Game Review: Elder Scrolls: Castles

Elder Scrolls: Castle is an app for Apple and Google Play. It's sort of like Fallout Shelter, which is a little app that Bethesda put out around 2015.

The idea is to manage resources, not get your king killed, keep the people in the castle happy, have children, go on little quests, etc.

The Elder Scrolls: Castle games has quite a few nods to Skyrim, which is my favorite video game of all time. I received an Ulfric Stormcloak character within a week or so of downloading the game to my iPad. There are also the different races found in the Elder Scrolls/ Skyrim world, so if you're familiar with that, you won't be surprised to see Dark Elves and High Elves, Khajitt, Argonians, Bretons, etc.

I started playing the game on September 10, when it first became available, so I've been playing it for 13 days. I'm already a little bored with it.

It starts out with the assassination of the king, so the player gets to choose a king. My first king ruled for 10 years (each day is a year in the life of the kingdom) before somebody stabbed him in the back. Then I chose another king, who is currently ruling.

The king has to make rulings on various and sundry things, like someone isn't working well with somebody else in the kitchen, the warlocks wants to land on the shore and will curse the kingdom if not allowed to do so, and so on and so forth. The rulings make the subjects happy or sad, and sometimes makes someone an enemy of the king.

People can be banished, but I have only banished one person because I simply don't have enough workers to keep things going. I can't summarily banish people for sleeping with somebody else because I wasn't paying attention to who was married to whom. I look for my current king to be stabbed shortly, if I keep playing.

The quests are rather boring because there isn't much to do besides stick your fighters with good weapons and armor and send them off. You can watch them take down the enemy and occasionally use a special effect or a healing potion, but there isn't much else to do to make the quests interesting. 

The castle world is promoted through experience points, and those allow upgrades of such things as the kitchen, the mill, the oil press, the workshop, etc. You can also put up little decorations that add to happiness or knock 1 second off of production of certain items.

I found Fallout Shelter to be much more engaging, even though the cartoonish look of Castles is cute. They are both repetitive types of games, but Fallout Shelter offers the opportunity to quickly get to 100 or more little characters and they all have something to do; Castles makes me feel lucky to have 50 and have them working. The aging thing in Castles is too quick, and older little workers die off while it takes a long time for the kids to grow up.

I am also more than a little irked that Microsoft owns Bethesda as of 2020, and the app is not available in the Microsoft Store. I prefer to play on the PC. I prefer a mouse to my finger on a tablet. I would have thought that Microsoft would have made this available as an app to its users, but apparently not. I know a lot of their games - maybe most of them now - go through the XBox game pass, which I do not use, but this isn't available through Microsoft for my PC at all.

I give Elder Scrolls: Castles a strong C- . It is not as much fun as the game it's based on, Fallout Shelter, and I'm surprised I've already grown bored with it.

Bethesda needs to figure out how to make the successor to Skyrim sometime before I'm old and too feeble to play a new game.

When the Cloud Messes Up

One of the game stages I use is called GOG. It has older video games on it, the ones I played back in the 1990s and early 2000s, along with other things.

One of my favorite set of games, aside from Bethesda's Elder Scrolls, were by 3DO and were called the Might and Magic series.

GOG allegedly syncs my game play in its cloud with the games saved on my hard drive.

The last few days, I've been getting this message when it goes to sync:

I have no idea how to fix this and can't find a way to contact anyone at GOG to ask about it. So, I just hit ignore and go on.

But isn't it fascinating that my files are now 53 years off? I didn't even know what a computer was 53 years ago. Well, maybe I thought it was the robot on Lost in Space that said, "Danger! Danger!" but that would be about it.

I have also wondered if GOG has been hacked. Or if I have been hacked. Nothing else is amiss on my end, though. At least, not that I've noticed.

Suggestions welcome if anyone knows anything about this.

Walked It Back

A few weeks ago, I wrote about leaving the fellowship of a video game that I've been playing for over five years.

I am back in that fellowship.

Not only am I back, I am the fellowship leader.

I returned on my own, so this is no one's fault but mine. Playing this city-building game by yourself is a bit boring. But I wasn't stopping. I had hoped the boredom would lead me to quit playing. 

It didn't.

