Dem Pillars, Man!

Fuck me. For about a month or two now, my life has been so good, if somewhat uneventful and boring. With the exception of my occasional adventures on Everquest 2 and Warframe with friends and family, I had pretty much quit online gaming. I didn't even play games for my job anymore. I got into Wasteland 2. I played Shadowrun Chronicles solo. Other than that? Fucking walks. You know, outside, where the bears are. Enjoying sunsets with Claire, going out for dinner now and then, taking a deliberate long walk to the supermarket instead of ordering shit online. I have reasons. :P

First of all, I'm tired. I'm tired of competing and chasing after virtual shit in online games. I had all the very best stuff in Warframe, so they added even better stuff, which takes an eternity and a half to max out. So I went after that. So now they added raids, which reward you with even better shit, which takes even more time to max out. I'm done. I'm not gonna uninstall the game or anything, but I'm done going after the very best stuff all the damn time. Fuck it. For what? Waste countless hours of my life chasing after pixels, which will ultimately lead to even more boredom once I obtain them, because I'll have "nothing left to do" until they implement even more overpowered gear. It never ends. And it's so very pointless.

I'm still highly competitive on CoD, but it's not like that required any real skill or talent.

And I'm tired of games, which tell me that all my efforts as a solo player are worthless and I can only have all the coolest rewards if I join a raid group. I don't want to raid. I've played Molten Core back in the day when it required 40 people. It sucked. 40 man raids sucked in Wildstar, so guess where they went. Having to coordinate 20something people still sucks and is about as exciting as organizing a staff meeting at work and making sure nobody falls asleep during your power point presentation. It's the same shit, but on a larger scale, with more people, which inevitably provides more opportunity for the group to fuck up. Yay.

And you know what? Carlton is fucking nice. I never thought I could become this boring, but I actually enjoy sitting outside with Claire, just talking to each other, watching the clouds, that kinda shit. I can't wait to take Hugo outside again. Our monitor lizard. I don't refer to my Penis as Hugo. But the world is conspiring against me, wanting me to go back to being a gaming hermit who shuns oxygen and sunlight.

Hey, virtual outside still counts, right?

I had to review the subscription-free version of Elder Scrolls Online and those bastards at Zenimax actually made the game fun. I think their community manager still hates me because I bashed the shit out of their game after its less than stellar launch, but I had nothing but high praise in my re-review over at Gamestar. I'm already hating my future self for being unable to resist looking at the comments section, where people are gonna tell me I've probably been bribed into giving it a good review score or something. Frankly, I can't really blame you if you've played the game at launch and then quit like I did. I was fully expecting the whole thing to suck and... well, what do you know. If you already own it, give it another go. It's pretty great now.

I've started to master the fine art of stealth on there. I'm using mostly heavy armor, I do have a shield for tanky goodness, but I get sneak bonuses for playing a cat, so it's actually possible to sneak up on enemies whilst wearing a set of full plate and... man, it's the tits! Sneak up on a guy, charge a heavy attack and BAM! Instakill! I love how versatile the characters are on there and how much you can do with the character progression system.

Also, I have an eyepatch!

Playing ESO alone wasn't soooo bad. I mean, sure, family won't see me on Everquest 2 as much, but they know how to reach me and I'm one poke on Facebook away from leading them through dungeons or helping them with quests. But then Obsidian just had to release Pillars of Eternity and apparently it's one of the best RPGs of all time and in every way as good as Baldur's Gate - and then some. So now I have to split up my precious play time between that one and ESO. And then there is the new DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, which I'd be playing right the fuck now if it wasn't for ESO and Pillars. Gotta prioritize now. Play ESO when family is on, play and beat Pillars when I'm on my own, then grab the Inquisition DLC. Thank fuck I finished Ori and the Blind Forest in time.

I hate to say it, but absolutely everything I love about Everquest 2 can also be found in ESO - just ten times bigger and better. Except housing, but... meh. That has never been on my list of most wanted features in any game and I'm pretty sure Zenimax have been working on a housing system for quite some time. I'm only guessing, of course. *coughs*

-Cat

Tamriel Unlimited Might Be Worth It

Whee! I'm on a horse!

