Withywarlock

I've consistently been an officer in just about every MMO guild I've been in save for two, and I was selected by Blizzard's Community Manager team to be an MVP of their EU forums. I however chose to quit that role as my treatment by the community was dire, and the CMs had no interest in engaging in the forums. I went to YouTube at that point because Blizzard seemed more interested in hearing what people outside their own forums had to say.

For all the praise I give to PC, the failure rate with my hardware has never been higher, and it's not like I've taxed any of my systems. On my first PC Green Machine, my R7 250 (not the R7 250X that I was supposed to be sold, not that it made much difference) died, and not a year after replacing that the PSU - a Corsair one - had also died, taking out the motherboard with it. So I had to have parts replaced, and it took an age. At least the folks there were kind enough to install new fans. On that same PC I had a CPU cack out on me (an AMD FX 4300), before I eventually decided it was time for an upgrade. My current PC by the name of Nosferatu hasn't had any hardware woes. Yet. I've had Xbox 360s die on me, but in their defence they got transported a lot to give me something to do as I visited relatives, so it was no wonder that they would eventually give up the ghost. The one I have no works, but it's loud, probably caked with dust within, the hard-drive doesn't always stick to the top of the console, and the disc drive sticks too much for CeX to take it back, but it's amazing how well it serves me. I have to give consoles that much: they're built to last.

I said I'd get back to you, and while I've only played with them for about ~4 hours, just having companions has made a world of difference. I feel a lot more motivated to explore and complete content now I've got someone to watch my back, which will also be useful with the higher difficulty, as I tend to play as low as possible in Bethesda games. I've also tried an 'Enhanced Economy' mod, which makes trade and money making more realistic (or so it claims) but didn't quite enjoy it all that much. I might do as the game goes on and I have too much money. I'll look into housing mods soon too. I have faced the problem of mods causing the game to crash on startup though, so I'll need to look into which one(s) are causing the problem, and then see how many I can safely play with. But if I had to just settle for companion mods, I can live with that. It's nice to see one of my all-time favourite games with a fresh spin on it.

I tend to like Scrabble myself as English is my strong suit, and it's really the only board game I play. I don't think I know anyone who would really be into longer games such as Risk or Settlers of Catan. And despite it not an option I'm fine with Monopoly when I'm in a group that plays it correctly; if it's video game themed, all the better (I loved the Pokémon one years ago.) As for least favourite, again, I don't play enough to say. KerPlunk used to be a favourite but it was incredibly noisy and I couldn't deal with the sensory Hell today. And games like Mouse Trap take too much time to set up, and the pieces were easily lost.

I learnt to play World of Warcraft better because of Preach, and in numerous MMOs I tend to look at guides that are written by World First players and such. I don't copy them word for word (or rather I do and fail because I've not got the capacity to remember it all,) but I do find myself being measurably better when I consult guides and develop that muscle memory.

You're correct that I'm playing on PC. I'll get back to you on this because I'm still in the tutorial quest in the sewers, which I get bored of easily so tend to do about a room at a time! 🤣

I tend not to watch or play such content. I see the appeal of it, but it's just not for me. On the rare occasion I use mods, I prefer them to match the tone and style of the game. Even in World of Warcraft, where the most you can do is edit the UI, I preferred having the in-game elements fully customisable instead of flashy UIs that told you which buttons to press in which order, glowing bars, sound effects and so on. I sort of have to admire Final Fantasy XIV for that: it has the customisation built in, and it's modular enough for just about anyone. I've currently got The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion modded, and I'm eager to see how the new companions and buildings I have installed will freshen up the game. Or maybe I'll find them too jarring.

So long as I've been a professional reviewer, zero, because that wasn't my trade when Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was new, and those are some of the few games that would get my overwhelmingly bias 5/5, which is what they're reserved for. However, when I do a personal review of something such as on The Backloggery, I've given three games a five-star review, the first being Yakuza 0. The next two are Paper Mario and I may end up knocking down Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door simply because I don't find it as legendary, despite its status within the community (and my nostalgia which matched others'.) My scoring system is essentially 4-stars, and goes as follows: A technically bad game I didn't enjoy. A technically bad game I did enjoy / a technically good game I didn't enjoy. A technically good game I did enjoy / a technically bad game I greatly enjoyed. A technically good game I greatly enjoyed. Unreachable god-tier. I find five-stars to be more managable than 10 or out-of-100 because they lack consistency between sites, editors, and reviewers,and my criteria are easy enough to measure. It also prevents score inflation. A 2/5 is still a good game in one sense or another, and honestly, between that and a 5/5, that's the score to trust if you read any of mine. But then you are supposed to read the text that reaches the conclusion of it getting its score.

Peter Molyneux is easily the first one that comes to mind. Crap execution of his ideas, and he certainly can't do it on his own because there's simply not enough hours in the day to learn how and put them into practice, but they're good ideas all the same. I could easily listen to him talk at length about any subject. And while I don't like Josh Sawyer's works when he's surrounded by yes-men, I appreciate his perfectionism and wanting everyone to know his exact thought process.

