Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Minecraft - No sense of orientation

First of all I think I have to apologize for not writing something recently – at least to the very few people that might actually read my crap.
The fact is I've been away on a long long trip that was occasionally interrupted by the insanity of some of the stupidest people I know. The place where I have been is called Minecraft and I was trapped there for an impressive amount of time if you consider that I actually had important stuff to do in the real world because somehow a few people that I have to be acquainted with decided to lose their minds.


I really enjoy my new computer and all the nice stuff that I can do with it – and the Steam sales where I can't hold it when a game just costs about 3€. You might say now that I could have played Minecraft all along because it doesn't take much resources and I could have played it on my old notebook. Shut up. My notebook takes 10 minutes to start and about 5 minutes to open an office document. And it doesn't have a functioning keyboard anymore so I had to use a kind of shitty usb-keyboard since I was too cheap to buy a proper one. I still have to fix that thing but I have been too lazy for that.
this is me ... yup
Anyway – Minecraft got me now. Actually it's not so bad anymore because I started playing some other games in the last couple of days again. I will write about that some other time I guess.



Until I find somebody that might want to play with me, I am playing alone in Survival Mode on my own single player map. When I first started I died almost every ten minutes until I found out how to bury yourself in the night and mine and craft properly because I wanted to do everything without looking into the wiki-page. I built my first house with some wood and then went on to find more crafting materials. When it turned night again I could not find my house anymore. 
So I just buried myself and waited for the sun to rise. Then I embarked on an almost endless journey through deserts and jungles and after realizing that I maybe should mine some more and gather materials, I decided to build a second house on the foot of a huge mountain. 

I decorated it with red roses and even had a small terrace facing the ocean. It was really nice and I actually built my first chest there and stored some stuff before going outside again to find more wood for attempting to build a door. 
When I stepped outside I fell into a hole in the ground. I lived for some reason but now I was trapped in a cave and did not have much stuff yet to defend myself properly. So I started to dig my way out. When I finally reached the surface I went back to my house and closed the hole that I fell into. And when I finally took a few steps to the mountain where I wanted to dig my mineshaft, I fell into a hole again. But this time there was no way out because it was just too deep and well I actually don't know anymore. I was really pissed off so I just decided to explore the cave because I happened to have some torches with me and well I wanted to mine anyway. 

So when I dug my way out of this cave again, I did not know where the hell I was. I think I looked around for hours and hours before finally deciding to build my final house besides a beautiful mountain ridge and a big lake. And I stayed there and dug my own mineshaft in the back of my house all the way down to bedrock and built a tower with torches at the top so I could find my house more easily. And I had a bed which meant that my spawn point was now in my house. When I finally mined some redstone, nothing was a problem anymore because I now had a compass and after some exploring I realized that my original spawn point was just on the other side of the mountain ridge. That was actually the point where I eventually built my nether portal, too, so I could find it easily. Well and there was my first house, too. But I did not need this one anymore since it was just plain walls.


So this is my "house" now

with one of my cats derping around. the other 1230953245345 are in the cat house... yup... I said it... I got a cat house
So now I almost have everything right beside my house – chicken, sheep, pigs, cows, eight dogs, uncountable cats and a huge mineshaft with everything you would need. But I still like to explore the map some more since I now can find my way back without problems. So when I went on an adventure some time ago, I actually managed to find my second house again. Which should actually be next to impossible because the map is just too huge. Dam dam daaaaaam ^^

there it is... the bitch O_o
 
like it was waiting for me the whole time... it could have been awesome there... meh


But Survival Mode gets kind of boring now since I have everything and I am playing alone. So I started building some weird things like roller coasters and other redstone stuff in creative mode. But as it turns out playing alone is addicting at first but after a while of extensive playing you can escape from this addiction. I mean, its still awesome and a lot of fun but I can actually go to the toilet again before I am in intense pain and eat other stuff than food that only takes 2 minutes to prepare. 

And I can play some other stuff again too which I kind of have to since I recently bought Assassins Creed 3 and still have to finish the shitty Revelations before I am allowed to play (self proposed agony … ugh). I am actually not looking forward to the 3rd part anymore because I heard that it is unsatisfying and because Revelations was one of the worst games I ever played and I might actually have lost my faith in the whole franchise by now. But the 4th part is announced now (you should have heard that by now) and it has f-ing pirates. Pirates!!! *_* 
Plus I am still waiting to be able to finally play The Elder Scrolls Online! My social life is doomed. 

Dooooooomed!


 

I have been very productive today ^^ my sense of productivity however seems to be kind of weird

Monday, March 18, 2013

To The Moon: Right in the Feels

Got it without any spoilers - YAY!

