Final thoughts on 2011

<p>This year has been amazing from a gaming standpoint. It started strong and steamrolled into a rollercoaster of awesome that I thought I wouldn't survive. There were laughs (littlebig planet 2) there was racing (forza 4) there were cries (skyrim lag problem), and incredible advertising wars (call of duty vs battlefield) but all in all, I am happy with the way things turned out and can't wait for the future.
My top 5 must plays this year are -
5) gears of war 3 - 360 only
4) saints row the third - ps3, 360, pc
3) the old republic - pc
2) uncharted 3 stakes deception - ps3
1) the elder scrolls 5 skyrim - pc,  ps3, 360
There are still a few I want to play (skyward sword, halo anniversary, others I can't think of) but as we close this year, I look forward to games like twisted metal, halo 4, mass effect 3, and (hopefully) Diablo 3. Next year is shaping up to be pretty awesome and I can't wait. I know you read this, so PLEASE comment! Leave your top 5 of the year! Thank you all for reading and as always, See You Online.

The Old Republic (12/24-12/27)

Sorry guys, there have been some unforeseen circumstances that have prevented me from playing much the last few days. Christmas, my car died, got called into work twice, it was like the universe was against me, but I did manage to get a little time in and would like to touch on a something I haven't spoken about.

The user interface. The interface is very friendly to use, and I found it to be very easy to navigate through. I wasn't able to move any of the windows around at all, which did bother me a little bit because default placement for some of them is a little bothersome. The top center of the screen has the menu bar with everything it should have: Character, Abilities, Crew Skills, Skill Tree, etc... Clicking on each button opens up the window and places it wherever the game wants it to go. On the top left of the screen is the chat box. Until you move your cursor there the only thing you see is the planet population and the chat from the players near you. There is an option to turn off the chat and when you move your cursor over to the chat area a blue outline box shows up around it to highlight the chat area. On the bottom of the screen you have your abilities bar which is customizable if you choose. I currently have two bars showing with my offense attacks on the left side and my defense and support on the right side. On the bottom right of the screen is the mini map, which is fairly helpful except it occasionally doesn't outline walls, which is a small problem for me because I tend to just go by map and not by what I see on screen. Not a huge complaint though.

That's pretty much it there. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to play more, and I'm working on that as we speak. Hopefully I'll have more things to post in the very near future. Thank you for your patience and See You Online.

The Old Republic 12/22-12/23

The last couple days have been spent leveling up my Bounty Hunter and exploring Hutta. There is still the lag problem as I get into the swampy areas of the world, but I have noticed that it is going away a lot faster than it was. Last night there was still a wait, but a short one as I jumped into the queue at place number seven. The quests that I have been doing seem to be a combination of fetch/kill quests such as "go and get X of this item, and while you're out kill X of these people if you like for bonus points." They are getting repetitive but that is the nature of the game.

I did get to run a flashpoint last night and it took about forty-five minutes to complete. The group was forming and I jumped right in without any incident. It ran smoothly and once it was over we went our separate ways like nothing ever happened. It was a nice diversion and I look forward to doing more in the future.

I have noticed as I level up my Bounty Hunter that the attacks are more designed to kill very quickly. Everything that he can do is designed to either incapacitate or execute. Flamethrowers, explosive darts, missiles, overcharged rapid fire shots that have a chance of setting targets on fire, and a jet pack punch all add up to one powerful tank. I have noticed that my enemies are having trouble dealing much damage to me even in a pack of three or four. I feel a little over powered but at the same time, when I first started with this character I was taking heavy damage and died five or six times per level because I couldn't keep my health high enough.

That's all for now, I hope to go a bit more in depth as I learn more of the mechanics of the game. Until then, See You Online.

The Old Republic 12/20-12/21

The last two days I have been working on a new character. The options for character customization are both limited, and vast if that makes any sense. My new person is a Chiss Bounty Hunter and he fights like a tank. I spent nearly half an hour working out the kinks in my looks before I even thought about stepping foot onto the game world. Picking out skin and hair color, to scar pattern on his face, to deciding on hair style and body type was quite the quest for me.

