My reason for purposely avoiding Skyrim

The day has come. Tomorrow we will finally be able to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Ever since Skyrim’s announcement in December last year I have been counting down the days until I could finally put my hands on the next game in my favorite game franchise.

And unlike my fellow Elder Scrolls-fans, finally sitting down to play Skyrim will be an extraordinary experience because I have willingly starved myself on information about the game. No, hear me out please. I am not crazy. I have my reasons, you see. Purposely avoiding all the teasers and bits of information the devs are giving us and the articles written by the gaming journalists that were lucky enough to be able to sample the game was a hard decision, but a necessary one.

Let’s go one year back in time. Everyone into the T.A.R.D.I.S. now, there is room for everyone.

Everyone got their seatbelts on? Perfect. Off we go!

*T.A.R.D.I.S. makes weird noises and then disappears*

You all remember Obsidian Entertainment’s Fallout: New Vegas, right? Well, my reason for bringing up ‘Oblivion With Guns 2’ is that I only took an interest in the game about a month or so before the game was released in October 2010. I didn’t know that much about the Fallout-world and I had only watched the short developer diary-clips that Obsidian released as they worked on the game. Those that saw those videos know that they didn’t really give away too much about the game. When I finally managed to get my copy of the game I had more or less no idea what kind of journey I was about to embark on. I just knew that New Vegas was about some kind of faction war in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas with a wasteland desert ridden with radiations and mutated creatures, and the game ran on the same engine as Oblivion. (Call me crazy, but I actually like Gamebryo.)

Being thrown into the world of Fallout: New Vegas with pretty much no idea about what to expect is among one of my favorite video game moments. Right at the top of the list together with Skyrim’s announcement and finally manning up (figuratively speaking) and beating Shalebridge Cradle (Thief: Deadly Shadows).

Alright, let us pop back to 2011 now. After all, Skyrim is released tomorrow!

*Pop*

There we go!

Though I must admit that I have in fact glanced at a couple of Skyrim videos. After all I am only human. Going an entire year without any source of Skyrim-goodness would certainly make me fit for a citizenship in the realm of Sheogorath. Here is a list of the material I have seen:

-          The QuakeCon demo played by Todd Howard

-          The Sounds of Skyrim-feature on  Bethesda’s YouTube-channel

-          The full trailer.

-          The face presets for all the races.

As you see that is not a lot of information. Now, the rest of the Elder Scrolls-fans are all prepped up with all the little bits and pieces of information that are floating around the internet but I am still pretty clueless. On Friday I will finally find the answers to all the questions I have.

What guilds are in the game? Other than the ones that were in Oblivion I have no idea. How do you join the ranks of the Dark Brotherhood? I only know that you can’t just kill some poor innocent sap and hop into the nearest bed for a power nap. Can we have kids once we marry? If we can, I am totally going to make a mix of Orc and Khajiit! An Orcjiit! What kind of Daedra are there? Will there be Daedric Shrine-quests? Can we buy houses? And will there be only one house for sale in each city? So many questions, so little time until they are answered…

And then there is one more thing I want to write about before I let you go on your merry way.

The collector’s edition.

Skyrim’s CE sparked some debate on quite a few gaming sites. It received mostly negative responses from the general crowd. 150 bucks for an artbook and a plastic dragon? Preposterous!

I admit it is a steep price to pay, but since when did Bethesda ever release CEs filled with stuff? Thay prefer quality over quantity, so they skipped the playing cards and the DLC codes and went straight for the high quality PVC figurine and giant artbook. That might not be everyone’s cup of tea but who gives a crap? It’s fuckin’ SKYRIM! And seriously, you can spare the money. How often does a new Elder Scrolls-game come out? Exactly.

By the way, is there any interest in a Skyrim collector’s edition unboxing video over at The Mudcrabs Den’s YouTube-channel?

Blog revival and a Halloween lucky draw contest! (CLOSED)

Hello my little mudcrabs!

