My Take: Terraria

I really like it when my friends introduce me to games that I might not otherwise pick up.

Terraria Montage Wallpaper by Demon1160

Having purchased, played, and thoroughly enjoyed Minecraft, I was excited to give this a try. The game is a blend of a sandbox-building Minecraft theme and exploration-adventure games like Metroid.
Minecraft  focuses more on building, whereas Terraria is more about enemies and items.
At $2.50 I couldn't afford NOT to try it, right?

Wrong-O.

With apologies to those who give a shit, I really REALLY hated Terraria.

And when I say hate, I mean that it so offended my sensibilities that I brutally murdered it, chopped up the corpse, and scattered and buried the pieces in shallow graves throughout the land in random, difficult-to-reach cavities so that NOONE will ever find it and be able to piece it back together.

I opened up Terraria today for one more shot at it, to make sure I wasn't being unfair - that my first attempts a month ago were tainted by Minecraft fever. Nope.
At least this time I closed the game in something other than a frothing state of rage-quit fury. This time my experience ended with more of a resigned exhalation followed by a migraine headache.
Where to begin?

My complaints are hundredfold, but for brevity's sake I'll only list the immediate and surface problems I had with Terraria:

~The sprites are cute and all, but why is everything so goddamn small on the screen? I'm over 25 and thus old. I cannot see shit. How can I enjoy a game with my face mashed against the screen? "Oop! I see movement! I wonder if that.. yes, that's me dying."
Night sure is dark around there.

~How the hell do you even play this game? I get that it's like Minecraft, but isn't Minecraft. So, I sort of had a basic understanding of what my motivations were (to not die), and what  my probable obstacles would be (zombies and shit). I knew the first thing I had to to was 'get wood'. After that the entire game sort of stagnates and I spend all night dying never-ending deaths in total darkness.
Total and repeated failure in the first 10 minutes of a game sort of puts me off.


~Crafting on the crafting table is out. That's fair enough, as some people really don't find the Minecraft crafting table that intuitive. Know what ALSO isn't intuitive? Whatever the hell they replaced it with in Terraria.
I couldn't figure out how to do things or make things or, well.. anything. The inventory is kind of... everywhere.. and nothing really seems to jive together. I see lots of spaces to put things eventually, but no clear idea as to how to actually make anything.
I realize I'm going to have to be doing a lot of what people complained about with Minecraft - tabbing out.

Display ALL the menus! Screenshotted by Adam

~One one of the glaring design flaws (or cunning game design genius?) in Minecraft was that there was no adequate in-game tutorial or help function. You're plonked down in the middle of nowhere with your bare hands and no rescue in sight. You're sort of on your own in a sink-or-swim/life-or-death scenario that one finds charming and refreshing - the first time. For most games, however, I like to be 'in' on the joke, not the butt of it.

~Why in god's name do the zombies leap tall buildings in a single bound? Seriously. That's... well. It's as crap as zombies that sprint.

You're crap.

After a bit of research I found I'm not the only idiot in the world as other people seemed to share my troubles when it came to playing this game. Admittedly I'm in the minority, as most of the reception was favourable, and I have to believe it by all the Let'sPlays that exist of Terraria that stretch into 30 and 40 video series. I have never WATCHED those videos, preferring instead to administer myself a messy frontal lobotomy.
Perhaps it's the 'Metroidness' I'm missing. I never played Metroid, and it could be I'm lacking that necessary nostalgia which might allow me to endure the frustration.
NAH!

I didn't want to play Terraria and do a negative comparative study. I wanted to play Terraria and have a good time.
Terraria =/=Minecraft. Terraria =/=Metroid.

I spent $2.50 to be reminded that just because it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck DOES NOT make it a duck.

Okay, maybe it does.

I am Dovahkiin

Here in Skyrim, things aren't ALWAYS 'kill the dragon' and 'fetch me an epic poem'.
Sometimes they're just 'walk around and take crappy pictures'.
And I don't even have my horse with me :(

NOTE:
Listen to this while looking at the pics. It'll make everything more wonderful. ^.^

Thistles and tundra cotton

Abandoned shack? Probably teeming with undead.

Skyrim: Riften You Bastard

I found this article particularly lol-worthy, especially since I just got finishing bitching to whoever would listen about what a shitty hole Riften is.

