Among the other loot that I got for Christmas, my loving and oh so patient and understanding wife got me an EVGA Nvidia GTX-570 video card and a Collector's Edition of Skyrim.

I think everyone reading these words can see where this is going from here.

I vaguely remember my life before Skyrim. I remember concepts like "fresh air", "sunshine", "people" and, of course, "sex". I remember that I used to experience all of these things. Of course, these things all happened prior to two things:

1. My Christmas loot

2. The new "Nexus Mod Manager" and how unbelievably and tear-inducingly easy to mod games like Skyrim became.

But I fear that I am getting ahead of myself in my enthusiasm. Allow me to start from the beginning. Some of you may be aware that I could have certainly picked up Skyrim on release day, but that I am completely and fully aware of the fact that Bethesda doesn't exactly have a stellar track record for their games being, shall we say, completely ready to be played on release day.

Because of this, I decided NOT to pick up the game on that day and instead make the strategic decision to put the game on my Christmas list on the assumption that the game would have had multiple patches by that time AND that the game would have had plenty of attention from the modding community by that time as well. I'm pleased to report that these things are mostly true.

Skyrim is not fully free from bugs. I've encountered one, for example, in my playing of the "Companions" questline in Whiterun that prevents me from finishing the questline. I've also had "essential" characters die on me by accident due to their getting caught in the water on an object and drowning. The latter I managed to fix through the research of the appropriate console commands on the PC version of the game. The former remains a vast, throbbing, canker sore of irritation.

But what really differentiates Bethesda games on the PC is the mods. Dear. Sweet. Zombie. Savior. Jesus. On. A. Pogo. Stick. Eating. Blue. Twinkies. The. MODS!!!!

If you're anything like I was a couple of years back, then getting into the modding of games, even as a user and not a mod creator, can be more than a little intimidating. The instructions given for the installing of mods can be obscure and aren't always written with newbies in mind when the modder him/herself puts the mod out for public consumption.

'Lo and then the clouds did part and the angels did sing! For unto us, a Mod Manager is born to clense the world from the sins of computer savvy people assuming the rest of us know what the flying "purple gumdrops" they're talking about when they spout their arcane gibberish.

What I am about to give you, ladies and gentlemen, is the sort of thing that inspires the throwing of panties at rock stars. Yes, it's that damned awesome.

Nexus Mod Manager

It should be noted that if any of you feel the need to throw your panties or underwear at me after trying this thing out and seeing how easy it is to use (with a little help from the rest of this blog) please do put your name somewhere on them. I fully intend to start a collection on my bedroom wall beneath a nicely carved oaken sign that simply says "Conquest!" upon it. Having names attached will, simultaneously, make that both 10x more juvenile and 20x more awesome.

Okay, so, a little instruction. Here's how that mod manager works.

Here is a list of the current top-100 endorsed mods of all time for Skyrim. If you've downloaded and installed that mod manager above, then "modding" your Skyrim experience is as easy as taking the following steps.

1. Click on a mod.

2. Decide if you want it.

3. Select downloads

4. Choose "Download with Mod Manager"

5. Choose "Nexus Mod Manager" when the box pops up.

6. Wait for the download to complete.

7. Open your Mod Manager

8. Click "Mods" tab

9. Click button to install

10. Enjoy.

Seriously, it makes it that damned easy. Even an evil genius created Experiment 626 can manage it.

So, what are the things to consider as you're selecting and implementing your mods?

1. Keep in mind your system's capabilities.

Sure, swapping in High Definition resolutions for the "vanilla" (game default) ones anywhere and everywhere you can sounds badass. But the reason why developers go with lower resolutions is that they try and put out a game that looks good, but that the vast majority of people can actually have their computers run.

I'm lucky in that, due to my wife's OTHER gift, my computer can pretty much run anything I damned well please on Skyrim, but not everyone is so fortunate. Many modders out there have "Lite" versions of their mods for lower juiced PCs. Consider this and read the descriptions of the mods carefully when determining which ones to use.

If necessary, uninstall your mod (via clicking a single button in your mod manager) if you suffer an unacceptable performance hit.

2. Install ONE MOD AT A TIME.

As awesome as some of these mods are, they are not exactly professionally done and tested. The quality of the mods and the competency of the people creating the mods vary widely.

Some mods are relatively benign. For example, mods that replace the default textures in your game are relatively harmless on a game that is connected to Steam. Don't like the results? Undo and let the Vanilla stuff take over again.

