Fucking play Falskaar!

Skyrim DLC is a lot like sex with me - quick, cheap, not great but pretty fun and a bit messy. Um... no, let me try and start over.

What if I told you that some 19 year old has spent a year in daddy's basement, away from school and a proper job, so he could create a huge mod for Skyrim, which rivals the official DLC in terms of fun, quality and amount of content? 20+ hours of extra play time for free! Well, you'd probably say, "I know! It's been all over the internet more than a week ago, what's your point?" Gee, aren't you in a bad mood today? Fine, I'll cut to the chase: Having finished all the official DLC and Falskaar, I can honestly say that Falskaar is more fun. And it's free!

A friend of mine, who pretends to be an ancient Indian professor in his spare time, once said, "If I secretly added Falskaar to your Skyrim installation, you wouldn't even know it's user-generated content. That's how well it fits in."

And you don't mess with Sambulai Afnak-Afnak

And it's true. Falskaar follows Skyrim tradition all the way up to it's ludicrous background story, which is best enjoyed without asking too many questions. Questions such as:

If you reach Falskaar through a portal, which had been inactive for centuries and everyone suddenly refers to you as the fabled traveler, why can you just leave the damn place on a boat? When you first step into Falskaar, you get the impression that the place had been forgotten and out of touch with the main land for eons. If you want to leave, however...

"Yeah, I can sail you back to Skyrim, no problem." Really? People travel to Falskaar and back by boat all the time? Then why add the whole portal traveler prophecy thing in the first place? It doesn't really make any sense.
Again, this isn't a big deal and by no means worse than the plot holes in the official DLC. Let's just say you'll be playing this for fun, but not because you're dying to see how it all ends or because the story was somehow moving and full of unforeseen plot twists.

Anyhow. Portal, shmortal, at the end of the little introduction you reach the town of Amber Creek, a little town full of completely helpless NPCs. I had a dozen or so new quests piling up in my journal, simply because every single NPC needs help with something. Sexy merchant chick wants some lost family ring returned. Farmer dude wants his stray cattle returned. Mrs. Jarl wants me to check on the neighbours. Elf Jr. wants me to find proof he's adopted. Daddy Elf wants me to stop monsters from killing all of his chickens - with bonus rewards for speedy completion!

And since this isn't an MMO, you don't just go there, kill this and loot that, but fight your way through massive, well-designed dungeons full of traps, puzzles and secrets, as well as hordes of strong enemies. I was level 54 when I started my playthrough and found many of the bandits and necromancers in Falskaar to be a lot stronger than regular Skyrim baddies, even on adept difficulty. Crank it up to legendary and you're in for a rough time. What fun!

Many quests make excellent use of the creation kit. If you want to figure out who is killing all the chickens, you'll need to hide and wait in the bushes at midnight, then follow the killer to their hideout, rather than whacking them on sight. Leave the quest in your journal for too long and all the chickens will be dead. In a seemingly empty lighthouse, a ghost will fade in and out of existence to guide you towards a hidden passage. There are also some good guy options when handing in a quest. "I don't need your gold, I did this because I'm full of love" or some shit, which may sometimes result in an even better reward or, unsurprisingly, no reward at all, since you just refused it. You moron!

And it works with companions! Look at how happy the wife, follower, doggie and mount are!

The real meat and potatoes lies within the main quest, which stretches over nine lengthy story missions. There's a bad guy and his army of other bad guys, who all happen to be a bit greedy and hungry for power, so they start ransacking the nearby towns and end up planning their attack on Amber Creek, the one thing that stands between them and total domination of Falskaar. There's also a bit of Indiana Jones style mythology going on and then both factions chase after some magic artifact, which supposedly grants immortality and all kinds of nifty perks, but for the most part, it's guerilla-style elite soldiers vs generic bad guy army action. Almost a bit like Call of Duty with swords.

For the most part, this works incredibly well. You join a bunch of five or so NPCs and infiltrate an enemy fort through the sewers, then battle your way through, rescue a kidnapped family and duel the commander to the death. At some point, you'll have to decide whether you want to join the Brawny Bros. on their raid against some bandits or the Jarl and his monk buddy to kick some necromancer ass - you can only choose one of the two missions, the other one will be finished by the NPCs.
This may sound a bit strange, but it's actually really cool. Nobody in Falskaar gives a shit about you being the Dragonborn. They have brave, capable warriors there, who get shit done. They'll ask you for help and they'll happily have you tag along, but you don't single-handedly save the day and defeat a whole army. They lead the attack, you follow, kill as many bad guys as you can and try to stay alive. The NPCs related to the main questline rarely just sit on their asses and wait for you to do all the dirty work. Good!

It's not exactly Braveheart, but then, William Wallace probably didn't have to fight with framerate issues.

Of course there's a reason why the official DLCs and Skyrim's main plotline don't do stuff like that. And that becomes apparent during, and after, every major battle in Falskaar. First of all, things can and will turn into a huge, confusing clusterfuck rather rapidly. This is especially the case in the later, bigger battles, where on top of the main NPCs you get some generic soldiers to join you.

All the red dots on the compass are enemies.

Imagine fighting a dozen or so bad guys. There might be a dozen soldiers on your team, not counting any possible followers you may have brought along. They all want each other dead. Actually hitting one of the bad guys is incredibly difficult, because they all just disappear into a cartoony cloud of fists and swords. No, not literally. Shut up!
It doesn't help both the bad guy soldiers and good guy soldiers wear simple guard outfits. You can only tell them apart by their colour, which is a bit difficult during night time or when you start torching people. And again, you're not Rambo, you're part of a whole bunch of soldiers. If you run, hide and sit around for long enough, your troops will destroy the enemy units, with or without you.

Finishing off what I hope is an enemy soldier.

