I started working on it weeks ago, but finally got my finger out and made it into a proper WordPress theme over the past couple nights. I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out. Doesn't have some of the more fancy WordPress features, like widgets, but I don't really need them for what I'm trying to do here. I'm also thinking of maybe adding an alternate, darker, colour scheme. My heavy usage of Giant Bomb has led to me to becoming accustomed to white-on-black, as opposed to the more traditional black-on-white. The former is better late at night as well, which is when I seem to spend the majority of my time reading online. Shouldn't be too hard to implement, with the exception of the subtle background pattern, there's no images to change, it's all CSS. An old blog I had a few years back had a style switcher as well, so I might even be able to just copypaste over some code.

If you find anything wrong, leave a comment on this post, shoot me an email, or hit me up on Twitter. I don't want to have to do too many short update posts on here, so normal service will be resumed shortly.

In other news, myself and three of my online-e-buddies made a podcast on Friday. We originally made one about a year or so ago that ran for about eight episodes, before it kind of fell by the wayside. We finally got our acts together and did something about it. So, check out the GAEMZCAST, hopefully every Friday/Saturday-ish. We haven't gotten a proper schedule sorted out yet. The idea was that the podcast would accompany GAEMZNET, a website myself and my e-mates were planning a while back. Articles, reviews, video content, that sort of thing. Obviously, that hasn't worked out yet, and isn't likely to anytime soon, so for now at least, the GAEMZCAST is it's own thing.

"Life went on around me, but the explosion was to change my life forever."

Point-and-click adventure games are among the few types of video games that, in my opinion, generally age pretty well. Good 2D art will always age better than bad 3D graphics, and there's not much room for improvement on the basic point-and-click gameplay of classic adventure games. And because the main focus of adventure games is the story, which obviously doesn't "age" in the same way that other aspects of a game would, means that adventure games are generally much easier to enjoy years down the line. With other types of games, playing them after they've aged isn't always easy, due to the lack of gameplay features and innovations that've come since and that we're used to and often can't look past. Not to mention the old-looking graphics in the case of 3D games (go back and look at some early 3D games from the mid-to-late-90s, that shit ain't pretty). Adventure games generally don't have that problem.

So, why haven't I played all that many adventure games? Truth is, I have no idea. Another thing about me: I love a game with a compelling story, which makes it all the more strange I have played all that many of these games, what with compelling stories being the main focus of them. This is something I plan to correct, with a reasonable number of point-and-click adventures sitting on my massive backlog of games.

In fact, I've already started. I played through Beneath a Steel Sky last week, a very highly revered game by Revolution, the same dudes who made those Broken Sword games I love so much. Because of that, I figured it would be a good place to start. That and the fact the game has been completely free since around 2004 or so. I would like to pick up a physical copy at some point, since I love having physical copies of games. The day gaming becomes purely digital will be a sad, sad day. But that's a story for another day.

The plot and setting are of BaSS is pretty different than that of Broken Sword, although Revolution's charm and humour are definitely there. Steel Sky is set somewhere in a dystopian future in Australia, where most of the NPCs have ridiculous British accents. The game is worth playing for that alone. Some of the voice acting is absolutely hilarious. While the scope of the game is pretty limited compared to their later offerings (Steel Sky only being Revolution's second release, after Lure of the Temptress, another game on my hit-list), the world is surprisingly well realised, even if the majority of the game only takes place in a handful of different areas.

The game isn't terribly long, but then again, most classic adventure games (to my knowledge) aren't particularly long. I can plough through Broken Sword in a couple of hours tops. The puzzles in BaSS are also pretty well done as well. Not super-easy, but not so hard that they make my primitive brain struggle and resort to a guide. The game, for the most part, does a decent job explaining what you need to do to continue, which is good because, in a story-focused game, more often than not the only thing I want to do is see more story. So, I guess I could call that a recommendation. If you have any sort of interest in adventure games and you haven't played Beneath a Steel Sky, you really owe it to yourself to play it. And it is free, after all. Hard to argue at that price.

