TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Tag: PC

  • Observations on Skyrim

    I have been enjoying Skyrim very much. My character is level 14 and is slowly progressing through the story missions and other quests. He has joined the Companions and completed their ritual (no spoilers, but if you’ve gone through it, you know what I mean), bought a house in Whiterun, and has started wide exploration of the world. He has been concentrating on one-handed weapons as well as destruction magic, though has recently learned the advantage of conjuration magic (try calling your familiar into being over a trap/ward – it kills the poor spirit wolf, but prevents the player from taking damage). Last night, he started with the mage school and had a nice time in the mountains. He has completed his shout training with the Graybeards, and has even discovered a few other shouts by himself.

    I have picked up a few companion offers along the way, and have adventured with 2 of them: a woman who fought me in a bar in Whiterun and my “housecarl” Lydia, also from Whiterun. My problem with these companions is that they can die. Most of the time, they fall in combat and get up when the player has resolved the situation, but sometimes they are killed. Since I don’t want to have them die, I reload and try the fight again.

    Another problem with companions is that they often get lost (or choose not to take the same path the player does). Most of the time, I can just fast-wait for an hour and they will magically appear. Sometimes not. There should be an indicator on the compass showing where your companion is.

    I also bought a horse so I could get around faster. Horses are more expensive than in Oblivion, but apparently smarter and hardier. It was a common occurrence in Oblivion to leave your horse outside a cave only to come out and find it had been killed by something. So far, that hasn’t happened in Skyrim. Horses often run from fights, which is good, though sometimes they will join in. I fought a dragon last night when the horse was nearby and even though the dragon attacked it sometimes, it survived. The problem with horses (other than the fact that they aren’t that fast and look funny when you’re riding them) is that you can’t get rid of them! Whenever you fast travel, there’s the horse. Even if you are going into a dangerous place, it comes with you. At least with companions, you can tell them to go home or wait somewhere. There doesn’t seem to be an option or sell your horse or keep it in the stable.

    Because of the problems keeping my companions alive, I’ve stopped using them for the moment. I don’t know what to do with the horse. I don’t want it to be killed, but I don’t always want it with me when I’m out exploring. I’ll have to look for a “mod” solution.

  • Skyrim and its hardware requirements

    I bought The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim because it is on sale on Steam. I have wanted it since it came out and skipped a couple of previous Steam sales, but then regretted skipping them when it remained it its confiscatory retail price for months on end. I wasn’t too upset, as I had plenty of other things to do and games to play, but every day, I checked Amazon and Steam for a sale.
    Now that I have Skyrim, it’s pretty great, even though I haven’t played it long. I have been experimenting with all the different damage types and am dressed in heavy armor, mostly using mace and shield, but becoming more attracted to magic all the time after frying a bunch of skeleton dudes way faster with magic than I could thump them with my mace. I remember that heavy armor inhibited magic in Oblivion, so I will see if the same effects apply. I really wanted to use a bow, but even with a nifty bow that is better than the starter bow, it doesn’t do damage that fast and is slow to shoot. So I’ll probably become more of a magic user than a melee fighter, though will keep some nice weapons handy just in case.
    On my home machine, which is a high end machine, Skyrim runs beautifully at 2560×1440 with ultra-high settings (though I did turn down the anti-aliasing a little from the recommended level, because I don’t think AA adds that much at super high resolution). The game is smooth as silk and looks pretty good, though not quite as amazing as I had hoped. I killed a bunch of bandits in a snowy hideout and the snow-covered floors looked like plastic (and this was with the high-res texture pack) and the falling snow was cartoonish.
    As a comparison, I installed Skyrim on my laptop, which is a pretty good laptop. It has a quad-core mobile i7 processor, though it is only 2 GHz, rather than the 3.4 GHz of my gaming PC. Both have 8 GB of RAM, and both have AMD graphics cards (because of the bad luck I have had with NVIDIA cards). The home machine has a 6970 GPU, which, at the time, was the fastest available, while the laptop has a 6770, both with 2 GB of graphics RAM. The laptop is 1920×1080 resolution, while the gaming PC is 2560×1440.
    When Skyrim launched, it autodetected the settings for the laptop and chose Medium with some AA. I took its advice, launched the game, and after waiting nearly forever, the game started with a frame rate in the maybe 5 FPS region. It was a slideshow. So I quit, turned off the AA, disabled some of the reflections, etc., and tried again. It got better, maybe 10 FPS, but not playable. After switching the textures down to medium, it may have been 15 or 20 FPS, but still horribly disappointing.
    I would imagine I could do some of the things in the various tweaking guides, and make it playable, but it is sad that I should have to. This laptop is much better than most people’s gaming rigs and is certainly miles faster than what I played Oblivion and X3 and most other games perfectly well on. So how is it that a game can look perfect on my gaming rig and look horrible on a machine that is at least 50% as capable, even at reduced settings? And does that mean that the majority of Skyrim players either had to buy a new machine for it or suffer with crap frame rates?
    Since I have a good machine that I will play it on, I’m not particularly outraged by this, but it is concerning. I remember when Crysis came out and my machine at the time was as fast as could be (and certainly way faster than anything that had been using in the game’s development), I had to reduce some of the settings a bit to make it smooth. At least in Crysis’ case, that worked and I got a smooth and good looking game. With Skyrim, I would probably have to reduce the resolution to make it playable on the laptop. Game makers should try a little harder to make things playable with reasonable, but not great, hardware.

