Fallout: New Vegas ~ Ultimate Edition

Oh face it! If you buy a Bethesda game the first day it comes out you are just asking to be engulfed in a game world of bugs and glitches and programmer PAIN! Skyrim players are facing these challenges as we speak. Quests won’t trigger. Things won’t work right. Bethesda does this time and time again and they keep acting like QA testing is something they have never heard of before. Imagine people at other companies actually try their games out before they sell them to the idiots!

Every day is a new day in the land of middle management at Bethesda I guess. We, you and I, are the issue though we keep buying their lame ass excuses and making their games bestsellers.

Anyway, this is why despite the fact I very much liked the more vibrant and more flowing storyline found in the very buggy Fallout: New Vegas I still was saying buy Fallout 3: Game Of The Year Edition because you got all the downloadable content and the final patches in one great big value priced lump.

Now you can do the same with Fallout: New Vegas ~ Ultimate Edition. So if you like Skyrim and want to see what a Bethesda influenced Sci-Fi game with guns and big western wastelands and assorted mutants might play like. Even if you found Fallout 3 a bit bland, humorless, constantly dragging it’s feet, and ultimately a bit tedious to play despite how massive and fully realized the huge wrecked world building was try this version and see if they did not slash the original focus on minutia laced tedium and pump up the pacing just a smidgen better. New Vegas is far closer to a shooter than the original.

With this new version you get all the extra downloadable content and all the current patches and everything else in one nicely put together disk of post apocalyptic goodness. This is probably the time period most people should wait to buy any Bethesda game. Mark my words Skyrim will probably end up finally fixed and actually ready to rumble by the time they get one of these Ultimate Edition versions together.

My favorite addition to the world of Fallout was ED-E my lovable floating robotic handbag of death. Love you ED-E! Never a bad word for anyone probably because he can’t speak and he was so easy to deal with.

Skyrim

From: The Inquisitr ~ Bethesda to have Skyrim Patch 1,04 for PS3 by end of January.

Here we go again! Last time they patched… OMG!

Things I had no problems doing before suddenly were broken as shit. I had to fix the laggy freeze problem myself as best I could.

Before patch 1.03 I had no problems becoming Thane of Riften.

I bought the house and then went and looked at it and then talked to the Jarl and she made me Thane. Simple.

After the patch if you buy the house you have to immediately turn to the Jarl in the same room and at that same time have her make you Thane because if you leave that room for any reason the quest maker goes away and she will not make you Thane of Riften anymore.

Also before the patch no problems getting all three Dragon shouts for Ice.

Now after the patch, The first Word Wall for Ice in Saarthal flickers and still hisses at me even though I got the word from it. The last Word Wall for Ice in Frostmere Crypt plays the “oh ah” music and hisses but no word, no lights, nothing.

So no getting all the Dragon Shouts for me.

There are other fun problems but those are not so much glitches just “good things to know” they should have made more obvious.

LIKE… If you get any armor from a specific faction that you join and they do not make you buy it. KEEP IT!

Do not sell the Thief Guild Armor or the Nightingale Armor or the Dark Brotherhood Shroud Armor. KEEP IT!

You will not be able to get another set and no one will sell you a new set and it can severely ruin your chances completing a few side quests that come up about armor upgrades.

Unlike the Companions who have their own smithy selling their members the Skyforge Steel stuff and the Wolf Armor. The Blacksmith will sell you as much as you want of all that crap.

That’s why I like the Companions so much they are handy and they think it all through. More than a few of those Companion dudes have probably left his armor lying around in some dark corner of a bar where he drunkenly could not find it.

Just an observation of overall game play…

Why is it that after I hit level 50… (I joined every faction this run through and became pretty much in charge of just about everything in the game.) So um, why is it when I shoot through early “cleared” dungeons, stuff I already visited and did everything in, I find not just better quality loot but actually all around MORE OF IT?!?!

I don’t get that. Why dump all the cool magically enabled weaponry and jewels, gobs of gems and jewelry, all right as the player is pretty much nearing the end? I needed that stuff and would have spent hours playing around with it finding the best combo back when I was buying all the houses and having to buy better armor than I could make myself. NOW… that stuff is just annoyingly late in the game, pretty but useless, garbage. I needed most of these weapons when I was just starting out and I needed all those gems to make jewelry so I could build up my smithing skills not now that I can make something way better than anything you are handing me.

People just starting… In my opinion the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood even though they are bad rep organizations have some of the best armor and weapons stuff they just hand you for the beginning player before you have any good perks or any real “umph” in your fight skills. So I suggest first buying the house in Whiterun and then checking them out at the beginning instead of waiting and doing them later. Like joining the Companions or even picking a side in the big Skyrim civil war I would save for late in the game when the rewards incurred from doing those things and the type of fights you can survive start to be more beneficial.