It's been a long time since I was really touched by a game and especially a game's ending. Don't get me wrong, there were some awesome games and game endings I was able to witness. But nothing kind of reached the epicness and touchiness of say... the death of Aerith in Final Fantasy VII. Seriously - nothing does. Even bringing this up does not really help my point. It was the most "wtf omg arghhh"-moment of my whole lifetime gaming experience. And I think it is for a lot of people. 
As I said I came across a lot of awesome stories and stuff and one of it was Heavy Rain. Yep... I liked the story of Heavy Rain – a lot. (Actually I did not play myself and instead just watched but that really does not matter that much with this game.)
What most people criticize is that it is not really a game in the conventional sense. It is more like a film where you get to press a few buttons once in a while and can interact more than while watching a movie. Well that is actually what makes it more awesome for me. It is a really good film where you get even more sucked into the story because you can interact yourself and in the case of Heavy Rain even change the course of the story.


But this post is not about Heavy Rain. It is about a game that I recently bought on steam and at first did not even install for a long time. 
The game is called To The Moon and I finally played it a few days ago because I was bored. And when I started playing I actually could not stop before having it finished because I really wanted to know how the story would progress. This “game” as you might or might not call it exactly falls into the category that I explained earlier. I can see why some people might not like this game because there is nothing left of real interaction. 
You can go around a small confined area and explore and every once in a while you get to solve an insanely easy puzzle in order to progress. I can understand why people would not like that. But I did not see it this way. It was more like an alternative way of passing along the story. It's like an interactive film more than a game and if you see it this way it is doing a very awesome job.
The story is breathtaking. It has absolutely everything from very fun moments (and a lot of references including Street Fighter, Pokemon, How I met your Mother and what not) to very sad or very creepy moments. And I loved all of it.

Well yeah... fun moments... or is it just my way too immature self?

Whoever wrote this story deserves all kinds of respect. You are a genius!

And the music! The f***ing music is so awesome that it had me from the first note. The piano theme is not only catchy but also very beautiful and complements the storyline so well that I think it played a very big role in making me love this game the way I did. I'm not only a self-titled graphics-whore but also a story and music whore. You can get me with this stuff all the time. That is why I still adore The Lion King and the Kung Fu Panda movies. Yep... I said it. I think I have to go kill something now to redeem my manliness that I did not even have from the start... Haaahhhh penis envy.

Yup...
Actually in the end To The Moon made me feel a little bit too girly for my comfort because I could not stop crying for about half an hour after finishing. But does that really matter? This game could make a bear cry!
It would be nothing for all you guys that rate gameplay over story (which is not a bad thing but in some cases it just does not even matter) but I f***ing loved this game and it's story and if you got maybe up to two days or however long this game takes which I can't remember now (I would actually have to check how long I played now but I am way to lazy) of boredom left I absolutely would recommend playing this game or more experiencing this awesome shortstory for yourself.

Seriously – try it. You won't have to tell anyone if you cried at the end like I did. But I am officially allowed to do that because I unfortunately got a vagina. BAM!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Skyrim: Exiting Whiterun without actually exiting Whiterun


Someone once said that a part of the fun while playing Skyrim is because of the massive amount of bugs and glitches. Sounds funny but actually I can relate. Sometimes things happen that are just so stupid and all these random unintentional situations make me laugh all the time. You could say that this stuff actually makes the gameplay experience somewhat better – as long as it doesn't get too annoying or f***s up some quests for you on your saved game... which it sometimes did for me.

I actually had to reload more than ten times while doing the Dark Brotherhood questline (which I loved) when you are in the Nightmothers coffin because the game always crashed. Fortunately I read that this bug is fixed now. I could not find out if the Miraak bossfight bug is fixed by now but do I really care anymore?

Yes I f***ing do... But I don't want to try anymore before I know because I don't want to end up sitting there for 5 hours again trying to get it right... I still really want to do the manbearpig quests even though I don't really play Skyrim anymore.
Yeah... f*ck you Miraak!
Okay so now I wrote a lot but nothing that really fits the headline. So let me get to my point.
Me and my fellow Stormcloaks (yes, go f*** it stupid Imperials) just conquered Whiterun, everything was burning but all was good. So I had to go back to Windhelm and talk to Ulfric or something. In order to do that I first had to exit Whiterun. But somehow the wall around the big gate in front was not there anymore. So I thought to myself: Yeah I can just go outside without having that annoying loading screen! Awesome!
Because you see, I play on Xbox360 and the longer you play the longer the loading screens get. That is one thing why I chose to not play anymore – at least my main character. Sometimes a loading screen can be up to 3 minutes long...
Shit! I forgot something inside the f-ing house -.-"
So I exited Whiterun by going around the gate and before me there was nothing. Well, actually there was an endless Grassland without trees or anything really. In the distance there were a few trees. But it did not look anything like the grassland that actually is outside of Whiterun.
I walked around trying to reach the end but I think it was endless. Sometimes I was hovering above the ground and sometimes I was just swimming in it. 
I guess this was the area around that you might see when you are in Whiterun in a high place or something. So I exited Whiterun without actually exiting Whiterun. Using the gate did work but who would use a door when you can just go around it?

