Category: Gaming

Art fusion at its current best

Child of Light is a work of arts. Yes, plural. An interesting mixture of many forms: poetry, music, photography, image art, all wrapped up in a wonderful bundle of simple yet compelling gameplay mechanics that “speak” to all the rest.

Most of the dialog is in rhyme and as far as I could discern, having just started playing, it is mostly an even number rhyme. An even number line in a paragraph rhymes with the even number line above and/or below it.
The art engine Ubisoft uses is amazing! The backgrounds are lush and lose none of the finesse and color quality of a hand-drawn painting. The characters and moving elements present a wonderful cell-shady particularity. Movement is smooth, the lighting effects are adequate. In short, for I could write a book about how incredible an effect this games visuals has on me, the UbiArt framework is fucking A. It looked good in Rayman, here…. it SHINES!

What more can I say? GO EXPERIENCE IT!
Child of Light is an instant classic that you have to be completely bonkers not to love. April 30th, 2014 will remain a highlight of my gaming life.

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End of migration

And so ends my migration of the posts previously on 1up. Like I said in the final post, I installed Kingdoms of Amalur after Skyrim. I had high hopes for it.

It turned out to be a good game. It was flashy, third-person, had a lot of cool moves with different weapons. The only sin it made for me was that it came after Skyrim. If I had played it first, I would have had a blast. The lore is deep, and the world big, although not feeling as free roaming as Skryim. All in all, I did not feel the magic that Bethesda put in their Elder Scrolls games. Nevertheless, maybe now that quite a while has passed since last I’ve launched the game if I go back to Amalur maybe I’ll have forgotten enough of Tamriel to really enjoy it this time around.

Final 1up migration post :"Skyrim….The End???"

Feb 21st 2012, 3:15PM

Yesterday I grabbed my courage and decided to bring the fight to Alduin. After weeks of postponing, it was both exhilarating and scary. I have finished all the major quest lines save for the Companions’, and really, apart from a few individualized side-quests, it feels like there is nothing much left for me than the never-ending “Radiant” quests.

While finishing the main story, I committed two major errors. The first: I went in there with too high a level (65), according to what I read somewhere 35 is the best max limit otherwise it will feel anti-climactic; Second error: I was armed with Merhunes’ Razor! Yes, and unluckily, the darn thing activated during the final fight……after 2 hits….. There I was facing the World-Eater himself in epic battle and the Razor activates on the SECOND hit!!!!!!!!! What’s worse than the hardest last boss? Well, obviously, it’s the easiest.

Now that I’m done, I will end the Companions’ story and beyond that…..there are tons of achievements to get, items to hunt for and dungeons to clear. Along the way, I am bound to find some interesting sidequest to keep me busy. In the meantime, I have installed Kingdoms of Amalur, I just hope all the hype is worth it though I doubt it can ever replace Skyrim in my heart.”

1up migration post XV: "Dragon slaying too easy? Barbas the indestructible dog!!!"

December 15th, 2011, 2:53 PM

“Using followers is the best way to make the Dragonborn’s work easy, too easy even. A combination of Lydia, a conjured Atronach, and Barbas (Clavicus Vile’s indestructible dog companion) is the spoon full of sugar to make the dragon pill go down. Barbas is, of course, imperative to this equation. He is a royal pain in the *** when it comes to everything else, pushing you off ledges when trying to sneak around, making a constant racket barking all the time. But in front of a crazy ol’ Blood Dragon, he is UNSTOPPABLE. That does not simply mean that he deals damage, it means that most of all that he keeps the adversary occupied while you hack away from the rear, cast some major spells (which may kill a follower like Lydia but not good old Barbas!), and shout out as hell in between recharges. People if you want to make your lives easier, don’t finish Clavicus Vile’s quest. Barbas may be extremely annoying, but he has his uses.

The only thing to truly consider is that, the easier it gets for you, the slower your character progresses, due to the judicious “use it or lose it” choice of design made by Bethesda. The ultimate reward is still the same though: the bones, the scales, and the best the soul!
Any adequately hardcore Skyrim Dragonborn probably has heard or about Barbas and the interesting idea of holding off finishing his quest in order to keep him as an extra free follower. So the choice is actually all yours; he may make caves too easy at times, allows the use of incredibly destructive scrolls on enemies, but he also makes dragon slaying a little less much of a headache.”