Maybe I needed to give it more than two weeks. I decided, though, that if I were still going to play, I may as well find a fellowship so that the rewards were better. Just until I finished up the current chapter I was in, mind you. It was taking a lot longer than I'd thought it would.

My old fellowship had not yet replaced me. Better the devil you know, right? I had friends there. I asked if I could return, but I said I didn't want to return to my old role of mage in charge behind the scenes.

But upon arriving back into the fellowship, I found it in disarray (fortunately mostly behind the scenes and not in front of the majority of the players). I had greatly underestimated my impact on this group. The leader was incapable of managing the thing alone. Another good player left shortly after I arrived because of something the leader said.

The next thing I knew, I was dragged into this, and then I was the archmage. I agreed to take it because everyone expected me to. 

Things settled down almost immediately.

I still think I need to drop this game. The problem is, I don't have faith in myself to replace it with something as satisfying, or time consuming, or whatever need a video game meets.

It doesn't help to call myself an idiot, but I shouldn't have gone back. I did not expect this turn of events.

If I accept a responsibility, I tend to it, so I will deal with this as best I can now. But I know I need to make changes somewhere. I know I should be using my time better.

I know this isn't permanent.

Motivation, it seems, eludes me. Or maybe it really is an addiction.

Eventually, I will figure this out.

Damn it.

Just Walk Away, Renae

This weekend, I made what for me was a big move. In others' worlds, it was a nothing burger.

In March 2017, I started playing a video game called Elvenar. It's a world-building game. Essentially, you're running a city and through a research tree, you move forward in the game so that the buildings grow and change.

Spacing is a big issue, forcing you to think about how you utilize resources. Trading goods with other players is a necessity. 

Being in a fellowship is also a necessity. To that end, in August 2017, I co-founded a fellowship in Elvenar. While I did not hold the "top" honor of Archmage, I was head mage.

Basically, I ran the fellowship. The archmage was the shield so I could do the behind-the-scenes work.

When I started playing this game, my husband worked at the fire station, still, and it was easy to spend the evenings he was at the firehouse on my game. I'm not a big TV watcher, so the only thing I was neglecting, really, was my reading. At that time, I was having a lot of trouble with my eyes and reading was difficult, so this was not a big deal.

After my husband retired from the fire department, he was home every night. I changed up my routine so that most of my game playing was in the morning or immediately after dinner, when he was in the shower, because I wanted to spend my time with him. 

By this time, I had four cities in this game, with three of them supporting my main city, the one in the fellowship I'd helped establish.

As the game progressed, it began to take up more of my time. Some mornings I would find that three hours had passed and I'd yet to shower and do my chores. I was in charge of keeping up with 25 people, answering their questions, keeping a spreadsheet on their game play, because we were trying to take the fellowship to the top 10.

You don't get into the top 10 by being an occasional, relaxed fellowship. We worked to keep a balance so that other players didn't feel pinched. But ultimately, I was the one who ended up feeling pinched.

I've known for a year that I needed to drop this game. Or step back. But I'd been playing it a long time. I'd spent a little money on it, not much, but I'd certainly put a lot of time in it. It's hard to walk away from something that you're that invested in.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not a little addicted to all things computer, and video games in particular. Video games are set up to lure you in and keep you there. 

This was the first time I'd ever played in a multi-player game. In my other video games, I played solo, because they were solo video games. When I played those, it didn't matter if I walked away for a week or a month and then went back to it. But Elvenar really encouraged players to be in fellowships or else forward movement slowed to a crawl.

I watched players come and go. There were 5 of us, including myself, who had stuck with the fellowship the entire time. Others have been there for several years. Some had left and returned.

The archmage and I are on a first name basis, and I consider him a friend. But he's a bit self-involved. In the past year, we've hardly communicated, and he was playing a lot less, and certainly not as hard as I was.

My reasons to stay were dwindling. And over the summer, I realized that I didn't care if made it through the next chapter in the game or built my city up anymore.

So, Saturday, I sent the archmage a personal note telling him I was leaving. His response was churlish, "More notice would have been nice," and he offered me no reason to stay, no relief from the responsibilities I'd taken on, or even "why don't you just take a month off, we'll hold your place." 

I thought I deserved at least that kind of consideration, but I didn't ask, and he didn't offer. I'm not sure I would have accepted if he had, but I am disappointed that he made no effort to be accommodating. All he could see was that he was being inconvenienced.

