I have to mash the Nirnroot with the what now?

I have no idea what ingredients make specific potions in Skyrim. At least that was the case until I heard about Potionapp.com. Enter your ingredients and it'll tell you what horrible mess will come out the other end.

Sweet.

A jaunt through the land of Oblivion

I'm about seven hundred years late to the party but I've started playing Oblivion on the PC and am taking random screenshots of my journey through the place that isn't Skyrim.

Link here.

Skyrim: Save 348

I decided to do a straightforward bounty mission in Skyrim: go kill a collection of bandits at Silent Moons Camp. Fortunately I saved just before attempting the mission, and so it came to pass that Save 348 is now my favourite save of all time.

Stealth would be the name of the game here; kitted out in light armour, my silent sneaky boots and a shedload of invisibility potions I had this all mapped out. I'd head out just before evening with Lydia and my horse along for the ride, keeping them at a safe distance in case I needed to mix it up a little.

That was the plan.

Then this happened.

Oh dear, Lydia is being attacked by a sabre cat. Well, no worries - the entrance to the camp is on the other side of that big wall down a rather steep slope, so we can polish this guy off then make our way around. I'll just get off the horse and help her out with-

...oh look, a huge bear has appeared and is running at my face with his teeth out. At this point, Lydia has just about killed the sabre cat, but a second bear has appeared on the rocks above and has distracted my horse from rescuing me from bear number one. The happy chap above is clawing me from behind while I take this shot:

 

Well okay, three wild animal attacks in the space of twenty seconds. No worries, because I'm all about the thinking on my feet or whatever. "I'll circle this guy, jump on the horse and charge to the bandit camp and use them as bait for the two bears. Easy as pie."

Imagine my dismay when I discovered the pie had now turned into a Frost Dragon - smack bang in the middle of the camp fighting it out with the bandits and myself, the horse, Lydia and the two bears. You know, this isn't exactly how I imagined my stealth plan panning out. I get off the horse and it does a 180, racing off back to where we came from. Lydia gets stuck on some rocks while hitting a bandit over the head with a large axe and with big frosty explosions everywhere one of the bears sails off into the distance.

One down, at least eight to twelve enemies to go.

My energy dropping like lead, I look around for Lydia who has heroically untangled herself from a three foot rock and has resorted to using a magical weapon which fires what I can only describe as fifteen foot high fireballs in every direction. I wonder if that will get the attention of the dragon?

Hey Lydia, little help over he-

Never mind, I'll inform your next of kin.

Wait, why is the ground sort of rumbling? What's happening? I better spin around and take a quick look...

Uh, did Lydia let off a stray arrow that accidentally hit a mammoth from about a mile away which is now set on a collision course with my face?

Lydia? Oh wait, you're dead. Well this won't hurt at all-

As you may have guessed from the blurry vision and flecks of blood, being bumrushed by a mammoth is actually rather painful.

Well, this is the best stealth raid ever. Lydia may be drinking in Valhalla, but my horse is still alive. Can he rescue me from the endless throng of bandits, dragons and mammoths?

Oh. Right. You went back to fight with the bear. Super.

By this point, I have absolutely no idea what's going on. A pack of wolves charge after the mammoth and take down one of the bandits, the bandits respond in kind by killing two of them before another guy is wiped out by the dragon. Then there's a mammoth / dragon / me showdown, which goes about as well as you'd expect.

The dragon gets a lucky shot in - well, someone did - and a mammoth bites the dust. There's still a bunch of bandits running around, although my horse has taken care of the bear and is now kicking people in the face. Notice in the below screenshot that one of the dead bandits has no clothes on, because if you're going to get naked this is as good a time as any.

I don't know if Lydia dropped the insane fireball staff of doom or if the game glitched out or what, but one of the bandits now has her staff and is dropping the contents of the Sun onto my head as mammoth and dragon go for broke. Energy almost depleted, I decide to abandon my horse, racing off around the corner to safety and the chance to fight another d-

....crap.

Suddenly escape by horse seems like a smart move, but one failed backpedal later and my horse decides he's some sort of VTOL aeroplane, launching into space because his home planet needs him. Also a giant.

