My Usual Spiel: Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, yet another revenge story

Release date: 12/3/13 
Genre: Real-Time Strategy (RTS)
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Platforms: PC/Mac
Players: 1 to 8 
Online Classification: M (ESRB)

Awhile ago having played Wings of Liberty I thought to myself “well there’s no denying it, I gotta see how this story goes” so I shelled out 40 dollarz for Heart of the Swarm. I do feel a bit silly buying a game just to do the storyline though it is only an expansion and who knows I might play multiplayer again at a LAN or something at some point which I have actually, once. It’s kind of going to be a bit lopsided review as I only really purchased the game to play the singleplayer though I ‘m no stranger to the multiplayer and will give a brief rundown of new content and units available. I don’t really know what happened to my liking of Real Time Strategy (RTS) games, I say to myself it’s just all the micromanagement which is what others don’t like, though I used to play RTS like Warcraft and Total Annihilation all the time though technically I did cheat a lot, hey sometimes it made the game more enjoyable!

Anyway so I’ll try not to spoil any of the story but basically the story revolves around the now less-infested Sarah Kerrigan and her revival of the swarm. I started playing and enjoyed the starting missions as I always do because their very easy and simple, I especially liked the way  Kerrigan was now with Jim Raynor and Prince Valerian and the Terrans who have the Zerg in testing labs and request Kerrigan to command them. I was really enjoying this and wanting Kerrigan to get back with Jim but then they get attacked by Arcturus Mengsk’s forces then they get split up and Kerrigan’s has nothing to do but go after Mengsk and make the swarm hers again. So what ensues is lots of going to planets and finding her old swarm and convincing brood mothers to join her again and being contacted by the mysterious Dark Templar Zeratul just as Jim did then finding out origins of the Zerg while eventually confronting Mengsk himself.

Raynor and Kerrigan, their rekindled romance is unfortunately short lived.

Throughout the journey it was fun to see Kerrigan reunite with her old Zerg friends such as Izsha, Abathur and the Brood mothers as you’ve never really seen much Zerg interaction apart from the Overmind and the Cerebrates in the first game, I was kind of sad with the way things went I would have really liked to see how the Terrans got along with the Zerg, which they sort of did or really how the actual intelligent zerg like Izsha and Zagara handled the fact that Kerrigan’s missions was not the destruction of anything not Zerg.

Izsha is a one-of-a-kind Zerg similar to Abathur and acts as an Advisor to Kerrigan

Playing through the campaign was fairly similar to Wings of Liberty apart from the narrative, there was your mix of missions with no base and missions with a base and also missions where you started with no base and then came upon a base, there was the usual bonus objectives which make missions mission more interesting and also gave you more essence to fuel Kerrigan’s abilities and the Evolution pit missions, I found the different levels a very good mix up and much different to the usual “build base and army, then go attack” formula. As this time you were switching to single small unit/army style while playing normally and also the way Blizzard implemented controlling/defending more than one army was very well done I think they were actually aiming to minimize micromanagement as much as they could which was great.

One of the biggest changes was being in control of Kerrigan and several other ‘units’ almost all of the time, and as how Kerrigan starts of pretty damn powerful already and you can level her abilities up after that making her almost unstoppable (at least on the normal difficulty) and a very big help on harder difficulties. It reminded me of the missions of Wings of Liberty where you play as Jim Raynor himself and saw his reactions and character development through those missions except you do this with Kerrigan on almost every mission/level making it truly her story.

Campaign Zergling rush!

I did like the evolution missions that you received from Abathur who plays a role similar to what Rory Swann did in Wings of Liberty, upgrading and evolving Zerg strains for better use in game though you now need to get essence from doing bonus objectives in the regular missions. These evolution mission are quite fun as their role is to show you what strains you have available to upgrade to for a particulate unit. This involves you landing on two different planets and assimilating a select species of local wildlife to obtain their genetic strain. So for example with the Zergling strain you have two options the Swarmling strain which allows the Zerglings to spawn faster and 3 to come out of a single egg, and the Raptor strain which gives the zerglings wings that allow them to jump up and down cliffs, leap over obstacles and onto targets from range, and gains +2 damage (40% increase). The missions themselves are fun little skirmishes of you acquiring the DNA and the game showing you how they work in a controlled environment, I have to say I enjoyed them kind of more than the normal storyline cause you know me I like to keep things simple.

Baneling Hunter Evolution mission on Scoria

As well as the evolution missions, Kerrigan herself now has her own abilities which range from activated abilities such as Kinetic blast and spawning various creatures to passive abilities such as vespene harvesters not requiring drones to harvest and zerglings being brought back to life with no additional cost to resources, this was slightly different to Wings of Liberty as the upgrades now revolve around Kerrigan as the upgrades Egon Stetmann did were either from Protoss or Zerg research.

I must admit being only able to choose one of these abilities was a damn hard decision (I chose Improved Overlords)

Tier 3—Level 10

• Zergling Reconstitution: Killed zerglings respawn from your primary hatchery at no cost. Respawns up to 10 zerglings every 30 seconds until all zerglings have returned to life. Passive ability.

• Improved Overlords: Overlords morph instantly and provide 50% more supply. Passive ability.

• Automated Extractors: Extractors automatically extract vespene gas without drones. Passive ability.

Kerrigan upgrade screen, she gets damn powere up towards the end.

