Everywhere on the web you’ll be able to read about all the fantastic parts of Skyrim, so I’ll be focusing on not so nice parts of this game.

The interface is not intuitive at all. I’ve read that it’s slightly better on consoles, though not by much. It looks extremely elegant and clean, but it takes a lot of getting used to. The mouse cannot be used in most menus and everything will need to be done by keyboard. Which isn’t all that bad though… once I got the hang of the flow through the menus it works alright, but it’s a long and bumpy road to actually understand it.

In my first hours of playing Skyrim, I truly struggled with the interface:

• How exactly do I know which gear I’ve got equipped? I’m not able to see my character!
• Why on earth are my miscellaneous quests not tracked on the map? …the fuck?!
• What in the love of all that is holy do I need to do to be able to use my newly earned shout?! Stop telling me I need a dragon soul, I have one damn it!
• Generally it lacks explanation and the player is left on its own to figure out all the possibilities.

Another part I truly do not like are the controls of my horse. The amount of times that I accidentally fell off a cliff because the horse seemingly had a mind of its own is not funny. A hint for any future Skyrim players… never ever walk your horse to the edge of a cliff and assume you can walk backwards to back away from it. Maybe I’ve played Word of Warcraft for too long to expect my mount to just walk backwards.

The AI pathing seems to lack quite a bit of… intelligence as well. The amount of times that I’ve lost a companion in the woods somewhere can not be counted on both of my hands. Either they randomly run off the road to stand around in the woods for a while before deciding to get back to the road and follow me or simply wait somewhere until I return and fetch them.

They also do not like climbing rocks either… where I (and I suspect many other players) simply jump onto some rocks, the AI decides to run off searching for a proper path there. This caused such enormous frustration at one point when I was trekking through the wilderness…

All in all, while these things really are annoying… it’s not such a huge deal that the game itself isn’t enjoyable. At the moment I’m even favouring to play Skyrim over Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. For me, as a true AC fanboi, is quite stunning.

Anyway, to get back on topic. There’s a new Assassin’s Creed coming this year, November to be precise! It’s going to be concluding the story of Ezio’s life. Many people had hoped for a new main character, but I’m very happy to have Ezio back for more action! As far as I understand, the game will give us answers instead of just raising more questions. It’s supposed to make us understand the link between Altaïr, Ezio and Desmond and finish that part of the story. Nothing has been mentioned about finishing Desmond’s story, so expect more Assassin’s Creed game in the future!

Here are a few trailers from the E3 2011, to wet everyone appetites (and give me a nerdgasm):

It’s so weird to realize that I still have clear and vivid memories of some of the clan matches or midnight gaming sessions; loading up a single M4 with two ammo clips and two grenades, only to make a mad rush at the enemy base and surprise blast my way through the enemy team was so awesome! Sometimes I’d die in one or two minutes, but I would have four or five kills behind my name! Sweet!

I loved this game so much that I remember playing until deep into the night in the weekends. I would come home late in the evening from my work as dish washer in a restaurant, fire up my computer to play some rounds of SF with my buddies and have an awesome time until 4AM in the morning…

It must be around 10 years ago, if not more, that I played this game. I remember taking my first driving lessons when I was working in that restaurant. That was back in the year 2000. So, that means it was in fact 11 years ago. It’s probably more, because I played this game for quite a while already before I learned how to drive. Goddamn! I’m getting old!

Ahh, the good old days of playing in a relatively small community where pretty much everyone knew each other. I truly miss that. Browsing through the server list, finding buddies or simply hopping on my favourite server, knowing I would find friends there. These days I play games (World of Warcraft and StarCraft) where the communities are so massive that everything is fairly anonymous. Being a jerk to someone doesn’t really matter… it’s highly unlikely you’ll play together again anyway (unless it’s a guild mate of course).

Maybe remembering what it was like to belong in a tightly-knit community sparked this longing in me. I’m going to have to find out if the original Unreal Tournament can still be installed and played on a current day Windows 7 64-bits system! I was thinking it might be fun to put up an old-school SF server. So, if any old veterans (SF 1.55 – SF 1.85) out there accidentally read this post and is interested in having a brawl, be sure to drop me a message!