Then I sent the fellowship a note:

My Dear Friends:

Now, at long last, we come to the end of our fellowship. It is with sadness that I leave you today, but it is time for me to forego gaming and figure out something else to do with myself.

I depart so that another may help carry the FS into the top 10. I had been waiting for that to happen before I left, but we can't seem to get past 12th place. That's pretty good, though, for a FS that started out in 2017 with just FD and me and something like 303rd place.

May all of you have good health, much joy, and great laughter. And when you're slogging through another chapter of Elvenar, remember that patience is queen in this crazy little game.

This has been my first foray into multiplayer gaming. Thank you all for making it such a lovely time.

With kindest regards,

CountryDew

Yes, my player name was the same as the name I use on this blog.

At any rate, I sent the message, and then I left. (The fellowship dropped to 16th when I did; I have a really high score.)

It was much harder to do than I thought it would be, walking away. And of course, I didn't leave the game. I still have three other cities, though they are in relaxed fellowships, and it doesn't matter if I "make perimeters" or not there. If I don't show up for a few days, no one will say much, and it won't matter. And I can play the other city alone, if I want.

What I walked away from was the responsibility of trying to create a top 10 fellowship. I was tired and it was taking up a tremendous amount of my time.

It is time to move on, but sometimes that is incredibly difficult.

Now let's see what I'm walking toward, shall we?

Things Going On

A mish-mash of things -

My husband's cousin passed away on Monday after a long bout of Covid. He spent some weeks on a ventilator before succumbing. The funeral is tomorrow. I have an earache and so will not attend. George was well known and a respected member of the community, so there will be a crowd. My husband looked upon his cousin like a brother. He will represent us at the funeral.

Russia invaded Ukraine yesterday, or I guess really Wednesday night. Many people see this as the first step in World War III. I think another world war will not look so much like the last two - this one will be fought with technology. Computer hacks, degradation of lifestyles, loss of the electric grid, downing satellites, plus drone bombings in various cities - those things I expect. This is not how I expected my senior years to play out, watching the world fall apart. But we all can only do what we can with the time given us and play our mostly insignificant roles therein.

Still, there are boots on the ground in the Ukraine, so traditional warfare also continues. I watched a video earlier of a Ukranian woman telling off a Russian soldier. She called him a fascist and gave him sunflower seeds to put in his pocket so they would bring up something beautiful when the soldier died. It was an intriguing notion, to bring something lovely from the destruction that was coming, or rather, has come, and continues to come. She also cursed them, not just with foul language but as in an actual curse or hex. As well she should.

For some reason, the video of all of the talented singers who participated in USA for Africa and sang We Are the World in 1985 popped up in my youtube feed, so I watched that. I remember when the song came out, how it much impact it had. I believe most radio stations agreed to play it at the same time, and the song was everywhere. I doubt we could ever have such a thing again. I will hope, though, because we are indeed the world, all of us, even those who are different in whatever way. We're all one, really, little grapes in the great vineyard of life. Some of us are purple, some are blue, some are withered raisins, some are squishy, some are seedless. I hope I'm a Concord grape. They're my favorite. I haven't had any in a long time. They're hard to find. My husband's grandmother used to grow them, but I don't know of anyone who grows them now.

At my age, I am still learning life's hard lessons. One of these is trust. I trust people to do the right thing. To do what they say they're going to do. To not hurt me. To be kind. To be nice. And guess what? I'm wrong to do that. I should trust no one. This morning's lesson came to me via a video game I play. It's a city building game called Elvenar. Not a war game, or a shot people game. A game where you trade goods to create new buildings and advance through a research tree. It's the first, only, and will be the last multiplayer game I have ever played. In this game, you have fellowships. You can have 25 people in your fellowship. Some of these people I have been playing with for five years. You do get to know people a little over that period of time. I am the archmage of my fellowship, which means I'm the leader. I can promote people to mage. My mages are the people I've come to feel are trustworthy.

This morning, I woke to find one of them had violated that trust. I have a chart on my google drive where I keep track of various things in the game - players have goals to meet, for example - and I'd given the chart to three of my mages. This morning, when I went to the chart to update it, someone had turned the thing into a garish, difficult-to-read document. I copied it over so I would be the only one with the link and then had to spend about 45 minutes trying to get it back to the way it was. It upset me so much that I cried. I also left a message for my three mages, and I let whoever had done this know that I was not happy. I demoted the fellow I think did it, and if he confesses (which is doubtful), I will throw him out of the fellowship. 

