Not Enough Boredom

Fuck.

Great. I've done it again. Against all reason and logic, I've gone and installed Star Trek Online again, because I was tempted by the upcoming expansion, Delta Rising, its new tier of ships, new abilities, new missions in the Delta quadrant (which I don't even care about), featuring former Voyager crew members, voice-acted by their original actors (which I care even less about), increased level cap, yada, yada, yada.

This game is my personal World of Warcraft. Erm... I should probably explain that. I have friends and family, who have started playing WoW at some point and they just can't stop until this very day. They have phases where they don't log on very much for a month or two (or fucking 14, because there's no new content), but they never unsubscribe, they never let go and no matter how many other MMOs and online games we show to them, their one true love will always be WoW.

I'm an MMO-whore. I had them all, been with them all for the occasional quickie, but I never get serious. Brief encounters are alright, but then I get bored. And for some fucking reason, I always end up coming back to STO. And I don't just play that shit. I don't just go and look at all 20 or so minutes worth of new content they release every year. I play that shit to the max.

And things just started looking so great with Warframe. Sure, it only took me about 20 minutes to complete the new "week-long" event, but we were having such a great run!

And then there's my sweet, sweet Borderlands. Claire and I had finally arrived in the year 2012, we've gone and purchased every last bit of DLC and we've enjoyed a massive coop-session with a friend just the other night. The massive amount of stupidity and sheer incompetence each and everyone of us has brought to the team is beyond words and we had a really great time on there.

I remember Claire soloing a raider outpost, while I sat in the car with our driver Haggy, who tried to ram his way through the barricades around the outpost - which didn't work, but that didn't stop him from slamming our truck in there again and again for the next 20 minutes. To be fair, that was our second truck. I destroyed the first one, when he told me to drive all the way around the camp and attack it from the other side, which turned out to be a stupid idea, because the outpost was all the way up on a cliff and we ended up inside a pit of giant monster worms. And they started eating the car, so I got out to shoot them and let Haggy do the driving. Problem is, he never noticed that I left the car, so he kept telling me to drive, because the truck was getting eaten. And when I tried to get back in, my character would mount the cannon and avoid the driver's seat. Sure, I could have switched seat with the right hotkey, but I was a noob and very nervous, so that didn't end too well.

I also can't help but notice the fine layer of dust on our Pathfinder tabletop box and I'll admit that this stings a little. I'm hoping to come up with a fun little campaign, but between work during the day, every day, including weekends, and switching my brain off whilst gaming at night, it's difficult to find the time for decent game mastering. And as if all of that wasn't enough for now, I just had to take another look at this black hole of an MMO.

Crap.

I had a long break from STO, because some of the changes and additions that came with season 8 just pissed me off. You see, I'm a very competitive player. I don't just want to finish a mission or some public event, I don't just want to be on the winning side in pvp - I want to fucking dominate. And I absolutely mean to brag when I say that I'm consistently topping the DPS-tables, kill-charts and scoring one first place after another even when I'm using exotic ships and unusual set-ups, which the community largely considers subpar or even useless.

I had not played since November and this is the first thing I did.

I know, I know, everyone is awesome on the internet, but I have countless videos on my youtube-channel showing off landslide-victories in pvp, top-scores in just about any event you can think of and half of the time I get that shit done with outdated, weak ships or unorthodox builds. My STO-videos are the most popular content on my entire channel and the first thing I had to do when logging on after my long break was work my way through tons of fan mail I had received ingame. Which is a lie, it was really just two letters from people asking about some builds I showed off in some videos, but it's still nice to have earned at least some tiny amount of fame with the shit I do on there.

And then Cryptic came along and fucked me. They came up with ridiculously powerful tactical consoles for fleets. Without getting too much into the mechanics, let's just say they're items, which provide a massive damage boost over all previously existing gear of the same kind. And it was only available to fleets (read: guilds). This ruined the game for me in several ways - first of all, I had to farm up millions upon millions of credits in order to afford what was previously the best stuff in the game, only to watch it become subpar from one update to the next. Secondly, that new stuff was so much better in comparison that I could no longer keep up with fleet ships, which were kitted out in nothing but fleet gear. And most of all - I didn't want to join a fleet!

I learn everything I need to know from my cat.

Just reading those ever-repeating, ever-same fleet recruitment spam messages makes me want to throw up. "Looking for friendly, active members!" Well, no shit! Why do you have to stress that so much? It should be pretty obvious that nobody is looking to recruit assholes or people, who don't actually play the game. Who wouldn't even be there to read your recruitment spam to begin with.

And there's my problem - most fleets expect you to be online and take part in their shit for a certain amount of hours a week. But I don't wanna play what other people want, I wanna play what I want. And sometimes I simply can't be "active", because the publisher expects me to marathon-level some character in some other game. And call me crazy, but after 10 or so hours of random MMO grind, I just don't want to relax by switching over to another MMO.

