First time fun

Hello and welcome back to Eccentric Spheres. Today in the interest of  keeping it short and sweet, I'll get to the point. Yesterday, I live-streamed for the first time, and I loved it. It was a ton of fun and I'm going to do it again at some point.

I played Fallout 4 with a bunch of minor mods together with the Whispering Hills mod overhaul pack. It essentially transforms Fallout into a foggy hellscape a la Silent Hill. Unsettling to not see where you're going to say the least.

If you want to watch the VoD, here it is: 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1192321709

Be aware though that it will disappear after 14 days, so if you're planning on watching it, do it now before it's too late.

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great and safe week! 

  

 

Far Harbor

Sometimes life takes a strange turn. I waited a year and a half, with baited breath, for the release of Dishonored 2, an yet Fallout 4 refuses to let go. This is made much worse due to Steam having an extra Autumn sale and allowing me to get my Lovecraft-loving claws on the Fallout 4 DLC, Far Harbor, on the cheap.

So since that's what been playing, that's what I'll be talking about. I have previously bought the all build DLC, except the robot workshop, that add extra stuff for you to putter around with in your bases, and they are a lot of fun. I can say this even though I have essentially only scratched the surface. If you're not a builder, they don't add much, but Far Harbor does.

Far Harbor is an island infested with radioactive fog and nasty terrors from the sea that happily walk on land just to eat you. It's a bit like taking Lovecraft's Innsmouth setting, adding a dash of Stephen King's The Mist, and serving it with a healthy dose of Fallout. In other words, it's great!

Content wise, apart from the large explorable map and the intriguing story, it adds lots of new weapons and clothes, though unfortunately no new pistols. Two excellent rifles, the wonderful Harpoon Gun heavy weapon and some really cool melee weapons round out the arsenal. New creatures, new everything really. Well, perhaps not everything, but it's a hefty DLC worth it's price without question.

If you like Fallout 4, you should definitely get Far Harbor at some point. I can't imagine why you wouldn't.

I got a lot to do today, so I'll see you next time. Until then, have a great week!

The Fourth Fallout

Fourty seven hours so far. Fourty seven glorious hours of Fallout 4 so far, with many more to come.

I've been playing since Tuesday morning and I have only scratched the surface of this magnificent game. It's not perfect no, but damn it's good.

Let's get the technical stuff out of the way first. It's beautiful. Simple as that. Graphics, music, voice acting, all spot on. And if for some reason you aren't satisfied with how it looks, you can mod it better.

Game-play is mostly awesome. The controls are responsive and the addition of a sprint button is a welcome change. Sure I have had to get used to a different key layout compared to F3 and New Vegas but that's no cause for complaint. The AI is mostly good, with the occasional silliness. Like a raider getting upset when I stealthily blow his friends head off, only for the raider to shrug and say “I guess it's my imagination”. But these things are more funny than anything to complain about.

What we have here is a wonderful sand box game in the best tradition of Bethesda. Fallout 4 stands proudly as their latest creation in the long line of Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. If you don't like action RPG's or sandboxes, this is not your game, but for me it's narcotic. Addicting and sweet.

There are several important changes from Bethesdas previous Fallout titles, some which are familiar to Skyrim players.

First off, the skills are gone. It's all been baked into the perks system, which not only preserves the immersion better but makes leveling up easier. When I say immersion, I mean that since you can't see exactly how good you are at a skill it feels more alive and less numeric. Not that it was ever a problem as such.

As I said, you can sprint now at the cost of action points. Very useful for getting out of trouble. Or into trouble if you prefer. And you can parry with melee weapons as well as pistol whip your enemies.

In the previous titles, radiation poisoning was fairly abstract. You had to get seriously irradiated before you felt any ill effects, but not any longer. Now rads eat up your health bar, so it's definitely in your best interest to keep those rads down.

I'm not going to go too deeply into all the details here, so I'll just quickly talk about base building. I have let's say, sampled it a bit. There are lots of pictures online of some really great fortresses people have built, but from what I have experienced, it's lots of fun, if a bit fiddly. I have grand plans though. Time will tell.

