magic > firaga > cast > the video game thread

[Yaksha]

I played as basically a straight up Warrior. High Offense and Defense. Though i can sneak and steal if I need to. Very little magic use. Maybe a healing spell here and there

[Tatts4Life]

Playing Oblivion with mods gives the game a whole new life.

Once again. Give me link to the mods you use, so maybe it won't be so fucking boring.

LOL that would probably take up a whole page. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. When I played on the 360 it was boring to a point. The open world was very sparse. You hardly ever run into people walking in the woods or on the roads. even bandits were few and far between. Owning homes can be boring too since you don't really get much in the way of a companion. But with the PC I've changed everything from adding all new lands past the borders, I can now travel to Morrowind, Skyrim and other provinces from the games. There are mods that make the graphics better and add things to the cities and to different parts of the land. If you really want links for mods let me know and I'll try and find all the ones I use.

[Tatts4Life]

I'll put them in spoiler in case other people are interested.

[Tatts4Life]

OK so here is a list of the mods that I'm using along with links and maybe a short description of what it is. For some of them I'll probably include links to the Bethesda forums where they have multiple links for the mod.

Spoiler:

First off you'll need these mods to either load them into your game or control the load order.

Oblivion Mod Manager or OBMM for short: OBMM helps you load the mods into your game
Wrye Bash: Wrye Bash does the same thing but it has TONS of other features
Better Oblivion Sorting Software or BOSS for short: BOSS helps you order your files so that they load in the correct order so you don't have floating trees or missing areas of land.

Then this was the first mod/mods I installed since it has a pretty strict way it needs to be installed in order to work.

FCOM: FCOM is a collection of several mods that add tons of new enemies and also changes things so that enemies no longer level with you. I linked to a thread that has all the links for the mod along with the unofficial oblivion patches that fix tons of things in the vanilla game.

Next up is Oblivion XP which changes the leveling to more of a Fallout 3 style where you earn XP for killing things, finding locations, stealing, lock picking you name it it will probably give you xp for it. Oblivion XP

Now comes my favorite mods. They are the ones that change the look of the cites or add new places to explore. Some of them I think are weather mods too.

Bannanasplit's better cities: this mod changes the looks of all the cities from Bravil making it look more run down and poor, to Leyawin being flooded since it's in the lower lying area of Tamriel, to the Imperial City which changes the arboretum to a lush garden among other things. Plus it adds a couple quests. One being that you can work for the gold horse courier.

Unique Landscapes: This is a link to a forum that has probably 2 dozen unique landscapes added to the game. It adds things like new waterfalls and flooded areas and changes the gold coast. You can pick and choose what you want OR do what I did and go with this one that added all of them in one mod http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19370

Immersive Interiors This one is also a must have but a work in progress. What it does is makes all the windows in the cities transparent which means you can look through them and see the outside. But the guy didn't add anything like people walking around since it takes a lot of work.

All Natural: This one does several things it changes the weather to look more like real word weather. It also changes the way interior lighting works. No longer will you have the mysterious invisible floating light that lights up the whole interior. It makes it look more natural.

Animated Window Lighting System and Chimneys: this one is cool because at night the windows light up in homes buisnesses and the chapels. It also adds smoke to the chimneys.

Autum Trees: this is cool because it adds falling leaves to the northern parts where it looks like fall time.

Sounds of Cyrodiil: this one adds tons of new sounds like wolves howling and bees buzzing noisier wind in the mountains.

Frostcrag Reborn: Now this mod is a must have for mages. This mod is HUGE and has a great story to it also. You get a note that tells you about something bad that happened to the students. The note leads you on a quest under the tower to reactivate a section of the tower which then leads you under the tower into the mountain into a HUGE underground civilization. It was very fun playing it. Careful though you could get the vampire disease and not know it until it's too late.

Battlehorn Castle Enhanced_The Fighters Stronghold Revisited : This one is cool because it added a bunch of new rooms to battlehorn castle.

The romancing of Eyja: this adds a quest to romance the maid that comes with the house you can buy in Skingrad. plus I think it added a few rooms.

Companion Vilja: It is what it says. Vilja is a companion that walks with you and can help you fight and even has lines that deal with the quest. She is all ways talking so it doesn't feel so lonely out in the wild.

Midas Magic: This adds over 290 new spells to the game that are a lot of fun. The quest to get the spells is pretty hard though.

