Commander Shepard says hi.

Haven't blogged in a long time...
So my 6th year "blogging anniversary" (on Feb 18th) went by without me noticing..
So to make that up i am posting this picture of Commander Shepard :)

Now that's something you didn't see ingame did ya :)

This is one of the things i am doing lately, i made this in a program called XNALara and it's all done with models from the game (Mass Effect.. duh) and a lot of patience trying to pose them :)

Anyways i am still alive, just very quiet when it comes to blogging and gaming.
Been playing some Sims and... well that's about it, i guess i am just tired of gaming mostly, i am tired of MMO's, it's all the same just with some new pretty graphics, blah, blah..

The only games that i have some interrest in right now are basicly RPG with a really good storyline or the really big open world RPG's like Skyrim, Fallout etc.
I really like to be able to change anything in the game i like, so it becomes a game i like and not a game that someone thinks i like.
Also one of the reasons i played a lot of the Sims lately, you can just about change anything you like in that game with the right mods and of course the same goes with games like Skyrim &  Fallout New Vegas.

And then there is my latest "addiction" messing around in programs like XNALara or Gmod, importing models form games and.. well just pose them around in different scenery's and take screenshots :)
I've also been checking out stuff like 3DS Max and Blender, but for now that's kinda out of my league.
Been trying to import my own custom Shepard from Mass Effect but so far this is all i got:

I've managed to import everything from my custom Shepard, like the head, hair and body but so far i have not managed to get the textures on the model right..
But it's always fun to learn new stuff and hopefully i will manage to get it right sometime :)

This blog is not dead (yet), just a little quiet. Who knows there isn't much i am looking forward to this year in gaming, apart form some Kickstarter stuff, but i might show up here every now and then.

Skyrim: Mod spotlight - Vilja in Skyrim

I recently started playing with this mod and i am just so impressed by it that i just had to write a short post about it.

This mod is called Vilja in Skyrim, some people might remember Vilja from Oblivion, well now she has arrived in Skyrim :)

Basicly Vilja is a companion mod, but ther is so much more to her than just a companion that follows you around and blocks the doorway you wanna go through (like Lydia does all the time).
This companion feels much more "alive", she actually interracts with the world, she will make remarks about things she sees, give comments about quests you are on or give her opinion on quests you have done.
In fact she talks a lot, and by a lot, i mean A LOT :)
Sometimes she is annoying, sometimes you will laugh, she talks a lot to you, to herself or to other companions (like Lydia, Aela and many other..), most companions she will actually hold conversations with, i have not tested with all but she will actually hold whole conversations with Lydia and Aela.

One of the coolest features (i think) is that you can actually ask her what she wants to do next, or you just ask her to take you somewhere (like a city, nearest tavern or let her decide on some random location) and she will lead the way and bring you there.
Now that feels really awesome, instead of you taking the lead and your follower just following you, you are now following your companion to where she wants to go.
She will every now and then tell you that "it isn't fair that you always get to decide where to go next".

She is fully voiced with over 4000 lines of dialog with a cute swedish accent :)
There is way more awesome stuff with this mod and if you want to know more you can read it on the mods page on the Nexus.
All in all this makes her feel very much "alive" and not like some stupid mute robot following you around.
I admit that at times she can be quite annoying, as she (by default) doesn't shut up, i like her that way, but you can, in her menus, adjust her setting so she does talk less.

Here's a little video that will give a much better review of Vilja than i did in this post :)

For me this companion is so much fun, that i have left all others at home, whenever i just take Lydia with me it feels like i am missing something :)

Travelling back to Skyrim

It's funny how you can ignore a game for a long time and then get completely back into it :)

I had bought the Dawnguard and Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim during the Steam sales, i used to play Skyrim A LOT, but at a certain pount got tired of it.
Not that long ago i somehow ended up on the Nexus and saw some great new mods out and that reminded me i had bought the DLC so i figured it was time to check that out.

