I've been playing Arx Fatalis, an old school first person RPG released around the same time as Morrowind. Of course it was completely eclipsed in practically every way by Morrowind, which was an amazing game for it's time and stole the spotlight.

Arx Fatalis was a dark and desperate roleplaying experience with nothing really similar to compare it to. The game is based on a planet in which the sun has gone out, forcing a large number of different species like goblins, trolls, and humans to retreat deep underground into the old dwarven mines and coexist.

The groups have divided themselves by species and each taken a part of the sprawling underground caves as their own. Aside from the dark cave system, the inhabitants have created small towns and settlements which are surprisingly detailed and interactive.

Cettlements feel alive with residents moving about and trying to survive. The sounds are amazing and it truly feels as if you are in a cave system. You'll hear echoes, dripping condensation, your own footsteps, and of course the hum of air moving through the caverns.

Now I'll get into the character, skills, customization, inventory and dialogue.

First with the negatives: You are unfortunately forced to play as one of four preset characters, all of which are white males. The dialogue is alright but there are no real options about what you'll say. Speaking to a character will start a preset conversation with automated responses from your character. The inventory is also clunky and distracting, but manageable.

Luckily the skills and depth of the game make up for this.

For instance you can pour points into stealth and rob people going about the day or you can work on strength or magic and hack/slash enemies until you can buy equipment after selling their stuff.

You'll need to eat so there are several food items in the game. You don't have to buy or find food. You can also build a fishing pole to catch fish and then cook them in a fire to sate your hunger. The spells are truly amazing. Bad guys chasing you through a tunnel? Erect a magic barrier blocking them from following you. Or summon a monster to eat them for lunch. Just don't forget to cast a control spell on the demon or you may be next. Slow time, light torches, enchant items, and levitate.

There are a plethora of choices aside from the routine bow/sword playstyles, although these are present the game doesn't force your hand.

It is an excellent but somewhat flawed game that looks surprisingly good and provides approximately 40-100 hours of semi linear play.

I have looked a bit in Arx Fatalis´ way but never really gotten around to it, unlike Bioshock. I may eventually get it as it really sounds like something I´d enjoy.


Thanks for the extensive review, Kiln

Yes, thanks for the concise and insightful review, Kiln! Ah. . . so many games, so little time.

Yesterday I finished playing Firewatch. It is not an action game, nor even technically an RPG. It is fairly linear in both gameplay and narrative. There is no melodrama associated with Saving the World or stopping Dr. Evil or even becoming the Superhero of the Moment. It just puts you into the shoes of a man named Henry, who is running from something (isn't everyone who takes this sort of job?) and takes on a summer firewatching in the Shoshone National Forest. He has to spend the season alone in a one-room lookout high above the forest, with only radio contact with one other lookout (Delilah, at the Thorofare Lookout to the north). We never see Henry - just his hairy legs and chubby hands, and Delilah is only a disembodied voice. The game is set in 1989, so no iPhones, iPods, or even a basic flip phone (which makes the cut phone wires all the more portentous). The biggest threat here is fire. Yup, fire, as in Forest Fire. This is just after the HUGE Yellowstone fire that burned all summer of 1988, and was visible even to me in the Twin Cities region (the soot and smoke from that fire caused some pretty dramatic sunsets that summer). So instead of putting the fire out, the crew just monitors the fire.

What makes this game really cool for me is that it is story driven. I became immersed in the story of Henry, and through his radio conversations, in that of Delilah. And the graphics are deceptively simple, but I found them deeply dimensional, and immersive in an atmospheric sort of way. Not detailed the way they are in TES games (especially Skyrim) but more in the way of how light and air is treated. Not to give out any spoilers, but in the end, it was a bit disconcerting trying to hike out ahead of the fire, because smoke was obscuring everything to the point where my lungs were beginning to complain (and I'm sitting safely at home! In a non-smoking house!).

It only took me six hours to play the game through, but it is just so much fun exploring the trails and watching the sky change. The sound scape too, was pretty impressive. Normally I play with the music turned off because it obscures too much of the environmental sounds for me, but in this case I left it on because it was NOT ON ALL THE TIME - only when I am about to discover something, or something is about to happen.