Let the people drink: this adds a water fountain that flows out of the dragon in the imperial city. It adds a lot of cool water effects in the IC. You can either do a quest to turn the water on by unblocking the aqueduct going to the city or use the other plug in that just adds the water. Because of all the stuff I have I had to go with the non quest so I didn't have the aqueduct. It was causing my game to crash.

Imperial City Expanded: This adds a whole section under the IC that is pretty cool.

This is a small portion of what I'm using I haven't even posted all my quest mods or my graphic overhaul mods. I'll post those later when I have more time.

[Tatts4Life]

OK so I'll list some more of my quest mods and graphic enhancers.

Spoiler:

Akatosh Mount: adds a rideable dragon goes great with Frostcrag reborn because that adds a landing pad for your dragon.

Quest Mods:
AFK_Weye: Adds I think several buildings around the inn. It also adds some more people that walk around there. it also adds a quest I think.

The Lost Spires: is a cool quest that comes with some nice weapons.

Homes with small quests:


Bravil Sea Dome Expanded: adds a home across from Bravil near the panther river has a bunch of rooms. Works great for Argonians.

Shadowcrest Vineyard: This is an awesome cottage south of Kavatch that has a small quest tied into it that is fun. It's one of my favorite homes.

Millstone Farm: Adds a place you can own.

Armory Lab Adds a portal outside of your home that transports you to a room with a bunch of statues that you can pose and put your armor on. You can even buy Mannequins to place in your own house and pose which looks pretty cool.

Here are some graphic enhancers I use too:

OBGE: This one is my all time favorite. It adds light shafts to the morning sunrise, You can even change the game to look like Borderlands with Cell shading and add depth of field which just looks ridiculous.

QTP3_Redimized_Further_Reduced: improves a lot of texture graphics in the game.

I've got other graphic mods but I can't find the links.

[Darkthoughts]

Ahhhh finally found a GC memory card so I can have a Zelda Wind Waker sesh on the wii. Forgotten how much I a) love this game and b ) how much it drives me insane!!

[Mattrick]

Been contemplating my next purchase between Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3. Call of Duty has been good but not great past few titles and I don't expect it to get a whole lot better. But it's a beast I know. I didn't like the original Battlefield, too rigid of controls. I may buy it and not have as much fun with it. Call of Duty Elite has me intrigued. By buying the premium membership (50 bucks) I get all the DLC Maps included (they are doing 4 DLCs they say, 15 bucks each so already saving ten bucks) and they release new content each monthf or premium, instead of waiting for the packages every few months. On top of this they are doing shows on Call of Duty elite...one is produced by Tony/Ridley Scott (HELLS YES) and another is videos sent in by people and Jason Bateman and Will Arnett (FUCK YES) provide the trash talking for them. So those two things...along with the fact the riot shield is back has made me decide to get Mod 3. Apparently quickscoping will be what it was like in Mod 2 (which is unrealistic AND throws weapon balancing right out the window) was a piss off but whatever. Quickscoping is easy (although apparently it takes sooo much skill, that I can do it without any practise) so if I have too, I'll quick scope quick scopers.

[OchrisO]

My roommate was in the Battlefield 3 beta and what I saw of it looked pretty awesome. It has quite a bit of detail, like being able to actually see the laser sights flashing through the air when people are using them. That is a small thing, I suppose, but it impressed me. i think it really comes down to whether you like large scale maps and vehicles(Battlefield) or smaller maps and no vehicles(cod).

[SigTauGimp]

I'm a pretty big CoD fan, but I may just hop onto the Battlefield wagon after what I've gotten to see on 3. The level of detail is just astonishing...top notch, graphically.

The only thing that gives me pause would be latency issues. Sure, all the gameplay (multiplayer and otherwise) I've watched is fluid, non-stop action, but I seriously doubt that is how it's going to look for the majority of online gamers, once it releases. Something tells me that with that level of detail, their servers are going to have to be some serious, top of the line hardware, and most companies wouldn't want to shell out that kind of money.

In other news, my copy of Black Ops finally gave up the ghost. =/ The constant playing, combined with it being constantly popped into and out of the case, caused a few cracks. It recognizes the game, and tries to load it up, but almost always gives me the disc error message. My current plan is to find someone with a good copy, and install it onto my 360 HDD. I'm hoping that since most of the data would be on an easily accessible hard drive, the game's odds of not hanging would improve. Has anyone tried this before?