At any rate, I think I am done with the game. It takes time, but I enjoyed it. It kept me thinking and was an exercise in patience and creativity, because one really had to give thought to the goods and how to keep things equalized, and suddenly not have more planks than marble or whatever. I shouldn't have to give up something I enjoy because of someone else, but I have found that to be the story of my life.

It is no wonder I have about given up on people in general.

Too bad I can't give myself a hug.

Yes, I Play Video Games

Yesterday during a conversation, I was asked what I did for stress relief. I mentioned reading, coloring, playing guitar, and video games.

You'd have thought I'd said I walked to the moon every morning.

"You play video games? At your age? And you're a woman!"

Neither of those facts have escaped me. However, I know a lot of folks my age who play video games. Whether they own up to it or not is another matter. I do because I don't care what people think of the fact that I play video games.

The fact that I am a woman - that too did not surprise me that it surprised her. There is this conventional misconception that women don't play video games. But a lot of women play video games. They may not be the shoot 'em up and leave 'em bloody kind of video games, but they are video games.

Pew Research says that 31% of women in my age bracket play video games. That's almost 1/3 of us. So why is it surprising that I play?

I play a lot of puzzle games, and those are popular with folks who have at least a bachelor's degree. I like the challenge of them. I play city-building games because they're kind of a puzzle - how do you fit this building here and get the population correct and all of that. Lots of math involved (which should make my friend Tina very happy, so I won't tell her that these days I just call out, "Alexa, what's Q x X" or whatever I need), as well as thinking and contemplating. It's a lot better than worrying about politics, I'll tell you that.

My video game playing began with pinball when I was a wee lass, and progressed from there. I thought Pong was the greatest thing ever. I loved Centipede in the arcade. I thought a weird game called Area 51 was great. I liked to play games by Apogee (and if you don't know that name, you weren't gaming in the 1990s), like Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, and Commander Keen.

I also loved Bethesda's Elder Scroll series and played those, too. Skyrim was the last one they put out before moving to multi-player online games. I don't like multi-player games - too much drama involved with other people - so I stick to Skyrim, which I still play every now and then. It can be time consuming and involved so I generally don't play it unless I've got a lot of downtime.

And then there was the Sims. I loved the first incarnations of the Sims; wasn't too fond of the Sims III and haven't played since. There is a Sims Freeplay app game that I play sometimes on my Kindle, but it freezes up a lot so I don't mess with it often.

Playing video games gives my brain a pause. Well, not a big pause because there is a lot of thinking involved in these games but it gives it a rest from worrying. I can't worry if I'm focusing on beating a level or finding the next treasure or whatever.

So yes, I play video games. It beats smoking, drinking, running around with men, and going wild.

Perfect Month (in Microsoft Solitaire)

I post this only because I've never managed it before. Actually I'd never tried - but each green square means I beat the five daily challenges of card games, ranging from easy to expert. Note at the bottom it says PERFECT. Yay me.

City Building Games

Lately I have been entertaining myself with a city-building game called Elvenar.

You can play as either a human or an elf. There are several worlds (or servers), and I am playing one of each. Because, you know, why not?

I started the elf city back in late March, and the human city a month later. In this game, you can play by yourself but it is very slow going. You need to trade and that is best done through joining a fellowship of 25 other players.

My fellowship in my elf city (which I named Arcadia) was small and out of sheer desperation, I began inviting other unaffiliated players to join us so I could have people to trade with. We had our numbers up to 19 players and then the archmage (the person who started the group) and our other top player (I was #3) simply stopped playing. Soon I was the #2 player. The lack of trades slowed me down considerably. No one else seemed to be playing as hard as I was, so last weekend, I dumped my fellowship. I spent a day moping about it, and redid my city so it would look a little less frantic, and applied to a fellowship that had a single opening but had players ranging in points from 180,000 to 101. (I am around 23,000 now).



My elf city, Arcadia

To my surprise, they accepted me, and I went in at #16. Three days later, I'm now at #13, having jumped ahead of a few players already. I intend to keep climbing, although the top players have been playing for over a year so I don't think I will beat them. I might catch them in points, eventually.