There is more, so much more, like armor and gun modding but I'll let you find out on your own. It's time to talk about the negative.

First off, yes there are bugs. Of course there are. Sometimes my guns become invisible. I have had a sound effect loop endlessly until I re logged. Small things like that. I haven't thankfully experienced any game breaking bugs so far, and most are things that will get fixed in time.

My biggest complaints personally have to do with story. The game predisposes you to be a good caring person. This is no issue if that is what you want to play, but if you want to play a villain, it's a big snag.

Likewise, and minor spoiler here, there is a quest where you support a Brotherhood of Steel paladin in combat. He then invites you to join the Brotherhood. I declined, but the quest won't go away until I accept. At least so far. And to make things worse, his brothers have actually tried to kill me, which doesn't really help either.

So with only 47 hours of gameplay behind me, I'll conclude that this is indeed a great game, a weird and wonderful Fallout game, and a game RPG fans really aught to play.

Until next time, may your week be radiation free! See ya.

Bethesda has really done it now!

When Bethesda announced that they would have a press conference at E3 this year the speculations started to buzz like flies.

At the forefront was Fallout 4 which has now been confirmed, it's even in the Steam store... Other speculations were Dishonored 2, the new Doom and Elder Scrolls 6.

It's not Elder Scrolls 6. But it's everything else!

I just sat down with a cup of coffee and had my mind blown. I'll link the videos down below due to work safety concerns, but wow...

OK, focus.

First off, the rumor that you wouldn't be able to play as a female in Fallout 4 is firmly squashed. You can indeed play female, and the character creation is perhaps the best I have seen so far. It is absolutely gorgeous. So just as I was coming down from that, I saw the building video. Yes, you can create your own houses, even an entire settlement complete with resources you can trade. Then you can set up turrets to defend it all from raiders. But if you don't want to build you don't have to. It's all up to you.

I'm very excited. And it seems like it'll be out in November, but I'm not 100% on that yet.

Now, Dishonored 2.

Oh yeah, this is going to be good. You play as either familiar Corvo or as Emily Kaldwin. Every one who played Dishonored 1 should know that name, right?

It seems that the Outsider has given her an entire new set of skills unlike what Corvo has. And it looks good. The game looks so gorgeous it belong in a museum. Not much to tell about the story yet, but damn it, I'm already hooked.

Finally Doom.

I was a huge Doom fan back in the day. The action, the demons, the setting. All of it spoke to me and I blew the ever-loving hell out of those levels both in Doom 1 and 2. Doom 3 didn't excite me that much, in fact I never finished it. Maybe I'm not really that into FPS's anymore or maybe it was the lack of light that made Doom 3 so uninspiring to me, but this new Doom does look good. It's slated for release in 2016, so plenty of time.

E3 has only just begun, but I'm having a hard time thinking about what the other companies are going to do to have even a chance against Bethesda this year. All I can say is:

Shut up and take my money already!

Here are the videos:

Fallout character creation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXzlkJEUPDs

Fallout Building:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj06B-QQJTM

Dishonored 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnsDyv-TtJg

Doom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NteAPGprDJk

That's all for now, I need to take some deep breaths and calm down. So until next time, have a great week!

P.S. If you didn't know, the Steam Summer Sale is on as we speak.

Cya!

Rumors and petitions

As I mentioned last week, the internet is buzzing with curiosity about Bethesdas announcement that they'll be hosting their first ever press conference at E3 this year. Next month in fact.

The money seems to be on Fallout 4, which would be great, but many are hoping for Dishonored 2, which I also wouldn't mind. There is an outside chance of Elder Scrolls 6, but I think that's really unlikely since it's only been four years since Skyrim, but you never know.

However, I read – or watched – I can't remember which, an interview with Todd Howard, the executive producer and game director at Bethesda, and in it he said that they're not really interested in making sequels just to make them (cough Ubisoft, cough). And he used Dishonored as an example of a game they're not going to sequel. Of course with established franchises like Fallout and Elder Scrolls, sequels are not only inevitable but really sought after.

