PC Computer Games, Deals, Cheats, Hints, Suggestions, And Reviews

Review by H. Collins:
To be fair I have been playing M&B since it was in beta 0.610 or thereabouts. It was rough and unpolished then, but it was the first game of its kind, an incredibly immersive and fun steel-and-horses age combat simulator. I bought it immediately, and have never looked back.

This first thing that confuses people including off-the-cuff (Gamespot) reviewers is that this game is not Oblivion. Taleworlds went in a completely different direction, instead of rehashing the same formulaic crap that infests the game publishing world today, and they should be thanked for it. Instead, they get rated down for NOT being boring. This is not strictly speaking an RPG in the way that the industry thinks of RPGs. It is not strictly a strategy game. It is not a shooter. So what is it?

Mount & Blade is a great sandbox game, along the lines of Pirates!, but more interesting (to me, anyway). You get thrown into the game and from there can literally do whatever you want. The game does skew towards combat professions and goals, since its greatest strength is its combat engine, but you can be a merchant, a rebel, a vassal, a mercenary, even a tournament specialist. You can even do several of these things in sequence, defining the career of your character through your gameplay choices.

The combat engine is utterly magnificent. This is one of the rare games where you can come up with a solution to a problem by doing what you would do in the real world, and it works! On foot, you turn your body in the same direction as your weapon swing as you make contact, and you get an increase in damage. Duck in and out of striking range based on the actual length of the weapons you and your opponent are using. Stand on the high ground with your bow for a range advantage that you can see happening as your arrows take a natural dropping flight path. Get back up on the hill to slow the momentum of that gyu riding down on you, step to his blind side, and chop his horse out from under him so you can brain him while he tries to get back up. This is a lot more immersive and gratifying than spending points on various melee skills and hitting control buttons for special moves over and over again while standing in one place.

The political and economic systems in vanilla (un-modded) Mount & Blade are simple, but they work! Build up friendships with local lords by doing stupid errands for them if you like, or else catch them in combat with a superior force and run in to save their bacon, which they’ll be grateful for. Build favor with the ladies of the court so they can funnel bribes for you to lords who mislike you. Gain enough renown and favor with your liege to be put forward as a candidate for Marshall, but make sure you can curry enough votes to win the election. Burn local villages to prevent enemy lords from recruiting there, and kill their caravans to stagnate their city’s economy.

I have seen lack of a concrete storyline mentioned as a weakness in some “professional” reviews. The game lacks a storyline because it’s not supposed to have one! There is a background, there is an ongoing political dynamic, but you create your own story. Honestly, I don’t understand the point of “story” based games where you walk through in a linear fashion, click some buttons, and listen to some voiceovers. To me the last great story-based computer game was Fallout, which also incorporated a sandbox play style as part of its dynamic, in addition to some really great lore. Nowadays, if you really want to follow a storyline, you can probably find better and longer-lasting ones in different media. Books, for instance. (If you lack the imagination required to have a rewarding experience reading a book and prefer the multimedia experience brought to you by some hack writing computer games, there is always television.)

The most important thing to me about Mount & Blade, though, is that it captured my attention back then, and still does. I spend many nights not going to sleep because there’s one more siege I want to pull off, or one of my rebellion faction lords who needs help, or some juicy enemy caravans waiting to be plundered. I would rate its replayability along the same lines as the original Civilization when it came out (and I basically wasted six months of my life on that). Not many games nowadays can even capture my interest, let alone hold it for longer than a couple of days. It’s just that much fun.

There are a lot of videos of M&B gameplay on YouTube, and some of them are mine:

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Review by HLT:
Medieval Elite? Definitely. Also a chivalric 3D shooter/basher with party-based RPG elements and character development in a persistent world of competing factions. I got into it by downloading the trial version (various beta versions have been available for quite some time, allowing you to advance a character up to level 6, which is plenty of time to decide if you like the game) and was hooked from half-way through the tutorial — from the moment I first mounted a horse, to be precise. I’m sure I had a huge grin on my face as I rode around the practice field!

The game is completely open-ended, with no central narrative. You find yourself in a land of competing kingdoms, starting start out as an independent adventurer, but as time goes on you’ll want to build up your company of companions and hirelings, and eventually to join one of the warring factions (which has repercussions with the others of course, as well as opening up new paths and opportunities to you).

