*Roughly 2 hours of game-play time
For those of you, gamers and non gamers alike, who have been around me
for longer than 30 minutes within the past 6 months, I've probably
rambled and talked your ear off about Fallout 3 like bringing up the
subject was somehow keeping me alive or bringing the universe one step
closer to serenity.
I finally got my grubby little mitts on it for a few hours at a friend's house.
The opening sequence and tutorial really do a good job of getting you
into the controls if you're unfamiliar with first person games and
introduces you to the game mechanics of the previous Fallout titles
for those who are new to the series. You literally grow up as your
character, therefore the tutorial doesn't feel like you're being
talked down to - at least that was my feeling. As a child of 12
months, you learn to walk around and manipulate objects. This is also
where you pick your base stats, or your SPECIAL stats.
Strength
Perception
Endurance
Charisma
Intelligence
Luck
Unlike Bethesda's previous title, Oblivion, you cannot be a godlike
master of all things material or immaterial if you just run around the
countryside long enough. Your stats cap out at 10 and it's exceedingly
rare to be able to run around with max stats without really going out
of your way. (In fact, it may not even be possible period.) The
leveling system is akin to the previous Fallout titles. If you're not
familiar, your skills don't go up from use. You level up, they give
you a handful of skill points, say put 'em where you want, pick a
perk, and then you're on your merry way. Perks are special little
"bonuses" to your character. Think of them akin to feats in Dungeons
and Dragons or just little extra stat buffers. Individually they're
tiny in the grand scheme of things but when you pile on the right
combination, you can go from Bob McNormalson to "Texas" Jeff: The man
who can shoot a fly out of its wings while holding the gun in his
feet.
The other aspect keeping you from being a super-character is a very
simple thing. A hard level cap at 20. It's *nearly impossible to max
your stats out with a strict level cap as with how the skills work.
You get a smattering of over a dozen skills, each one can get up to
100%... You start with all of them roughly around 18-21 range,
depending on your stat distribution.
*This is only from playing for 2 hours and from reading about others'
play throughs. It may be possible for some super number cruncher out
there to find a way to skill up to 100 in everything while riding a
flaming gryphon while masturbating and ejaculating rainbows and
sunshine.
Now, as I said before, the game starts with you as an infant. You
customize your character's race, gender, and facial appearance - with
the help of an obscene list of beards I might add. When you are done,
your father in the game (Voiced by Liam Neeson) comes into view. Your
appearance determines HIS appearance, which I just find cool.
You live in Vault 101. One of a series of underground bomb shelters
built before a major thermonuclear war. Long story short, the cold war
mentality never ended, we got into a war over natural resources,
everybody hit their respective Big Red Buttons and the conflict was
over in less time than the average lunch break.
Vault 101 has never been re-opened since it was first sealed. Noone
leaves, noone enters. You live in the vault during the tutorial levels
until you wake up one morning at age 19 and find the seemingly
impossible has happened.... Your father has left the Vault. So, that's
the key goal of the main quest, go find pop. Like Oblivion, though,
you may not get to it for days or weeks on end as there's just so much
to simply wander around and find to do. You emerge from Vault 101 to
the Capitol Wasteland. The ruined blow'd up area of what used to be
Washington D.C. You can start on the main quest or simply pick a
direction and go, there's no real penalty. The quest will be waiting
for you when you get back.
Unfortunately, this is also where some gripes make their appearance in
the game as well. It's a video game made by a bunch of human beings
so, by definition, it's not perfect. The landscape is pretty realistic
for a blown up wasteland but...you realize something, you've been here
before... Only the game was called Gears of War. Quite honestly, the
wreckage does look very familiar after a while. Of course, you can
only make a disaster zone really look one way.
The NPCs you interact with also have their quirks. In combat, raiders
(scavengers of the wasteland) and other enemies rarely show any
reaction to your attacks unless you score a crit. Now, that's all well
and good but if I shoot you in the forearm with a rifle, you're going
to react no matter how much it initially hurt. I shot you with a
rifle.
During dialogue, they have the same issues in Oblivion. They look
straight at you, with no idle animations whatsoever. Hard to describe
but it is a little weird after a while.
AI pathing can get annoying. I normally wouldn't care but in my
limited jaunt, I had an NPC I had talked to for a quest ask me to
follow him, so I did... Until he got hooked on another NPC who didn't
react to being run into at all. I honestly thought there was a risk of
it messing up the quest. That stuck with me and annoyed me.