Graphics and sound are great as usual, As with most PC games, the better your computer, the better the details are going to be. True to Blizzard, the game has some of the most amazing cinematics I have ever seen and I love it when I get one to watch throughout the story, I also love how there the story and cutscenes in between the action in the game. The graphics are sharp and smooth, I did like the various locales inc the missions on the jungle world Zerus and the lava animation on Scoria with was used to great effect with the   the Baneling Hunter strain mission. I have found delight in the way almost everything seems to have some kind of animation to it such as crystals shining and even some trees in the map moving slightly in the wind. The Zerg buildings and units are especially disgusting all pulsating or wriggling or squirming or twitching. All in all, the sound is great and the music is fine too, with an RTS I find these things have little bearing but Blizzard have done them well and up to expectations.

Video of Zerus, it's amazing how you can see the trees and grass swaying.

Playing through the singleplayer this time wasn’t generally too hard, I usually play on normal mode the first time so I can get used to things. Gameplay wise on the singleplayer campaign things were basically the same though the obvious different being you were controlling the Zerg which needed a slightly different mindset to the Terrans with things like the spawning flag for worker drones and spawning flag for everything else. I began to find more features that I’d forgotten about from playing Supreme Commander like holding down shift to have a worker build multiple buildings though I don’t do it quite as much as I did in that game, I also found worth using the patrol command for certain warriors to protect the primary or secondary base when I away somewhere micromanaging oh and yes I finally saw the worth in leaving a group to protect the base while I went off to attack the main force.

Ah build queuing, gets me all nostalgic about Supreme  Commander

I haven’t really played multiplayer all that much though one of the main reasons I did purchase the game was to play it at Lan comps if I felt like it, there was this particular incident where we were having a comp an Lanslide (which is a great lan in south east Melbourne btw you should go to it) where some of us didn’t have the Heart of the Swarm expansion, so the event coordinator said we can all play Wings of Liberty but then some other (fairly high ranked mind you) players whinged that they “Wouldn’t have their builds” I mean come on, you’re going to whip our asses anyway why not give yourself a slight disadvantage you elitist ponks. So anyway after that I decided to get it but naturally haven’t played much multiplayer since though I did have a great game at another landslide where these two older guys wanted to play a match on the “normal” speed which is really quite slow compared to “fastest” where most multiplayer matches are played.

That match was quite unique in that I wasn’t able to come up with a partner so I decided to play with a computer ally (that’s really kind of sad now I think about it) but anyway I ended up losing as the computer player was set to easy but it didn’t matter cause the match wasn’t going to count anyway. The other thing was I loved the way that you could actually communicate with your AI partner i.e. there was a menu where you could tell them to attack and defend certain places and the character (in this case it was Kerrigan) actually spoke to you and said if she was able to comply with the request and also if she was being attacked etc.

Playing with my best buddy, the AI

There are some new units in the game with the Terran and Protoss new one’s I haven’t been able to play with extensively but hope to in the future, I especially like the look of the Tempest. Apart from that there isn’t too many things that have changed apart from new maps, I won’t go into details regarding the changes to battlenet etc though I do like the new sort of “multiplayer training mode” they have which is a welcome feature as their semi-truth of “The singleplayer is the training for the multiplayer” really is not the case, it may be for other games but not this one. The training mode is a sort of multiplayer tutorial showing you the basic of building a base in multiplayer then goes on to defending and attacking then advances tactics such as rushing and ‘turtling’. You can do these tutorials with whichever race you like and receive experience points for completing them, there is also unranked play for people who are too scared to play on a ladder.

The new very much needed training missions for multiplayer.

Overall although I thought the story was a bit meh it did play out very well and the changes made to the game like the changes made to the whole experience were for the better and almost made me forget about all the micromanagement though I must admit there wasn’t much of it, well any more than before anyway. Heart of the Swarm introduced some great features into the multiplayer in order to curb the gap between singleplayer and to train newcomers, as not knowing how to build is one of my biggest weaknesses. The trilogy’s going pretty well so far and I might say even though I’m still not interested in this kind of genre anymore it’s impossible to ignore with the gaming championships going on and competitions at lans. And of course I am indeed wanting to know what happens in the end just like everyone else.

8/10

What I like:

• Story mode plays out well missions give appropriately diverse gameplay
•  Kerrigan reuinited with Jim and then her old Zerg buddies
• Evolution missions are fun and evolution itself is good
• Addition of Multiplayer training mode is great
• Visuals are fantastic
• Playing with AI opponent is better then ever before.

What I don’t like:

• Story is epic but I'm kinda sick of the whole "large scale revenge" thing, can't everyone just be friends?
• Same old micromanagement RTS issues but that's just me.
• Units available in Singleplayer and Multiplayer are different.
• Like League of Legends, community is fairly unforgiving

JD

Heart of the Swarm Gameplay

What I wouldn't give for an all-zerg sex scene.

My Usual Spiel: Battlefield 4, Lookin' good and Feelin' fine

Just a quick note on this review, as I finish this three expansion have already been released namely China Rising, Second Assault and most recently Naval Strike. I will go through the expansions in later post hopefully when all of them have been released, for this review I just want to focus on the initial game. Also I’ve decided to do a single score out of 10 and a what I like/didn’t like to give a better idea and sum up of the review though it doesn’t mean too much I’m just giving an honest opinion.

