MadCap's Game Reviews - "Skyrim: Dragonborn DLC"

It’s a good thing that this a written review instead of an audio one, largely due to the fact that I am really unable to properly form any sort of words with my mouth after playing this new DLC, much less any sentences.  This DLC is amazing! When Hearthfire came out a few months ago, I was vastly disappointed.  The kind of disappointment one really only receives from being promised the world and being given a rusty tin can and some string.  Dragonborn has proven to be everything that the previous DLC, for all its lovely aesthetic appeal that didn’t save it from being completely pointless, was not.

The storyline was picked up by my Dovahkiin in the city of Whiterun, where he was approached by two strange looking cultists (very reminiscent of the Knights of Order from Shivering Isles) who inquired as to whether or not I am the true Dragonborn.  After telling them I was, they made a poor life choice that resulted in them being piles of ash on the small bridge by the blacksmith and I found among their remains a note that led me to Windhelm, and eventually to the island of Solstheim.  That’s right, the beloved stomping ground of werewolves in Morrowind’s expansion Bloodmoon returns and has changed significantly since the time the Nerevarine came to meet the channel of Hircine.

The story follows the Dragonborn learning that the many sacred stones of the Skaal people have been corrupted by some unknown force that is getting anyone who comes into contact with it to build temples around them.  Sooner than later, we discover the identity of the cultists’ leader – the original Dragonborn.  And you lore fanatics might be screaming that it’s Saint Alessia, but it is in fact and individual that we’ve never met or heard of before.  I have to admit, that is a little disappointing (and given lore, more than a little confusing), but it soon becomes irrelevant as you go on more and more through the storyline.

It quickly becomes clear that your Dragonborn much become stronger than the one currently rising in Solstheim.  To do so, you seek the help of Hermaeus Mora, Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Memory, and can find a few new words to channel into Shouts.  The DLC also gives you a variety of new armors and weapons to try out that those players of Morrowind should find quite familiar – Bonemould and Chitin – as well as badass new Nordic armors among other things.

I really did enjoy playing through this DLC and I think you will, too.  I speak, of course, from a position of not even being remotely done.  Even after wrapping up the main questline of the Dragonborn, most of Solstheim is left open before me, untouched.  There are still many Dwemer ruins and Dragon temples to explore, and I wish to leave no stone unturned and you shouldn’t either.  The nods to things in Morrowind are just great and a big gushing point for me, as Morrowind remains to this day one of my favorite games.  Even some of the remains of House Redoran and Telvanni make appearances.  The homages are done in a way that doesn’t get in the way of the main story, and I like that.

Where Dragonborn falls short for me is in two areas: 1) The Dragon shout that allows you to tame and ride dragons, and 2) Morrowind itself.  The shout has a problem in that, I can get a dragon to come down and mount it, but I’m not even sure that I’m controlling where it goes.  When I tamed a dragon for the second time, in the forests of Solstheim (so I could test it out in a non-plot related event), the dragon would go in a certain direction for a set amount of time, and then loop back around.  No matter how I moved the control stick, it seemed I was unable to much control its movements.  Being able to lock onto targets from the air would be nice, but when are you ever going to have that many enemies to rain fire down upon? My Dragonhunter character, my main play right now, is nearing level 45 and he can easily dispatch even a crowd of enemies very well on his own.  But usually enemies aren’t in mobs of more than three or four.  I could see this being useful for maybe a bandit or a Forsworn camp, but not much else.  And if you can’t even really steer the dragon, what’s the point?  It just seems rather cheap for a mechanic that Bethesda was so blatant about promoting as something awesome.

And then, there’s Morrowind itself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Morrowind is probably one of my favorite games of all time. It had depth and complexity to almost every facet of the storyline, it was just great and well thought out and all that. And the scenery, well it’s a Bethesda game, so the scenery is kind of a given it always looks good. But traipsing around the island of Vvardenfell, there was always this strange, exotic look to everything. When I first played it, I could see just from that that this was not the normal sword and sorcery tales I had grown so accustomed to. This was something wholly unique.

 I’m not really fond of Bethesda’s decision to have had the Red Mountain erupt and render Vvardenfell effectively uninhabitable, because it robs us of seeing so much amazing things that could have been done with Skyrim’s graphics engine.  Not to mention, I would have just loved to see how Vvardenfell had progressed in the 200 years since we last saw it.  It just seems like a rather cheap cop out, especially almost taunting us with Solstheim – an island that was within swimming distance in Bloodmoon – being the setting for this one.  But, I suppose in the end, it’s not all that bad and it doesn’t at all ruin the charm of this DLC.  If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and 1600 Microsoft Points lying around, I highly recommend that you get it.  It is completely worth it.

Oh, and the PS3 crowd will actually be getting this one, Bethesda has said. It’s about time, guys.

Dragonborn DLC is RELEASED!