I very much like modelling characters around Merlin, but I've never used that name. There's a first time for everything though!

I tend to go with my own name, my screen-name (as seen here), or I name them after the supposed warlock 'John Napier,' me being a John myself. I'll then name companions after other witches and warlocks in history.

In earlier Elder Scrolls games, and some others off the top of my head, you couldn't level up until you'd gone to bed to meditate on what you'd learned. In a way it was like it's own "milestone experience" system, where until you'd survived the task at hand you couldn't learn from it. Honestly, I find this one to be quite realistic in a sense. Before I was going out with my dearest, I had to go on a walk the following day to process all that I'd learnt from her, and how I would respond in a few day's time. Flirting with my dearest was nowhere near as arduous as missing scribs in Morrowind but the principle remains. In Paper Mario, and I imagine this is a lot more typical, you can go to an inn to fully recover your health, flower power, and your star power. So yes, I only really sleep if there's a mechanical necessity to it. If I can use a wait function without needing to catch forty winks, I shall do so also. I read the potential confusion as "I sleep because it refills my [as in the player] cores, and while that's going on, Arthur's sleeping." Kinda like a joke format that goes along the lines of, say in reference to Doom's synopsis, "I got locked in a room full of people and shot my way through them, and then I played Doom," the idea being that people think you're talking about events transpiring in the video game, the punchline being that it happened out of the game, and then they did something less spectacular in the game. I'm overexplaining it, and it's not as funny as the original version I fail to recall.

As much as I abhor Blizzard Entertainment, I appreciate the good they've done for a few fans. I can't recall many devs that have fan cameos that aren't some sort of contractual obligations (Pillars of Eternity backers making up the vast majority of the Watcher's targets, for instance).

I hear that Scarface: The World is Yours is a phenominal game, but I never got around to playing it myself. I do however hold The Godfather and The Godfather II to be some of the best movie tie-in games, even if they're a few decades late to being tied in to the films. And I'll always bang on about how the Disney games on Playstation One were awesome, and I'm not just talking about Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue.

Dragon Age: Origins' assassin Zevran helped me discover my bisexuality, so yes, I believe that video games - like any other medium - can inspire someone to discover some great revelation about themselves. I've not consumed enough of different types of media, nor had that many revelations, to say what unique abilities games have over other mediums but at least I know from my personal experience that they can aid in one's self-discovery.

I may well have to admit defeat and start moving a lot of games to external media, just so I can free up the necessary space on my system. I've got a HDD, an SSD and an NVME drive coming up to just over 2TB of storage... and I'm struggling. Lord have mercy come the next Call of Duty: Black Ops update... This is one thing I have to give to consoles: if there's clutter, I know where to find it and out how to get rid of it. What's necessary and what ain't on my C Drive is akin arcane lore lost upon me.

Once upon a time, it was quite the novelty to see your character's legs and feet when in first person games, so I guess that's a habit that's carried over for people who are more versed in such games. I pay attention for a number of reasons: to comment on graphical fidelity, to look for hidden paths, to detect traps and falls, and simply know where it is I'm actually going. There are other, more quirky reasons, such as when BioWare had taken a .jpg of some coffee beans, turned them grey, and used that as a cobblestone effect in Baldur's Gate. It's also that game that has me frequently pause to let Detect Traps tick over and highlight hazards. Always remember to Find And Remove Traps: it could save your life!

Not necessarily, no. I often like a change of pace, and this is something I appreciate in Paper Mario: going to the shops between battles and chapters. I enjoy the 'shopping session' in tabletop RPGs (Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun are king in this regard), and I enjoy them in video games also when the opportunity presents itself. Less fun in Paper Mario is selling off one's hard-earned loot, and there's not a whole lot of coin to go around either, but in other games I love doing it especially if loot is levelled, such as in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and V: Skyrim. I find myself appreciating physical media as I play D&D online now, the eye strain gets too much switching from on-screen book to on-screen battle map to on-screen character sheet to... this is probably why I choose to write notes on lined paper for video recaps rather than in WordPad. There's cons to digital that people are quick to overlook, when it takes time to realise that they exist.

I went into this thinking I don't like it but you speak true. I still don't like it, but the arms race is out of hand. The PC market right now is abysmal, and it's not going to get much better until GPU and RAM manufacturers better align their release dates with upcoming consoles, and/or the cryptocurrency mining dies out. Even then the first one's a temporary problem that solves itself as more consoles come out; cryptominers are a consistent thorn in builders' sides.