They also make you a recruit or a trial member and you have to hang with them for a few weeks or months before they let you use their facilities and shops. Which is fair, they had to work for that stuff and they don't want any random noob to walk in and benefit from it, but I don't wanna get married to some virtual club in order to earn all the best shit, just because the devs decided that you should not be allowed to have nice items as a solo player.

But fortunately for me, the community of STO is awesome and like me, many players think that all the best shit shouldn't be exclusive to powerful, high level fleets. So a random maxed out fleet invited me, said I could make use of all their shops and stations, buy all their exclusive gear and I never have to hang out with them, talk to them, play with them or whatever. Heck, I can leave anytime I want, if I want to. And you know what? That's so fucking awesome, I think I'm actually gonna stay. And I have all the nice new gear now, so... yay!

They're also offering free TNG uniforms right now.

Best of all, they've finally upgraded my favourite ever ship of the Franchise, the Galaxy-X Dreadnought from "All good things". I don't give a shit about their upcoming new tier of starships, I don't care what cool new abilities, buffs and consoles they're gonna get. I'll be using my beefed-up Galaxy now and nothing but that. Even if that means I won't be uploading any more new builds and pvp videos with weird new ships. I guess I can still do that with the upgraded Galaxy, of course. Oh and did I mention I was already unstoppable with that thing before they put it on a level with all the other "endgame" ships?

Rawr!

-Cat

Bonerlands

I can't blame anybody for assuming I'm fishing for stuff when I write about how I'd probably play certain games if my financial situation allowed me to do so. Honestly, though, what I was trying to say in my last entry is that I find Borderlands 2 so good, I'd probably buy it. And the only reason that I haven't done so already is the fact that I just don't have enough on the side to do so right there and now. Nothing more. We've all been there, right? You kinda want something, but it's just not reasonable to spend money on it, because you might need it for something more important, so you decide to wait a little while longer.

The reason why I'm bringing this up is because five minutes after my last post went online, we had the GOTY-version gifted to us on Steam. Both of us, Claire and my grumpy self. We're super happy and we're really enjoying the game (put another 8 hours of play time in there last night), but honest to Godzilla, we're doin' okay, we're paying all the bills, everything is fine. And to our dear donor, we'll make up for it and gift you a copy of Colonosopy Simulator 2014 or something next week.

As you might recall, my first impression of Borderlands 2 was pretty good, but I wasn't entirely sold on it just yet. Several things have changed since then. First of all, I have learned about Shift-Codes.

And I may or may not have overdone it a bit with their use.

On top of skins, heads and other such goodies, these codes provide golden keys, which basically can be turned into epic gear. And epic guns kill shit faster, which fixed my "all my guns are too weak" issue. I've also bumped into this fine gentleman:

That guy's name is Loggins, he shouts something at you about being in the dangerzone, then sends you to the Goose's Roost to burn down a net and stop three shirtless dudes from playing slow-motion volleyball. And frankly, if you don't get these references, then I want you the fuck out of my blog until you've educated yourself, you worthless barbarian.

Claire and I have built a truck and used it to chase down random raiders in their vehicles to ram them to pieces and shoot giant sawblades at them. Co-op car chases. With sawblades. Lots of explosions. Look, we're easily entertained, which is why we've spent hundreds of hours playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and Warframe together, but this is easily the most fun we've had in a multiplayer game since getting high, naked and beating up a bunch of assholes with giant purple dildos.

And you thought I was only joking, you silly fool!

The game still feels pretty tough and unforgiving in places, which is probably because we haven't played it to death, yet, and we're really only two players. But the story is pretty decent so far, the characters are all incredibly fun and it's difficult not to like folks like Handsome Jack or Ellie the Belly. Not so sure about Tiny Tina, but she might still win me over once we get to her campaign. We're only 13 levels in and there is this seemingly endless amount of content to go through, so this one should keep us busy for a while.

Vehicles make everything better.

Connectivity issues are still a massive pain in the ass. I have found a workaround, which might help us play together via LAN, so here's hoping I can get that to run. It just seems stupid having to reconnect to Claire's game every ten minutes, even though we're sharing the same stupid connection.

-Cat

Badass Bonerfart

I know it's blasphemy and my sudden enthusiasm is years behind the rest of the world, but I never really cared about Borderlands 2. The characters just didn't appeal to me very much and I'm not a fan of "artsy" visuals. Borderlands uses those thick, black outlines around everything, which I guess is supposed to give everything a comic kind of look, but that's just not my cup of tea. But the game can be played for free on Steam this weekend, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and this was the exact moment where I felt that maybe this game isn't so bad:

What a fucking cool title song! Been playing it up and down all day long.
The game is pretty fun and I'd consider getting the GOTY-Edition, which is 75% off right now if there wasn't a certain funeral-sized hole in by bank account.

