Google News: 7 Things You Should Do in Skyrim

7 Things You Should Do in Skyrim PC Magazine - ‎2 hours ago‎ The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released today for the PC, PlayStation 3, and XBox 360, thrusts everything to the next level, giving you more ways to play, fight, and live in the land of the Nords than you've ever had before. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360) CNET Review: 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' a magnificent odyssey USA Today See all 382 sources »

---

Browse all of today's headlines on Google News

Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten

Some promises are harder to keep than others, but for Valvatorez, a promise is a sacred thing, to be honored no matter the personal sacrifice it requires. For reasons that aren't immediately clear, Valvatorez has sworn to no longer drink the blood of humans. He was once fearfully referred to as "The Blood-Soaked Valvatorez of Absolute Evil" and "The King of Carnage and Atrocity," but his power has diminished tremendously since he made his vow and forswore the empowering delights of drinking human blood. Now, he works as a prinny instructor, just another cog in the wheel of the vast netherworld bureaucracy. But he doesn't let the lowering of his station dampen his spirits, and he has even found a new culinary treat to adore: sardines. Valvatorez sings their praises at every opportunity, going so far as to interrupt story sequences to shower you with facts you didn't care to know about sardines. He's a great central character for this tale, and the large cast of friends and foes is composed of similarly strange and delightful characters. Valvatorez's sycophantic werewolf servant Fenrich manages to convince himself that his master's most glaring mistakes are actually acts of incomprehensible virtue and brilliance. Former middle-schooler Fuka can't accept that she has died and been sent to the netherworld, so she maintains that everything that happens is just part of an elaborate dream she's having.

Disillusioned by the corruption that exists at the highest levels of the netherworld's government, Valvatorez builds a team and sets out to overthrow that government and usher in a new era of evil. Concerns about government corruption, labor exploitation, freedom of speech, and other weighty issues abound, but they're woven seamlessly into Disgaea 4's slyly humorous tale. The cutscenes are unimpressive, with character portraits that make the occasional dramatic gesture but mostly stand still. However, the writing sparkles throughout, and lively voice acting conveys the character's emotions even when the visuals don't.

Feel my wrath, Hi My Honey!

Redrawn, high-definition sprites make this the sharpest-looking Disgaea yet, but the series' style hasn't evolved at all, and this is still a visually simple game. However, what it lacks in technical prowess, it makes up for to some degree in charm. Although these battles involve vampires, werewolves, demons, and other denizens of the netherworld, cute designs make the action lighthearted and the characters endearing; it's a delight to see these little sprites perform elaborate attacks that appear to rend the fabric of space.

The core of Disgaea 4 is in the turn-based strategic battles that have defined the series. Viewing the action from an isometric perspective, you move your characters to tiles on the field of battle and strive to vanquish your enemies with physical attacks and magic. You need to consider your characters' movements carefully to maximize the amount of damage they can do on each turn. For instance, by placing teammates on adjacent tiles prior to an attack, you create the possibility for them to join forces and perform a more powerful team attack. You can exploit this system by maneuvering squad members into positions to maximize team attacks, then retracting their moves to have them act elsewhere, thus expanding your tactical possibilities.

These sprites may look harmless, but get a few of 'em together and they can really pack a wallop.

The geo blocks introduced in Disgaea 3 return here; these cubes convey special properties onto specific tiles across the battlefield, often making your struggles much more challenging. They might create clones of an enemy with each passing turn, for instance, or make enemies on certain tiles invincible. These force you to consider whether to focus each character's efforts on fighting the enemy monsters or on eliminating the troublesome blocks.

F1 2011

The visual improvements over last year's game are striking from your very first lap. The desaturated lighting has been replaced with a realistic colour palette which better conveys the famous Grand Prix atmosphere, from the fans in the grandstands to the scarlet Ferrari and gleaming chrome McLaren. More attention has been given to the cars, too. Each team now has its own steering wheel design, complete with bespoke animations for gear changes and other steering wheel functions. Circuit marshals can be seen waving flags, and the LED caution lights dotted around each circuit work realistically. Bodywork reflects far more of the environment than in F1 2010, and damage to tyres can now be seen in the texture of the rubber on each wheel. Such is the attention to detail in the car models that you can even see the front wing flexing and bending as the cars bounce over bumps, just as during slow-motion footage from a real race.