Strange things are happening these days. After five years of freezing my ass to the toilet seat during the cold months we're getting double-glazed windows in every room of the house and they're redecorating our bathroom. Quality of life, no more sitting in a drafty house, no more petting that fluffy, black carpet of mould in the bathroom when I soak in the tub. And that whole thing about me not really reviewing games much these days? Well, someone has just made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

For the past few months I have made most of my money writing gaming-related news. I wasn't a huge fan of it at first, but they're nice enough to let me write my articles using my crude sense of humour instead of forcing me to be all dull and boring about it. I do get the odd reader in the comments section, who feels the need to point out that gaming is serious business and news shouldn't be funny, but I'm starting to gather a bit of a (minor) fan base, who appreciate what I do, so I'm actually having fun with it. I get to be creative, the hosts of the website let me get away with my weird shit, my stuff stands out a bit and everybody is happy. Good money, too.

I'm getting the hang of this whole writing quest text thing, too. I do a bit of translating and simple story crafting on the side for a bit of extra money and for as much as I loved reviewing games, I really didn't miss it all that much. But now I've been asked to take another look at Elder Scrolls Online, they're offering decent pay, I get free ingame goodies on top and frankly, I was tempted to give it another try, anyway. It's the enforced re-spec, which made me stay away until now.

That and finding a decent-looking dye combo that doesn't contain red, black and white.

They've recently changed the way some of the attributes and skills work and everyone got their stuff reset. Clean slate. On a max level character in a game you haven't touched in months. Enjoy distributing your 50something attribute points and 200+ skill points! I realized that when I re-downloaded the game two or so weeks ago, changed my mind and just removed all that crap again. Then I got the job to re-review ESO, so there's that.

It took me a fair bit of research to come up with a new specialization for my character, but now I'm glad I had to look into it for work. I went back into the fray and immediately felt like a badass. I went into the nearest dungeon, killed some giant snake boss monster and got a "group event" achievement for killing that thing all by myself. To be fair, I cannot really tell whether I'm getting on so well in combat because I'm such a BAMF or whether they made the game a lot easier over time. But so far I'm breezing through the veteran content, I'm fucking shit up and I'm seriously enjoying it.

Being a werewolf is suddenly awesome!

When I last played ESO, shape-shifting into a werewolf usually ended after about ten seconds because a) I got killed, b) I got stuck and killed, c) I actually managed to kill something and then transformed back, because it was fucking impossible to maintain transformation.

I tried it again today, eradicated an entire spawn of enemies, whacked a named quest mob, then ate her face. It's entirely possible to remain a werewolf for several minutes at a time now and doing so actually makes you stronger and more dangerous instead of turning you into a gimped sports mascot. I didn't have any annoying lags, delays and all the usual problems I always used to have with switching weapon sets in the middle of a fight. Everything just worked.

Right now the cash shop is perfectly acceptable. Bunch of costumes, some mounts, cosmetic pets, but no experience boosters or anything. I believe those had been announced for the shop, but they don't exist right now and I like it that way. The optional subscription gives you a monthly stipend of cash shop currency and a 20% experience boost, but that's pretty much it until they add new premium content, which you can only access by paying for it or subscribing. Right now there's well over a hundred hours of play time in this bitch, which requires only the client software and is perfectly enjoyable without a sub or any purchases in the cash shop. And that's a lot of play time for very little money.

And face-eating! Don't forget face-eating!

With all that said, they seriously need to add new content. The new champion system functions a bit like paragon-levels on Diablo 3 (though champion points cap out at 300 right now, I think), so basically, everything is end game. Solo questing in pve, group dungeons, what little raid content there is and pvp. Problem is, if you're into raids, then you've probably played Craglorn to death. If your veteran rank is maxed out, then you've played all the quests and explored the whole world. And if you're not into pvp, well...