Claire and I have put a little over 8 hours into the free weekend trial thingie so far and we've had a lot of fun. Driving around Pandora in heavily-armed vehicles is fun, especially when you just run over random animals, raiders and just about anyone who can't get out of the way fast enough. The game has a certain Mad Max coolness about it, albeit a lot sillier. Helping to come up with a new name for the wild Bullymongs, only to watch them turn into Bonerfarts was hilarious and pretty unexpected.

The whole experience is far from perfect, though. We can't get LAN multiplayer to work AT ALL and having to play coop multiplayer through Steam, even though we're sitting in the exact same room, sharing the exact same network, isn't just annoying, but also comes with its fair share of interrupted sessions. "Connection lost." Boo!
And while every other game generates individual loot for each player, it's perfectly normal in Borderlands 2 to fight over certain epic weapons - finders keepers and all that.

There's a staggering amount of revolvers, automatic pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, guns with elemental effects that set enemies on fire or electrocute them, grenade launchers, triple-barrelled rifles, shotguns, guns, which explode and can be thrown like grenades (wtf?) and while they're all unique and interesting in their own way, most of them aren't really that satisfying to shoot.
I think we're about level 12 now and so far, most of the enemies feel like bullet sponges and the guns feel pretty weak. There's the occasional weapon, which kills baddies at a satisfying pace, but move on to a higher level quest, face tougher enemies and your once mighty weapon feels like another pea shooter.

We also had a few problems with the odd shitty side mission here and there. There's an insane amount of missions in the game, there is a ton of stuff to do and I can understand that some missions are better than others, but it's a bit weird when a quest points out a spawn location for a certain type of enemy you're supposed to kill, the tracker tells you to "kill 25" and there are only ten bad guys around. So you need drive all over the place to find more baddies or leave and re-enter the map to respawn them. It got worse when we had to shoot those baddies with a specific mission-related weapon, which didn't come with nearly enough ammo, so we had to run back and forth to stock up on bullets. This is probably less of a problem when you're in 4 player coop, but there were only two of us.

Most of these problems will probably go away at the higher levels when our characters become a bit more powerul. I assume grabbing some of the DLC content would help with these issues as well. More to do, more experience, better gear and all that. I'm not totally in love with it right now, but we're gonna keep on playing, because it's still a fun, interesting game and we might still go for the whole package in the long run. There's also this funny and strangely moving character trailer here:

I'M THE CONDUCTOR OF THE POOP TRAIN!

I'm really tempted by the Borderlands 2 GOTY edition and I'd buy it right now if I had the money. Ironically, I will have the money next week, which is exactly when the special offer ends and the price will go up from a tenner to 40 Quid again, so... yeah, I'm afraid that's just a little too much right now. Oh well, maybe I'll try a keystore or something.

Meanwhile, my "home office" is turning into the world's craziest zoo. Our beardies are getting a little bored in the bedroom, so I'm trying to take them out here and there and have them sit with me while I write my articles. Earl Grey needs lots of love, because he freaks the fuck out whenever somebody goes anywhere near him. He's fine when you pick him up, but other than that, he seems to be a nervous wreck. I've never seen a bearded dragon lose his shit the way he does.

Nomnom and Earl Grey.

Meanwhile, Hugo must have developed some sort of advanced reptile taste buds, because he's getting tired of the occasional raw meat I used to feed him now and then while preparing dinner. Locusts make up around 80% of his diet, but he does get the occasional slice of bacon, serrano ham or whatever tasty treats we have in the house, if only to get him out of my face when I'm preparing dinner.

You know, cook a bit of pasta, throw some mincemeat at the begging lizzard, that kind of thing. Except sometimes he shows up a little late and the meat is already fried and seasoned and... well, I let him try a little of that stuff and now he goes to sleep in his food bowl and he won't give it back.

It'sa his Dolmio-day

Sharing the house with an ever-hungry lizard and two hyperactive cats is a bit like living with a bunch of 3 year olds. Except, they always remain 3 years old and never grow up to become less demanding. On the plus side, they also don't grow into teenagers, who want you to drive them places and shit.

Commence pet battle in 3... 2...

If you're at least a little familiar with cats, then you'll be aware of "the rips". You know, those five to ten minutes a day, where your cat goes batshit insane, runs all over the place, climbs up the curtains and/or just destroys shit for no reason whatsoever, then goes back to sleep like nothing ever happened. Imagine that kind of shit with two cats. Imagine them terrorizing a carpet python, which will quickly grow into a 10+ ft monster, eager (and more than capable) to turn your cats into a quick snack. 

The kitty wrestling championship was only the beginning.

Now imagine all of that happening inside your "home office" every day.

Or in your kitchen.

This really makes me appreciate our royal python. They're certainly not the most spectacular kind of snake. In fact, they're the exact opposite of everything people assume and fear about reptiles.

They're quiet and they don't kill your cats.

I wonder how I would have reacted as a kid, had anyone ever told me I'd be living like this one day. I don't regret it, I'm having fun over here, but my days at the office are just a bit more surreal than they are for most people.