At this point, everybody involved seems to think it would be a jolly good idea to play "chase the idiot" and stomp me into sludge.

Come at me, olden times bro. I'll just duck into the small building to the right and pick everybody off from afar - the bandits are stupid, the dragon can't harm me in there and the giant can't get in.

Right? Right??

...oh.

I'd like to think my last words were "Skyrim belongs to the Nooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh" as my character cartwheeled into space, joining his horse on his newfound career as an astronaut. if you need me, I'll be waiting on a call from the League of Assassins...

Battlefield 3 Limited Edition is Limited

I picked it up, only to find the much touted "Back to Karkand" maps aren't actually included as DLC codes - no, they're included as DLC "coming soon" flyers because they don't actually arrive until sometime in the future (as the flyer put it, "when it is released". Thanks for that).

I mean crap, at least give me a horrifically overpriced statue, half a soundtrack or a set of night vision goggles. I'm going to break out a marker pen and rename it the Complete Lack of Anything Extra addition.

Soundtracks and Special Editions

Oh dear, it seems people with the expensive editions of Deus Ex are rather annoyed that the Augmented Edition version only has a handful of songs.

I'm a little dissapointed at how limited the Augemented Edition's soundtrack is. It's missing a ton of good tracks, almost all of the ambient music, most of the combat music, the only boss theme on it is the weakest one (Yelena's track is fantastic but Barret's is really weak), and doesn't have any of the character's liefmotifs on it, Icarus notwithstanding. The hell? - Link

Fuck this. My Aug Ed has half as many songs. =/

Worst special edition ever. - Link

"Well that's some fantastic gouging, advertising that the limited edition has the soundtrack when it's less than a third of the actual music, and then releasing a separate one..."

"I think it's more cause people liked the OST alot and there was enough demand to warrant an actual full OST. Don't think there were plans at first to release a seperate soundtrack." - Link

Bolded my me. Special Editions sometimes use OSTs as a hook to buy the game, but include only a handful of tracks - the buyer then watches as the full thing is released a little while after.

Me, I was schooled in the art of "never buying a special edition again" when I picked up the LE of Dragon Age. The main hook for me was the bundled OST - what I got for my money was a "free special plastic case" (hahaha etc), some poor DLC and a crippled soundtrack that only included 18 random tracks - any marginal value I got from paying extra was negated when the OST dropped containing 35 pieces of music, also here's an additional collection based around DLC.

I don't think an OST was included with the Mass Effect 2 special editions, but I steered clear just to be on the safe side - I didn't want a repeat performance of the above. Even disregarding the notion of low content OST bundles in Special Editions, look at how the music is broken up anyway: a main soundtrack is released, and then additional collections appear that could easily have been included (Combat and Atmospheric). Then we get more music appearing as the DLC packs for the game are released - Kasumi, Shadow Broker and Overlord (ah, DLC - you don't just break up games anymore, you do it to soundtracks too!)

Of course, you could argue the music for the DLC packs hadn't been put together at the same time as the main music but even so, you'll have to buy six different albums to get the complete Mass Effect 2 experience - and there's no reason why Combat and Atmospheric couldn't have been on the main album.

Interestingly, the Special Edition of Dragon Age 2 came with 29 tracks - however, trying to buy DA 2 music will mean you have to purchase this, this and this in order to get the full experience. It seems even when most (or all) of the music is included on a Special Edition, the soundtrack is then split up afterwards to ensure multiple purchases are required.

I don't know if Mass Effect 3 Special Editions come with a soundtrack, but I'd suggest you at least try to find out how many tracks are included before purchasing - and the same goes for all Special Editions touting an OST as a major selling point. Unfortunately, it's often impossible to obtain details of what makes up the Special Edition nitty gritty, which makes the problem of limited music tracks included in these collections much worse.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and hug my six billion tracks per disc OSTs of Final Fantasy 7 to 10 while the words of this person ring in your ears like so much absent music...

The Mall: now with all new and improved space zombies

I think someone played a little too much Dead Space...