Unfortunately, on PlayStation 3 these visual improvements have come at a cost. Unlike the versions of F1 2011 on other platforms, the PS3 suffers from a frame rate which varies a lot from circuit to circuit. Circuits with less track side detail perform significantly better than others. Though the slowdown doesn’t affect the gameplay too much, the varying visual standard between each track is irritating. Also, objects in the distance sometimes appear to be slightly blurred and the aliasing of various models, including the cars, is nowhere near as crisp as in either the Xbox 360 or PC versions. Even the pit garage menu system appears blurry at some circuits.

The graphics may be a disappointment on PlayStation 3, but the audio now more accurately mimics the real deal. Engine notes are now much more aggressive, as are the gear-change sound effects and the sound of the car hitting the rev limiter. You can even listen to the noise of the tyres on the road to predict the wheels locking up under heavy braking. The enhanced sound gives experienced players much more feedback with which to understand their car's behavior. Additional improvements have been made to the race engineer character who feeds advice to you over the car radio. In F1 2010, the advice was often irrelevant to your race, but in 2011 you are fed information specific to the cars closest to you on the track and given much clearer advice about how to best look after your fragile F1 car.

The fragility of the car is the most important change to the game this year and does a fantastic job of capturing the care needed to drive a racing car. You must find a careful balance between pushing hard and prolonging the life of your tyres. In real F1, the more damage you do to your rubber, the more often you must pit; the same is true in F1 2011. You must also control your fuel use so that you can safely make it to the finish of each race. If you use the "fast" fuel setting for too long, you will drain the fuel tank more quickly, forcing you to drive slowly later in the race to improve your fuel economy and make it to the finish. A new feature on the heads-up display tells you exactly how much fuel you have left by comparing the number of laps left in the tank with the number left to race. All of this attention to detail will be loved by F1 fans but may frustrate those less familiar with the sport. The race engineer does give advice about when to push and when to drive conservatively, but much of his advice assumes you have a high level of F1 knowledge, using terminology which can be confusing if you're not familiar with the real sport. However, fans will appreciate how similar the radio chatter is to real life.


The Williams F1 team car taken out for a spin.
Comment on this videoWatch this video in High Def
Car handling in F1 2011 leans heavily towards simulation. You can choose from a variety of assists, such as traction control, braking help, and a dynamic racing line, but the series still doesn't have any tutorials to help novices feel comfortable with the incredible acceleration, braking, and cornering speed of an F1 car. However, the alterations to the vehicle physics make this one of the most authentic racing simulations around. The remodeled suspension system gives the car a more believable sense of weight so that you can now feel its mass moving during corners, allowing you to predict slides and correct them appropriately. Sudden spins caused by bumps and kerbs, a major problem in the last game, are a thing of the past. The different tyres are simulated impressively as well. Soft rubber creates great grip but wears out quickly and can be damaged easily, whereas harder rubber offers less grip but is much more durable. The new physics make driving with a standard gamepad a much larger challenge than before; a force feedback steering wheel creates a greater connection between you and the car. A wheel also makes the game much easier to master by allowing much more subtle steering inputs. These aren't always possible when driving F1 2011's twitchy cars with an analogue stick.

The twitchy handling is especially evident in wet weather, which is now far harder to cope with than in F1 2010. Should it begin to rain while you are using a car setup designed for dry conditions, the car will understeer horribly going into corners and oversteer aggressively on the exits, often even if you switch to the correct intermediate or extreme wet tire. If you have the correct wet car setup, you still need to be very careful, as a relatively minor mistake could cause a spin. Along with the tough handling in these situations, the visual effects for water spray are even more frightening in this year's game. Driving closely behind another car in heavy rain is akin to driving with your eyes shut. It demands extreme bravery and really captures the crazy conditions seen regularly in the real sport this season.

Should you lose control of your car, you will quickly become familiar with F1 2011's detailed damage system. With a big enough impact you can knock off your front wing or lose a wheel, but the game also helps you understand that F1 cars are sensitive even to minor incidents. If you lose your entire front wing, you will notice a massive loss of grip, but you can also lose smaller pieces of your car through minor contact. You lose less aerodynamic grip from these incidents, but they still have a subtle negative impact on handling. Puncturing a tire is a much less random occurrence this year as well. If you run off the racing line you will find that your tyres pick up small amounts of dirt and debris; do this too often and a tire might deflate.