There are no enemies to kill, no zombies to avoid, no weapons to wield, no skills to level up. Nothing that would make a game worth playing for some. But if you want to just lose yourself in a world where not everything is life or death, and not everything has an answer, and what matters are your emotions, your developing relationship with a disembodied voice, and an amazing wilderness area to walk around in, go for this game. It's available on Steam and directly from the website (though it does require Steam activation to play).

I have a couple of days off coming up - I think I will play this game again just to enjoy the slower pace.

Ark Survival update on the Xbox one is game breaking. Don't do it!

Ui problems, broken shadows, and spawns producing literally thousands of bugs around swamps. I'm trying to report it but their official forum isn't confirming my account.

Heh, I was just thinking about doing that update. Thanks for the warning. I encountered a similar bug bug before which caused loads to spawn at the edge of a section of forest, and in turn caused me a great deal of frustration.

I'm playing Final Fantasy Explorers, a 3DS game I picked up earlier. I've only played for an hour or so, but it seems pretty fun so far.

Ha!

I knew you´d cave and let me know

I have dropped back into 1st person shooter addiction.

Fallout 4
Far Cry 3
Metro Redux
Dishonored

Waiting for Doom.

Can you describe Far Cry 3 in your own words? I bought a PS3 a couple years ago and it was one of those package deals which came with this game. Never tried it though. I've been assuming it's a mixture of Tomb Raider and something more open-worldy?

This post has been edited by Renee: Feb 21 2016, 03:42 AM

Far Cry 3 is the best of the Far Cry games IMO. It may not have the power of the modern console powering it but it has a very neat story line and voice acting and a better overall balance to the game.

By balance, what I mean is that the game delivers the progression in a very sweet way. It always seems to be at a smooth pace- each part, whether climbing a radio tower or crafting or upgrading fits in nicely to the speed of the main quest. Far Cry 4, by contrast, seems like a huge playground with 100 independent things happening and no cohesion.

The 1st person shooting mechanics are really good. It has very nice upgrades for the weapons and the battles are lovely and brutal. One minute a tiger is mauling your leg the next you are raiding a pirate base down by the water.

The South Pacific island is great. There are numerous caves and beaches to explore with heaps of hidden collectibles. The audio is very good- gunshots, pirate dialogue, waves washing up on the sand and animals all surround you.

I really love the cut scenes in the game. Vaas is a brilliant antagonist and makes you wonder why Beth can never deliver anything close to this level in Thieves Guild or DB...

As a 1st person shooter I would give it 9 out of 10.

For people who do not like these styles game they will probably say 5-7 out of 10.

It all depends what you like.

Tomb Raider is way more linear than anything here. Only the tranquility of the playground reminds me of the adventures of Miss Croft. This game has plenty of open world goodness. Attack the base using stealth, sniper from range, use animals to help clear things out, or soften things up with grenades and a frontal attack. You can even hang glide and go swimming with sharks.

This post has been edited by Winter Wolf: Feb 21 2016, 09:02 AM

Oh okay, that sounds neat. Maybe I'll try FC3 this summer. It'll be one of my "summer" games, if I'm burned out of Fallout 3 or whatever.

Blasphemy!


Fallout 3 is my summer game every year

Far Cry Primal. Having a jolly good time with it.

Still has that Far Cry feel to it, even though there are some changes from previous games. The big open world is gorgeous, which is something FC games have always done well. I'd say the map is at least as big as in FC4, if not a little bigger. I'm 16 hours in and it looks as if I've explored about 50% of the world. As in previous games, there are enemy camps and outposts spread across the world, and clearing them will allow your tribe to spread and grow.

The story puts you in the animal skin shoes of Takkar the beast master, from the Wenja tribe. The game focuses on rebuilding the Wenja tribe, and defeating the rival tribes - the cannibalistic Udam and the pyromaniacal Izila. You complete quests to gather wandering Wenja peoples together, and are helped along the way by 'specialists' who also provide Takkar with new equipment and skills. There is no English dialogue in the game, and everyone speaks the game's own prehistoric language (with English subtitles), which is really cool. There isn't as much drug use as FC 3 and 4, but missions that involve the shaman mostly include drinking mystery potions and having spirit visions, which are really nicely done and give you an insight into the way the other tribes think or how the world works.

