This is my new game project: “Ac!d Commander.” It involves Metal Gear Ac!d for the PSP. Rather than being in written form, I decided to do an actual Let’s Play, making videos and everything. I’ll be posting one to three new videos every Friday from today until the game is over. I welcome any comments and discussion. Apologies in advance for any audio hiccups, video malfunctions, or other jackassery, which will surely ensue.
Skyrim glitches are the best glitches
Now here’s a post that would seem more appropriate for 2012, hmmm? The uniqueness and hilarity of the glitches throughout The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have been well documented. In fact, I’d say that Skyrim glitch videos are nearly as plentiful as cat videos…and I’d also be exaggerating, because there’s no way in hell that any type of video could ever topple the juggernaut that is the cat video on YouTube. But still, there are a damn lot of videos on YouTube displaying Skyrim’s glitchiness.
As I mentioned last week, I’ve started replaying Skyrim, for reasons. I didn’t mention last week but will say here that not long ago, I wrote this article for Virtual Bastion: “What’s the glitchiest game you’ve ever played?” In it I proclaimed Fallout: New Vegas as my new personal glitchiest winner (eking ahead of Saints Row 2.) That was primarily because I had just completed that game, and it was fresh in mind. But holyshitontoast if Skyrim doesn’t blow New Vegas’s glitches straight outta the irradiated waters of the nuclear apocalypse.
If I had been smart about this, I would have hooked up my capture card to the PS3 and started taking screenshots, at least, from day one. But I’m a dumbass who’s bad about thinking ahead and didn’t feel like rewiring the PS3 to attach the capture card, so there. However, as I said, Skyrim glitch videos are rife on YouTube, so have at.
Not to go off on a weird tangent, but typing “Skyrim glitch” has made me think of “Skyrim-Glitch Mob.” Has anyone remixed the Skyrim soundtrack? Huh. I’m not gonna go…look…
*opens up YouTube tab*
… … …
*three hours later*
Yes. Yes, people have. Wow.
What the hell was I talking about? Whatever it was, I’m sure it was of the utmost importance…
Oh yes, Skyrim’s glitches, and how lazy I am. And how this post is, like, five years overdue. But whatevs. Right.
Also, when did I start using “whatevs” regularly? I just said it the other day, too. That’s got to stop.
Anywaaaay, as sad as it is that I don’t have any pictures to prove what I’m about to say, I think we’ve built up enough trust here over the years. Y’know? Look, to prove it, let’s do a trust fall. Okay, you fall backwards, and I’m going to catch you. Promise.
THWUMP.
Ah shit…yo, fuck, man…I…I’m really sorry bout that. I..it’s just…it’s this cat…he was being sooooo stupid funny in this vid…yo look, watch!…
But how I digress.
What I’m getting at is that I’ve been tallying many of the oddball glitches that I’ve encountered in Skyrim. And the best thing is that they boil down to funny glitches, not game-breaking ones, which is probably one of Bethesda’s MOs, though I’m sure they wish it wasn’t. (Or maybe they relish in it? Based on the fact that such ridiculous glitches are also present in Fallout 4, one has to wonder…)
Without any more further ado, as I have already ado-ed too much already, here’s my list of ten of the most hilarious glitches I’ve encountered so far.
1. Having guards fall from the sky upon entering Dawnstar (has happened multiple times, and it’s never not funny).
2. In the ruins of Mzinchaleft when my companion, the mage Mercurio, got accidentally hoisted up onto a wall of spikes and stayed there, still in his battle poise. When I activated the wall to come down, he remained there, just floating, but so ready for battle.
3. That time when I killed that one dragon at Dragon Bridge, and its skeleton “fell” on top of my horse Shadowmere right where it’s stomach would have been. It looked as if the dragon had eaten the horse.
4. When I killed a cave bear on the top of a mountain outside Winterhold, and it fell down into a nearby cavern. I found said dead bear lying on its back with its four legs pointing straight up into the air. Ridonkulous.
Goddamn, have I got to quit with these dingly dumb words!
Haha…”dingly.” That one just sounds goofy.
*Ahem*
5. Upon first entering Whiterun and having three people approach me, except they all mashed together to form one “person” and were all talking at the same time. Maybe more terrifying than than funny.
6. When stupid Lydia needlessly died fighting a couple of giants outside Dawnstar; I proceeded to run away. I returned to the spot and the giants were retreating but dead Lydia’s corpse had “adhered” to one giant’s club. So terrible…terribly funny!
