Mount & Blade, my game of the year!

For the last couple of days i have been completely hooked to Mount & Blade.
I did start playing a bit of The Chronicles of Spellborn, but Mount & Blade quickly took my attention away and is right now all i play.

Admitted the title doesn't sound great, the graphics and character models look like 10 years ago but the gameplay is awesome.
Some of the "big" game makers should really take a look at this game.

This game is kind of a mix with RPG, action and strategy, but the thing they did very well was the horse/mounted combat, this is just awesome to play and it feels close to perfect (admitted it might not work perfect in an PvP environment but it works for PvE).
And then to think this game is (from what i have read) mostly made by a husband and wife team!!

This is definatly one of the most fun games i have played this year and really makes me wonder why the "big" gamemakers can't come up with great stuff like that.
For me a game usually stands or falls with the graphics/character models unless the gameplay makes up for all and with Mount & Blade it definatly does, looking at the hours i clocked so far on playing this game (68 hours and counting) it's my number one game for this year, even beating Fallout 3 for me.



So if you haven't, definatly check out this game, there's a full functioning demo out there that let's you play the (full) game up to level 7 without restrictions.
I have to admit when i first read about this game and saw the screenshots i was not really interrested but after seeing IGN give the game an 8 in a review i decided to check it out and am i glad i did :)

So looking at the amount of hours i played this game and the fun i am having i would probably say this is my game of the year!

Hmm, wonder what this game would be like with an engine like unreal or Gamebryo and a few tweaks here and there.....

Finishing Mass Effect and Broadcasting my gaming sessions.

Went through Mass Effect for the first time, really loving it.
Started another run right after finishing it the first time.

Also finally found out why the Xfire broadcasting didn't work for me...
Apperantly Xfire doesn't work too well if you have Fraps running, have to exit Fraps to be able to broadcast through Xfire, major bummer...

So now that i have that working you might be able to see me game live, just goto www.hauntshade.net and it will forward you to my Xfire broadcast page and you can see if i am broadcasting or not.
The first time you visit this page it will ask you to install a plugin to be able to see the video though.
I have been watching some broadcasts and been broadcasting myself and have to say it works great and awesome quality, a lot better than the way i did before using Ustream.

Bring down the sky

Got kind of bored with KOTOR 2, somehow i just didn't like it as much as KOTOR 1, i guess the storyline just didn't "capture" me, so i decided to get Mass Effect instead :)
I allready played it on the Xbox but i am really a PC gamer, don't like playing long sessions on the Xbox.
So i went to D2D and got Mass Effect, it was a lot cheaper (almost half the price) than getting it in the shop.

So far i am having a lot of fun playing, it was an awesome game on the Xbox but i think it's a lot better on PC :)
Also got the downloadable content, "Bring down the sky" for free with the order

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

Been playing nothing but KOTOR the last couple of days, completely hooked.
Can't believe i only played through it once!

Having lots of fun and discovering some quests i don't remember doing the first time around.
Going through it on light side but thinking about trying dark side for another run.

Also installed KOTOR 2, probably up next :)

Running Mirror's Edge

I have been enjoying Miror's Edge quite a bit, the "free running" is awesome, i just feel that it should have been all about the running.
Finding your way around the city is awesome.
The major dissapointment is the guys shooting at you, it feels like i's just there to annoy you, it adds nothing, especially the times you are actually forced to fight them and have no option to run away from them, this definatly destroyed the game for me.

There were moments i was trying to find my way while being shot at by 6 or 7 bad guys and of course being killed over and over having to restart the level because i apperantly took too long trying to find the right path.

Overall it is a great game but it could have been so much better..

Way to many games to post..

So what have i been playing, since my last post about Fallout 3.. well lots of games :)
I've been playing Left 4 Dead, definatly loving it.
Call of Duty World at War, Mirror's Edge (xbox360), Tomb Raider Anniversary, Tomb Raider Legend and Tomb Raider Underworld.



Definatly liking the Tomb Raider series, started playing Legend and Anniversary when i pre-ordered Underworld after playing the demo.

So far i haven't been back to playing Dead Space, the controls on the PC version just suck, the game feels like a console game, not suited for PC at all..

Not much mmo love lately, after the announcement of Tabula Rasa going away i just didn't feel much like playing mmo's.
I did spend a little time in Age of Conan and did a little bit of beta, but i've mostly been playing single player games.

