————————————————————————————————-

Just a note. Soon after i posted this the game crashed again.  So unfortuantly is has put an end to my gaming tonight. I got to Lv. 9. not too far off. I suppose there is always Tomorrow/Tonight/Today?

Am I an addict already?!?

The secret dairy of a WOW gamer.

So, as a gamer i have always dismissed playing WOW, until recently. It was always deemed too geeky. But I thought about this and decided that I will have a look into it. I wanted to know why there was this stigma attached to one of the biggest and most popular MMO’s

So i opened my account and picked my Character. Although at the time I wasnt planning on blogging about my experience. I chose to be a dark elf? but i didn’t like the character. So i deleted the account and started a new.  I was only at the time Lv 6, but it was still immensely annoying!!

Whatever. So I am now a dwarf Shaman?!? It seems cool enough.

So my plan of action is, whenever I log into WOW I will take notes of my experiences and then update this Diary.

So here goes.

Left 4 Dead

02 January 2012

To tell the truth I put off playing this game for a while. Mainly because I made the mistake of playing deadrising 2 and I felt that I couldn’t emotionally put myself though that again. But to my surprise I enjoyed it.

It reminded me of the old house of dead series. So this took me back to when I was younger and just discovering the joys of CD games. By this I mean back in that day when half-life, doom and house of dead were first released on the original Xbox and these games were games that I hold close to my heart. I love the retro style of them and I didn’t think that in a gaming culture like what we have today it would be possible to recreate a game with the feel of these games but also feel updated at the same time. These games had a feeling of being raw and kept you on edge. You didn’t want to turn the corner in fear of what was there. The graphics of said games, compared to today’s standard were poor, but I feel that this just added to the raw feeling that the games were trying to portray. This said, the graphics for Left 4 dead feel like they were an afterthought. It has the boxy feel that valve seem to apply to all of their games.  Left 4 dead wouldn’t feel too out of place if it was a DLC for Half-life.  Not that this would be a bad thing.

So, It was a grey day outside, middle of winter and I needed to take a break from Skyrim, I decided to put this on and well I completed it in one sitting. I was fixated by this game. I generally love everything that Valve produce but Wow!

I’m not sure what amazed me with this game, it wasn’t the graphics, and it certainly wasn’t the way that the game is set out – The film idea is a nice touch, but I couldn’t help but feel a little unfulfilled. It’s almost like the game is missing something but I don’t quite know what that something could be.  I’m left here musing over the fact that it might be something that I could have found on the co-op campaigns of the game.  I haven’t played the co-op versions. I rarely go on XBL and I don’t have steam as I am not a fan of the interface I don’t think it’s very user friendly. Plus I don’t think that my computer will survive if I had steam and WOW installed. (I’m sure I will do a steam related rant at some point!)

Each of the games are very short with 5 parts to each one, I liked this as there is only so long you can go around slaughtering zombies and retain your interest. This is where I believe dead rising when wrong, but that is, again, a whole different post.

This game has some nice touches; for example, when you are vomited on you have crowds of zombies rush to attack you. Although annoying at the time as you can’t see what is happening and you are left shooting blindly into a crowd, this is not as bad as it seems. You are left on the edge of your seat as the hordes keep on coming, this only lasts for 10 seconds max, and it adds a dynamic to a game which would be empty without it.

So to summarise,  I found that the this game took me back to places no other company would be able to take me back to. It rekindled a lot of good memories. I enjoyed the shortness of the films that you play in. I think that they are just the right length for concentration and enjoyment. I also like valves graphics and their box like feel as it feels like familiar.

I have talked to many people about playing this game in co-op and they all say the same thing: that this makes the game. So maybe in the New Year I will bite the bullet and play it online.

Reviewers Score: 4/5

 

Bioshock

September 13, 2011

Bioshock Review So when I decided to start reviewing I decided to replay all the games so I can review them properly. (it has nothing to do with the fact that i deleted my gamers profile on my xbox like a retard)

So i decided that i was going to spend my weekend playing Bioshock again, and what a pleasure that was. I had forgotten what an amazing game this is.

The game itself is set in an underwater city call Rapture, and governed by a guy call Andrew Ryan. Throughout the game you will find Diaries that explain why he set up Rapture and why it is in said location etc etc. You start the game with a plane crash, and your character finding Rapture. – Although throughout the game, you will find out more about why you are there. You are first guided by a man named Atlas, and he fills you with promise that he will help you escape – only without pulling through. The main guy you are after is Andrew Ryan the creator of Rapture, a guy that is obsessed with creating the perfect vision among other things.

This is what FPS should be Short, sharp and simple. It follows the standard format of exploration – boss – exploration/activities – boss. You are not suddenly hit by a monster that you can’t defeat nor are you disappointed by any of the battles and the activities in the game are not mundane. Never once did I question – why the hell am I playing this again.

The thing that makes this game so great in my opinion is that it flows nice and easily. The controls are nice and set up in a memorable place, so less confusion if you want to change your weapon and plasmoids.

The main boss came at the end, naturally, and is a fight divided into 3 sections. All three quite simple, and you end with a short cinematic clip, I got the good guy ending, it was a heart-warming way to finish a game that I can look back on and replay with a smile.