I picked up Skyrim on release day last Friday (11/11/11). The Elder Scrolls is by far my favorite video game franchise. I played TES: Arena and TES II: Daggerfall back in the day, never to completion though. TES III: Morrowind would be the first Elder Scrolls game that I “played the crap out of.” I know I put at least 100 hours into Morrowind, perhaps over 200. I actually bought my Xbox 360 to play TES IV: Oblivion as it was cheaper than building a PC to play it (I had pre-intell Macs back then). I didn't stop playing Oblivion until I was satisfied that there was nothing left to do, over 200 hours went into that game. At PAX East this spring I saw videos of TES V: Skyrim. I completely missed the Bethesda's announcement in December 2010, so that was a surprise.

So after a week I'm just about 20 hours into Skyrim. The game is definitely an improvement over Oblivion. Bethesda changed how the character creation and leveling works. You still get to pick your race, gender, facial and body features, however instead of picking a class you start off with a blank slate. This means instead of having to level specific skills in your class to level up our character, you can level up whatever skills you want and they all contribute to you character's overall leveling. This means your character will pretty much end up exactly how you actually play him or her, and should adapt as you progress to 100 hours and into the 200s.

Alienware is giving away 10 day free trials to Star Trek Online. There were still 6,663 Keys available after I finished signing up. I've been interested in trying out this MMO since I lost interest in keeping up with World of Warcraft. STO is moving to a Free to Play (F2P) system by the end of the year. Information on how to get the 10 day key and F2P status are below.

10 Day Signup: http://www.alienwarearena.com/giveaway/star-trek-online-subscription-bundle/

F2P Info: http://www.startrekonline.com/f2p

This online Xpath tester saved me a lot of grief today.

http://www.xpathtester.com/

I have been playing Lord of Ultima for 3 weeks now. Other than joining an alliance, I have not had any real player interaction yet. The game's progression is painfully slow. I might give it another week before deciding to move on to something else.

It took 45 days to get my first dragon kill... I was doing really well keeping up with the leaders, then disaster struck. There was a two week period where I accidentally got stuck at level 11, the trainer killed me on my way to level 12. I kept loosing experience to failed player kills and getting killed early in the forest. Then I had trouble saving up for decent equipment once I got to level 12. Had trouble finding fairies. But the other day I got a fairy and robbed the bank, bought a Blood Sword and better armor. Then today another fairy. Survived the forest, then searched for the dragon. For once this round I didn't get one-shotted by the dragon and was able to kill him with the first blow after being resurrected by the fairy in my pocket.

There is already someone with 3 dragon kills, looking like that will change to 4 soon (5 ends the game). This round might not end up being my best, but there is always next round, which I expect to start around Thanksgiving or sooner.

I was exploring the Google Chrome app store when I came across this game called Lord of Ultima, published by EA. Ultima is a long running RPG IP that started way back in the 8-bit computer days (Apple II, Atari 800, Commodore 64, etc etc). I have fond memories of renting several Ultima games for my NES way back in the day, though I never really got into them like I did with Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior.

The only thing "Ultima" about this Lord of Ultima is the name, which is very well established and I can not fault its current owner, EA, for using it. LoU is a free-to-play strategy/simulation MMO that operates like an RTS, but much, much slower. You have resources to collect, which pay for buildings, upgrades, and army maintenance. Buildings collect resources, resources buy buildings, you get the idea. It will be interesting how player interaction works in this game, by default new cities have a 1 week protection period where you can't be attacked. The game is visually pleasing, graphics remind me of PC strategy games of the late 90s early 00s.

I'm not very far into it, only played it briefly during my lunch break today, but I do see it's potential as a good "morning coffee" game for me, much like Nation States and LORD. Hopefully the paid items in the game do not throw the balance off too much, time will tell. I tried Age of Empires Online when it came out and got the impression it was not so much a free-to-play but a pay-to-win game...

Want to check it out? Please use this link to give me some "Refer a Friend" points:
http://www.lordofultima.com/ref/2266322312

I'm surprised I never got into the Tropico series earlier I remember briefly playing the original Tropico back in the day. College was kind of hit and miss for me when it came to television an video games, I was a pretty busy fellow. That most likely accounts for why this game never caught on for me back then.

So anyway, I was poking around Steam the other day and saw a promotion for Tropico 4. I'm a big fan of the classic Junta board game, and general fan of the whole politically incorrect banana republic humor. I started to read up on whether or not the Tropico games were any good. The public consensus was "yes" if you like city simulations and this humor genre, which I do. While researching I found out that Tropico 3 was available for the Xbox 360. I fired up my console and found that there was a downloadable demo available. I played the demo for a couple hours and was hooked. I checked around online and saw that a local Gamestop had a used copy of Tropico 3 for $17.99. Tropico 4 wasn't due out until October or November. I figure with Elder Scrolls: Skyrim launching on 11/11/2011 that it didn't make sense for me to buy a new game only to stop playing it after a few weeks. Next day I rode the motorcycle down to that Gamestop after work and picked up Tropico 3, case was cracked but the disc was perfect.

I played the game for the good part of the week. It is addictive, funny, and plays decent on the 360. I have a feeling a mouse/trackpad would make this much smoother, but I really enjoy gaming in front of the TV versus notebook or desktop. This is definitely a good buy at under $20.

Nation States is a simple, yet ingenuous, nation simulator created by Max Barry. The game was created by Barry to publicize his novel Jennifer Government. I just recently picked up this game after about a five year hiatus. The mechanic that makes this game simple is that every so often you will be given an issue to address. The frequency of the issues range from twice a day to once a week, and several other options in between. You generally get three or more ways to respond, along with a "dismiss issue" option if you don't like any of the given responses. That is pretty much it for direct gameplay. The way you respond, over time, effects how your nation develops. The game has a slight humorous slant, because as Barry says: "that's just because international politics is so inherently funny."

It's a great "morning coffee" type of game, takes about 5 minutes to check in on your nation and respond to issues.

The game is located here: http://www.nationstates.net/

My nation is: The Dominion of Stupid Stupids

The region I created is located here: Pretty Dumb Area. Any nation is welcome to join.

Obviously, I'm going for silliness as a theme.

Round 45 will be starting tomorrow, August 28th. I plan to be playing on the Blue realm as "John Stamos."

http://lord.nuklear.org/

Version 7.x-1.x-dev (2011-Jul-16) of the Tagadelic module has a bug where is breaks the taxonomy pages, at least in my install. I found the solution to the problem here: http://drupal.org/node/1225808

Essential all you need to do is either apply the patch posted there, or change this one line in the tagadelic.module file:

'class' => "tagadelic level$weight",

To this:

'class' => array ("tagadelic level$weight"),