The future of AFS Uplink and AFS Soldiers

Recent announcement about Tabula Rasa has lead me to some decisions about the podcast AFS Uplink and the website AFS Soldiers, you can read more on my blogpost over at AFS Soldiers here.

It's a sad day :(

AFS Uplink #9

Uplink number nine is out with a little delay.

Topics for this week:
The battle of the 2nd November
Tabula Rasa 101 for new recruits
Special Feedback friday

AFS Uplink #8 is out

A short show this week but packed with some exciting news!

Topics this week:
Feedback friday gives us some tricks and treats
AFS High Command issues a Red Alert
Deployment 14 on PTS


Deployment 14 full patchnotes

Fallout 3

The last couple of days i have been addicted to Fallout 3, what an awesome game!
I decided to download it from D2D and give it a go after the major dissapointment of Dead Space.
I am really enjoying this, lots of fun.

Dead Space: Crashfest

Been playing a bit of Dead Space on the PC.
So far played a little more than 2 hours, just passed the first chapter and allready experienced 4 crashes...
All crashes seem to happen while working with the workbenches or the store and of course those crashes mean losing all my progress, so having to start all over again from the last save.

Looks like another "solid" EA product.

Also feel the controls really suck on the pc version.
It's an interresting game but so far my experience is not one of fun and in my opinion the reviews (so far) seem to be way to good (maybe a bit too much hype??)

I am going to try play this game a bit more and hopefully my feelings about this game will change, but if it keeps crashing i doubt i will keep playing it, i've allready had enough of it for today and i've played maybe about 30 minutes.

AFS Uplink #7 is out now

AFS Uplink #7 is now available on iTunes.

A short show this week with the following topics:

Deployment 13.6 fixes issues
AFS Transmission from General British
Deployment 13.8 hits the live servers
Classified AFS Transmission
Feedback Friday talks "Earth Day"

AFS Uplink Episode 6 is out

Episode 6 of AFS Uplink is now available on iTunes.

In this weeks episode:
Tabula Rasa Goes YouTube
Deployment 13.4 hits the live servers
Live server problems
All out server war
Feedback Friday
Trick or treat

Age of Conan seems to be OK

A little while ago i said in a post i would no longer play Age of Conan.
I had recieved an email saying my gametime was up.
However yesterday i decided to check on my account and to my surprise it was still active, it still had about 4 days left so i decided to update and check the game out.

Much to my surprise i had no crashes or problems at all, i played for 3 hours straight!
Looks like they actually fixed the OOM errors, well at least i didn't get any in those 3 hours nor did my maps turn grey or anything.
Might be time to get out that gamecard and keep playing it.

I took Morenn my barbarian to do some quests in the Tarantia Noble District and had a lot of fun, also gained another level and she is now lvl 48.

Changes to the Irendas Penal Colony

Just a little video i made showing some of the changes to the Irendas Penal Colony after the Bane attack (event).

Fun event on Centaurus, Gangus Outpost & Irendas Colony

Had a lot of fun yesterday, saw the message on the oficial website about the Irendas Colony when i got home from work, logged in immediatly, found myself at Gangus Outpost (where i logged out previously) only to find (dead) level 60 stalkers laying around and Exo's running around with bane.
Apperantly i just missed the fun (if only i didn't work overtime i would have had some fun there), but decided to stick around a little when i heard Avatea was going to give away some black and white armor paint, so i just went in line with the others there and got some armor paint (20 black and 20 white), awesome!!

After a little chatting Avatea logged off and i went off to check on Irendas Colony, only to find there were still mobs spawning inside the base (probably the aftermath of the event).
Was lots of fun, although most of the lvl 50 mobs that were spawning where almost impossible to kill (solo was impossible for me as a sniper, hardly did any damage), guess that after a while we just didn't have enough people on anymore, when i started there we could still take them down as squads, but later on they would even come in to the hospital to attack us there some of these mobs would kill me (lvl 50 sniper) in 3 shots, so around 4am i decided to call it a day and go to bed as i was getting killed more than actually doing damage :)

Can't wait to see what's going to happen to either Gangus outpost or Irendas Colony, from what Avatea said, it looks like something will change to either one of them, so i am pretty exited to see what's going to happen.

Bummer i missed the event, but glad i logged in to check things out, at least i got some cool paint :)

I did take some screenshots and posted them over at AFS Soldiers

Ding!! level 50..