With other open-ended games (like the Sims or Port Royale) I’ve found myself getting bored after a few days, because there wasn’t enough variety. Mount and Blade is holding up better so far, firstly because the combat is so much fun (similarly I keep returning to the Unreal Tournament series, also lacking in any story) and secondly because the quests and the chance for political advancement in the persistent world give you goals to strive for.

Another aspect that should help extend the life of the game is the difficulty sliders, which let you improve the combat AI among other things. I’m still playing it on the easiest level, but it’s going to be interesting to see how much more challenging the game gets as I progress to higher settings.

Overall, it’s really refreshing, particularly in these days of big-studio consolidation and all the baggage (particularly draconian DRM baggage) that goes with that, to see an indie game that succeeds so well in delivering a fun and addictive playing experience.

Review by R. Nicholson:
This game is the long awaited follow up to ‘Farcry’ (one of the best FPSs of 2004). We now finally get a look at this newest offering.

Here are some of the things that I’ve liked in the single player mode…

1.)This is a FPS in which your nano armor gives you special ‘skills”; these ‘skills’ include enhanced speed, strength, armor and invisibility; and you’ll need them all to survive.

2.)Graphics that are smooth and flowing…plus excellent audio; both add a spooky, creepy ambiance to this jungle based horror game.

3.)The ability to use and control vehicles (on land, at sea and in the air), as well as the mounted weapons on these units.

4.)Generally good (but not great) enemy AI! Although some will just stand out in the open, there are some that will sneak up on you or hide behind cover; also they must reload empty weapons. Due to their larger numbers and the fact they’re usually spread out, will necessitate your using your special ‘skills’ and the surrounding environment to defeat them. This is the basic, reoccurring challenge for this game.

5.)Easy, anytime save/loads with F5/F9 respectively, as well as game generated checkpoint saves.

6.)If your taking a beating (or find it too easy), you can change the degree of game difficulty anytime, as you play; you don’t have to start a new game. This is a nice feature!

Cons:

1.)I’ve had a couple freeze ups, requiring reboot; also some minor video fragmentation (after extended periods of play).

2.)I found the controls on flying the VTOL (vertical take-off & landing) craft were difficult to operate (the plane just didn’t seem to respond to commands quickly) with the result of frequent crashes.

3.)There was one extended section where you were floating (in either space or water), that I found confusing, tedious and boring. I was lucky it was very linear, or I might never have gotten out of there.

4.)A high end system is preferable. Although playable on XP, Vista can use Dx10, and combined with good hardware and a high end video card, it does make a difference in being able to run a lot of the ‘extra’ graphic details.

Conclusion:

All the pre-release hype made it sound as if this game would easily qualify for Game of the Year honors; I don’t think so. Graphically it is beautiful and it is a good game, but it’s not a great game! If you liked ‘Farcry’ then you’ll probably like ‘Crysis’. Was it worth the wait…probably, but somehow I was expecting something more. Over all, I liked ‘Farcry’ and its gameplay a little more. However, still worth a 4 1/2-5 Star rating.

Review by OneOrTheOther:
I love this game, and mostly I agree with the high rating that the game has received. The other reviews have pretty much touched on all of the things I love about it and normally I wouldn’t think of chiming in just to pile on more of the same, but I feel there are a few points that were missed . . . points that I think others should know before buying this game.

I have a dual boot computer that runs both Windows XP and Windows Vista Home Premium. (2 SLI linked Nvidia 8800 Ultras, 4GBs of RAM and an AMD Athlon 64 FX-62) I have run the game on both OS’s and have found that, all things being equal–using the exact same settings on the same computer with only the OS being different–that the game runs significantly better on XP. I’ve tried this comparison with quite a few recent titles–titles that run both DX 9 and DX 10–and Crysis shows, by far, the biggest slow down when switching between the two OS’s. (I’ve checked around and it seems that I’m not alone in this discovery) This seems a shame. I kind of expect some problems with Vista–that’s the reason I kept XP on my system . . . But I guess I’m willing to cut Crysis a little slack because it IS such an ambitious game.

