26/08/2012

New Game - Uncharted 2

I really wanted to go back and play Skyrim but was worried about not over-playing it again to get bored. So I turned to Guild Wars instead but we were having server login issues.

What to play?
Abbas said Uncharted 2?

Ok, why not the first game had some frustrating moments but was enjoyable.

The game starts with you having to survive a train wreck falling off a cliff. You are given flashbacks to the back story, this time it is all about Marco Polo & his failed return from China in 1292.

An old associate Flynn & old girlfriend Frazer offer you a ob of stealing an old oil lamp from an Istanbul museum. Obviously once you retrieve the lamp you are betrayed by Flynn & imprisoned. This is when Sully arrives to get you out of jail and you are off to Borneo to track down Flynn & his boss.

That's enough of the plot details, the gameplay & production values are the same top drawer quality but & more importantly no frustrating sections yet. There have been a few button press sequences but I have now come to expect that to be the norm in this series.

Guild Wars - Bye Bye Ascalon

The daily quests were starting to become a chore & Abbas was getting bored of grinding the Charr so we decided to join Prince Rurik & attack Vatlaaw Doomtooth.

Making it to old Ascalon had its advantages because I had access to my chest & we could now hire two henchman to join our party.

Abbas saw the map & thought wow that is huge to which I replied yes we will be playing his for a while yet.

Guild Wars 2 also arrived in the post but my attempt to logon was prevented bye constant server errors. Thinking about it this morning my copy of the game arrived early from GMG thus I probably do not have access to the headstart? I will leave it till Tuesday to try again.


25/08/2012

Skyrim Diary - Entry 25 - Dragonbane & Vulthuryol

Usually I write my blog posts on the PC but being awake since 6am & lazy to not get up. I just grabbed my iphone & using the Blogger+ app I am writing this post.

After last week Skyrim I started talking about swords with Abbas & he said have you got the sword from Sky Haven Temple? What sword ?!

A quick google search revealed an armoury in the temple that has blade armour & the Dragonbane sword.

So the first task was to return to the temple to visit the armoury. There is a small room to the right when you walk into the main hall with the giant table. The armoury also has some blade armour & other bits. The Dragonbane sword can be found on the table. It does extra damage against dragons & shock attack on other enemies.

I then paid a quick visit to Whiterun to use my smithing skills to improve the sword & blade armour. With my +one handed attack ring & necklace the Dragonbane now did 130 damage. The blade armour was not better than my dragon armour so I passed the set over to Jzargo.

With the Dragonbane & Red Eagle sword I was now dual wielding with 265 damage.

Back to Blackreach where I had lots of mining, crimson nirnroot to collect & a glowing orange orb.

I decided to leave the glowing orb for now and looking at my local map, I went walking into the dark undiscovered areas where I found lots of places to mine & enough nirnroot to complete Sinderion's quest (which now wants me to visit his colleague Avrusa Sarethi). There are lots of buildings on the outskirts, some inhabited by Falmer & some just filled with loot.

With nothing else left to do it was time to visit the glowing orb. The area is surrounded by Falmer & Falmer servants (who are brainwashed humans ZOMBIES !!). It's a shame there were no dwarven robots, I was expecting to be greeted by some centurions.

There are two buildings Hall of Rumination & Debate Hall. Both buildings also only have Falmer & Zombie Slaves. Not much in the way of notable loot. The Hall of Rumination has a stairwell which takes you outside onto a platform overlooking the glowing orb.

So without further ado & as suggested by William (HaggisHunter) I used the unrelenting force shout on the orb.

FUS RO DAH !!

I expected the orb to smash open & a swarm of dwarven bees charging to attack me. But no it was the roar of a dragon !! A fire breathing dragon !! Being so high up on the platform I tried to attack with my bow but it's very difficult to attack a flying dragon.

The dragon then decided to land very conveniently outside the dwarven city. I had to go and meet him then, because I had killed all the Falmer on the way it was just me & Jzargo.

But I did have my new Dragonbane sword. The dragon, actually his name is Vulthuryol (sounds like a cough medicine) landed just outside the main wall. I decided to just charge in with my two swords and Jzargo was launching his destruction magic.

I got roasted quite a bit by taking the dragon flames head on but with only losing half my health I managed to jump on his back for a cinematic final blow.

Collecting the usual dragon loot, it was time to look at the local map for the location of the elder scroll.

I entered the Tower of Mzark to which I laughed Mzark the word in punjabi means joke. At this point I deleted my old saves (I usually only keep around five at the end of a session) & created save number 378.

Tune in next week then for more exciting adventures in Skyrim.

19/08/2012

Skyrim Diary - Entry 24 - Blackreach

Unfortunately Skyrim Friday did not happen due to many reasons. Thanks to a wrong number phone call at 5am Saturday morning (GIT !!) I was awake so decided to have some early morning Skyrim (Not for breakfast of course because I was fasting).
 
