Hustlin' through the Old Republic: It's lonely in the galaxy, well this one at least

I was excited to go back into playing SWTOR this time around being away from it for awhile I returned to find my guild basically the way it was since I left with not many people on at all, before I had left last time I had befriended stacyj from the Republic side who I’d said if my current guild had not seemed to get any more populated I’ll switch over to the Academy Exemplar who she was part of. So since she was online I decided to take her up on the offer and joined, Academy Exemplar (along with their Empire Sister guild: Lyceum Narcissus) are a pretty good guild they have a guild website and possibly will be getting a Teamspeak channel soon. I can’t tell you how good it was to have people to talk to about SWTOR as I don’t really know anyone who plays it and the playerbase has unfortunately dropped even more since my last post and it’s becoming increasingly hard for players on our server to complete or even participate in end-game content.

There has recently been a large “Consolidation” or “Merging” as it would be more commonly known of the US and European SWTOR servers I only realised this when I came back that Bioware had gotten rid of a heap of US and European servers, where there used to be 20 or 30 servers for each of those regions this is now  8 for US and 9 for UK (3 each for England, France, Germany) What I think is that they've obviously had to do the cull as more than half of them I noticed when looking at the TorStatus constantly had a light population status. There has been some recent discussion and general buzz as well as apparently some formal communication with Bioware from Visz Alliance the main guild on the server, (well on the Republic side at least)

Oh no!, I'll never defeat that World Boss on my own, and with the population in the state that it is, who will help me? 

  I personally support a merge with Dalborra as I don't RP myself and I'm pretty sure most people on the server don't anyway. I'm certain that the small number of people who do RP could put up with some of the more rude or elitist players that can be found on normal servers in favour of a better game experience. That's probably the best I can hope for though according to TorStatus I noticed that the Asia-Pacific PvP server Master Dar'nala has the world’s lowest population so I don't know how Bio are going to solve that problem, Imagine if they merged all three AU servers into one and made it PvP! Ah wouldn’t that be fun, not.  However there is and was only ever 3 oceanic server, one PvE one PvP and one RP PvE and I highly doubt Bioware will merge the three into one or even two as this tweet %90 confirms.

Oh lordy lord the irony,

Believe it or not I actually originally chose to come to Gav Daragon around March 2012 (when the game came out in AUS) because according to TorStatus  the population rate of the Asia-Pacific normal PvE server Dalborra was actually quite heavy. Around that time it was actually the third most popular server in the world with an average population index of 2.52 (the largest at the time being the US "The Fatman" server with 2.56) and in some cases you had to wait to login. But unfortunately now it’s only reasonably populated making it ideal for play which is a cruel twist of fate. I reckon it's just people being unhappy with the game and moving on to others specifically things like Guild Wars 2, some people I know go through games at an insane rate and it's always "hey buy this game it's great! buy that game! what are you still playing that for? buy this and play it!" and I seriously cbf I mean I'm still happily playing GTA4 which came out in 2008, the only problem is with multiplayer games you like, need people to play it

Good thing I've got guildies!

Apart from a few issues, namely, no auto-attack, duel spec (yet) or allowance for player-made interface mods I'm fine with the game, I wanted a Star Wars version of WoW with a player storyline and that’s what I got, it's where people who were expecting greatness that were let down. Believe me I’m resisting going back to WoW as it seems a lot of people have done most probably because of this which I won’t mention but to be honest it is tempting going back to a large playerbase and a new expansion, but I’ve bought SWTOR and I intend to play until I can’t anymore, whether that lasts for as many years as WoW kept me occupied only time will tell.

But anyway, back to the latest in my Jedi/Sith ventures

Well If I can remember correctly on my Jedi I finished the whole planet of Quesh, which was even more of a monster ridden toxic waste dump than Balmorra so much so that before you went down they gave me some kind of injection to survive the hazardous environment though it was only a short stay as it’s only supposed to be a two level planet. 

Quesh, quite a messy place

I then went on to start Hoth in which for some reason I had continuous framerate issues whereas my FPS would go more than 30, this had happened before both in SWTOR and WoW and I only had to close and restart the game in order for it to go back to normal though I did this several times and it didn’t seem to work. After a bit of frustration I found that because I play in fullscreen windowed mode and I was out of the main screen when It loaded which somehow created the problem with the FPS, but anyway it hasn’t happened again so it seems to be fine. With Hoth the first thing I noticed that it was goddamn bright, I was even squinting at the screen in some cases because the entire landscape was white, though this was a given really cause Hoth as most people would know is an ice planet with a large amount of snow, first time I’d ever considered wearing sunglasses to play a game. 

Scene like this are particularly squint worthy.

The "Invisible Foes" heroic quest on Hoth, brightness and lightsabres everywhere, gah my eyes

I’ve noticed that Datacrons seem to be getting tougher to acquire especially the Matrix Shards, for example I have a RYY (one red two yellow 28 strength, 14 endurance) level 24 Matrix cube but in order to get the next one (YRR 29 str 33 end) I’ll either need to pay 18,000 credits to obtain another red matrix shard on Hoth or just wait to get to Ilum where I can get it for free, and I’m not even going to think about what I need to do to get a level 50 one (GGG 66 str, 56 end) as obviously the way the Matrix shards go you won’t be able to get three of the same colour until the end of the game.

Ooooo green glowy box!

 Well Hoth went pretty well I can’t really remember what the main storylines were or why I was there to be honest but I do know when I finished  that was the end of Act 2 which I now released I’ve forgotten to mention in my posts. The “acts” as I refer to them refer to different climaxes and crucial plot points in your characters storyline, I’m not going to spoil what happens but the second one of the Jedi Knight was pretty intense I can tell you and was a real “wow so how’s this going to work out?” vibe to it. There’s apparently 3 acts in your characters storyline with the last one ending after you are level 50, I’m quite looking forward to both the first one on my Sith Inquisitor and the last one on my Jedi Knight. I've also gotten full affecxtion with Kira and even "married" her if you can call it that, I must have banged her 7-8 times during that whole thing ka-chow anyway since I've got no more romantic options availiable I've had to decided to my next companion character and thats between: T7-01, Doc, Sergeant Rusk and Lord Scourge. And I'm happy to say I picked T7, he is a tank character, which I don't really need and relatively weak, but I can't help liking the little dude and watching him kick ass.

