[PHS] - Professionals Have Standards// Read the front page news, PHS

[Lone Wolf]

today?

[MEDIK]

5 would work

[CrazNoDale]

5 would work

[Killah Zillah]

Something like that.

More of my crappy classy music tastes:
Audiomachine - The Last One
I dunno why I'm only listening to instrumental and choir music now. Don't ask me.

You and I must have identical tastes in battle music, because I was listening to this yesterday!

Audiomachine - Blitzkrieg

today?

No, next week. We always give you five days notice so that everyone has the time they need to check their schedule, make arrangements or let us know they won't be making it.

[E-man]

Something like that.

More of my crappy classy music tastes:
Audiomachine - The Last One
I dunno why I'm only listening to instrumental and choir music now. Don't ask me.

You and I must have identical tastes in battle music, because I was listening to this yesterday!

Audiomachine - Blitzkrieg

THAT's really good! I've looking for something that gets out of the patterns with battle music, and I didnt know thsi existed. Amazing.
Really good tastes i must say!

[Commando]

Do you guys want this war to be ranked?

EDIT: TSA said yes to 5pm EST.

[Unsung Hero]

Meh. To be honest, I don't really care much for rankings, but if the rest of the clan wants to do it then sure.

Although if it's ranked then we can't use Footpop...

[Humble Master]

Do you guys want this war to be ranked?

EDIT: TSA said yes to 5pm EST.

So next saturday at 5PM EST?

[Unsung Hero]

To celebrate my spring break, I'm playing Skyrim again.
EDIT: Woot. I got a finishing move on an elder dragon. I didn't know that was possible...

[Humble Master]

Not in anattempt to shun you Unsung Hero but I really don't like Skyrim. It is simply a computerized version of Dungeons and Dragons.

Still I will give it credit for making an intricate game world with a large variety of play options.

[Killah Zillah]

Not in anattempt to shun you Unsung Hero but I really don't like Skyrim. It is simply a computerized version of Dungeons and Dragons.

Still I will give it credit for making an intricate game world with a large variety of play options.

I have to agree on your analysis, it's mostly just crawling around in essentially the same copy/pasted caves and fighting dragons. Still, I LIKE the game... I just don't think it's nearly as Godlike everyone else thinks it is. The dragon fights are the only time the game really comes alive to me, and after you get the Dragonrend shout, dragon fights become trivial and barely worth your time.

The character customization is weak compared to previous games. You could make your own class of character and roleplay under your own title. For instance, you could make a Jedi Master class and get bonuses to Illusion, Swords and Destruction. Here, no matter what you do, you start out as any other generic member of your race with zero custom abilities that flesh out your character from the rest of the game's stock characters. A high elf starts out with their sword ability in the toilet, and there's no way you could fix that without grinding and grinding.

The quests are mostly just "go to dungeon, get McGuffin, bring it back". Even faction quests are boring and lifeless. The Skyrim equivelant of the mages guild quest ended in one hour for me and I didn't know the first thing about magic, and it had zero story to its questline either. In comparison, the Mages Guild of Oblivion had you go into alternate dimensions, fight this fabled evil dark wizard that's ACTUALLY been heard of in previous games, and you got this true sense that what you were doing actually mattered. Here, some dick tries to steal your guild's magic ball and you never learn why. Then you kill him and get arbitrarily named head mage.

The highest magic skill I had was 40 in Restoration, and that's only because I was a level 25 when I started the questline and only joined the college because I wanted better healing spells and had nothing better to do left in the game. The rest of my magic abilities weren't even above starting level. I didn't earn headmaster mage status at ALL, and I walked away from that college feeling very very let down. Previous games either gave you a kickass story to play through that made it feel satisfying to beat, or made you at least work your ass off studying and training your skills to make you feel you at least deserve the title of headmaster.

The game's worth purchasing and playing from beginning to end, it's fun and extremely immersive. You could lose yourself in it for hours at a time. The combat is the most satisfying yet, and the game's world is ten times more varied than Cyrodiil's generic forestfest. It's still a very good game and stands head and shoulders above today's standards for games (and western RPG's especially), but I don't really see much reason to play through more than once.

Also, I hate hate hate hate hate the fucking sliding ring door puzzles in tombs. If there were one thing I could scratch out, it would be those stupid stupid, "move the ring on the door" time waster door puzzles. There's no hint, no trick to it, you just keep turning rings until you get lucky.

[Unsung Hero]

The combat is fun simply because there is so much you can do in it. Shoot your enemies full of arrows from a distance, sneak up to them and assassinate them, set them on fire, etc. The finishing moves are by far the most fun thing about it, especially when you get them on a tough enemy that you've spent a lot of time trying to kill. When you decapitate someone, their heads literally go flying.

And true, the other quests get tedious. The Civil War one basically ends up with "lure enemy at point X, capture forts Y and Z, and then destroy major enemy base." But the main quest (along with several others) don't work like that. You do have to go into some dungeons, but you also go back in time through the Elder Scroll, see how the ancient Nord heroes killed Alduin, repeat the process, then journey into the Nord version of the underworld to face off against him.

As for the point in playing it more than once, I believe it's that one playthrough that really is interesting. You can choose how much time you want to spend on the game. If you finish the main quest and decide to put it down, that's fine. If you decide to finish every single minor quest and help everyone out, that's fine too. If you decide to do a combination of the two, that's fine as well.

tl;dr Unsung rants about Skyrim

Not in anattempt to shun you Unsung Hero but I really don't like Skyrim. It is simply a computerized version of Dungeons and Dragons.