I always fear starting my (modded) Bethesda games after release of updates/DLC because it always breaks the game/mods, and, no surprise, this time it also did.
I couldn't start building a house in Hearthfire and i couldn't enter the Dawnguard Fort without crashing the game..
Even without mods activated the game would still be bugged as hell, i would actually say even more bugged than with mods as i have quite a few mods that fix stuff that Bethesda left in.

So first i had to figure out what was causing all that, first thing of course is checking which mods i wanted to use and which mods could go, after that updating all mods to the latest releases.
That fixed my Heartfire problems, but the crashing at Dawnguard Fort still happened, in the end i found that there was a script in my scripts folder that altered the mannequins in the game (i think there used to be a "wandering" mannequin bug and this script fixed that), that script caused the crashing, after removing that script everything (seemed to) work.

But my happiness was short, apperantly my save game was allready pretty bugged, had a savegame with a huge filesize (226MB) and during play the game would constantly freeze, pretty much unplayable..
So a new game had to be started, with a new character.

Eventhough i hated abandoning my (first Skyrim) character, it does feel kinda nice to start over, despite allready knowing most of the quests, i am still seeing stuff i don't remember from my first playthrough.
I also enjoyed Hearthfire and Dawnguard, although Dawnguard was still buggy/glitchy like hell, i actually had to use the console at least twice to be able to advance in the questline because some scripted scene would not start (like Serana opening the portal to the soul cairn) and many more small glitches/bugs, overall i would say Hearthfire and Dawnguard where enjoyable, but i was not very impressed with them, but they felt very rushed, i have seen stuff in mods that is much more impressive and though out, and better working than what Bethesda showed in Hearthfire and Dawnguard (and mods are free!!).

I may have said it before but Bethesda really needs to take a look at the modding community over on the Nexus and get some of these people to work for them, i mean i see modders doing way more impressive things with (i assume) the same tools the devs use and usually a lot less bugs/glitches.

So far i have played over 500 hours of Skyrim and i think there will be many more :)
Although i doubt i would be playing this much without mods :)

Restless Gamer Syndrome

I guess it has something to do with the time of the year.
Somehow most of the year i am pretty happy playing whatever i am playing, however when i gets towards that last few months of the year it seems as if i am getting bored/unhappy with the games i am playing and start looking for new games to play and jump from one to another.

Don't know if it is just me or if other gamers have the same thing :)

So i have been looking and playing (and trying) lots of games, lately and one of my favorite places to check for games has become kickstarter.
There are quite a few games that have caught my attention and i can't wait to check those games out.
Here's just a few:
Wasteland 2 - http://kck.st/yDcMry
Shadowrun Returns - http://kck.st/HgUlMj
Project Eternity - http://kck.st/Sl7W7K
Star Citizen - http://kck.st/RXG0Z8
Shadowgate - http://kck.st/VsUwJ9
Sui Generis - http://kck.st/PkmGrD
Limit Theory - http://kck.st/WivH2X
Elite: Dangerous - http://kck.st/YN6rVC
The Infection Simulation - http://kck.st/RdYtVP

Other than that i have been getting back into some of my "old" games like The Sims 3, Darkstar One, Freelancer and of course the Steam sale left me with many games to play...
I am also having lots of fun in Sleeping Dogs, always like these open world kinda games and i think it is one of the reasons why i actually play MMO's, just to get that feeling of an open (big) world to explore and adventure in.
I have also been looking at some browser games like World of Steam (Beta), Drakensang Online and Battlestar Galactica Online.

At the moment i just can't get myself to play any of my MMO's, although i did play a little WoW just to check out Mists of Pandaria but other than that it's mostly singleplayer games i am playing.

Another thing that might have contributed. was the fact that i (re)discovered cycling during my summer hollidays and started cycling a lot and enjoying it a lot, that got my mind off of gaming and i didn't play much the months after that (hence the long period of me not gaming/blogging).
Until a couple of weeks ago the weather was quite pleasent to be cycling, but with the cold weather lately i guess my interrest in gaming got back :)

Now to get into my huge backlog of games..