And that's a problem right now, at least to veteran players. If you're a returning player, then there's a shitload of content waiting for you and there is really no pressure here to spend any real cash. If you're a newcomer, now is the perfect time to start, because ESO has finally reached a state where it feels polished and playable. If you're at Veteran Rank 14 and you're tired of running the same old veteran dungeons every day, then you might just be a bit fucked, because aside from rolling a new character, grinding pvp all day or just mindlessly slaughtering spawns of monsters, there really isn't much left for you to do in order to get those champion points.

Zenimax did the right thing by polishing their combat and balancing, adding stuff like the justice system and granting players a greater sense of progression, but now it's time to expand the world and add to the story a bit. I've defeated Molag Bal a long time ago and I only have another six veteran ranks ahead of me before it's pvp, raids or daily dungeon delves. And that selection feels just a bit limited right now...

-Cat

My Skyrim Looks Better Than Real Life

I think the armor really brings out her personality.

I've always had this big problem with Skyrim where my game is capable of doing all these amazing things you'd never dare dream of in the console version, but I can't get myself to actually play, because there is so much more I want to tweak and improve and mess around with. It's almost like some kind of messed up art project, except 99% of the art was made by other people and I just manage to get it all to run without too many FPS dips or crashes. Which is a bit of an art form in itself, really.

I remember when I had not touched the game for a few months, we had Claire's sister over, I wanted to show off my pet project and of course the fucking thing crashed about three times in ten minutes, so I just gave up. Stupid me, I tried using the latest version of Deadly Mutilation without updating to the high compatibility version of the XPM32 skeleton, so of course the whole thing would constantly go kaputt after a few minutes. Duh, right?

I messed up and I need to be punished by Aela the Huntress.

One reason why I'm so obsessed with this shit is how lots of people try this sort of thing, but ultimately fuck it up for two reasons. One, they slam so many 4k resolution textures, graphical overhaul mods and parallax textures in there that the whole thing turns into a beautiful landscape simulator for breathtaking screenshots, but the whole thing will run at around 20 frames - per minute. And then it crashes. Two, they just combine whatever texture mods they can find, which can make parts of the game look and feel like they don't belong there. Worst case, the whole thing doesn't resemble Skyrim anymore. Of course that's really just bad if you actually give a fuck. If not, well...

"Ultimate Skyrim" is an abomination, but it's still beautiful, if for all the wrong reasons.
Now, don't get me wrong - people should modify their game (or leave it plain vanilla) any way they fucking want. That's what makes it so great, right? Personally, I want mine to look as stunning as possible without running like total ass.

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody takes a screenshot, is it truly covered in 4k parallax bark?

And if the game doesn't just look amazing, but also allows me to be part of a massive battle, which ends with mountains of corpses, severed limbs, intestines, brains, skulls, random torsos and a lake of blood covering the place, all the better. Because no matter how nice and arcade-ish the combat system in vanilla Skyrim may be, introducing a bandit to the business end of one's claymore should leave a bit of a scratch.

If you know what I'm saying.

However, the most exciting mod I've tried in a long while doesn't add extra violence or realism. It added Claire's character to my game. It's not exactly Multiplayer, but at least I get to spend some time with her virtual self in Skyrim. It's a mod called Familiar Faces and it allows you to save an exact copy of any of your Skyrim characters, their stats, gear and achievements, in a central hub. Then you can visit the hub with another character and make these copies a part of your game. So I went and transferred Claire's jack of all trades argonian into my hub, then put her into my main character's game world.

You can do all kinds of stuff with these characters, give them a voice and personality, make them your spouse, have them live somewhere in particular or let them roam the world or even turn them into an epic enemy for your character to fight. I received messages as I was playing, telling me where her character was traveling, so when I finally caught up with her she was just slaughtering her way all across The Rift, toasting trolls and spiders with thunderstorms and all sorts of impressive dragonborn shit like that. I recruited her as a follower and now we can fuck shit up together. I love mods!

Now all I have to do is wait for Youtube to support a bitrate, which will actually do the game justice. In the meanwhile, this looks pretty good, I suppose.

-Cat

Dem Feels - Ori And The Blind Forest

Creepy fan-fiction usually involves some of people's favourite characters from games, books, movies and tv shows and a lot of boning. Now imagine you could expand that kind of thing and include not only characters, but some of your favourite things. Let's say Metroid or Castlevania hook up with a movie by Studio Ghibli and they get a little drunk and start fooling around and one thing leads to another and nine months later you end up with Ori and the Blind Forest.