Unfortunately, I  couldn’t find any proper screenshots to post along with this message, but I found some nice youtube videos! Enjoy!

The Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft has been released for about two months now. It’s been out long enough to have formed some opinions about the current state of the game. On a personal level, I will have to admit that I’m not very fond of Cataclysm. I will explain why later on in this post.

First off, I will start by saying that I think Wrath of the Lich King has been the best expansion so far. As I write this I like to imagine a lot of people starting to froth at the mouth and call me a “wrath baby”; someone who is used to getting it all for a minimum amount of effort. If those people would like to call me a wrath baby, fine. Let’s forget that my favourite healing spell in Classic was Healing Touch (Rank 4)!

The reason I liked Wrath so much is that the content was accessible and I managed to complete it all, including some of the harder achievements. This was a new experience for me. Classic and The Burning Crusade were made to cater to a different kind of people, so that I could never even see some of the content the game had to offer, let alone complete it! Heck, I even took an eight month break from TBC, because it was just a big grind that was far from enjoyable for me.

Not only did I get to see all the content, I had a seriously good time with people who I thought were my friends. Admittedly all of those are gone from my life at this point in time, but I will not lie and say that I didn’t have a good time. Most importantly however, I met my girlfriend in Wrath! I’ve had ups and downs and had to rebuild an entire guild from scratch only to get a Lich King kill at the last possible moment before the big 4.0 Cataclysm patch was released.

Sure, Wrath had its downsides. Introducing Trial of the Crusader and Tier 9 was a big mistake. Due to this the item level of our items turned out to be sky-high in Icecrown Citadel. This had the effect that our classes were becoming a little overpowered. Big hits, big heals, infinite mana and so on. I agree that these are mistakes from Blizzard that shouldn’t have happened, but ignoring the flaws the general style of play was awesome and very enjoyable for me.

Now we’ve arrived in Cataclysm. The style of play has changed. At the start of this expansion I figured that wouldn’t be an issue. I would adapt, as I had always adapted to Blizzard’s whims. Two months down the road I can say I feel very different. The style of my beloved healer has changed to something not very likeable. Blizzard’s new philosophy for this game and healing in particular seems to have split the community in two. One part says: “It’s fine, you just need to l2p.” The other part says: “It’s not enjoyable to play any more!”

I have found myself firmly in the latter camp. The fun has been sucked out of my game. I don’t find the new style of play enjoyable. It’s not that I need to learn to play. I have always adapted to new styles. It’s just that this time I find the new style so far from enjoyable that I don’t care about adapting. In fact, the whole of Cataclysm reminds me of The Burning Crusade. It feels like a big grind that I don’t want to spend my time on.

I play a game to have fun, not to be annoyed with grinds and time-sinks. Perhaps the time has come where I have a been there, done that attitude. The magic has disappeared. I ask myself why I should continue to pay and play a game that is not enjoyable for me. That doesn’t make sense. It’s not that I don’t like World of Warcraft any more. It’s just that in its current incarnation I doubt it will be able to keep me entertained.

I can imagine that people who are reading this are thinking: “Why don’t you just quit then?” I wish it was that simple. I’m a Guild Master and I feel I have a responsibility towards others. Perhaps I should try something different from healing for a while. I don’t know. I do know that I’ve always liked WoW and that I’ve spent far too much time on it to simply decide on the spot to quit. Nor would I want to disappoint my girlfriend (and co-Guild Master).

I guess time will tell…

My girlfriend wondered why I didn’t go to Silverpine instead then. I quickly decided she was a genius, I had already seen all changes made to the zone with one of my other characters and was very impressed with it, and took the Zeppelin ride from Orgrimmar to Undercity. Absolutely nothing had me prepared for what I would experience on my adventures in the gloomy forest of Silverpine!

The zone tells the story of the Forsaken battling against the Worgen of Gilneas. Fairly soon I got to meet with Lady Sylvanas herself as she waited for the Warchief, Garrosh, to show up. Sylvanas shows Garrosh the power of the Valk’yr from Northrend. She lets them raise a number of dead as Forsaken. Naturally Garrosh doesn’t like this and wonders, perhaps rightfully so, what makes her different from the Lich King now. Sylvanas however, doesn’t think much of Garrosh and pursuits her own goals regardless.