1up migration post XIV: "Skyrim: SHOUT (for real)"

Dec 13th, 2011, 4:40 PM

“Dunno if this made the news page yet, haven’t checked (just got back from work), there is this modder that is in the process of creating a mod that actually requires you to “shout” the words of a shout through your microphone to actually produce them in-game. Pretty nifty huh? And theoretically much faster than having to switch shouts in a menu, IF you succeed in memorizing and correctly pronouncing said words. Here is the link to the 0.2 version of the mod:http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3251 “

This link is no longer functional. I haven’t bothered to look if the mod still exists, I had a hard time making it work back then, but I remember the issue being with my hardware and not directly the mod itself. But it’s a great way to look and sound crazy playing this awesome game! There is also this mod you can use to voice control shout: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/88419. Anyway, as with everything Skyrim, the newer versions of the mod can be found in the Steam Workshop.
…….Ah, the name! Of course 😀
This shout mod is called :” Thu’um”

1up migration post XIII: "ALL the books in Skyrim in your kindle!!!!!!!!!!!"

December 12th, 2011, 12:04 PM

“This incredible fan of the Elder Scrolls universe has compiled and converted ALL the books in Skyrim into a single file readable on a kindle, there are also a Nook format, an epub format and an iOS format of the file. Check it out right here: http://travistyoj.com/dovahkiin-gutenberg.

“
 
Just so you know, that link is actually still active, and you can still get the compilation if you haven’t 🙂

1up migration post X:"Fave memories"

April 22nd, 2008 10:41 AM

“My most cherished memories of gaming lie with the PC. It was through it I got my first taste of what it would be like in my future. I was barely 3-4 years old when I touched my first PC, at a fast food, some black and white screen with some “things” moving on it and I can’t say I remember what they were. Later on, as I grew I was always fascinated by computers, even my first console, the NES, did not stir me as much as them. Although by a twist of fate, my first game was an RPG very much in the likes of Ultima underground, Betrayal at Krondor and the such. A hardcore first-person RPG that I liked very much though it was impossible to play for poor me at that age. But I learned rather fast and that necessity to adapt quickly to the game set the path for me adapting to a lot of thing later on. What I mostly wanted to come to here is that, despite my love for some very popular games such as “FFVII”, “Chrono Trigger”, “FFVI”(THE best console game of its generation, in my opinion), my best memories of gaming go hand in hand with:”Ultima seven: the black gate”. To me, it was a blast! It’s not just about gameplay and story here, but also friendship. One of my 2 best friends used to play this with me. OK, so we each played on our own PC but we kinda paced the game together, and when one got stuck the other tried to help. Well, most of the time we both got stuck, so we had to put our heads together to keep going. What also delighted me was the relative freedom one had in the game and it was my first experience with that. You could be a merchant and spend time selling and buying stuff, you could go almost anywhere possible on the map, you could steal (my friends did spend most of the game stealing stuff, while I chose to play it nice) and it was all the very first time I encountered that. That was what truly turned me the most towards PC gaming rather than consoles. I still did both but I was always more excited about trying out a new PC game. Put on top of that, the fact that characters got hungry and had to eat, that in certain situations they would do what they wanted and not listen to orders from the player, it was superb. And that “sextant” used to calculate map coordinates from the height of the sun! We would use that a lot to tell the other were we found this or that on the map. It was a massive game for its time and it lived for so long after. I mean look at how long “Ultima Online” survived!

 

As for my favorite console no doubt it was the SNES. Even thinking of it now, it brings back some feelings of wonder and sweet sorrow of all the fun my best friend and I had. When you look back, some games were pretty plain. But, at the time, they meant something to us. The ones I remember the most? “FFVI” bought for less than 6$ from some idiot who disliked RPGs, the pinnacle of our joy, the best for so much less! “Chrono Trigger”, just as good in my memory as FF, but felt cooler (must be the spiky-haired teenagers) and was so much easier too. “Top Gear”, the first SNES racing I was ever interested in, I forgot it fast but the first time we rushed home to play it is dearly remembered, we had to leave school a bit early make it home before our moms and play like hell, ’cause when they came it was game over! Go study! Do your homework! It only made the short play all the more delicious. Growing means quite necessarily in this world parting ways. And so we all three each have our lives now and, I have confirmation, at least two of us are still gamers. I don’t know if my best friend from back then still plays, but I do know he went out to be a graphic artist. Did he succeed? Unfortunately, all the news I have from him are from his mom. I do hope we get to meet someday, all of us, and have one of those old gaming nights, there used to be like 15 of us at home and playing games like “Mario Kart”, “Killer Instinct”, “Soul Blade”. We had fun and we had good memories. The only other thing in my life that may bring me such happy reminiscing is what I felt and still feel for that first girl I ever fell in love with. That’s another story now, ain’t it? Auf Wiedersehen.”