Release date: 31/10/13
Genre: First person Shooter 
Publisher: EA 
Developer: Dice 
Platforms: PC/PS3/X360 
Players: 1 to 64 Online 
Classification: M (ESRB)


Well that was quick, another Battlefield game already, I suppose it has been two years, it just seemed that every time I’d go back to Battlefield 3 there was a new expansion out though there was 5 different ones over that period too and 5 yet to come for Battlefield 4 but we’ll get into that later.

I was never terribly excited about Battlefield 4, after 3 I really didn’t know what to expect the game had changed so much since my beloved BF2 that I really didn’t think that much would change and suffice to say not much has changed, but what has changed has been good. It’s as if the feel of the game has been freshened up slightly, I used to dislike using battlelog, but having a bit of a poke around and exploring the various options has given me a better understanding of the whole thing. Even the parts that I found confusing in the last game regarding all the upgrades and unlocks for your weapon and also the main map interface just seemed easier to use. 

All good here at base, not blown up or anything.

 I’ve been having a lot of fun with the game since I’ve gotten it, and most of that fun was with friends of course. I managed to get Battlefield 4 for a bargain price at ozgameshop by purchasing the code only, usually I’d be sceptical of these sort of things but it went pretty smoothly I got the code emailed to me and I downloaded and installed and it was all fine though by “all fine” I mean that the game installed fine, there was still a few problems with connecting to servers and the games crashing but we’ll get onto that. Among a few changes China’s PLA (People’s Liberation Army) have made a return meaning that in some maps it’s the Chinese versus the Russians.
 

The new Chinese player models

I am now going to talk about the singleplayer mode cause I did play it but unfortunately it won’t be very high praise as it was quite insignificant. Practically being the same as before you were a part of a squad of American Soldiers and become part of a huge conspiracy/thingy except this time China plays a major role. So needless to say you go places, shoot people, blow up things, you survive explosions, buildings collapsing you listen to your squadmates and others banter alot, you smuggle people out, you make decisions, you do quick time events etc. It’s exciting don’t get me wrong but it’s just the same old go in shoot that, get him blah blah blah oh this happens oh that happens, meh well glad that’s over with time for multiplayer. I was reading an interview with the developers of the Battlefield series and one was saying that back in Battlefield 2 that “the game was pretty hardcore back then, with no singleplayer aspect apart from bot matches and only one game mode” and I though thought to myself “that’s all it needed!” though I digress some of the other game modes are fun, inc rush. This whole idea of matching other games awesome singleplayer mode like Call of Duty that DICE (or EA) has is just misguided, all they need is some kind of training mode for multiplayer and that’s it, the singleplayer mode is not needed and is a waste of time.

"Yeh I don't know why we're doing this either."

 This time when diving into Multiplayer I was determined to get to grips with the Battlelog. For those who don’t know the Battlefield 3 and 4 server browser and profile viewer/editor is accessed through Battlelog which is a site your web browser.  I been through it a few times and think I got the hang of what’s going on, I even updated my emblem which shows up on your weapon, occupied vehicle and player ID, you also see them in the player details bar of who killed you, this was useful information as some people have pretty funny emblems and I wanted to make one. I also signed up to Gravatar in order to change my avatar cause you know I like to fill out my profile. The Battlelog is pretty extensive with the stats showing lots of stats for the guns/items and vehicles.

The battlelog, much easier now that I know what the frack I'm doin

I purchased Premium for Battlefield 4 not too long ago and with that you get access to all of the current and coming expansions. Additional Premium Battlepacks which are sort of like prize bags where you can get anything from Weapon accessories, Dog Tags, Character customization and XP Boosts which I really need to remember to use. Premium also gives you priority in server queues, which is a huge help especially when you’re trying to join your friends and are 7^th in line. All of this is good but it meant spending another $50, but I suppose it works out cheaper in the end. I must say though that I regret getting the “unlock all pistols” free as I realise that unlocking things is all part of the game though I suppose I don’t use pistols all that much and would take forever to unlock them all. 

Hiding near the flag, I do that a lot.

I haven’t really dug too deep into the server browser and finding games as I’ve mostly been playing with friends so I’ve just been joining their games. I’ve had some issues connecting, you just need to basically keep trying then it eventually works, though once you are playing there is still some problems with crashing though after several patches it’s become a lot better recently. I really enjoy the new in-game interface it really brings out my eyes, wait no, it really makes things easier. The spawning interface shows you what vehicles are available at what spawn point and areas that you are able to spawn other then captured flags and the HQ, these are represented by white circles on the HUD. You can also select your squad members and see through their eyes through a smaller screen to check if it’s safe to spawn, something I’ve forgotten to do many times. The usual class options are there allowing you to pick your class before you spawn and also shows you what weapons and utilities you have selected, which reminds me actually I need to make sure I’ve got everything set up correctly all this stuff being unlocked is hard to keep up with things as it is.

Spawn screen, the map is Zavod 311 on Conquest normal hence the smaller map

 Controls haven’t really changed, their basically fine, I’ve mapped my crouch key to one of my thumb mouse buttons which helps immensely and I’ve also finally found out why when I prone I jump immediately back up again (I was holding forward) apart from that I can’t see if too much has changed. The controls are you basic FPS controls so are easy enough to use and drive vehicles and fly helicopters and planes which seem slightly easier to fly then before though choppers are still massive targets for Anti-air anything. I do like the new truck vehicles and the Jet skis though their quite hard to manoeuvre being so twitchy, I managed to beach myself a few times. I must also say that boats are a bit OP with their main gun and two chaingun slots, especially in the Paracel Storm map which is heavily sea/island orientated oh and speaking of which, when that storm comes and the sea starts rolling it gets damn intense. 