-Cat

Expendables, Expanding

The following entry contains thpoilerth.
The third Expendables movie just came out over here and it's a steaming pile of poorly-written horseshit, which makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever. I liked it. It's completely predictable, it's full of massively overused clichés and it really doesn't make any sense. In the first five minutes of the film they blow up an enemy base by driving a train right into it. You see the bad guy just standing there, calmly, waiting for them to come, then his eyes widen as the train crashes through the gate and shit just explodes everywhere. Okay, so, who puts their base right in the middle of a bunch of train tracks? Didn't they see the train coming? Couldn't they have opened the place up and let the train go through or something? Why was the villain just standing there, waiting for the inevitable? Maybe there is some logical explanation here, which I'll understand when watching this the second time around, but all I remember right now is some place in the middle of a railroad track getting blown up - by a train. In another section of the movie they're fighting the entire army of some made up middle eastern country. For some inexplicable reason, their military has a special motorcycle unit, which consists of exactly two men, so one of the main character can show off his special motorcycle-related abilities. They also have tanks, which are so big, you can put Dolph Lundgren in them.

There's also this completely unnecessary scene where Stallone leaves behind all the old people from the movie poster and replaces them with a bunch of younger characters absolutely no one gives a shit about. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, the young team fails, so the old guys have to jump in to save the day. They could have just let them die and no one would give a fuck, because there is no character development, we don't know these younger guys and they're about as interesting as that kid with the sniper rifle in the previous movie. Who died. And nobody cared.

And the clichés, holy fuck! Bombs with a visible countdown timer on them? Check! Timer stopping at exactly 3 seconds? Check! Guy just magically "hacking" security, bombs and shit, just because "he's that good"? Check! And of course this doesn't impress the younger characters at all, because "well duh", while the whole thing looks like magic to the veterans? Checkity-check! Movie's main villain has the opportunity to kill off the main character multiple times, but prefers to do some stupid shit like give a speech or torture one of the hero's friends? Fucking check! Villain looks at painting of Cain and Abel and ten minutes later he tells the hero 'we were like brothers', because symbolism is haaard? Check! Main villain has a gun, faces the unarmed hero and decides to "settle it like men", only to die 30 seconds later? Cheeeeck! "Oh no, the hero is dead and everyone is all sad and depressed and oheywaitaminute is that the hero and he's okay? Yaaaay!" - Check. Sigh.

That film is pretty awful and I liked it. I liked the Star Wars reference. I like the illusion that you can still kick some ass when you're an ancient fucker, because it makes growing old a little less terrifying. I still have all my teeth and I haven't spotted a single grey hair on my body, but damn am I gonna freak out when that shit finally kicks in. So it's nice to have a movie that says, "Hey, those 70 year olds are still pretty fit, so don't worry. You still have a few good years ahead of ya." It's all bullshit and sometimes that's exactly what we need.

Speaking of things I need - I might be a tiny step closer to striking two more things off my bucket list. Nothing is set in stone, it may not be possible at all or I might not be good enough, but there miiiight be a Berserkerkitten comic in the future and I might, perhaps, possibly get a chance at voice acting.

Without wanting to break any conscience, I think it's okay to say that when you help write a magazine, you will have to sit and talk about new ideas and content to put into said magazine. And among the suggestions and ideas I handed in to our senior editor was a Berserkerkitten comic, inspired by the illustration drawn by the incredible Marvin Clifford when I first got my own column - you can also see the image of the caped cat in this very blog. Basically, the idea is that I do the writing, come up with characters and stories and Marvin, if he's interested and available, would work his magic and bring each strip to life.

Right now, all I know is that our senior editor really liked the idea. I really don't know whether or not the whole thing is really going to happen, but damn, I'd fucking love it. The guy is an absolute genius and I genuinely love his art. And I won't lie to you - I'll be fucking nervous if we're gonna end up working together. Thrilled, but really, seriously nervous.

The voice acting thing came up during a Skype call from work. "Hey, you should lend your voice to a Bond-villain or something", because apparently, there's something calm and evil about it. I get strange comments like that about my voice when friends and coworkers talk to me on the phone for the first time or when I get invited to podcasts. People also tell me I have a sexy accent when I speak English... ahem.
Long story short, of course that remark on Skype wasn't dead-serious, but it's actually something I've always wanted to do. You know, voice acting, maybe for a cartoon or a video game. And maybe, juuuust maaaaybe I may get a shot at it sometime. Some of the good folks who produce videos and other fine quality content for our website have lent their voices to characters in games before and they might know someone and... you get the idea. It might be nothing, I may not be be talented enough, but I said the same thing the first time I was asked to write reviews and columns for money, so... who knows? Fast forward another decade and maybe I'll be voice-acting the main character in Berserkerkitten - The Videogame. Har!

-Cat

Emotionally Amputated

I'm not going share this entry on Facebook or Google+, because I don't want it to look like I'm trying to milk the subject for clicks, because right now it seems like everyone has something to say about it.