As for other games on my adventure hit-list? There's certainly quite a few. I bought the remake of The Secret of Monkey Island off XBLA way back when, and got a couple of hours into it, though never finished it, so I probably owe it to myself to see that one through, as well as the second game which got a similar makeover. I plan to get around to playing the games that Tim Schafer is known for as well: Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. I'm actually eyeing up a copy of Full Throttle on eBay at the moment, and I've been trying to get an original big-box copy of Grim Fandango, though the past couple auctions have slipped me by, and the buy-it-now listings are a little more pricey than I'm willing to pay right now. One day though. One day.

As for more modern day games, I'm a couple of hours into Gemini Rue, which was on sale a little while ago on Steam, and I'm definitely enjoying that, even if it does have a pretty clunky combat mechanic. I've heard great things about the Blackwell series by the same guys as well, so I'd love to check them out. I also want to play some of the games by Pendulo Studios. Giant Bomb recently did a Quick Look of Yesterday and that definitely looked like something I wanted to play and I hear their back catalogue is of similar quality.

Having said all that, I currently have a fucktonne of other, non-adventure games on my backlog as well, which I would love to get through. I haven't been doing all that much gaming lately, even with the amount of free-time I generally have. I'm often plagued by lack of motivation, and sometimes it's almost as if I enjoy reading and talking about video games more than I enjoy playing them.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

And the answer to that is quite a lot.

I'm still knuckles deep in Mass Effect 3. I'm about 10 hours into a second playthrough, this time as a female sentinel (as opposed to my default male soldier). I can see why people are attracted to playing as FemShep: Jennifer Hale's voice work is pretty stellar, though I've never really agreed with the general opinion that her's surpasses Mark Meer's voice for male Shepard. At least, not in Mass Effect 3. It's been a long time since I played the original Mass Effect, so I can't comment on how good his VO was there, ME2 was fine, not bad, but not amazing, but he really seems to have come into his own on Mass Effect 3. Meer is definitely a talented voice artist (he also voices the Vorcha, as well as numerous smaller characters in the series).

So while I'm in the middle of a single player run, most of the my time with ME3 as of late has been with the multiplayer. It's fun. Very fun, in fact. I was a bit worried pre-launch, since the gaming world doesn't really need another take on wave-based survival co-op modes, but something about ME3's keeps me coming back. There aren't many co-op games that I can stand to play with strangers. And it's completely awesome with friends, with whom the vast majority of my time spent with it has been with. The unlock system, while it definitely has issues, is pretty awesome. The fact that BioWare made the unlocks system play like a collectible card game is ingenious, making it incredibly addicting. The temptation to throw real money to get them is embarrassingly high. Gotten get them packs.

I also at some point plan on playing through the original Mass Effect again. Whether or not I'll get around to it (or even getting around to finishing my current ME3 playthrough) is another story, since I have a bunch more games that I'm wanting to get through.

Two of those being Darksiders and Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. The former being a God of War style hacky-slashy action adventure game which a lot of people have likened to the Legend of Zelda, which was enough to get me intrigued. I've played through the first couple of hours and it's pretty fucking fun. The combat is pretty satisfying, the enemy and character designs are kinda awesome (with perhaps, the exception of War, the main character) and the voices are awesomely cheesy. It makes a nice change from all the shooty action I've been playing as of late. Space Marine is a game I was aware of before it launched last year, and I said to myself I would pick it up at some point after being thoroughly impressed by the demo for the game. Think Gears of War with no cover, more meleé and hoards of enemies. Oh, and hilariously stereotypical British accents. SPOICE MAHREENS.

On top of those two, I also have Rayman Origins and Halo Anniversary to play. The latter I've put a little time into, enough to complete the first level of the game. It looks... okay. The ability to change between regular old-ass Halo graphics and the updated ones on the fly is kinda cool. In regards to the updated graphics though, they obviously had some constraints they had to be limited to if they wanted the nostalgia-mode button to work, so I feel the game doesn't look as nice as it could've done. Reach is a better looking game, for sure. As for Rayman Origins... it's still in the shrink wrap. Sure looks pretty though.

And that's not even all the games I have going on right now. I've been putting a lot of time into the Xbox 360 version of Battlefield 3, after getting it to play with friends, since I don't have many people to play with on PC. There's also a whole bunch of older games I'm determined to play through as well: Beyond Good & Evil and Psychonauts are two that comes to mind. And on top of that, I'm also in the process of reading the Mass Effect novels, which are particularly enjoyable. So far anyway. I really want to check out the Halo and Gears of War novels at some point as well. I need excuses to read more.