Killer waves dude.

The character and vehicle customization screens are now much easier to use in my opinion, the kits have each customization now in categorized ‘slots’, weapons a that can be customised have a gear icon on them that leads to the weapon customization screen. The guns you unlock are now divided into sections i.e. assault rifles, shotguns making them much easier to sort through then Battlefield 3 where you just clicked through them all and you didn’t know what was a carbine and what was a “PDW”. I really enjoy the new in-game interface as I’m not sure the specifics of what they have done it’s just better than before, I approve!

Weapon choosing interface, it's complicated but still simple enough to manage.

 The graphics are beautiful as usual, sometimes I just stop to look around as it looks magnificent, then I get shot but meh, enough time to take a screenshot, seeing the Frostbite 3 engine in action is great  and most of the players and vehicles look damn real but of course they always have, you can’t really get much more real but they can try at least. What I liked most about the new maps was the difference in weather and time of day for example some were clear skies, others were either sunset, nighttime or stormy which I’ll get into with the Levolution, though some of the sunset (or sunrise I dunno what) looked amazing the sun glare was a bit too realistic, what I mean is it’s all well and good to successfully reproduce annoying sunglare but it actually gets really annoying sometimes. 

Ah what magnificent sunlight, just don't blind me please

 I can’t really say much else about the graphics though they look as great as they did last time, if not better. I enjoyed all the foliage and the trees coming down plus the major destruction of the buildings that has been toned back up to the levels of Bad Company 2, man on one map I saw the “Farm” flag (which is Alpha I think) at the start of a round which is a small farm settlement, about 10 minutes into the game it was completely flattened of anything that could be flattened and possibly some things that weren’t supposed to be able to be flattened.  There’s also something called Levolution which alters the map in certain ways such as buildings and towers collapsing and in the Flood Zone map you can destroy a Dam levy and well the place gets flooded and amphibious vehicles and boats start spawning. one of my favourites is the Golmud railway one where one flag is a train that if one team captures it starts moving along the tracks closer to their main base.

My thoughts exactly.

I can't tell you how glad I am that they've brought the Commander mode back from Battlefield 2, though technically it's not the same (nothing will ever be the same really). You need to be at least rank 10 to play as the commander and as before can be beaten to the role by a higher ranking player, you can also be voted out by mutiny though you can be "approved" of by players (giving you points) One of the biggest changes to the role is that the commander is no longer a player but I regarded as a "separate slot" on the server, this means that if you decide to go as commander you forfeit your player spot and if you want to go back to actually playing you have to rejoin the server. This sucks major balls and really deters me from going commander, especially when playing with friends. I think this change was mainly due to the Commander mode being able to be played on a mobile device such as an ipad (also available on android), which is fun but really it isn’t worth it, I wanna be a Commander on the field!. I miss all the hiding around your main base and killings those pesky Spec Ops infiltrators trying to blow up your stuff, of course I did that too.

I am in COMMAND, not sure which team is screwed more.

The commander mode is still a top-down view of the Battlefield however the available resources are a bit different this time around, for example some of the abilities like the Tomahawk missile and the gunship can only be used if you have control of a particular base whereas other things like map scans and supply drops can be used by spending “chunks” from the progression bar which are obtained by squads successfully carrying out orders that the Commander has issued. I’m actual thinking of getting a Google Nexus tablet so I can do some commandering in my spare time.

Here’s a full list

• Tomahawk missile strike: +50 points to deploy + kill bonus
• UAV deployment: duration: 10 seconds. +25 points for each kill your team gets within UAV zone
• Supply drop
• Map scan feature that reveals enemy infantry
• EMP strike: duration: 20 seconds. +25 points for each kill within EMP zone
• AC-130 Gunship against ground targets. +50 for each kill
• Vehicle drop
• Ability disable enemy commander for 10 second (I think) this one isn’t officially listed for some reason, probably added in a later patch

Hmm that vehicle drop didn't quite go as planned.

I've been playing the multiplayer of Battlefield 4 for a while and I'd have to say I'm liking it a lot better than the previous incantation, it's just some things that have been tweaked in the gameplay that makes playing so much easier of course the thing that makes this is always your squad members, if you're playing with friends you always have the better time than playing with people that you don't know who can most often be idiots. And that's another thing, the amount of aggression and vulgarity I see in Battlefield is abhorrent compared to other games things like people calling each other “fucking idiots” for doing simple mistakes, I even got flamed for being a shit commander when all I did where some bad UAV points (putting them over enemy bases) but the map was so small that was what we needed. Also the names are just disgusting, I saw a guy called “ScreamingFetus” in BF2 and I see other guys called “TangledHairyAnus” and I just think why? It’s not even funny it's just wrong, I’ll admit “Sexmegoood” was kinda funny but the guy was a total wanker flaming people for god knows what. In the end if you have great friendly team members and even friendly enemies, it’s a much better game, even when they’re not your actual friends. I had heaps of fun when we were given orders by the commander or squad leader to take a certain base or defend it and we did our best to (and you get more points as well), it’s the comradery that makes it great. 

Go go guys! attack that control point!