The game's incredibly beautiful, artsy visuals, the cute, fluffy characters and the orchestral musical store, which is made from only the purest goosebumps, will kick you right in the crotch until you cry, especially when you watch the game's depressing intro:

It may not be Super Meat Boy, but damn, it's not an easy game! At the end of each dungeon there's an escape sequence of sorts, where you have to use every special move at your disposal to gtfo as quickly as possible - a single mistake usually ends in instant death - no checkpoints, no rewinding, it's back to the beginning of the sequence. Everywhere else in the game is fine, as you get to place save and respawn points pretty much anywhere you want, but the rapid escape scenarios are punishingly difficult and require you to memorize every inch. Some people on the Steam forums argue that much of it is down to reflexes, but when a random boulder just falls on you without warning, there is very little chance to react and you'll just have to respawn and remember where the damn thing drops.

I've seen a thread where a guy has utterly pulverized his Xbox 360 controller whilst playing the game and I'm happy to report beating the entire game with zero peripherals thrown or destroyed. With that said, I remember days in the 8/16 bit era, where games were criticized for forcing you to memorize levels in order to beat them. It never got bad enough to make me ragequit, but I came close a few times.

The difficulty reminds me of Dark Souls a bit. The game is perfectly fine once you master the controls and know exactly what to expect in each area of the game, which is why you'll see a bunch of people getting all smug over how "easy" this is, but trust me, it'll likely take you a while till you reach that stage. I don't usually like commented gameplay, but I may have to look up the youtube channels of some folks I like to watch now and then to see how they're getting on with Ori.
If you like your games a little more on the difficult side and you're a sucker for amazing music and artwork, then this thing belongs in your games library, especially since it's very affordable at 20 Euros or eight bags of potatoes and a goat or whatever people pay with in your country.

And then Youtube recommended random Skyrim videos to me, so.... yeah.

Honey, I'm home!

With literally hundreds of mods, texture upgrades, custom ENB settings, lens effects, sun sprites and god only knows what the fuck else, this thing is still the single-most amazing thing I've ever played. And now that it doesn't just look better than real life and stopped crashing every ten minutes, I can also record the damn thing at a stable 60 FPS, so maybe I'm gonna fill up my youtube channel with some more Skyrim next week. But first I have syndicate missions to complete on Warframe and loyalty tokens to earn on Everquest 2. I need more hours in my day.

-Cat

Dude, Not Cool!

I was a teenager of the 90s and my brain is affected by that weird thing that makes you believe absolutely everything that happened in the 90s was only ten years ago - and that ten years isn't really a lot of time. This comes with a few weird side effects, starting with the fact that I really couldn't name or recognize any bands or actors who became famous during the past decade or so. Which really isn't a big deal, because the only popular music one really has to know nowadays is weird shit that goes viral on youtube. And every movie today is some kind of reboot, remake or some other kind of regurgitated crap from the 80s and 90s. Heck, thanks to Kickstarter, even all our old games are coming back, from Toejam & Earl to Wonderboy to Ultima Underworld and even freaking Bard's Tale!

So most of the stuff I liked as a kid is either still around or it's being brought back. When I look at the Ninja Turtles, Indiana Jones, Star Wars and the A-Team, I'm not so sure if that's really such a good thing, but that's a different subject for another day. The point is, they're marketing our childhood memories to death and whenever they do come up with some new gaming franchise, you'll end up getting annual, near-identical sequels for all eternity. Nothing feels new, everything has already been done a million times. Or maybe I'm just old and I've seen a lot of things, so stuff doesn't excite and surprise me as much as it used to.