Anyway, that'll do for today.

Hutch revealed that he is quitting. And I mean quitting quitting. He's quit his job at Machinima, he's moving back home from LA, he's not going to be posting videos at all and he's unlikely to be active very much at all on the Internet, whether it be on Twitter or elsewhere. He, for whatever reason, has decided it's time to bow out. I'm talking about this because, I, once upon a time, made Call of Duty YouTube videos. I stopped a few months ago, however, for a number of reasons. Mainly because I wasn't enjoying it any more, and I don't like the direction that the "community" has been heading in for a while now.

But Hutch was one of the good guys. He was the reason I originally started to make videos, and he was the reason a lot of people started to make videos. And, for better or worse, he's the reason the CoD scene on YouTube is as big as it is today. He wasn't the first to make CoD gameplay commentaries, but he was the one that popularised it. Hutch's quitting could (hopefully) be one of the nails in the coffin for the CoD scene on YouTube.

That's one of the reasons why I quit: I hate what the "community" has become. Back when I first started watching CoD videos on YouTube, the community was an actual community. There weren't a whole of people doing it, and the guys that were were faily close-nit; everyone knew everyone else, at least in some respect. Now, the community houses well over a million people. One million plus people is not a community. There are people who have Machinima contracts that have thousands of subscribers, that you will have never heard of, even though they're doing the exact same thing you are. That's how big it's gotten. And with the rise of Machinima and the insane growth of the scene, the focus turned from making videos because you loved making videos to money.

Take some of the bigger channels, WoodysGamertag is a good example. Compare his videos from two years ago to his videos now. Whenever I go to the front page of YouTube and see all the new videos from the people I'm subbed to, all you see is uncreative videos, with titles and thumbnails designed to grab your attention and get as many views as possible, simply so that person can make some money. Now, I have no problem with people making money off their videos, if said videos are actually well made and required effort to make, Stuart being the prime example. It just annoys me when I see people with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, putting up ugly videos that are creatively and intellectually bankrupt, yet getting thousands of views and making enough money to earn a living.

Actual content aside, the fact that some of the big names don't know, or are simply too lazy to make even the most basic steps to make their videos look good. To name a few names, Wings of Redemption, Blame Truth and xJawz are a few that are guilty of putting up videos that are just plain ugly. No colour correction, so everything is just bland and washed out; resampling not disabled, leading to their videos having awful ghosting due to the raw video and rendered output having different frame rates; and low bit-rates, making their videos, combined with the previous things, looking like a compressed ugly mess. Three different things, which take a combined 15 seconds to fix, and yet it makes your video look infinitely nicer. And that's without the boring, uninspired commentary, with them begging you to like and favourite their video. Looking at you, Blame Truth.

And that's why I quit YouTube. I wasn't big, I wasn't popular. I barely had 300 subscribers to my name. But it was something that, once upon a time, I used to really enjoy doing. And it's something Hutch used to enjoy as well, and while the reason he decided to quit is just all speculation, it's clear to see that he didn't have the same spark he had three years ago. The fact he decided to bow out at a high point is something that a few other people should probably think about doing.

Oh wait, no, because they haven't worked a day in their lives and will be fish out of water when the YouTube money dries up.

Mostly.

The game released here in the UK on Friday, but I managed to get a copy on Thursday due to my superior choice in online retailers. First class postage sent out a few days in advance is awesome. So I got Mass Effect 3, and I ploughed through it pretty quickly and it's certainly a very enjoyable game. So I'm going to talk a bit about it.

As a heads-up, spoilers are going to be everywhere, major, major spoilers. If you haven't played and/or finished ME3, and don't want some of the finer details (including, but not limited to the actual ending) spoiled, you might want to stop reading right about now. If you're reading this on my blog's homepage, the rest of this entry will be placed after a jump.

So, Mass Effect 3 is here. The conclusion of this (genuinely) epic trilogy, one which has been called by many as the best new IP this generation, and I'm, inclined to agree. Having played through the original Mass Effect, ME2 and now 3 all with the very same character (nothing interesting, just Sheploo, for those interested), the series sets a pretty high bar when it comes to storytelling in this medium. I've always loved video games that tell a good story, stemming back from when I played Final Fantasy VII as a kid. Sure, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a game with solid gameplay, but no narrative, but being able to get invested in a game's story, world and lore has always been hugely beneficial for my enjoyment of a game.