I do admit that this blog has become quite neglected over the summer… oh who am I kidding? I completely forgot about it. So in an attempt to get this train back on the tracks (because according to the stats people are still checking in, or they are just drawn in due to some very weird search terms. ‘ass 640×960′, ‘paper lying on the table’ and ‘ben barnes bikeme a few,) I have decided to have a little lucky draw contest. And since it is October, why not making it Halloween-themed? Here is what you have to do to enter the contest:

Post a comment on this blog entry and tell us about your best Halloween memory. It can be both good and bad. Did you score an amazing bounty after a night of trick or treating as a kid? Or maybe you were the one hiding in the bushes to give those kids a real scare?

The winner will be chosen by random on October 31st and contacted by the e-mail address he or she provided.

The prize you ask? I’ll put together a small collection of Halloween-candy :)

—

In other news, The Mudcrabs Den now has a Facebook fan-page for your convenience. On this fan-page I will post links to new blog entries, polls and contests. If you do not have a Facebook-account (no one blames you, dude) you can send an e-mail to mudcrabsden@gmail.com with the word ‘Newsletter’ as the subject and then you will be notified by email whenever there is an update on the blog.

I’ll see you later, and I am looking forward to reading your Halloween-stories :D

EDIT: This contest is now CLOSED.The winner will be picked and contacted via email.

And there you have it! Eventually…

I have been writing on and off here for a while and I have finally finished. I had a lot of fun answering questions, though I got stuck with the favorite protagonist and antagonist questions. Do you agree or disagree with my favorites? Tell me in the comments :)

Questions!

What’s your favorite gaming moment?

That is a tough one… Obviously a lot of moments in Oblivion and other RPGs comes to mind, but I do not know how fair it would be to add them since they were mostly made with the characters that I created. It would be best if I excluded moments from RPGs where I made the story of the character involved.

My favorite gaming moment has to be playing through the mission in Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows. I love absolutely everything about that level. The sounds, the dark and spooky rooms, those freakin’ creepy-ass notes and books scattered around the place…

And then there are the puppets. Oh my god, the puppets…

"Hello, I am a freakin creepy-ass undead asylum-patient that will run up to you within miliseconds and eat your brains! Oh, and the scary sounds I make will haunt your nightmares for decades to come!" <3 <3 <3

Honorable mentions (Contains spoilers!):

- The final cutscene in Assassin’s Creed II was a real surprise.

- Getting dragged out of a plane by Kirilenko and shooting him with a handgun in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

- Zoé witnessing April getting stabbed and Kian getting arrested in Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

- Finally being able to play The Longest Journey after I watched someone play it when I was seven years old.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever read?

Hands down, that is definitely The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks. I have always had a penchant for stories about thieves and master assassins, so this book struck home immediately. The book is the first one in The Night Angel Trilogy.

If you like Assassin’s Creed, Thief or any other stealth-oriented game then you will love this book! You can read the first chapter here.

Honorable mentions:

- The Wish List by Eoin Colfer.

- The Shamer’s Daughter by Lene Kaaberbøl (this is the book that really inspired my love of reading).

- Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne by Arina Tanemura.

What is your favorite colour?

Blue!

Honorable mentions:

- White

- Purple

- Silver

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

I wore a blue wig in public during the time when I was getting cancer treatment.When I was a child I always dreamed about having blue hair, and finally my dream had come true! I have a pink wig too ^^

What’s your best childhood memory?

Traveling to Boden in Sweden with our caravan. We used to go there every summer vacation when I was young. We stayed at an RV park only a bike ride away from the center of town. The RV park had a small outdoor swimming pool, and 30 minutes away was a bigger swimming pool resort with both indoor and outdoor pools.

Have you ever been to a sex shop?

That is certainly an original question. No, I have never been to a sex shop. I have walked by them, but I have never set foot inside.

Would you ever dye your hair to some other colour?