Actually this all makes sense that there is an area around that you can see but are not supposed to go to. I get that because I am not stupid. But I thought it was fun to go there anyway.
Yes shame on me but I actually enjoy stuff like this. Boohoo...

Friday, March 1, 2013

Bastard Tetris: My new nemesis

I moved into a new appartment today so I am kind of exhausted. So I thought: Why not play a little game of Tetris to calm my nerves (yeah right). I actually wanted to play Mario Kart on my SNES Emulator but since I had to install Linux all over again on my Netbook I don't have it installed yet and did not really want to bother much. I needed something instant so I just had a quick look into the Software-Center and searched for Tetris. I chose the one with the funny name.
It is called Bastard Tetris and it is called that for a reason.

Oh look, I built a skyscraper O_o
On the Tetris Wiki I read (after playing angrily for a long time) that this game chooses the blocks exactly based on what you need or can fit in the least. So I was right you SCHEISS BEHINDERTES ARSCHLOCHSPIEL!!!! (<- yay for German swearing)
After a while of extensive swearing I thought that this game might be worth it to write about on here. Especially since I don't have much else to write about now because I had to move and could and can not play anything that needs a bigger screen than my netbook has for at least some days now. Plus I still need Internet in my new appartment. Assassins Creed Revelations sucks by the way but that's a different story... and I can't play it anyway because my PS3 and my TV are sleeping in their pretty little boxes waiting to be unpacked once again... Same with every game that I bought on steam so far for my PC. Soon my little friends - soon you will be free again.
Until then I will be lying here playing f-ing Bastard Tetris and swearing my head off because I'm hating it so much. Actually I always kind of sucked at playing Tetris... but this is insane. F*ck you Bastard Tetris >:-(

and f*ck you white blocks!!!
Graaaarghhhh!!!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Donkey Kong Country: Childhood memories revived

So as it turns out I bought a new gaming pc. My first of my very own! It's like a lifelong dream come true. It was very expensive but I inherited some money from my grandma.
Now I have an ultimate power gaming PC!
So I started playing Donkey Kong Country again on a SNES emulator on my netbook. (Yeah... wtf XD)
I think it must have been way over 5 years since I last played this game. I loved it when I was a kid but someday my brother took his Super Nintendo into his own room and I could not play anymore because I did not have my own. Still having the N64 was enough for me though.
Now I came around Donkey Kong Country again and I am really impressed by my memory. I still remember what to do in every level (at least the first ones that I played so far).
I even still remember when to jump in that mine car level maybe because I loved this level and played it a lot. 

It's amazing how I somehow still remember how long that beaver in a millstone will follow you in that one level and I still can't remember anything I have had to learn whilst doing my bachelor degree course. But that's not as bad as it sounds because I really did not learn anything that I would need for my masters degree.Duh...
Anyhow I am kind of suffocating in games right now because I got steam on my computer and stuff. Too bad that I don't have much time to play because I still have exams and such things... But the time will come...

Oh yeah and sorry for not writing and stuff... exams... yay -.-"

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Skyrim: Fighting the bug


This post contains spoilers of the Dragonborn DLC for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim – please do not read if you did not play this content yet and may want to play it sometime.

I already mentioned that I had my fair share of problems with the Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim. I know that I'm not the only one that experienced this sh*t. Actually I don't know if this is already patched by now because I'm not playing Skyrim at the moment. And I was really that mad about all this that I did not want to hear anything about this stuff ever again.

First of all: I really loved the Dragonborn DLC because you get so many new locations and for me as a passionate alchemist very important – new ingredients :). The first thing I did on this island was collecting all of the new ingredients I could find – only to find out that most of them are completely useless. Oh well...

I was really interested in the main quest of the new content – so I skipped some of the still very interesting sounding quests, like the man-bear-pig-quest and stuff.
So I collected all these books and read them and did all this stupid library stuff. Actually this was quite awesome because the library looks epic and the enemies called Seekers also look really f-ing cool. And there are these Lurkers that kind of look like giant Falmer with whole fish-bodies as heads.