Fallout: New Vegas because it wasn't as black-and-white as Bethesda developed titles, and I didn't like the reputation system (which I would come to learn is not a new addition, and has been with the series since its dawn) and the themes and the factions. I came to like it later on when I simply got my head down and took a moment to dig a bit deeper into its myriad messages. Spyro 2: Season of Flame because it was a Game Boy Advance title that didn't just do what Spyro: Orange - The Cortex Conspiracy did and make it a side-scroller. Not only was the isometric view painful to look at due to the limited field of view, it also meant one of Spyro's two signature moves would land you in deadly water, of which there is no coming back from save for respawning or reloading a save state on an emulator. I have since come to enjoy the game because it wasn't all that bad, and at its heart was a game that deserved to be part of the series. The ultimate honour goes to Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, which I've spoken at length about in the past but would be happy to do so again all the same. The first obstacle being it's a fairly old game, and the remaster doesn't do much to make it look much better than the original. It also uses an older - but still functional, contrary to popular belief - rule system for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. Despite being autistic and sucking at math, I still managed OK with ThAC0 (To Hit Armour Class Zero), so yah boo sucks to you, grognards. ThAC0, because I want to further rub 1d4 in the wound, is the equation you work out for your character's ability to hit an opponent. The calculation works out as follows: Attacker's ThAC0 - Defender's AC = [minimum number on the dice required to hit]. If I managed to pick that up despite being used to a much later and simpler edition, then I don't get what the problem was. Unless people just didn't see it the same way I did, which is fair, D&D books as they went on were woefully written. The game still should've done a better job of explaining this though. At least ThAC0's nothing like Fallout's damage calculations. If you can make sense of that, what are you doing on this forum instead of building spaceships? Carrying on, the game doesn't really tell you anything on how to play the game. It assumes you A: have access to AD&D 2E books (which would be replaced with D&D 3E come BG2's release), or B: you know where to find this information in the Steam instruction manual, which nobody has ever needed to know before playing this. Alternatively you can look at wikis and forums that are compiled by people who were just as confused as you, and then took the initiative to compile it on a website on Fandom or wherever. But I eventually got into it because it's one of the most fun games to learn that I've ever played. I enjoyed making sense of it all, especially the Iron Crisis plot. You earn your grandiose plot, and despite being the chosen one you have to discover that later in the story and work for it through many trials and tribulations. It made magic fun for me. It made being a rogue fun for me. It was one of the nails in the coffin of the basic basher class for me. It's because of this it's up there as my all-time favourite RPG.

Hmm, I believe it is but may require some additional tweaks. It may be worth looking up the console instructions on how to do so (obviously be wary if they ask you to dig into its software guts), as I'm only familiar with the PC way of installing custom DLC. Wishing you luck with it if you go that route! ^^

I'm not obsessed with it per se, but I am enjoying the Nintendo 64's Paper Mario. I was going to make a thread about 'underrated' companions or some such but I've always preferred to partake in others' better worded conversations than start them. This game has quite a few that fill niches I didn't realise existed. But yes, it's very hard to put down! I am however obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop game, mind. Having to do research into my party's gods and patrons is good homework for me as a Cleric in the service of Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead and Judge of the Damned! I hope it serves you as well as it did me. It did nothing for my finger technique, but it was a good tool all the same. I'd recommend looking into the unofficial CDLC too for any songs that aren't supplied with the game or as paid DLC. It takes a bit of work, but it's well worth it to master the songs you'd like to play most.

I do this also. My list of priorities go as follows: The video I'm listening to in the background (currently Critical Role, Campaign 1) Dialogue audio. Sound FX depending on how the music is. Music depending on how good the FX are.

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger's remaster on Steam is the epitome of how not to do a remaster. While the game is functional and with a higher resolution, its modernisation is precisely the problem. The things you put in front of visible walls to make them more convincing are of low quality, and you can see beyond them if you get to a high enough point, for instance. There's things you're not supposed to see at such a high resolution or distance, which you now can. Think of it as removing the fog in the first Silent Hill, previously there to stop the game cacking its duds performance wise. The Playstation 2 HD Edition did just that. I'm firmly of the belief that remasters are better served for games that didn't see much attention that were popular. Tombi! for instance, or Tomba! for our US forumgoers, is a game that you won't see anyone say anything bad about. The problem is more people know it by its demo than the game proper, because it was self-published by developer Whoopee Camp and thus they would've faced difficulties distributing it. What I'd give for a remaster of that, or even just a full re-release if anyone's got the rights to that property. Finally, I think remasters for games that were clearly good had it not been for technical issues are the most deserving. Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly's developers knew what they were doing, they achieved the closest semblence to a Spyro game since Insomniac handed over the reigns to publisher Universal Interactive Studios, so they could developer Ratchet & Clank (or 'Ratshit & Clunk' as my dad calls them), and that's rather impressive considering they didn't need to devote 20 years of their lives to the intricacies on how to do it. But due to the strict time limit they had to make the game (8 months for two consoles), paycheques being missed and lack of publisher communication, the game ended up suffering dire loading times (in an old review of mine I encountered a loading screen for a loading screen), poor framerate and the odd crash.

Oh, the possibility is always there. It's especially bad with the 'spambushes' in Dark Souls II the further on you go. MauLer did a great critique of the game, which should reflect the difficulties you may face in that particular game. That is, if you've time to watch the entire series of analysis.