T7 and I, the Jedi Guardian and his faithful Droid companion (I bought the green custom color for him)

I’ve now started Belsavis on my Jedi which is some sort of mass prison complex, shortly after starting though I reached level 45 in which I decided to go back my Sith Inquisitor: Kxan.

Now I was at a crucial point with Kxan I’d just finished the Dromund Kass missions and was now on to either Balmorra or Nar Shaddaa now according to this chart of the planets in SWTOR and the suggested levels the lowest was level 16 but after Korriban and Dromund Kass I was already level 20. I may have mentioned this before in previous posts but I’ve had a continuous problem with what seems like I’m leveling too fast which can be dissected by  a number of reasons. When I played WoW all I needed to do was determine which zone/area of the world was the appropriate level for me and I would go there and level up, this was made much easier when I got the Cataclysm expansion as all the quests for the region were in the one questline which could be started from notice boards and NPC’s in the main cities which let you know where you could go at your current level. 

It looks pretty empty but I actually ended up doing some heroics on Balmorra (under duress of course) I even ended up tanking a heroic-4 in which I did pretty well.

 However WoW had no character storylines only area/zone storylines whereas SWTOR has both, I’m not sure exactly how it all balances out but it definitely adds to the xp you get. Also as well as flashpoints/instances SWTOR has Space Combat missions which aren’t mandatory but any SWTOR player would be insane not to try it. When I finished Coruscant on Jxan I was about level 20 same as Kxan and I found that I had two options: one to go to Taris with was level 16-20 and Nar Shadaa which was level 20-24. Now in WoW terms I would have gone straight to Nar Shadaa but it was apparent that I had story missions for both planets and couldn’t do one or the other. So when going to Taris I felt compelled to do all the missions I could find, inc the bonus series which are some sort of strange offshoot of missions that start in various level ranges for example the planet Alderaan supposedly goes from 28-32 but you get the quests for the bonus series around 35-36.


Doing the "Companion Dance" ability with Khem Val, looks quite ridiculous I can assure you
 

So it was an amalgamation of these reasons for you levelling up pretty damn fast so after some research and guildy discussion I decided that the best option as to go to Balmorra and try to do as little of the missions as possible apart from the main story quest, so instead of taking everything on I only did the story missions plus some others I decided to do which were convenient and or any heroics that people roped me into helping them with. It worked out pretty well though next time I might try and do less as even though I did that Nar Shadaa is 20-24 and I’m 25 and not even halfway through but anyway, it’s better than Jxan where I’m constantly trying to stop my quests going grey. Though there is one thing I’m worried about that that is credits, as in if I do less quests I get less credits and I get kind of low when purchasing speeders/etc and the other things is since I can actually send mail between the Republic/Empire factions I’ve been using the resources I’ve collected from Archaeology and using them for the Artifice skill that Kxan does, the one for all the Jedi lightsabre and trinket making. 

With the leftover resources I’ve been sending them to Jxan for making any gear he can to upgrade what Khem Val and I are wearing. Although these upgrade are sometimes quite large I can’t help thinking it’s just not really worth it as I’ve had pieces of gear drop which I’ve had to think about whether I want to replace or not in which I definitely would if I didn’t have it made, and the companion have their gear upgraded automatically through normal quests albeit slowly. All this drains the credits quite a bit though I’ve bought my first speeder now and seem to be back up to speed (bahaha!) with credits.

Having so many companions and then alts to keep track of their gear is no small feat, especially when you can send cross-faction mail.

Speaking of speeders, I've become really disappointed with the endgame level 50 ones, I mean they just look horrible, the hoverbike things you get at level 25 and 40 look reasonably fine, but these car-like things look pretty ridiculous and huge I might add. Like for example they look like they'd be a two seater vehicle except the other side has been covered over so it's just your character sitting on the left with just the rest of the ship on the other side. Does this mean their going to make the speeders dual seater eventually? and if not why not just model them with the driver's seat in the freakin middle of the thing it's look much better and be smaller I might add. I can tell you if they don't change I won't really be celebrating getting one of these.

Nice ride buddy, got room in there for two? oh nope that's ok would have been pretty suss anyway

Damn the traffic at this hour is terrible

Well I can really feel the effects of the server drop now as it’s getting harder to get groups together, I’m levelling along good on my Assassin and almost got my second companion now but I just can’t seem to get a flashpoint going without guildie help, especially on Empire side, I’m just going to have to see how it goes I suppose as long as I get some flashpoints done though I really don’t know what endgame is going to be like once I reach 50 on my Jedi Guardian. Well at least I’ve got a good guild, who luckily is in league with what is possibly the biggest guild on the server.Though because of my insistence on playing my Sith Assassin I joined the Academy Exemplar empire sister guild: Lyceum Narcissus, in which I left my previous empire guild and went from having a few people online to no-one online most of the time but meh, I may as well be on the sister guild of my main one in so people can find me.

Admiring the view while finally getting to do the Mandolorian Raiders flashpoint, guildy Terril was nice enough to run me through it. perfect loot run for me too got 4  or 5 new gear peices

I’ve had a brief look at the new free-to-play preview but I can honestly say I will stay a subscriber, I don’t actually buy many games anymore so I’ll at least support the ones I play online, plus I’ll be able to reap all the benefits they give to existing subscribers. I can only hope that this move will bring more people to (or back) to the game so we can all have a better experience.