7. Visiting my favorite blacksmith in Solitude and finding that he had traded his hammer for a broom. Nothing like smithing with a broom. (has happened multiple times).
8. That time I took Cicero out and had to swim out to a ship docked near Solitude. The poor thing kept swimming in circles. Had to reload.
9. Exploring Dragonsreach and watching the jarl walk down a set of stairs and onto the head of a guard standing at the bottom of the stairs. The jarl’s feet and the guard’s head melded into an inhuman form for a brief moment before the jarl “fell” of the guard’s head and went on his merry way.
10. And finally, more floating fun with that dragon I killed in Riften. Upon first doing the deed, its skeleton fell upon one of Riften’s bridges. I left the city and returned a short time later to find the same skeleton hovering above the city’s market stands, kind of like a macabre umbrella.
Oh, how I am enjoying this game (again, for the first time)!
Into the Chaos: Borderlands 2
You know when you start playing a game that you think you’re not going to enjoy, and it turns out that not only do you enjoy it, but it affects your entire outlook on games? That was my experience with Borderlands 2. Head on over to Virtual Bastion for the full article.
Borderlands 2 and I shouldn’t have gotten along. It’s an first-person shooter, and a fairly aggressive one at that. It strongly suggests the addition of teammates. It’s tiredly open-world. It contains only limited role-playing elements. There are no difficulty options. Its story seemed to require prerequisite knowledge from the first game.
Well, what’s that they say about not judging a book by its cover?
Turns out that I had Borderlands 2 all wrong.
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Ac!d Commander: The Powerhouse, part 3
This is my new game project: “Ac!d Commander.” It involves Metal Gear Ac!d for the PSP. Rather than being in written form, I decided to do an actual Let’s Play, making videos and everything. I’ll be posting one to three new videos every Friday from today until the game is over. I welcome any comments and discussion. Apologies in advance for any audio hiccups, video malfunctions, or other jackassery, which will surely ensue.
A harrowing week and heeding the call of games…of one game…
Y’know those weeks where all the days seem to mash together into an incoherent pile of work and non-work activities? That was my week last week, and partially this week. I’m not even sure I could describe to someone in words just how bizarrely the days went. Things happened, and I’m still here. That’s about all I know. Sadly, I didn’t blow up any shit on the 4th. In fact, when it came time to, at the very least, watch the local fireworks display, I was pretty much all like “meh, seen it.” I was just too damn tired.
Meanwhile, things are going great with our bathroom renovation, thanks for asking.
*crickets*
Continue reading “A harrowing week and heeding the call of games…of one game…”
Top 5: Favorite Open-World Games
So here’s a story. I just started replaying Skyrim. The end.
Well, I didn’t say it’d be a very exciting story.
I’ll have more to say on Skyrim later this week, but for now, it’s worth revisiting this post I recently wrote for Virtual Bastion on my some of my favorite open-world games. Sans, Skyrim. But I already told you that story.
As much as I enjoyed my first trek through Mass Effect: Andromeda, the game left me a bit soured with regard to open-world games. Surely the feeling is only temporary, but as I search for something to take its place that’s not Borderlands 2 (so fun!), I find myself avoiding anything that resembles an open-world experience (even though Borderlands 2 does kinda, sorta fit that bill). The dilemma, though, lies in the fact that I’ve woven my way through some fantastic sandboxes in the past, so why not pick one to play again or for the first time? Why not choose an open-world game that gives players freedom, provides an excellent story and a beautiful (or beautifully dangerous) environment, along with substantial or unusual side quests that are worth pursuing? Once I started looking at my options, the floodgates opened. I eventually came up with many more than five…
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Ac!d Commander: The Powerhouse, part 2
This is my new game project: “Ac!d Commander.” It involves Metal Gear Ac!d for the PSP. Rather than being in written form, I decided to do an actual Let’s Play, making videos and everything. I’ll be posting one to three new videos every Friday from today until the game is over. I welcome any comments and discussion. Apologies in advance for any audio hiccups, video malfunctions, or other jackassery, which will surely ensue.
A Life, Through Computers
The following post originally appeared on Geek Force Network, August 16, 2013.
The other day, a short post appeared on Kotaku titled “Explaining Microsoft Windows’ Evolution Is Simple” that featured this image uploaded by Twitter by user @kataoka_k.
