Category: Games

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I Am Not Sure How I Played Morrowind On The Original Xbox

Yesterday I started playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind again thanks to it coming to backwards compatibility on Xbox One, and the first thing that struck me while playing was how much smoother it was.  Sure the bump in resolution up to 1920p (on the X) made it seem like I was wiping a thick layer of Vaseline off of my TV screen, but on the original Xbox the framerate would take massive dives, so that it seemed your character was trudging through molasses.

I was shocked to find out that the Xbox version of Morrowind was targeting 60FPS, even though it almost never hit that mark, sometimes dipping down in to the teens, but the Xbox One does a better job keeping things above 30FPS, and the Xbox One X almost manages to keep things at 60FPS despite pushing out more than 16x the pixels and adding 16x anisotropic filtering.

The game still looks dated, and it makes me want to find a way to push out the draw distance because everything is popping up like ten feet in front of my face, but game is still fun, and I find myself getting lost in it again.  There is something about playing Morrowind on a console that just makes me happy.  Below is a video comparing the Xbox One X, the Xbox One, and the original Xbox.  It is pretty impressive to see what Microsoft has done by just tweaking their emulation.

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Shmee Plays Some Bro Recon: Brolands!

Thanks to heavy discounting I decided to pick up Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and for the most part it has been a good decision.  The shooting is solid, the graphics are amazing, and there are a variety of things to do.  The problem is that it should not be called Ghost Recon.  Wildlands has more in common with Far Cry than Tom Clancy; it is just you and a group of bros assassinating a bunch of dudes down in Bolivia.

With the older Ghost Recon titles, the games were always about finding the best way to tactically take down your targets.  To make sure that you were never taking fire because that meant instant death.  In Wildlands, you get out your drone, mark all the targets, and then make sure to get them all as you do what needs to be done.  If you want to go in guns-a-blazin’ that is fine, just don’t stand out in the open too long.  Even better, why not jump out of a helicopter, or crash a car through the front gate.  Again, you don’t quite have the god-like powers you do in Far Cry, and you have to kind of make sure to scout the place first, but it definitely doesn’t take the skill and planning of the older Ghost Recon games.

To add to this, all the secondary audio seems like it was added from an ‘R’ rated military cartoon.  The bad guys brag about murdering people on the radio, and your squad says pretty offensive things at times.  Meanwhile the main story cutscenes and media are dead serious.  Tonally this game is all over the place.  It seems like they didn’t want to make another Far Cry game, so they slapped the Ghost Recon brand on it, and to justify that they gave you a squad of bros, made you slow down, and kind of think about what you are doing.  A little.

Listen, Ghost Recon: Wildlands is around $20 these days, and it has enough positives that make that a worthy investment.  It is just a shame they couldn’t commit to a playstyle for this game.  Because an actual open world Ghost Recon game would have been pretty sweet, but this is just Far Cry’s slightly more grown up bro.  Waiting for you to come murder sicarios with him.

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Xbox One Finally Gets Morrowind!

The Backwards Compatibility program for Xbox One has brought a lot of value to its customers, and the Xbox One is finally getting one of the best original Xbox games ever, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.  Morrowind was the game that sold me on western RPGs on console.  It was the first open world game that really allowed me to do whatever I wanted.  I could be the good guy or the bad guy, there were deep dialog trees for main quests, so I always felt like I was saying what I wanted to say.  In other words, it was the first console game where I felt like I was truly role playing.

Even better, on the Xbox One X it is going to run at sixteen times the resolution with sixteen times anisotropic filtering.  Meaning outside some PC mods, this is going to be the best looking version of the game.  To have all three of the modern Elder Scrolls games on one console, in high resolution, is pretty sweet, and honestly, at this point Bethesda should just release Arena and Daggerfall as a classics pack, so that people can see how far the games have come.  They could even throw in Battlespire if they felt like it.

The are very few games left that I want to see come to Xbox Backwards Compatibility, and it is nice to see that Microsoft is protecting my purchases.  I guess they want to make sure I always have an Xbox under my TV, and with the way things are going, there always will be.  While I wait for April 17th to install Morrowind, I may just have to start up Red Dead Redemption now that it runs in near 4K thanks to Microsoft’s technical wizardry.