JD

Trying to resist the Dark Side but this ain't helping

The Important Pieces of Paper - Skyrim, I return much more quietly, Part 1

I'm going to sneak another post topic in here, since I seem to be playing Skyrim a lot more than I thought and I'll possibly be playing the next Elder Scrolls game too, so I present : “The Important Pieces of Paper” I have also decided since this post is so goddamned huge I'm going to split it up between two parts which I should have done since I took a break in playing GTA4 The Ballad of Gay Tony so this post will be titled "Part 1" because that's so original.

Well I’ve started playing Skyrim again, I thought I’d write this just to detail my new experience through the game as I had to go through it again at least twice. I’d previously played the whole way through as a 2-hand Warrior which was a lot of fun and wrote my Usual Spiel review on the game roughly back in January 2012.

I’d always thought about trying it again playing as Mage as it sounded quite fun to use Magic and fling fire and lightning spells around and it was fun for a little while to begin with. I soon found that even with the new magic kill animations (which looked quite cool I might add) and the two handed lightning and flame throwing and the conjuring of undead and animal spirits to help you wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. I found myself still reverting to being stealthy and using my bow, I also found that actively fighting with only cloth armor and magical spells to protect me was actually quite difficult, and probably the most annoying thing was all of the spells  you had to juggle around as you could only have one in each hand at the time. It was miles away from the simplicity of being a Warrior in heavy armor swinging around a two handed weapon, also I realized that one of the good points of playing Skyrim is that you could really get the feel of combat swinging your swords and maces around and really feel the “thunk” of your arrows penetrating their skull.


A detailed and well made video on the new "killcam" finishing moves of the 1.5 update, man I didn't even know you could some of these things, unarmed finishing moves? I've never even tried that.

So I thought since I’ve already done a Warrior the logical character type to play would be a Thief, as I’ve always wanted to heavily use bows and this wasn’t the case as a warrior and also I wanted to do some stealth killing with knives Tenchu-style, I decided on a Wood Elf (or Bosmer) for the race as I didn’t really want to go as a Khajit which was the other one of the two suited for the Thief style. It’s been great so far. All the stealth kills with bows and daggers look awesome especially the new arrow kill-cam sequences which gives a great “oh yehhh hwoooo!” feel and I use one or two swords if I have to melee.  Another reason for playing the game a second time around was that I could join the Thieves Guild and possibly the Dark Brotherhood and play through their quest storylines and get the gear etc.

Interesting looking dude aren't I? like some kind of emo indie rocker.

I started to notice however that npc's still weren't exactly that smart (maybe because of the difficulty level) for example if they found a colleague shot with an arrow they can be heard saying "I'll get whoever did this" but when shot themselves they just end up giving up the search and going back to their normal routine often with more then two arrows in them.

For some reason this guy took not one but arrows to the head before he went down, I think he had a helmet on but I don't see how that would make any difference, must have been one tough motherfudger.

This time though I was not going to repeat the same annoying necessity of quick travelling  to several towns in order to sell my collected items, so from the start I used the console commands to give myself two Speech perks: Merchant and Master Trader which allows me to sell any item to any trader and gives all trader’s 1000 more gold for bartering. I did this because I didn’t want to waste any time running around trying to find merchants who still had some bartering gold left. Also last time I went through the game I finished at about level 42 and never ended up getting the higher perks so this time I decided that as I levelled up the skills and the skill the point became available I would get whatever I could right then through the console commands regardless of how many points I had to spend, this would make sure that I could experience all the perks even if I didn’t get to level 50.

My current speech perk tree, notice how the top one is bright but not linked? I'm sorry I just had to

Doing the main storyline is kind of weird since I’m playing as a thief but it’s ok. I’ve found that being stealthy takes somewhat longer to finish missions and also I find if I have to resort to melee using a 1H sword isn’t damaging enough and using two 1h swords and not being able to block with only light armor to protect myself is quite hazardous so I sometimes just melee anyway against weaker opponents just to raise my light armor skill. Plus it’s so much faster just running in and slicing them up and if you have any trouble just use the Sanguine Rose which is a very useful item I can tell you. I feel like I last finished this game so long ago and just want to create a warrior again for fun and go round upgrading my sets of armor and weapons as I go (i.e. Iron, Steel, Plate). With my Thief it seems that my Thieves Guild armor is the best around for a long while and you also have the option to upgrade the enchants which is something I’ve never seen before, not to mention better armor as you progress along the Thieves Guild  storyline, I think I’d better hurry up with it actually otherwise I’ll spend half the game playing in the entry-level guild armor. Once I finished the appropriate mission I chose to upgrade my chestpiece to carry more stuff, as I couldn’t really decide so I just decided to do that.

Me looking out over Whiterun. You can't really see my Thieves guild armor in this picture but it looks pretty cool nonetheless as if I'm lookout out over a town that's ripe for the plucking.

Well I’m back after a brief ‘episode’ (hah!) enjoying GTA4: Episodes from Liberty City, The Ballad of Gay Tony, which I have detailed in this post. I needed a break as I think I’ve taken longer to get through Skyrim this time than on my warrior, most probably because all the sneaking and stealthing around does take longer than running in like a maniac and cleaving your enemies in two. I’ve also started to go all out with my two swords more often now as I get more powerful, it’s unfortunately a bit more dangerous wearing only light armor and not having all the perks but that’s the way it is when your usually sneaking around all the time  I also think I’ve done more missions this time and found more things not to mention I’m doing both the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood missions. Speaking which I have now finished the Thieves Guild storyline which I’m not going to spoil but was quite the exciting, even got the quite nice looking Nightingale Blade out of it which has a damn good enchant on it but drains it’s power like anything making you constantly having to fill it up, not to mention the Nightingale Bow though this wasn’t as good as my current glass bow.

I also acquired the Dawnbreaker which looks like it’s some kind of opposite of the Nightingale Blade. You get it from cleansing the Shrine of one of Daedric Princes Meridia (who is actually female) this thing one of the best undead killing enchants around, kill an undead with this sword and it creates a fiery explosion that turns or destroys nearby undead.  

