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Impressions: Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer
Last Updated on Tuesday, 28 February 2012 02:23 Written by servbot_kill Friday, 24 February 2012 11:08
BE FOREWARNED: Minor spoilers ahead.
So after about a week or so of play (in terms of total hours spent…), I come away with some hopeful impressions of Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer segment. A little background recap: the new multiplayer segment in Mass Effect 3 finds four players of varying race and class battling against unfavorable enemy odds in waves. These small-scale actions take place parallel to Commander Shepard’s main campaign against the Reapers and can be safely ignored in the final game. For those of you who do partake in the multiplayer segment, it adds to a Galactic Readiness level present in the Campaign mode. How that Readiness level plays into the campaign is not yet clear, but you can imagine it presents a pretty sweet incentive to keep playing.
Tags: Demo, impressions, Mass Effect 3, multiplayer | Posted under Games, Videos | 1 Comment
Mass Effect 3 Demo Live
Last Updated on Thursday, 16 February 2012 11:39 Written by servbot_kill Tuesday, 14 February 2012 10:20
Unless you’re on a PS3 or 360, the Mass Effect 3 Demo is now live. Experience two levels from the single-player campaign and, if you redeemed an access code bundled with every copy of Battlefield 3, play the much-talked about multiplayer co-op mode now!
Or… wait three days for the early access period to end. See you online, on the 17th!
EDIT: MULTIPLAYER CAME OUT A DAY EARLY. SEE YOU ON… NOW!!!
Posted under News | No Comments
DICE 2012: Skyrim Mod/DLC Teaser
Last Updated on Tuesday, 14 February 2012 11:50 Written by servbot_kill Tuesday, 14 February 2012 11:50
If you thought Skyrim was a wonderful game, you’re in good company. If you thought Skyrim was a bit of a hollow experience, you’re also in good company with many of Skyrim’s detractors. You could be a part of both camps, in which case it probably means you’re playing, but wish there was more in it. Like it didn’t feel quite… complete.
This teaser, taken from Todd Howard’s DICE 2012 keynote, generally proves you right.
Here’s a good summary of the video at Skyrim Nexus, though you should allow for the servers being crushed under the weight of new Skyrim mods coming out of the CK.
Skyrim Superbowl Predictions: 1-Up
Last Updated on Friday, 3 February 2012 05:22 Written by servbot_kill Friday, 3 February 2012 05:22
Whether or not you follow football all that often, you’re probably going to watch the Superbowl for the zany and/or clever commercials, for the camaraderie, or just to stuff your face and mooch your neighbor’s gigantic television. Whatever. If it comes to it that a prediction need be made to continue said face-stuffing or win some sort of bet, here’s a handy, ready-made geek production from the fine folks at 1-up inside the world of Skyrim.
NOT INTERESTED? HATE SPOILERS BECAUSE YOU TAKE TOO MUCH STOCK IN PREDICTIONS MADE WITH SPECIOUS (IF HILARIOUS) ASSOCIATIONS? Don’t watch.
Posted under Funny Video | 2 Comments
Skyrim mod streamlines gameplay, wears out nerd vocal cords
Last Updated on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 08:47 Written by servbot_kill Thursday, 19 January 2012 02:55
I don’t know about you, but playing Skyrim, I hardly ever used the Dragon Shouts given that they were a third layer of powers after inherent racial powers and magic– the menus to sort through, even with mods installed, broke action far too long and often for me to use them enough, not to mention the hard-coded global shout cooldown timer which, depending on which Shout you used beforehand, took your Voice out for the length of the entire fight. It was nice, but ultimately a story-related contrivance that had little impact on gameplay.
Enter DeadlyAzuril and PsychoHampster on Skyrimnexus.com.
Their mod: Thu’umic, Real-Life Dragon Shouts, relies on your PC microphone and a neat bit of voice-recognition tech to pick through your utterances, normally guttural, but in the case of the Thu’um cleanly enunciated and with vigor, to find the Words of Power necessary to set someone’s face on fire or toss thousands of goats off of a mountaintop. The result is quite striking. After you train the voice recognition software and to an extent your own voice for a while, the process gets surprisingly intuitive and responsive, allowing you to trigger a Shout effect in the middle of combat and keep moving, where at least on the PC version this gets difficult to do given the demand for your fingers on WASD and then mashing Z.
Now, actually learning the syllables involved in the Dragon tongue is a necessity (not unremedied by a cheatsheet, mind you, but still faster memorized), and the satisfaction of actually screaming FUS RO DAH to knock someone off of a cliff is pretty hard to beat.
Suggested modifications: removing the hard-coded Shout cooldown by fiddling with the console. This ensures that the only realistic limits on the poewr of the Thu’um are your aim, the endurance of your vocal cords and the electricity surging into your machine.
The mod is also tagged as “100% FREE,” which, as a mod by a third-party author, would make sense since they’re not legally allowed to sell it without express authorization by Bethsoft. Whatever the case, you’d be crazy not to at least try this mod once… just make sure it’s a private environment you have to make a fool of yourself in. Or a very public one. No such thing as too public.
UPDATE: One funny side effect of having tried this mod; if you sneeze while playing, you will knock someone off of a cliff. It’s hilarious.
Tags: Microphone, mods, shouts, Skyrim, voice recognition | Posted under Cool, Games | No Comments