But then there’s another bit of hanky-panky that isn’t so forgivable: This is the fact that the game won’t let you turn the video settings to “Very High” on XP. At first everyone thought, quite naturally, that this was due to some difference between the relative abilities of DirectX 9 on XP and DirectX 10 on Vista. But it turns out that the limitation is purely artificial. (For those who want to circumvent this, it’s an easy fix; simply cutting and pasting a few lines in some config files allows those higher settings on XP. Look around on Google, it’s out there . . . ) This isn’t to say that there IS no difference between DX 9 and DX 10, only that someone tried to make the difference seem even greater than it really is by inserting an artificial limitation.

All is not lost, the Crysis people are coming out with their first patch in a week or so and I have no doubt that they’ll have the game running well on Vista in no time. Maybe they’ll even give up on the artificial limit in XP . . . but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one. Still, I give it four stars.

Review by Catbabe:
This game was right up my alley. A bit of seek and find, mini games with an adventure storyline. Not too hard and fun to play. I couldn’t take myself away from it. (I am playing it my third time right now.)

Review by Mary:
I liked this game. It has hidden objects, puzzles and adventure. I was a little disappointed that it didn’t last long enough. Before I knew it, I was at the end looking at the credits. I also wasn’t sure about not being able to receive a hint when some of the puzzles came up. There was a couple of times when I looked at the puzzle for about 15 minutes and wondered, “What do I do here?”

Review by Charlie:
Oblivion most certainly lives up to its reputation as a Game of the Year for 2006/2007.

The interface is very easy to manipulate. The combat system is intuitive, and I found the regeneration of fatigue and magicka/mana to be quite unique to the RPG environment. I often found myself lugging around potions for regenerating mana and hitpoints in other games. This is not the case with Oblivion! My dark elf character regenerated fatique and magicka, while it was extremely easy to cast spells that restored health.

The game crashed to desktop only a handful of times out of the dozen or so days I spent playing, so I’d say it was above average in terms of reliability. The game runs smoothly at 800×600 with a P4 3.0 GHz CPU and an ATI Radeon X1950 GT 256MB AGP video card.

The most noteworthy aspect of this game is the sheer number of quests and the “sandbox” aspect of exploration and character development. I did not have to stick with the main quest, but I often found myself sidetracked with various quests that lead to additional quests! It is not uncommon to have a dozen or more active quests in your log!

The second most intriguing component of this game is the ability to manufacture potions, spells, and enchantments for your items. This is quite a unique feature! No longer is the player restricted to cookie cutter items and equipment. You can enchant armor to provide chameleon (invisibility), while you can enchant weapons to suck the life out of your opponents with each strike.

One “mini-quest” even allows you to play as a vampire, whom must feed on sleeping victims or else you begin to lose hitpoints under the sun (complete with smoke rising off your skin).

I must say that Oblivion is one of THE most innovative games I have played in the recent years. This special GOTY edition includes Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles expansion, providing months upon months of playability. I have spent over 50 hours and have not even started the main quest.

Pros: Intuitive interface for exploration, enchanting items, and making spells. The combat interface is exceptional for a RPG. I recall the days of text-based RPGs and RPGs like Final Fantasy II for the SNES where you were always forced to take damage during turns. Oblivion is a mix of a first-person shooter and RPG. Godfather fans will probably see quite a resemblance, with the exception that Oblivion is far more fleshed out and involved than Godfather.

The GOTY edition includes the latest patch and I have not run into any problems with the quests that were previously found in earlier versions.

Cons: The voice acting gets repetitious since they keep recycling voice actors for the minor NPC’s. This is also a pro because this allows for a bigger budget in developing the game itself. I find myself reading the text more than listening to the NPC’s whining that someone stole their ring, or they need some special wine.

I found that not being able to fast travel to marked locations was annoying. Fast travel is useful because you can go from one location to another without being forced to ride a horse or run on foot. Unfortunately, fast travel only works if you have explored the region and found the location. In addition, fast travel only works if there aren’t enemies attacking and if you are outside in an open area. You can’t fast travel from the inside of a cave or inside of a building. This can be get rather boring at times.

