Video Game Tuesday: Good Games to play in Quarantine

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m back with a list. It’s some Good Games to play in Quarantine!

Skyrim: This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has ever heard of this game but if you’ve got a fairly decent PC Skyrim has nearly endless potential for gameplay with it’s countless mods that have been released in the nearly 9 years since it first released. Even if you don’t have a PC Skyrim is full of fun things to do for those in Quarantine. Whether it’s collecting every piece of Cheese in the province of Skyrim or just following the story you’ll have plenty to do.

Bonus Suggestion:

Morrowind: If you are feeling really adventurous you can load up Morrowind, it’s been out for 18 years and it also has plenty of mods to use. Thankfully this game should run just fine on almost any PC that’s been made since 2010. I do suggest getting a mod that increases your run speed though. You do move very slowly in that game.

Tales of Berseria: I’ve always loved the Tales of games, and Tales of Berseria is the best of the bunch. It’s got an amazing story, fantastic gameplay, excellent graphics and musical score. Frankly this is a must play regardless, but you might find this to be a very fun game to play if you need something else to do and prefer JRPGs over Western RPGs.

Persona 5 Royal: Sadly this game is only on the PlayStation 4, but Persona 5 Royal is a great game that has a fantastic story and while less action oriented than most RPGs, it’s still a very fun game.

Minecraft: Like Skyrim, Minecraft on the PC has plenty of mods, and is literally endlessly replayable, although some might get bored eventually.

No Man’s Sky: This game has come a very long way since it first released and has gotten very good. If you want to explore a nearly endless galaxy full of planets and moons to land on, No Man’s Sky is the game to play.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

 

Video Game Tuesday: JRPGs and Turn-Based Combat

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a topic I hear thrown about way too much. It’s all about JRPGs and Turn-Based Combat!

What do you mean too much?: I mean that I hear people critique many JRPGs or call them not pure JRPGs because they don’t use Turn-Based Combat like Final Fantasy or Pokemon. First off that’s a load of crap, what seperates a JRPG from a Western RPG is the way the story is handled.  The lack of a coherent story without having to dig through hours worth of lore and tool tips is something that JRPGs lack and are a huge point in their favor for me. WRPGs tend to be much more open about how you can proceed with the story, or not proceed with it at all and just adventure. Morrowind is the perfect example of a WRPG. Secondly the Final Fantasy series has used the Active Time Battle System since the fourth entry in the series. so you FFVII fans out there calm yourselves before raising up in arms against me.

But JRPGs aren’t JRPGs without Turn Based Combat!: I call bull on that, there are plenty of JRPGs that don’t use Turn Based Combat and they are excellent games, my favorite JRPG of all time Tales of Zestiria doesn’t use it all and that was a strength for it. In fact it’s the entire reason that Zestiria won it’s place over Chrono Trigger for me. I hate Chrono Trigger’s combat system because of it’s sometimes clunky nature. Zestiria had amazing combat in comparison. Final Fantasy XV, the one that just got released a couple weeks ago, has no turn based action at all as well. It just might be my favorite battle system outside of a Tales of game I’ve played.

So just because a JRPG doesn’t use turn based combat doesn’t mean it’s not a pure JRPG, and it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!

Video Game Tuesday: Consequences

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a topic that some people love, and most people hate. It’s all about Consequences!

What do I mean Consequences?: I mean the fact that most games, don’t have lasting consequences for player choices. Most games you just die and respawn or lose a life in a platformer. You can just redo the fight or sequence or level over and over until you succeed or get lucky. Mostly just get lucky for most players.

However some games like Morrowind, and the Souls series are great, they have definite wrong ways to play. It’s refreshing and it helps players improve. It also can suck though if you are hundreds of hours into a game and make a small tiny mistake and accidentally hit the wrong NPC causing it to kill you over and over again. Fun fact I did that in the soon to be released game Dark Souls 3. I was pissed. Thankfully I was early into the game, but it was still a brutal lesson to learn. However it did make me appreciate the consequence of making a simple mistake and to be vigilant at all times.

Thats it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday, but what are some of your favorite screw-ups in gaming? Leave a comment below!

 

Retro Game Friday: The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m covering my favorite Xbox (Original) game of all time. It’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Plot Synopsis: After a storm and a strange vision in his dreams, the player begins fresh off a boat from a mainland prison in a town called Seyda Neen, freed by the string-pulling of the current ruler of the Tamrielic Empire, Emperor Uriel Septim VII, with the task of meeting Caius Cosades, a member of the Blades, a secret group tasked with the protection of the Emperor and the Empire.

Plot: The plot is very much uncover it as you go along, and while more recent entries in the series have held your hands with waypoints and fast travel, Morrowind had none of these things. In addition to being able to fly through the sky, players were free to kill anyone even central characters to the plot of the game. Of course doing so would cause a warning saying you screwed up and that you should probably reload a save file prior to your murder of that character.

Gameplay: This game plays quite similarly to Skyrim and Oblivion, but it wasn’t nearly as easy to complete the main story quest. This was due to the fact that you didn’t have a handy compass telling you which way is north and no waypoints for each quest. You actually had to read the in game journal and correctly interpret what was written in there. Probably the thing that caused me to play as a mage in this entry rather than a thief like I did in the later entries was the fact that you could levitate. If you had enough mana you could do it endlessly, and would be able to dodge all sorts of nasty things. Of course the sky was filled with weird creatures that could attack you while you flew around, but it was generally the easiest way to get around. Also diseases and curses were much more damaging to you than they were in Oblivion or Skyrim.

Music: The music for this game was amazing, and stands up to more recent works in the series as an equal. I actually prefer the soundtrack of Morrowind over Skyrim or Oblivion’s soundtrack.

Art: The worst part of the game was the artwork, it was very ambitious, but it clearly shows its age now. If you played on the Xbox version you were subject to frequent crashes, but if you saved every 5 minutes or so you were okay. In fact you were encouraged to do that in case you messed up and created an unsolvable problem due to a mistake.

Overall: If you’ve never played it, give it a shot on the PC. Download some graphical mods and make it look a bit better and enjoy the game.

For those who like: The Elder Scrolls games, RPGs, Open World Gameplay, Difficult games.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.