If they do make Fallout 4, I hope it will take place in a city environment like Fallout 3, rather than a desert like New Vegas. I do like New Vegas, don't get me wrong, but ruined cityscapes really speak to me far more than mere wilderness. F3 had a good blend of wasteland and ruins, but it's old and done and I'm ready for something new.

In other interesting game related news, I have heard that EA have actually managed to turn their Origins store into something worthwhile. Good customer service combined with money back guarantees have gone a long way to make Origins a good place to get games. I haven't tried it yet, but the buzz sounds promising.

Likewise Good Old Games, or Gog.com have launched a beta for their store client, which should be familiar to anyone who uses Steam. Gog have gotten a lot of good press lately with an ever increasing catalog of games both old and new that they actually quality check. Again I have not yet used their services, but it seems that Steam is getting some healthy competition and not a minute to soon.

Finally for this week, I started watching a let's play for Bloodborne, a Dark Souls style Gothic game. Dripping with dark, gloom and blood, this game looks amazing, but it's PS4 only... I can really honestly state that I hate the practice of only releasing a game on one platform. The number of people who'd go out and buy a 380€ console just to play one game can't be that high, so it's like throwing away money.

And I'm not alone in wanting Bloodborne on the PC. There have been rumors since launch that it would come to PC, but I don't believe it. In fact a petition to bring this game to PC has been going around for a while and garnered quite a few signatures. But we'll see. I won't be holding my breath though.

Oh yeah, an anti Bloodborne to PC petition has also been going around if you can believe it. Some PS4 owners have actually signed this in order to try to keep Bloodborne PS4 only, and I quote:

PC gamers are bunch of elitist douche bags. They don't deserve this PS4 exclusive. If they want to play Bloodborne they should buy a PS4 like gentlemen.

How childish can you get?

Until next time, have a great week!

Paid Mods

Hello. It's Monday and that means a new issue of Eccentric Spheres.

The hottest controversy on the gaming scene at the moment has to be the paid mod scheme for Skyrim cooked up by Valve and Bethesda. As a disclaimer I should point put that I have never used mods for Skyrim, and I certainly have no knowledge of how to even begin making one.

That said, I found it hugely entertaining as well as interesting to follow the debate on this subject. I first became aware of the issue when I woke up, went on Reddit and saw the site on fire from this subject. But I'm not going to go into it in great detail for two reasons.

One, I couldn't do much more than parrot what others have said, and I'll link a couple of really interesting videos below if you want to learn more.

Two, I have a case of the Mondays, and I'm feeling lazy.

But in a nutshell, the idea that came out of nowhere to smack gamers in the face, was that Steam would be hosting mods that you had to pay to download. Valve would then take their share as the host, Bethesda would take a cut as the IP owners, and the modder who did all the work would get the pittance that's left over. A lot can and have been said about that alone.

The biggest fury though seems to have come from the very idea that you would have to pay for mods at all, since they have always been free. And they pretty much have to be. Otherwise the modder would be making money from a company's intellectual property without permission, and that's illegal.

Anyway, Both Valve and Bethesda braved the storm of discontent and defended the system, only to then promptly scrap the whole idea. This whole kerfuffle (I love that word) came and went so fast that you missed it if you blinked. But the idea is now out there, and had it been handled right, it could have been good, but for the moment it's pretty toxic.

Some have speculated that Bethesda is gearing up to release Fallout 4 this summer and that the Skyrim project would have been the test pilot.

Now keep in mind that there is no evidence of Fallout 4 so don't get all excited. It has always been Bethesdas policy to announce a game only when it is done. Not like so many other companies that announce as soon as they come up with the idea of a game, only to scrap the whole thing two years later. But they have stated that they have a big announcement at E3 this year, which is something they apparently never do. And keep in mind that The Elder Scrolls series and the Fallout series have been very closely linked game-engine wise so there is hope. But no evidence. Remember that.

In other “news” most game stores have sales on Star Wars games today, since it is May 4^th, so you might want to check that out.

Here are the links I mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aavBAplp5A

That's it for me this week so until we meet again, May the Fourth be with you!