Decision Time

While reloading Fallout 3 for the third time today (a total of six so far!) I stumbled upon the fact that Fallen Earth is on a very nice sale. Let me explain the first part of that. I love Bethesda games, while Bethesda games hate me. They crash usually at a rate of once an hour on any machine I put them on, with or without mods. This has been the case since Morrowind, on through it’s expansion packs, into Oblivion and it’s expansion, and straight on to Fallout 3. I put up with it because they are amazing games and a quick reload once an hour isn’t going to ruin my experience.

On to the sale and the decision. This sale is calling to me. I really REALLY enjoyed my time in Fallen Earth and my body has been craving a return, it’s partly why I am loading up Fallout 3. I love the setting and to be honest I enjoyed Fallen Earth MORE than Fallout 3, though it lacks any single player story of course. I also didn’t experience it’s lack of end game, but that doesn’t bother me as I can just roll alts until I get bored with that and leave the game. I don’t feel that MMO’s begin at the end game. I enjoy the leveling and then usually get bored afterwards.

So what the dilemma? If I buy Fallen Earth I would need to unsub from Star Trek Online until I was done playing Fallen Earth, or maybe swap them out every month if I felt like it. This is because I only have two games ever going at the same time, one I play with my wife and one I play by myself. It’s a financial issue that I refuse to budge on, as $45 a month for MMOs is more than enough for me.

The two games are vastly different. On one hand I love the story missions in STO. They have an interesting story and lots of scripted events that can make them very enjoyable. On the other hand that’s pretty much all the game has going for it at the moment aside from the Fleet. In Fallen Earth I have much more to do, but less people to do it with (and far less that I know, IE nobody). Add onto that the fact that Fallen Earth doesn’t have great story quests, though there are a few, and it’s going to be a tough choice.

I think for the blog it would be more interesting to play Fallen Earth, as there is more to do and even if all of the bloggers I read were writing about it, each of us would be doing something different. In STO it feels like you are on serious rails, and you are, which isn’t a bad thing, just a different feel. Well, what do you all think?

The beauty and quests of Star Trek Online?

Or the grit and adventure of Fallen Earth?

GameSpot Fuse

I received an invitation on spam account to join GameSpot Fuse, the beta anyway. I got all excited because I have been downloading and trying out Steam alternatives for tracking achievements, IMing and other services inside games. I tried X-Fire, the most fugly piece of software I’ve ever used, including their website.

I then moved to Raptr because there services seemed better, and so far I’m pretty happy with it, especially since they now allow in game instant messaging. When I read this in my inbox I thought that GameSpot was coming out with an alternative to these products and I signed up to test it out.

It turns out, or so it seems at the moment, that it just integrated into your Raptr account and tracks those statistics on your GameSpot site. This is useless to me. I don’t hang around and friend people on GameSpot and I doubt ever go there unless I am following a random link. I wanted a client to download that would do this, and I already have the client they use apparently.

I’ll continue messing with it to see if there are other features I’m missing, but if not it seems rather limited. There ARE special GameSpot achievements, but I couldn’t care less about them. I only enjoy achievements that I randomly get while playing and I never go out of my way to even find out what achievements are out there. Except in MMO’s, where I will go FAR FAR out of my way to achieve Deeds or other “achievement” type trophies.

Let me know if you have found a different use for it, I’d be interested to know.

On a completely unrelated note I’ve been reading my favorite book trilogy again, in omnibus form, The Faded Sun Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh. I am a lover of settings. I don’t care what the story is (though the story is great in these books) if it has a good setting, and this plays over into movies, books and games. I’ll pick up pen and paper role-playing books with no intention of playing them, just to read up on the setting. I create settings in my free time and try to breathe as much life into them as I can, without ever creating anything resembling a story. C. J. Cherryh puts my efforts to shame in this science fiction trilogy that creates two VERY unique alien races that have amazing depth, relatable to us enough that you can understand them, but different enough that you don’t read them as being human.

I’m also preparing Fallout 3 for another playthrough. This entails a lot of searching on mod sites and downloading random things to improve the game. I have the same several day adventure whenever I try and play Morrowind or Oblivion too. Got any mods you’d recommend for Fallout 3? Leave them in the comments.

Never fear though, I shall return to MMO’s shortly. I have a Star Trek Online post I’m putting the finishing touches on, as well as a few other little things that are in the works. Now I’m going back to my book.