Would I? Probably not. Have I? Yes. At the beginning of summer holiday 2009 I dyed my hair jet black because I was going to play a prank on my brother. I had to bleach it in order to get it back to blonde, but bother than that I have never done anything bigger than adding some highlights to my hair.

Favorite artist? (Ayumi is not an alternative)

Drat. If I can not say Ayumi Hamasaki, then I must say… umh… If it has to be an artist/band that includes a singing voice in their music then I choose Simple Plan. My favorite artist that doesn’t have voices in their music (instrumental pieces, soundtracks, etc.) is Hans Zimmer. The Gladiator soundtrack is one of my favorites.

Honorable mentions:

- Boa

- Yuki Kajiura

- Yoko Kanno

- Linkin Park

- P!nk

Seen Tangeld yet?

Nope. I want to buy it on DVD when it is released ^^

Start playing cod4 on xbox?

No thank you. I’m having fun with Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

How can Mario eat mushroom? it’s tastes realy awful

Mushrooms are yummy-scrummy! And honestly, if you found a mushroom that would give you an extra life, wouldn’t you eat it?

What is 1+2+4-2*6+5/3+1?

=12,66?

Buy xbox? :D

No.

Buy xbox? :)

Nnnnno.

Buy xbox? :-)

Do you know somewhere close by I can buy an N64 controller?

Haven’t got a clue. Try putting up an ad in the newspaper or check Craigslist.

Proud owner of thief?

I assume that you mean Thief: The Metal Age? Yes. Yes, I am.

How did you come by Ayumi Hamasaki? And what was the first song you heard of her?

The first time I heard her music was in 2005 when YouTube was the hottest place on the internet. The site was filled to the brim of english-subbed anime shows and I spent every available minute watching InuYasha. The 4th closing theme for the show was ‘Dearest‘ and it was the best of all 7 themes that were used regularly.

What got you interested in japanese culture?

I think it was in 2003 or 2004 when I first came across my first manga. I was waiting for my mother at the mall, and in order to make time pass faster I decided to buy a magazine. At the magazine stand I saw a book with the picture of a cool looking girl on it. Time Stranger Kyoko is what the title read. After reading the description at the back of the book I decided to buy it. Time Stranger Kyoko is still one of my favorite mangas today!

Time Stranger Kyoko

Favorite antagonist and protagonist?

My favorite protagonist is actually Sam from the Totally Spies!-cartoon. Every Sunday morning I would wake up early, drag my blanket and pillow into the living room and sit down in front of the TV to watch my favorite show. Sam is the smartest of the three main characters and is usually the one who comes up with plans and ideas on how to succeed in their mission.

Honorable mentions:

- Ezio Auditore da Firenze from Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood.

- Oscar François de Jarjayes from Rose of Versailles.

- Garrett from the Thief-series.

- Durzo Blint from The Night Angel Trilogy.

- Rosette, Chrono and Satella from Chrono Crusade.

- Maron from Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.

- Viola Hastings from She’s the Man.

- Rei/Sailor Mars from Sailor Moon.

- Tulio and Miguel from The Road to El Dorado.

- Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell-series.

My favorite antagonist is a tough choice. There are so many villains that I want to list as number one. At least this question isn’t about who is the most evil or hard to kill, so that means that I can go for their personality. I do not have a villain no. 1, so here is a small list of favorites:

Vaisey, Sheriff of Nottingham from the Robin Hood TV series (2006).

Hieronymus Lex from Oblivion. He isn’t a villain per se unless you play the Thieves Guild quest line.

Noin from the Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne manga.

Elph from The Wish List.

What’s the funniest thing you’ve experienced in Oblivion?

So many examples comes to mind. Maybe it was that time I discovered what would happen when you closed the door on a dead body.

Or when a bandit came to my rescue when I was being attacked by a wolf on the roads, only to get my blade in the back afterward as thank you.

Or when I was traveling the roads and met two NPCs at the same time. I gotta tell you, that happens only once in a lifetime! And I have a screenshot to prove it!

What’s your most favorite food? And what do you like the least?