Personally, I think it's great. Fighting side by side with a bunch of surprisingly likeable characters, storming enemy keeps and trying to stay focused in a big, confusing battle is very different from your usual Skyrim experience. Think about it: You're the fucking Dragonborn, the über düber hero, nothing can stop you, everyone thinks you're such a badass, blah blah blah. Yes, that's fun or nobody would have played it. But in Falskaar, you're just some friendly, helpful stranger, who helps out in a war, which would have happened anyway, with or without you. The whole world doesn't just fucking revolve around you. In Falskaar, you're not treated like some fabled superhero, who could take on the gods all by himself. You join a war, try to stay alive, try to keep up with the main characters and try to kill a few guys, who actually belong to the enemy team rather than your own. It's confusing, a bit scary, potentially frustrating and highly immersive.
To be fair, the whole thing may polarise a bit. If you love being the one and only hero, if you want your battles everyone vs you, then Falskaar's main plotline probably isn't for you.

Wearing the main baddie's armor. Which isn't really supposed to happen, but I modded it. :P

The other, bigger problem with quests and battles of this magnitude lies in the unpredictable, stupid AI of Skyrim. Sometimes you're supposed to meet up with NPCs at a certain location. You can follow them as they move there, only to realize they're casually walking and killing every single last mudcrab on the way. There are fucking horses in Falskaar, why don't they use them?
"Make haste! We have to make it to the Temple of Bob before Mr. Badguy gets there! Time is running out!" *casually prances away and attacks a crab* Mkay...
I have caught quest NPCs swimming across a river literally three feet away from the fucking bridge.

Most of the time it's best to just fast-travel to the quest location, then use the game's wait function for NPCs to catch up. This becomes especially hilarious when only half of the important NPCs show up for an engine-rendered dialogue cutscene.
"Halt! I challenge you to a duel! If you have any honour, you will fight me or forever be known as a coward!"
"Ha! Fighting an old man isn't much of a challenge now, is it?"
Silence. One minute. Two minutes. Everyone just standing there.
Wait-hotkey. "Wait for 6 hours". 6 hours pass. Missing NPC comes running into the cutscene.
"How dare you!" AHA! Imagine he had been all out of breath to make it even more surreal.
This isn't game-breaking. Not entirely. Stuff bugs out, you wait or do a quicksave/quickload to fix it. But it's there.

Some script and AI quirkiness aside, presentation is fucking amazing and beyond anything I had ever expected from user-generated content. First of all, there's the voice acting. Okay, Jarl Ragnarr is a ham and overacts every line of dialogue so badly, he must have been channeling William Shatner or David Caruso the entire time. The other voice actors (29 total) are really, seriously good, up to a point where even enemies such as the countless bandits you kill, have their own voice sets in combat! They're seriously fun to fight, because you get some different lines of text, which you haven't already heard a million times in the main game.
Falskaar also looks really amazing.

These burgers are so fresh, they're still mooing!

The whole place is about one third of the size of Skyrim and full of caverns, outposts, ruins and other places to explore. Well... if you're allowed to explore them before finding the corresponding quest first. More often than not, I'd run into a locked door that would not budge until I had managed to get a quest for the dungeon.
You may notice some performance issues if you're using texture and ENB mods. Indoor areas aside, the whole thing is in one piece, there are no loading screens when you enter a town, the landscapes are incredibly detailed and use more plants and vegetation than most areas in Skyrim and if you add 20 or so bloodthirsty warriors to the picture, well... things can get a bit taxing on your hardware.

Falskaar also comes with it's own 40something minutes of soundtrack, which is pleasant enough, if a bit tinny and canny. But come on. On the one side, you have Jeremy Soule for the main game, then there's Falskaar and what I presume must be an enthusiastic six year old with his own Bontempi home keyboard. Style and quality are somewhere between Runescape and Minecraft. Still. Custom music for user-made DLC. And it's not horrible. You can enjoy it for the 20-30 hours you'll spend there.

A geyser. Something I can only pronounce because I play King of Fighters a lot.

If you're still not sold, here's the one reason to play this, on top of it being free, fun and full of stuff to do: Any idiot could set it up in two minutes. Even you.

Even if you never use any mods, if you're staying away from everything that isn't official DLC, because you're afraid it might mess up your game, try Falskaar! It consists of two files that go in your data folder, you activate them, that's it. No need for plugins, script extenders, nothing. All you need is an up to date version of Skyrim. You don't even need the official DLC. And it's not intrusive, either. It adds one NPC to Riften, who asks you to check out a mine in the middle of nowhere, which will lead you to the new content. That's it. The rest of Falskaar is entirely seperated from the main game, it doesn't add any weird new shit to it, it won't mess with your story and it won't break anything. Doesn't get any more convenient than that.

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favourite DLC on the Citadel.

-Shep

Cryary of a Skyrim Mod Enthusiast

Remember how we could just mod the shit out of Morrowind and Oblivion and stuff just worked and didn't break or get outdated all the fucking time and you could actually play the damn game when you were done modifying it?
That's the way I remember it and it's most likely wrong. That, and, after a while these games were simply "done", there were no more patches, DLC or anything that would force you to keep updating your game.

Skyrim had two major expansions (I refuse to count Hearthfire, building a fucking house and adopting children is NOT a fucking expansion! And why the FUCK would I want to settle down, get married and have kids in a game about exploration, adventure and dragonslaying?) and the Legendary Edition had only been released last month. This thing is still going strong.

The possibility to modify my game in any way I want is the biggest reason for me to play Skyrim (and to not really care about Elder Scrolls Online). Aside from the obvious texture and quality mods, which make the game look better than real life, there are tons of things I've added to the game, some of them self-made, which make the game infinitely more fun to me, make it unique, different from any other Skyrim out there.

Vanilla. It's still very pretty.

Modded. Prettier.

In my game, characters have visible bleeding cuts if their unarmored body parts are hit by a sword. Or a bruise from a blunt weapon. There are all kinds of different wounds and blood splatters depending on the weapons, armor and clothing involved. Completely unnecessary, but fun and immersive all the same. In my game, NPCs will react to weather effects and go inside when it rains and wear cloaks and hoods when it's cold and wet. In my game, werewolves can turn back and forth at will, not just once pay day and only for an hour. And characters aren't Barbie & Ken underneath their clothes. Not because I'm perving over video games, but because in my world, underwear isn't fucking glued on.