Is it a good game? Yeah. Will I play the hell out of it the moment I
have it in my own ownership? Oh hell yeah. Is it perfect? Nope.
These AI and animation bugs were ones that were present in Oblivion.
They used the same engine and still didn't fix these the second pass
around. I'm very much bothered by this. It's not going to keep me from
playing, but it's going to nag at me with a feeling that there is a
tiny grain of validity to the people who claim it to be Oblivion with
Guns. The Fallout feel is there, the dark humor, the morbidness, the
feeling of being alone is there... But so are some of Oblivion's bugs,
and those should have been squashed by now.
I don't feel like I can give this a true numbered score, but if you
like first person open world RPGs, this is a great addition to your
library. You'll easily sink DAYS of playtime into it. The bugs aren't
incredibly severe, but they annoy me in that they should have been
fixed (or improved upon) by now.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Yet another step in life.
Hi again everyone; time for yet another odd post where I go everywhere at once while still sitting in my computer chair.
I very recently (read: last night) saw Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog... Why in the nine hells did it take me THIS LONG to finally watch it? The damn thing is brilliant. I've always been a fan of seeing the "behind the scenes" lives of typical stereotypes. Plus, that Niel Patrick Harris being taken under the wing of Joss Whedon can mean only good things. Set on the rolodex of such a creative individual can greatly help his career.
This does loop around to a major thing on my mind but that I don't feel that I've shared with all of my friends. I'm interested in a career in the entertainment field; acting to be most specific. I do hope that a very realistic mindset will lead to very good things in my life when pursuing this avenue. I know I more than likely won't get a huge break when I finally get to California (still working on that savings plan) and that I may have to start at the bottom, but being an extra isn't that bad.
The key dilemma with this problem is locational... I'm in St. Charles, Missouri. Nothing too interesting happens here. We flood, that's about it. I'm still going to look for acting experience around town, though. I gotta start somewhere.
Well, I do hope everyone is staying happy and healthy; while I'm letting everyone in on my life I may as well post my twitter url as well at the bottom of this...
http://twitter.com/Krall
I very recently (read: last night) saw Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog... Why in the nine hells did it take me THIS LONG to finally watch it? The damn thing is brilliant. I've always been a fan of seeing the "behind the scenes" lives of typical stereotypes. Plus, that Niel Patrick Harris being taken under the wing of Joss Whedon can mean only good things. Set on the rolodex of such a creative individual can greatly help his career.
This does loop around to a major thing on my mind but that I don't feel that I've shared with all of my friends. I'm interested in a career in the entertainment field; acting to be most specific. I do hope that a very realistic mindset will lead to very good things in my life when pursuing this avenue. I know I more than likely won't get a huge break when I finally get to California (still working on that savings plan) and that I may have to start at the bottom, but being an extra isn't that bad.
The key dilemma with this problem is locational... I'm in St. Charles, Missouri. Nothing too interesting happens here. We flood, that's about it. I'm still going to look for acting experience around town, though. I gotta start somewhere.
Well, I do hope everyone is staying happy and healthy; while I'm letting everyone in on my life I may as well post my twitter url as well at the bottom of this...
http://twitter.com/Krall
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
A new beginning...
To my old friends and newcomers alike, I welcome you all to this new blog of mine.
For many years of my life I have drifted aimlessly with no purpose or goals in mind, I hope to change that starting with this blog. I will be writing about what makes me the person that I am: the experiences in life, the friends I have, and the countless forms of entertainment in my library - like any other blog you can find on the internet. This one will have an importance to me in that I will also be tracking my personal goals, and therefore, give me a reason to follow through with these goals. I need this right now to push myself, and I do hope to make myself proud by reaching these goals.
Some of these may be relatively basic in comparison to what others view as major life goals but I've fallen a bit behind in life and need to do this at my own pace.
For those of you who don't know me, I'll take this time to fill you in on who I am. Those who do know me may even find some new information here as well.
I was born with Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that was caused by a defect in one of my chromosomal pairs resulting in my body missing a chloride ion channel, this gene effects a great deal of the body's systems. Sweat, mucous production, and digestive enzyme production being the hallmarks. My health deteriorated on a rather slow rate until the age of about 15 when it became worse very quickly, repeated episodes of pneumothorax (rupture of the lung wall, resulting in air entering the cavity between the lungs and the ribs) caused my lung function to deteriorate at an alarming rate. It was during this time when I believe I developed the core of a strong depression that has held me within its talons until very recently. These episodes were developing due to no intervention on my part. I would cough in my sleep and wake up with the telltale chest pain. I began believing that, no matter what I did, my end result would always end in disaster due to outside influences that were outside of my control.