I had to write a little news article about how Blizzard are going to pay tribute to the late Robin Williams by including him as an NPC in World of Warcraft. The first thing that annoys me is the ever-repeating wave of wisecracks bringing up that same old argument: thousands of people die every day and now we're all acting sad and depressed, just because some celebrity died. And there's only one thing I have to say to you guys. Fuck you.

Just because you don't personally know someone, just because they weren't friends or family and you didn't hang out doesn't mean you can't be sad when they die. Many people grew up watching his movies, enjoying his standup comedy and just like some of you get overly attached to ancient 8bit gaming systems or Saturday morning cartoon shows, others get attached to certain films, actors and the characters they played. Some draw inspiration from them or find their role-model. I wasn't a huge fan of Robin Williams, myself, but it pisses me off when people want to dictate what one should or shouldn't feel sad about. Just shut up.

What annoys me even more are people, who argue whether or not depression is a "real disease" and call Williams a selfish coward for ending his life. Depression is the darkest, most soul-crushing form of loneliness. Imagine seeing your firstborn child for the first time, hearing their first words, watching them make their first steps and you feel absolutely nothing. You know you're supposed to feel something, there is this magical bond everybody talks to you about, you know there should be something, but you're completely detached and watch the whole thing like a neutral bystander. If anything, there is despair, because you know there is something wrong and everybody around you expects you to feel something, so you pretend to make everybody happy.

Imagine your father dies, suddenly, unexpectedly and without warning and week after week you're waiting to cry, you're waiting to grieve and there is simply nothing. After you've already felt nothing when both your grandparents died a few months earlier. Everyone around you at the funeral cries, everyone is sad and heartbroken. And you try to fit in. Be normal, even though you know you're not and there's something wrong with you.

My friends, readers, fans, people I work with, nobody has ever met me face to face. I get dozens of people asking to meet me at events like Gamescom right now, role-playing conventions, people want to come over and meet me here in the UK and I always ignore them. I don't want them to see me. I don't want them to meet the real me. My blog, my columns and articles, everything I do online makes people laugh. When I have to meet with neighbours and family I make them laugh. I'm good at that. It's a persona. It creates a safe distance and distracts from the real me.

As a child, I had to deal with more abuse, alcoholism, violence and other bullshit than I want to bore you with. I tried to talk about these things with my father a few years back, just before I left the country and moved to the UK. He felt like I was attacking him. Told me it's ancient history and I should get over it already. But that's not how it works. You don't just "get over it", without ever being able to talk to the one person, who was responsible for all the drama and pain. Nobody cared, nobody listened and I didn't matter at all. Wouldn't have made any difference had I not existed at all.

You don't want to know what it's like to just exist from one day to the next, having absolutely no reason to get up in the morning. For the most part, I didn't feel "sad" on the bad days. I just felt nothing. I didn't care. About myself. About life. Swallowed a whole box of pills once to see if I'd stop waking up altogether. It's hard to describe. It just felt more interesting than life, if that makes any sense.

My partner loves me and cares about me today. I'm building a decent relationship with my son. I'm looking after our ever-growing collection of pets. I have the one job I always dreamed about as a kid. In a way, everything turned out okay for me in the end and I'm glad those pills just severely fucked me up and didn't kill me. I enjoy life and I'm happy with things the way they are, though I'm still far from normal.

I don't miss my family back in Germany. Everyone was happy to see me at the funeral, but I didn't stay in touch and it doesn't feel like it matters. I'm still not crying over the loss of my father or my grandparents. And I'm still pretending.
I'm not suicidal. I'm not sad. I've learned to deal with the whole thing my own way and I'm leading a reasonably normal life. But that shit doesn't just go away over night.

-Cat

Back To Amalur

I want to see a cooking show on tv where the chef has Tourettes. "Now you just add a pinch of salt AND SOME FUCKING PEPPER, give it a good stir and you're done. HITLER! PENIS!" I'd watch the crap out of that.

If you happen to own an account on EA's gaming platform Origin and you're even remotely interested in RPGs, go download Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. They give you two whole days to try it for free and it's 50% off after that, so there's a pretty good deal on a fantastic game, which most people didn't have on their radar when it came out, what with all them Fallouts and Skyrims and Witchers around.

It's a damn shame, too, because wow - this game is so much fun! Like every good game, Amalur begins with your death. But you get better and it turns out you have no fate. You see, everyone in Amalur has a fate and the whole place is destined to be fucked. A bunch of super hateful humans wage war against all the elves, dwarves and other weirdos and they're about to win, but then you show up and you're in control of your own fate and you can change the fate of the whole world, so everyone is hoping for you to save the day - unless you need gear or potions or something. You still gotta pay for those, saviour of the world or not.

"Not tonight, I'm about to have a splitting headache."