...no, really. Why are you here? If you have Xbox Live, then go! Get going! It's available for download for 1600 Points.

Also, some astounding good news.  If you're a PS3 user, they have worked out the issues for at least this DLC, so you all will be getting it shortly.

So, with that bit of news, I'm off to the lands of Solstheim. Go for it! Reviews coming again soon!!!!

MadCap's Mad Ranting - "Blizzard vs. Greedy Idiot!"

I was sent a link leading to a story of a most idiotic nature. It appears that Blizzard has a class-action lawsuit up against it because someone apparently decided they wanted in on Blizzard's profits for the year Blizzard hasn't been doing its duties to its consumer base playing online games! That's right! Blizzard, the MMORPG titan of the gaming industry has been, to quote the article, "deceptively and unfairly charging some users to secure their data from hackers."

HOW. DARE. THEY?!

My mock rage disguising my irritation at this aside, this looks just like a mad cash grab by one Benjamin Bell, the plantiff leading the suit against Blizzard. He's claiming that the mighty Bliz has failed to properly protect player information, and when hacks did occur, they failed to properly inform players and take steps to help prevent the incident.

I can already say that that's an enormous load of dung for a simple reason that I actually have already mentioned in my mock-enraged paragraph: Blizzard is the MMORPG titan of the gaming industry. It's not an opinion, they really are, just on World of Warcraft alone. They've set a standard and have done very well off of it (which only leads me to believe more and more that Mr. Bell is attempting to force Blizzard to cough up some cash), and the absolute last thing that they would do would be to misinform players about a security risk that might lose them their profits from their consumers. But this also ties into another issue that kind of destroys Mr. Bell's entire argument.

When you sign up for something online, put information into any system, you're taking a risk. Blizzard does what it can to ensure that all information that they take in from players is protected, but there is no such thing as perfect system. Blizzard, as I've stated above, is more than likely to be doing everything they can to protect player information and inform them of any problems that may develop. It's a security issue, and this is an age where people who know how can easily hack into just about any system and take whatever information they like. It's really just common sense. Of course, Mr. Bell seems to want Blizzard to, in addition to paying damages, not make players sign up for a Battlenet account when they buy a Blizzard game for use online.

It's not only an incredibly stupid demand - how do you improve security without a security system? - but it could affect many similiar systems in the gaming industry.  Xbox Live, for example? Or just about any MMORPG out there?  But I doubt that the illustrious Mr. Bell has thought about the long-term repercussions of this on the world of gaming.

So either Benjamin Bell is a complete idiot or he's greedy. And either way, I hope Blizzard's lawyers send him packing when they actually get to court.

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Mystic Forest"

XBLA "Cover Art"

Obi-Wan Kenobi once spoke of Mos Eisley Spaceport with great infamy, claiming that “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” a claim I would make about the Xbox Live Arcade’s Indie Games.  Now I’ve reviewed some indie games in the past – namely the titan that is Minecraft (it’s Xbox 360 port, anyway) Ib, and Cthulhu Saves the World, all of which I’ve enjoyed for one reason or another.  However, with the recent update to Xbox (and seriously, could they find somewhere to place more ads?) I found a “Recommendations” tab based on games that I’ve played in the past or have shown interest in.

While most of them were not really my cup of tea, I found one called “Mystic Forest”, which depicted an anime-style fairy woman with her eyes lidded and her mouth about half open as she was grasped by what I could figure from my best guess were tentacles.

…yes, I know you can see where this is going.

I only picked up the demo, however, because it was free.  I didn’t expect it to be able to learn everything I needed to know about the game in literally five minutes! I’m not sure whether to express my disgust or give the makers of it a medal.

The game begins at the start up menu with a prompt of “Press Start”, which then opens up the real start up menu, and the depiction of two large breasted women clad in a thin sheet of cloth each standing thigh deep in some green liquid that I hoped to God was water. I could use this section of my review to go on a tirade about how this is just cheap pandering in order to bring in what they believe will be their target demographic.  Except this game doesn’t really have a target demographic, as I’m sure you’ll quickly realize.

Developed by Team Shuriken (makers of similar games such as Dream Divers and Ninjas and Priestess, all of which seem to have a similar…ahem, aesthetic appeal), the game puts you in the role of Philippe, a hero who is “no strange to the humdrum life of a farmer as he plos the field”.  Besides the typo (and several others throughout the game, ever heard of editors, guys?) the text based intro is literally a list.  It’s stating facts about a character, in this case “Philippe”, much like I’d write out a grocery list. Of course at that point, I didn’t realize what I was playing was a text adventure.

I’m not a big fan of text adventures, and this game didn’t help me see any sort of light.  And it’s not that I’m not fond of reading, I do read (somewhat sporadically, by my own admission), but this is a game, and last I checked games were supposed to be a visual medium.  One could make the argument that this is indeed being a visual medium with the pictures it displays next to the walls of text as you progress, but as your focus is supposed to be on the text and not on the image, I call BS.  The image is pretty much there as an ornamentation or titillation (anime-style women everywhere, at least we can say the box art doesn’t lie) and serves no purpose beyond that.