 

Mental note: never try a Beta again

I'm sort of "meh" on hacker games really, as they all pretty much do the same thing: reduce it to "click a box, watch a meter count down and then you've hacked it". Uplink is entertaining for a while, but hack one machine and you've hacked them all. Thought I'd try Duality - after ten seconds, I have a crazy mouse pattern onscreen and I've completed a level.

I didn't do anything.

Maybe I beat the hidden "Draw a picture with my mouse" level or whatever.

Tips for Atom Zombie Smasher

I had a few whines about this game, and it seems a lot of other people have had the same problems.

Step forward, useful forum post.

Atom Zombie Smasher Review

 

15 hours in two weeks (less, actually) pretty much tells you all you need to know about Atom Zombie Smasher (£5.99 on Steam).

1) I like it.

2) It has zombies in it.

3) I get to kill millions of zombies.

Atom Zombie Smasher is a cheap and entertaining top down “make the little dots move around and kill other dots” strategy / resource management effort. The pink dots are the zombies. The yellow dots are the people. Save x amount of people before the time runs out with your helicopter or they all get eaten, or finish the level by wiping out the zombies before nightfall.

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The campaign gives you a map filled with terrorities (they all look the same though, which is a bit of a wasted opportunity).

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Each one has a number attached to it, the higher the number the more zombies you’ll find. As the game progresses, the game will change things up a bit with landscape hazards, tougher zombies, equipment malfunctions, shorter days and so on. You'll also gain XP for your units, unlock better skills and so on. You'll also see certain cities filled with valuable scientists, who will allow you - quite literally - drop some science on the zombie hordes.

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At the end of each level, you’re given a score and then all the territories owned by humans Vs zombies give points added to the Campaign total. First one past the post wins.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to win this game or even come close. No matter what you do, the zombie outbreak keeps spilling into new zones. The 1s become 2s, the 2s become 3s, and then you get a 4 and it’s basically game over at that point. A 4 is an outbreak that turns into 1s in adjacent zones at the start of the turn. After a couple of turns, an otherwise level pegging map with no claimed territories will quickly resemble six billion zombies hunting you down with chainsaws. There is NO WAY BACK from this, and the campaign score descends into farce as a quarter length Zombie bar screams towards the finish line leaving you wondering what the Hell just happened.

Another annoyance which doesn’t help: the squads / weapons you get is randomly allocated before you enter a map. You can guarantee that when you need your best assets the most, you’ll be left with 2 smoke bombs, a road barricade and some C4 to wipe out hundreds of zombies in a very tight time limit.

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Good luck with that.

In fact, many of the 15 hours of gamplay may well be me just sitting there wondering what to do once the Level 4 outbreaks start appearing. Besides swearing loudly, I mean. I think I may well just do that when a real zombie outbreak begins, because the tools you’re given here to do the job certainly don’t cut the mustard. Now the game does let you mod it, and I guess you can probably skew the odds in your favour but I tend to think something is going wrong when you have to resort to that.

I did also consider the possibility that I just might not be very good at this game, but everything was going fine until the Level 4 outbreaks hit. Then it became a random guessing game, the guessing part being how long it'd take to flash up the "Game Over" screen. If you think you can bluff your way through those odds from about halfway through your campaign, or you just want to mash some zombie skulls - and really, who doesn't - then you could do much worse than give it a go.

The music is great, too. But you're not here for that, you're here to mash some zombie skulls. Right?

The Humble Indie Bundle: Some Interesting Stats

http://www.humblebundle.com/

Now that you've clicked the above link, bought some games and donated your money to whoever you like (game devs, EFF, Child's Play and so on) I think this is worth looking at:

We need to have a little talk, Windows users.

My Fallout New Vegas bug gets a few eyeballs

News to me, but then I gave up caring about referral logs years ago.

That's right kids, I JUST KEEP ON BREAKING THE RULES.

Anyway, Kotaku.com.br covered my experience with a surreal glitch in Fallout New Vegas here.

I also found this in my referral logs:

"Why gamers opinion on FF13 is worthless". Is that you, Yoshinori Kitase? 

The Suicidal Videogame

A few years ago someone made a game called Lose / Lose that deleted system files if you played badly. Here's a title which slowly kills itself every time you lose a life, eventually breaking the game forever.