Nothing is better than a nice steak with baked potatoes, mushroom stew and garlic butter. *Drooool*

Have you ever tasted mashed rhubarb? Ewwwww…….

What’s your biggest fear and your highest dream?

My biggest fear is to be completely forgotten when I die.

My highest dream is to develop the ability to fly and reach immortality!

Who has been your biggest celebrity crush?

To be completely honest, I have never had a crush on a celebrity. I always knew that there was no way that I would end up dating someone famous, so I didn’t bother getting emotionally attached to any of them.

But I do admit to resting my eyes on them occasionally. So I give you instead a small gallery of man-candy! (Thank you, Google)

Japanese singer Gackt

The only fun part of watching the third Narnia-movie in 3D was the close-ups on Ben Barnes.

Hello, Jake Gyllenhaal :)

Richard Armitage

Time for questions, time for truth…

For some time I have been thinking of fleshing out the about-page, but I do not know excactly what to put there.

Then I got the idea of having a free-for-all where the readers aks me every single question they want me to answer.

So then I turn to you, dear reader, and ask:

What do YOU want to know about me?

You can ask me about absolutely anything. What is my favorite ____? Have I ever been to ____? Would I ever do ____?

Post your questions in the comment area or send them to my email: mudcrabsden@gmail.com

You can ask completely anonymously if you want to. At the end of the month I will sit down to answer your questions.

Let’s Play!

Good evening, citizens of the internet.

After some messing around with fraps and my sound card program, I finally managed to make the headset I got for christmas to function properly. When I run fraps while playing games, I can record sound as well as video. Before, fraps wouldn’t record the sound so that kinda sucked. Soooo…

I was thinking of starting a Let’s Play of sorts that would be uploaded to the Mudcrabs Den Youtube channel. That’s right, the Mudcrabs Den now has a Youtube channel! And a mail address (mudcrabsden@gmail.com)!

But continuing on the topic of a Let’s Play, what games would my dear readers be interested in? I went through my pile of unplayed games (a shameful lot…) and found a few titles that would be suitable for the LP.

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

First off we have Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. This game is down the same alley as Assassin’s Creed. The Prince, that you control (or I, if this is the LP-game), is posessed by a Xivilai as you see on the cover here on the left. He must kill bad guys, climb some stuff and stab some monsters while trying to control his Xivilai-self. He also has to get his ass to the hospital to have someone look at that metal spine he is growing out of his arm, becase that is freaky!

MYST V - END of AGES

The next game up is MYST V – END of AGES. If you want me to make a complete fool of myself, you pick this game. And I will hate you for it. The reason why, you ask? I have tried to play MYST V before. You see, at the beginning there is this bald dude dressed in robes. And those robes have the most epic physics. When he starts strutting around while telling me vital information, I cannot focus on anything else than his robes that flow so perfeclty lifelike around his ankles, missing said vital information. The box says seven years and up, I say attention span 7 and up.

MIRROR'S EDGE

And last but not least, MIRROR’S EDGE. I totally use CAPS LOCK whenever I have to write MIRROR’S EDGE. In this game, the protagonist Faith is a human carrier pigeon. To make up for her lack of feathery wings that would bring her straight to her destination, she uses her sweet parkour-moves to manouver across a bluuuuuuue scyscraper landscape. She also beats up some evil men that want to take her out of business. Probably Fed-Ex employees. Follow Faith on her exciting journey down the yellow bri-… the red metal walkway and solve the great mystery! Or something! Or something completely different! Or nothing at all! Yay!

Vote in the comments about which game you would be interested in! I dare ya!

Update: Time to cheat!

Initially I didn’t set a deadline for the votes, but I kinda want to get this thing going so here is the deadline. One hour and 15 minutes from now! If there is a game you really want me to play but the votes aren’t in your favor, send your friends a link to this site and tell them to vote for the game you want to win! It doen’t matter if they are even remotely interested in this, they are just here to help you cheat! Isn’t it marvelous?

Update: voting is closed!

