The Videogames Tab

Yeah, same happened with tron 2, bought it a while back and it was way cheaper like 2 weeks ago.


I don't think companies should rush things like games, seems to cause more problems. From what my boyfriend has told me he says that a vast majority of games that have come out in the last year and a half have come out and had major problems and always need to be patched. From what my boyfriend tells me also though is that when companies rush games it's because it's hard to keep up to the trends of the now when new graphics and ways to play (E.G. Vita) are always being produced. And that the way the companies figure it is that they will send the game out and patch up any necessary problems while the rest of the team works on developing a new better game.


And I have to say EWWWWWWW about Lindsay Lohan. lol

I wonder if it's always rushing; some of these games, particularly the type of many-variable'd branching choice games that Bethesda likes to make, just have a metric ton of potential things to test, and there's just no way to beta test it as thoroughly as the public as a whole can. I'm pretty sure they could spend a decade on them and they'd still have animals flying into the air at random.

Oh yeah: I have officially joined the ranks of people with nice graphics cards, thanks to Dave's sage advice once again. I'm rockin' this ridiculous thing:



Looks like a freaking aircraft carrier mated with Biff Tannen's III's hoverboard.

While the games themselves won't be lagging, I might be, as I'm still gonna hold out for the next MW3/Skyrim sale on Steam, or wherever. But I'll be all over it and back in here soon, albeit like 6 months too late. Once I actually finish New Vegas, that is.

Are we all running the exact same card now? I recommended the 2GB ASUS to Dave when he was fed up with his AMD card...

The card is a powerhouse.

__________________

You ended up with the Asus card after all Chris? I thought you'd gone for the slightly cheaper 560ti.

I get what you're saying about never totally ironing out all the bugs in a big sandbox game but the things like horse combat and ranged kill cams (not forgetting the free PC HD texture DLC) seemed like they always should have been there. They weren't fixes, as such.

__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

But, it is a 560Ti...isn't it? Mine is, anyway....

Yeah, I bit the bullet. Being able to go with the cheaper power supply (which was like $50 less than the other one we were talking about) made the total a lot more palatable. And yeah, it's a 560ti, but it's a Nvidia/GeForce/whatever. And I'm pretty sure it's self-aware.

I think you're right about the other stuff (I haven't played, but that does sound like obvious stuff). I think maybe the inevitability of that first wave of bug reports has caused developers to be a bit laxer about the finished product, because they know it's definitely not finished. Such are the benefits and downsides of remote upgrades, I guess.

Yeah, Skyrim wasn't exactly broken when it was released (apart from me not being able to advance the main quest when I got to Riftin, but it wasn't a bug everyone got) unlike some games. Then again, Skyrim on the PS3 (like Fallout 3 and NV before it) seemed very close to being unplayable when it came out.

I borrowed a friend's PS3 copy a while back to see how the game stacked up on that platform and, boy, was I disappointed. They seem to have used some form of FXAA on the textures and it makes everything look murky and out of focus. If you've not got a capable PC, Skyrim on Xbox looks *much* more playable than the PS3's.

Although, again - It's Bethesda so I'm not surprised. They seem to leave their PS3 ports up to the work experience boy.

Since I got my 560ti I've been flirting around with ENB shaders for various games. Some work better than others but the strain they put on a rig means you need good hardware to run both ENB and the game smoothly.

My favourite config so far is Fimbulvinter ENB. Its colour palette is very muted and subtle, totally fitting the feel of the world.

If you listen to Todd Howard's from D.I.C.E. this year, he talks about "the spotlight," a figurative focal point they developers imagined in order to prioritize the best features of the game that would take center-stage and the not-so-successful features that would still be present, but recede much more more into the background. He uses the issue of horses specifically to explain the idea.

If you read between the lines (or I guess listen), it's pretty clear that Bethesda wasn't happy with the way the horses in Skyrim came out. They knew that Red Dead Redemption had set the bar on horses in video games and didn't want their horses to be stiff and unintuitive like they were in Oblivion. But the Elder Scrolls gameplay seems to be a little less forgiving in the area of horses, and Howard himself even concedes that they finally decided horses wouldn't be a major focus and drew them away from the spotlight.

That, I think, is why horse combat didn't make it in. But of course, you put horses in a game and people will use them... and want to take on anything and everything whilst on them. My money is on that being an instance of fans yelling loud and clear about what they wanted.

Regarding the archery kill cam, I have no idea why that wasn't included at launch. But it's damn cool though!

The horses are poorly done, even after the 1.6 patch, but there are a couple of mods which make them a tiny bit less annoying. Apart from you, hunters and that couple forever travelling to Vittoria Vici's wedding (oh what fun I had with that in the Dark Brotherhood quest line ) no one else seems to use them.

Red Dead Redemption had horses nailed. Not literally.

Well, when I upgraded the other day I poked around and saw that Skyrim and MW3 were both still $50-60 on Steam and Amazon. Oh well, I figured. Other day I'm doing some shopping and pass a Best Buy; I poke in and notice Skyrim for $35! I make sure it isn't a mistake, then buy it. It's the same price on Amazon now, though I can basically swear it wasn't just two days ago. So it must've gone on sale just now. Still not on Steam, though.

Either way: yay, I've got it. Probably gonna hold off playing for a bit, though. Still need to finish New Vegas and try some mods and all that.