But other things can cause unforeseen conflicts, bugs, unexpected quirks, etc. Mods that change dialog, or impact the storyline, for instance can corrupt things that you don't anticipate. Best advise is to do ONE mod at a time, start your game, see if the mod has caused any issues, and then move onto the next.

This way if something gets screwed up with your game you know EXACTLY which mod caused it and can go back and adjust as necessary. This is as opposed to downloading and installing ten different mods and then trying to figure out which one is causing the flying villagers with missing faces in your game.

3. Backup your save files

With a mod manager like the one I linked to earlier, your choices of causing irrevocable harm to your game are substantially reduced since it has you messing around with far less stuff than you would be if you were installing these mods manually yourself.

But "far less" doesn't necessarily mean you, or the program itself, can't cause an unforeseen fuuck up. As a general rule of thumb, back up your save files in a safe place every so often to avoid losing the hundred hours or so of your life that you've invested.

4. Understand what the mods are doing.

This can give you a general idea of when you might have a "conflict" between your mods. "Conflicts" occur when you have multiple mods trying to do the same thing. Let's take a depressingly common example to drive the point home.

Due to it's desire to avoid "NC-17" type ratings for its games, Bethesda makes some compromises with the content of its games in places. For example, children in their games tend to be "essential" which is a fancy way of saying "the game doesn't let you kill the little bastards no matter how annoying they are or how much you've been playing your character as an evil douchemonger".

Another example is that Bethesda games show no boobies. If you loot a corpse, it doesn't matter if you take everything on the corpse, it will be decently clad afterwards to avoid the inadvertent nipple making an appearance. To many modders (and frankly to this author) this, like unkillable children, is an insult that must not be allowed to stand. This is not because I can't stand to go without naked pixelated dirty pillows, but because it represents an outside interference with the choices involved in how I play the game and an offense against realism.

To put it a different way, I don't typically always play my rpgs as a child killing, nipple ogling psychopath but I will DEFEND TO THE DEATH my right to do so! Viva la revolution!

So a very common mod out there is to swap body textures for nude versions...or even nude versions with RIDICULOUS attention to detail being paid to things like nipples or genitals. If you download and install two different mods that both replace those textures, then you're not going to get both.

In the best case scenario, the most recently installed one will overwrite the existing one. (And the Mod Manager typically warns you when this is happening.) But in some cases this doesn't necessarily get caught. So, when you're installing your mods, think about what you already have in place and that will tell you the likelihood of causing problems.

So, with those simple rules in place I bid you the best of fun and experiences playing this, and other Bethesda games, with the benevolent help of the Nexus modding community. My wife just got home. I need to go pretend to pay attention to her for a few minutes and then go play more Skyrim.

In my next episode, I will talk about a few mods out there that I think very highly of and would recommend to my readers.

YAY!

It's a special time of year. No, I'm not talking about Christmas...though any day that gets you presents is, by definition, a special day even if it didn't have the "son of god birth" branding thing going for it.

But I'm referring to something ELSE that is special. Salon has released it's annual "Top-20" list of the biggest media hacks and whores.

Click here to save brain cells from early death next year

(Click on "Earlier Articles" to get to the rest of the list.)

This list is basically a "Who's who" of people who fit one or more items from the following profile:

1. Lazy, uninformed, clueless stenographers who believe "journalism" involves sucking up to people in power and uncritically recording and reproducing what they say in either print or media form

2. Propagandists who try and portray themselves as something other than that or otherwise disguise conflicts of interest

3. Shills for somebody in order to get a paycheck.

4. Evil and vile human beings who are willing to deliberately use a widely read or seen platform to convey a particularly ugly viewpoint dressed up as something else. (Hardhitting! Provocative!)

5. "Horse race" type reporters who focus on who is "winning" rather than who is lying or wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Gamespot Terms of Use may have changed dramatically recently, but that doesn't mean that I don't still love each and every one of you who consider me interesting enough that you bother reading what I write and, even better, commenting on it. It is because I love you that I feel compelled to let you know:

If you see or read something that has the name of any of these people attached to it, chances are you are becoming dumber.

The people on that list are idiots and sociopaths and some of the worst examples of our currently failing media experiment here in the United States. Listening to, watching, or reading any of them will result in your being less informed and less knowledgeable about any of the events that impact your life.

Since I know that quite a few of my readers are in college at the moment, and that a number of you horny youngsters are occassionally taking time away from your books to "sew your wild oats" (seriously, who still uses that phrase?) I thought that the offer below might catch your interest.

