Skyrimin'


Yes, I have a beef with November; then again, this November is a great month for PC gamers. Just look at this month’s releases: Modern Warfare 3, from the franchise that has left many wives and girlfriends doubting the wisdom of having a relationship with a gamer; and Skyrim. I needn’t go beyond Skyrim.
The Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim (to give the game its full name) is as immersive as any video game can get. It has a vast, complex game world, numerous quests, and in-game details that can turn a gamer into an obsessive-compulsive asshole.  Yes, pretty standard for an RPG, but this game compels you to actually finish it.

I’ve played Bethesda’s Morrowind and Oblivion (both in the Elder Scrolls universe), but those games quickly turn into a bore-fest, at least for me. The time I played Morrowind, I followed the storyline for awhile, did a few side quests, and when I realized that I am not getting paid to do this mind-numbing chore (I already have my job for that), I quit the game faster than Kim Kardashian quit her "marriage."  The same pattern happened when I played Oblivion.
I usually avoid games that are described as open ended, a game description that reminds me of all those hours I will never get back playing those Bethesda games. But when it comes to games, I am a forgiving sort; and this flaw in my character led me to play Bethesda’s Fallout: New Vegas last year.
I stopped playing it when I began to question what my priorities were in life. You’d think that too when you find yourself wandering around yet another vault/cave for hours, with nothing happening, because you got lost (again!)  and can’t find the exit. 
Although to be fair to the Fallout franchise, I’ve played and finished Fallout 3, some years ago.
But Skyrim has a game world that practically begs to be explored, and with an engaging storyline to boot. Plus, I didn’t get lost! At least not for very long. This makes me optimistic that I might actually finish an Elder Scrolls game. 
And talk to more dragons!
The game is not without bugs and glitches, of course. For example, in a quest (A Cornered Rat) where you have to find Esbern to talk to him to advance the storyline, the player will find himself standing in front of a room with a door that refuses to open, preventing the player from completing the quest. An annoying bug, but a workaround is available here.
Also, if you are the sort of gamer who has no qualms about using cheats, the good folks at Bethesda have thoughtfully provided cheat codes.  
You don’t have to use Cheat Engine, like a certain gamer I know who used it to increase money and ability points in games like Rage, NBA 2k12 and many others. Cheating bastard.
Skyrim plays at a steady 60 frames per second, whether you turn off V-Sync or not, with settings at Ultra High--I play on a rig with a Core i5 750 processor, 4GB Ripjaw RAM, Nvidia GTX 460 (1GB), Asus P7 P55D mobo, and powered by Corsair 650 watts; my monitor has a 1600x900 resolution. Pretty average, for a weekend gamer like me. 

And with Skyrim, I will be dead to the world again this coming weekend.

Comments

Post a Comment

So, what do you think? Post it here:

Popular posts from this blog

The Square Cube Law and How It Killed Giants

Image
We are so used to the idea of giants that we take it for granted that they exist, or must have existed at one point in our history.  You know, those very large and very tall human-like creatures, carrying a humongous club, and being very nasty. Like this: And if you are a typical, god-fearing Catholic Pinoy, you would swear that not only are they true, you even saw one beside that big-ass, scary-looking tree not far from your home, one night when you were going home after an evening of binge-drinking with your buddies. And the bastard’s smoking a cigar as long and as big as your leg! Or you know someone who saw one of those cigar-smoking monsters. This creature is called a kapre —a cigar-smoking giant wearing a loincloth. Or maybe a tikbalang —a half-man, half-horse creature about as tall as a kapre. Unlike a centaur, however, a tikbalang is a giant with the torso and arms of a man, and the head and legs of a horse.  Scary creatures, these—and, if I may add
Read more

Vincent

Image
Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings are valued today at hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the world’s greatest painters, he is also one of the most influential figures in Post-Impressionism art. Ironic, because nobody wanted his paintings when he was alive.  He was a “weirdo” and nobody really understood him. Except for the few friends he had with other struggling, unsuccessful painters, one of whom he quarreled with, a quarrel that resulted in Van Gogh cutting off his ear with  a razor.  He also suffered from delusions and had psychotic breaks. He seldom ate and drank heavily. He was one of those tortured souls who had so much to give but was largely ignored. His genius and artistry nobody really got while he was alive. He was an idealist, a sensitive soul who had too much empathy. Imagine somebody like that living today.  At age 37, Vincent Van Gogh - struggling with depression, mental illness, and thinking that he was a failure - killed himself.  You know, maybe Don McLean
Read more

Typhoons and Earthquakes in the Philippines

Image
The Philippines has more than its fair share of disasters, and not because the country is particularly cursed or anything, but because the entire archipelago—purportedly composed of 7,100 islands—lies on a region in the Pacific Ocean called the “Ring of Fire” (actually, the area is shaped more like a horseshoe, although to be fair, “The Horseshoe of Fire” doesn’t have the same impact as the “Ring of Fire”). About 40,000 kilometers long, the “ring” runs from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia (the Ring of Fire’s western edge extends into the Indian Ocean), and to New Zealand.  The “Fire” part of the Ring of Fire is because a string of 452 volcanoes dot this line, like a malevolent game of connect-the-dots. The regions along this line experience volcanic eruptions and periodic earthquakes—majority of them small, hardly-felt tremors, and the few devastating ones that kil
Read more

The Queen of Heaven

Image
Inanna, “The Queen of Heaven,” is a goddess of Sumerian origin: goddess of warfare, fertility, and sexual love. The Akkadians called her Ishtar , a name from which Easter was derived. Yes, the Christian holiday. Inanna is the most popular and important female deity in ancient Mesopotamia. She is also known as a healer, life giver, composer of songs, and possessing a wide range of emotions—passionate, ambitious, jealous, grieving, joyful, timid, and generous. In later cultures, she went by different names: Astarte, Isis, Aphrodite—she was the Goddess. She is the original femme fatale , the embodiment of the woman every man dreams about; the female that devours men, the female that attracts/scares men; the virgin harlot. Every man knows at least one. The goddess makes an appearance in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.”  Throughout Sumer’s existence, her powers and deeds were glorified and extolled in myth, epic, and hymn. No one dared oppose her, neither god nor man. She was
Read more