What makes this game so great is its combat system. It's not as visually impressive as Skyrim, it doesn't have the epic story of Dragon Age: Origins and the clunky console interface on the PC version is actually worse than Skyrim. But the battles, holy shit, those battles. You can sneak up on enemies and backstab the crap out of them, hack them to bits with "fae blades", which is just fancy speak for warglaives. Pound them to pudding with hammers and greatswords or shoot them from a distance with a longbow. Or just throw a pair of burning chakrams at your enemies, because that's totally possible.

The game lets you map two different weapons to your attack keys at any time, so you can combine attacks and combos from your two favourite weapon types and chain them up as you please. Alternatively, if you're reeeeally into, say, swords, you could map a flaming longsword to one and a frozen longsword to another attack button, so you'll be able to take down enemies, who are resistant to one and vulnerable to the other.

You get warrior, mage and rogue skilltrees, which you may power up upon level ups as you please. Be the ultimate warrior, be a rogue spellcaster or do a little bit of everything. On top of that you get adventuring skills like lockpicking, blacksmithing, persuasion and lots of other cool, self-explanatory stuff. So creating just the kind of character you want, something to match your preferenes and play style is really easy and lots of fun.

Getting through the main storyline roughly takes 20-30 hours, but you can easly slap on another 100 if you want to do ALL THE  THINGS, like side quests, dungeons and so forth. For instance, there's this cursed wolf, who has been turned into a human by a bunch of bored spirits, and he reeeally wants to go back to his animal self, because he hates having to wear pants. Sure, the quest itself plays out like any generic RPG sidequest, but the story is great and I had lots of fun with it.
There's also some DLC content, which adds even more stuff to do, but even without it, Amalur is absolutely massive and you can go pretty much anywhere you want, anytime you want. It's not as completely open as Fallout or Skyrim, but it offers a lot more visual variety.

Eat up!

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning also features elves with goofy Irish accents and some of the best music you'll ever hear in any RPG. Even if you don't usually give a crap about my videos, click on that thing at the end of this entry and just play the first two minutes and tell me that tune isn't awesome. It sounds like something taken straight out of a Batman movie. Well, one of the cool Batman movies, before they were about nipples or stupid voices and shit.

Sadly, this game never got the attention it deserved and lots of people completely ignored it. Give it a try. Look at the combat in that video below and tell me it doesn't look fun. I never finished the game when it first came out, because there were too many other great RPGs around and I completely forgot about this one. But this time around I'm gonna finish this.

-Cat

One More Crimson Dragon

Okay, one last quick update on the game, then I'll spare you with it. I've almost completed the whole thing now and unlocked the chaos version of my favourite dragon, which was immensely fun. That said, it's starting to feel more and more like the game was maybe 50% done and then they just pushed it out to have an XBone launch title.

Crimson Dragon is supposed to play on a planet called Draco, because wow, how utterly inventive. But said planet apparently only consists of a lake with a cave underneath, a forest and some abandoned high tech city and that's it. Some planet! Sure, that's still more variety than Hoth, Endor, Tattooine, Dagobah, but... come on! The city levels start off in a desert landscape, which suggests that there were actual desert levels planned for this game at some point. In fact, the description for one of the dragons claims that it is native to Draco's desert.

When the story takes you into that abandoned city, a cutscene claims you're being sent away, because you've stumbled across some super secret conspiracy or something. Except, when you go back to the mission selection, it takes you right back to the city, so whatever story arc they had intended to put in there to take you back out of the city only appears in the narrative, but is never actually played out ingame. The fact that two of the "different locations" in the game are essentially the same but at different times of day suggests that there might have been various day/night time versions of other areas in the making, as well.

Apparently, the game's original soundtrack also happens to contain a few tunes, which are nowhere to be found within the game itself. So, um - why would they need more bgm tracks than actual levels in the game, unless they had originally planned to make the game bigger than it is today?

It's sad. It feels like I'm playing an alpha version that shows off the basic elements and features, but at least another half of the game is yet to come. Instead, I only have three more missions ahead of me. There's always multiplayer if I want to show off my beefy dragon to random strangers and I can always power up and evolve some of the other dragons, but I'm not a huge fan of repeating content over and over again. I know I said I don't mind the RPG-style grind, but that usually happens with some greater goal or higher level content in mind, which you'll access after the grind is done. Of course there are also achievements, but anyone who considers those actual content is an idiot, who only contributes to the content shortage within many modern games.

-Cat

Xbox, Go Home!

Update 3 for TESO is live. Well... half of it, sort of. They've now added armor dyes, so 90% of all players are running around in black and red armor. And I jumped on the bandwagon.

Unfortunately, the rest of the game is still so incredibly average that I just can't get myself to enjoy it very much. I've unsubscribed again and I don't think I'll be back before the introduction of champion levels.

One problem I have with this game is how they announce new guild features like custom tabards and stuff much like on WoW and some other MMOs, then they disable guilds completely upon release of the stupid update with zero information on when we even get to use these new features. Meanwhile, the news and update notes proclaim that stuff is already in there when it really isn't.