You've got a willpower made of solid iron, man. Skyrim was one of the few games that I actually took off work to play. I ripped that case open, popped it in, and did little else but slay dragons and stoke the fires of Civil War that entire weekend after its release. But hey, it was also easily my most anticipated game ever...even more than Ocarina of Time way back when (a game that also completely kidnapped me the weekend I got it).

If you decide on playing Skyrim soon, Chris, hold off on the 1.6 Beta patch - ie: Don't sign up for it in Steam Settings.

There's been reports of performance issues with it. I've noticed maybe a little slowdown here and there (could just be my imagination though, but I experienced it before I found out about the patch problems) and nothing to spoil the game, but all PCs are different etc etc etc.

Unfortunately for me, I rolled back my game to 1.5 and opted out of the Beta so Steam wouldn't auto-update. It then told me that my save wouldn't load because it was created on a game version higher than the one I had. Grrrrrr. This was the character I wanted to use for Dawnguard.

My most favouritest bestest recent mod - Build Your Own Home.

It sucks you in: I originally just constructed the basic house (gathering materials can take ages) but then contracted a bad dose of 'I wonder what it'll look like with xyz add-on?' and wasted hours.

I'll keep that in mind; hopefully it'll prompt me or something. But odds are I'll wait a couple of weeks. Maybe.

The big thing for me, though, is deciding how to play. With Fallout 3 my curiosity overwhelmed me and I found myself saving, loading, trying things to see how it came out, reading up on how various actions would change things, etc. Couldn't help it, though I realize for lots of people not knowing this stuff is the whole point. So I'm pretty sure, with Skyrim, I'm going to force myself to just play through normally, not knowing anything, and keep that stuff to a minimum. But it goes against every instinct I have. Probably because, as curious as I can be, in any game where you level up I hate having to start over, so the idea of playing again, but differently, ends up being a nice idea that I never actually follow through on.

Yeah, I think my brother took several days off. That's when it hits a new point for me. I guess I'd consider doing that for something like Fallout 4, if it looked like it was going to be as awesome as Fallout 3 was, but then, I have a flexible work schedule, too.

So yeah, the first bit of waiting was facilitated by the fact that my computer died less than a month after it came out, and that I'd played lots of Fallout 3/New Vegas, so my sandbox appetite was under control. And I've never played the others, so while I'm interested, I wasn't champing at the bit.

Should be a lot of fun, though. Kind of curious how it'll differ from what I'm used to. I do love that little feeling in your stomach you get when you spot a town or a landmark in the distance and decide to waylay to see what's over there. Should be lots of that, I figure.

The Beta participation should be turned off by default so the game should only update to the latest official patch, but it never hurts to make sure.

The nice thing about Elder Scrolls games for new players is that you don't need to have played the previous titles to get full satisfaction. Sure, some events are mentioned and referred to occasionally but all that serves is to prick up the ears of TES fans and make them pine for Morrowind.

I only pine for the atmosphere and look of Vvardenfell, by the way. The gameplay is mega dated now and anyone who says otherwise is just ... weird.

The only thing I'd touch with a first Skyrim play is to make sure the free Bethesda HD DLC is downloaded (I think you need to click download from within the Steam Skyrim store page but then it'll always stay tied to your game no matter how many times you download the base game. After an hour or so you'll probably want to get SkyUI, Better Sorting and Categorised Favourites.

Easiest way to do this is to download the Nexus Mod Manager from the Nexus site and SKSE (which adds to the game's scripting options) to make SkyUI have a full compliment of features.

Then delete Skyrim Nexus from your bookmarks until you've finished your first play. Be strong!

I know exactly what you mean and there is tonnes of that. The game is diverse enough that you have no idea what to expect wherever you stop.

If you loved Fallout 3 and New Vegas it won't be much of a leap for you to get into Skyrim. There's very little difference in terms of gameplay mechanics, except the levelling system, and you just have to get used to using Swords and Bows instead of Laser Pistols and Railway Rifles!

Atmospherically I think it lacks something in comparison to the Fallouts but it's a hell of a good time once you get into it.

Looks like the 1.6 patch has moved out of Beta so expect a rash of new Skyrim mods.

To celebrate, here's some of my recent screenies:

Whiterun

Solitude at night

Ermmm ... Falkreath?

Chilly Lydia

Markarth

Come to the conclusion that the ENB shaders are great for arty screenshots but not for actual gameplay, unless you've got some kind of monster rig with 2x580 GTXs.

It does look amazing though.

Wow, those shaders almost seem to be too strong. They've taken out almost all of the color contrast. Most of the colors and textures are strikingly similar in hue and value. And what's with the blurry haze?

The haze is the Bokeh (I think, that's the ENB one anyway) Depth of Field. Don't like it personally but a mild DOF is actually quite good in the game for blurring out those nasty LOD textures.

The lighting mod I use for actually playing the game is RCRN. Much smaller performance hit (unnoticeable for me) and, I think, much truer to Bethesda's vision of how Skyrim would look. The vanilla game's interior lighting is just awful and I find the nights far too bright now. RCRN's also got dynamic interior lighting for some of the more popular interiors (Breezehome, Dragonsreach etc) so it actually gets darker inside at night compared to during the day.