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