Room to Expand

Dear me, but that elven babe on the box looks bored.  She’s got a PhD in international law, you know.  She could’ve been a big shot at the UN, but alas, like most elven babes, she ends up modelling for low-end game marketing.  “What’s this Spellforce job involve?” she asks her agent excitedly.  “Er…steel bikini and loincloth.”  “Again?”  “Yeah, but you get a sword this time. It’s very empowering.”  Not quite the Security Council, though, is it?

Rawr! (That’s Draconic, By The Way)

First things first: if you tried to access the link in my previous post and found it be broken, then be assured that it now works. Here it is again. You have no excuses! Right, someone mentioned a poxy little game called Skyrim today. What’s that about?

 

Nostalgia Trip – Pokémon Blue

Charizard, Nidoking, Gyarados, Parasect, Graveler, Jolteon. What a team. Or not. I have no idea. You see, in search of some nostalgia I took my good ol’ Gameboy Colour (I don’t care if it’s actually spelt without the ‘u’) on holiday with me last week and ended up sidelining my other games in favour of the original Pokémon Blue. Wario Land 3? No! Super Mario Land 2? No! Ronaldo V Football? Hell no! Get me a bicycle, some pokeballs and a map to Celadon City!

Back to Cyrodiil

A while ago I wrote about The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind and me; how I remember it as one of the formative artistic experiences of my teenage years, as evocative as any other book, film or piece of music. I also wrote that I couldn’t bear to play it again, because on my second, brief, playthrough several years ago, it felt like I was trespassing on the adventures that my first character had already completed.

The province of Cyrodiil, though, is another story. I’ve just got started on my fourth character in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, and it remains as irritating, flawed and compelling as it ever was.

Expansion Packs or DLC?

I miss the days of expansion packs. Of course there are still some being released, but for the most part the big £15 addition has been replaced by small updates or expensive but short DLC. How can I spend seven or eight quid on three or four hours of adventure when something like the Shivering Isles pack for Oblivion added so much more at such better value; not just a new, big-ish quest to deal with, but an entirely original, unique, custom-built world entirely different in tone and feel from the original game?

The Shepardess

We recently learned that the marketing material for Mass Effect 3 will not only feature the default male version of Commander Shepard, but also the female version. Thanks in part to Jennifer Hale’s terrific voice acting, this version of the character has slowly become a standard-bearer for female protagonists in games, although only 18% of players choose to save the galaxy as a woman rather than a man.

The default faces of male and female Shepard from Mass Effect 1 and 2.

Replay the Day Away

Firstly, this a big one. Read at your peril! Or if you’re just a bit bored. Anyway, let’s crack on…

I’ve just fired up the topic-o-meter, which tells me that today’s post should be about replayability. Good call from the machine, since I’ve got two fairly decent starting points on the subject. Firstly, I’ve just finished playing Batman: Arkham Asylum for the third/fourth time (no idea which one) and the game has pulled it’s usual trick of making me want to start from the beginning immediately.

Preservation

There’s a rather marvellous article over at Eurogamer right now, ‘The Keepers of all Games’, that definitely deserves a read. Ostensibly it’s to do with a recent get-together organised by the co-founders of the National Videogame Archive project to discuss and promote the preservation of games, but there’s a good deal more information to be wrung from the article than a simple recap of the event.

Prince of Protocol: The Witcher Brotherhood

If somebody made a game based on the title of this post then both I and my wallet will be humbly in their debt. (You know what? I’d be satisfied with Prince of Protocol on its own. It sounds like some sort of C3PO-based action flick. Ideas, ideas…)

You see, the light at the end of the exam-filled tunnel is fast approaching: in less than 24 hours, I’ll be finished with university and to celebrate the occasion, a gaming binge is called for. Or at least it was, until a bizarre feeling began to crawl up my spine as I loitered around Amazon last night: I quite fancy getting out a bit more. The years of 24-hour digital knees-ups at the onset of the holidays seen to have slipped away. 12 hours is far more doable.

Prospects Dashed

These next few weeks are going to be interesting. Having just got back to uni for my final term, I’ve been informed that I have to attend some lengthy bore-fests things called ‘exams’ which also, cruelly enough, require extensive preparation beforehand.

Bother.