My human city (which I named Riften - Skyrim players will recognize that name) at this time is nearly even with my elf city, even though I started it a month later. I began in a young fellowship but the top 15 players or so work well together and seem to be doing great. I am #5 in that fellowship at the moment.

My human city, Riften.

City building cities have always fascinated me. I loved Age of Empires when it first came out, which not only was a city-building game but also a history teaching game. Civilization games taught me that ultimately corporations would rule the world - and it appears to be quite prophetic.

Anyway, these days you don't have to spend money to play games with all of these free apps. Of course they want you to spend money so that is why some things are hard, but with patience, you can move forward without dropping a dime.

Review: Fallout 4

Over the July 4 "celebration period," Steam, the video game engine that most of the video games are now played through, at least on PC, had a big game sale.

Fallout 4 had been on my wishlist for a while. The game, by Bethesda, had received more good reviews than bad and I am a fan of their Elder Scrolls series, having played Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. I have over 1,300 hours of game time in Skyrim alone. (That's over a period of 6 years, and some of it is time I am not even playing it: I've set a pack of dimes on a key to make my character stay in stealth mode to build up that skill and walked away.) These are open-world games and enormously playable. The Elder Scrolls series are set on another planet, where you have humanoids but also characters that function as humans but which have different capabilities; lizards, cat-like creatures, orcs, and so forth. The Elder Scrolls also deals with magic and doesn't use guns.

Bethesda generally does not have great main story lines, but their multiple side quests can keep me engrossed for hours and are in and of themselves long games. I also like to explore and do not barrel through each quest. I take my time and search every nook and cranny of a cave or whatever. I appreciate the detail in the game.

Anyway, given my track record with Bethesda games, I thought I'd give Fallout 4 a try since it was on sale for a very low price, like, paperback book-level price. Given that, if I only spent 5 hours with it, I would consider it ok. Generally speaking, with Bethesda games one does not necessarily need to have played the earlier games in a series for it to make sense.

So far I have spent 6 hours with the game, and I confess I find it wanting. It is set in a dystopian world, the year 2285, more or less, in Boston, MA after nuclear war created by over-consumerism and an ignorant population (the beginning was so like today that it made me shiver) make everyone angry and riotous. It is our world though not quite, as it is initially set in 2075; however, the differences aren't enough to shake the queasy feeling that this might actually be our tomorrows.

I'm going to talk about the story line as well as game controls, so if you don't want to know any of that, stop reading here.

SPOILER ALERT

Fallout 4 uses the same game engine as Skyrim, so I thought my learning curve on the PC controls would be quick. Wrong. The menu system on Fallout 4 is terrible. After six hours of play I still haven't figured out how to favorite a weapon, use armor, or anything else useful. I can use a security baton and beat up roaches and that's about it. I found a pistol and either I am a really bad shot, taking nearly a full clip to kill a radiated cockroach, or the aiming mechanism is off. This kind of thing should be intuitive, and a somewhat seasoned Bethesda game player, playing on novice no less, should not be left still wondering how to figure out the menu after six hours of game play. If I decide to play anymore on this game, an iffy adventure at the moment, I am going to first find a walkthrough with control directions and something that explains this weird menu.

In Skyrim, the player interacts with the AI world using text. Fallout 4 gives the player voice options, but they are terribly limited and frequently are not the questions you'd want to ask. Whereas in Skyrim you might hear the player grunt occasionally, in Fallout 4 the character makes comments about the scenery around her (I was playing as a female). The story line begins with a husband and wife in the bathroom. The player sets up the character, facial characteristics, hair, eye color, all of that stuff, and the husband comments on it. "New hair style?"  "Shaun (their child) has your eyes."

Once the character is created and named, you go into the kitchen where you meet a robot helper, who cooks, cleans, and cares for the baby. He goes off to feed the child. During this time, a salesman comes to the door to force you to purchase space in Vault 111, a safe space where your family can go and stay for a year or something in the event of a nuclear event. You agree to the purchase. The robot comes back to say Shaun needs his mother. You visit the baby, spin a mobile above him, and then the robot tells you to come and look at the TV.

