My gaming rut is over and once again I have Skyrim to thank! After seeing numerous images and videos of the RealVision ENB mod on the web I started lusting over it's unbelievably good graphics. Was it possible that these shots were real - could Skyrim look that good for me? I'm not much of a modder - but I was motivated to get this done. I read what I could, downloaded the NMM installer from Nexus Mods and began the process of installing the exhaustive list of mods (and in the correct order!) to get my Skyrim to look like their Skyrim.
It took about two weeks (hey - I have a job, a wife and three kids!) but I finally got it working. It is stunning! I started a new character and spent a weekend in Skyrim exploring the environment. THIS is next gen gaming - not the peonic little consoles offered by Sony and Microsoft or Nintendo - THIS is what games should look like. THIS is the future! Unfortunately the next time that I tried to load Skyrim, about three days later, the game crashed and hasn't loaded since. Maybe the future needs a little more time.
In any case - the Skyrim mod experience energized me up for this most recent wave of gaming. I picked up Wolfenstein and devoured it. A terrific game if somewhat traditional - but there's nothing wrong with a great single player FPS campaign if the story is solid and there's Nazi's to be killed. I picked up Dark Souls 2 and put it aside after many, many deaths to finish Wolfenstein - but I've returned to it and it really is an amazing game. It's like nothing else out there - discovery is the key in the game and of course repetition. I've leveled up to the low 60's now and I'm committed to finish it before I hit my hundred thousandth death.
My 'to play' backlog is actually quite large now. I've been picking away at Age of Wonders 3 - it's a 4x game in a fantasy universe - and though I wish that I was better at it (and had more time to invest in it), it is scratching an itch until the next Civ game is released. I've started up State of Decay and need to give that a little more time to gel before I form an opinion, and I'm looking at Endless Space, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and The Last Federation as well. I also decided to launch Hearthstone and Starcraft II to see what all of the excitement was about, and I'm enjoying both of them.
On the mod front I installed The Long War mod for X-COM: Enemy WIthin and wow - it's a long, brutal, difficult and unforgiving war. Probably too much for me.
I'm now ready to roll into the Destiny Beta to see what that's about - but in all, it feels good. I've got my gaming cajones back.