Some people take their need for realism so far, they mod their game so that their avatar needs to eat, drink and sleep, lest they suffer all kinds of bad side-effects or even death. Bit too harsh for me. Keep a fish in your inventory for three days and it'll go bad. Eat it and your character gets sick. Drink water from any random river without boiling it - sick again. Drink twelve bottles of wine in one sitting - dead. And if that isn't realistic enough, some people have seriously added the need to piss in form of a mod. Because interrupting gameplay for RL pissing isn't annoying enough already.

One problem with these modifications is that they need to be updated when you update your game. They can turn unstable, cause issues in combination with other mods and so forth. And keeping well over 200 mods up to date is, well... not fun.
I keep Skyrim on an old, secondary Steam profile, no auto-updates or anything. I don't want this game touching anything else, I don't want auto updates to fuck with it, I need a safe, sterile environment. And after finishing Dawnguard, the first expansion, I made a decision: No more game updates at all! Skyrim was reasonably stable (as stable as this game can get), my mods worked the way they were supposed to work, let's not risk breaking anything.

Well, that was last year. Then they released Dragonborn. Same weak storytelling as always, lots of bugs, crashes and problems, but overall fun to play, critics said. I chose to ignore it. Then I ran out of stuff to do on there, had the whole map uncovered, every dungeon explored, every side quest, every guild, brotherhood, blah, blah, I was all done and didn't want to start over. Then, Falskaar:

Can you believe this is a mod created by some 19 year old kid, who claims he can produce an expansion with the same quality and added gameplay as Bethesda themselves? This mod is his job application. What I've seen of this so far is absolutely amazing, a few minor typos and grammar issues aside (both of which also exist in Bethesda's original writing).
So. I had nothing left to do in my game. Dragonborn and Falskaar were waiting. So I thought, heck with it, let's update this fucker and give it a go. Damn you, Steam Summer Sale!

Naturally, in order to play all this new content, I had to download the latest game updates. If you're unfamiliar with modding, let me tell you what this means:
Many of the game's modifications and plugins require advances programs, so-called script extenders, which allow the game to do things it normally would not do, i.e. map certain new functions to a hotkey or advanced NPC commands that go beyond "follow me" and "wait here".

If you update Skyrim, said script extenders will no longer recognize the game and cease to work. Basically, all you have to do is update your script extenders along with Skyrim. But that's where the problems start. One of these extenders ('Dragon Script') has been discontinued, so I could not update it. Without an update, it would not work on an updated Skyrim and without the extender, half of my mods would refuse to work. So I had to re-download and reconfigure all of these mods, which were now all using different setups and settings due to the now defunct Dragon Script.
Unfortunately, the website hosting all of these mods, Skyrim Nexus, was in the process of migrating data servers, causing 90% of the downloads to be unavailable unless you registered for a paid premium account. It only cost me about two fifty, but yes, I had to pay money in order to fix my broken mods.

One problem with installing, fixing and reconfiguring a huge load of stuff is that Skyrim may just freeze after a few seconds, refuse to load savegames, crash or just refuse to start up altogether. I had all of these problems in every possible variation. No surprise here.
Now there's a handy little tool named 'BOSS', which is supposed to put all your mods in the right load order, points out compatibility issues and outdated, broken and obsolete mods. So I went and ran BOSS and lo and behold, it put my mods in an order, which allowed me to fire up Skyrim without immediately crashing it. But that's about it.

Not only had it fixed my stability issues by re-arranging all my crap, but it had stopped half of my stuff from working. My main character was missing his head. My companion still had hers, but her hood had disappeared. I could no longer run, because I was suddenly overburdened, either because my stuff got heavier or my carrying capacity got reduced. Still haven't figured out how that happened. And those were only the most glaring, obvious problems.
I have spent the rest of that night manually rearranging my mods until they all worked again. The missing head problem was the most fun one. It was related to a defunct helmet mod, which would only work if you loaded it before any mod that would alter the stats of any helmet in any way, but after any other custom headgear. Or the other way 'round. Or something. I dunno, it took several hours of research and trial & error.

When I finally had all of that shit sorted, I tried to actually play the game. But whenever I tried to loot something, the game would crash. A problem with the new UI and its load order. When I fixed it, various hotkeys and HUD elements ceased to work, because they depended on the new UI and had to be rearranged, as well. Now my game stopped crashing, but every minute or so, it just froze for ten seconds, then resumed to work. Would happen for ten or so minutes, then freeze up completely. Turns out a "compatibility patch", which BOSS told me to download for one of my sound mods, was causing these freezes, so I had to remove it and play without it.

I finally made it to the Dragonborn expansion area when the game seemed to work okay. And it crashed. A lot. Turns out I had too many companions and the follower mod wasn't compatible with Dragonborn. So I got rid of my followers. Unfortunately, my savegame got corrupted and I had to start over from an older savegame. Having lost some progress, I had to repeat the last dungeon I finished before starting the expansion.
Here's the important bit: In my original savegame, an NPC told me about the dungeon, so I went there, got a new dragon shout, killed a dragon priest, got his cool mask, yay.

On the backup savegame, nobody told me about the dungeon, but I still knew where it was, went there without ever having heard of it, approached the wall with the dragon shout and... crashed.
You see, basically you learn new dragon shouts (special ability thingies) by staring at a wall with the shout engraved, the screen goes wobbly and BAM - new shout! When I went there, well... BAM - crash to desktop!
Just triggering the damn thing would crash my game every time! I could briefly peek at the wall, fast-travel to a nearby city and ten seconds later I'd still crash. Logical assumption: One of my mods conflicts with dragon shouts.

I've disabled, deactivated, uninstalled, fixed and reinstalled another ton of mods, most of which were somehow related to visual effects like night eye, werewolf vision, stuff that lets you see in the dark and what not. Because word walls trigger a visual effect, I figured there was some sort of conflict right there, but the fucking thing would keep on crashing. Kept me busy all day.
Yeah. It wasn't a mod. It's the fucking game. You're not supposed to beat this dungeon, let alone find the dragon shout, without being told about it first. So I sat around in town all day, waited for random passing NPCs to tell me about the place (only comes up as a rumor in random NPC talk) and nobody mentioned it ever again. No dungeon for me. Boo!

