Now I purchase a ride from Hobitton to Stock on the East side of the Shire. I pass by lots of places whose names are recognizable from the Lord of the Rings books. Next up: on to Bree.
Category: Games I’m Playing
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LOTRO Tour Part 4: Tour of the Hill
In this segment, my Hunter rides around “the Hill” suburb of Hobbiton. The Hill contains the Party Tree and Bag End where Bilbo and Frodo lived. As you can see in the video, the Sackville-Bagginses have moved in already.
I’m disappointed by how much the compression by YouTube muddies the textures. The game is quite sharp and generally looks good, as do my source videos, but YouTube needs to save bandwidth, so re-compresses quite a bit. I don’t fault them, but it does blur things quite a bit.
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LOTRO Tour Part 3: Michel Delving to Hobbiton
This time, I am using my Hunter to take the tour because Hunters can easily zip between the major Middle Earth locations.
This video shows the path from Michel Delving, where the last part of the tour left off, to Hobbiton, with a short detour to the Great Smials in Tuckborough. Again, no loading screens along this path, nor will there be any for quite a while.
Based on the tour videos so far, you would think it is always night in Middle Earth, but it is just bad luck. The night views are good and I should show more of the stars and sky in them, but generally the daytime views are better.
This video was captured with FRAPS at half resolution and 30FPS, so what you’re seeing is a quarter of the pixels and half the frame rate I see, but it gives you a pretty good idea of how large and well-done Middle Earth is in the Lord of the Rings Online.
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Finished Borderlands: Great game, but underwhelming ending
I finished the main missions of Borderlands and thoroughly enjoyed the game, but the ending is quite a let down. I was quite high level before attempting the ending, having done all the other quests I could find, so I had some great weapons and gear. Therefore, I was able to power my way to the Vault, kill the boss monster, and finish the game without too much trouble. But once I killed that boss, there was lots of ammo and such (which is good since I used a whole lot trying to kill it), but there weren’t any amazing weapons or loot there. I would have expected the Vault would contain some killer stuff, but nothing? How odd…
I thought I must have missed something, but upon consulting walkthroughs, it looks like I didn’t.
So, in short, Borderlands is a great game, particularly if you can pick it up on sale, but the ending leaves a bit to be desired. I have the DLC since I bought the GOTY version, but can wait on that until I make some more progress in LOTRO and Uncharted 3.
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Enjoying Borderlands
I bought Borderlands on Steam when it was on sale for $7.50 for the Game of the Year edition (as I write this, the game is on similar sale) and have been enjoying it.
Borderlands is a FPS (First Person Shooter) that instead of trying (and failing) to be photo-realistic, it has a detailed cartoony look, which it pulls off really well. Just because things don’t look realistic doesn’t mean they can’t be scary.
In the game, you play one of 4 classes – I’m playing a soldier that likes his assault rifle, though other classes value stealth or brute force more. You can have several guns equipped at once, as well as a shield and a grenade mod. The amount of loot in the game is crazy – there is never enough inventory space to carry even the good stuff back to sell it.
Many of the fights are tough and shooting one enemy often makes many more pop up and attack you. Each class gets a special skill, and mine is to drop a turret that automatically shoots enemies for a little while.
Eventually, you get to drive armed buggies around and they are great fun. It’s great to run over enemies and hear them splat under your wheels!
The number of missions is amazing – I’m just out of the first area and have activated the fast-travel system, and I’ve done tons of missions and there are many more that await.
The only bummer about the game is the first person viewpoint – it is enough to nearly make me sick after playing for a while. The movement is smooth and fast on my new graphics card, so I need to take occasional breaks so I don’t lose my lunch.
If you have a good PC, pick up Borderlands – It’s great fun!
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Trying out Age of Conan MMORPG
I downloaded and have played just a bit of Age of Conan, just to try it out. I don’t actually need a new game to play at the moment, but I had been told that Age of Conan (AoC) was a nifty free-to-play MMORPG. AoC is certainly prettier than Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), and is very similar, so took almost no effort to start playing.
I decided to play a Priest, a class that has one-hand weapon attacks and spells. The only spell I have at the moment is a Smite spell, but that is quite powerful, though easy to interrupt. As I gained in level, I earned points that could be put towards various abilities, like running, jumping, healing, and most importantly, concentration, so I could cast spells without being interrupted so often.
The game starts with a shipwreck and you being marooned on a beach. The player needs to fight to rescue a girl that cheers as we kill things, but is otherwise not helpful during the fights, and get to the city. It took an hour of so to fully explore the starting area, kill everything, and get to the city. I nearly died a couple of times, but managed to survive.
The game is a bit racier than LOTRO, with skimpy outfits (and yes, my dude looked nasty in a thong), lots of blood, and violent conversational options. For mature audiences, it seems like it could be lots of fun, though the story so far isn’t nearly as compelling as that of LOTRO.