Actually I met Hermaeus Mora before because I did this one quest were you open this ancient dwarven door and then have to kill this old strange lunatic dude that helped you on the main quest. So I actually already swore allegiance to Hermaeus Mora. But he did not seem to recognize me.
People and other … erm entities seem to really have problems in remembering you the right way. Except this one argonian guy in the Bee and Barb that always tells me to f*ck off because I offended his bartender girlfriend in one of the thieves guild quests before.

One day I started the last part of the main DLC quest and I saved over my other save file because I did not think anything bad would happen. Some time later I had to face Miraak in an epic battle.
I shouted at the dragon with the massive jaw so he would let me mount him. This actually looks really stupid because the textures on the dragon are really badly done and not as detailed as on every other dragon or yourself. You can see that really well on the loading screen where you see the model of Miraak sitting on Mr. Bigjaw Dragon.
Also flying on a dragon ist not that epic as I thought it would be because you can't really tell your dragon where to fly and when you tell it that you want to land or stuff it does not really know where and just finds its own place to land which is really stupid if there are just two islands in this green sea in the library and there is a 50:50 chance of landing on the wrong island. They could have done this whole dragon flying thing much better I think... but I digress...

So then I finally managed to get my poorly texturized big jawed dragon to land on the right island where Miraak was waiting for me. Then a fight started and this ass is f-ing weak. Actually he is that weak that I could have killed him with just 5 to 7 strikes. But he did not let me do it.

As I understand it this fight should work the way that he consumes the souls of his three dragons one by one and heals himself with them. So everytime when I got him low enough to heal himself he would turn etheral and could not be wounded anymore. He then would always proceed to kill off his one dragon and then he would just stand there – a long long time. I could not wound him anymore and he would not come out of his etheral state. So I loaded my save-file from before.

And I tried again and again and again. I tried all of the many ways the internet told me to try and more. Nothing would help – it would just be all the same again.

I first tried killing of all dragons before wounding Miraak himself – but he would just turn etheral and call his dragon and then just wait because the dragon was already dead.
I tried doing just a small amount of damage with one strike by fighting with my bare hands but it did not work.

I tried hiding from Miraak so he would come out of his etheral state which he did but that also did not work.
I think I fought against this bug for 4 or 5 hours straight. And then I just did not want to try anymore and left all of the Dragonborn DLC content behind.
Remember that I could not load a save file from before starting the quest because i saved over it before... big mistake by me and I know that. The one that I had was really far away in the past so I choose to just play on the mainland and sh*t on the DLC content. Well... at least I have my very own Riekling army... "Belifakathoooookawa."

I was actually really pissed off because I could not even do the man-bear-pig-quest. The guy that I should talk to about it just told me to revenge his clan leader... which I can't f-ing do. WTF

Manbearpig saaaaad :(
Bye bye Dragonborn DLC – you seemed fun but in the end you pissed me off until I wanted to bash something fragile with a baseball bat.
Thanks Bethesda...
Maybe it is patched by now but maybe this would still not help me and my save-file where the quest is already started. Meh.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Assassins Creed 2: Bartholomeo fail


It is kind of difficult to write about this because I don't remember it too well but I really wanted to write something about Assassins Creed. 
Now that I am at least a little bit free from my Skyrim-mania I want to go on with playing Assassins Creed because the 3rd part is out and I start to stumble upon stupid spoilers on the internet which I have to constantly ignore and the main reason: I really want to play this game. So there is this one Problem – I first have to play Assassins Creed: Revelations because I started Skyrim before getting it and I want to do everything chronological without missing too much on the whole storyline. So I ordered my copy a few days ago and now it's finally here.


But actually I want to write about Assassins Creed 2 now. I kind of liked the location and time of the first part more but I think I enjoyed playing the second part a little bit more. Everything just seemed just more comfortable to play and I liked the storyline a lot. Of course the enemies were still totally dumb and stuff but I was really sad when I had it completed and I missed playing it for weeks after. So now that I almost have my copy of Revelations in hand and can play again I start to get really excited and am thinking about the old times when I loved playing the other parts.

I remember this one incident where you had to do a quest where you rescue this guy named Batholomeo (or else XD) and then he has to follow you somewhere. So I had him follow me and I don't quite remember if you had to climb that tower or if I just wanted to because I kept obsessing about climbing every f***ing tower I had never climbed before when it happened to be near. So I climbed it and Bartholomeo followed me and when we were standing on a platform, I turned around to him and he was already standing kind of near to the edge. I just took one tiny step forward and Ezio just slightly raised his hand and that was enough to shove Bartholomeo into death and me into starting the quest all over again. It just looked that ridiculous that I could not stop laughing and I wasn't even mad about having to do everything again.


And now I can go on to be really excited to play again. Yay!!!