It made me chuckle, and it made me feel ancient. As the post and some commenters point out, this “history” omits a few operating systems like DOS, Windows 1, 2, and 3, and Windows ME. I’ve not used all these systems, but I’ve been exposed to most of them throughout my life either at home, school, or work. But my personal history with computers dates from before even DOS, when I learned to program in BASIC on our TRS-80 Color Computer.
The TRS-80 was nicknamed “Trash-80” for good reason — it wasn’t much of a computer. I mean, I liked it, but I was kinda young then. Oh yes, I can see it now…that dull, gray, boxy complexion, replete with small, square keys in rich, foggy-colored plastic with deep onyx imprinted letters and numbers. And what of those itty bitty keys, filled with playful, independent spirits mingling among the electronic underpinnings! Why you made typing so, so…unique! Did you just type a “p” or a “q”? Well, let’s say you typed a “2″ and leave it at that. How jovial! The accompanying cassette player and its graceful if incessant whirring – it made a game out of recording! How much force is needed to push the button today? Only by trying and failing and trying again and failing again will you find out!
In my world, the TRS-80 was good for only two things: playing simple games like checkers (shut up about the fact that we did have an actual board with pieces) and writing BASIC programs. The computer didn’t come with a monitor, so we had it hooked up to the TV — a color television set nonetheless! Oh man, and did I make that screen turn colors! Cyan, you were always my favorite.~
From the TRS-80, my parents quickly progressed to DOS and Windows machines; and for awhile, those were my primary gaming devices. (It was the only time in my life that I could truthfully claim to be a PC gamer. Also nobody did their homework on a computer, silly.) Meanwhile at school, I swear we were using Commodore 64’s for the longest time. In high school I took a programming class where I worked, for the first time, on an Apple computer – the Macintosh. I’ll tell you, I was terrible at programming, but I did like those Macintoshes. Yes, their screens were teensy weensy compared to the monstrous 15 inches of CRT monitor I had at my house, but they were spry machines with very little lag. The programs we created worked so smoothly and the interface was clean and simple.
When time came for college, I was sent off without a computer – why that’s just crazy talk! — because mobile computing then was a thing for high-class business people in their stupid suits and ties, not poor, lowly, yet much cooler college students. Instead, I had a shiny, new electronic, Smith Corona word processing typewriter. Oh you can laugh if you want, but I got a good many assignments done on it AND there was no white-out or correction tape needed. And…
…okay, fine…go ahead and laugh.
Speaking of college, I did end up having regular access to some pretty nice computers during that time. After my freshman year, my electronic typewriter was nearly banished because I did most of my work in the lab, using a new thing called the “Internet” on a fresh, white batch of Windows 95 PCs. That was a nice OS; it worked well for my purposes and was robust enough to handle whatever we threw at it. The first computer I ever owned after college was a Windows 95 machine. And yes, it was a brick, large and heavy, suitable enough to serve as a deadly weapon.
Meanwhile our household technology grew by leaps and bounds. In just a span of a few years, we had gathered up a number of machines: a Windows 98 machine was quickly and unfortunately replaced by a Windows ME machine, which was thankfully replaced by a Windows XP machine as soon as it could be afforded. We still have the XP machine running today, and only recently has it begun to show its age. But it still works like a charm, even if we could watch a full-length movie in the span it takes the thing to boot.
Several years ago, I made the mistake of getting a Windows Vista laptop. It was only intended as a home office computer – word processing, emails, and Internet. But its “security” interface was ridiculous and annoying, and it seemed to be constantly bogged down running some program or another. And forget about trying to run Norton scans or some such – those could render the thing useless for hours!
My current laptop runs Windows 8 – only every now and again do I regret having made the upgrade from Windows 7. I don’t mind the “tiles” interface but I also don’t use it much, instead favoring the regular desktop. As tempted as I am to use the Vista laptop under a short table leg, I have to keep it because Windows 8 isn’t compatible with everything, and that’s problematic. Case in point, not long ago I sought to update my old Android phone. The only way to do this was with a computer and some downloaded software. Without reading the fine print, I stuck the necessary program onto my Windows 8 machine and attempted to run it; and each time it failed. After thinking that my phone was at fault, I took a closer look at the software’s specs. Nowhere was Windows 8 listed as compatible. So I went through the same process using the Vista machine, and…success!! Oh, Vista hated being made to work as it chugged along with the program, but it still worked. Hmmm…maybe I could update that laptop to Windows 7…