The good news is, my game is fully patched and updated now, I have all the expansions and DLC and I'm hoping there will never ever be any more updates, patches and DLC again, because I don't wanna have to go through all of this shit again in this life.
Also, Dragonborn is pretty fun, if clearly aimed at stupid people. Half of the time when I find a new dungeon, a cave or some other potential explorable content, the whole thing will end at a locked door. "Key required", it tells me. The game doesn't want me to explore anything until the story clearly tells me to actually do so in the first place. So much hand-holding and on-rails gameplay!

Dragonborn also features the most ridiculous espionage plot in RPG history.
When exploring Raven Rock, the expansion's first town, I walked into a family's house. They didn't stop me, they didn't seem to mind, acted all friendly and as I rummaged through the stuff in their basement, they started talking upstairs. Basically, the kid called her dad "father" in quotes, daddy called mommy his "wife" in quotes (the subtitles had actual quotes, but you could also hear them in the dialogue) and the game made it pretty clear that these guys were just pretending to be a family for the sake of some sinister plot or something.
The funny thing is, when I came back upstairs, they kept on arguing among each other like I wasn't even there, clearly not giving a shit about how they just revealed themselves to me. Mkay.

A few hours later into the game, a quest NPC told me that there were spies among the villagers, who were plotting to assassinate someone. Hmmm... now which of the villagers could possibly be the spies? Derp!
What's even more annoying than the fact that the game already revealed the whole thing hours before the actual quest, was how I could not tell the quest NPC what I knew. I fucking KNEW who the assassins were, they openly talked about it right in front of me, yet there was no dialogue option other than, "Any leads?" and "What can I do?"

It gets better. The quest giver told me to talk to the local tavernkeep, who immediately told me: "Yeah, the spies you're looking for is the suchandsuch family." You know, the guys who already told me hours ago, anyway.
Okay. So those spies talk about being spies in front of other people. They're so shitty with their secret identity, even the village idiot knows they're spies. Why the fuck do they even need my help to solve this "mystery"? Oh yeah! "We can't do anything without hard evidence."

You know what the quest NPC did? He gave me a key to the spy family's house. A fucking key. Why would he even have one? And why would I need one, for that matter? I've been in their house before, it wasn't locked, and they didn't even care when I came to visit!
So I went back to the house and the moment I stepped inside, the whole family attacked me. Why? They didn't know I was sent there to find evidence. They knew me. They were friendly with me until that step of the quest. They had no fucking reason to attack. And lo and behold, daddy dropped a key when he died, which opened a safe in the basement, which contained a piece of paper saying, "Yeah, we're gonna kill that guy when the time is right."

If I needed a perfect example for awful storytelling, this would be it. And the quest had so much potential! Think about it: There's a spy among the villagers and I have to reveal him before he assassinates someone. If I screw up, I may get the wrong guy arrested or even executed AND the real spy might still kill his target! How cool is that? Watch people, gather evidence, figure out who's behind all this. Proper RPG moments.
Nope. Bartender: "Yeah, it's those three guys over there, here's a key to their house!"
Oh well. Nobody plays Elder Scrolls games for their plot. I'm having fun and I'm happy the damn game finally works.

-Cat

Explosions, Hairballs and Mr. Happy Fridge

Cats. Nature's way of saying I hate you. Giant assholes on fluffy, silent paws. My family adpoted their first cat when I was about ten years old and we've always had cats ever since. And, until our latest pair, they've always been outdoor cats. Easier that way. They take care of business outside, they suck up to the neighbours for food and only show up at home whenever they fucking feel like it.

Our home here in the UK is located on Station Road. They call it that, because there's a fucking train station two minutes away from us. Busiest road in town, railroad crossing, giant buses, you get the idea. Not the best place to allow your cats to go outside. Our neighbour tried it and her cat got pancaked by the oncoming traffic. Our outdoor cat just mysteriously disappeared. So it seemed a reasonable thing to keep her kittens inside the house and that's that.

Now here's one problem with indoor cats, that I never had to deal with before: Hairballs. Before we had indoor cats, I've never actually seen one in my life. And you have to admit, a hairball doesn't really sound all that bad, right? You'd imagine a cute, round, cartoony little ball of, well, hair. Like cats spit out little balls of yarn or some shit. Well, they don't.
The result is something between a disgusting, hairy slug and a wookiee turd. I'd post a picture, but you should probably just google it if you're that desperate for gross images.

One of our stupid cats has also decided to hate flowers. It's her new thing. We have some flowers in the window. You know, little basket of crappy little flowers on the window sill, looks nice and friendly, that kinda thing. Then the cat knocks them down and parks her fat, stupid ass right there. There's enough space for 38 cats right next to the flowers. Both sides. There's a perfectly comfortable leather sofa right in front of the window, as well as a comfy leather armchair in front of the other window. But no, cat's gotta sit on the fucking narrow window sill, fall asleep and fall on her retarded face every 20 minutes. And in order to do so, the flowers need to die. Again and again.

In other news: BOOM! Explosions!
I was just sitting here last night, playing games, surfing the web, everything was fine and then there was a loud bang and all the lights went out. And apparently, sparks were flying across the room right behind me. Turns out the PSU in Claire's pc had blown up.

A little bit like this.

Weird. We had ordered that thing on Amazon just a few months ago and it had nothing but great reviews. Okay, there's always the occasional 1 star dipshit going, "There was no power cord included!" or "Y u no deliver screws?", but there were no problems with the product itself. Oh well, time to tell support! Here's my email to Amazon:

[...]I'm no scientist, but I'm relatively sure this is not supposed to happen. This PSU should have been more than powerful enough to support my PC, which it did until just now. 

This thing literally exploded within less than a year of purchase. I will gladly send it back to you as proof. Now, I know it's a bit difficult to prove that I didn't use it the wrong way, but I can assure you I do not keep my computer in the oven or near any explosives, I did not share a drink with my PSU and I have paid special attention not to hurt its feelings, thereby possibly causing it to self-destruct as a result of depression or low self-esteem. I used it to power my home computer. That's it. 

