April 11, 2012

Skyrim: Initial Thoughts

Skyrim promotional image of the hero standing on a cliff overlooking a snow covered valley

So remember about 5 months ago when everybody was talking about this great new game called Skyrim and wandering around saying things like “I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow in the knee” (maybe that was just in my house.) Well, I finally got on-board this week. You can call me whatever you want, just don’t call me on time for dinner.

Initially, what struck me is that Skyrim is a damn good looking videogame. I leveled my character up from 0 to 12 in one weekend, which seemed really fast for me. Especially since I stared at the TV so hard, I broke a blood vessel in my eye and had to tell everyone at work on Monday that it was allergies. (Allergic to not playing Skyrim!)

Combat isn’t as satisfying as in other games like Mass Effect and Fable. I do love the slow-down cut scenes in which you ABSOLUTELY FUCKING MURDER dudes, but I wish there were more than two versions. Although maybe there are more, and I’m just not good enough to see them yet. That wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t like that the aiming sights have to be focused on your opponent to hit them, and there’s no snap-targeting that I can tell. The fact that my controller had a derpy right thumb stick is no help at all.

What I really love is that I spent basically the entire weekend playing and I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game. Just walk in any direction and you will experience amazing views, and random game-play along the way. I wish there was some way to run faster or summon a horse like in Red Dead Redemption (sweet merciful God that was a useful feature.) I know you can buy a horse, but I hear they’re pretty stupid and if you accidentally leave them in some random place, they’ll stay there forever and unless you can find them, you won’t be seeing them again.

One thing that really bothers me is the companions sense of personal space. This always seems to be a hard trick for game developers, but in Skyrim it’s the worst I’ve seen in years. If I walk into a small room, they crowd in after me and then I can’t get out. It you’re struggling to navigate a small space or tight turn, the companion takes this opportunity to cuddle up to you and can literally push your character in the direction they’re going. I also dislike the fact that you can permanently kill you companion dead if you hit them in combat, but I love that the enemy can’t kill your companion dead no matter what.

I have a lot more playing to do before I form a concrete opinion about the game, but so far it’s going very well. At this rate, it might take weeks to even explore the whole map, let along progress the plot much. The realness and the details of the universe are definitely perks.

April 12, 2011

Twitter Again

Today I went back to twitter for more inspiration.

TheNoid13 wanted to hear about video games.

I feel that I’m a somewhat unexpected video game fan. I never played video games growing up, I didn’t get into them in high school, I really had no interest in them until college, when I started dating my amazing boyfriend, who is an avid computer and video game player.

For the uninitiated video gamer, there is definitely a learning curve. This can ruin the game experience for a spoilsport like myself. However, when you’re young, broke and without cable, the siren song of an adjacent xbox can really be compelling. Keep in mind that college is a special time in a young person’s life when an xbox isn’t hard to come by, but money for a matinee or a dinner not wrapped in paper is an extravagance too far.

Having acquired access to this new toy, and a library of games through the process of sexual conquest, I began my xboxing rather tentatively, but before long I was hooked. I’ve always been the kind of person that has difficulty watching television without something in my hands. All those years of knitting in front of the TV, bored out of my mind and I could have been playing video games. If only I hadn’t been so damn poor.

Video games solved all of TVs boringness problems by being completely better than TV in basically every way. No more watching helplessly as the protagonist does stupid tricks for my entertainment dollar. Now I’m the one doing stupid tricks, and loving every moment of it! Don’t like something? Shoot it. Can’t shoot things in this game? Then what the hell is it doing in this house?!

One of the best things about video gaming is that this is a completely new form of entertainment. Having born witness to the changes in the industry just since I started gaming is amazing. Everyone points to graphics and player interface as being the main things, but I think that we discount the writing at our own peril. Gamers are more likely to care about a story these days, and I don’t think it’s because we all suddenly discovered our feminine side.

The stories in games are becoming tangible in a way they’ve never been before. This isn’t Mario saving the princess, it’s not even the princess saving Mario. Game developers like BioWare (“Mass Effect,” “Dragon Age”) are taking games to a literary level, creating whole worlds and universes that you can save or destroy at your whim. We’re all familiar with the concept of a reader, a listener or a viewer, but the player is a new breed of media consumer. And as games become increasingly refined, many of us who never expected to will be adding that to our list of consumer credentials.