Hellgate Global: From London to Tokyo

I recently started reading Helgate: London Exodus and reading that book reminded me how much i enjoyed the game and even more the whole back story and lore behind this game.

Maybe the game itself didn't do justice to the lore, but it is still a lot of fun to play.
Reading the books made me realise how much more awesome this game could have been..

Even after Hellgate: London was taken down you could still play the game in singleplayer mode.
The game has now relaunched as Hellgate Global and is free to play up to a certain point, there are definitely some cash shop purchases required to enjoy the full game.

I ended up in the beta for Hellgate Global but for some reason i could not log in to my account, as no matter what i tried my password was not accepted, a couple of days ago i finally managed to get my password reset and am now playing :)

The game is not without it's problems, i am very surprised to still see some bugs there that were allready in the Hellgate: London beta way back, but so far it is not all game breaking.
The only major problem is lag spikes, there are moments in combat where everything freezes up for several seconds or you get a framerate of 1 fps.
There also seems to be very little (gm) support, gold spammers are sometimes spamming chat for hours.

Despite everything i still love this game and can't wait to see what the future brings for this game.
I allready had a little taste of Tokyo, which looks pretty good, can't wait to see where the story brings me, most of the story i allready played through with Hellgate: London although some things seem to have changed.

A Buggy Game of Thrones

I never heard much about this RPG until i actually saw it on Steam and since i really enjoy Game of Thrones i figured an RPG set in this world might be cool.

It felt kind of wierd i hadn't heard about this game before, i mean a big IP like GoT you would think big marketing..

Today the game unlocked for me on Steam and i was able to start the game, and that was about it.
I wanted to check my settings and change screen resolution, but for some reason all i got was blank (black) menus, nothing to read/select/check, the same with all other menus.
So i figured to just leave the settings as they were and just start playing.

Well everything went fine during the intro, it looked ok, nothing really amazing but just like any other decent RPG.
Then came the character menu

More bugs, a two headed character, nothing more to see here so on to the next menu

And more bugs, no text, nothing to click, just a buggy four headed character..
I was able to somehow get past this by just randomly clicking and or smashing buttons and got through to the character attributes screens, but that gave me more black screens with nothing to read or see what i was doing.

So when it comes to the game itself, i have no idea, i can't judge it (yet), but just from this experience i am fearing the worst: a buggy game.
Still hoping this game is worth the purchase, but only time will tell. I guess i'll just have to wait and see if there are going to be any game updates/bugfixes coming through Steam that will allow me to play this game.

Right now i can't recommend getting this game, even if you are a big Game of Thrones fan, i also can't say not to get it as maybe not everyone is having problems with this game but it won't work for me, plain and simple.

I was really looking forward to playing this game, but i guess there is a reason this game did not get a lot of publicity, despite having a big IP/name to it.
Really hope Cyanide Studios is working on some fixes here as i can't imagine being the only one having these problems.

SWTOR: A quiet universe.

I have been slowly progressing on my smuggler Morenn, who has just reached level 36.
Right now she is questing on Balmorra, progress has been somewhat slow as i am staying away from all heroic quests, no sense in trying them when there are only a few people on the planet most of the time.

It's definitely something i have noticed, everywhere i go there seem to be only a few people on the planet, obviously most people who do play have leveled up and moved on and there are very few new players.
It has been kind of the same with my guild, usually it's just me online and maybe every now and then i see another person logging in, although in this screenshot there are actually 3 people logged in (including me).

So right now i am skipping (dropping) any heroic quests i get and just concentrate on doing the normal quests, obviously i am missing out on quite a bit of content here, but yeah, there's not much i can do about it.

Don't get me wrong though, i am still having fun, the smuggler main story has been quite good and i really enjoy the interaction with my companions, actually in the above screenshot you see me leveling up after a nice chat with Risha in a cantina, who is by far my favorite companion.

I guess i'll be saving that heroic content for later, along with codex entries and holocrons that i missed.