I know it's a bit late for the 30 days return policy and everything, but surely there must be some way to get my money back for receiving exploding computer hardware? At the very least, explosions should have been added to the feature list on the product website. 
Just, please, whatever you do, don't send us a PSU from the same manufacturer as a replacement. I'm starting to run out of computers to blow up. 

Please let me know if there's anything I can do. My money back or a coupon or something would be awesome. I love money and things.

And here is their response:

Dear Customer,

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk.

We are writing to confirm that we are processing your refund in the amount of £XX for your Order 202-1004913-9902718.

This amount has been credited to your payment method and will appear when your bank has processed it.

Sweet!

Yes, this is an actual picture of what happened next.

Claire is patiently waiting for her replacement now (thanks, Haggy!) and making the best of things. I don't know how the fuck she manages to be so positive all the time. This is why I need her so much and it's why we're meant to be together. I'm a born pessimist. The glass isn't just half empty, it's the wrong drink. Meanwhile, Claire is in Mushroom Kingdom or some shit. I'm not making this up.

The other night, a giant moth would park its fluffy ass on the side of her screen. "Yaaaay! I have a moth buddy!" A what? Well, it just sat there for an hour or two, then flew away. "Bye Mr. Moth!" she shouted, then looked at me. "He was a good moth."
"How the fuck can you tell?"
"He looked happy."
Oh. Okay.

But we don't just have a Mr. Moth, an assortment of Mr. Spiders and a Mr. Locust, who escaped one of the reptile tanks and has since started to eat our curtains. There's also Mr. Vacuum and Mr. Oven and, most importantly, Happy Fridge. But only when he's full of stuff. So when Tesco shows up, it's Happy Fridge time.

He even looks happy. Bit dirty perhaps.

Okay, here's a serious question: How do you react when a 58 year old man brags about his 23 year old girlfriend? Before you answer, here's a bit of a plot twist: That guy is your father.

My old man is the kind of person, who would change his mind about picking me up from the airport (without telling me), because he's got to raid on World of Warcraft. I wish I was making this up.
Back when I still lived in Germany and visited Claire in the UK, my old man agreed to pick me up at the airport when I get back. So I get off the airplane, it's midnight, I've got a heavy suitcase with me (and not one of those cool rolly ones, either) and my father is nowhere to be seen.
Long story short, he had left me a message on my mobile's voice box, telling me to just grab a taxi or something because he had to raid.
I didn't even have enough money for a train ticket. Boarded a train anyway, because I couldn't exactly walk all the way home. It was 2am by the time I got home. I had to get ready for work five hours later. Yay. He did similar things around Christmas (got up in the middle of dinner, went to play WoW with the family still sitting there, never came back) and at just about every possible awkward opportunity. I'm sure his now dissolved marriage has failed for all sorts of reasons and I daren't say whether he got addicted to online gaming because his relationship was shit or the other way 'round.

He's also the kind of person, who keeps on promising to visit me in the UK (been living here for three and a half years now), but never actually shows up. Funniest thing is his reaction when I tell him a flight there and back is only 100 Euros. "Wow, I had no idea it was so cheap! I don't really know much about these things." Right. Guy has been flying before I was born and all, but he doesn't know how to google a plane ticket. Fuck, Claire managed to book and pay for a flight to Germany when she was 20 - first time she had boarded an airplane in her life! Which begs the question - if he doesn't even know how much a flight over here costs, how the fuck can he say he'd love to come over here as soon as he can afford it? Apparently he couldn't be bothered to even look at how much it would cost him. Some sincerity.

Anyhow. He's bragging about the 23 year old intern he's boning at his new job. Because that's something to brag about to your children, right? That guy has kids, all of which are older than his girlfriend. My girlfriend is older than his girlfriend. He's telling me that he's cutting down on WoW, because a 23 year old has interests other than online gaming. What interests could her and my dad possibly have in common? What could they possibly have to talk about? Surely she can't be that fucking pretty! I mean, for fuck's sake, the midlife crisis hits some folks harder than others, but... ARGH! We don't get to choose our parents. I have to make the best of it. I'm supposed to respect him and all, so why does he have to make it so fucking difficult?

I don't think I'm ever going back to Germany.

-Cat

Hawken - Clusterfuck of Happiness

Easter egg: The signs are clear - Pikachu and an angry cat. Not sure wtf the frog is all about.

Something strange has happened: I have passed the enthusiastic first 2 weeks mark and I still haven't lost interest in Hawken, something that rarely happens to me and F2P games - if ever.

I haven't put so many hours into a first person shooter since Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena or the beta 7 of Counter-Strike. Yes, I have to stress the beta bit to sound better than you. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" I hear you ask. Nothing. Hawken is just a fucking good game, which can be summed up as a more complex Call of Duty with mechs.

Yes, I said Call of Duty. Because not only do you run around and shoot stuff, but you gain money and experience as you play the game, which allows you to unlock weapons, upgrades and new mechs, just like in CoD. Okay, sure, there are no 25 different kinds of shotguns, 38 assault rifles and 250 million scopes and silencers to unlock, but nobody gives a shit about those. Instead, you get different kinds of mechs with different abilities. Here, have a pic of my mech getting repaired by another player's healing mech:

You can feel the love just by looking at this picture.

"But why would I want to be a healer when I could just run around and kill things?" Because players don't top the scoreboard depending on the amount of their kills, but their overall contribution. Assist in a kill, heal a team mate, defend a mission objective, be useful and receive bigger rewards. It's that simple. Good stuff.

Despite my rather modest amount of kills, I'm the top-scorer by far. The mission is everything...

Hurray!

Oh yeah, mission objectives. On top of the usual team-/deathmatch modes and a domination thingie (called Missile Launch or something) you get Siege Mode. Players of both teams collect energy from the two dispensers on each map. If you get killed with a full tank, you lose all your energy and it sits around where you died, so anyone can grab it - presumably the guy who just shot you.

Filling up those energy tanks whilst covering each other's asses against potential ambush.