Fortunately, when I was 17 I received a lung transplant and have been able to lead a relatively normal life. This depression continued, however. This resulted in my lack of effort in school endeavors which have resulted in being the unlucky recipient of a failing college GPA. This depression became worse as time grew on and it was left unchecked and untreated. It hit its peak most recently, I was seeing myself in an infinitely negative light. After talking it over with a friend of mine online - who did the smartest thing, just letting me vent until I came to the conclusion on my own - I remembered the core of my depression and realized how absolutely illogical my thought process was. This was a mere few days ago.
I am going to be using this blogger as a site for keeping myself in good spirits and to track my progress toward my goals.
Finally, a point that I've been debating. I'm planning on putting a PayPal link on this blog. My medication costs are fairly high and any help in whittling those down every month is great. As of now, I'd be satisfied if I could pull off $500 per month, just to cover the COBRA payments. I get enough visitors who don't mind donating, this could probably be chopped up to a tiny bit per person. I'm not going to rely on it, by any means. I also want to ensure that any money I get through that donation would go toward medication costs, even if I procure insurance in the near future, the copays on medications are still pretty heinous.
Well, I do hope I'm able to entertain, inform, and never bore. Sit back and enjoy the view, everybody.
-Michael "Krall" Schumacher
For many years of my life I have drifted aimlessly with no purpose or goals in mind, I hope to change that starting with this blog. I will be writing about what makes me the person that I am: the experiences in life, the friends I have, and the countless forms of entertainment in my library - like any other blog you can find on the internet. This one will have an importance to me in that I will also be tracking my personal goals, and therefore, give me a reason to follow through with these goals. I need this right now to push myself, and I do hope to make myself proud by reaching these goals.
Some of these may be relatively basic in comparison to what others view as major life goals but I've fallen a bit behind in life and need to do this at my own pace.
- Get a full time job that I can enjoy - 40 hours a week.
- Save up roughly 18-20k over the course of a couple of years. (It IS possible, believe it or not)
- Make the move I've always wanted to California.
For those of you who don't know me, I'll take this time to fill you in on who I am. Those who do know me may even find some new information here as well.
I was born with Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that was caused by a defect in one of my chromosomal pairs resulting in my body missing a chloride ion channel, this gene effects a great deal of the body's systems. Sweat, mucous production, and digestive enzyme production being the hallmarks. My health deteriorated on a rather slow rate until the age of about 15 when it became worse very quickly, repeated episodes of pneumothorax (rupture of the lung wall, resulting in air entering the cavity between the lungs and the ribs) caused my lung function to deteriorate at an alarming rate. It was during this time when I believe I developed the core of a strong depression that has held me within its talons until very recently. These episodes were developing due to no intervention on my part. I would cough in my sleep and wake up with the telltale chest pain. I began believing that, no matter what I did, my end result would always end in disaster due to outside influences that were outside of my control.
Fortunately, when I was 17 I received a lung transplant and have been able to lead a relatively normal life. This depression continued, however. This resulted in my lack of effort in school endeavors which have resulted in being the unlucky recipient of a failing college GPA. This depression became worse as time grew on and it was left unchecked and untreated. It hit its peak most recently, I was seeing myself in an infinitely negative light. After talking it over with a friend of mine online - who did the smartest thing, just letting me vent until I came to the conclusion on my own - I remembered the core of my depression and realized how absolutely illogical my thought process was. This was a mere few days ago.
I am going to be using this blogger as a site for keeping myself in good spirits and to track my progress toward my goals.
Finally, a point that I've been debating. I'm planning on putting a PayPal link on this blog. My medication costs are fairly high and any help in whittling those down every month is great. As of now, I'd be satisfied if I could pull off $500 per month, just to cover the COBRA payments. I get enough visitors who don't mind donating, this could probably be chopped up to a tiny bit per person. I'm not going to rely on it, by any means. I also want to ensure that any money I get through that donation would go toward medication costs, even if I procure insurance in the near future, the copays on medications are still pretty heinous.
Well, I do hope I'm able to entertain, inform, and never bore. Sit back and enjoy the view, everybody.
-Michael "Krall" Schumacher
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