(Riften is no happy vacation destination.)

"I don’t care for Riften. Well, that statement isn’t really fair. I hate Riften. I hate Riften, and I wish it would burn to the ground, and I wish everyone who lives here would also burn the the ground, and I wish a bunch of giants would come and push dirt and rocks over the ashes, and I wish that whenever anyone asked about the giant dirty rock pile that smells like burnt dead bodies that sits where Riften used to be, the giants would shrug as if they didn’t know.

That’s my wish for Riften." 

 ~Christopher Livingston

I didn't fare much better than poor Christopher.
Here's he only screenshot I got of Riften because I was busy being cheesed off at the irritating happenings and the deplorable beings that reside therein:

Sapphire's face might say 'piss off', but her heart says... well actually her heart says 'piss off', too.

And as far as weddings go, I don't really give a rat's ass.
I got the necessary amulet almost by accident, and I should have throttled the well-meaning monk with it.

But now that I've learned what having a spouse entails in Skyrim, I might just scoop up innkeeper Wilhelm from Ivarstead. He's affable enough, and really all that matters is if he can cook a mean Elsweyr Fondue and look good in a French Maid's outfit, amirite?

Ooh la la!

My Take: Skyrim

Awww yeahh I'm enjoying this game! Who doesn't?!  JERKS. That's who.

Since I was given Skyrim by a man-god for Christmas, I've been playing it nearly every moment I can spare. 

And that's many moments.

I was playing it so much over the holidays that after one particular session I staggered into the bathroom to brush my teeth and collapse into bed, and I was pondering to myself what flossing my teeth would grant me, skill-wise.

From speaking with others who have somehow already completed the game (?!), I've learned that my gaming style is much different from theirs. I was never one to rush through a book to 'get to the end', and I do the same thing with games. If I'm enjoying it, why would I ever want it to end?

So I'm doing all the fiddly side-quests and meandering about picking all the flowers in Skyrim. I wonder if one can get an achievement for that? >.>

This gameplay style probably would drive most gamers mad, but as I'm mad already, this behaviour only makes me stronger!!! FOOOOOOLS!  MWAHAHAAAAA!

What can I say about Skyrim as it pertains to playability, graphics, n stuff n stuff?

Not much.

I am playing it on the lowest resolution because my laptop is apparently crap. I am playing it on a lower than HARDCORE difficulty setting, because my skills are apparently crap. But I can speak for the immersion, because even while playing the vanilla game on low res and with menu lag, it's STILL incredibly immersive for me, and I adore it.

I never really got into the other Elder Scrolls titles. There was something about them that wasn't a fit for me. People might accuse me of having a 'casual gamer' mentality, and that you're not a true gamer unless you're playing something SO counter intuitive and indy and difficult and unfun that it MUST be good?.... Or maybe true gamers are just pretentious dickwads.

Whatever the case, Skyrim is an RPG that I don't find too 'talky', overwhelmingly difficult, nor boringly inane. And while it can be somewhat repetitive at times, it appears to strike the right middle ground to keep all but the most contrary reviewers appeased.

If I have complaints, it's that it is obviously made for console, as controlling it on the PC is like wrestling an angry, naked bear in an barrel of olive oil.

I'd think it was my computer alone, but I've heard similar laments from other people. 

The item and skills menu systems are ASS on the PC, but seem to work fluidly on the Xbox.

Also, the 'help' tab in the menu is no help at all. -.-  Why bother?

I've heard the whole experience can be enhanced by the much-touted mods, but we'll see. I don't appreciate games where you have to wait to get community content it to be 'good' (or even playable) - it's part what kept me away from the other Elder Scrolls games. 

Unlike others, I haven't found my copy of the game to be particularly glitchy. There have been a few instances, but nothing that turns me off playing (in fact, watching huge Mammoths spaz out and dance across the landscape is highly entertaining to me).

Now I'll astound you with thousands of amazing screenshots of my adventures:

Check out my awesomeness. Wood Elves forEVA!
Actually, I'm not all that psyched about the wood elves.  Their special ability is to befriend animals? LAAAME.

That's no moon... wait. Yes it is.

I got a staff to make a familiar. Nuts to that. I sold it immediately after conjuring this doofus. My Patronus is NOT a dog.

More pics after the break...