Gaming

Oh, Morrowind! I like you but why are you so unforgiving?

After almost getting killed by another tiny, tiny creature whilst on another plant-picking mage quest, I've now had to resort to online assistance. With some modern games over half of the levels feel like one long tutorial, Morrowind is definitely NOT like that.
Anyway, I've now watched a YouTube video explaining "Why you can't hit anything in Morrowind!" and I think I understand the combat a little better now. I've also invested in a bow and some arrows so that I can hopefully pick off the baddies from a distance instead of manically swinging a sword at my own feet while a small worm wreaks deathly havoc on my ankles.
Wish me luck for when I wake from my health restoring sleep. (10 gold coins for a bed?! A tad extortionate, methinks.)

Yay! I'm finally making progress in Morrowind.
I can now successfully kill small creatures before they nibble me to death from the ankles, I no longer get lost now that I know about the road signs (always stick to the path!) and I've also solved the murder of the tax collector. Yes, I now understand that I should have done that first instead of wandering off to another place to accidently join the Guild of Mages with their weird plant-picking obsession, but I didn't realise the missing taxman was an Actual Quest. I thought it was just tedious NPC gossip.

But who cares about those initial blunders? I have plenty of gold in my pocket, a decent sword in my hand, my stats are slowly improving and now the island of Vvardenfell is my oyster. So to speak.

Bring it on!

Oh, wait a minute. It's [Loading Exterior...]

No, it's pretty good once you get past the awkward first hour(s).

Games usually start off easy and gradually get harder (with some of the Need For Speed games I can get through 60% of it before I fail to win a race on the first attempt) but RPGs (and especially this one) are a bit different. Locations only appear on maps AFTER you visit them so you often get lost (the other night I kept bumping into the same woman that I was trying to get away from despite the fact that she wasn't even moving anywhere!) and combat, instead of being based on your own skill, is entirely dependent on character stats, which at the start are absolutely awful, hence every minor skirmish ending in death.

The weirdest thing though is the stamina/fatigue bar. I've never experienced anything like that in any other game and it takes a bit of getting used to. When the bar goes down you are "too tired" to fight and literally can not hit a single thing!

Phew! And after typing all that I need to rest again just in case I encounter another angry slug!

Delving back into the past once more....

One of my fave games on the Amiga was Frontier (the sequel to Elite.) I recall wasting many an hour shuttling cargo between Sol, Barnard's Star and Wolf 359. (Always legal, none of that slave trading. Honest!) Not to mention being amazed at the fact it had a whole galaxy to explore.
So I was somewhat intrigued when I was browsing that Internet thing the other day and found a modern, open-source remake called Pioneer. Yeah, yeah, I know that these days there's Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous and No Man's Sky etc. But they cost money and require chunky graphics cards.
So I downloaded the free remake and rekindled those old space faring memories. It's surprisingly good... once you work out all the keyboard controls.

Wow, that's quite a collection they've got there!

And who cares about Deluxe Paint when you can once again play P.P. Hammer And His Pneumatic Weapon!

I'd forgotten about that one.