Hutta is an interesting world. There is a distinct yellow-brown hue to it and it does look kind of depressing that way. You can tell that people really shouldn't be on that planet. Your character is dropped in the middle of a gang war between two Hutts so there are quite a few enemies to kill right off the bat. Leveling up early on was not a problem due to a low population and large number of enemies that were there to kill. The bounty hunter quests have been a little more interesting for me because I don't usually play the dark side so clicking the darkside option on some of these quests makes me feel pretty bad. One quest in particular sticks out because my decision ended up making me kill an entire village. I am determined to go dark on this one though. My only complaint so far with the bounty hunter is that up to this point (I'm only level six) I can only use one pistol. I can't even use a blaster rifle, I have to use a pistol. The attacks are standard fare; I have my regular rapid shot, a missle, and an overload burst shot.

The area I have noticed a huge change between Coruscant, Typhon, and Hutta is that on Hutta even though my planet population is only in the thirties I have some severe lag from time to time. I believe it is due to the large amount of trees and grass present through the swampy areas, but it is still there and is bothersome. Other than the occasional slowdown I am not really having any issues graphically with this game.

So that's all for now. See You Online.

The Old Republic (Day 2)

So far my second day of playing has been without too much disappointment. Last night when I tried logging in (around 11 PM EST) my server had a twenty minute wait to get in because it was full. It was a long wait and I can see this being a problem in the future. When I logged in this morning (Around 8 AM EST) I got right in without any issue. The server had what the game called heavy traffic which surprised me so early on a Sunday morning. I had some pretty severe lag last night while I was playing which did bother me, but I decided it best to soldier on through the lag because I waited so long to get on. I played through the remaining missions for the prologue section and finally unlocked my lightsaber after what seemed like days (it was only about four or five hours) There were plenty of side quests and I am loving that every conversation is fully acted with multiple responses available. I also unlocked my companion, a droid called T7. The droid has a personality and actually made me smile a few times from the dialogue between it and other NPCs. I have noticed that T7 is insanely powerful and from time to time makes me look like a chump while we are fighting a group of enemies.

I also made it to exploring another planet and so far I haven't been disappointed with my experience yet. I traveled to Coruscant to continue my training as a Jedi Knight. The city is busy with both NPCs and PCs but it helps to make the game feel like it is a living world. I haven't experienced any lag as of yet during my travels. There are MANY different shops and vendors to visit, and a LOT of quests to complete. I haven't had much time to explore yet, as I have only been powering through quests and working on leveling up a bit.

Final bit of the update for now, I unlocked a class specialization for my Jedi Knight. There were two options available, Jedi Sentinel and Jedi Guardian. I chose the more combat focused Jedi Sentinel. My reward was that instead of wielding just one lightsaber (that I only unlocked like an hour before that) I was able to wield two lightsabers. Adding a specialization also enabled several skill trees for that class. The skills seemed to be divided up into three categories, offense, defense, and support. I chose to start off with the offense and was rewarded with a new attack.

That's all for this update, I will have more tomorrow, which is the last day of the early access. Until then, See You Online.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Day 1

As of this moment I am logging off for the day. I have played for roughly three hours this morning and have to go to my real job so I won't be on until tonight after eleven PM. So far I have made my character, I started off with the standard Jedi Knight and made my race the Zabrak, and I am a female. The intro cinematic was beautifully rendered and gave me a lot of hope for this game. I have experimented with combat and it is exactly what you would expect to get from an MMO game. Controls are easy and the interface is compact and easy to use. Inventory control and management is fairly simple and the powers I have unlocked (I'm only at level six) are expected. I was slightly disappointed with the in game graphics, but as this is an MMO with what seems to be a decent player base already, I can understand why the engine is toned down a bit. There is a fast travel system using speeders to different speeder ports that you have found and unlocked and the world map is very informative as to where everything is in each area. The interactions to this point have been fully voiced with no need to read anything but subtitles. Bioware does include the conversation wheel that has become a standard for their games and rewards light and dark side points for actions during your playthrough. I am a little sad that I cannot pick my own powers and upgrades like you could in the old Knights of the Old Republic games, but this is only a minor complaint.

Bear in mind that these are only a VERY minimal look at what the game has to offer. We shall see in the coming days/weeks what will actually be. I have tomorrow off of work so I will be spending a lot of time playing. Until then everyone, as always, See You Online.

Star Wars: The Old Republic PC Review Process

To be honest guys, I have no idea how to review an MMO. I know it's going to take a LOT of hours and more attention than I can begin to fathom. So, what I think I may do is put a few hours on each day, and post my observations as I play the game making a kind of day by day log of what's going on and how I'm doing. If anybody else is playing, feel free to leave some comments on the posts and we can get like a discussion going as to what we all think of the game. I will eventually give it a rating but I think I will forget doing a normal review.

