Skyrim on a calculator? Okay then

Steam Sale Carnage...

The above image speaks for itself really, but this time around I did damage to my wallet with the following:

Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, Mount & Blade Warband and Fire & Sword, Shogun 2, Unreal And Quake packs, Hacker Evolution Duality, Defcon, Left 4 Dead 2 and the Hitman pack. I also got Swords and Soldiers as a freebie from the coal crafting thing.

Thank goodness it's over for another year...

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...