Today has reminded me of how absolutely unaware I am of the flow of time when I freaked out over the most uncool thing imaginable: a fucking pot. You know, for cooking. I used to cook most meals in this massive, ancient cast iron pot. I got it as a gift when I moved out of my parents' place some 15 years ago and the damn thing was already super old back then. It's entirely possible that this pot is older than I am. It's just large, black and has some weird, blue non-stick coating on the inside. Maybe it's just varnish, I don't fucking know. It had a bit of a dent on one side where the blue stuff came off and was starting to rust just a tiny bit. Tiny little rusty spot, maybe the size of a pea. Yeah I know, why the fuck would I still use that for cooking, but it was barely visible and it didn't leak or anything and it was my best pot and that's that.

Until today, that is. The ol' rustbucket had finally sprung a leak and needed to be replaced. And frankly, I had absolutely no clue how much one has to pay for a decent pot these days. I have some crummy old steel pot for pasta, a cast iron pan, some fancy frying pan we got as a housewarming gift and ol' rusty, that's it. Never needed anything else, never bought anything. So when I went to the shop to get myself a new pot it felt like Christmas. Because of a fucking pot - true story!
That thing is even bigger than my old pot and weighs less than half as much, because it's made of aluminium. And teflon all around. I remember when my parents bought a frying pan like that when I was a kid and they had to spend a small fortune on what felt like space age technology back then. The whole family gathered around it like it was our new god or something. Meanwhile, that massive pot cost me 18 of our British money units and I got a nice glass lid with it, so now I can see what the fuck I'm cooking at all times. There's a tiny hole in the lid for the steam to escape, so the lid won't hop and dance and I won't boil my face off when I remove the lid. Mmmm, future!

But when I think about it, there's a lot of stuff that used to be super expensive when I was a kid and now everybody has it. I remember when basic cable was all the rage and suddenly we had 20 or so tv channels instead of the usual five. Or when whacking it to internet porn took longer than actual sex, because loading up the pictures could take an eternity and a half whilst costing so much that 1-2 hours of surfing the web each day was already kind of a luxury. We didn't have a Steam library containing 4.500 downloadable titles, either. Heck, everybody hated Steam when they forced you to use it in order to play Counter-Strike. Nowadays we have Origin to teach us that it could have been so much worse.

Our upstairs neighbour has tried to commit suicide again. Well, either that or she was really hungry and she had absolutely nothing but pills in the house. Her family kicked down the door and dragged her off to the hospital. She came back from the hospital right the next day and then her family banged and hammered against the door again when she didn't answer the phone. False alarm that time. It almost always is, but it still makes me wonder.
I mean, the lady upstairs is suffering from bipolar disorder. She wants to die. And she's living all by herself up there. If you had a family member who just tried to kill herself, would you leave her on her own right the next day? Or ever, for that matter? I don't know if they're in denial, if they're just waiting for the inevitable or what the fuck is going on here, but why isn't she in therapy? Why is nobody with her to make sure she's okay at all times? Don't get me wrong, she's the nicest, happiest, friendliest person you'll ever meet on a good day. But holy shit does she want to be dead when she's on a low. If I had to guess, I'd say she probably doesn't want professional help and would much rather live a normal life - because who the fuck wouldn't? Be normal, do normal stuff, don't be watched at all times in case you decide to do something stupid. I get it.

But for fuck's sake, if that was my sister up there, I'd drag her off, kicking and screaming, and have her receive some professional help. We're not talking Arkham Asylum here, there are decent places to help you with this stuff and cruel as it may sound - what's the alternative? Leave her by herself and wait until she finally succeeds and offs herself for real? Great.
"Why do you even care", I hear you interrupt me like some rude asshole. Because I get involved in this mess, whether I want to or not. Because I have to jump out of bed, the bath or wherever the fuck I am whenever her family hammers against the door, because they think she went and killed herself. Because I was asked to grab her by the legs and stuff her in the car that drove her off to the hospital. Because I get random unannounced inspections from a pissed off landlord, who is being told we're dissecting human bodies in our house, following complaints by some random, mysterious stranger who reeeeeally seems to hate us on a bad day. But what am I supposed to do, call the police? Great. They'll go upstairs, tell her to stop being so suicidal and she'll hate us even more and shit will escalate further. I miss our old neighbour. She was cool. Man, the threesomes we could have had. Possibly just on Mario Kart, but it's something.

-Cat