While you can develop your character by improving his or her skills, there isn’t much development in character interaction. For example, when you join the Dark Brotherhood, almost everyone is open and receptive. It felt like this was the friendliest faction. Antoinetta Marie seemed to have more than a friendly disposition towards your character, but it never developed any further than typical banter with NPCs. I feel this is a major flaw in many of the games today, but it is most likely a technical limitation more than anything.

Bottom line:

Oblivion Game of the Year Edition gets a 10/10 rating from me based on being an overall excellent game. Very rarely does a game get almost everything right, and still be able to run smoothly on budget PC hardware. There is simply so much to accomplish in this game.

Review by NeoTristan:
What can I possibly say about this revolutionary computer RPG that hasn’t been said?

To me this is arguably the best computer game in the history of video game, period.

‘Oblivion’ is a non-linear, free-form, 1st-person RPG, colored with beautiful next generation graphic that enhances the immersive gameplay set in the gigantic gameworld, where you can do anything anywhere anytime you feel like it.

There are over 20 cities and settlements, 300 quests, 300 dungeons, caves, ruins, tunnels, and whatnots available in the game (combining ‘Knights of the Nine’, official DLCs, and ‘Shivering Isles’).

Then there is TES Construction Set. Using this amazing toolset used by Bethesda to create TES IV Oblivion, there are literally over 2000 mods made by gamers like you and I, available for free and still coming out on a daily basis.

I spent close to 200 hours with over 50 mods installed and I only covered less than 70 quests. I was too busy crawling underground, fighting monsters, retrieving loots, selling them for better equipments and houses, decorating.

To hell with saving the world. I only finished half of the main quest, and I have no intention to finish it in the foreseeable future.

The production value is simply stratospheric. From character design, character model, environment, grass, tree, flower, water, animal, item, monster, building, right down to single pebble and stone, Bethesda paid so much attention to details that it is breathtakingly marvelous.

Music by Jeremy Soule and sound effects are another praise-worthy achievements.

No other RPG in the history of video game gives the gamer so much freedom in gameplay as it is so evident from the very beginning in character creation.

If you spend enough time, you can virtually create any actual person’s face both living or dead in uncanny resemblance.

Whether you like it or not, I think ‘Oblivion’ has set the standard by which all future CRPG, and even other genres to some extent, will be measured for a long time.

To Bethesda’s credit, ‘Oblivion’ successfully streamlined the CRPG mechanics from its beloved franchise into more accessible mainstream game that became a runaway success; or dumbing down for console kiddies as many describe, depends on how you look at it. I know many of people were turned off by the changes made from older TES series, and ‘Oblivion vs Morrowind: Which is better?’ is still one of the most fiercely-debated topic in the official forum. Since I have fond memories of all previous TES series, I won’t get into the flaming war. I just don’t see any constructive point of insisting one game over another. They all have pros and cons, and no game is perfect.

I couldn’t read single review of new CRPG called ‘Two Worlds’ without comparing it to ‘Oblivion’. What a burden and curse it is for ‘Two Worlds’, which has been brutally trashed by critics and users alike. I really love that game, too. Although I really enjoyed that game, it was ultimately not enough to erase the memory of ‘Oblivion’. If ‘Fallout 3′ becomes anything close to the success of ‘Oblivion’, Bethesda Softwork will become the next formidable RPG Giant like ‘Blizzard’ / ‘Black Isle’ / ‘Bioware’ trinity once achieved back in the days. You can be sure Bethesda will come out with TES V, and its success is pretty much guaranteed no matter which direction it will take.

Now I think far too many game mechanics from the past CRPGs such as ‘Ultima’, ‘Baldur’s Gate’, ‘Wizardry’ or ‘Diablo’ series stemmed from the limitation of technology at the time rather than game design choice. I still have the original copies of ‘Baldur’s Gate’ and ‘Diablo’ series along with ‘Ultima’ series, ‘Wizardry 8′, ‘Planescape: Torment’, ‘Fallout 1, 2′, and of course ‘Daggerfall’ and ‘Morrowind’.

Except for ‘Morrowind’, I don’t see myself playing and enjoying those game as I once used to anymore.

