Category Archives: Video Games
General Skyrimming
So the other day I introduced everyone to my Skyrim character: Tannenbaum the orc warrior. I trust many of my readers are playing Skyrim as well, and I thought perhaps they’d be interested in seeing what Tannenbaum has been up to. I know I’d be interested in hearing about your characters or your Skyrim adventures. Post some in the comments!
Anyway, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is much like any other massive role-playing game. I travel the countryside slaying trolls and zombies, I visit towns with NPCs who have fetch quests, and trust me, a random stranger, to deliver letters are parcels for them on the other side of the country. Some quests are fun. Some are gruesome. A lot of them involve sieging dungeons and tombs. I’m having a blast. At one point I used a wicked dagger to cut through the roots of the world’s oldest tree, which lived in a hidden grove. I then used the dagger to collect some sap from the tree, only for the tree to get pissed and create a bunch of wood monsters to come at me. I slew them all…but not before the wood monsters shamelessly slaughtered the peace-loving hippies who were visiting the hidden grove.
And the hippies had warned me against messing with the tree. Oh well.
One of the coolest parts is killing dragons.
Here is Tannenbaum, standing before his latest kill
You’d think dragons would be a pretty big deal, and they are. They’re part of the storyline. But at the same time, dragons are randomly spawning creatures. Just as if you were wandering in the woods and came upon a wolf or a bear, you can randomly come upon a dragon. Tannenbaum slayed this one with his mighty axe.
But the game isn’t all questing and slaying monsters. There’s also a hobby portion. Tannenbaum has taken up blacksmithing, where he can make his own armor and weaponry, either for use or for sale.
Here, Tannenbaum made his trust sidekick, Lydia, some matching golden armor.
Can you say Christmas card picture?
Until next time Tannenbaum does something worth sharing, everybody have a Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m Not the Only One Enjoying Skyrim
It’s fun for all ages!
Plus that little 3-year-old girl learned a very important lesson: people don’t like being “sworded”. I told you people last week that I was a sucker for adorableness. And this blog could definitely stand to be more adorable from time to time. Hence so few pictures of me.
In Skyrim news, Tannenbaum the orc has so far killed two dragons, bought a house, mined some iron ore, slew a troll, climbed to the top of a giant, snowy mountain to meet with wisemen, and beat up a tavern minstrel. And I’ve still barely scratched the surface of the game.
What are some of your Skyrim characters up to? I’m sure some of my readers are enjoying the game as much as me. Share some of your characters and their exploits in the comments!
Skyrim Has a Hold of Me
So I splurged and bought the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. For those that don’t know, it’s this epic sword and sorcery role-playing game that all of the week world is going crazy for right now. Skyrim has hours of gameplay, hundreds of quests and sub-quests and thousands of characters to meet or monsters to vanquish. I may or may not keep everyone up to date with my playing.
My character is an orc named Tannenbaum, named after one of my World of Warcraft characters. He’s a warrior who favors a two-handed axe, perfect for slicing off heads or burying axe blades into heads.
I’ve also slain a dragon.
So pretty fun game so far. Here’s Tannenbaum:
Orcs hate the dentist
Just look at those graphics! I’m glad I bought Skyrim for the PC.
Songs of Skyrim
There’s an awesome new role-playing video game out this week, called Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim! It’s a sword and sorcery epic, where you create your own legendary character and take them on amazing adventures through the land of Skyrim. The Internet is awash with praise for this game. I can’t wait to play it, but I’m going to have to wait until I’m less broke. Until there, the Internet has been kind enough to give us some hilariously awesome, fan-made songs about Skyrim to tide me over!
They were made by some group called Harry Patridge. The songs are brilliant and the animation is fantastic!
The first:
The second:
The One Thing Grand Theft Auto 5 Has to Get Right
Money.