1up migration post IX:"Final judgement"

Mar 22nd, 2008 10:56AM

“I’m sad to say I completed the last addition to the Ace Attorney series “Apollo Justice”. Things took a turn that was rather surprising towards the end. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but seriously I now realize that from the beginning there were serious hints at what was going on. And a most important thing: the cases in this are really more related to each other than ever before in this series. You really feel mid game that it’s all part of the same journey and it all has to add so u can figure it all out in the end. The one little problem I had which was not a problem really, but a habit, I was used to how sometimes difficult the other games could be, so I kinda felt that this one time it was rather easy. Or maybe after playing the 3 Phoenix Wright game I just got used to the system, who knows? Well, I was tremendously satisfied with it all. I hope this “jurist system” won’t just die, the developers might be on to something and I hope in the future they can whip us up some more of that excellence or even wow us with the next ace attorney.”

As I’ve said previously, I haven’t played the latest 3DS installment so I don’t know if, in the end, they did stick to the jury system or just to the old one. I’ll find out soon enough (unless someone tells me first).

1up migration post VIII: "Ace attorney DS port"

Mar 11th, 2008, 11:31 AM

“I’m finally done with all three of the Phoenix Wright games on the DS and have just started with Apollo Justice. A lot of good ideas from the first game seem to have made their way to the new opus in the series like the evidence-examining sequences that so remind me of CSI. The first game was, of course, my favorite, simply ’cause of the first impression it made on me. But in terms of story-telling, I liked the third one best. The episodes feel much more connected and it all felt more like a game where all the loose ends are more or less tied. And the way it all ends is pretty nice. Of course, it’s no epic but I personally liked the series very much. And I’m liking what I’m seeing of the new turn it’s taking with its new character and perception system. My favorite guy, in the end, was Godot. He had those very poetic replies for both the judge and Wright, it was fun to watch. All in all, I just like games that can get me thinking a lot, especially since in the end all u really need to solve a case u have but the question is how much attention one can give to the details both in testimony and evidence. For example, I don’t know how many people have played and liked Professor Layton. I’m just crazy about it. Anyway, I’m now playing Apollo justice and am loving it, so anyone wanna try it out, be my guess.”

With a new Phoenix Wright game out on 3DS, I’m eager to see how things have evolved for this new handheld generation. Can’t wait to look silly again in public, yelling “OBJECTION!!!”

1up migration post VI: "Holding it tight"

October 21st, 2006 8:20 AM

“This is just to say that I’ve finally decided to invest in a recent handheld and that is the DS. Why? Because a lot of friends have a PSP so I can easily borrow one to play my games on, all I need is a mem stick. But I only know 2 other guys in my area with a DS and only one is really a friend of mine. Do the math. The other reason is ’cause I like the innovations in most DS games, and having a PS2 a lot of PSP games just remind me of their console counterparts. There is some nice stuff like LocoRoco and Daxter, but in my eyes, they are not legion. Well, it’s just a personal opinion and I’m sure not many will share it. I wanted to buy the coral pink DS Lite just to be sure that none else around here has the same color as mine, but I figured “Too gay, if I were that’d be fine but since I’m not, let’s not give out the wrong signals.” I bought it with Contact, I’m won over by the idea of playing myself, the gamer holding the DS, I’m sure a lot of you brainiacs thought about the idea too, but thank God someone at least had the courage to put it to the test. That being said… 
Au revoir les amis.”

 
To this day, I still think Nintendo has the best to offer in handhelds. the PSVita is nice and has some very good offerings, but it has yet to beat the DS and 3DS in terms of innovation and the great memories they created…TWEWY anyone? I’m looking forward to how Sony intends on turning things around (for me), but honestly, in that theater of the console war, they are and should just stick to the fans they have.