My Nightingale Blade and the Dawnbreaker

I also finally obtained the Nightingale Armor this armor was highly recommended by my brother who got it previously which looked awesome and was pretty cool though it had a few flaws, I couldn’t wear the hood as it had “Illusion spells cost 17% less to cast.” And I didn’t cast spells at all plus I had a hard time deciding whether to wear the Nightingale armor which had a stamina increase and frost resistance but looks really cool or my Glass armor which was a higher armor rating and I had put an increased health enchant on it. I decided to switch between the two and use the glass armor for Dragon fights along with my glass gauntlets which have an archery bonus. As I said before I’m not going to spill the questline but I did obtain the Skeleton Key which acts as an unbreakable lockpick which unfortunately you have to return in order to finish the questline, I kind of wish I had waited, though there’s always the “Unbreakable” perk if I ever get up that far.

Here's a shot of me, Brynjolf and Karliah in our Nightingale get-up, I'm wearing the Krosis Mask but you get the idea

I also have joined the Dark Brotherhood and started the quests, which are pretty easy I can tell you with me now having 100 Sneak skill and all the perks for it, I mean when I’m sneaking I’m almost undetectable unless I actually dry hump someone, I’ve killed a few people now and made a few bucks, I can also say that the storyline is quite entertaining and will continue to be from what I've heard.

That giant's in for it, cause I'm such a stealthy guy, oh yeh.

My (dark) brother (ahah!) also informed me of something I’d kind of forgotten, namely the Dragon Priest Masks he said that the Krosis one was very good for Thieves, and if you look at the stats that is quite true, apparently if you collect all the masks you can combine them to create a very powerful one, but since it’s Heavy Armor I’ll wait until I do a warrior again. It’s kind of funny walking around talking to people with one of these things on, they can’t see your face at all I almost forgot to take mine off when I got married, not that your bride kisses you anyway, I guess that’s one area where Skyrim is lacking, no sex, gah a game without sex what’s the world coming to? I suppose Bethesda isn’t as kinky as Bioware, though they had to tone it down for SWTOR no tainting the LucasArts image eh?

"Hey there good-lookin, no this isn't my face, my actual face is pretty damn sexy"

Another thing I have recently tried out is player-made housing after paying a hefty amount of gold for Proudspire Manor in Solitude and yes I know I’m not part of the Imperials I just wanted it as it was the most expensive house and I wanted to see what it was like, and to be honest, it wasn’t all that crash hot, compared to Hjerim in Windhelm, it was smaller and didn’t really have very much amenities such as bookshelves or any display cases for weapons, so I decided I’d go online and try out some more game modifications. Now mods, in case you didn’t know, are a very large part of Skyrim, one of the main websites Skyrim Nexus where I get my mods from has almost 20,000 files worth of player made, mods, fixes and game changes a few of which I’ll recommend below.

These are all pretty easy to install, just remember to read the instructions on the site.

QD Inventory – Makes your inventory interface easier to manage though I might possibly replace it with SkyUI which is quite possibly the most popular mod in the Skyrim Nexus

A Quality World map with Roads – pretty self explanatory adds paths and roads to the map

Glowing Ore Veins – Makes ore much easier to see

Auto Unequip Ammo – helpful mod that automatically removes the arrows from your back when not wielding a bow

Arrowsmith – Create arrows and bows using blacksmithing

Lost Art of the Blacksmith – Adds missing and extra blacksmith recipes

Glowing Ore veins: now imagine how hard that would be to spot wihtout the white paint, and yes I know it's not realistic but you try spotting the ore at night.

That’s only a few and there are a lot more good ones out there, but anyway where was I? ah yes I was looking for a new house, now Skyrim is an easily modified game, I’ve never tried it myself but with the amount of mods and changes people have made to the game it can’t be that hard. Now if any of you have played Skyrim you’ll know that your character requires certain world objects to store items and perform tasks for example you all know you have a carry limit, and those Dragon bones and scales are damn heavy and secondly the profession that your character can undertake inc Alchemy, Enchanting and Blacksmtihing all require certain tables, forges, smelters/etc to do your work, there are already houses in the game that can be bought with some of these amenities in them though this pales in comparison to the convenience, utility and coolness factor of most player-made housing which most often have everything you could possibly need included inside (and sometimes outside) the house.

The blacksmtihing section of the Asteria proving that even on a ship you can still have all of your blacksmithing needs. in the one place

So I had a look through the player-made houses section of the Nexus and found some pretty cool looking hunter/rustic inspired ones incl Ranger Ridge and Riverside Lodge, as I didn’t want some huge castle playing as a Thief/Ranger/Assassin type I also found some utterly ridiculous ones such as the Dragonborn House and some absolutely beautiful looking ones such as Deus Mons. Though my original intention was to find a mod which fixed up Proudspire Manor so I found a good one and installed it and it did make the manor one hell of a lot better as it gave all the things like a full smithy and larger trophy room for all your collected wares and also makes the housecarl room a bit nicer. I had a look at this and it looked pretty damn cool but then had a bit of a revelation, why would I stay in this normal looking, boring house when I could have something so much better free of charge. So had another look through the houses, I decided on Deus Mons for my Warrior (or future warrior) as it was a pretty epic medieval castle with actual NPC’s to fill it with made by this guy called ‘Eldiabs’ whose other player houses were equally as awesomely well made. But there was one which unfortunately for the sake of what realism there is in Skyrim I couldn’t pass over.

The Deus Mons Castle by Eldiabs, large, beautfiul, but functional

The Asteria, is a flying Dwemer Airship which according to the creator is %100 lore friendly which at first would be quite hard to believe, but if you’ve played most of the game you would know about the Dwemer race of dwarves and their steampunk style mechanical creations and the ship itself is entirely made up of objects from game so this thing wouldn’t be too far out of the ordinary.