From that moment on I worked for Lady Sylvanas and helped her in the battle against Gilneas. I felt a little uneasy during some quests. I wondered how I could have gone from the relatively peaceful plains of Mulgore to this dark and foreboding war on the other side of the world. I had envisioned my priest as a noble Tauren, skilled in the powers healing and defending allies. Instead, I found myself gliding down the path of shadow, inciting terror in the heart of men (or in this case, Worgen) and aiding Lady Sylvanas and her dark cause.

All too soon I found myself in a situation where Sylvanas gave the Worgen leader, Crowley, a choice. A choice she had never been allowed to make: retreat his forces or see his very own daughter be raised as a Forsaken to serve her in undeath for all of eternity. I felt a little dirty. I had kidnapped his daughter and I had brought her to Sylvanas, although admittedly I had a little help with that. Help from former enemies who had been raised as Forsaken (yep, thanks to my help… again).

At the end, Gilneas is lost and I felt as if I had took part in a real war. Never had I experienced anything similar. I felt like shouting POWER TO THE FORSAKEN! I almost regretted I had made a Tauren instead of an Undead Priest!

On a more personal note, Lady Sylvanas has become my absolute favourite faction leader. With Thrall stepping down as Warchief and leaving a brute like Garrosh Hellscream in charge,  I felt a little unhinged. I had always seen Thrall as the absolute leader of the Horde. No… Thrall is the Horde. He is the symbol of all the forces united under a single banner. With him gone, the factions are slowly crumbling and no longer solidly united. In a way, it could be said I felt leaderless. Not anymore though! Sylvanas showed herself as a solid and strong leader, although her cause might be a little… questionable?

My goodness, these quests were just awesome! I can only hope the rest of Cataclysm is going to be equally impressive! I might actually start to like questing!

He convinced me to try some online play instead. We did a few matches in the practice league and after a number of games we got placed in the silver league. No clue why we didn’t get placed into the bronze league, but what the heck! After another few games we came to the conclusion that we had been placed in the wrong league. We couldn’t win a thing and generally didn’t stand much of a chance against our opponents! Luckily, I’m not fussed about competitive play (yet), so it was all good fun for me.

Later on in the evening I tried my luck against a ‘Very Hard’ AI opponent in a 1vs1 game. I had never played the AI on that skill level yet and to my surprise I managed to win! Even though I had a bit of luck as you will be able to see in the video below. My luck was that I missed the enemy army when I was on the way to their base. And so, before I got to attack them, I got surprised by a reasonably sized army in my base. I hesitated shortly, not sure what I should do, and settled for a do-or-die approach by just going into their base and do whatever damage I could. I was happily surprised to find them retreating as soon as I started my attack.

The first thing I did was take out the pylons powering their gateways to stop reinforcements. With a bit of luck I managed to survive the battle with a single void ray when the enemy army arrived back at their base. I used it to harass and destroy pylons and gateways before they were able to be built up again. I sent in another wave of zealots with another void ray and won the match! Yay!

I’m starting to like this game!

After spending a weekend watching pretty much most of the streams, I’m happy I did buy access to the live streams. I pretty much enjoyed most of the sessions. Ironically enough, my favorite bits were the Starcraft 2 matches, which, I believe, didn’t need a paid account to watch – correct me if I’m wrong!

There’s a few things I’m amazed about though.

Apparently the comedian, Jay Mohr, who performed at Blizzcon, got quite a bit of abuse on his Twitter account (@jaymohr37). Just goes to show how lovely the ‘community’ of World of Warcraft has become. I didn’t think his jokes were brilliant or anything, but I was definitely amused enough to be surprised about this.

Another thing that baffled me is Tenacious D. I got scolded when I said I had never heard of them before: “Have you been living in a cave?!” Well, apparently I have! I didn’t quite see the entertainment value in a bunch of Rednecks with dodgy lyrics either after I had watched their performance in the closing ceremony. I guess it’s a ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ thing.

All-in-all, with the power of hindsight, I can conclude it was good value for money! I hope my little murloc arrives soon so he can threaten to tear up the world as we know it!

