Month: May 2015

Books and movies are influencing my gaming tastes

Posted on by Nimgimli

This has probably always been true but I just really noticed it for the first time.

A couple months back there was a Star Wars Celebration weekend, where they showed off trailers for the new movie and teased the upcoming game. That put us in a Star Wars mood and over the next month or so Angela and I watched all six Star Wars movies, and I started reading Star Wars comics via Marvel Unlimited. It only made sense that I should go back to playing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I couldn’t have been happier logging in every night and enjoying the pew-pew of blaster fire and that seductive electronic hum of lightsabers clashing.

Then we ran out of movies to watch, I got tired of the comics and something distracted me (I find inertia is a huge motivator for me in MMOs; when I play regularly I keep playing but if something causes me to take a break it’s easy to drift away) and now I don’t find myself too inclined to log into SWTOR.

At about the same time the new season of Game of Thrones hit HBO and, having set aside comic reading, I went back to working my way slowly through the novels. So instead of a galaxy far, far away I was spending my media time in a pseudo-medieval world. And as it happened, circumstances caused me to log into The Elder Scrolls Online. I wasn’t intending to really play it, but I’d taken advantage of a $20 pre-order of the upcoming PS4 version, and I knew they were going to ‘clone’ our PC accounts onto the console accounts, so I logged in to do some housekeeping and get things orderly for when that happened. (I deleted some lowbie alts, cleared out my bank a bit, and things like that.)

But now I find myself logging in almost every night. I don’t even really do a lot (I’m kind of trying to keep the game ‘fresh’ for the console launch). I’ve been working on crafting writs and slowly working an alt through Betnikh. I do some fishing. Read books and talk to NPCs. But I just find it fun to kind of be in a world that is somewhat similar to that of Game of Thrones.

One of the things I’ve always really liked about The Elder Scrolls Online is that, like me, it doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. Or at least, it isn’t silly. It’s a fairly somber world in a lot of ways. And I think it’s safe to say the same about the Westeros. Not a lot of silly things going on there. I think that’s why out of all the pseudo-medieval MMOs out there, ESO is scratching this Game of Thrones-induced itch of mine.

I’m guessing next fall when the new Star Wars movie comes out, I’ll find myself back in SWTOR, though.

It’s a shame about The Witcher III

Posted on by Nimgimli

White Orchard
I was looking forward to The Witcher III for a long time, but I’ve learned my lesson, or so I thought. I refused to pre-order the game until reviews hit. When they did they were almost universally positive so I opted to pre-order the digital version so that I could get started early and save 10%.

It took me all of 10 minutes of playing before I noticed a terrible problem with the console version of the game: the text was too small. I thought at first it was just me because my eyes are old and tired and poor (just like the rest of me) but I quickly saw the same complaint from many places on the Internet. (It might not seem too small from these screenshots unless you’re reading this blog on your TV screen 10′ away from where you’re sitting.)

Main MenuNot a single review that I read mentioned issues with text size, though a few did (rightfully) criticize the clunkiness of the UI. And that is the last time I rely on reviews from gaming sites.

There’s a patch coming to the PS4; I guess it’s already out in Europe. It increases the size of the loot pop-up windows which were certainly the place where the ‘small text’ issue was felt most and I’m hoping it helps, but I still am waiting for a more general way to increase text size.

I love so much about the game but every time I play I get an eye-strain headache after 30 minutes or so. It’s just not worth the cost to try to play. At least on the PS4 there’s a built-in screen zoom and that helps but it’s really tedious. Open Inventory, pick an item, Screen Zoom and pan around to check it’s stats, exit screen zoom, pick the next item, Screen Zoom and pan to check stats, etc, etc.

Mind you there are other issues too. The UI in general isn’t very well thought out. For example your gear wears down and has to be repaired. But when you visit a vendor to do those repairs, the UI lists all your gear with no indication of the pieces you’ve actually got equipped. So if you have 6 longswords in your inventory with similar names and stats, but one has stats a tad better so you’re using that one, when you go to get repairs done you have to first examine your character sheet, make a note of the name and stats of the sword you’re wielding, then talk to the vendor and open his repair panel and find that sword and repair it.

And as things stand now, each bit of this process might require a screen zoom.

Main MenuSadly I’ve set The Witcher III aside for now and I fear that by the time they patch out these issues I’ll be involved in something new. I’m kind of disappointed in CD Projekt RED (particularly after I learned that they had the same issue in The Witcher II) but I’m really mad at every reviewer that covered the console version of the game and didn’t make note of the text size issue (and many of these same sites have since run posts about the issue).

It just seems like such a trivial thing to let slip through and mar an otherwise amazing game. It’s a damned shame.