  • Bought Dungeon Siege III and Deus Ex: Human Revolution from Amazon

    Yesterday, I bought download versions of Dungeon Siege III and Deus Ex: Human Revolution from Amazon. While neither of those games were on my must-play list, they were such a good price that I had to pick them up to see if I like them.

    I enjoyed the first two Dungeon Siege games a lot which made me hope the third one, which got not-great reviews, would be okay. When I downloaded it from Amazon, it added itself to my Steam account, which is great, because Steam can worry about keeping it up to date, etc.

    The game is very console-oriented, with few character choices, no customization, loot items specific to each character, and combat tailor-made for a game controller (I use the Xbox 360 controller for Windows). The game looks good at high resolution and doesn’t stutter on my system. Dungeon Siege III starts amazingly quickly and has very little in the way of delays or loading screens. It’s very well done.

    I chose a character that uses guns, both a long rifle for ranged attacks and a duel-wield shotgun/pistol combo for short range. There are only 4 character choices, so my guess is that the party will eventually end up with all four: yourself and three companions. Each has different skills, armor, and appearance.

    So far, the combat is pretty good. Before I got better with the controls and switching between short and long range, I had a lot of trouble when mobs would close on me and surround me. The long rifle is powerful, but not useful up close. Once I figured out my stun skill, how to roll and avoid hits, and spamming the shotgun/pistol blasts, I got lots better.

    The plot is the usual kind about how you are of special lineage and everyone around you was betrayed and killed, etc. The plot missions, so far, are very linear, and the number of side quests is reasonably few, so you can focus on progressing the story. You start off solo, but so far, I have rescued one of the other characters, so she is now my party companion and does fire damage and helps a lot. I presume our goal will be to rescue the other two soon.

    In short, Dungeon Siege III is a fun, simplified action RPG that is worth playing, especially if you can buy it on sale!

  • Finished Dragon Age 2

    I recently finished Dragon Age 2 and generally enjoyed it. While I didn’t find the story as compelling nor as epic as the original Dragon Age Origins, it is still well written and fairly interesting and entertaining. All the criticisms you read about Dragon Age 2 complain that the environments are used over and over with only minor changes. That is entirely true and could be annoying if you let it get to you. On the other hand, if your goal is to do missions and fight baddies, it is fine.

    Dragon Age 2 is somewhat dumbed-down from the original Dragon Age or from most other RPGs. While the skill trees are there, they are a bit simpler and better grouped. Inventory management is good too. In general, you can only equip armor for yourself. Some of your companions have weapons that will stay with them for the entire game (Varric’s Biana, for example), while you can swap others out at will. My wife was so intrigued with the simplified aspects of the game, she may even want to give it a try sometime.

    I did all the companion quests, so they all loved me at the end. Even when they disagreed with my endgame choices, I convinced them to fight for me. The companion missions are good and many of they tie closely into the main story line, while others are just fun distractions and ways to gain XP.