According to the patch notes, experience for killing people in pvp has been increased a lot, but when I was only two percent closer to my level up after a solid hour of pvp I just lost interest. "Progress" still happens at a dreadfully slow pace and it doesn't help that people get kicked off the servers every ten or so minutes. "An unknown error occured", welcome back to the login screen! That's not what I had hoped to see after the EU-Megaserver had finally migrated to the EU from fucking Texas.

Up next I was actually hoping to show you some self-recorded footage of Crimson Dragon on the Xbox One, but the powers that be have decided otherwise. The Xbone allows you to record ingame footage, trim it, edit it, add all kinds of neat special effects and intros and what have you. And then you're supposed to upload it to OneDrive, a cloud storage, which allows you to share your footage with the interwebs. Only I keep getting an error message whenever the upload is 90something percent done, which has been happening to lots of people since fucking day one.

Instead, enjoy random press release screenshots.

Of course, none of this would be a problem if this console hadn't been developed by assholes. You see, my Xbone is connected to our home network, where it shares internet access with all the other consoles and PCs in the house. Does that mean I can just access the damn video files through the network? Of course not, because that would make sense and be user friendly and convenient. So can I just plug a USB flash drive into one of the console's many USB ports and store video and screenshots on it? Noooope. I can, of course, buy an external HDD, which must be USB 3 compatible and at least have 256GB of empty space available in order for it to be even fucking recognized, but I'm really not that desperate to share five minutes of random gameplay with the world.

So until I can fix my annoying upload problem or Microsoft decide to support flash drives and/or network capabilities on their stupid "next-gen" console, you're just gonna have to imagine videos of dragons fighting, growing, evolving, racing and doing all kinds of shit while I talk about the actual game some more.

UPDATE: Well, what do you know - sometimes all it takes is trying the same shit over and over again for two hours and a lot of bitching. I have finally managed to get a whole five minutes of fucking gameplay on the 'net after only about a dozen or so error messages. Enjoy:

If you're into dragons and rail shooters, then this game might look tempting, especially if you're a fan of the old Panzer Dragoon games. Unfortunately, what little gameplay I'm showing off in my video pretty much covers 90% of what this game has to offer. Crimson Dragon offers about as many levels, enemies and bosses as the first ever Panzer Dragoon, which could be finished in under an hour. However, they're stretching this content with RPG-style grinding and leveling mechanics in order to make it last for several days, maybe weeks.

Crimson Dragon lets you ride half a dozen different dragons, all of which come with their own strengths and weaknesses. They can be taught new skills and upgraded and evolved into ever bigger, deadlier, cooler-looking dragons. It's a pretty neat feature, which brings with it an awful lot of content-stretching. First of all, in order to even unlock all dragons you need to gain levels and earn credits by playing the game. Evolving dragons requires special items from rare monsters, which will only spawn if you're lucky - and then you'll still have to kill them before they disappear in order to get that item you need. If your dragon is ready to evolve, he'll stop gaining any more levels or stat points until you've acquired all the stuff you need in order to evolve him to his next form.

And technically, the game really only has five different levels: A cave, a lake, the exact same lake but at fucking sunset, a forest and some ancient, yet somehow sci-fi city. That's it. And each of these levels offer half a dozen or so different missions, meaning you'll be returning to the exact same areas over and over again killing slightly different enemies or hunting for more rare items in order to progress further through the game. And that's about all there is to do on there.

You can also team up with up to two extra dragon riders in cooperative multiplayer, which is an experience I'm simply too old or too civilized to enjoy. Basically, the game threw people named xxSP0Og3m4st3r5000xx at me, then tossed me into whatever mission this wonderful member of the human species has selected, whilst forcing me to witness what I assume must have been open mic night in a random apartment in Italy. I heard a man and a woman shouting Italian insults at each other, while one or two little children were crying in the background.
Their constant fighting and moaning completely drowned out the ingame audio and I got to enjoy it all via 5.1 surround sound with no obvious possibility to mute that shit without having to completely disable all audio altogether.

The amount of people, who plug in their microphones without giving a shit about what they pick up during play is mind-boggling. That is, if you get into a multiplayer session at all. 90 percent of the time you get stuck on a popup saying "accessing session" and then nothing happens for a full minute before it either boots you right back to the title screen or puts you in an empty lobby with no other players. In other cases you get stuck with people, who repeat the exact same mission over and over, because they're after a specific item or achievement.

Despite what I'm writing here, I don't actually hate the game. Quite the opposite, actually. While I absolutely hate the multiplayer experience with random strangers, I quite enjoy playing this game in singleplayer mode and I could see myself enjoying multiplayer with friends (I totally have those, shut up). I don't mind RPG-style grinding mechanics, gaining levels, slowly turning my dragon from a weak, scrawny wimp into a hulking beast that brings death and destruction to the five or so different enemies in the game. And then I spend my hard-earned credits on randomized item packs, which contain boosters and new abilities and skills to upgrade my dragon with. They work more or less like the reinforcement packs on Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, up to the point where you can spend real cash on them if you're impatient. So far I didn't feel the need to spend any real money on random upgrades and I don't think I'm going to.