Oddly a lot of the things in the detailed surroundings (they are very good, graphically speaking) are more like 1950s style than futuristic. It is an odd mix of old and new. Anyway, there is nuclear war starting, the TV announcer says, and then the screen goes blank. A Vault 111 van pulls up and someone on a loud speaker tells everyone to get up the hill to the vault. Your husband grabs Shaun, and you both run. You go onto a little circle thing - other people are being beaten back by Vault 111 security, which is kind of not nice - and you go down. You are hustled into a room, handed a suit, and told to go into a decontamination unit to change.

Everything goes white for a while. Then you wake up, and you see through a glass in your decontamination chamber, which is really a cryogenic pod, a man grab your child from your husband and then shoot your husband in the head. Then you go back into stasis or whatever you call it.

Then you wake up. This is when you finally really get to take over the character. Previously all you could do was walk around. (Fortunately I knew that was "w" on the keyboard from Skyrim, because nothing else told you.) You go to your husband's pod, open it, and all you say is "I will avenge you, sweetheart, and I'll find Shaun," and you take his ring. No weeping, nothing. At this point you don't know how long you've been "asleep." As you wander through the underground enclosure, you come across computer terminals that, if you read them, explain that you were put in deep freeze and that the crew that was supposed to watch over you mutinied after about 180 days of being locked underground. No one else is alive in their pods and you can't open them.

After you kill cockroaches and pick up coffee cups and various other pieces of junk (which I did only because I had pre-read that you should pick up everything), you finally make your way out. You go to your house and your robot is still there, tending to a fallen-in house (made of wood, it really wouldn't be standing, still). He tells you that you have been gone for 210 years. So it is now 2285 or so.

Everything is very dismal, with your little subdivision in shambles. Somehow couches still have some stuffing and you wander around the neighborhood picking up more junk. Across the street from your house you find a couple of workstation for creating things. Apparently crafting is an integral part of Fallout 4.

In Skyrim, crafting is an option. You don't have to improve a thing to move forward in the game. But in Fallout 4, you are ultimately creating new settlements, so you actually have to use all of that junk you pick up to make beds, electricity, radios, etc. Also, if the weather turns weird, you take radiation hits, which you have to cure somehow or another.

Anyway, the gist of this is you go from town to town and you're still searching for your son. Now, you have no idea when he was taken from his father's pod. So you don't know if that was 200 years ago or 10 minutes before you woke up. Odds are, though, given the shape of the world, that it was a very long time ago, and probably about the time the crew watching over your units mutinied, which would make it a very long time ago indeed. This really makes no sense as a main quest. I mean, I understand wanting to find your son but I would think you'd be wondering if you're actually looking for your great-great-grandchildren.

There are side quests, from what I read - you do this or that for people, and you create a settlement in your little subdivision. The things you have to fight off are killers and looters, roaches and other assorted oversized bugs, some bigger creepier things that are very hard to kill, and ghouls, which are irradiated people who are like zombies. There are normal people wandering around but they are not very helpful, or at least, not the few I met in the six hours of game time I have played.

Jumping forward, because I went and read the storyline to see if I even cared about it, in the end you find your Shaun and he's an old man, overseeing some section that was running Vault 111 and which is now trying to control the world or something by creating synthetic people.

It is not a story line I particularly care about.

It is unusual for me to feel this much distaste for a video game, but I am not keen on this one at all. It has a balance of good and bad reviews and I wish I had paid more attention to the bad reviews, but it is hard to judge those things, just as it is with book reviews. It is all subjective.

Part of the problem is I dislike using guns for multiple reasons, and part of it is the dreariness of this world is such a start contrast to Skyrim - which is full of color, northern lights, brilliant moons, etc. - that it is almost shocking. The other part is it is not a fantasy world, it's reality of sorts, and not a very nice one. It is one thing to watch Waterworld for two hours, and then return to your life, but quite another to want to invest 100+ hours in this kind of landscape.

I suppose I shall have to wait until the next version of The Elder Scrolls comes out before I purchase another open-world video game.

Rated M for Mature

In today's paper, the "Dear Annie" column had a letter from a mother who was allowing her 5-year-old child to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on a PlayStation 4.

I play Skyrim. It is rated M for mature. It is not a game for a 5-year-old child.

Read the labels, people.

The mother said the son had mastered the "dragon language" in the game and would only speak that. The dragon language is basically a set of kill commands - in the game they call them dragon shouts. The words allow the hero of the game to kill dragons and people with only the voice.