In regards to Hardcore and Normal modes, my friends and I most often play normal, as hardcore mode is really just a bit too hardcore for me lol as there’s a lot of support things like repairing the chopper while sitting in it, healing teammates, spotting enemies and knowing how much health your vehicle has that is hard to do in hardcore. The only real reprise hardcore has is that when you shoot someone first you will kill them rather than emptying almost a clip into them and then them killing you, so we play normal really all of the time. I’ve been experimenting with the Engineer class a bit more as thankfully there are handfuls of times where every person in the squad isn’t an engineer, and I’m also getting better at primary weapon kills as I have made the switch to using carbines rather than the PDW (Personal Defence Weapons) that the engineer start out with as the starting one is quite hard to use. I’ve also been attaching RDS (Red Dot Scopes) to my weapons on recommendation from a friend and I have to say they are amazing as I always using iron sights before which was often quite difficult to see the target, of course make sure you only use the no-zoom scopes or failing that the 1x zoom scopes.

Waargh! oh man this be dangerous, good thing I have my magical blowtorch which repairs all damage to the chopper regardless of where it is, though if that's how it works why the hell do I have to be hanging out of the damn thing, they need another "middle of the chopper" seat.

Battlefield 4 has probably been my favourite multiplayer experience since Battlefield 2, not to say it’s better though just now I’ve got to grips with things and am really enjoying the new battlelog and weapon/vehicle customising, I appreciate the new Commander mode and am having heaps of fun playing with friends and working as a team, I look forward to the expansions, unlocking more weapons/gear and being the commander with my tablet.

9/10

What I like:

• In game interface is much better
• ‘Levolution’ is awesome! (despite being a wanky title)
• Playing with friends and/or friendly teammates/enemies is great
• Commander mode is back!
• Game feels better overall then BF3

What I don’t like:

• We don’t need no Singleplayer story
• Bugs, lots of them, at first
• Should be able to do things in loading screen i.e. open battlepacks look at stats etc
• Community is full of angry knobheads with stupid names though there is the occasional nice person

JD

Our choo choo train!

Hiatus of Blogging 20/3/2014

I do apologise for the lack of posts going on, as you may know from the years before this is our busiest time of year at work and I really don't have any time for blogging let alone anything else but work really. This has actually been our most busiest year so I don't think I'll even be able to post anything before April but we'll see.

In the interim I've been playing Battlefield 4, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Minecraft, GTA San Andreas, Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer (on Emulator of course) and of course Star Wars the Old Republic. I've also started Diable 3 as a Warrior and have gone further then ever this time and am almost finished! just before the expansion comes out too lol.

Anyway happy gaming and I'll leave you with this 90's ditty I can't get outta my head.

JD



 Mr Magoo!

The Important Pieces of Paper: Skyrim, Came back Swinging

Oh Skyrim, when will I ever stop replaying you and actually play some expansions, well the answer is fairly simple: the next time I play. You see after playing the game through again as a thief/assassin type character I couldn’t help going through the game again as a beefy warrior class again to get back to the old sword-swinging mayhem. I did briefly have a go at being a Magic-user as there was now cinematic kills with spells which looked pretty cool when searing or electrocuting someone alive, but the more I played the more pointless I found it really, the reason I played Skyrim was for the swinging of the swords, the ‘thunk’ sound of the arrows into a body and the grisly hacking pieces off someone’s body.

The new Kill Cams as per the 1.5 patch (I think we're up to 1.9)

The other thing was, there was no “tailoring” aspect to Skyrim so you couldn’t make your own armor, or “robes” I spose and taking away all the fun times of mining and collecting the different coloured ore to make you’re super cool armor, and speaking of armor wearing robes gave you crap all armor too. So needless to say after getting pounded by everything from axe-wielding maniacs to other magic users I decided I’d man back up and start smashing heads. I did have a go at the Mace-and-Shield (or sword) combination which had some awesomely painful looking kill animations but I just couldn’t resist the lure of slicing someone up or bashing their face in with the good old giant sword or warhammer, and no I’ve never used axes in case you’re wondering as I just don’t fancy them.

Can I axe you a question?

I had a few reasons for playing through the original Skyrim again, the most prominent being I wanted to run in and whack things again instead of being all stealthy but I also wanted to set another character up to play the Dragonborn expansion as I wasn’t quite happy with my first character being the one to do that expansion as I hadn’t done the console-commanding-skills-in-as-soon-as-I-can-get-them thing so he wasn’t quite as powerful as when I finish off my new character. When I was creating him I chose Nord as before as I intended to be on the Imperial side this time but be a Nord like Legate Rikke who gives some very convincing arguments when you talk to her as why Skyrim needs the Empire. I have always had the contested view with my brother that the Stormcloaks are the “good” guys fighting the oppression of the Empire similar to most games but even when finishing the Civil war questline on the Empire side I still didn’t really feel like I’d done the right thing but anyway I’ll get into that later. 

Legate Rikke and General Tullius in Castle Dour, and me, looking kinda of out of place.

 As he was going to be on the Empire side though not an Imperial I made him look like quite a nice Nord with a thin beard and slightly longer hair then I think I’ve ever given any character in a game but I reckon it looks quite good. Though technically the face of my Dragonborn didn’t really matter as I fully intended to make use of the Psychosteve's DragonPriest Masks mod again and get that faceless-killer look going. I named him “Brogan” after a customer at work was trying to remember my name in an email and said it was that, also because both of my former protagonists names started with a Z (Zairne and Zalunar)

Here he is, Brogan the Imperial siding Nord he looks kinda tired, that's probably be right as this was taken when I was almost finished everything.

