Pretty friggin disgusting what these guys are doing. Don't get me wrong ,as games developers I love the stuff EA make. The battlefield series, Skate 2, Spore, Mass Effect, all brilliant games. So why is it now that we have to force ourselves to use what I see as spyware in order to do something as simple as playing a game by these money corrupted bastards?

They were making plenty of money off steam, with thousands (if not millions) of copies of their content bieng sold. No doubt that EA are prospering from those purchasing their games (and there are a LOT of them), so why switch to Origin? Yes, everyone needs a little extra cash during a depression, and I can understand wanting your own platform, but whats with all the security violations that you force upon your users? The fact that you can suggest what game they might like? No-ones got any more of a chance of buying a game repeatedly shoved down their throat than one they discover by themselves! Your advertising techniques are poor, EA, and quite frankly I'm surprised so many people buy into the bullshit that your now forcing on us, should we wish to play your games.

If Gabe Newell decreed it that Steam was able to scan its harddrive, I'd damn-well be off that too, but thankfully, Gabe isn't mentally disabled and wouldn't force such an unnecessary decision on the people making him money. Not to mention that Valve are fairly close to their fanbase, whereas EA seems somewhat distant. "HERE YOU MONEY PRODUCING CONSUMER MOUTH, BUY OUR SHIT, ITS WORTH IT. OH, YOUVE DONE THAT, LET US VIOLATE YOUR FILES! MUHAHAHA" No. Fuck off.

Rant complete. Second time ranting on Origin, but now seeing as I cant get the final part of a game I really enjoy on the platform it was previously released on, fuck EA.

So it would seem the last time I made a post regarding Skyrim, I don't feel I had truly immersed myself in the game. I claimed that the game was too monotone, and the combat got boring quickly, but I now feel that it was more of my mistake than Bethesdas designing abilities.

Since the last review I deleted the game (and all my saves) then re-installed it afterwards, to see if I could actually got into it anymore, and lo and behold I have. Last time, I played through using primarily heavy weapons/two handed weapons, heavy armour and generally played it like I play most MMOs (Mostly Melee combat). I feel that it's actually somewhat more immersive than I initially thought it was, and perhaps if others read this they might find that playing an alternative style to what they normally do can really help.

So, instead of going for a tank-like character capable of destroying things in one blow, I decided to go for a more stealthy character that relies more on single handed weaponry, light armour and general thief style gameplay, and I found it to actually suit the game a lot more than my techniques. Now I could criticise Bethesda for not fully designing their game for a wide range of people, but quite frankly thats like critizing Call of Duty for not including enough references to Star Trek(Although I do dislike the CoD franchise, the absence of Star Trek references is not one of the reasons why).

So here we go. Skyrim is a pretty good game, the dialogue and voice acting is brilliant (for the main characters, anyway. The annoying repeated bandit/guard lines are more than a little tedious), the gameplay is superb (once you figure out how to get the most enjoyment from it), the level design is amazing, the effort put into that alone is phenominal (as previously mentioned), the graphics aren't all that bad. Where I now feel it fails is in some horrible glitches, such as dragons flying backwards, terrain generation errors (although these are usually quite subtle) invincible/unkillable enemies (even though I seem to be the only one experiencing that), and some inconsistency problems. For example, your a dragonborn, someone capable of bringing down massively armoured beasts capable of breathing fire and turning you into ashes in an instant, but then you die from a couple of swipes of a troll? Seems a bit unbalanced to me, seeing how the dragons are supposedly the harbringers of the end times in the game, but now I'm really just nitpicking at little irritating things. The main reason I disliked it has been fixed due to my own initiative.

So yeah. Change of heart as a result of change of gameplay. To medieval Sweden/Norway/Whereverthecrap! :D

FUUUU!

I hate it when I just run out of ideas. I know others have this problem a lot too. Any ideas to combat this other than complaining about it? :P

Loving the new look of the site, new graphics look brilliant, layout changes are quick to adapt to, and the site was only down briefly. I'm really impressed with this, so congrats to all the staff :P

Seriously, I expected much worse, after all the fuck-ups Google did. Glad the site exceeded expectations :P

Disclaimer: This is a personal opinion. Feel free to disagree with it. I'm not here to change your mind about Skyrim, just felt like broadcasting my opinion, because quite frankly I've got nothing better to do at the moment, and cause I enjoy these little news posts.