I went into the raid last night feeling as if this was our last possibility to clear Icecrown Citadel. We only had Professor Putricide and the Lich King left alive, so I had good hopes we’d get in plenty of attempts on the Lich King. I desperately tried to banish the treacherous thought that in the previous weeks our first attempts were always the best and the rest of the night would be spent in frustration of not getting anywhere near to killing him again.

Once the raid got under way, I felt strangely focused. I also felt focus from the rest of the group. This feeling was confirmed when ten minutes later, Putricide was lying dead on the floor in one of the smoothest kills we’ve ever had. Once we were all at the Frozen Throne, we quickly went over tactics and positioning one last time. Before the pull someone mentioned that our first attempts were always the best and, I can’t remember who, commented that we’d better make this our only attempt of the night then.

When we had a guild first on Sindragosa a few weeks ago, I wrote that it was one of the most satisfying bosskills I ever had. We had never gotten a lot of practice in due to reaching Sindragosa at the end of the night and simply wiped and wiped. When I saw the Lich King dead on the floor last night, I only felt relief flooding through me. The only thing I could think was: “Finally!”

The last bits of the fight were just nerve wrecking. We had wiped before on 14%, so when we hit the 15% marker yesterday my heartbeat steadily rose with every percentage the Lich King was down. I frantically forced myself to concentrate and make no mistakes. When I saw the Lich King on 9.8% I was almost panicking. In fractions of a second I was having very frantic thoughts. Why hasn’t he killed us yet?! Shouldn’t the next phase start by now? What’s taking so long?! IS HE BUGGED?! And then… bang! We were all dead on the floor.

I didn’t quite realise it until the cheers started on Ventrilo and in guild chat. Personally, I needed time to calm down as my heartbeat had doubled during the last few percentages! But, we did it! On quite possibly our very last opportunity to do so, we kept our focus and we one-shotted the Lich King! Looking back on our ICC run last night, I think it was one of those very few runs where everything just worked out perfectly.

Kingslayers at last! I no longer feel a scrub for not having that title!

THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE KING!

Read all about it on WoW Insider.

In short:

1. Go to www.battle.net;
2. Login;
3. Account Management;
4. Communication Preferences;
5. Disable the Real ID settings of your choice;

Thank you Blizzard! At last!

I wish they had simply not bothered with the entire ‘Live the life’ concept. It’s poorly implemented from what I read about it and personally it’s not what I’m looking for in a Formula 1 game. When starting up the game for the first time a friendly journalist asks you for your name and nationality and that’s how you create your personality for the career mode. They’ve created the menus exactly like in Dirt. I’m not a fan of those 3D menus and the trailer thing, but it’s definitely not game breaking.

While the graphics are decent enough (playing  the game on a full HD screen), the framerate bums out a little. It’s far from a smooth driving experience and there are noticeable fps drops in certain spots at most tracks. For example on Spa-Francorchamps when coming down the back straight and breaking before the last chicane before start-finish, the framerate drops just enough to notice and mess up my cornering. Can’t imagine what it must be like with multiple cars ahead of me.

The sounds aren’t all bad! I don’t have anything to complain there. Actually, now that I think on it, sometimes the sound of the cars passing by sounds a little bit chopped up. It didn’t happen often to me though.

Driving laps however, is a different story. With all the assists on it’s a walk in the park! Very much an arcade game and not too challenging. I immediately turned off the assists and had another go. Wow! What a difference. I spent more time off the track than on it. I sighed at myself and went back in the menus to turn ABS back on and put the traction control back to Medium. The driving was a little better. It still comes down to precision though! It’s very easy to miss a breaking point or the apex of a corner. I can see lots of practice will be needed to crank out some proper laptimes.

The big question though… will I put in enough effort to actually get to grips with this game? My first impression hasn’t convinced me yet. The driving itself is good, but the choppy framerate at certain spots is a real issue for me. I don’t like messing up a particular hard corner because the game doesn’t feel as smooth as it was two corners earlier.

All in all, I guess it’s a decent game. Definitely considering how long we’ve gone without any non-Sony Formula 1 games. I’ll have to play it a bit more before I can decided whether I actually like it or not!