The kid also runs around swatting people with flyswatters or whatever he is using for a sword. She said when she took the game away once, the kid went outside and tried to call down the dragons from the sky.

Skyrim is an incredibly immersive game. I have logged over 1,000 hours playing it over the last five years or so. I have 80 hours on the new release that has updated graphics. I love the game and I enjoy it immensely.

However, no child should play this game. A 5-year-old should be playing LEGOLAND or something. Not Skyrim. It is rated M for a reason.

What is wrong with people? I swear, I think the Earth flew through an asteroid belt and it has infected the minds of half of the population of the world.

Stupidity is not good. Ignorance is not bliss. Stop drinking the tainted water, folks.

I sent a response to Dear Annie. This is what I wrote:

Dear Annie,

I read with horror the letter from the mother who is letting a 5-year-old play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. That game is for mature audiences and no one under 13 should be playing it.

The dragon language the child is learning are commands that harm or kill, not actual conversation. This game is quite immersive and is full of killing with swords, magic, and words (the dragon language). It is not a game for children.

I am not your average gamer. I am a 53-year-old wife and freelance writer. However, I have logged over 1,000 hours on Skyrim over the last five years, and frankly consider it an addictive game. I set an hour timer when I play because otherwise I lose track of time and am there for five hours instead of one. Skyrim is a great game for adults who know how to control their time and game-playing, but I would never let a child watch me play it, let alone take over the controls and spew the guts of a bandit all over the cave floor.

This is beyond imaginative play. The mother needs to take that game away from that child now and under no circumstances should she return it. If she wants to let him play video games, then she should find something more age-appropriate.

People have minds. I wish they would use them.

Thursday Thirteen

This is probably a bad thing to confess, but I like video games. I have been playing them ever since Atari came out with the first home consoles.

I have an older Xbox and a Wii but I have generally played games on the P.C.

Here are 13 of the games I have enjoyed over the years:



1. Oblivion. This is an RPG game put out by Bethesda as part of the Elder Scrolls series. I still see this game occasionally in the bargain bins, so I think it is available. This is likely the last RPG I will ever play, as I am not a fan of online gaming nor will I pay a subscription to play a video game. This game was initially released in 2006. The game has a main storyline that involves restoring the heir to the throne.

2. Morrowind. Also an RPG game put out by Bethesda, released in 2002. This is the only RPG I ever played on the Xbox.  Actually this game was the reason I even bought an Xbox. Yes, it was worth it. In this game the hero saves the land from annihilation.

3. King's Quest series. These are old games that involved puzzles. They were touted as "good for girls" because they weren't shoot 'em ups. The series chronicled a royal family and their trials and tribulations. Mostly the hero roamed around picking up items with which to solve puzzles. This was a DOS game.

4. Rise of the Triad. I daresay few people have heard of this game, but I enjoyed it. The game was released in 1994 by Apogee Software, a company that invented some of the best games of that time period. In this game, the hero was a member of a team of operatives who needed to get inside a secluded monastery in order to stop a plot to destroy a California city.

5. Wolfenstein. I'm not talking about the most recent release of this, but the earlier versions. This last version of the game, Wolfenstein 3D, was released in 1992, again by Apogee Software. In this game, the hero must make his way from a prison camp and outside, taking down as many Nazis as possible along the way.

6. Might and Magic series. These RPGs were released by New World Computing, which eventually became The 3DO Company. There were 10 games in this series, but I only played the last five. The games were mostly fantasy but sometimes a little science fiction crept in and suddenly you had not a wand available to you but also a laser blaster of some kind. These games were also released in the early to middle 1990s.

7. Heroes of Might and Magic series. This was a spin-off from the Might and Magic series, as you might guess. The first games were released in 1995. In these games the hero undertook various quests to save something or the other, and there was lots of magic involved.



8. Myst. This was an adventure game that, like King's Quest, required you to solve puzzles in order to progress through the game. It was released about 1993. In this game the hero is whisked away to a magical island and must unlock the clues to obtain his release.

9. Duke Nukem series. Another Apogee Software series that I enjoyed. The first Duke Nukem came about in 1991 and there were numerous games that followed.  Duke had to stop some bad guy and save the world.

10. Commander Keen series. Developed by Id Software and released by Apogee Software in the early 1990s, this series featured little Billy Blaze, an 8-year-old kid who travels through space and becomes Commander Keen. He saves the world a lot.