See You Online.

I'd like to have a chat.

I'm playing Skyrim. A LOT. Like, that's pretty much all I'm doing. Well, that and a little WWE '12 and tending to my blog here. I feel it's time to post a not review, and open up an opinion area. I want to know how you guys are playing Skyrim. There are so many ways to play it's nearly unfathomable to me. I have taken the explorer route, and have traveled a large portion of the map. I'm still finding new things every time I play and I haven't even begun to explore most of the ruins and things I find. My quest/task list is a mile long and there are surprisingly few I've actually completed. My fighting style has been a destructive spell in one hand, and a one handed weapon in the other. (currently fire in my left hand, glass war axe with shock damage in the other) I feel this is a fairly sound fighting strategy and would love opinions on it, or different ways you guys play. Feel free to comment and as always,

See You Online.

Saints Row: The Third (PC)

Well, I finally got myself away from my crushing Skyrim addiction to play something else, and it was Saints Row: The Third on my PC. After playing for a while, I have come to two conclusions. First, this game is Awesomely fun. Second, This game is absolutely insane, but in a good way. The developer here decided to go for fun instead of seriousness and it pays off greatly.

From a graphic standpoint, this game is adequate. The city looks great, as do the explosions. The animations are a little stiff at times and the character models could definitely use some touch-ups. There is a bit of pop in while you're playing as well, but that is to be expected from a huge open world experience like this, so I do understand it to a degree and it was really only while I was driving that I noticed a terrible amount of it. The character customization is phenomenal here. I started out playing as a standard white dude dressed in a suit. By the time I made it to the end of the game, I was a seven foot tall, green, Asian transvestite, with an Afro, in a cocktail dress, running around with a three foot dildo club. Yeah, you read that sentence right.

The sound design for the game is fantastic. The soundtrack is awesome and features a very wide mix of songs to listen to while you are destroying the city. The voice work is great for the most part. As always there are sections where the actors make some interesting pitch changes or just speak a line differently than I think it should have been said, but that's my opinion. The customization options for your character are a lot of fun. Cut scenes where you are speaking in zombie gibberish and the other characters don't even react still make me smile.

The gameplay is what really pulls this package together. The controls are good and responsive. The nice thing here is that the missions are like mini action movies. They are many and varied enough that you don't get bored. Side missions, or activities, if you prefer, are still part of the game. You have to do a few activities to earn enough respect to be able to start the next mission. This helps to force you to explore the city and do some of the crazy things that the game wants you to do. Insurance fraud, blowing things up, deliveries, street races, pimping, whoring around. There is a plethora of things for you to do in this game and you should do them. Besides, who doesn't want to rampage around town with a MegaMan arm cannon blowing up whatever you can before time runs out? Oh yeah, did I mention fighting Luchadors? Yeah, that happens too. This game is just pure fun. The story does ramp up to a disappointing conclusion, but I don't recall paying too much attention to the story as I was too busy deciding where to place my next air strike. The game also includes a "Whored" mode where you fight waves of people using only the weapon the game decides you can have that round. It's a lot of fun and another distraction from completing the story.

Honestly, this game is for people who just want to play around in a giant world of insanity. You do what you want to, when you want to, and nobody is going to stop you from going nuts. I do recommend this game, but remember not to take it seriously. I award Saints Row: The Third on my PC a 9/10.

See You Online.

Rage (PC)

Rage. Id Software made an attempt at an open(ish) world game. I love the post-apocalyptic setting and the backdrop to the story. And, truth be told, I wanted to love this game. I just couldn't though. Upon first playing it, the texture loading was so bad I had to quit. I found there was an update, so I updated my game and there were a few more options for the graphics available to me. Sadly, even turned all the way down, I still couldn't get textures loaded right and even on lowest graphics settings, I would have framerate drops so bad that I couldn't play. Sadly my friends, I will not have a Rage review mostly because I don't want to shell out another 60 dollars for it. This saddens me greatly. I do not believe that the framerate and texture issues were problems on my end, I am running a mid-range rig that should be able to handle it. I have an AMD Phenom X4 955 Black Edition running at 3.4 ghz, 4 gb 1600 mhz DDR 3 Ram, AMD Radeon HD 5770 1 gb GDDR 5, and a 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD. This could run Crysis 2 at full settings at around 50 FPS. My Rage framerate dropped to 10 FPS. So again, no review for Rage due to crushing disappointment. See you Online.