This game feels a tad unbalanced here and there to be honest and there is no real sense of direction or signs saying do this first or save this for later till you have played through a few times and seen where each path takes you.

Skyrim

If you have Skyrim on the PS3 and are having continual unending freezes.

Try getting rid of all your books, letters, notes.

That’s right, this is similar to the issues we saw in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. It’s not the size of the save file but the amount of things the program is tracking. It really only tracks the stuff in your house since we all know the stuff in chests in the dungeons shops and so on gets reset constantly. So not to cut off your nose to spite your face… It’s not like I am saying get rid of your stash of alchemy ingredients or your stash of jewels or your pile of various smithing ingots or your collection of weapons.

HOARDER! Next on a very special intervention edition of Hoarders we travel to Skyrim land of hoarding Nords.

PS3 Rule Of Thumb: Dump your books! Get rid of them!

They can only be read to get any benefit out of them once then they are useless as far as any further game play goes. Even if you get a quest that needs a specific book it will most likely make you go get it from the location it wants you to get it at anyway. I stock piled Powdered Mammoth Tusk for the White Phial Quests and I still ended up having to go grab some from another place because the program wanted me to do it the way it wanted me to do it.

So I repeat try this it worked for me… I am only talking about Skyrim for PS3. Read the book then dump it. Either sell it or leave it where ever you found it. No library of your dreams but at least you can complete the game properly.

Now onto crafting things for fun and profit they do not make obvious…

If you want to enchant some items to help you blacksmith above 100 you can do so by enchanting the following items. At 100 Enchanting with a default store bought Elixir you should get to about 28 Fortify Smithing…

Necklace
Ring
Bracers
Armor

I just generally “smith up” some steel bracers and steel armor and a plain gold necklace and ring for the Fortify Smithing gear. If you do a set for Fortify Alchemy gear then change out that Armor there for a Helmet but go ahead and keep the rest the same idea.

Now when you are first starting out you want to go to several potion stores over and over (Whiterun, Riften, Morthal, and lastly the Orc places) and buy a stockpile of some rare or at least extremely hard to find Enchanting and Blacksmithing ELIXIRS which pump your enchanting ability up 25% and smithing ability up 50 but you can Alchemy stronger ones yourself eventually you know. Oh and while you are at the Orc places remember to pickup some Daedric Hearts which you can also buy some from that shady student on the second floor of your apartment building at the Wizard College.

So you are thinking but that’s a ton of perks to do all the crafting stuff and you are right if you use all the available perks for all three of the crafting schools.

Or you can

Smithing… Now I like getting all these perks complete because I really like upgrading all the armor in the game but if you wanted to save perks remember the rough circle is actually two halves you start at the bottom Steel smithing and then go left or right up to Dragon. To save perks select Steel, Dwarven.Orc, Ebony, Daedric, Dragon. Which gives you the best Light Armor in the game Dragonscale and the best Heavy Armor and player made weapons in the game Daedric.

Enchanting… Let’s face it really all you need to function is the five levels of that initial star selection and then Insightful Enchanter for the skill enchanting of objects even though I personally cannot live without Extra Effect since I am so wishy and washy and can’t decide what I want in a magic item. Can this sword magically slice and magically dice too?

Alchemy… Lots of conversations about this one but let’s get real much like Enchanting you only need the first five levels of that initial star selection and then Benefactor to function in this school. All the rest is gravy.

You can use that 100 in Alchemy plus select perks to make some stunning jacked up Blacksmith Elixirs and Enchanter Elixirs of your own and then create some jaw dropping 100 in Enchanting smithing gear so when you go to use your 100 in Blacksmithing after you drink your own high octane brewed Blacksmith Elixir and then put on your suped up enchanted smithing gear and then create your very own world crushing kick ass armor and weapons from it all.

So there you go. Problems solved kinda sorta and secrets revealed.

Now if they would only bring that Bodyhair Nude Male HD mod by MysticBinary82 to the PS3.

From: Kotaku

Skyrim

Bethesda just patched Skyrim to version 1.03 on the PS3 this morning!

Lollipop Chainsaw

“I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.”

Guess what game won Game Of The Year… Take a guess I dare you. Skyrim It really is JUST THAT GOOD!

I was even happier when my choice for Game Of The Year 2011 ~ Portal 2 walked away with the most awards including an award for the lady who played GLaDOS. She so rocked as GLaDOS.