    The endgame is a little disappointing (much like Mass Effect 3’s endgame apparently is). I only played one ending, but it turned ugly and we needed to kill the leaders of both opposing parties. My hunch is that by making the other choice to get a different endgame would have resulted in killing the same two bosses, just in different order. There was no pleasant finale in this game, much like there apparently isn’t one in ME3. Apparently the Bioware folks like cataclysmic, world-changing endings, perhaps because they want to develop new story lines rather than being stuck in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age universes.

    If you like RPGs, Dragon Age 2 will not disappoint. It looks good, plays well, and is fun. It is well worth the price, particularly now that it can be had for a decent price. Check it out!

  • Still too many games!

    While I still own too many games that I intend to play, I have been working on trying to get through some. After finishing Fallout New Vegas, I played and enjoyed Bioshock 2. I liked the original Bioshock, but there were many aspects of the game that were not explained very well. Bioshock 2 does a great job of covering the history of Rapture and explaining many of the events from Bioshock and leading to the events of Bioshock 2. The plot is pretty good, the action is great, and the enemies (and some of the NPCs) ruthless.

    The only problem I had with Bioshock 2 was the ending. I did the good ending where I saved everyone, etc., and while it was moving and emotional, it wasn’t so good for me. In the original, the good ending was all happiness and light, while this one wasn’t as pleasant.

    Since Bioshock 2 is very inexpensive these days, I strongly recommend it if you like story-driven shooters.

    Now that I’m done with Bioshock 2, I’ve been working on Dragon Age 2, which is also pretty good, though didn’t grab me as much as the wonderful original Dragon Age!

  • LOTRO Forges of Isengard solo instance

    This is a long video of a mission to clear Saruman’s minions in the Forges of Isengard. This is a solo instance that is not too difficult, but has some tough baddies and lots of loot, particularly reputation items and some legendary items. I nearly bit off more that I could chew at the start, because I pulled 4 enemies, but survived and breezed through the rest.

  • LOTRO Tour Part 7: Bree

    This is a tour through Bree, starting at the west gate, then showing the Prancing Pony, the crafting hall, the town hall, jail, auction house, hunting lodge, and finally ending at the skirmish camp beyond the south gate.

     

  • LOTRO Lore Master Menagerie

    Lore Masters in Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings Online can summon many companions from nature to help fight or even just as decoration. The gallery below shows most of my pets, though I can’t show one without serious re-traiting, so it is omitted.

    My favorites are the Snow Crest Eagle, because Eagles can revive you if you die in battle (by sacrificing themselves), and Slynxy the lynx, which has an awesome stealth attack that can kill some weaker enemies in one shot. BigGrowly is also a good tank and can grab aggro away from the poor squishy Lore Master… DuskyKitty can deal damage, sometimes against groups, so he’s a good choice in some situations.

     

  • Finished Fallout New Vegas

    Despite my getting discouraged at Fallout New Vegas, I finished it. I didn’t like the lack of freedom in the outcome (hey, why can’t I be friends with the NCR at the end?), not did I like that it completely ended the game, and didn’t let me do the last DLC that I hadn’t done. I decided to load an earlier save (the “Continue” option in the game offers to load a save right before the final battle), so I could do the DLC in Zion. The DLC was pretty good and I loved the red rocks and the views. As usual, there was controversy and unhappiness at the end, but it wasn’t quite as unfortunate as the others. So if you haven’t played New Vegas, pick up the new version that includes everything or wait for a sale on Steam or elsewhere. Overall, it was pretty good.

  • Getting Sick of Fallout New Vegas DLC

    I’ve mostly been enjoying Fallout New Vegas, although it is not as engaging as some of my all-time favorite games, like the original Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Dragon Age. I bought the game from Steam with all the available DLCs, and so far have played through 3 of the DLC missions and all of them have some sort of unpleasant ending. The last one I did, Lonesome Road, has, in my opinion, a downright lousy ending: I can nuke one faction or another or both, or else I can sacrifice my companion to stop the nukes. If I just want to be a nice guy, not nuke anyone, but keep my companion, there’s no way out. I chose to nuke the Legion, yet I still wasn’t able to keep my companion (a robot named ED-E, much like the one in the wasteland, but with more personality). The previous DLCs I played, Old World Blues and Dead Money, also had endings that required guns rather than negotiation, though Old World Blues at least lets me go back and visit.

    In short, I’m getting sick of Fallout New Vegas and think I will just get done with it and move on to the many other games I’ve yet to play.