Another reason was the fact that I wanted to try out playing with a companion as I didn’t the first time and it wouldn’t work with a stealthy character. I could think of no-one better then Lydia as the ‘trivia’ section of the Elderscrolls Wiki states she can be the deuteragonist of Skyrim as she has quite a bit of programmed personality and due to the fact that she is the first housecarl that the Dragonborn is offered she is probably the most used companion in the game. And also for the fact that she is female and is able to show off a female version of any amor you put on her. And the final reason I was playing again is the fact of humble abodes and you know how much I love them, I started with the quite humble Pinewood Cottage with its enclosed space and objects and amenities at arms reach was the ideal starting house. After that going on to the not-so-humble but magnificent Deus Mons, and finally finishing by building my own house with my own two hands getting hitched and adopting kids with the Hearthfire Mod so hey at least I’ve played one expansion.

A detailed walkthrough of the Pinewoods Cottage player-made home.

So I started out in Helgen yet again following Hadvar this time which really felt weird as you were briefly in the company of Ralof and Ulfric Stormcloak and you really felt like you were on their side as the Imperials were about to cut your head off but anyway you go down and you say hello to the torturer and his assistant and they follow you out and then once you get out you find that Hadvar’s uncle is Alvor the blacksmith in Riverwood who by way of conversation is ideally on the Imperial side and you get free access to almost all the blacksmithing supplies they have which is nice. I searched around and found a patch of corundum ore and together with the iron ore from the always-fun-to-raid Embershard Mine I managed to make enough steel for a full set of steel armor though I didn’t end up making a steel weapon as I found a Honed Ancient Nord Greatsword which had a frost enchant.

Full steel armor

Doing the quests not really much happened in the way of Stormcloaks vs Imperials apart from the fact that I was nicer to Imperials and Imperial sympathisers which again made me feel kinda bad. Joining the Companions again was fun though their questline is quite short, I do like receiving a Skyforge Steel weapon though (yes I picked the greatsword again), I made sure though that I did the quests to lose  my Lycanthropy soon after I received it. I must have quickly upgraded my smithing skill as I remember as soon as I arrived in Riften I picked up the Grimsever's Return quest to travel to the Dwemer ruin Mzinchaleft where after finishing the quest I returned to quite a few times to get more Dwemer metal to smelt to Dwarven metal ingots which I got quite a lot of seeing as in some Dwemer ruins you can obtain almost 300 ingots in one visit by collecting and smelting Dwemer metal. After making the armor for myself and Lydia I used a lot of the leftover ingots up to raise my blacksmithing skill but unfortunately the armor and weapons also need steel and iron ingots to make so I couldn’t get that far. At some point during this time I acquired the Dragon priest mask: Rahgot which gives an extra 70 stamina points and with the masks mod overhaul looks pretty good with the Dwarven Armor despite being green in colour.

Dwarven armor looks pretty gold and tanky.

Lydia has a thoughtful pose here, I don't think she likes my mask, well I don't care if it doesn't match my armor (or doesn't give a set bonus) I ain't takin' it off.

For the sake of looking good I stuck to one set of armor for Lydia and I instead of mixing and matching the only difference being me wearing a Dragon priest mask and although I did lose the set bonus I still kept the original set helm and usually put an archery enchant on it and used it for taking screenshots. I found when playing with Lydia as my companion it was almost too easy. Because she was decked out in the same upgraded and enchanted armor as me (albeit slightly different enchants) we made short work of any and all monsters we came across. Basically the way I did it was that I ran in swinging with my 2-handed weapon while Lydia shot arrows at enemies from afar, because of this I gave her the best bows and arrows, as I only really used mine for Dragons and I gave her the best shield and either a 1h Sword or Mace as that was what she originally used. Because I was a warrior again and just running in, and also because I had a powerful companion with me, I completed dungeons much, much faster than the sneaking around during my last playthrough.

Lydia my faithful follower (and steward) in her bitchin' Dragone Armor

Playing with Lydia caused only a few problems, when you gave her anything better than her default armor and weapons, she would use those that were better which was all good, sometimes though she would not seem to wear or use the shield she was given, although it was much better in stats. Thankfully your follows can’t be intentionally killed by enemies and/or environmental hazards like fire or traps as when they lose almost all of their health they go down on one knee and are then ignored by enemies, the only person who can really kill your follower is you and I had to load a previous save sometimes as I accidentally hit her with a weapon or used a magical scroll. Speaking of scrolls and shouts, I couldn’t use most of the destructive ones as with spells like Scroll of Fire Storm you companion would be engulfed in the flames too killing them. Apart from that Lydia made things quite a bit easier with her shooting arrows and attacking small enemies and almost “tanking” dungeon bosses made it much easier for me to move around and finish off enemies without being challenged, I hardly even needed to use the Sanguine Rose (I had to get it just to do that questline again) and when I did we were practically unstoppable.

There are many sell-swords in Skyrim that can be used as companions.

I was living in Pinewood Cottage at this point and while it was nice and cosy it got annoying with Lydia following me around and blocking the stairs, so I used the very useful Ultimate Follower Overhaul (UFO)mod to set to ambient where she will walk around the location using various objects that are available (chairs, beds, alchemy tables etc) until I tell her to follow again. Pinewood Cottage as you can see is quite quaint, nestled in to a small area by a creek which ended up being quite close to the Lakeview Manor homestead. Around this time I also tried out Horseriding as I put in the baseID and the console command code from the Elder scrolls wiki page to place a horse near me, which always seemed to be the Palomino with no saddle, but I just took it anyway as I didn’t want to buy or steal any horses for the fear of losing them. I don’t know whether it was the follower mod that I had or just the system but if you travelled to a stable and some inns your companion would have a horse waiting as well so you could both saddle up which was fun though once you quick travelled somewhere their horse disappeared and Lydia unfortunately had to run along after me, heavy armour didn’t seem to stop her though heh. Also as of Patch 1.6 mounted combat was now available so you could swing away with your weapons and also shoot arrows at those pesky wolves.