11.  The Sims series. I feel in love with The Sims from the very first time I saw a commercial for the game. The game, a strategic life simulator, was developed by Maxis and put out by Electronic Arts (EA) initially in 2000. This is the best-selling video game series in history. In this game the player has to keep the simulated people happy by giving them shelter, things to play with, a job, a family, and other items. The only real goal was to keep the sim happy; otherwise you could make up your own stories about the little simulated sims. It was like bringing a book to life. The later games were more goal-oriented and a bit more linear, which I did not like as well. You also had to make sure there was a bathroom around in Sims 3, the little beings had to pee a lot.

12. Area 51. This is the only arcade game on my list today, but this was one of my favorites. It was released by Midway in 1995 and later it was released for PC as well. In this game, you are a squadron leader shooting down aliens from another planet. I spent a lot of quarters on this game, mostly when we were on vacation.



13. Wii Fit. The only game that is not really a game, and the only one that might actually have some health benefits. It requires a balance board and a Wii Console. The games include yoga, strengthening, running, balancing, and other activities that burn a few calories. The game was initially released in 2007 and as far as I know there has only been one update to it. It weighs you and tells you your "wii fit" age if you want to know it. It generally told me I was fat and old, though not in those words. I spent hours and hours on this hoping it would do me some good. I should probably have taken up badminton or horseshoes instead.

What video games have you enjoyed, if any?

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 306th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

The Wii

About three weeks ago, my husband and I stood for an hour outside of Best Buy in order to buy ourselves a Wii.

We have an XBox (the first version, not the 360) but it's hard to find games for that anymore. We hadn't used it in ages.

I wanted the Wii Fit game but so far have yet to make that purchase too. It apparently is as hard to come by as the Wii console itself.

I have noticed all the peripherals for Wii are very expensive, including the things you need for the Wii Fit. I did not do my homework very well before we bought the Wii, having succumbed to my need and desire to exercise and being bored by present routine and seeing the commercial of people happily doing yoga with their Wii.

So this was for all intents and purposes an emotional purchase and not a rational one.

By the time we bought the Wii ($250) and a crossbow thing ($25) and a Wii Play game which had an extra controller ($50) and a Cabella's Trophy Bucks video game ($50), we spent $400 on this wee bit of entertainment.

I have since bought a sports game that has ten different sports on it and Laura Croft's Tomb Raider's Anniversary for another $50 "investment".

The Wii Fit, whenever I finally get it, will add at least another $100 to the price of this thing.

And it's amazing what I don't know about it. I don't know how big a hard drive it has on it. I don't know, therefore, how many game saves the thing will take before it starts telling me it's out of memory.

Because I didn't really research it well, I don't know exactly what games are available for it, although a look at list on Wikipedia indicates that while there are a good number many are not the kinds of games I really like to play.

I like RPGs like Morrowind or Fable. I don't care much for shoot-'ems like Halo or weird games like Sonic Hedgehog or even the Mario and Donkey Kong games, which seem to be staples for anything put out by Nintendo. They haven't gotten past that for 20+ years.

I also like puzzle games and brain games that make you think. My husband likes racing games and deer hunting games.

I haven't put the first game save on the Wii for the Laura Croft game, which means I haven't played it much. My husband and I both have played the Trophy Deer game all the way through its 96 different hunts and then some, however. He is greatly enjoying that game, which certainly counts high in my estimate of the purchase.

We put this system in the living room which makes it much more accessible. However, it is not on our 42 inch TV but rather on a 26" TV because we couldn't hook the thing up to the 42" TV screen without making radical changes to our DVD/DirecTV setup and then having to hook and unhook wires every time we wanted to play or watch TV. Anything that was that much trouble would have been swiftly set aside.

The XBox, by the way, was on this small TV but it was located in the bedroom I use for my office. This change has made the gaming system more accessible, anyway.

So we now have two TVs in the living room, one on each side of the fireplace.

I do not think buying a Wii was a bad purchase, and I think we'll get enjoyment and kill a few hours with it, particularly since we've taken to trying to stay home more because of the price of gasoline. But I can't say that it is the best, most rational and appropriate purchase I have made in a while.

Oh, and this is also, I guess, our 25th wedding anniversary present to one another, even though our anniversary isn't until November.