One of the funniest comments I saw on the youtube video was this one: *gets married* wife: "we can live in my house if you want." me: "bitch, please..... i have a flying mansion." morgatron4639

Speaking of which there is a mod that helps with that which can be found here. I did get married actually and for some reason my bride walked away before the ceremony was even finished, I mean seriously I still have to find her and test out whether this mod works. I’ve noticed that mannequins behave rather strangely in player-made houses, if you can call being alive and moving around behaving strangely. It’s the weirdest thing ever, I walk through the door to the armory room of the ship and their all moving and walking around, some even look like their talking to each other, then about 5 or 10 seconds later they all zip back to their correct positions but stand in random poses, creepy.

Mannequins never learn to stay put do they? However this mod should help.

My brother was starting to play Skyrim again and he was looking for a house to inhibit for when he was first starting his character, something not too outlandish like a giant castle or a mansion on a cliff edge near a waterfall or a flying ship. So he found this snug little place called the Pinewood Cottage which sits in a pretty secluded spot between Falkreath and Helgen and needs no quests or prerequisites to get to and you can warp straight there. We had a good look inside and man it’s quite cramped but then how much room do you need? It almost has everything within arm’s reach apart from the smelter which he took quite a while to realise it was outside the “cottage”, I was wondering why they didn’t just extend the basement to fit the smelter in.It's truly a unique house which I will use if I ever start a warrior again.

The Pinewood Cottage, quaint-looking eh?

Real estate agent "Don't be worried by the size, it's actually quite spacious.... in the basement"

Surely with all the blacksmithing amenities within arms reach they could have done an extension or carved out the wall for the smelter? I mean it does belch smoke and that's probably why there's no forge in there but sure you could do a chimney coming out of the ground or something and not that I'm being picky but you can't forge armor with just an anvil.

So that will be all for now, I'll do another update with the ending of this blabbering journey soon as it'd be too much to read in the one post, hell, there might even be a part 3 the way I'm going.

JD

The Northern Lights, with two moons!

I used to write good one-liners, then I took an arrow to the knee

The Past and Times of Yore: GTA4, The Ballad of Gay Tony, Bringing back the crazy-go-nuts

Title: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
Developer: Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games (Parent Company: Take2 Interactive)
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Multiplayer: Up to 16 players on consoles; 32 on PC.
Website: www.rockstargames.com/theball...
Release Date: October 29, 2009 on X360; April 13, 2010 (USA) on PS3 and PC.
Rating: MA 17+ (ESRB); 18 (BBFC)

First off I will say I have already done a small review for TBOGT back in April 2011 but having recently played the game again I did want to expand on that as much as I could.

There was a time when I thought that GTA had gotten a bit more serious, that was of course when GTA4 came out. It was so great looking and smooth and the ragdoll and physics effects were awesome and the driving and shooting and overall animation and graphics were much more realistic overall, which wasn’t exactly too hard coming from San Andreas. While this newfangled animation did resolve with some ragdoll fun, most of the time I found myself trying to play mildly realistically even so much as early in the game and sometimes when I felt like it even abiding to the local street signs and traffic lights. With the release of the “Lost and the Damned” expansion this didn’t really change much, the biker gang story was just as gritty as the main GTA4 storyline. But I enjoyed the realism and playing properly though I couldn’t help thinking there was something missing.

GTA was based on gritty realism, TBOGT is safe to say is not in most regards.

When the newest expansion for GTA4 “The Ballad of Gay Tony” (TBOGT) came out thats where a lot of things changed. In contrast to the gritty underground life that was the Lost and the Damned This ‘episode’ focuses on the glitz, glamour, money and business of the Algonquin (aka Manhattan) night life, the game introduced new weapons, new vehicles, new radio tracks, new interiors, and new missions that offer a fresh way to explore Liberty City. The story starts off quite simple (in GTA terms), you are Luis Lopez, a hispanic American who has had a troubled childhood with both his friends and his family and has been through some rough times with drug gangs and jail and has just recently survived a bank robbery as an innocent bystander in which we all would know which bank robbery it was and who the culprits were. I love the fact that the main characters of the expansions have missions that intertwine with the ones from Niko who was the main protagonist in GTA4. So anyway Luis is now in a business partnership with Tony Prince aka “Gay Tony” who is a nightclub entrepreneur with links to the Ancelotti Crime Syndicate. Gay Tony operates two nightclubs in Algonquin - Hercules and Maisonette 9, he is also a drug addict, with many debts to pay off, and he relies on Luis as his bodyguard/business partner.

Tony and Luis hold a tenuous partnership

The first mission started out pretty normal, you drive to the two clubs and see Luis and Tony together and got to know the two personalities. I did notice that Rockstar had added new “clubber” citizens with the appropriate clothes and I have to say they did a pretty good job of simulating a nightclub, the music was there, the new radio stations and tracks were especially good in the club scene, the alcohol, the people, the vibe there was even people outside the venue drunk and throwing up. It became apparent in the second mission that this was not going to start off slow at all, you travel with Tony to the golf driving range where you take shots at a union official who is tied to a golf cart before his mafia friends arrive and you jump into your own golf cart for a short guns-blazing-golf-cart-chase through the city. After that things quickly spiral out of control and you’re doing jobs all over the place for eccentric millionaires, annoying pricks and powerful criminals alike to save Tony’s skin, things that involve blowing up speedboats with sticky bombs, stealing armed helicopters from luxury yachts, skydiving out of planes, jumping off buildings and stealing a moving train carriage using a skycrane.

Just a usual day at the office

All the side missions this time around are all just as crazy, they involve helping your friends Armando and Henrique steal drug shipments, base jumps from buildings, cage fighting and triathlons involving helicopters, speedboats and fast cars, you can also enjoy the clubs if you with, either by doing the dancing mini-game or working there as the manager occasionally being called out to do a favor for a celebrity of some sort. One of the main things that adds to the action is the introduction of some fairly ridiculous new weapons and vehicles which include:

Like Planet Rock!, we just don't stop we gonna drive you nuts!

• A longer more silly looking handgun.