Ideally, you get to fill up that tank of yours and make it back to your base in one piece. Once enough players have delivered their energy, your base will launch a huge-ass battleship.

Aw yiah, suck it all out!

Once your battleship is in the air, you need to fight for control over the anti air unit in the middle of the map. The team which controls this unit can use it to destroy the enemy battleship before it can do any damage.
One possible strategy is to camp and hold the anti air spot, wait for the other team to launch their ship and shoot it down, then launch your own. Or be quicker than the enemy team, launch your ship while they are still harvesting energy, rush to the anti air unit and occupy it while they're still trying to launch their own battleship.

Here is what happens if you don't destroy the enemy battleship:

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

This giant fucker of a ship will head straight for your base and shoot it to bits. Trying to destroy the battleship will take for fucking ever! If your base is blown up completely, you lose.

Well, fuck.

Siege has the potential to be the most awesome, exciting and the most frustrating, stupid mode of Hawken. Ideally, both teams know what they're doing and the match can turn into an arms race, which may take well over a half hour.
But the moment a game gets more complex than "just shoot stuff", stupid players will ruin it. If you've ever been part of a battlegrounds match in any major MMO, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Siege mode has a video tutorial. When you enter the game, a popup screen appears, tells you to collect energy, launch your ship and use the anti air cannon to destroy the enemy ship. The game goes out of its way to explain how it all works. And let's be honest here - it really isn't that fucking complicated.
But 90% of the time, one team wins in a massive landslide victory, because people on the other team have no fucking clue what to do. It's a bit frustrating when the scoreboard shows you as the only player on your team harvesting energy, while everybody else is just running around getting shot. It's more frustrating when team mates collect energy, then have no fucking clue what to do with it. If only there was a giant, flashing mission pointer, that tells you exactly where to deliv... oh wait, there is!

So yeah, it's perfectly normal to be the only player, who actually knows how Siege is played. It's always fun when some idiot on your team spots enemies and tells everyone their map coordinates. "But we're not supposed to farm kills, we gotta launch our battleship!"
-"STFU NOOB!"
Mkay.
Five minutes later, when you've lost with the enemy base completely unscathed, you'll see this, coming from the same guy:
"Fucking noob team!"
And he's probably got 12 kills, 38 deaths, not a single energy unit collected. In fact, you can see a guy like that on my scoreboard screenshot I posted earlier in this entry.
And once more, you'll wish for the ability to strangle stupid people through sheer hatred and willpower across the internet.

To be fair, you get this special little shithead in just about every other mode of the game, as well. Lost by a mile in a session of team deathmatch? Some guy with 2 kills and 14 deaths will blame his team for being fucking noobs. Internet behaviour and small dick syndrome at their greatest moments. "Quickly! We have lost, so I gotta blame it on my team to make perfectly clear that it's everyone else's fault and not my own!"
Another personal favourite of mine is when I'm told to "try again without hacks" whenever I end up in first place. Good times.

How the fuck do I line up a headshot in this game?

There is a huge content patch on the horizon, which will let players customize the abilities and strengths of their mechs. Right now, the game features skill trees, which do amazing things like raise your HP by 3.5% or your damage resistance by 1.6%, which is a fancy way of saying they do nothing. I'm curious to see how they're going to make the whole system more fun and a little more useful and, most of all, how to prevent that absolutely everyone simply puts every last point into the dps tree and ignores everything else. Because who gives a fuck about some extra HP and defenses in a first person shooter, when you could be specced to kill shit faster?

- Cat

Pikachu and the friendly tortoise

What an interesting day this has been! It was the hottest day of the year thus far, so we decided to take Hugo out. Interesting observation #1: Giant reptiles have a magnetic effect on elderly ladies. I was standing around outside the pet shop, which was waaaaaaay too hot. And Hugo, who had spent most of the day walking up and down the street on his weird new leash was fast asleep in my arms... on my chest... on my shoulder... um... yeah, all of the above at the same time, because that's just how big he is now. Head goes on the shoulder, tail is somewhere around the nuts, which is always a bit unpleasant, especially since he uses that thing to hold on to stuff. I kid you not - he climbs out of his tank and gently floats towards the carpet whilst roping himself down using only his tail. Fascinating stuff.

Anyhow. Standing around outside, where the air moves and isn't getting heated up by dozens of reptile tanks. People walk by, turn their heads, stare, stop their cars for a moment, the usual. Because that's the kind of thing you do when you have a chance encounter with a small dinosaur. Seriously, their faces are the closest thing to a real dinosaur you'll ever see.

Not actually Hugo, but it gets the point across.

And then there was this old lady. The stereotype your brain comes up with when you think granny. Tweety's owner. Snow white hair, face like a nutsack and disturbingly fearless and curious when it comes to Hugo. She didn't even stop to ask whether he's gonna spread unholy, leathery wings, breathe fire and proceed to tear out her very soul to drag it down to the 9th circle of hell, where her spiritual remains shall be devoured and shat out in the shape of a newborn divorce lawyer. She just started petting him and started asking about what he eats, how much a guy like him would cost, that kinda thing. She even took a few pictures with her hot pink (!) iPhone. What interesting times we live in.
Granny #2 got into her car and was ready to drive off when she spotted me, stopped her engine, opened the door and asked me if she could have a look. Eep! And again, 10 minutes of petting and Q&A ensued. She told me I had a very precious pet and that I should take good care of him. Yes, ma'am! o_O

What's even more amazing than the fact that the walking dead of England know no fear of reptiles is the intense friendliness of the common red-footed tortoise or whatever the fuck that thing at the shop was called. You see, I don't really know anything about nature's resilient little frisbees. A class mate back in elementary had two viciously aggressive turtles, which I'm told is not the same thing as a tortoise, because the former are water-based and the latter live on land. I also know that our friend, Swiss Guy, has a bunch of tortoises in his yard. Swiss Guy probably has a real name, but who cares, we just call him that.
So this friendly tortoise at the shop tends to scratch at the glass of his tank when he wants attention. He also gets up on his hind legs and then topples over, which is awkward.

He looks like this.

