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I'm might wait for a GOTY edition of Skyrim before I buy it. More stuff that way.
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That's often the way to go with these things; a big world means lots of little problems. Best wait as long as you can cope. Elder Scrolls games are always buggy as hell when released, and it gives you a chance to say goodbye to all your family before you disappear into your bedroom for the next two years.
Unpatched
Oblivion is truly a thing of horror.
Now, while we're on the subject of Skyrim, I'm afraid I'm going to be a miseryguts for a little while.
You see, I'm a PC gamer. Have been since the days of the Mega Drive. I'm not going to go into the reasoning again; Everyone thinks their own team is the best, I've got my reasons just like everyone else and I'm not going to fight about it. But one thing remains as a niggling quirk significant, if not unique, to our platform.
PC gamers get treated like shit.
We got cast aside by the larger gaming world a long time ago, and it's a good thing people like Valve were there to give us sanctuary. But the backstory basically goes:
Once upon a time game reatail stores stocked PC games. PC gamers bought them, paid the mark-up for the convenience, and everyone was happy. Then as more and more consoles were released, the stores had to keep splitting their shelf space to make money from all these new demographics. The PC section was the first to shrink, I don't know why. I guess the PC sales were always steady, wheras consoles boom and dwindle. Maybe it was the higher piracy rate. Anyway, less PC games instore means less PC sales. They blame this sales drop on the customers, like they were supposed to buy multiple copies of the same game instead of games from the wider range they used to have. So they shrink the section more to make room for the other platforms, sales go down more, leading the stores to a big, stupid conclusion:
"The PC is the least profitable platform to cater for."
This is absolute bollocks.
I'm not attacking consoles, by the way. I'm not even blaming the game stores, they just want to turn a profit. I'm blaming whatever vacant moron they had in their PC marketing depatment.
So, with only two shelves of of the PC "section" remaining, stocking countless copies of The Sims, Oblivion and World of Warcraft (This is their legacy to PC gaming. They only stock the PC games that sell best, but they gather sales data from their own stores. The only games they will sell are the ones they stock. So you end up with a loop, and their Top Ten Sellers remain permanently frozen at whatever they were selling before they stopped stocking everything else.)
The dejected PC gamers escape onto their PCs, and their saviour is right on their doorstep. The stores gave us two shelves and and the internet gave us everything. Steam appears, and all the others, and the prices are a fraction of what the real world could give us, and we never have to leave the platform we hold so dear.
The net does what the stores didn't and commits to making a good, profitable business out of PC gamers, and we're so happy that someone cares that we pretty much just hand over our wallets.
The stores don't like this. They know that Valve are making millions essentially out of their own former incompetence. So they throw a big fat hissy fit and basically declare "But those are
our customers! Waaah!". Yeah, well screw you. You should have treated us nicer when you still had us. If they were sensible they'd just cut their losses and lose the PC section entirely. I don't know anyone who uses them any more. The last game I bought physically was Starcraft II. I almost fainted, I had genuinely forgotten how expensive it was.
So now they're getting really jumpy (and now I
am bitching about the companies in their entirety), because Steam has all but monopolised the PC market. While I love Valve dearly, even I can see that that's a very bad thing. No one company should control the PC, that's one of the biggest things going for it as a platform. The way the stores and publishers (who can also be bastards) are fighting it, however, is nothing short of disgusting.
Rant over, this is the point.
I recently decided to preorder both
Space Marine and
Skyrim (sorry Phylum). These both look like wonderful games and I would be delighted for the developers to have my money.
Except I can't.
Space Marine has been on my Steam wishlist since it appeared, and so has Skyrim. But now the links don't go anywhere. Their pages have completely disappeared.
The reason? The stores are biting back at Steam, and essentially
bribing publishers to deny Steam users their games in order to try and force gamers back into their stores. Currently the period of denial is only 30 days or so after release, but we all know they're going to expand it as much as they can. But 30 days isn't the real issue. This period also applies to all the time
before release.
So in other words, if I don't want to join another, inferior game client (I don't), I'm not allowed to preorder it.
And that, my friends, is what almost happened to
BRINK.
Details of best example here.
Maybe I am stressing about this too much, in fact, I
know I am, but that all took a long time to write and I'm not deleting it all now.
Okay, misery over.
Every man has at some point wanted to be part of a heist. Behold, a prototype version of
Payday. Think
Left 4 Dead with police instead of zombies.
More
Trackmania. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Freaky stuff in a freaky game.
The game that keeps on giving.
And yet more Skyrim shots. Character creation looks
much better than
Oblivion.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/08/24/th...ow-every-race/
And finally, today's duff video:
Wildstar, the game that has furries as a race.
If it was a movie I'd watch it. As a game it looks apalling.
You missed me, didn't you?
EDIT:
PC Gamer have been reading my posts...