• The AA-12 automatic shotgun with explosive rounds no less

• The P90 Assault SMG

• A Golden SMG that has a ridiculous 1000 rpm fire rate

• A heavy M249 machine gun

• A chunky looking advanced sniper rifle with laser sight.

• The return of the sticky bombs and grenade launcher from the Lost and the Damned as well as an armed helicopter with chainguns and rocket launchers and last but not least a SWAT tank with a full on assault cannon. If that doesn’t spell chaos then I don’ know what will.

Budda budda budda budda! kablamo! wachow! badda bing bong!

When playing GTA San Andreas it was hard to believe CJ went from a low-life gangster in LA to being a part owner of a Las Vegas Casino and The Ballad of Gay Tony does seem a lot like the time CJ spent in the Nevada desert doing seemingly secret-agent style missions. I’ll always love the whole “starting out in a new city with nothing and working up to something” style of story, but it was somewhat fun to be “starting out with lots of things and trying to stay alive” sort of story and throughout the missions there were a few times when I did think to myself “wow how are we going to get out of this one” as Luis struggles to deal with all the problems he has going for himself with his troubled mother, his friends Armando and Henrique, his suicidal stalker ex-girlfriend Margot, and not to mention all the people Tony has either pissed off or borrowed money from with his drug-fuelled antics.

Luis' friends Armando and Henrique aren't exactly supportive of him trying to reform his life though either does he the way he's looking with that fully automatic shotgun "Grrrrrrr"

I had only one occasion where I could experience the multiplayer and it was fun, but not as fun as it could have been, I played a bit at a LAN we we used the Simple Trainer to spawn cars, obstacles and generally cause some ruckus but what I really wanted was to do multiplayer base jumping and skydiving. I was really interested to see if they had a game mode where you could do the triathlon race with the helicopters, boats, cars and nitro with your friends but looking at the multiplayer modes unfortunately this wasn't the case though as you'll see below I did find some press screenshots of it so I don't whether it was originally in there or what.


"This ain't checkers" Triathlon Mission with Mori

Why wasn't this a multiplayer game moooooooooooode!

Overall I found The Ballad of Gay Tony a pretty fun experience, it brings back a few of the crazy things from San Andreas that were missing from GTA4 and really finishes off the game with a bang (literally!) It pays tribute to what the original game was built on freedom, chaos and thoughtless crime. This ‘episode’ has vice, sex, action and explosions out the wazoo and would satisfy anyone who was disappointed with the simplification of the original game. Sadly the multiplayer was never very active on PC at least though I thoroughly recommend for any fans of the GTA series.

JD

 
The Ballad of Gay Tony Debut Trailer

Menergy!

My Usual Spiel: F1 2011, To strive for perfection or misbehave

Release Date: 23 September 2011
Genre: Driving/Racing
Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Codemasters Racing
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

F1 2011 was a game that was suggested to me to try out by one of my friends Aaron Simpson, a friend whose experience with Japanese swords I couldn’t question but with video games I really had no idea. Though I was only trying out the game free of charge this time around unlike the instances of Magicka, Diablo III and possibly Arma II which I purchased on the proposition from friends that it was a game I would enjoy and found I actually didn’t in the end. But anyway I’d never played am F1 simulator before and who was I to refuse a driving game. I found starting out with the game pretty easy, I thought It was going to be a nightmare settings up all the controls and options but it turned out to be pretty easy almost over simplified I think as it struck me straight away that this was not a serious racing simulator such as Grand Turismo and not a crazy arcade racer like Burnout but sort of like a middle of the road one like Test Drive Unlimited 2 for example which is what I’m used to.

Ah the very start of the race, quite chaotic especially in Singapore at night

The experience of being a new F1 driver is fairly thorough you get a full on introduction and media interview though they don’t actually react to your answers, you also get a laptop with emails from your Team Manager your Race manager your PR Manager and your Manageering manager of managerial services but this is just formality basically as you are told what your targets are for each race anyway, things like placing 18^st or under which is pretty reasonable for your first time. So you select the race (Australia is first up as usual) and then you get straight to the garage and in the driver’s seat and have options to configure all this stuff and view these screens with things like, tyre type, weather, engine set up etc, but basically depending on the difficulty level you have it set on the options should be picked for you and you can go straight out and start.


"C'mon let's go man! it's all good, I'm good! I'm fine! get this damn computer off my car! dunno what most of it means anyway, wait I think I need to go to the toilet!, is there a toilet in here!? errgh aargh eeg! oh screw it let's goooo! woah! sorry about that buddy almost ran you over! woah this shit is fast!

To my annoyance you don’t actually drive the car out yourself, it’s automatically done for you to stop any speeding through the pits, but the problem with this is that the car keeps accelerating and they only give you control back on the first corner and you have to really make sure that you slow down. I actually tried turning all of the assists off and faired mostly fine without them surprisingly though I had a hard time measuring the throttle to my joystick, I use a Logitech Playstation2 style controller for PC and I use one joystick for steering and the other for acceleration and braking unlike the new PS3 one which had the bumper pads for accel/braking.

These two turns couldn't have gone any worse, I was having trouble getting used to the throttle and was accelerating way to fast.

So I did laps, and more laps, it was pretty challenging to start off with even on the easiest setting (especially in the freakin rain) but I got reasonably used to it. Though in order to get the full experience you really need the whole force feedback steering wheel/pedals set up of course I reckon it does make things harder especially when you not used to it.

You can apparently buy an F1 steering wheel pheripheral

Not that something like this wouldn't be even better.