We got one new vote! That’s one vore more than I expected!

And the winner iiiis…

Prince of Xivilai-posessedness: The Two Dining Chairs! Congratulations!

Update: Problem!

My mirophone will not record the sound properly, and the sound system in the game is too unbalanced. Sometimes it is low, and sometimes it is loud. Darn it.

[Arts and Crafts] My New Vegas-planner!

After starting this project last year (new years-humor, harr harr harr) I finally finished it at 1.30 AM today. I always bought school-planners to use throughout the year but after the first month I just couldn’t be bothered. I never found a design I really liked so they didn’t feel very ‘personal’.

But one evening I was surfing the internet and came across a bookbinding tutorial by lenoki (Part 1 and part 2). She explained very easily how to make your own book, and I thought it looked like a lot of fun so I decided that I wanted to give it a try.

I wanted the book to have a real journal inside instead of making pages with lines and dates from scratch. If I did that with normal A4-paper then the book would be too thick to fit in my backpack… So I went to Staples and bought the cheapest hardcover planner they had. Then I went to the textile store to buy fake leather and silk ribbons. I picked up some contact glue at the hardware store and at the bookstore I got a huge plate of boxboard. It was very windy that day, and walking through downtown with a large piece of boxboard proved to be pretty hard. It acted like a sail. It is incredible that I was not blown into traffic.

My dull wallpaper knife eventually managed to free the planner from its hideous gold and beige cover. After some measuring I started to plan the design of the cover. I had a Fallout: New Vegas-design in mind. The front would be the mobile-wallpaper of Vault Boy (link). I had to work with it a little in Photoshop in order to remove the logo and expand the edges a little.

I finally learned how to work with the clone stamp…

The front cover was done fast. The back was a little more tricky. I wanted to have the cards and poker chips from the Collector’s Edition combined to make it look like they were lying on a table. It took three hours of working with an old scanner to get all the chips (both sides) and cards (seven casinos plus some pictures) turned into .jpeg images. Then it was another two hours or so in Photoshop to put it all together.

It is VERY important that you save often when you use Photoshop. Especially if you are working on big stuff with tons of layers. You can also save the file as ‘[name] 01′, ‘[name] 02′, ‘[name] 03′ etc.

When I was happy with the design for both sides it was on to printing. I used semi-glossy photo-paper since it was nice and thick. It took a lot of test printing before the colors came out good enough. The vault-suit got more navy blue colors after printing instead of the teal-ish color in the digital file, and the back had somewhat flat colors but I couldn’t do anything about it.

I didn’t take any pictures during all the cutting and printing and gluing and doing things over again because I screwed up. I ran out of contact glue after fixing the fake leather spine, so when it came to the part where I put on the endsheets I had to use some wallpaper glue that I found in the basement. I left it to dry overnight and this is what I woke up to:

This is the front cover.

This is the front endsheet.

This is the back endsheet.

This is the back cover.

And this is a close-up on the end of the spine and the two bookmarks (in vault jumpsuit colors!).

2010 in review

*Authors note: I got this e-mail containing some of my stats through 2010, and I wanted to share them with you all. Thank you for sticking with me in 2010, and I hope my little mudcrabs will stay with me throughout the new year too!*

 

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 27 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 41 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 49mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was April 28th with 42 views. The most popular post that day was Sun. No wait, rain. No wait… snow? Make up your friggin mind, nature!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were forums.bethsoft.com, stellena10102.wordpress.com, worldpooki.blogspot.com, chorrol.com, and ekteteaterblod.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for casio exilim ex-z90, casio exilim z90, casio exilim pink, casio z90, and casio exilim ex-z 90.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Sun. No wait, rain. No wait… snow? Make up your friggin mind, nature! April 2010
10 comments

2

(Not quite) sweet 18? July 2010
7 comments

3

Ayumi Hamasaki – Microphone PV March 2010
5 comments

4

About March 2010

5

Home at last… *opens bag of loot* August 2010
7 comments