Duke Nukem Forever

The saying goes, “Better late than never.” I wish this was the case for Duke Nukem Forever. Unfortunately, stale gameplay and clumsy mechanics make me wish Forever was left as an idea, rather than made into an actual game. I wanted to like it. I really did. I tried to overlook its shortcomings and enjoy a story and character that brought me back to my childhood.
As far as character is concerned, nothing has changed. Duke is still the same testosterone-raging, foul-mouthed booby-slapper that he was in the 90s. He is a gun-toting badass who treats women as objects, mocks our society, and gets off on squashing aliens. The humor in the game is great. It brought me back to my adolescent days, when I got a rush out of doing things in the game that I wasn’t supposed to do in real life—-like looking at dirty magazines. Boy, did pixelated women ever look so good.

You’d think that after 12 years in the making, the women would look a little better. OK, so the game may have been an idea for 10 of those years, and the other two were development, but the point is that a game for consoles like Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 should look somewhat better than Duke Nukem Forever does. I thought blocky graphics and choppy movements were gone with the original Xbox. I would think the “King” would get the pleasure of a graphical overhaul, but maybe they purposely left us with these graphics for a nostalgia’s sake.
I wouldn’t be so hard on the graphics if the gameplay made up for it. The simple fact is that the gameplay is stale. There is nothing quite as adrenaline-pumping as running into a room full of aliens, guns blazing, and blasting the hell out of anything in sight. It was fun in the first Duke Nukem. It was fun for the first couple of levels in Duke Nukem Forever. Then it got repetitive. I can only get so much enjoyment out of shotgunning an alien and giving it the finger afterwards. Maybe today’s shooters have spoiled me into wanting more out of a game, and maybe the hype of Duke Nukem Forever made me expect more out of the game’s action. But there wasn’t more. All you do is run in and shoot up the place, often dying in the process because of “cheap” deaths. When I say “cheap” deaths, I don’t mean any time I die I’m labeling it as cheap. I admit, some of the deaths were results of careless play on my behalf, but when I am shrunken and nowhere near an enemy yet still die when he stomps his foot on the ground, I consider that a “cheap,” poorly programmed death.

Normally, I don’t complain about dying in a video game. I enjoy the challenge. However, when it takes five minutes to reload the level, it gets a little frustrating. No, I am not exaggerating. Each load screen takes about four to five minutes, and it happens quite frequently.
Duke Nukem takes gameplay elements from the very FPS games that it mocks. It has a regenerative health bar, called ego, and the constraint of only holding 2 weapons at once. Honestly, who can only carry two weapons these days? Especially when the hero is someone as badass as Duke. Duke’s levels are fairly straightforward—-linear maps filled with charging humanoid pigs and jetpack-wearing aliens. Some of the weapons are fun, as you can find shrink rays and freeze guns or use your blunt fists to pulverize enemies. After blasting your way around a level, you occasionally encounter some small puzzles. Although small and simplistic in nature, some of them can be quite difficult to figure out and can lead to frustration. The majority of them involve finding which crate to jump on next. Once you complete the acts in each chapter, you come face-to-face with a boss of some sort. These boss fights usually require patience, as you are forced to repetitively fire rockets at it until its health depletes.

The ideas behind some of Duke’s elements are there. It could’ve been fun shrinking into miniature size and driving miniature trucks around a room. However, its clumsy handling leaves you wanting more. “Jump on this crate and climb this ladder ... Jump on the hamburger buns to avoid being burned.” The puzzles are so dull that they are annoying. What should have been considered fun breaks in action sequences seem more like hindrances that only piss you off when you die because you can’t make the jump required to reach the next platform. Have fun waiting another five minutes to reload the level.  But hey, what is five minutes of waiting when we’ve waited 12 years for this game?
I enjoy the Duke character. I love flicking off aliens and cursing them out as I blow their heads off. I love chugging beer and cracking skulls with my fists. I love getting virtual lap dances in strip clubs and admiring myself in the mirror. The story, as hokey as it is, is still entertaining and filled with crude humor. I just don’t love anything else about the game. The graphics are dated, and the gameplay is pedestrian at best. I found myself begging for the game to end, playing it only for the sake of beating it rather than enjoying it. It seemed like a chore instead of a game. If you enjoy repetitive levels and corny one-liners, then you will find enjoyment in this game. The game will definitely bring you back to the 90s, but I wish it would have left 90s gameplay and graphics.