Giddy up!

After finishing most of the companions questline and getting on with the quests through the world I was hungering for change, and change happened. Having upgraded Lydia and mine’s weapons from Dwarven to Glass (I had used a greatsword both times) I decided when I made our Ebony armor I wanted to use a Daedric artifact and had originally intended to use the Ebony Blade but like most Daedric artifacts acquiring it meant killing someone else and looking at the harrowing way that the blade works I decided against it. Instead I chose Volendrung which was a massive hammer of Dwemer origin, currently in the hands of the Daedric Lord Malacath who is worshipped by most Orcs as their Idol. I chose this as it was a warhammer and has a very interesting enchant that absorbs 50 points of stamina per hit effectively making it a stamina battery as you use a lot of stamina when power attacking with warhammers. So I completed the quite entertaining Cursed Tribe questline which didn’t involve any evil at all really to get the hammer and went on my merry way.

The Daedric Artifact Volendrung gifted by malacath after you have finished the Cursed Tribe quest

 At this point I was pining for a new house as I had an absolutely huge amount of items inc. armour, weapons, dragon bones, personal items and a crapload of books which I love collecting so much so without further ado I returned to Ivarstead to climb partway up those seven thousand steps to where the magnificent Deus Mons was located. You may have heard me talk about it before it’s one of the most magnificent play-made homes I’ve ever seen, a huge castle on the southern side of the Throat of the World which doesn’t exactly give it quite the best outdoor garden and facilities perched up on a windy snow covered cliff but technically it’s more of a Dragonborn’s private castle then a place where you’d bring a wife and kids. The interior of this place is amazing it’s no wonder why it’s arguably the most endorsed player-made house on the Skyrim Mod Nexus, it’s got everything you need and more, it is a bit large though, the Alchemy and Enchanting table are through two loading doors , and Lydia got a bit stuck and I ended up losing her a few times. But goddamn did I manage to pimp that place out with armour, weapons and book towards the end it’s got more storage space than I could use up at that time and a heap of places to store individual items, I especially liked the stack of six safes. To get in there though you needed to defeat a fairly powerful dragon but no dragon’s a match for us (macho pose).

Deus Mons (post dragon) it's quite misty up ere.

A fairly details move of the Deus Mons interior

After I had moved my quite hefty amount of personal items from one house to another I had levelled my blacksmithing up to Ebony so now it was time to make some. I quickly found that due to the amount of resources that were required to create and upgrade full sets of armour and weapon for both Lydia and I, I did not have enough Ebony ore I was not really going to wait around an in-game week for the ore to respawn in the mine I had just mined out so unfortunately I had to console it in but anyway, I got the armour made. I also had to select which Dragonpriest mask I was going to use, the main two I was interested in were Ved and Ikendov because (the masks) were all black and looked pretty cool, unfortunately I had to go with the classic style as with the way the mod author had attached the new masks to the new hoods I still had some minor issues with my face protruding from the mask similar to last time with my wood elf character. So I chose the classic hooded version of Ikendov and despite the hood being a dark brown looked pretty badass with my ebony armor and Volendrung. It did not however, look very badass while riding a palomino horse. So after some searching I found by going to the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) wiki page on Skyrim horses that they had the baseID codes of all the horses you could get at the stables so I decided to get the black horse from Whiterun to match my current armour set and was happy to find out it had a saddle, this looked much better with my new armor.

The Ikendov mask works quite well with Ebony armor

You may have noticed in the screenshots that I am carrying a Daedric Warhammer with my ebony armor, this is because Volendrung even though it is a Daedric artefact unfortunately does not benefit from the Daedric smithing perk and thus the Daedric Warhammer had a higher damage ratio so I decided to make Daedric weapons for Lydia and I, but not Daedric armor as I had used that for my previous warrior and I had previously decided that the Dragonbone set would be my final this time. I finally reached level 100 in Blacksmithing which was a hell of a bitch I can tell you, I really needed to use some Fortify Smithing enchants but got there in the end by paying for levels from trainers but man it’s expensive. So it was time to make the Dragonbone armor and weapons and boy did I sure have enough materials for that by killing all those pesky dragons. I most definitely knew what Dragon Priest Mask I would be using this time and that would be Konahrik as the mod version of the mask looks freaking awesome. To get this mask you have to acquire all of the other Dragon Priest masks two unfortunately involve things I wasn’t willing to do like complete the College of Winterhold Mage questline and complete the last quest of the main storyline and I wasn’t about to became a Mage or finish off the story at this point so console commands it was. So I did that and went to the Labyrinthian and put all the masks there and I got it, and it’s as awesome as it looks, albeit some odd enchants.

My Dragonebone armor set with Konahrik

The entire set of masks with the dragon mouth open and revealing Konahrik

I’m skimming here but a bunch of stuff happened after that, I progressed through my world questing and further into the main questline, I also started the Civil war questline but remembered to not go too far into it in order to do the Season Unending quest which happens if you do the main storyline up to the point where you need to trap a dragon inside Whiterun. But this cannot be done as the Jarl of Whiterun says that he cannot divert attention away from his defences while the civil war is going on and thus you and the Greybeards have to organise peace talks with the two sides which I found to be quite fun.

