Dildos, Dubstep & Destruction

Did you ever have one of those friends, who keep sending you gifts and shit, no matter how many times you ask them not to? Haggy is one of those friends. He got us the Game of the Century Edition of Saints Row 4. And, as you can see by the name of my blog, Volition's humor is right up my alley. I liked the previous Saints Row game, but having to remake my character from scratch for the next one, being limited to a depressing, virtual, simulated game world (the story throws you into a simulation), and playing a game, which was originally intended to be DLC or an expansion of sorts simply put me off.

But Saints Row The Third was many moons ago now, we've been done with it for a while and I didn't mind giving the "new" one a go. Watch this space in 2018 for my opinion on Gat out of Hell! The completion thingie says we're about 30% done with the game while I'm writing this and it has been pretty good so far. Claire is playing this weird, sexy porn nun with most of her tits out and she's killing shit with a massive purple dildo. I didn't even know this weapon made a return in this game, as we tripped upon it entirely by accident.

Veins, balls, you gotta give 'em credit for all the ugly detail.

Saints Row 4 makes fun of Mass Effect and the way you can (literally) fuck just about every person on your ship. There are also references to movies like Die Hard, Wargames, Apocalypse Now, Armageddon, The Matrix and tons more. Apparently, there is also a quest which mimics sidescrolling beat 'em ups like Double Dragon and Streets of Rage and I can't wait to play that one! Now all I have to do is get Claire to stop dildoing the shit out of me whenever we try to play co-op and everything should be fine.

You don't deserve to read this blog if you don't get this one.

Do you happen to be the person, who is "good with computers", so everyone in the family just assumes you know how to magically fix them? I'm that guy. I hate it. Not because I don't like to help or anything, but because I really just do exactly the same stuff everyone with a bit of common sense would do. I google that shit. I look for people, who had the exact same problem, which is plaguing the machine at hand, I try and find out whether or not they have found a solution and then I go and reproduce that if it seems safe enough.

The real shit starts when hardware dies, because you'll want to be 100% sure you're not betting on the wrong component. Telling somebody their GPU is fried means you had best be damn sure about it or else they'll throw out a functional piece of hardware and waste money on a replacement because of you. Not the kind of responsibility I want to have. I had to replace and re-order two hard drives for the family last year and doing so fixed the problem in each case. Thank fuck!

It was worse when Claire's mother started experiencing slowdowns and bluescreens and other nasty shit, up to a point where games became practically unplayable. It was relatively easy to figure out that the fan on her video card had died and regular overheating had caused permanent damage to the GPU, but again, that's a triple digit amount of money for a current-gen replacement. Would you want to be wrong when telling somebody they should buy an expensive piece of new hardware? I sure as fuck would not. On the plus side, the factory-overclocked Asus GTX 750 TI is insanely powerful for such a little budget card. I've never seen anything like it. That thing is about half the size of my GTX 770 and runs just fine without a single PCI-E connector. It runs Warframe at rock-solid, stable 60 frames per second on full 1080p and maximum detail settings. Not half bad for a card, which cost a little over a hundred Quid. Not bad at all!
It may not run Warframe in Glorious 4k, but most systems probably don't.
Still, I'm glad I found the culprit and fixed these problems. Imagine telling somebody to buy new parts for their PC and then they don't do shit. Not a happy thought.

We've finished all the new content on Star Trek Online a while ago and just completed the latest event on Warframe, so I decided that now was a good time to check back on Everquest 2. The fact that Claire's mother now has a super fast GPU and the possibility to record gameplay with Shadowplay might have helped a little, as she has posted a video of Everquest on Facebook and I figured, 'yeah, I wanna play that again.' Turns out I was eligible for my ten year veteran reward, so that was pretty cool.

This guy. This guy is my reward.

Everquest 2 has so many cool, innovative features, I wish there were more games like it. Claire's mother has finally reached a level, which allowed her to enter some of the dungeons in the game, so Claire and I matched levels with her through the mentoring system. So, we temporarily lowered our characters' levels from 87 and 45 respectively to 21, so the dungeon would remain a challenge and everyone could receive experience. The dungeon was designed with five players in mind, so the three of us filled our ranks with mercenaries. Each player may hire one mercenary at a time and they'll follow you around like a battle pet of sorts. They come in various classes and roles, so they can deal damage, tank, heal or even revive you if you fall in battle (and they don't).

Depending on your class and gear, it's entirely possible to "solo" a dungeon without overleveling. For instance, I'm playing a relatively beefy warrior class, so I can finish whole heroic instances with a healer mercenary. If you're a damage dealer, you could bring a strong, tanky mercenary and do the same, provided you kill the bad guys before they kill your tank. The game still features ridiculous amounts of massive, difficult raids, but there are so many zones, quests, events and activities out there that it's entirely possible to avoid all the raid content without ever running out of other fun stuff to do. You could just sprout wings and explore the world or play house:

Even if you're not hugely interested in Everquest - just look at those flying animations for a minute. They're just so fucking good! You can ride dragons, pegasi, a skeletal nightmare with ghostly bat wings, but this will always be my favourite way of transportation. Meanwhile, Claire is using a ground-based mount, which moves at insane speed by leaping:

Clever girl!

But if raptors are too scary for you, then you could always get yourself a floppy-eared rabbit:

This isn't photoshopped - that's an actual ingame mount.

Of course you might find this one a little too much on the cuddly side, so there is also a nice battle-clad bunny if you like it just a wee little more hardcore:

Not sure if stupid or badass.

Or add a touch of Caerbannog:

Death has big, nasty teef!

Like WoW, the game is over a decade old and isn't overly demanding, so I can actually run it on 4k resolution and maximum detail settings, but the UI becomes practically invisible, so... well, mabye for screenshots.

I may resubscribe in the near future if I end up missing any of the premium features, but as a (near) day one veteran, I get so many free goodies and bonuses and unlocks, there's really very little reason to spend anything at all. Maybe I'll save my pennies for the new expansion once I reach level 95.

-Cat