Skill progression is split between several skill trees, and each tree needs you to recruit a certain specialist to your village before you can use them. For example, the warrior specialist has all the cool takedown skills, while the shaman has the beast taming skills. Other than that it's pretty much the same skill point based system from previous games.

The combat is brutal, as expected, with clubs, bows, and spears being the primary weapons. There's a good range of equipment and skills, which allows you to play however you want. Beast taming is of course the most fun thing in the world, and there are 14 beasts to choose from (plus 3 more if you have the Apex Predator version of the game) which all have different strengths and abilities. Hunting is a big part of the game, of course, with a huge variety of animals ranging from deer to mammoths.

It's refreshing to play a Far Cry game from a different perspective like this. I'm not sure how many more times I could do the 'bewildered American man shoots his way through a civil war' thing that the series is so fond of. Primal is a good change of pace for the franchise.

I've been having a lot of fun playing Final Fantasy Explorers, but I'm getting that itch to head back to Cyrodiil again.

Think I'll start a new character, a Spellsword, of sorts. My Nightblade's all well and good, but sometimes I feel like playing a character that can cross blades with the foe.

Sat down this evening to grind for three hours in Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (NES). I don´t plan to play it through, I just like leveling up and getting stronger

Downloaded Pokemon Red onto my 3DS (Red, Blue, and Yellow are all available on the online store as of yesterday). Aaah this takes me back.

Just last week I was playing Omega Ruby, so to see how far the games have come is really cool.

I felt up to playing something for the first time in weeks this morning. Settled on Minecraft. Not my primary Minecraft world but a test world generated back when I updated to MCv1.89. Spent a good two hours (until lunch) exploring a vast cavern system while gathering resources. Rotten luck searching for diamonds. Found only two so far, not even enough for a pickax.

I installed an Oblivion mod that replaces window reflections but haven't launched the game to check it out.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Mar 18 2016, 04:53 PM

I've recently been playing Warframe. I originally downloaded it last year, but only got a couple of hours in before ESO arrived and swept me away.

Now, after several hours, I'm having a blast with Warframe. It's a third person shooter RPG thing with multiplayer stuff, but not quite an MMO. Set in space, lots of lore and sci-fi stuff.

You play as a titular 'warframe', of which there are dozens to play as. You can craft new frames, weapons, items etc. and the game never lacks for things to do. You can get a pet dog-like creature called a Kubrow, and you can build and decorate your own dojo. I'd talk more about the story, but a lot of it could be considered spoilers.

Only two issues I have with it:
1) Very 'grindy'. You'll end up playing the same levels a few times over to get crafting blueprints and materials, and it takes time to craft things. For example, I had to kill the same boss 4 times before I got the blueprints for the components of a new warframe. Each component takes 12 hours to craft, then the frame itself is going to take 72 hours. I know it'll be worth it because the frame will help me advance in the game but...84 hours!? (of course you can always pay real money to speed up the process, or bypass the grinding and crafting altogether)

2)Very difficult as a solo player at higher levels. My friends all play it on PC, so I have to go solo on Xbox, and at higher levels it's proving very tricky. Once I craft a new frame and some new weapons it should be easier.


Anyway, it's free to download and play, and it's fun.

For over a week now, maybe two, I've spent a lot of time in Minecraftia. Not my main world, but rather my putz-around world. Nice thing about that world is that I have no presence as a 'builder' there and instead devote the entirety of my time to branch mining, resource gathering, spelunking and gearing up my avatar. He's in full enchanted diamond now, the chest plate having a quite excellent set of enchantments. Much of his base is underground and ugly as can be. That's where his wheat, potato and reed farms are. (He has not yet found melons, carrots and surprisingly pumpkins.) He has a fenced off area outside his cave used for a tree farm and combo cattle/chicken pen. (Protective outer fencing there was finalized just this evening.) No sheep, chickens or rabbits yet, though there are plenty in the wild close by. I doubt my avatar there will become a great long-distance overworld explorer, but I won't rule it out.

Otherwise I've done no gaming whatsoever.