Finally reached level 50 on my main Cynheiddon (sniper).
Only have a few missions/instances left that i still need to complete.

Starting to wonder what alt to level up next, kind of like most classes, but of course i like sniper the most.
Think it's going to be either my sapper, exobiologist or commando that i am going to level, or maybe just play whatever i feel like at that moment and see when they reach 50.

Think i am actually having way to much fun to worry about leveling them :)

AFS Uplink Episode 5

Episode 5 of AFS Uplink is now available on iTunes.

In this weeks episode:
Critters heading out to a new front: Critters leaves Tabula Rasa.
PTS Patchnotes: Deployment 13.4 on PTS
Feedback Friday talks about 3 new systems

AFS Uplink episode 4

Episode 4 of AFS Uplink is now available on iTunes.

In this weeks episode:
TR 101 in the field: GM_Vagabond adresses the crowd
PTS Patchnotes: Deployment 13.3 on PTS
Feedback Friday talks on PVP Control Points in Deployment 15

Quasso Station: Thunderhead

Cynheiddon today saw some action in Quasso Station in Thunderhead, a fun instance that can be quite tough. Find the right switches and it becomes a bit easier :)
I didn't spend as much time in here as i did with my previous instance, but it's still a fun instance.

And with this instances there is only one left... the Atta colony..., man i hate Atta's :)

I am getting pretty close to lvl 50 (about 49.5 now) and for now i have gone to the only map that has missions left for me, which is Howling Maw.
Once i am done here i have a few loose ends left with several ToO's on different maps, most of them i still have to find a boss or two and i might have to do a couple of instances here or there, but mostly i'll be done with my sniper.

On the one hand it'll be cool to reach 50 but on the other hand it feels a bit dissapointing as there won't be any missions left, so no more adventures :)

AFS Uplink Episode 3 is out

After a little delay i managed to finish recording the third episode, editing was quite a lot of work as i have a pretty bad cold at the moment which i am sure you will hear in this show.

Shownotes for AFS Uplink episode 3
In this weeks show we have the following topics:
A change in command: Tabula Rasa gets a new lead designer.
Patchnotes for deployment 13.
And this weeks Feedback Friday gives us a sneak peak of what's to come.

The Ashen Desert

Been playing quite a bit of Tabula Rasa lately, mostly played my main char Cynheiddon, who is now a level 46 Sniper. Yep getting closer to level 50 :)
Currently Cynheiddon is running around on Ligo, Ashen desert, finished pretty much all of the missions and all that's left are the instances.

A little note on Age of Conan, my gametime has ended and because of all the gamecrashes i have decided to stop playing and not use the gamecard that i have laying around, hopefully i'll be back in Age of Conan soon, when they have fixed the crashing/out of memory errors with the game, it's just no fun playing when you are constantly worrying about the game crashing, instead of just playing and having fun.

AFS Uplink episode 2

AFS Uplink episode 2 is now out and can be found on iTunes.

 

My first podcast: AFS Uplink

Well my first podcast is out !
It's a Tabula Rasa Podcast, go ahead and have a listen.

You'll be able to find it on iTunes

Or directly from RSS

Spore

Been playing a bit of Spore and have to say it's more fun than i thought it would be :)
I am now at the stage of conquering space.

Entering the arena

Had a real positive experience in Age of Conan.
I was having trouble finishing the "Obtaining the Noble Arena key" questline, had to defeat a guy to get access to the arena, however the NPC was bugged, you would be able to get his health down to half and he would stop fighting.
After trying for a few days i decided to send in a petition about it (i was allready lvl 46 and didn't wanna outlevel most content), within a minute a GM responded and came to me ingame.
I explained the situation to him, he basicly said it was a known issue and asked me to wait a while for him to contact another GM who could reset the quest for me.
After waiting for a while another GM contacted me and straight away "fixed" the quest by setting this quest as having defeated the guy, after this i was able to continue this quest line.

So all in all the GM's are great in Age of Conan, i won't mention their names but i do thank them for contacting me and fixing it for me so fast, absolutely one of my most positive GM experiences.
If you're having troubles with this quest (and i am sure many have), do a petition and it will be fixed for you, just one advice: be nice :)

The Killer Rhino

Been leveling Morenn, my barbarian like crazy :)
Reached level 43. At level 40 i could finally use my killer rhino mount that i got with the pre-ordered collectors edition.
This killer rhino looks a lot cooler than a horse, and it's huge :)
It's also fun to fight with it.

