Dragonborn & Microsoft's Hate for Expats

Today is the release of Skyrim's DLC Dragonborn on xbox 360! I'm so excited, it is like an early birthday present! (My birthday is Saturday, which will be 1 year since I got Skyrim).

What I'm looking forward to the most about Dragonborn (other than it makes the game I really love last longer), is that I will have something to do besides radiant quests with Raewynn (my lvl 58 primary character). As you know by now, I have been working on getting her to level 78 to work towards all achievements earned for Skyrim. However, the road has been long and grueling and very very boring.

The only way I have figured to help me level up is to level up all my skills.. since I played as a dual wield melee character I started going back and working with some magical skills or even 2 handed skill. But it is hard to level those skills when you have nothing to kill except whatever quests you get in a radiant line and it gets boring REALLY fast. It is true I still have not completed the main storyline quest though. My reason for that was to make me not give up so quickly on trying to level. Generally when I player has already done the main thing, they stop playing and I'm not above that.

#1 Reason Why...

Here we go...! I saw this floating around on twitter yesterday but didn't want to touch the topic, but after an article over on CNN (and the irritating comments left) I feel compelled to say something about it.

First of all, here is the article: 'Lady game creators' meet up on Twitter'. The article talks about the issue in the detached tone, blanket generalization that most big media articles on gaming (and even worse, women in gaming) tend to take. Never touching on the REAL issue or really understanding what is going on.

CNN asks for those involved in the topic to share and so I threw my two-cents in answering this call: "Are you a female interested in the video game industry, or do you know someone who is?"

Now, I may not be involved directly in the development side of things, I don't have the education level developing requires, but I do have a passion for video games. I also gave up on being more professionally involved in other ways some time ago (for multiple reasons which I will not get into here); but that doesn't mean I don't have an inkling of a clue of what I'm talking about either. More so than the random CNN correspondent that knows nothing of video games or women in gaming anyway (no offense to CNN, and not including some of their gaming journalists).

What irritated me the most with this article wasn't really the article itself which offers no real opinion or substance simply because they don't have the knowledge or background to do so anyway, but the comments. Scroll through them and you will find the cliché stereotypical things you always hear about women and video games. From your trolling "get back to the kitchen" to the, "women just want attention" comments.

Malyce: My Second Skyrim Character

As you may (or may not) remember, I have been slowly working on completing all the achievements for Skyrim on xbox 360. To make keeping track of that a bit easier through my blog, I have especially created a tab that directs to my Skyrim: All Achievements post which is updated as needed.

Because I destroyed the Dark Brotherhood on my first/primary character long before I even thought I might care about the achievements (which require you to follow through the entire DB chain) and because I had cured myself of Lycanthropy and didn't want to reinfect myself AND because I also denied becoming a vampire lord and completed the chain from the Dawnguard side, I needed to create a secondary character in order to get those achievements.

I really like Skyrim, so I wasn't bothered by the fact that I needed to create another character. In fact, I had intended to do so eventually on my own anyway to see some quests from another side, especially from Dawnguard. I had only previously hesitated creating a second because I was unsure how to keep track of my saves and not lose my primary, but once I discovered I could save another character on another media device (memory card in my case, yes I had one..) without hassle or fear of mixing them up, I dove right in.

A Necessary Facelift

Unecessary Blogage got a necessary facelift today! Hopefully you like it as much as I do compared to the old look.

Updating my blog is really something I have been meaning to do for a long time now but never got around to.  I'm not so great with graphics, nor with HTML etc, so I kept trying to take the lazy way out and download templates. Everything I looked through though was either really ugly, really specific (specific video games etc), or just plain full of advertisement for the site I was looking at. So then I thought to just transfer everything over to WordPress as there were far more customization options, but while blog titles transferred the content of the blogs didn't. -_-  Then there was the problem of youtube videos not displaying properly without addons (I forgot about this when I used to admin a WP site before) and everything costing money to do anything. Eventually I just abandoned that idea (for now anyway).

After much frustration with downloadable templates I just decided to try Blogger's new customization tools and make a holder until I could work on something. But as I started working, I started seeing that I could do most of what I wanted to do anyway and just did it. I always wanted to make a real header for my blog but never got around to it either and today I just sat there and did it. Again, I'm not great with graphics and manipulation or anything, but I'm satisfied with the result and happy to find a new use for my Rock Band 2 avatar of myself (too bad Rock Band 3 doesn't give the hair style I need to pull it off again & there is no photomaker tool anymore).

I've also added Disqus comments! Yay! I'm hoping this will encourage more blog comments since Blogger's system is really primitive. We will see.