Blackreach is a really REALLY large cavern, so instead of following my quest marker I decided to wonder around and see what I could find.

The first building I came across was Reeking Tower which was occupied by spiders (lots of them). After that I found Silent Ruin which had a trap chair when you sat on it a spinning blade pops up to attack.

Wondering around also meant I could collect lots of Crimson Nirnroot, I think I am currently on 22/30. You also run into a lot of falmer but not many dwarven enemies. Some centurions seem to be offline in holding rings & when you attack them they wake up. Also mining lots & lots of places to mine for soul gems & ore.

There is a giant glowing orange orb in the center of Blackreach but I have not visited it yet just in case it advances the quest line.

Luckily there are a few great lifts in blackreach that take you back to the surface, I only tend to pick up loot that is worth more than 150 gold but I was full & Jzargo was a pack mule. So I took the great lift of Raldbthar. I was greeted by the roar of a dragon & I think it was Alduin so I went down the path to take him on but he flew off & another dragon Viinturuth came in to attack.

Viinturuth does a frost attack which was easy enough to counter by equipping the necklace & ring I had to increase my defence to frost attack by 70%. My trusty Red Eagle easily killed the dragon but I had to leave the bones & scales behind.

Looting & selling the loot can take many hours in the game. I currently have 80,000+ gold but the difficulty with the high value items I pick up is finding a merchant with enough gold to sell them. I usually fast travel to Whiterun first & visit Warmaiden's, Drunken Huntsman, Belethor's & Arcadia's Cauldron. Then off to Riften to see the market traders, after that depending on what I have left I sometimes go to Riverwood.

I have thought about taking up some perks on the speech skill but with 80K gold already & nothing to spend it on it's probably a waste of a level up perk.

After selling my loot back to Blackreach to continue my sweep of the area, next to the glowing orange orb building I saw a giant wondering around & thought why not. But rather than charge in & attack I used my sneak ability & crouched to attack with an arrow doing 3x damage. Jzargo decided to do the same & we quickly killed the giant.

Wondering pass the giant we came to some more buildings including a pumphouse & market. The pumphouse had a master locked chest which rewarded me with a +35% damage ring when wielding a sword. The market had some loot but when I opened the main door I was met by a brick wall. Odd ??! but with the voice of "Daddy" that was my Skyrim play time over.

Tune in next week then for more exciting adventures in Skyrim.







18/08/2012

Completed - Friendle

I have only one games folder on my iPhone & occassionally a game comes along that drives itself into the folder & that game was Ticket to Ride. Thus I had to get rid of one game & Friendle was my least played.

It is a nice app that offers you seven games you can play against friends but I only really ever played Backgammon. In fact before Friendle I did not know how to play the game of Backgammon so the game actually taught me something.

The list of games in the folder so far are Words with Friends, Disc Drivin, Hero Academy, Carcassonne, Outwitters, Pocket Heroes, Tiny Tower, Matching with Friends, Ticket to Ride, Bang, Song Pop & Trivie. The latter two have their days numbered.

17/08/2012

New Game - Ticket To Ride

I have two games on my iPhone that have been sat gathering dust till I can find the time to learn how to play them. Bang & Ticket to Ride.

Abbas has already played quite a few games  so we sat down for him to teach me the ropes.

The result of the first game was me winning :)

You start the game with the choice of selecting up to 3 tickets. These tickets are a train journey from one city to another. When you stat the game you have various coloured tracks & you need to have the correct number of he coloured cards to match the track you want to lay down. thus if you want to lay a red track of four, you will need four red cards but there is a special rainbow coloured card which can be any colour of your choice so you could place the track with only 3 red & the rainbow card.

You then carry on playing the game collecting cards you need to lay the tracks. Throughout the game your goal is always to complete the tickets you started the game with but you can during the game select more tickets but be warn any tickets you fail to complete will be taken off your final score.

Another enjoyable turn based game & I'm disappointed that I did not load it up sooner to play.


15/08/2012

Carcassonne - Waiing for the tile - luck needed

Still easily the best iOS game IMHO, in a recent game against the Monster we agreed that no farmers would be placed because it is difficult for him to understand. So we played kid mode which only gave us road or town pieces.

This led the Monster to attempt an assault on a large town I had built but not with one but three meeple's.


We still had quite a few tiles to play so I ignored his attack and carried on accumulating points but I forgot one important factor.

Luck !!

He had luck on his side & with only two pieces remaining I got the road piece & he ended up with the tile he needed to complete the town & take the points.

Was it luck, skill or the fact that he was brave enough to place three meeple's on the chance that he would get the tile needed?

Either way he walked off telling everyone that he beat Dad at Carcassonne & I just smiled.