And the third game definitely lives up to the reputation that the previous two games have set. I'm not particularly good at literary analysis, I only left school with a Higher in English, so I'm not going to attempt to break down how or why the writing in the games is good or bad. It is simply my opinion that the Mass Effect series is very high in the list of video games with great writing, and Mass Effect 3 doesn't change this. Sure, someone who is able to effectively analyse might be able to say why, from a technical standpoint, some of the finer details of the writing and plot aren't technically good writing, but that, in my opinion, is simply nit-picking, and doesn't matter. If you are able to get emotionally invested in a game, regardless of the technical quality of the writing, then that game is still well written. In my opinion, of course.

And Mass Effect is a series that I, and a great number of other people are certainly invested in. I suppose being able to import your character from the previous game, keeping the decisions and relationships you've made over the past five years will do that. Seeing decisions and characters from the original Mass Effect in 2007 make an appearance in ME3 is very, very cool. Conversely, seeing characters you've built up relationships in previous games dying in front of you, is heart-breaking. I'm generally not one to tear-up that much over video games (as opposed to movies), but seeing Mordin, one of my favourite characters from Mass Effect 2, dying, with nothing I could do to save him, is one of the most upsetting things I've watched in quite a long time. And there are multiple moments like this in the game. Couple this alongside some of the most amazing and memorable character interactions I've ever seen in a video game, and there's no doubt in my mind that Mass Effec 3 is one of the best written video games in recent memory.

And then there's the ending.

Oh boy. If you've been following the game, you're no doubt aware of the massive outrage from fans over Mass Effect 3's ending. Outrage which is fairly justified. Again, spoilers. If you don't want the ending to one of the best series of games this generation spoiled, then you should stop fucking reading right now.

I'm also going to assume you're at least somewhat familiar with the story. If you're not, here's a brief summary of the stuff that's important for the ending: Every 50,000 years, a bunch of huge synthetic/organic machines known as the Reapers enter the galaxy and proceed to harvest all the spacefaring life in the galaxy, before disappearing, leaving no trace of what happened or even their existence. In Mass Effect 3, the Reapers have arrived and began their destruction of everything in the galaxy. The plot of the game resolves mostly around getting together enough people to build the "Crucible" a superweapon apparently capable of destroying the Reapers once and for all.

Not to go too much into the detail, the ending is this: The "Catalyst", required to complete the Crucible, turns out to be... something, manifesting as a young child that had haunted Shepard's dreams through the game. Turns out, the Reapers are its creation, which it uses as its solution to life in the galaxy: Organic life will always eventually create synthetic life, which in turn will always rebel against their creators. So... the Catalyst and the Reapers save life in the galaxy from being annihilated by synthetic life by... destroying all organic life in the galaxy with synthetics. Yeah. Assuming your military readiness was high enough, the Catalyst gives you three choices: destroy the reapers, control them, or synthesis, which will turn everything in the galaxy into a new, organic/synthetic lifeform. If your readiness is not high enough, you only have the destroy and control options. In all scenarios, the Mass Relay network is destroy, leaving everyone trapped in the Sol system. In all but one of the scenarios (the destroy option with high readiness), Commander Shepard dies. In each scenario, Joker can be seen flying the Normandy through a Mass Relay, and crashing on an undisclosed garden world. Depending on the scenario, Joker and some of your squadmates are seen leaving the Normandy unharmed. In another scenario, the door can be seen opening, but nobody leaving.

Without going too much into more detail, that's pretty much the jist of it. In a nutshell, based on what most people will experience: Shepard dies, the Normandy is stranded on some unknown planet, and the rest of the galaxy's military is stranded in the Sol system (Earth).

It's just... the problem with this/these endings is that, apart from being completely unexpected and out of left-field, is that is completely disregards pretty much everything you've worked for in the past three games. It takes pretty much none of your decisions into account, in a series whose defining gameplay feature as making decisions that can have huge and drastic changes and influences on the story. And that's not to mention the gaping plot-holes. Who or what, exactly, is the Catalyst? If the Catalyst is/is on the Citadel, why couldn't it simply let Sovereign through in Mass Effect 1? Why was Joker trying to escape using the Mass Relay, and where was he trying to get? And that's not even the tip of the iceberg. For a game that's so well written and expertly crafted as Mass Effect 3, to go so, unbelievably downhill in the last ten minutes, is completely mind-boggling.