How much time did you spend playing it?

[Killah Zillah]

Like I said, it's worth playing, and the main quest feels epic and grand! It doesn't get more high stakes than the end of time itself, I just don't think there's much reason to play through more than once because only the main quest is really worth playing at all. Once you've played it, there's nothing left to see, and honestly it wasn't interesting enough to me to deserve a second playthrough.

I do admit that I made a second character, Niko Bellic, so that I could do all the evil missions I didn't want to do as my own character. I went and did Brotherhood and Thieves Guild missions, but only Brotherhood felt like it had any thought put in. I'm not gonna lie, I got a SHIVER when I recieved that letter. When I got my first taste of Brotherhood, I was in Riften at the time roleplaying as myself. When I got their letter, I went ".... YEAH NO THANKS " and chucked the thing in the river. Next thing I know, I'm bound and gagged in a cottage a long way from home being told to pick between three people to find who's innocent and who's guilty. I chose the fourth option and killed the bitch who brought me there in the first place, then freed her victims, surly as they were. It was definitely a badass way to start a quest, and I actually WANTED to do evil just so I'd see what else the Brotherhood had to offer me, since it was the only guild so far that seemed to have any thought put in it, but I couldn't do it because I was roleplaying as ME..

So I made Niko, made a GTA 4 playlist on my 360 and roleplayed as everyone's favorite Serbian. Life ees cohmpleecated.

[Humble Master]

   I totally concur about how important player created resources are for a game. In that old (but defiantly worth the play time) game Age of Mythology you could fight your way through the Underworld, put Osiris back together again and recreate the most powerful weapon in the history of the Norse Mythos! But then when you where done sending Gargerensis to Tartarus you could then play god (ironic since in the rest of the game you where worshiping the gods) and build entire scenarios and vast cities brimming with detail in the editor. In fact I probably spent more time using the editor than playing the campaign!
   That whole concept of player created resources was probably what I liked about Dungeons and Dragons the most. As the DM you could go past Adamantine and Mithril and let the players find the legendary Energite capable of powering primitive ray-guns and flashlights! You could create Necrowierds that stalked the Catacombs of Bothrak whose very gaze could turn living creatures into Zombies and Skeletons! You could create the race of cat like creatures who ruled over the desert kingdoms like demigods. The sky wasn’t the limit, the deepest bowels of Cthulhu’s great temple on the edge of reality was the limit until the player found the soul of the archfiend Glouw’ Puebvao and used it to power the Portal to a Thousand Worlds!
   The other thing I had a problem with Skyrim was the lack of, aside from Dragons, really epic bosses. I mean while Dragons made great bosses they get kind of old after a while (After all Dragons are almost a staple of fantasy). It is when the game introduces new bosses that it becomes truly exiting. A great example is the game Shadow of the Colossus which was basically 16 boss fights one after another with some kick A story line in the middle. But each boss was different, (spoilered so those who haven’t played the game don’t get unwanted hints)    Even in Dungeons and Dragons there was a wealth of bosses. Dragosn where cool, but so where Purple Worms and Beholders! Mind Flayers where just as, if not more, cunning and ruthless as any Dragon worth it’s +5 Vorpal swords and bags of holding. Balor Demons could summon hordes of Lemures, Hezrous, and Vrocks then when they were killed explode in a giant firry nimbus of utter doom and destruction that would kill all but the most stalwart and well defended players. Also just changing the environment could increase the epicness of a boss fight. For instance, let’s say the players find 4 of the Necklaces of Adaptation which allowed the wearer to withstand all levels of heat and colds as well as be able to live in a vacuum and without food, water or air. Well then once the players don their new amulets and launch themselves into space they find a whole new dangerous type of environment. After all what is cooler that fighting a modified Stone Golem in zero-G while under constant danger of the gamma rays emitting from a nearby super nova that could instantaneously turn a character’s brain to a viscous pool of liquid.
   Also as KZ said Skyrim is worth playing, it just isn’t worth playing twice and to me part of a good game is replay-ability.  It takes a while for Battlefront 2 to get boring and that is part of the reason it received a Greatest Hits mark. In response to Unsung’s comment I am unable to play it due to the fact that it is rated M. However my good friend (I will not reveal names for security stuff) has told me much and there are review sites on the internet. Again I cannot stress enough that I am not shunning you in any way shape or form, I am simply criticizing the lack of Skyrim’s involved quests with  the exception of the main one, after all we all love time don’t we?

[Killah Zillah]

Very well thought out as always, HM!

Totally, I can play through Fallout New Vegas multiple times because of the in-depth character customization. If I at least have the ability to roleplay effectively (which is what a ROLEPLAYING GAME is supposed to do in the first place) then I'll keep playing. Soon I'm going to be roleplaying as HUNK from Resident Evil and doing the evil missions I didn't want to do as myself.

That game also had an extremely varied array of clothing and weaponry. Oblivion has 2 sets of 7 types of armor, and one set of 7 for each type of weapon, and all of them have the same theme, meaning that there's less unique weapons in the game and they mostly look the same even when they're different types. In Fallout, each and every equipable item was unique, whether it was a business suit or a WW2 ace pilot's jacket, which is what I wore. There was so much more room to be who YOU wanted to be in previous Elder Scrolls games... I even made Pyramid Head in my Morrowind game using one of the Redoran helmets and some well picked clothes..