So it looks like the big up and comers next year are BioShock Infinite (The trailers alone are amazing!), Diablo III (Yeah, promises promises), Borderlands 2, Fable: The Journey, and for me at least Lollipop Chainsaw. Jason just yelled HELL YEAH! Lollipop Chainsaw! The maker of Lollipop Chainsaw is our weird & wonderful video game hero Suda51. Think of him as the video game player’s very own David Lynch.

My Final Comments On Skyrim

My Review Of Portal 2

Saints Row The Third

Saints Row is sorta a guy’s game. You do not buy Saints Row to explore the awesome landscape. You do not buy Saints Row to be the defender of law and order.

You buy Saints Row to be BAD! Last game let you be wonderfully BAD in their sandbox world. Ramming your car full speed down a city street while looking for some bad guys who did not bow to how BAD you were so time to blow them up with your devastating bazooka of doom.

So let’s see how BAD you can be The Third time out. This is an adult erector set for mayhem.

Skyrim

Bethesda just patched Skyrim to version 1.02 on the PS3 and fucked it up really really bad.

It used to be I would start experiencing “lag” issues so I would have to save before it totally froze up on me but I could still save and then turn the PS3 off and restart it back up. NOW… You are going along and want to go into a shop or something so you hit the door and BAM! During the transition the whole thing freezes up bad. It can also freeze up like this when it goes to Autosave randomly.

To make matters worse with the latest OS update from dear old Sony they decided to include a couple of nag screens now about the PS3 not being shut down correctly so you have to say OK to the first nag screen and then it wants to check the disk and files so you have to say OK to the second nag screen.

Oh Sony PS3 Programmer, pookie bear I did not shut the machine down the game froze honey buns. So I tapped the little button on the front of the PS3 like the manual says to do and it shut itself down.

I have and have had for ages now no control over how this dang machine shuts itself down so why blame me for it? Plus Sony PS3 Programmer sweetie dearest if the power goes out thus shutting the machine down the wrong way AGAIN I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THAT! Sweetie darling!

So please take the stupid nag screens out and if the damn machine needs to check files and disks then do not ask me for an OK. I don’t care really! Just do it! It’s not like I would say “no way” to something like that and you really do not give me any choices to say “no” anyway.

So why have any nag screens in the first place? Please please please please take the annoying cloying nag screens out pookie kins.

I won Skyrim by the way. Once you get to the part where you have to capture the dragon in Whiterun at Dragonsreach you better have the best armor in the game and the best weapon before you catch him because he’s gonna offer you a ride to the big guy and it’s all end game from there on out.

Remember I told you guys about Stacking… Pretty early on game time I made full on Dragonplate (Legendary) Armor at 138 and have a Glass War Axe (Legendary) at 146 all fully enchanted with various soul trap and absorb health spells and fortify magic and fortify health spells using that dual enchantment perk. All the stuff I learned and used with my focus on Smithing and Enchantment but also using a special fortify smithing ring I made that jacks my smithing ability up by 28% and I also use a ton of Blacksmith’s Elixer up 50% and Enchanter’s Elixer up 20% I horde away for when I want to make my own stuffs.

Anyway, FUN GAME!

Literally Skyrim was the best game I played all year and I am not the world’s biggest fan of the Fantasy RPG’s. Let’s hope they do this same thing to the Fallout series just one more time in house like none of those outsourced jobs anymore please and give us a huge Post Apocalyptic Sci-fi gun toting fun fest.

Still I say the best way to enjoy this game is not to play the main quest in fact ignore it. I only found two things I was looking for at the very end. The last mask for that group posed Dragon Priest statue. If you found any of these masks and the wooden mask you know what I mean. Also the last and final 20th Shout was learned after you defeated the last dragon. But that was all I found at the ending there I might have missed something I can go check later.

But really, do all the side mission stuff. Enjoy all the exploration and all the hidden fun to be found. Go ride a horse or just wander the gorgeous countryside picking flowers and digging for gold and get lost in the caves and valleys and mountain tops of this fantasy land of adventure because that journey was the best part not the final game ending battle with the big mean dragon. In fact waving my sword around hacking at yet another dragon was sorta boring no matter how much bigger it was.

Grade A for a most excellent journey and the awe inspiring magic of being able to do just about anything I wanted to do.

The Legend Of Zelda ~ Skyward Sword

Jason got this for his birthday. He started playing at 3 and it is now 6 o’clock.

His summation of the game so far.

There is probably all of a half an hour’s worth of actual game play here but it takes two weeks to complete all the god damn tutorials! If some manga character with dreamy eyes stops everything to talk to me one more time I am taking a break from this game you cannot bypass the long drawn out stupid conversations.

So there you go. I am staying in Skyrim.

Next up Peppermint Pig Cake!