13/08/2012

Matching with Friends - High Chain 11

I'm still playing Matching with Friends against some UGVM players & a random player Mmosie who is very good so i was good to finally beat them but also in the process get a high chain of 11.

If you fancy a game send me an invite.

12/08/2012

Skyrim Diary - Entry 23 - Alftand

It's Friday so that can only mean Skyrim day !!

I am on the quest Elder Knowledge searching the dwemer ruin Alftand for an Elder Scroll.

You get to fight a lot of dwemer enemies who are basically mechanical robots. Easily defeated by my Red Bane Sword & fire spells.

There is a section in the ruins that has you walking down a spiral platform & whilst under attack Jzargo decided to jump off this platform to his death but managed to knock into me & I promptly followed him down to my doom. I then asked him to wait at the top of this section whilst I dealt with all the enemies before asking him to follow me.
 
Later the ruins you come across Falmer who are a more tougher opponent, especially the Nightprowler & Gloomlurker. I ran into a party of three & died a couple of times before I had to stop & think of a strategy which involved placing down a fire rune & ensuring after a few attacks retreating to heal myself.

Along the way you find various journals & dead bodies of previous adventures who have tried to search the ruins for treasure. You eventually will come across two who are fighting who fight with each & whoever wins will then turn on you. After you have killed hem you can then use the sphere given to you to reveal a staircase down to Blackreach.

Blackreach is an underground cavern inhabited by Falmer & dwemer machines. It looks very beautiful especially with the Avatar floating like mushrooms. I also started another quest (like I don't have enough already!) when I picked up a Crimson Nirnroot plant. Slightly further into Blackreach you come across Sinderion's Field Laboratory & inside you find Sinderion's skeleton clutching a journal which asks you to then collect 30 of these plants.

At this point it was time to open my fast so I saved. Tune in next week then for more exciting adventures in Skyrim.

10/08/2012

Guild Wars - Legendary Defender of Ascalon

Not long to go now till Guild Wars 2 is released, in the meantime I purchased the original game for Abbas to enjoy.

I have never completed Guild Wars, I got to Lions Arch & then got distracted possibly by the arrival of the 360 & my return to console gaming.

Thus with Abbas we are adventuring in pre-searing with our level 9 characters (Warrior/Elemental & Warrior/Monk) to the Northland’s in search of experience points & more importantly Charr Bags. 

Once we have reached level 10 Lieutenant Langmar in Ascalon offers you daily quests, I have never gotten a character this high in pre-searing so I am curious to see what quest he offers & this will decide if we decide to advance  pass searing or stick around to try and earn the title Legendary Defender of Ascalon.

09/08/2012

Terraria - GOLD !!

Finally after nearly 20+ hours of mining I have struck gold, albeit a very small amount. You have to mine quite far down (I don't have a depth meter yet to confirm how much) before you get to find the rare meals like gold & silver.

By going further down you encounter more dangers like falling boulders, water filled caverns & tougher enemies like worms.

07/08/2012

Terraria - Mine Shaft

I'm sure there are lots of different tactics to mine but I like the mine shaft approach. I build a shaft straight down & then mine either left or right when I see something interesting.

It also handy to have a supply of wooden planks & torches which I keep in a storage chest at the top of the shaft.


06/08/2012

Tiny Tower - Rev Owen Arcade

Finally after building 99 floors I finally got the floor I wanted.

This will also be the only floor in the tower where the workers will wear costumes.

I wanted Batman costumes but these are not available in the game so the next best is the cat costume or I like to think Cat Woman.

Still miss you Owen (RIP)
Here's to you big guy enjoy the Arcade :)


New Logo - Borderlands 2

New Logo - Time for the Claptrap Boys to reunite !!
Time for a new logo, with the many new releases coming out this year including Assassins Creed 3, Halo 4, Need for Speed Most Wanted. Once game stands above all of these & that is Borderlands 2, release date 21st September can't come sooner.





Old Logo - Bye Bye Red shades

I still have a couple of more DLCs to play for Fallout New Vegas





Completed - Fallout New Vegas - Honest Hearts

Another DLC completed, Honest Hearts has you joining the fight of the Sorrows & the Dead Horses against the White Legs.

The two tribes have a mutual understanding against each other but the Sorrows are generally a more peaceful tribe & the Dead Horses are happy to kill if needed.

By doing various quests you eventually end up at a crossroad where you have to decide if you want to help the Sorrows leave Zion or go and attack the White Legs so the tribes can live in peace.

This would be a good point to save the game if you want to see both endings. I won't say any further want happens in the game but I played both endings before leaving Zion & returning to the Mojave wasteland.

I am going to take a break before starting the next DLC to go & play Uncharted 2.


05/08/2012

Terraria - My House

My first house in Terraria, i's a work in progress & is constantly evolving but it has a few essential tools for helping me craft equipment & chest for me to store any valuable loot or ore. But more importantly it protects me from the  zombies & flying eye balls that come out at night. You also need to build houses for any NPC characters but I only built him a basic hut.