For those interested, here is a very well written article explaining down to the last detail why the ending is bad. It's long, but definitely worth the read. It does a fantastic job of detailing and analysing things much better than I ever could.

And, unsurprisingly, petitions and such-like have popped up to get BioWare to "change" the ending. As for my option on that, I'm just going to quote something that Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann said on Twitter:

All signing a Mass Effect 3 ending petition does is send a message [to EA/BioWare] that you care about the universe and are receptive to buying DLC/sequels. Somewhere, some dude in a suit is looking at a chart and saying "LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT OUR GAME" and grinning.

And that's all I'm gonna say on the ending. While I more than agree that it's a very unsatisfactory ending, but the game overall is still fantastic and if you're in any way invested in the Mass Effect universe, you should definitely play it. The actual gameplay and shooting is the best it's ever been, and there's even a pretty fun co-op multiplayer portion in there as well.

It's just a shame those last ten minutes are gonna sour the reputation of the entire series for a great number of people.

But yes, I've played a little bit of Nexuiz. That is, the new, Illfonic developed XBLA games using CryEngine 3, and not the original free open-source PC game by Alientrap. I have no idea how to properly pronounce that. Some friends and I have been pronouncing it "Nexus", though the original game pronounces it "Nex-ee-us" on it's main menu screen. Either way, it's a silly name. Currently, it's only out on XBLA, but PSN and Steam releases are planned for the future. Hopefully the near future in the case of Steam, because this is a game that I feel will play much, much better on PC.

However, even on Xbox with a controller, this game is surprisingly fun. It's very fun, in fact. To someone who is unfamiliar with the game, it's an arena shoooter, a-lá Quake or Unreal Tournament and is similarly fast-paced, though the very nature of the system it's on slows the gameplay down a little, but is still significantly faster than your average console shooter. Perhaps this is why the game surprised me so much. The thought of playing a Quake-esque game with a console controller is almost absurd. I think Quake 3 is actually available on the XBL marketplace, but god knows what that plays like.

Nexuiz just feels... right with a controller. I'm not saying better than with a mouse and keyboard. This game will obviously play much better with that control setup, but the fact Illfonic have made a fast-paced arena shooter that works well on a console is commendable. In fact, it makes me even more excited for the eventual PC release because, if it plays this well with a controller, it must be phenomenal on PC, right?

The gameplay is pretty typical of these types of shooters. You run around in a small enclosed map shooting dudes with the crazy sci-fun guns also typical of these types of shooters. The main twist is the inclusion of "mutators", effects that can drastically alter the way the game is played for either yourself, your team, or everyone. There are some of the fairly typical ones you would expect: double damage, infinite ammo, etc, but there are also some pretty crazy ones, like inverting everyone's aim, making a random person explode, turning everyone into sombrero-wearing piñatas... some of them are pretty hilarious. And it's the inclusion of things like these that gives the game it's character and shows that the game doesn't take itself too seriously. Which is a good thing.

So, I think I'm gonna try and play more of it, in amongst all the other games I have going on right now (which can be a whole other blog post in and of itself). It's a ton of fun, and a lot of the people I play with think so as well, which is a rare occurrence. There's a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace if you want to try it out. It limits some features... like playing with friends... but like the Gotham City Impostors demo, is enough to get a jist of how the game plays.

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I'll be completely honest here: up until about a week or so before launch, I had no idea what Gotham City Impostors was. Sure, I had heard of it, but apart from the name, I was completely clueless. Based on the name alone, I figured it would be some sort of MMO-type game, and I still maintain that the name and premise would work well for that kind of game. The premise is pretty simple: a bunch of wannabe vigilante Batmen go against a bunch of wannabe Jokers in standard multiplayer shooter scenarios. Neither Batman, the Joker or any other legitimate characters make an appearance here, it's all regular Joes trying to emulate them, albeit it, a little more... violently.