In order to do your first race you first go out for practice to do a specific amount of laps which I’m not sure how many and ended up leaving having done about 5 and just gone with that time. I then had to do qualifying followed by the actual race. The Albert Park scene was good, I was ready to do then I did the 3 lap race and came 14^th which was pretty good, you really notice  If you happen to run into a wall and lose parts of your car the difference that it makes and how fragile the damn cars really are. I then went back to my drivers “caravan” and selected the next race which was in Malaysia and came 7^th, which was even better. It was at that time I came to the realization that being a virtual F1 Driver was quite boring, the emails were boring the interviews were boring and the racing was quite boring. SO I had to shake things up a bit (as you do)

Lookin good for Albert park Qualifying

I like this shot too, I think their just used generic buildings though unless you can recognise one

During the next race (in Turkey) I could give two shits about setting a good time or qualifying, and got myself disqualified from both events. During the main race I started to ram the fack out of my opponents, I shoved them out of the way, I blocked them (illegally, yes there’s such thing as legal blocking in F1 apparently), I ran them into the wall, I threw my cigarette lighter into their cockpit onto their crotch, you name it I did it and eventually got black flagged with race director “Andy”  all the while calmly telling me what was going on with the stewards until very calmly telling me that “this is the end of the race for us” as I was booted from the track two minutes in.

I then saw a short animation of me swiping the camera away and storming off into what I think would be the locker room. And do you think after all this foul behavior, disqualifications and failure would I get a stern talking to by Andy? A negative interview about the results of the last race, an angry email from the Team Manager? telling me to pack up my stuff and get out? No, NOTHING I did the same thing two races and two different countries in a row and nothing happened apart from some animation of me being slightly moody, the interview was the same stupid supportive crap and I received absolutely no new email from anyone, and that my friend is not acceptable. What’s the fun on doing wrong when you don’t get at least some kind of negative feedback for it especially in an industry as freakishly competitive as Formula 1.

"Get that camera out of my face!, or helmet... damn car, damn race, damn sexual misconduct lawsuit, rrrgh mffrmggr mgrghrghrr...."

But anyway I’ll continue with the review, the graphics are reasonable though a bit cartoony, it’s almost like they used the same graphical style and engine from Vietcong 2  but technically this isn’t a game which needs detailed human characters and you don’t really need that much for an F1 game, the people look decent, the weather effects are pretty good, there’s a decent vibe going when you start the race not to mention the attention to detail including all the stands with the people during the main races. The singleplayer campaign should keep you going for a while but there is also the new “Proving Grounds” which you are given specific cars and settings to make a time in as well as the normal time trial. I didn’t really try the multiplayer mode as I don’t usually bother with most racing games though I have tried with a few games recently including Test Drive Unlimited 2, Wipeout Fusion and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift. But if you’re a fan of F1 and want to play with and compete against people of the same liking then this will be for you where you can participate in the new Co-op championship mode, where you and a friend will be teammates/rivals for a whole F1 Season which sounds like a lot of fun, as well as that there also is the usual multiplayer plus a split screen mode which is rare for a PC version, there is also computer racers to fill in the gaps if you haven’t got the full 16 players on the track (imagine that)

Quite a good example of what would probably happen when you play multiplayer

Overall F1 2011 is a game mostly for fans of F1 or avid track motorsports fans in general especial the single and multiplayer co-up Championships you really get the feel of being an F1 driver, the learning curve can be a bit steep for newcomers  . I can honestly say that I’d rather be some rich bastard in Hawaii driving (almost) any car he wants any way he wants for some billionaire tournament rather than a chump who has to adhere to realistically strict rules. I can’t say I didn’t have a bit of fun, but seriously give me an open road and a Lamborghini anyday.

JD

F1 2011 Release trailer

vvveeeeeeoowwwwwnnn!....... rock'n'roll outro

Minecraft Adventures: Ozgamerparty, The Underground hall hideout and Admin tomfoolery in the 1.3.1 update

Well here we go again, I said I’d do it and I did, Ozgamerparty Minecraft is back in proverbial full swing and things have certainly started out swingingly. The 1.3.1 patch had come out along with the changes that I had detailed in the previous MC Adventures which I won't go into them again but most are good.

Early on when the new 1.3.1 map had been opened on the server I quickly joined up with my friend Atomic and his friends Brendan and that forest-burning, mass-furnace-obsessed wacko deadman47. I found they had travelled a short way across the sea to a tiny island in the middle of a huge ocean biome which wasn’t actually too far from the spawn area, and made a fairly cramped underground base and stairwell which obviously (as you know me) wasn’t going to work. 

That was our island, out in that huge mutha of an ocean, notice the Mushroom island on the lower left

It was fairly inconspicuous, apart from the torches as I got sick of the fackin spiders spawning above ground and making noise, I mean I went out one time and there was 4 of em up there.

We quickly widened out the resource room and we decided that there will be a large main stairwell as a centre for our underground base as this would allow us to have rooms jutting out from this stairwell as well as being able to have underground houses with windows to look out on to something rather than having ‘jail-cell’ like rooms. So we made the stairwell with included a nether portal, a large farm and a mine (full of slimes, no less) at the bottom. I also properly organised the chests but found when I logged in one night they were all re-organised to deadman’s liking but whatever, I don’t really care, though I had to change all the signs around cause of his lack of spelling skills  for example “caol” and “coblestone” I also really don’t understand his fascination with making large rooms with walls full of furnaces.

My design of the the Psynapse resource room. I think is pretty neat, if you ask me, yeh it takes more space then say putting the chests in rows, but I reckon it looks better..

So anyway we got our rooms underway and I went out looking for supplies, most notably wool (which I amassed quite a large amount of) flowers, possibly some coal and clay, the clay being the hardest to find for some reason. Ever since a certain patch (not sure which one probably the one which introduced swamps) clay has been in abundance, though in this map even in swamps I was finding it hard to locate for some odd reason. Though it did seem like someone had gone through the area already cause I found the clay in some out-of-the-way areas. Once I had gotten all of the resources I was eager to get started as I enjoy making underground rooms look more homely.