I tried them recently and was pleasantly surprised how pathetically they are outdated now. The vidio gaming asthetics have grown exponentially since those days.

Even ‘Morrowind’ took some adjusting time to re-immerse myself. When I say technology, I am not just talking about graphic but the scope and possibilities that was just not feasible in the past. The improved technology doesn’t always result in better game but it immensely helps to create immersive gaming world, and the technology lifted all the barriers for game developers to realize their vision into games. This will result in new convergent games that crossover the genres. Upcoming games such as ‘Mass Effect’ and ‘Fallout 3′ are the evidence of new gaming asthetics being formed right now.

What would you like to see in the future Bethesda RPGs in terms of game mechanics?

For me, one thing I really like to see is the interaction with NPCs improved. Radiant A.I. is the right direction for the NPC interaction, but I like to see more detailed implementation. In ‘Gothic’ series, NPCs actually perform various activities, which player character can also performs. NPCs react when weapons drawn upon or intruded by. I know these reactions in ‘Gothic’ are scripted events but the presentation makes them as if the NPCs were alive. NPCs in ‘Oblivion’, while acting on dynamic schedule, sometimes look like pantomiming. Many times I’ve witnessed the awesome NPCs interaction only possible with ‘Radiant A.I’, but many times NPCs walks around aimlessly in circle, too. The character deposition drops when weapon is drawn during conversation, but it would be nice to hear more distinctive reaction from NPCs about the fact. Daily routine could be more detailed in animation. Fishing, chopping woods, forging metals, making weapons, eating and drinking, the lists go on. I like to have more dialogue choices and right to refuse any quest. Many times you are given just one choice in ‘Oblivion’.

Another thing is consequences of player character’s action and its influence to the persistent world such as guilds. In ‘Oblivion’, your deeds, either good or evil, hardly create impact on the gaming world. Although there are more than one method to solve many individual task, and more than one result in outcome of the quest, it really doesn’t change the grand scheme of the game. I heard ‘Bethesda’ is really working hard on this for the upcoming ‘Fallout 3′. Multiple endings and various intricate political stands among different factions would be greatly appreciated.

Next thing is different combat mechanics for 3rd person perspective. 1st person perspective is outstanding in ‘Oblivion’ but it would be sweet to have the alternative combat mechanics in ‘Vanity Mode’ also. That way, gamers have choice between realistic 1st-person combat and more arcady 3rd-person combat. Accurate jumping mechanics like the one in ‘Metroid Prime’ would be awesome compared to the unrealistical moonwalking in the air in ‘Oblivion’. More acrobatic combat moves like rolling and dodging would be fantastic additions.

Havoc engine is great, but I hope the object manipulation becomes more useful in the actual gaming world, quests, or combat in the next iteration.

And my pet peeve of the game, it’s so difficult to fight the enemies while NPCs are around, especially the essential characters that you must protect.

These are merely the positive suggestions rather than pointing out the game’s flaws.

New ideas to improve the immersion for too much open-endedness would be great idea to narrow the gap between linear RPG and non-linear RPG.

Making RPG and simulating more life-like world is the ultimate holy grail Bethesda has been working for since ‘Arena’, I am sure.

No matter which TES game you like the most, the pathetic reality is that the choice of CRPG is very scarce in the market right now, and we need more refined game like ‘Oblivion’ to embrace mainstream casual gamers without alienating the hardcore RPG gamers so that market will once be crowded with good CRPGs.

The newly released GOTY (Game of the year) edition of ‘TES IV Oblivion’ contains the original ‘Oblivion’ along with ‘Knights of the Nine’ and ‘Shiverilg Isles’. Unfortunately, the rest of the official DLCs (Downloadable Contents) are not available in the package. You can either purchase them to download from the official website(www.elderscrolls.com) or you can purchase the retail version of ‘Knights of the Nine’ at the store, which also contains all the DLCs except the new ‘The Fighter’s Stronghold’. I strongly recommend you to purchase the retail version for you can freely install and uninstall anytime you need. The precedure of downloading through the website is such a pain.

This game literally never ends. You’ll spends hundreds of hours and one day, you’ll simply quit at your own device. ‘Oblivion’ is the one game truly non-linear, free-form, open-ended to the bitter end, indeed.