But the story picks up with “Philippe”, a peasant farmer - who somehow talks as though he’s a snarky, ironic twenty something – tending to his garden of vegetables for his vegan ex-girlfriend……..never expecting to find a fairy agonizing in his field of salad.

No, that’s almost word for word how it’s written in the game.

The fairy, Elfia, asks for help because, “I can not find the way to my village, which is located in the heart of Mystic Forest.”

Is anyone else seeing a problem yet?

But you get the option to either help her or leave her be with the push of a button.  Choosing to leave her be gets you a smack over the head from the game and a “Try Again” screen, because apparently you’re lame.  If you accept you get the small map screen, which looks like a D&D map that is actually pretty well sketched on a napkin, and some options to travel.  This pretty much represent the entire demo that I played through.  

And just to make sure, I actually went and exhausted every option I was given.  And the one thing I can say about this game is really just that it’s boring. All there is to it is just walls and walls of text.  But I’m sure even fans of text adventures really wouldn’t find this all that appealing.  Even if this were in the era when text adventure games were a big thing, it has so many problems that drag it down.  The typos throughout, a really simplistic narration that almost seems like it’s insulting my intelligence, and just a feeling that I really don’t have any control over what’s going on.  With games, that’s a problem.

I suppose that last thing is what it all boils down to for me, a lack of control.  I don’t expect to be completely in control, that’s no fun, but I expect to have some degree of control and for some of my actions to hold some weight.  Mystic Forest, however, thinks it would be best for me to just pick from a drop down menu of options and watch them get played out.  I don’t feel invested, I almost feel like I’m being insulted when things are explained, and the distinctive lack of anything remotely interactive in what is supposed to be an interactive medium make me scratch my head and wonder how this thing ever came to be.

…

…and no, by the way, it’s not good porn, either.

MadCap's Mad Rantings - Will there finally be some Skyrim DLC for PS3?

It may be possible. In the future. I know you all haven't been following my exhaustive ranting on Bethesda and their apparently inability to bring "Dawnguard" to PS3 users. Now, just shortly after the release of their trailer for "Dragonborn", the third DLC in the bunch. It might be that Bethesda is finally getting its stuff together. A recent tweet from the Bethesda reads, quote "To Update: we're close on new Skyrim content for PS3 and PC."

Now does this mean that Dawnguard may be getting its long awaited PS3 release? I don't know, but I suppose that it technically counts as "new" content for PS3 users, as the very least. At least I certain hope that that is what they're doing. Most people by this point, I'm sure, have moved on from it, though the few that remain are still hoping and a move like this is just what Bethesda needs as some damage control for the whole situation. The fact is, they didn't want to release a less than quality product and I can respect that. The problem is that they didn't say what the problem was and when a theory was presented, you denied it outright. So giving the people who are your consumers nothing to go on, no indication of just what the problem is, and that isn't really enough to keep them loyal. They were left out in the cold, and that's just not good for your image, Bethesda.

I do sincerely hope that this tweet means that they're making at least some progress on taking care of the problems and bringing Dawnguard to the PS3 crowd at long last. They've been waiting a while, Bethesda, and I'll be honest, they deserve it. Especially those of them that have stuck it out for as long as they have waiting.  

MadCap's Trailer Reactions - "Skyrim: Dragonborn"

...well, I need a cigarette.

It seems that in spite of their inability to get Dawnguard out for PS3 and their less than pleasing addition to their DLCs, it seems that Bethesda might finally be hitting the high notes once more with "Dragonborn", a DLC out for release on December 4th of this year, just in time for...a few weeks before Christmas. And I'm not gonna lie, this actually looks really good.

If you've played Skyrim, then chances are you've run into at least one of the Dragon Priests that are entombed in the icy wilderness in various dungeons, caves, and even mountaintops, each one with their own nifty mask and if you could kill them all, you could use their masks to get a super special awesome mask. Now here comes Dragonborn, the third DLC, that teases of 'the first Dragonborn', attempting to rise once again. This is an idea that was teased in vanilla Skyrim, that perhaps the player character was not the only Dragonborn.

And outside of the storyline - Morrowind-esque buildings and scenery, brand new enemies to impale on a sword, and...dragon mounts?! Yes, it seems we will be able to put dragons to use as mounts, though how this will be applied to the game world is left unknown for the time being. All I can say? Sign me up. The whole thing.

And guys, please work it out and send it to the PS3 people, too. (Yes, I'm still on about that)

And I do wonder just how we'll have to deal with the newly-awakened older Dragonborn.  Because, after all...

In the end...there can be only one!

Dragonborn will be available for download from Xbox Live on December 4th for 1600 MSP.

Hopefully it will be available for the PS3 crowd, too...