I done sheared dem sheep

I started by smelting all my clay into brick and making a brick wall with windows and doorway as an entrance to my house, inside I made a small work area with furnaces, a crafting table and a small open lava feature which acts as an incinerator. I also started to make a sitting area with wooden couches and a netherack fire in the centre with some iron bars around it. I’d planned to continue the brick wall all around the edges of the room (though it was kind of hard because I’d actually broken through the bottom of the ocean floor) with a combination of yellow/red/orange carpet and the roof of wooden oak just to make things look more homely and have little sign of stone.

The brick wall of my room in the underground base

My half-finished underground house

 Unfortunately  my plans and dreams were shattered as I logged in one night to find our underground home ransacked and all of my hard earned brick pilfered, not to mention pretty much everything else in our homes and all the valuable items from our storage. I was kind of annoyed about the brick, but there was really not much I could do, though I really did want to finish of that home, but oh well, it can wait for another time I was lucky enough to have made a full set of diamond armor previously so I at least had that and all of my tools.

Our post-grief-and-theft underground stairway

SO with that behind me I decided to see what other factions would take me, and right off the bat my old friend Rennz (WarpageHD) invited me to his faction of Aniki (not sure what that means). He also mentioned that his faction was “peaceful” which basically meant that they could not get griefed and could not attack others, so in other words perfect for me and I don’t know why I didn’t get my previous faction set to peaceful in the first place though you have to get admins to do it I think.

Aniki Town Centre

Fletcher's cobble castle-thing

Rennz had a pretty good faction area going already, including a town hall, several jungle trees inc one built into some kind of house, a waterfall, a large wheat farm and lake with bamboo surrounding and what looked like a villager ‘tenement’.

The resource room

I checked that egg at the wall and a chicken with a normal sized head and smaller body came out

Fletcher's Jungle tree hotel.

The Egg farm

Wheat Farm

Villager tenement (no we're not slavers)

Reed Farm

Alternate Shot of Aniki

 I didn’t waste much time deciding on what I was going to do for a house as it certainly wasn’t going to be made of brick this time. I first needed a place to set up before I could start making my house and I found this small crevasse inside the faction claim which I lovingly named the "Slum district" and made a dirty hole in the side to live in for the time being.

Slummin' it up

(chuckle)

I decided to create what I had been meaning to for a while, a giant version of a normal Minecraft tree which I have detailed in a previous post, I think it worked out pretty well though.

Aniki with my Treehouse visible

Dynamap view

I'm wearing a full set of Diamond Armor here, along with a steel sword which is for some reason shaped like a pirate sword. I went back to my old Domo-kun skin but I think I may bring back the human one if this is what i'm going to look like with texture pack armor on, even if other can't see me.

 We’ve got 4 people in our faction, Rennz, FletcherHD, Ninjasport, Blacklabelskata and me. I haven’t really interacted with Ninjasport as yet, she (or he, Rennz thinks it’s a girl due to the female skin but I have my doubts) has set up a base across the way from ours and Rennz built quite a large platform complete with powered minecart tracks all the way to Ninja’s base which was off-claim, we did actually decide to make Ninja’s claim part of ours in order for hers to be peaceful as well for protection though being fairly new to the game she was kind of reluctant as it may have sounded like we were taking over her base, but of course not we’re just ‘assimilating’ your property, said the Corporation to the homeowner.

Dynamap view of the bridge, the Dynamap for the server has had an update and is now at a high camera angle

 Due to books now needing 1 leather to create and the difficulty of finding cows when you need them we decided to create a cow farm in this open cave we mined out, funnily enough it wasn’t too hard to find cows nearby and we basically just started breeding. Which is a very surreal process as you can see below, The 5 minute time limit does make things a bit arduous though it’s ok if you make the paddock near the faction home and you can zip right back to there.

The Cow farm.

 Pigs, Sheep, Chickens, Cows and Mooshrooms enter "love mode" if fed one wheat. Wolves enter love mode when they are fed any type of meat. Cats enter love mode when they are fed a raw fish. Tamed wolves and cats must be at full health before being fed to enter "love mode". Animals in "love mode" emit hearts constantly and will path towards nearby animals of the same species that are also in love mode.^[3] The two animals will "kiss" for about two and a half seconds, and then a baby animal of the same species spawns either in between the parents or on the same blocks as the parent that was spawned first, which ends love mode for the parents. They will not be able to enter love mode again for 5 minutes. However, they can be herded with the appropriate material, regardless of age. After the baby animal has spawned, it will follow its parents for 20 minutes before growing to full size.

-Courtesy of Minecraftwiki

So there you go, you can make cows fall in love and have sex in 5 minutes, pop out a baby in two and a half seconds which reaches adulthood in 20 minutes, amazing, though this is a world where trees grow to full size in under 30 minutes.

For those who don’t know our resident shenanigan Moderator Jason1211. Recently I was warped to the spawn area to see a giant hole where the ocean should be, no doubt it was Jason doing some destructive worldediting, he then reverted the ocean floor back then the ocean itself right on top of a group of us who were watching, which made quite a cool effect while the server lag caught up.

Mod POWERR!

What a mess.

Thats the top layer of the ocean just coming down, was quite scary actually until we could swim up.

 A short time after that we apparently had all four faction members online at the same time and since we were the only players on our always responsible mod decided to have some fun with us, this started with spawning mass amounts of Silverfish in the town hall then spawning cows and sheep everywhere then pigs and punting them off Fletcher’s tower, then adding a massive amount of extra cows including Mooshrooms to our cow farm, needless to say it was an experience not to be forgotten.

Spot the Rennz

 
This was quite fun and also scary I can assure you.

Lupi was fairly antisocial this time around. also check out my sword, oh yeh

Well that's all for now, I may update the post with more pictures and happenings, don't know how much longer I'm going to be playing Minecraft for the time being. Playing F1 2011 by request from a friend, also playing GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony again as well as watching the first series of the simply magnificent Game of Thrones series.

Penny Arcade Expo may be coming to Australia! this is very exciting and we eagerly await which city it will be held in. Also have a look at this interview with Notch during one of the US Paxs's's's, it's quite an interesting read.

JD


Peace is underrated.