So far i've been able to prevent most game crashes by exiting the game when i noticed my maps going grey.
However i did have two very annoying crashes that happend in the middle of fighting, after getting back into the game i come back to a dead character, this was especially annoying since i don't get a headstone and can't remove my death penalty and have to walk around with it for 30 minutes.

Still exploring Hyboria

Well i am still trying to play Age of Conan, so far i have been able to prevent crashes/lockups by logging out and restarting the game as soon as i see my map or radar turning grey, i only had one crash that i didn't see coming by greyed out maps or anything and that happend during a loading screen.

The logging off/restarting is, of course, far from a good solution, especially if your maps turn grey when in the middle of a mission/instance.
The idea of having a crash just when your about to clear the instance......

Have to admit that in my last post i was a bit angry, but i do mean evrything i said, they should fix it.
I will still be playing Age of Conan for a while as i use gamecards and there still quite a bit of time left on my current card.
However i still have an unopened card that i am not sure about if i am going to open it if they haven't fixed the bugs.

Yesterday's gaming session really convinced me that Age of Conan is currently the MMO i like/want to play, i just love the combat and the world of Hyboria is just awesome.
I really don't mind bugs, i just want to game without (having to worry about) crashing (i have to say, apart from the game crashes, i have yet to find any bug or maybe the ones i did encounter didn't bother me enough to remember them).

Age of Conan: a dying age?

I love Age of Conan but not right now....
Funny thing, when launching the game you see a message by Funcom, saying they have fixed some memory leaks.
Now i don't know what they mean by fixing, but i hardly ever had any problems at all, not even in beta, but now i am lucky if i can play one hour straight.
Mostly however i crash several times an hour on an "out of memory error" with the occasional lockup (where only the mouse pointer moves but the rest of my system is completely unresponsive) or crash that totally messes up my computer.

Now i have a pretty highend gaming rig (can play Crysis with highest settings without too much problems), far above the recommended system specs, yet the game does not run without problems anymore.

Funcom whatever changes you made, undo them !!! because you are fucking up my game.
And i am not the only one, a couple of searches showed me that lots of people are having the same problems.

Right now i am pretty close to cancelling my subscription, the only thing holding me back (for now) is my love for this game and my (little) hopes of Funcom fixing their fuckups.

I really love this game so if i do cancel i will probably wait for 6 months or so before getting back to check things out, but i will be back (i think).

Signs Age of Conan is about to crash: first your world map turns grey (no landscape, only waypoints and quest markers), then your radar turns grey, then.. just wait a little and.... you start swearing (well i do anyway).

Watch me game live!!

I have been messing around with Ustream and some software and i am now able to stream my gaming straight to Ustream.
Unfortianatly i haven't managed to get the sound working, well it works but not ingame sounds :(

So whenever i am gaming (and streaming) you can watch me on this blog, the video has been added to the sidebar.

Live streaming video by Ustream
When it says offline, well than i am offline or not streaming :)
Don't know if someone would actually be interrested in watching me game but i thought it was a lot of fun to stream it, I don't really have a "gaming schedule",so if you're interrested keep an eye out for when i am online/streaming.
Or you could follow me on Twitter, i'll try to get a tweet out when i start streaming.

Gaming Holidays

Having a three week vacation is great for gaming :)
I recently installed an extra 500gig harddrive in my gaming pc, so finally able to install a lot of "new" games.

Next to a lot of Hellgate London i have started playing the following games:

Diablo II


Gothic 3


and TimeShift

Hellgate Addiction

The last couple of days (since my last post) i have been completely addicted to Hellgate London, been playing like crazy, it's been a lot of fun and have been playing both Single and multi player.
In single player i have created chars in every class and they're all fun to play.
In multiplayer i had only been playing a marksman, actually marksman was all i had played until a few days ago, starting a fresh character (guardian) actually made me feel like i was playing a whole new game (eventhough the missions are the same).

I was considering a subscription so i could check out the subscriber content, but they have stopped taking subscribers because of the current problems with Flagship studios.
I am somewhat in doubt if i should invest a lot of time in my multiplayer chars as there is no telling what's going to happen with the game/servers.

BTW: what actually draw my attention back to Hellgate was a game trailer i watched (that i haden't seen before), that video really sparked my interrest again :)

Hellgate

Been playing a bit of Hellgate London again, leveled my char up to level 12 in single player.
Still think Hellgate is a fun game.