GCI is a 6v6 multiplayer first-person-shooter, and features everything you'd expect from a modern example of the genre. Customisable classes, a progressive levelling system, persistent unlocks, etc. Ever since Call of Duty 4 set the bar, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a FPS that doesn't feature these tropes. However, that's not to say this game is just another Call of Duty game with a Batman skin; GCI has it's own set of quirks and features that make it stand out from the crowd.

For instance, the game features some pretty deep customisation options. Sure, the equipment customisation is fairly recognisable: choose a primary weapon, secondary, attachments, etc, as well as items that function very much like Call of Duty's perks system. However, GCI also lets you customise the appearance of your character, including ways that dramatically change the way the game is played. The biggest of these is through changing your body type: there are five different body types to choose from, effectively ranging from tiny to massive. Smaller body types get increased movement speed, but are much more frail, meaning they can't take as many hits. The inverse is true of the larger body types. The largest body type "Mighty" is a huge bullet sponge, but movement speed is painfully slow.

The thing that sets apart the gameplay of GCI from other similar titles is the various gadgets that are unlockable. During the game's "initiation" you are introduced to the grapple-gun, which you fire at any surface, high or low, and then make your way towards; the glider, which allows you to glide in the air, with height boosts attainable from various open air vents and trampolines scattered throughout the map. The glider also lets you do a divebomb attack whilst in midair, which does damage respective to how big your character is, with the "mighty" body type doing incredible damage on a successful hit; the roller skates, which give you increased movement speed, but makes movement harder to control, along with various ramps that provide speed boosts; and the spring boots, which you charge allowing you to jump at greater heights. These gadgets allow for a much greater increase in mobility to that found in more traditional shooters which greatly changes the pace of the game and help to set it apart from its peers.

Graphically, the game is... okay. On the console versions, the resolution is obviously limited, and some of the textures seem to be a little muddy. The frame rate can also be a bit spotty as well, with the game clearly struggling during some more intense moments. The biggest issue however, is that the game only runs at 30FPS (with occasional drops as mentioned). For a title whose speed of gameplay is just as, if not faster than say, Call of Duty, the poor framerate on the console version severely limits how enjoyable the game plays. On the PC, graphics are obviously much sharper with the increased resolution. Unfortunately, resolution is pretty much your only option when it comes to the graphics. Much to my dismay, there wasn't even a FOV slider, which made my time with the PC version rather un-enjoyable.

That is, if I was able to get into a game. One of the biggest flaws with the game at present is that the matchmaking is, to put it bluntly, completely fucked. The game doesn't support joining games in progress and, from what I can gather, lobbies never merge. This means that you will often find yourself sitting for ages in a half-empty lobby waiting for it to fill up with enough people to start the match. This problem is exacerbated on the PC where the player-base obviously isn't anywhere near as large as it is on the home consoles. Monolith have stated that this will be addressed in a future update, but the fact this problem made it into the final retail version to begin with is incredibly disappointing.

My biggest problem with the game however, is simply the core shooting. It just doesn't feel... right. For a game that is so fast-paced to be running at an inconsistent 30FPS is just simply not acceptable. Even though this problem is essentially eliminated if you're playing on a decent computer, the controls themselves just aren't particularly tight either. On PC, sprinting doesn't stop you from aiming-down-sights, so if you started sprinting with ADS-ing, you're going to automatically aim down sight again when you stop, which results in a great deal of unjust deaths.

At this point, I'm not even entirely sure if I would recommend Gotham City Impostors, even to fans of the genre. The sheer premise of the game, along with it's great deal of original gameplay mechanics and absolutely absurd humour is something to be lauded, but the core game itself simply... just isn't that fun. I probably had more moments where I was frustrated than where I was genuinely having fun. Or maybe I'm just jaded from these past few years of Call of Duty. Luckily, there are demos for the PSN and XBLA versions, which essentially let you play the full game for an hour (in-game time, not overall, which is nice). Although an hour is barely enough to scratch the surface of the impressive amount of customisation the game offers, it is enough to get a good sense of how the game plays and whether it's something you want to play more of.

So, since the topic of video games has already been dropped, SKYRIM.

I originally planned to have this blog up and running about a week or so ago. But, you know, SKYRIM.

Last week, I finally started playing SKYRIM.

SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM.

Skyrim.