So Claire picked him up and I had to re-learn one of the two things I actually knew about these guys. #1: Their heads are the closest thing to an uncircumcised penis I have ever seen, aside from an actual uncircumcised penis. This is a fact.
#2: As a finger, you don't want to be anywhere near that dickhead, because those guys like to bite. Hard. Our special little friend proved me wrong today.
Long story short, this guy loves a good head-rub. I have never seen anything like it. The head usually just disappears into the shell. Or worse, if you piss them off. This tortoise? He'd push his head against my hand as hard as he could as I stroked him. Weird.

Claire walked him up and down the street. I had Hugo, she had the tortoise, who would happily walk around and explore town. Easily one of the stranger things I've done so far. For a moment, we've brought the entire street to a halt, as everybody would stop, stare and point. Well, what would you do if you walked into something like that?
Our new friend was really more of a tortoise-shaped dog. I can't begin to describe how much this fascinates and surprises me. Alright, sure - how much intelligence can it possibly take to follow the person who feeds you every day? But the whole petting, handling and affection thing really threw me off. I was under the impression that tortoises sit around, wait for food and spend the rest of the day loathing you. Mr. Redfoot was very friendly and adventurous. Fun.

In other news: Mechs.
And surprisingly: No, not Mechwarrior Online. I'm actually afraid to try that one, for two reasons. First of all, it looks incredibly deep, tactical and large-scale. Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression here, but scale-wise it looks a bit like Battlefield or Planetside with Mechs. You know, spend a week walking around until you finally get to the action and then some asshole kills you from 300 miles away with a terribly unrealistic sniper rifle. Or some long distance laser equivalent in case of Mechwarrior. Oh and if you happen to be one of those dickheads, who are about to spam comments about how I'm just butthurt because I suck at Battlefield:

For the slightly more intelligent among you: I simply lack the patience, attention span and tactical ability to enjoy this kind of game. There's nothing wrong with this stuff, I'm just not the target audience.
The other, bigger reason that puts me off Mechwarrior: I don't know shit about the franchise. The last Mechwarrior game I've played came with my Matrox Mystique, sometime in the late '90s. All that battlemech and battletech stuff, fine-tuning weapons, energy-consumption, range, counter-measures, yada, yada, yada... I just don't like the idea of being a complete noob in an environment created and inhabited by nerds. I may as well hang out at a comic convention and argue why Star Trek is better than Star Wars or DC is better than Marvel. I can tell Batman from Captain Kirk, but that's about as good as it gets. I don't need some basement-dweller on my team telling me that, OMFG, you cannot be serious with that fucking gauss cannon on that mech of yours and where the fuck is your gatling laser and I don't even know if any of that stuff exists on there, as the only mech I can somewhat accurately name is a Mad Cat.

So I did the sensible thing and went for the alternative, which is an affront to any true Mechwarrior fan and borderline blasphemy: Hawken. Why is it so offensive, you might ask? Well, let me show you:

A Mad Cat, also known as the most awesome Mech of all times.

'Recruit', a Mech from Hawken. But wait, there's more:

User-customized Recruit. Note the red paintjob and the white hearts.

You see what I'm getting at. Mechwarrior has steel behemoths raining down death and destruction on you, whilst Hawken has bouncy boxes of joy, some of which resemble a walking microwave oven wearing my old valentine's day boxer shorts.

Hawken is also a lot more twitch-based. Mechs on there are surprisingly agile and they jump, run and boost around like lemmings on crack. Which, gameplay-wise, is right up my alley. I want immediate, clusterfuck-style action, no endless running around and planning and sneaking up and getting in position and whatever the fuck you do on the more intelligent shooters out there.

And to be perfectly fair, Hawken isn't all pink hearts and walking tv sets. There are some pretty badass mechs out there. Here's one I have created:

Easily the most awesome-looking toy in my arsenal. Also, I'm so incredibly shit with this thing, it makes me cry. I have another mech, one I'm actually really, really good with. And it's.... well. A bit embarassing, really.

Yes. This tiny... yellow thing. It gets better.
As a match ends on Hawken, the camera highlights the most valuable player (or their mech, to be more precise) on everybody's screen. So every now and then, when I try hard enough, my mech is featured on the mvp screen and everybody gets to look at it. That's what happened the other night. And everybody shouted: PIKACHU!

When Pokémon got famous over here I was already 16. I'm straight. Believe me, I tried, because my friends, my siblings, everyone wanted me to give the games and even the tv show a fair chance, but let's just say the magic never really happened for me. If you're male, about my age and capable of naming all 151 original pokémon, kindly send me an email so I may remove you from my contact list on Facebook.

In all fairness, lots of people actually like this shit. So when they named my mech Pikachu, they didn't try to insult me. In fact, the Hawken community is incredibly friendly, I have only seen one person being accused of cheating in about a week of intense play and the amount of immature players, who use dumbass racist remarks and speculate upon my mother's sexual activity make up but a tiny fraction of an otherwise great player base. Most people just want a good time. Highly unusual for an FPS game, especially of the F2P variety.
So, you know what? To hell with it. May as well roll with that shit, right? Here we go:

Look for the name in the top left section of the screen. :P

I do, however, refuse to shout "Pika! Pika!" as I charge at an enemy, guns blazing.

One thing I genuinely enjoy about Hawken is its decent F2P model. It's not great, but decent. Every mech, every weapon and upgrade, can be purchased with ingame credits, which you earn by playing the game. It takes roughly six hours to earn enough credits to buy a mech and there are no cash only premium mechs. Of course you can just go and buy every single item in the game using cold, hard cash. And stuff doesn't cost an arm and a leg, either. A fiver will get you a mech and a bit of customization on the side. Not too shabby.

What I don't like is the near-complete lack of "try before you buy" factor here. Yes, there are fortnight-long test drive events, which allow you to pilot certain mechs without having to buy them, but if the one you're drooling over is not on test drive week, you're gonna have to buy the proverbial cat in the bag. Games like Smite at least give you the option to test all the playable characters in a practice match against bots, so you'll know exactly what you're getting, but Hawken does no such thing. Not good.