When Grand Theft Auto 5 comes out next year to the ‘oos’ and ‘ahs’ of the video game-loving world, the one thing it has to fix from Grand Theft Auto 4 is the money. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby (or so I’ve been told), but the last game completely fucked it up! Money was absolutely worthless in Grand Theft Auto 4. This doesn’t make any sense, considering in every GTA game you play a criminal who is trying to make money (and sometimes revenge). You commit crimes, you pull off various jobs and you allow yourself to get pushed around by big-time gangsters in order to make money.
But in GTA 4, there wasn’t anything to spend money on!
The most expensive things to buy were the $2,000 suits.
That is one fine suit
Ostensibly, you were supposed to spend the money on ammunition and weaponry. But you only needed to buy weapons to complete more jobs (or wild rampages). I don’t know about you, but if I had several thousand dollars, I would not spend it on stuff I needed for my job! Besides, you were given most of your weapons for free, and extra ammunition was also freely lying on the ground every time you killed some other armed goon.
If the GTA games are trying to be as realistic as possible, then I want to be able to spend all of that cash on crappy, materialistic items! I want more stuff to buy in Grand Theft Auto 5! GTA: Vice City has a real estate side game you could play, how about one of those again?
Alla dis could belongs to youse
Let me tell you the story of my GTA 4 experience so that you understand why money was worthless in that game. I played the story missions about halfway through before I got bored with the game and stopped. In GTA 4, you play Eastern European immigrant Niko Bellic just arriving in New York City. You’re out to capture the American dream and get a little revenge on the side, but in order to reach the bad guy, you work your way up the ladder through the criminal underworld. You earn tons of cash killing rival gang members, playing chauffeur for the mafia Godfathers and whacking off stool pigeons. At one point, you even rob a bank and get $250,000!! And considering all of the other jobs, about halfway through the game I was very nearly $500,000 in the bank.
And Niko was living a great life!
Niko wore only the finest suits (there were maybe half a dozen to buy in the game), I drove only the finest cars without having to buy them (the game is called ‘Grand Theft Auto’ for a reason), and I lived in the swankiest of apartments without having to pay rent or actually purchase them. The game pretty much just hands you safe houses throughout the story. I had a nice apartment in the Bronx, a crummy apartment in Jersey and two high-end, penthouse apartments in Manhattan all at the same time, for free. There is dialogue in the game that indicates that the money for these penthouse suites is coming from Niko…but the cash is never deducted from my total. So there’s no rent on what are clearly million-dollar suites with big screen TVs and giant beds.
You literally kill a man in cold blood to get this apartment, which is how I assume real estate works in Manhattan in real life too
People complain all the time about the various friends that called Niko to go bowling or something, but these are just signs that Niko Bellic had a very active social life. He had a lot of interesting friends. One was even a helicopter pilot who would take you on frequent rides over Manhattan. And Niko was also dating and banging three beautiful women AT THE SAME TIME! They didn’t know about each other and had no way of crossing paths. You had to pay for dates, but it was a pittance to attend the finest restaurants and clubs in town.
And on top of all of that, Niko didn’t have a job.
He is the 99%
Sure, I was doing the occasional crime job for the mob bosses as part of the story, but if I just stopped doing the story then I would just live off my hundreds of thousands of dollars. Niko could have given up his quest for revenge and settled down into a pretty fantastic life. Rich, fancy cars, amazing apartments, and beautiful, bangable women. Niko was living the good life!
Yet for some reason, he was always complaining in the cut scenes about the failure of the American dream. What a downer.
Anyway, when Grand Theft Auto 5 comes around, they need to give us something to spend our money on. Paying for cars is obviously out, but what about paying rent for our apartments/safe houses? Or buying up real estate and small businesses? Maybe we should have to purchase really fancy vehicles, like yachts, blimps or private jets. If they bring back the TV or the Internet in-game, maybe we can order some really awesome items online like bigger weapons, fancy, one-of-a-kind cars or jet packs. And give us more clothing options!
You can do better than one gray suit and then the exact same suit, only in black.
Be creative, Grand Theft Auto. None of us are millionaires. And none of us can run down the middle of the street blasting a rocket launcher at passing cop cars. You let us experience one of those. How about the other?
You seem very interested in money, after all
Henchman-4-Hire 