I struggle to remember the last time a game has sunk its claws so far into me and kept me hooked for this long. No, Call of Duty titles passed Modern Warfare 2 don’t count. Especially Modern Warfare 3. Since it’s release in November, I’ve sunk a little over three days into MW3′s multiplayer, as well as played through the campaign. But that’s it. I haven’t touched the game in over a month, and I’m unlikely to ever go back to it for any reasonable length of time. It took a couple of years to get here, but I think I’m done with Call of Duty. I enjoyed the everloving shit out of MW2, but the titles since then, I’ve put a progressively smaller amount of time into. Oh sure, I’ll no doubt end up picking up Black Ops 2 or Iron Wolf or whatever the hell that game ends up being called in November, but I can see myself being finished with it sooner than any of the other games thus far. I don’t enjoy CoD as much as I used to, so naturally, I don’t put as many hours into it as I used to.

But OH MAN SKYRIM. At the time I am writing this (which will be significantly before this blog’s “proper launch”, February 6th, to be exact), I started playing a week ago today, and I’ve already sank over 30 hours into this thing. And that’s with a couple of days of light/non-existent play. Last Sunday alone, I played it for 12 hours, and about 8 hours today. It’s not often that single-player games grab me quite like this, the most recent I can think of being Fallout 3, also made by Bethesda OH WOW WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT.

Oblivion never quite grabbed me in the same way Fallout 3 and now Skyrim have. I just didn’t really have time for it. I got Oblivion not long after I first acquired my 360 and, being a lad with a fair bit of disposable income and a shiny new toy, bought pretty much every game I was interested in. Sure, I’ve played Oblivion, but I managed to keep its claws at bay, simply because I had a metric shit-tonne of other games I also wanted to play at the time. And when I was done with those games, Oblivion was one I just happened to never get back to. I may go back to it later, for dat gamerscore, when I’m done with Skyrim, sometime next year.

While I mentioned that I may try my hand and doing game reviews and such on here, expect no such thing for Skyrim. Unless constantly gushing about how much I fucking love that game counts as a review. I know my limits, and even attempting to write a coherent review of a game so open and broad in scope as Skyrim would be nothing short of idiocy. And a waste of time.

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To amend this post to something a little closer to the actual "launch" of this blog (everything written from here on out was written on the 15th of Feb), I've recently being playing Gotham City Imposters. It's... well, I'm not entirely sure what I think of it yet. I don't dislike it, that's for sure. I've played enough to level up to low 20s (a couple of hours or so) on the XBLA version and as I'm writing this, the PC version is currently downloading off Steam. Whether or not it'll be ready before I head to bed in a couple of hours will remain to be seen, since my connection is spotty at best, and Steam's "Time Remaining" estimate is wildly fluctuating all over the place. At the very least, I should get some time in before work tomorrow. What will likely follow will be a post on here of some sort, where I attempt to try to arrange my thoughts about the game into something vaguely coherent. Whether or not that'll entail a full review, I don't know. I feel that strictly multiplayer-focused games can be kind of hard to review, especially since I have a history with and love of this particular type of game that it would be difficult for me to stay completely objective. I don't know. I might try a review, I might not. Regardless, expect me to talk a bit more about it in the near future on here.

I also played the Mass Effect 3 demo. It was good. I liked it. It has its flaws, but overall, it left a good impression on me, so I will definitely be picking up the full release at launch, most likely via pre-order. Don't wanna miss out in the inevitable in-game shit I would score from ordering early. As for the demo, it felt great. The shooting and combat in general feels much improved, similar to how ME2 was an improvement over the first Mass Effect game. It's no Gears of War, sure, but it's feeling more and more polished with each iteration. The cover system can be a little spotty, and the rolling about and whatnot can feel a little weird, but it's definitely not bad overall and as I said, feels better than the previous game thus far.

My only real gripe with it is that some of the dialogue and writing is a little... bad. Especially the end scene of the first section, with the overly dramatic, over-the-shoulder, "Good Luck". Urgh. I hope (and expect) the full game will live up to the standards of writing the previous two games set. But yeah, apart from those minor (and I say minor) gripes, the demo was still perfectly enjoyable, and I'm still very much coloured excited for the final release in a few weeks.

So there you have it, the virginity-taking post on this nubile young blog.