The High Hrothgar meeting as part of the Season Unending quest.

After that I finished off all of the main world quests that I could then headed off to Dragonsreach to defeat and trap Odahviing, hitch a ride on him to Skuldafn then enter Sovnguarde and you all know what happens after that and if you don’t well go play the damn game. So after that was finished it was time to continue the war so Lydia and I, decked out in our upgraded and enchanted Dragonbone armor and weapons, defended Whiterun from the stormcloaks then progressively took back every territory until the Battle for Windhelm where we kicked so much ass it was ridiculous, I suppose with this quest being the last battle I’d ever do I was pretty powered up. So anyway we stormed Windhelm and defeated Ulfric and the Stormcloaks and then I was finally free to start up a new life for myself with...

 The Battle for (or against really) Windhelm

Fall of Ulfric and Galmor, this made me feel kind of sad, what's worse is their bodies stay laying on the floor even after the quest which is pretty gruesome.

Hearthfire oh yes indeed I am playing an expansion (or add on) for Skyrim and it was quite fun too. I first had to go to Falkreath and  made sure I’d done all the quests to become the Thane in which the Jarl allowed me to purchase the Lakeview Manor homestead where I could start buildin’ that shit. I must admit it was fairly easy building the house, you build it up in stages  so you start off with a small cottage that you can expand into a pretty fine looking house by Skyrim standards, it’s still nothing compared to some of the player made houses though but that’s a given it’s supposed to be a normal house not some giant and crazily extravagant castle. The materials you need are right by your plot of land Quarried Stone, Clay and Sawn Logs can be “acquired” indefinitely which is nice and I had built my house in no time.

I ponder If I'm going to need a change of clothes while my horse butts in

Now that's cozy!

The completed house exterior

What did take forever though was furnishing the place, I had to run all over the world getting all the materials not to mention the huge amount of iron that was need for all the nails and struts and fittings etc and I ended up getting sick of it and just console commanded some things in, I said it before and I’ll say it again I swear I could not play this game on a console. Though annoyingly once I had made all that crap I found that some items weren’t in a  place you’d call aesthetically correct especially the display cases in the greenhouse (yes greenhouse) which were standing on the mushrooms and what made matters worse was every single one of the display cases did not work (i.e. you couldn’t place weapons) even things that did work like the weapon and shield racks still had glitches where the weapons would appear in the floor and ceiling etc and of course there’s always that problem with the mannequins moving around and removing their own armor as if they didn’t like it.

This is another thing I didn't understand, when you make the initial cottage the furniture stays there so you have a bedroom practically in your doorway.

The dining hall.

The greenhouse

Needless to say I was not amused, these issues happen in the player-made homes so the reason I wanted to try Hearthfire is that I thought with an official add-on that these issues wouldn’t happen unless it’s the mods I have running that are causing the problem, though I suppose it’s partly my fault for just building everything all at once and not taking enough looks inside but I mean STILL.

Basement with shrine stand.

Full smithy

Upstairs

But anyway at least the weapon and shield racks kind of worked and the house ended up looking pretty good. I nominated Lydia as my steward and got myself a very shaggy looking cow, a chicken a beehive and a horse of which I now have two, which is good because my current one thinks it has been stolen as it walks away whenever I dismount but re-appears when I quick travel somewhere so the only way of getting rid of it is killing it really but I don’t want to intentionally do that. 

Main bedroom with the non-working display case.

Exterior view of the house

The back of the house leads to this old Nordic grave, hope it wasn't an evil person.

After I’d made the house and everything I had to decide who to marry (like it’s a hard decision really) and picked Ysolda, as I’ve always kind of liked her and she doesn’t really have a stance on the war, so after finishing off the Book of Love questline and got married though I’m a bit concerned as although I told my newly wed wife I have a nice house in Falkreath though she still hasn’t shown up and I can’t seem to find her in Whiterun or Riften or anywhere. So instead of thinking about a certain Richard Gere film I decided to just go and adopt some children anyway in which I already had Lucia in mind cause she so sweet and pathetic you can’t help it and also Hroar for a few reasons, he’s a Nord, he has a cool name and I want to go through the adoption dialogue with Constance Michel and tell her I’m the motherfackin’ Dragonborn and see what she thinks of that.

My marriage, I don't really know those people, and don't know how they relate to Ysolda and I

My adopted daugher recently brought a friend into the house and asked if she could keep him, I was like "a fox?" which funnily enough was the dialogue said. It also made me think of this.

So that’s it really, been through Skyrim for a third time, been through a few new quests big and small, fought with a companion, lived in a cottage and a grand castle, wore Konahrik and the Dragonbone armor, had a high powered business meeting, won the war on the Imperial side and then settled in with my wife and kids in a home I built with my own two hands (and console commands) so I think it’s a job well done. After all that sword swinging and danger I’m itching to go back to my stealthy one-man-plan and shoot some vampires crossbow style in Dawnguard cause I ain’t no Vampire yo. And then back to my new warrior for Dragonborn which I’m quite looking forward to exploring my old friend Hermaeus Mora’s realm of Apocrypha  and hopefully I’ll be able to do all this before the next Elder scrolls game comes out.

JD

Off into the wild wilderness we go!

Occupation: Dragonborn