Dungeon Siege II Underway

First time not posting at 3:00 or 5:00 in the morning.

Act 1 was just as difficult if not worse than I remember.  Sure you could work towards whatever specialization you'd like with anyone, but I think I wanted to stick to their initial preferences back then.  Which means I'm running around with two melee characters, the main one wanting to be a tank (by my own preference) but lacking the feats and gear to last more than a few seconds in a group of mobs.  I eventually give him a bow to kite everything and finish burning down the rest of the towers.  As I leave town for the next quest I run into the next party member who defaults as a ranger, and I have to wonder if she was there the first time.

I ran into some difficulties with group management after picking up the healer.  I don't remember what I did last time, but I thought the rampage formation worked pretty well.  Now some of them (like the main character) will move back to the group as soon as I issue the command and stand there, maybe taking a few hits before retaliating.  In the end I went with the mirror formation and controlled the ranger most of the time.  Otherwise, if I were moving back with the melee characters and started attacking again it would drag the healer to the middle of the battle since the active spell was a healing one, and the autocast healing spell wouldn't override the initial command to move to that spot.  After picking up the mage I controlled her more often due to the shorter range of her spells putting her near the heart of the battle and pulling enemies.

The game really picked up near the end of Act 1.  By then the tank was a real tank and I wouldn't have to run back so much.  Shortly into Act 2 after picking up the mage I had my old group composition back, but during Act 1 I considered discarding the tank role and turning him into another ranger.  I think I would have soon grown weary of all the kiting, though, and there would be competition for drops.  Maybe not that much competition; I wouldn't mind equipping more defensive items among all the members.  Still, one character who ridiculously outranges everything is enough for me.  And I like the traditional composition.

Get the ranger to engage then continue watching the Olympics.

The other members just happened to be female, really!  The order is like male warrior -> female ranger (bow/x-bow) -> female healer -> male ranger (throwing, shorter range) -> male warrior -> female mage -> female warrior...and I think a male ranger with bows shows up later.  Then I used him when I had an extra slot while playing a little bit of the next difficulty, but I could buy another right now since I'm trying the beta 4s hotfix mod.  Act 2 is nearing completion.  One more to go.

The question is why am I even conscious about gender preference / balance unless I had something to hide.  Heck, what about this name I'm using (not the guy in the game; I called him Isaac)?

Tried out Skyrim for a few hours the other day.  One freeze a minute into the beginning but no other issues so far.  A little bummed out over the lack of attributes and the clunky interface.  It'll just have to be fixed up with mods as usual.  I tried out SkyUI and it's an improvement, but I'd like to see if there's anything else out there.  When I think about Morrowind's inventory system it might supposedly be worse because you aren't presented with the names upfront, so I can't tell if it's nostalgia that's preventing me from really believing it.  I miss the item icons, and the ones in Oblivion look too simple.  Oh, I guess Skyrim has a model for you to look at but you need to have the item selected.  The interface in Morrowind just felt more homey.  Just right click and bam!  Numbers and stats and stuff to look at everywhere.

I don't have any saved games in this one again so I picked it up from Google Images, and then I saw that the site it came from had a rant about the very thing I'm talking about.

Still, what I'm looking for hasn't gone anywhere.  It's right there in Morrowind, and with a better computer I can take advantage of the graphical overhauls (always played without mods, save once) out there as well as explore new areas, including ones I haven't seen that have been there since the game was shipped out.  Just a matter of time before I rotate back to it.

Also took a walk the other day and enjoyed the nice, cloudy skies.  Quite humid still.

Which Game to Play?

Starting late June I stopped playing games for a about a month.  I think most of it can be attributed to focusing on the coursework near the end of the summer semester and reading from the programming book during my free time.  After a while of that the desire went away...but a week after class ended I felt too dull to continue my days reading the book.  I had no drive to do anything else and boredom settled in.  In an effort to dispel those feelings I played a single credit of Perfect Cherry Blossom which I hoped would feel like a beginner's experience after not touching that genre in over two months, but it was too soon and the effect was spoiled.