If you’re looking for a fun, free-to-play game, check out Age of Conan. It seems like it will be quite engaging.
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My Latest LOTRO News
It has been a while since I posted any LOTRO news, and my video upload project is stalled because I’ve been busy.
Most of my characters have left Thirst for Power, which couldn’t seem to gain critical mass in terms of having enough active members online at any time. Most of the kin members jumped to Exiles, which is an active kinship with many high-level members and a pretty fun group.
My main character, Tallborn, is now level 59 and has done some missions in Moria and lots of instances, like the Grand Staircase (in order to get Moria Medallions to get awesome armor). I’m working through the Epic story missions, but they are a bit tedious and have lots of FedEx quests. I should not have waited so long to do them, because I don’t get much experience from them at my level.
Several of my characters got fancy new Spring Festival horses, which are not faster than normal horses, nor cheaper, but have better decorations (saddles and gear). To get them, we had to win races and earn tokens, in addition to paying for the horse. While in Moria, you need to ride a goat, but outside, I like my festival horse.
I can’t emphasize enough what a compelling game Lord of the Rings Online is. It supports solo and fellowship play, excellent crafting, skirmishes, and more. If you have any interest in role playing games, swords and sorcery, or the Lord of the Rings, give it a shot. You’ll have fun!
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LOTRO Middle Earth Tour Part 2: Needlehole to Michel Delving
This video continues my Middle Earth tour in LOTRO. I start at the entrance to the Shire from Ered Luin (see the first video) and the ride to Waymeet and Michel Delving, ending at the Mathom House.
This video was captured using the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle using an HDMI connection. While the sound was set to the HDMI connection, it apparently was not recorded, so this video is also without sound.
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LOTRO Middle Earth Tour Part 1: Ered Luin
This is the start of my tour of Middle Earth as envisioned by The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). LOTRO is such a huge game that I thought it would be worthwhile to show people how amazing it is. I decided I would ride from end to end and post the video, but I will do it in segments, because it may become boring and I don’t have access to all areas yet (at least not without being killed quickly).
I’m also experimenting with capture approaches. My GTX280 video card failed, and in the process of diagnosing that, I built myself a new Sandy Bridge Core-i7 rig with 8GB of RAM and a GTX570, all in a nice red mini-ATX case. Unfortunately, the new GTX570 doesn’t have component video out, so I can’t use the Hauppauge HDPVR to capture anymore, at least not directly. The video below was captured using the HDPVR, but after the HDMI signal fr0m the computer was converted to component by a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle. Why not use the Shuttle to capture directly? Well, the software is a little unforgiving (ok, horrible) and when I did this video, I didn’t have it figured out. I did use the Shuttle to capture the second part of the tour, but have so far been unable to get it to finish uploading to YouTube (it’s failing for the 3rd time as I write this).
Unfortunately, just as I was experimenting with video capture, I was experimenting with audio capture. While the audio capture approach I used here worked in tests, it failed in real life, so this video doesn’t have sound. This is a shame, because LOTRO music is great. The soundtrack is varied and generally excellent – one of the best game soundtracks out there.
This video shows me leaving Thorin’s Hall on my goat (you need a goat to ride in Moria, but you can ride it elsewhere and it is as fast as a normal horse) and riding past Gondamon, through Duillond, then into the Shire gate. Sadly, it’s at night, so the colors are muted, but LOTRO has a great night sky, which I show off a bit during the ride.
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Enjoying Dragon Age II
I posted before that Dragon Age II is pretty good, but I am enjoying it more and more each time I play it. I still haven’t found a powerful over-arching plot, but the side quests and personal quests for your companions are very good and compelling.
As I said before, the combat is quicker and flashier, which is a nice improvement. I thought the combat in Dragon Age Origins was quite good, but this is more fun in my opinion. I haven’t had to do much handholding for my companions in battle, like I did in DA:O. They seem to pick reasonable targets and the default rules are pretty good. In DA:O, I had to adjust the behavior rules a lot. Perhaps as my characters level, I’ll need to do the same in DA II.
The family Mabari war hound is an interesting addition to the game. The first time I played DA:O, I didn’t get the dog, and I assume the same is true for many players. Here, they give the main character (Hawke) the ability to summon the hound, almost as a spell. The dog does not count as a party member and does not seem to be controllable, but attacks targets and acts like a tank autonomously. For some reason, I was sure the dog would stay with the party once summoned, but as I was playing yesterday, I noticed that the dog stayed in the same area and didn’t follow along. This means dismissing the dog and resummoning it during battle, which is a bit of a pain.
I still highly recommend Dragon Age II to RPG fans. It’s been a great game so far.