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My Take On All This Far Cry 5 Nonsense!

The game that has been all over the media these days has been Far Cry 5, and it seems that people either think it is the best game in the series, or the worst one.  What seems to be swaying people one way or the other is how they respond to the main story.  The marketing made it seem like it would tackle America’s hot button issues, but the actual game goes out of its way not to say anything about anything, and since this is a Far Cry game, this shouldn’t have surprised anyone.  Top brass isn’t going to take a chance offending anyone’s political or religious beliefs with a game this big.  They need Far Cry 5 to move a lot of copies to keep the company in the black.

However, I do understand that this can be disappointing.  Especially to players from United States.  To use our problems as marketing, and then not say anything about them is a tough pill to swallow.  It would have been nice to have a major game have an actual point of view.  Any point of view.  Even one a lot of people disagree with, but apparently Far Cry 5 goes out its way to not have one.

Does the Seed family’s religious symbology look a lot like that used by white nationalist extremists? Yes, but the Seeds have multiple African Americans in their ranks, so it is just a coincidence the imagery looks similar I guess?  Do they Seeds seem to worship guns? Yep, but they are being taken down by a bunch of gun loving rednecks all around them.  It almost makes people wonder how the Seeds took over in the first place.  Oh, they are drugging people.  Sure, that is fine.  So it is cool if I, as the player, murder a bunch of drugged up people?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   There doesn’t seem to be an alternative.

Here is the rub.  All Far Cry games are zany and crazy, but this time the craziness has hit our shores, and the story is just an excuse to let loose in Montana with a rocket launcher and a weaponized bear.  If you are okay with that, apparently Far Cry 5 is great.  If the use of current political goings-on for cool posters makes you a little teed off, maybe skip this one, but at least now we know how Bolivia felt when Ghost Recon: Wildlands hypothesized what it would be like if their country was run by a Mexican drug cartel (they threated legal action).

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Things That Sea Of Thieves Needs!

It is no secret that Sea of Thieves is a little bare bones right now.  The sailing, exploring, and fighting are all great, but after a while you have kind of seen it all.  Here are a few quick things they could add to liven things up a bit.

1: An Arena Mode

A lot of pirates out there just want to fight, so why not let them.  Have a vender set up where you can pay a little for an entry to battle other crews for the enjoyment of others.  Then take the entrants to a smaller map with just a couple of islands to have ships dart around, and loaded with bananas and cannon balls, so they can send pirates out to scavenge while that battle rages.  When it is all over the winner takes home a hefty prize and bragging rights.  Then allow people to spectate from the islands and place wagers

2: More Complex Sea Warfare

Right now you can only fire two things from cannons.  Yourself and standard cannon balls.  Just by adding a couple more shot types this could get so much more fun.  Grape shot to take out other crews while leaving the other boat intact to try and steal their loot, chain shot to take down enemy masts and slow them down, or harpoons to pull in other boats or take down sharks.  More variety would make ship to ship combat way more fun, and give people more stuff to scavenge off islands.

3: Parley/Safe Harbor

Always looking over your shoulder for other pirates is half the fun of Sea of Thieves right now, but there is no good way of just meeting up with other crews and hanging out.  If there was an island you could go to chill and talk to other crews that would be pretty cool.  Even cooler if this was something players could set up.  Maybe they could buy ravens and send them out asking for parley and setting a location, then other crews could accept or deny the request.

4: More Life Like NPCs

The only NPCs in the game are shop keeps, which I understand, but it makes the world of Sea of Thieves seem lifeless.  There needs to be more people to make this feel like a real place.  Maybe just a couple of pirates drinking and singing songs in the bar, or a couple guys wandering about.  Maybe they could even give you special quests for rare items if you listen to their tales.

I want to like Sea of Thieves.  It has the bones of a game I want to get lost in, but right now it just needs more.  More of everything.  The quick fixes above would go a long way to making things feel more fleshed out.