I've been playing it a lot, no doubt of that. If a game doesn't interest you after 21 hours of gameplay, its likely not gonna be able to immerse the player, which is such a shame, as I feel that I could've really enjoyed Skyrim.

Dragons? Good! Melee, ranged, and magic combat? Generic, but no-one really cares. It works (for the most part). Massive empty world? Really well executed, the game looks brilliant, despite a lot of people I know who enjoy the game much more than I do saying that it looks somewhat cheap. Now I'm playing the PC version, which is open to mods, better graphics (or so they claim), and as a PC gamer I find Skyrims interface to be useful.

It has all the making of a great game, and so it's kinda bizzare that I don't know why I dislike it. Theres as much freedom as you could ever ask for in a game, opportunity involving combat at every three seconds, or finding an individual etc. The choices you can take are huge as well, allowing you to train in so many different ways, so bethesda really cater to your gameplay style.

So why don't I like it? It feels like such a struggle just to go onto Steam and click on it? I've only had it for a week, yet already it feels monotone and worn out. I've had albums that I've listened to forwards and backwards that have held my attention for longer than 21 hours.

What I feel I dislike about Skyrim is perhaps just how predictable it can get, and its arguably one of the few things I feel are bad about the Final Fantasy series (other than voice acting), like the fact that you can tell whats about to fight you. Another thing I dislike is perhaps the combat style, it just feels like mashing the mouse button until you run out of stamina, or casting until your out of majika for the most part. Not sure how I'd improve it, but it sure feels monotone as heck for the most part.

Now I will say that the PC version is buggy as heck, as MotDef shows the initial release. Even now, 2 months after its initial release, I've found many bugs. Dragons won't take damage but can quite happily beat the crap out of me on occasions, minimising the game window causes crashes, sometimes the framerate drops to a crawl during the more strength-based attacks (IE running with a sword), and I know its not my PC, my PC has more than enough power to run the game. It can run every game on high, except Skyrim. Either an i7 quad core processor is no longer powerful enough, and a 1gb graphics card is out of date, or Bethesda haven't really done a good job with this. I AM going to blame them for these problems, as Valve don't have them, Square Enix doesn't have them, and neither do any of the games I own. Thats a lot of companies, and Bethesda's game is the only one that doesn't function? I highly doubt its my problem.

Overall, I just find it really quite monotonous, boring, and it feels like such a waste of £34.99. I can tell the effort thats gone in just from the level design alone, but I feel, even so, that its so flawed. Perhaps I'm just odd and that its just me that dislikes it, but meh.

Just waiting on the download. I hope this lives up to all the hype though.

Will post on here once I check if I have permission to post download links on external sites. If not, I'll just link you to the EP if and when it gets released. Anyways, heres the first track from it out of the total four that will be available if and when I get the go ahead. Its a mix of genres, starting off with this little dubsteppy track, but I've also got some DNB, trance and chillout elements all thrown in as well. Should be fun! Anyways, hope you enjoy :P

(I really need to go on Newgrounds more often)

I've never hated EAs games much. Battlefield, Mass Effect, SKATE 2, and so many others have been games that I can legitimatly say I enjoy massively. But Origin is honestly one of the shittiest, most worthless annoying pieces of crap I've ever had the misfortune of using. I wouldn't mind it so much if EA didn't make their games especially for their own publishing software. Its not like a layour problem like it is with Steam, its something much worse (which I'm sure everyone knows by now), because it can scan your harddrive so they can advertise to you I suppose (but the potential for hacking/security violations seems far too high if I'm honest. Just imagine EA was Sony and Lulzsec was still going strong. Then we'd all be screwed).

And I'm not sure, but I've got my suspicions it caused my computer to blue screen. The only time its ever done that was the day I installed Origin. Not before, and not after I removed it. I know its not my computer lacking the ability to have it, it's an i7 with 8gb ram and a 1gb graphics card.

Sod it, I'm just sticking with Steam, because Valve don't seem to be invading our security quite so much.

Also, forgot to mention I got a new track up on soundcloud, take a listen if you like dubsteppy stuff :D
http://soundcloud.com/ste-p/skyline-ve rsion-1

Got a good feeling about this year, looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Whoever reads this, I wish you the best this year :)

This video proves it.