[Mattrick]

I install every game I play. I got the first 250gb harddrive when it was released with the mw2 console

[Tatts4Life]

So this morning I was on the computer looking at things and listening to music through headphones while the kids watched TV. Well at one point I hear a voice from the show that sounded familiar but didn't seem right because i knew what show they were watching. The were watching the new Pound puppy shows and the voice I heard was of Jake from Adventure time. So I go and look up on IMDB if it was the same voice actor. Come to find that it was and not only did this guy voice those two shows but also does the voice for Bender on Futurama AND a character named Marcus Fenix on a little know game called Gears of War.

[SigTauGimp]

Turns out that installing a friend's copy of Black Ops worked like a charm.

Even though my disc is pretty much beyond saving/repair, the X-Box still manages to recognize that it is, indeed, Black Ops...most of the time. Every now and then it won't register as anything, or that it's only a DVD, but that only happens about one in every ten attempts.

I was a bit worried that it wouldn't install everything it needed, and that the 360 would still need to load some things here and there from the disc, but apparently, as soon as I start it from the dashboard, everything from that moment on is read from the HDD.

In other news, after six hours straight of battling, I finally managed to get a wireless link between the computer and my 360. Now I can access video/audio/photos that are on my computer, and stream all of it on my 360.

I had always thought that you could only pull it off if you used Windows Media Center on both devices, but I managed to find a friggin' sweet program called TVersity that practically does everything for you. I'm not going to lie, it was a huge hassle before I found the program, mostly because I use someone else's open router/internet connection. Getting my x-box to find any computer, other than the primary one connected to the router, took a lot of messing about. In the end, it was all totally worth it, though. It's great to be able to watch something you already own on your computer, instead of waiting for Netflix to randomly throw it up onto "Watch Instantly" without any warning.

[Tatts4Life]

Picked up my copy of Gears 3 this morning. I didn't realize until yesterday around noon that the game was coming out today. So far I like it. But I feel like I'm missing some kind of plot line. I felt the same way with Gears 2. It's all most like I have to read the comics and novel to understand what's going on.

[Yaksha]

Reading the books before you play Gears 3 would help you understand where the story starts better, but it really isn't mandatory. Though you should definitely read the novel if you are a big Gears fan. The first book in the series is Aspho Fields by Karen Traviss and they are an excellent group of novels. You get a lot of background information on the characters and situations you only heard of while playing the game. And Karen traviss is such a great writer. LIke i said not mandatory, but a good idea

[Tatts4Life]

I'll check them out

[Tatts4Life]

Beat the game this morning. I loved it. Great story. One thing I all ways found funny and i wish they would explain it was why the Locust Queen was human or at least looked human.

[fernandito]

Hopefully I'll be picking up the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD collection AND FIFA 12 after work today.

[Tatts4Life]

I'll be picking up Ico/Shadow next week when I have the money.

[fernandito]

I've already decided that SoTC is going to be my next platinum. I don't care how mind numbingly difficult some of those trophies may be, I freakin' love that game and I need to have that trophy.

[mystima]

I always wanted to play ICO. is that a sony exclusive?

[mystima]

looks like the new FFXIII-2 deals with a time paradox. From what I have seen in the trailers it has a Kingdom Hearts feel to it also with split persons. Like with Sora and Roxas being the same person.

[Tatts4Life]

I always wanted to play ICO. is that a sony exclusive?

Yes it is. Both Ico and Shadow came out for the PS2. I remember searching all over the place for Ico. I got lucky and found a copy for $20. Back then you would be lucky to find a copy and if you did find one used it would be going for pretty much original cost.

[mystima]

Looks like i will have to find one... I played SoTC when it came out and found it cool. played it a few times to get the extra stuff it had in the game like the one hit one kill ability and so forth. i have a ps2 for my kids so looks like i will be doing some searching then....lol

[Tatts4Life]

Looks like i will have to find one... I played SoTC when it came out and found it cool. played it a few times to get the extra stuff it had in the game like the one hit one kill ability and so forth. i have a ps2 for my kids so looks like i will be doing some searching then....lol

If you have a PS3 then just get the HD remakes of the games. You get both games on one disc for $40. I bet it will be impossible to find a good copy of Ico for a price that's worth it.

[fernandito]

What Tatts said. Plus, they'll both have trophy support ! You can't go wrong with the collection really.