Crimson Dragon isn't a great game, it's probably not even a good game. But it's okay, I'm having a lot of fun with it and it's still free for Xbox Gold customers for the rest of the month. So, if my description doesn't totally put you off and you're still tempted, you may as well give it a try. Nothing to lose but time.

-Cat

My XBone And The Shitty Rez

Gaming is always more fun with people you know and love. Claire's mother is making her first curious steps into Warframe, so we've been playing that a bit over the weekend. I'm converting the footage right now. We also had Claire's sister over for some Castle Crashers. The game is incredibly fun!

We've battled our way through the forest of shitting animals, mounted the diarrhea-deer and defeated the mighty catfish and I may have decapitated my significant other and her sister with a chainsaw, because in the end only one of us can have the princess. Castle Crashers also features the coolest resurrection system I've ever seen in any cooperative game. When the last breath escapes one of your dear team mates, you may provide first aid. Now, if you're really into it and you use proper timing during the CPR-minigame, you'll bring your fallen comrade back to full life House MD style. Of course that's not always an option in the middle of a heated boss battle, so more often than not you'll end up providing what we're referring to as a "shitty rez", which puts a downed knight back on their feet, buuuuut they'll usually topple over after getting nudged ever so gently.

I have also booted up my Xbox One for the very first time. I got it for free many moons ago, because I've agreed to review games on it, but so far I haven't received any, so the ol' box had been more of a luxury doorstopper. And what can I say - it pays off to be a natural pessimist. Most of what I've read about the Xbone was largely negative. The thing is more expensive than a PS4, yet seems to offer the weaker hardware, many games either run at only 720p and/or 30 FPS and none of the launch titles really look all that "next-gen". That said, it almost seems like we have reached a point where games no longer improve all that much in the graphics department, unless you want to scale everything up to 4k resolution. I really don't think that's even remotely possible on this new generation of consoles, so it's probably not going to become a new standard anytime soon.

My first pleasant surprise was Killer Instinct. Sure, KI isn't exactly Street Fighter and the ridiculous combo-system isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I find it a lot of fun to play. What's so great about the Xbone version is how the game is basically free. You get all the game modes, all the characters, all the content for free, BUT you may only play one of the characters yourself. If you want to unlock any of the other characters, you'll have to pay a small amount of money. Alternatively, you can pay 20something monies and unlock everything. I think that's a fantastic system, especially if you're a veteran to the series and you already have one or two favourite characters and you know you're only gonna play those, anyway. Just pay for the character you want, beat the whole game, go online, compete in the leaderboards, do all the things. You can't make monetization any fairer than that.

Visually, it's really not any more impressive than games like Soul Calibur V on the Xbox360, but it's a Free2Play launch title, so maybe I shouldn't expect too much here in the first place.

What really surprised me about the Xbone is how user-friendly and fun to use it is. I had no idea, because frankly, everything I ever read was about hardware and resolution and exclusive titles and there's a shitty tv ad with Jesse Pinkman, which provides a vague idea about how the whole thing works, but they're not really explaining any of the features too well. So I was pleasantly surprised when I fired up the games browser.

You see this library of games with their box art, a description, a price tag and an option to buy and download them all straight away. What's more important, each and every game comes with trailers, screenshots and live streams of people, who are currently playing the game you're looking at. For instance, I was checking out Crimson Dragon and when the screenshots weren't totally convincing, the menu highlighted the stream of some guy, who was playing the game at the time, so I could just watch him for a while and get a good impression of what the game was all about. There was also a whole library of recorded footage, which had been uploaded by other players.

What impressed me the most was the overall quality of it all. Select a stream or some pre-recorded video footage and it all plays instantly, in super high quality, no load times, no buffering, no hassle. Compared to how long it takes to get my shit up on youtube or find decent quality settings for a Twitch stream on PC, this almost feels like magic. Checking out new games has never been so fun. Also, I think I'm gonna go grab Crimson Dragon. I know it scored some pretty shitty review scores, but as a day one Panzer Dragoon fan, this title is pretty much a must-have for my collection.

Had another dream about my zombie grandparents and they still seem happy. I want to ask them what it's like being dead and all, but somehow I never do, because it seems rude. The loss of my father is starting to settle in a little more, as well. Usually during the weirdest moments. Sometimes I look at some new game or I try an upcoming new MMO and I think to myself, 'Yeah, I should tell him about this one, I think he's gonna like it'. And then I realize... well, you know. My son is also crazy about gaming, so in a way, the whole thing just started over, but this time I'm playing the role of the father. It feels weird.

Oh well. There are videos to convert, news to post and emails to send. I should go. We'll bang, okay?

-Cat