Anyway, I'm happy to have something a bit more to my style and a bit more original than the old template I had before.. everyone and their dog had that same look. I hope Unnecessary Blogage will be clear and easy to read while also being a little more pleasing on the eye. :)

Return of the Vocal Videos

Things have been busy for me lately. Aside my continuation in Skyrim (level 56 almost 57) for All Achievements, I also recently picked up Rocksmith last week since the game was FINALLY released in Europe. Now not only am I trying to level up in Skyrim for that damned Legendary dragon, but I am also trying to make sure I play Rocksmith consistently to maintain whatever callouses I may be gaining.  That is not including the fact that Rock Band still releases new DLC and I want to record vocal videos (especially of Amberian Dawn songs). So many things I want to do and so little time... first world problems, ya know?

So today I shook off some of the lazy and hauled my desktop to my living room to get some recordings done. I actually managed to get 2 videos recorded, Cold Kiss and Passing Bells; both by Amberian Dawn.

Skyrim: Hearthfire- My Experiences

(aka Learn From My Mistakes)

If you're looking for a review of Skyrim: Hearthfire you can check my post:
Skyrim: Hearthfire- My Thoughts.

This post is a bit more personal and will describe my playtime with it thus far and more in-depth opinions regarding my game play. Things I learned (tips) are bolded/italicized.

Skyrim: Hearthfire - My Thoughts

Skryim's latest add-on.

Unless you've been living under a rock, chances are you have heard of Skyrim's latest DLC add-on: Hearthfire released September 4, 2012. Hearthfire goes for 400 MS points and gives you the ability to buy land, build a house and adopt children.

Some people have compared it to The Sims. Since I don't play The Sims (nor do I care for it), I'm not going to compare it to that game. For me, Hearthfire is the final piece that makes Skyrim almost the new Fable, and I loved me some Fable.

In my opinion, Hearthfire is something that probably should have been included with the game from the get-go. I'm not saying it is so important that there was a great lack in the game without it, but it is one of those things that would have been so much more useful and enjoyed during the course of game play and leveling up than crudely tacked on 10 months later when the majority of people have already finished the main quest and stopped playing.

Skyrim: All Achievements Porgress as of 12/4/12

This is an excerpt of a previous post, the full post is here: Skyrim, Skyrim and more Skyrim. Updated: Dec. 4, 2012

So without intending to I kind of started a goal to gain every achievement in the game so that should surely keep me busy until The Elder Scrolls Online is released (well, maybe not THAT long, but for a while). I just started noticing that I was getting the majority of achievements anyway, so I figured why not?

Here's my profile on Raptr (I can't think of an easier way to link achievements):
http://raptr.com/_Anex_/about

I'm sitting at 63/75 achievements (there were some achievements that came with the Dawngaurd DLC , Hearthfire add-on and Dragonborn DLC). Rather than link all the ones I have it is just easier to list the ones I DON'T have.

Skyrim, Skyrim and more Skyrim

My character in Skyrim; Raewyn

(updated 9/17/12, see achievements section)

I know my blog seems to mostly be about Rock band, but I DO play other games too.

Last year on my birthday I received Skyrim for my birthday (December 8). I was semi-interested in the game, but didn't know much about it. I knew it was similar to Oblivion (I now know it is part of the same universe) which I HAD wanted to buy but couldn't play because my TV was WAAAAAY too small to deal with the interface (I used to play on a postage stamp, as evidenced in some of my rock band vids from 2 years ago).

I poked around the video game stores in November when Skyrim was released, but everything I found said "Version Francaise Integral" which usually means that the entire game has been translated into French along with character voices without any way to change the language. As a native English speaker living in France, this is a pain for me. Not to mention that games/movies/tv shows dubbed in French usually have TERRIBLE voice acting and translations (the majority of the Frenchies I have spoken with agree). So I put off the game. However my husband and a friend of ours schemed in my back to order the game from an English speaking country for my birthday. So needless to say when I saw my birthday present had the shape of a game or movie I opened it cautiously and then shrieked.

Rock Band Vid: Lithium & XLR -> USB Mic Buzz

I finally got around to recording a video! Yay!

I have been sick forever (going on over a month now) with bronchitis. I still haven't got rid of it, but I have decided I need to just learn to work around it because I am tired of waiting to recover. I think I will have to talk to my doctor about chronic bronchitis next time I see her, we will see what happens.

So this week is Lithium by Evanescence. As much as I'm not crazy about the band (or I guess I should say Amy Lee, since she started over) anymore (nor the direction), there was a time I did like the band (first 2 albums). It was also previous to discovering harder music and European metal which includes symphonic metal bands with classically trained female singers... so I have kind of "grown out of" Evanescence. However, this was a song I used to quite like and it is fun to sing.

In Major Need of an Update xD

It's been FOREVER since I have updated here. To be honest I really was planning a major overhaul and working on moving things over to http://unnecessaryblogage.wordpress.com/ but I was kept busy.

I had my first show with Ethropia, we were working on recording a demo.. it was crazy stuff. Now that Ethropia is on break for about a year, I have time again. I have really been wanting to write blogs regarding my Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 routine I started in February, and post more videos.

I did upload a few more videos to youtube