A few days later (7/28) I built my first computer (with some help from my father deciding on a few of the parts).

$700(ish) rig, not counting old components.

I wouldn't consider myself to be someone who plays a wide variety of games or picks up new titles as soon as they're released (with a few exceptions).  World of Warcraft aided in consuming my free time and keeping my interest in one spot, and after abandoning it in the middle of 2008 and drifting for a few months I found Touhou Project as a substitute for my singular focus.  That slowed down as early as late 2009, but I still played more than I should have.  With the discovery of programming this year I'm finally ready to enjoy it (more) casually, clocking only around 30 hours these past eight months compared to over 2,000 spent overall playing/watching replays.

Aside from those crazy instances I usually rotate between titles.  Play for a few days, probably finish the main story, put it up.  That sounds normal, maybe?  I don't think it's the right time to dump a list of all the titles.  They're usually PC games and RPGs.

To kick off the test run I installed S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.  Maximum setting goodness.  Installed Fallout 3 after that.

I'm one of those people who didn't play the first two Fallout games.  I also never experienced the Elder Scrolls games prior to Morrowind, or Might and Magic before VII, or Heroes of Might and Magic before III, or Final Fantasy before VII.  Well, I did watch my father play FO2, HoMM2, and all of Might and Magic VII.  Anyway, thanks to all this, hearing that Fallout New Vegas is more faithful to the Fallout universe didn't mean much to me as I cared more for the exploration and atmosphere of FO3.  At least, based on someone else's opinion that FO3 is more centered on exploration.  I think the preference is heavily influenced by Morrowind.  Also, I haven't experienced more than an hour of New Vegas because I still want to finish up FO3.  The older computer had a say in that (NV, not FO3).

I'm just a sucker for urban settings with cloudy skies and dirty streets and sidewalks.  I didn't pick up and play FO3 until last November, but I watched a relative play it on the Xbox during fall of 2009.  And I had this to help keep my imaginations afloat:



I was overjoyed when I was able to get it to run on the older computer.

Picked up Skyrim the other day; by sheer coincidence I told myself I'd start checking regularly for deals and it so happened to be 50% off.  I would have liked a physical copy, but soon enough I'll forget I ever worried about it.  Haven't touched it yet (I guess I should make sure it starts at least).

In a few days I plan on starting a new playthrough.  The first time around was quite vanilla with a few tweaks, but this time I want to include an overhaul mod.  And then the dilemma...what sort of character to play?  Sure, let's be another goody two-shoes.  Let's be another cookie cutter build with the exact same race (maybe switch gender) in Morrowind.  Let's start another fire/light/cold sorc or summon necro.  I decided on a not entirely evil unarmed specialist knowing that I still have my first character's save file where mostly everyone isn't screwed over.

But first, it's postponed for a few days because of an urge to play Dungeon Siege II.  Not much else to say about that; I'll probably only do the first difficulty again and probably won't pick up the expansion.  And I'll use the exact same party composition.  Nevertheless, it holds a special memory.  I don't remember when we got it but I remember being put off by the graphics.  Didn't proceed much into the first act after my melee party of two got beat down.

For some reason or another I picked it up again in the summer of 2007.  The house was sold and we were ready to move; just waiting on my father to finish his last year in the service for a bonus.  Rather than stay in the regular-sized housing on base (where we lived before buying the new house) we moved into billeting.  The order when moving to the US would be billeting -> apartment -> on-base housing -> real house -> billeting again.  Two rooms; the bedroom and kitchen/living room space.  There I played the game with laptop and mouse on my couch bed (it doesn't extend into a bed).

It wasn't just the game that made it memorable.  A few things were happening at that time (maybe I'll cover it later), and it was a humbling experience to live in small quarters again, with its own scent.  Doing laundry outside the house.  I had long walks on the field, appreciating the massive, detailed cloud formations displayed magnificently with little to no obstruction.  One of them one late afternoon spanned across with tops standing high.  It could be the makings of an empire.  I enjoyed those last days before we moved out of state.  It was all my fault.