Aliens, Raccoons and Modification

Despite never having played the XCom games before, I followed the announcement of the new FPS game with quite some interest. Nice art style, interesting era of history that is not normally explored, a potentially incredible deep tactical command/RPG system. Take a look. I personally thought that 2K Marin had really nailed a good balance between first person and strategy.

The internet, as it is wont to do, got rather angry. How dare they make a FPS game out of a beloved turn-based game? That will never work! People were angry, it seemed, because it wasn't the XCom they'd played 18 years ago. To which I say; "Of course it isn't." Sad as you may find it, turn-based games aren't as big as they used to be. There's less of a market for them these days (which makes the recently announced XCom Enemy Unknown reboot even more of a surprise). If it were me, I'd be quick excited to play a new spin on my favourite franchise. That said, I do sort of understand the outrage. If they announced a Grim Fandango reboot that was an FPS, there'd be blood.

The tagline would probably be
"They're dead... Now make 'em deader."

I feel like I haven't mentioned Super Mario 3D Land enough, which is a shame, because it's really quite good. Actually, no one has really been mentioning it very much. It snuck out at the end of last year, and everyone seemed too busy taking arrows in the knee to pay attention to the latest iteration of the exploits of a portly plumber.

Being a Mario game, you know the drill. Power ups, themed worlds, boss fights, it's all there. The game's structure is based on the classic games (hence the "Land" in the title), so no Galaxy hub locations to be found. Comparison to the classic games actually feels quite apt, because the game feels like a love letter to that style of gameplay. The levels feel like courses, as opposed to the multi-part obstacle courses found on the console games. The Tanooki suit makes a triumphant return, unless like me you've never played Super Mario Land 3, in which case, it's a leaf that turns you into a raccoon. Incidentally, when you plays as Luigi (spoilers, I guess) he turns into a fox instead, thus proving that foxes are always Player 2.

what is this i dont even

I've spoken before about my intense dislike of mods, mainly because most modders assume I am willing to install basically anything onto my PC, as well as the assumption I understand how computers work. When I installed Morrowind a while back, it was with the intention of modding it into 2012, or at least to this decade. After spending a good day banging my head against some of the most confusing guides, akin to something like this, I decided it was a lost cause.

But frabjuous day, the Morrowind Overhaul Project is here to change my view on mods and safe me from my own incompetence! This little beauty can be downloaded in four parts of that site, and then after that it's magic. It extracts itself, you point it at your Morrowind folder, and it goes to work. I mean just look at these images! Admittedly, the game doesn't actually run very smoothly on my PC now, but that's my fault because I overestimated what my PC could do. I can't thank the guys at Morrowind Overhaul enough for this, as well as their fantastic documentation.

All done. See y'all next time.