04/08/2012

The return of the Skyrim Diary - Entry 22 - Throat of the World

Please note this post is littered with spoilers.

The Diary returns from the dead but in a slightly different style rather than from the perspective of my in game character Valdarr it will be from my perspective the gamer.


I've not played Skyrim since April & thanks to a colleague at work who is always playing Skyrim I decided that hence forth I will devote my Friday gaming time to Skyrim.

It took me a while to remember the controls, after a quick look down my current quest list I decided it was time to ditch Esbern & Delphine & finally take them to Sky Haven Temple. Upon arrival at the temple Esbern takes you to Alduin's Wall & gives you a quick history lesson. I am really impressed with the writing in the game for the dialogue & lore.

After the history lesson you are told that you need to learn a shout that will help you defeat Alduin but they do not know it so you pay a quick visit to High Hrothgar & speak to the greybeards.

Delphine also now wants to set this temple up for the Blades new home & asks you to go and recruit suitable people (I've not recruited anyone yet)

The greybeards are annoyed that you are helping the blades but eventually agree to let you go and speak to Paarthurnax (the leader of the greybeards).

I would strongly suggest waiting till nightfall before you make your trek up the mountain pass because the skyline is simply amazing. Alas the xbox 360 does not have a screenshot option like steam & my attempts at trying to make a video via the iPhone came out poor.

Once you reach the top of the mountain you are greeted by Paarthurnax who is actually a dragon, another history lesson later & you learn about a time wound that you can can access via an "Elder Scroll" & return back to when the shout was first used to learn it. So basically this is Back to the Future but you need to find an energy source before you can go back to the past. Any excuse to use a BTTF reference but the writing and the dragon encounter with the skyline is an amazing experience & I just wished I had a larger TV screen (32") & full sound system to experience it again.

Paarthurnax does not know where an Elder Scroll can be found so time for you to pay a visit to the librarian in the College of Winterhold who informs you that you need to go north and try and track down a scholar who knows more about the Elder Scroll. I had a funny moment when exiting the college I encountered an ancient dragon & whilst fighting him Jzargo ran off saying "He was not going to die fighting a dragon" After taking care of the dragon he returned & I gave him a bitch slap with my sword.

You now get to wonder across an arctic ice-field to find Septimus Signus who is standing next to some Dwemor cube, he then asks you to help him use this cube by charging a lexicon from some Dwemor ruins which typically is far away from where you are standing, in return for hopefully an Elder Scroll? I don't know because I got to the ruins & it was time to open my fast so that was my first Skyrim Friday day over.

Thank you to LPFigwort for constantly talking about the game at work which finally made me get back to playing it.

More exciting adventures in Skyrim next week.


03/08/2012

New Game - Terraria

Mine Craft (is i two words or one, I could google and find out but hey ho), "You must get it". "It's the best game ever" & so- on ...

It probably is & I know one individual who certainly lives, eats & dreams Mine Craft. Not mentioning any names Luffers :)

Anyhow the recent steam sale (my first I may add) had me of course spending some money & one of the games purchased for a tiny sum of £1.49 was Terraria.

It's a block mining game similar to Mine Craft but in 2D & I blame wikipedia for making me buy it. The first line "Terraria is noted for its similarity to Minecraft and classic exploration-adventure titles such as Metroid."

Metroid !! ... click, buy & install.

You start off with basic tools allowing you to mine, attack & chop. The first task is to build yourself a house, you need this because at night & yes you guessed it ZOMBIES !!

Once you have survived the first night you can then set off on your mining adventure hoping to find rare metals to then return home & craft into a sword, pickaxe or armour.

02/08/2012

Syndicate - It's now geting easier

After a few weeks of further PMGs & a lot more players joining the UGVM syndicate. The game is getting easier to play, not because we are any better (albeit maybe slightly) but mainly due to research you can unlock upgrades to your weapons, learn new skills & upgrade your agent chip.

The first attempt at a map was very painful but now we can easily complete a map with no difficulties especially if we have a full roster of 4 agents only taking 15 minutes.

In fact yesterday Toby & I showed some amazing skills to complete a map with just 2 players !!

I have a couple of maps still to play on normal difficulty but it won't be too long before we start looking at ramping up the difficulty to the next level.

01/08/2012

Completed - Gatling Gears

It was in limbo for a long time but I finally managed to get my son to sit down for an hour to complete the last few levels.

It's your usual twin stick shooter affair but with mechs, you have very basic custom add-ons in the form of different skins & the weapons can be upgraded by collecting enough gold through the levels.

At the end of each level you get to encounter a final boss which only proves tricky because of the re-spawning minions.

Anyhow it's done & deleted from the 360. Next on the XBLA games list is Scott Pilgrim.