Also, all cosmetic changes cost real money. Want a new paintjob, a fancy new set of legs or a shiny new particle effect with those thrusters? Cough up! That's fine, they gotta make money somehow and looking cool does not give you any real advantage in combat. Still, being the customization whore that I am, I'd greatly appreciate a way to earn new camo and stuff simply by playing the game, even if it's for many, many hours. Oh well.

Despite running on the UnrealEngine, Hawken's visuals are fairly unimpressive and the ever-present texture pop-in is incredibly irritating. The whole thing is a bit of a mess right now - the client only runs on DX9, yet the config file is full of tesselation settings, which tend to lag the shit out of the game at no visual benefit whatsoever. There's also the, admittedly impressive, NVidia only PhysX particle option, which turns the game into a stuttering, unplayable mess and looks like this:

Pay special attention to how many times the guy says PhysX in a really annoying way. Brrr!

My biggest gripe with the game is how there is practically no visual feedback when you get damaged. Half of the time my mech will get shot to pieces while I'm fighting somebody and it always catches me by surprise when the damn thing blows up, because I'm under the impression that I didn't take any damage at all. Yes, there's a tiny number display inside the cockpit, which shows your current armor rating (HP), but the cockpit doesn't quake when I get hit, there are no red lights flashing, all I get is some small cracks in the glass when it's already too late. That's it. You'd think that a six-pack of hellfire rockets to the face would leave a bit of an impact. Huh.

Ah, fuck it. It's annoying, but not annoying enough to stop me from playing. And it's an okay replacement for the now dead Warhammer: Space Marine. No more death matches on the pc side of things. Boo! 

-Cat

FU MMOs, hello co-op!

The more time I spend playing MMOs, the more I'm starting to realize how much I don't actually like MMOs. My biggest problem with these games is how they're all designed to have you compete against and/or team up with people. And people are scum.
They're one of the reasons why I can't enjoy Neverwinter for more than the occasional short session here and there. People are hacking, cheating and exploiting to an extent, where the guys running the game seem powerless to do anything about it. The other day the auction house was flooded with stacks of 99 rare enchantments, which have all been duped. Instructions on how to duplicate items exploiting the mail system and the auction house are all over the 'net, along with downloads and instructions to farm bots and what have you.
It's the kind of shit you have to expect when real money buys everything in a game. Not so much for the sake of having the most powerful and precious items, but mostly because it also works the other way 'round: Virtual goods generate real money. It's shit like that, which has been causing so much trouble with Diablo 3 and its real money auction house and now the same shit is happening all over Neverwinter, again and again.
In all fairness, this is a problem which most individual players, myself included, could probably ignore. It doesn't immediately affect me or my gaming experience. But when I see assholes generating an infinite amount of items that morons like me have to quest, farm and kill for, I'm out.

I had similar unpleasant experiences with the Final Fantasy relaunch beta, where my dungeon party chose to let me die (as their tank!) when I did not immediately know how to defeat a boss, which everbody else in the group had already fought before. Apparently, not killing his minions was part of the strategy, which nobody had bothered to tell me before the fight, so when I started going after them for the sake of keeping the group out of harm's way, they ceased all healing to stop me from screwing up. Because that's quicker and easier than actual communication.
And that's a big problem right there, because group content in Final Fantasy is mandatory if you want to complete the game's storyline. Most other online games allow me to level up and experience my story all by myself, if I so desire. This one does not. Again, this isn't a problem to most people and the biggest part of the community is friendly and helpful, but there is still massive potential for complete strangers to ruin my gaming experience, which is something I simply can't be arsed to put up with.

I do make exceptions when I get to shoot people, of course. Seriously, go play Renaissance Heroes.

Because I enjoy bragging so much more than showing actual gameplay.

I like to play games with Claire. You know, cooperatively, because everything else leads to arguments and lack of sex. And my desire for jolly cooperation leads me to games that people, who wouldn't actually suck at my job, already knew about at least a year ago. You know, like Dark Souls. Or our latest addiction, Saints Row The Third.

Saints Row is something I used to ignore, because it all started out as a console game and I considered it little more than a GTA clone. And I don't care about GTA. Gasp! Blasphemy! It's not even that I "don't care", because everybody else seems to care, so I must not care for the sake of being special or some shit. It's because I only enjoy GTA when I get to dick around and sadly, that's not how it's meant to be played. You know, steal a car, run over random people, take their money, wait for the ambulance, steal their car, run over the ambulance, take their money, you get the idea. That's fun. For a day or two. But the moment I'm supposed to maneuver RC helicopters or some other gimmicky shit in order to beat a mission, I lose interest.

What I did not know until recently is how Saints Row, at least in its third instalment, is all about dicking around. Yes, it also has helicopters and gadgets and shit, but most of the time that stuff only encourages you to dick around even more. Remote control a car and ram a gas station! Run into passing cars and get hurt as badly as possible for insurance money! You know, fuck up, but be good at fucking up and be rewarded. What an interesting concept. What could be better than teaming up with Burt Reynolds to beat a horde of zombies into next week with a giant purple dildo? Teaming up with Burt Reynolds and a friend to beat a horde of zombies into next week with a giant purple dildo! Among other things. This is us playing together:

Another fun thing for those coop-cravings is Super Mario Bros. X:

One interesting thing about this game, which is not shown in the video is how Link is one of the playable characters. Sword and everything. Weird stuff. But very fun.

What's more interesting about successful cooperative gaming sessions is their positive effect on sex. "I love how you blew up that orphanage with your rocket launcher. Allow me to show my appreciation by making love to your face!" I have bloody scratches on parts of my body, which most among you don't care to hear and others secretly fantasize about. I'm not even kidding. We're like a lame, nerdy version of the Natural Born Killers, where all the killing is virtual, but at least we don't just "cyber" afterwards. Hm.

Also, work. Lots of it. Which is good. Lots of money. For whenever that gets here. I wish all of my customers were as reliable as I am. Maybe I should set deadlines for them, as well. You want an article within 48 hours? Righto! Just make sure to pay up within 48 hours as well! Ha! If only...

-Cat