500 Free Condoms

So, this is billed as a "year's supply", which, if you do the math, is a "good for you!" sort of situation, but here's how this works.

1. Fill out there little survey thingie, including explaining why you want your school to not become a hideous petri-dish breeding ground of STDs and little unplanned rugrats

2. Certify that you're A. In College and B. Plan on having sex with other college students and C. Not getting these for someone else or violating your school's policy (so they can be sued.)

3. Get 500 free condoms

Seems like a reasonably sweet deal to me, particularly given that the money you save can be reinvested directly into either your beer or your video game/entertainment budget.

No information available on sizing.

I don't really spend a lot of time talking about my relationship with my wife, Chilidragon, who also happens to have a blog well worth reading on the site because I doubt that, with rare exceptions, anyone would really find our relationship to be compelling reading.

Today, however, is a bit of a special day. It marks the ten year anniversary of us being together. Note: I did not say our ten year anniversary of us being MARRIED, but it IS the day that marks us being officially a "thing" for ten full years.

I like making this distinction and celebrating this particular day - instead of our marriage anniversary - because often times in the United States, with our sky-high divorce rate, a relationship only becomes "legitimate" after a certain period of time passing. This is, if somewhat cynical, also understandable. Chili and I dated for years before we got married though. When people ask how many years most people have been married, it is often a reasonable approximation on whether or not they're going to "go the distance" so to speak.

With us, that statistic is highly misleading because we're one of those few couples out there that stayed together for years and THEN got married and are STILL married. When I'm talking with people offline and they ask how long Chili and I have been married, and I tell them, I can often see the look on their face change when I then add, "But we've been TOGETHER for..." afterward.

I suppose, logically, there isn't a lot different about my relationship with Chili today than what existed yesterday. It's in more or less the same place as it was when I decided to drink a lot of rum and watch "Stardust" on the couch with her last night before stopping halfway through to go to bed. Emotionally though, maybe because we're raised to find meaning in permutations of the base-ten counting system or simply because we watch society or our parents or others celebrate these things as landmark occassions, today FEELS different.

I count myself lucky every day that I found a woman like Chili. I think that I found somebody very special. I don't necessarily believe 100% logically in the concept of a "soulmate", but, maybe because I'm Jim and not Leonard Nimoy damnit, I don't always go with logic. I KNOW that I found someone who feels like my other half. I wouldn't be able to prove or explain it, and I'm sure Dr. Gregory House would find this entire blog idiotic, but...

...Chili's about the best example I've ever come up with to justify a belief in a higher power that actually gives a rat's ass about us. I probably fall under the category of "agnostic" when it comes to believing in god, but if he DOES exist, I definitely owe that dude a solid for putting Chili into my life for the twelve years I've known her and for the ten she's been MINE. (I chased her for two full years before we became an item.)

Against all odds, I found a woman who is not only beautiful, but also smart, funny, interesting, enjoyable to be around (most of the time) and adventurous and that I actually have a ton in common with who labors under the belief that I'm something of a "catch" myself.

So....

I love you Chili and thanks for the ten best years of my life. I wouldn't trade you in for anything less than BOTH Scarlet Johansson and Natalie Portman TOGETHER.

If anyone out there ever needs to speak at a trial in my defense as a character witness or in testimony about my mental state after I climb a clock tower with a high powered sniper rifle, I'd like you to remember the phrase:

"Max Payne 3 has multiplayer."

"Rest assured, it's nothing of what you've feared."
-Casey Hudson

Apparently, Casey, it is EXACTLY what many of us feared.

Excuse me for a moment while I attempt to speak for what I suspect is a lot more people than just me. My pardon for anyone who generally has my opinion of kinect/coop/mp who feels I have expressed your views poorly.

It isn't any one thing that encapsulates what people like me fear about the direction that Bioware is rapidly sprinting down.It's a combination of factors that lead to what a lot of us view is a slippery slope that will eventually make Bioware completely unrecognizeable from the company that we love.

What I love, excuse me, what I LOVED about Bioware was that they created games targeted AT ME. They were, at one point, aggressively trying to create games based on my personal tastes.I'm being blunt, and admitting my own personal selfishness, but if people who believe as I do are honest, then that's the problem we really have. We're worried that not only is Bioware no longer creating games with us in mind, but that we are a COMPLETE afterthought and that Bioware is actively engaged in lying to us in the process.

Yes, I deliberately used the "L" word, because I think that is appropriate at this point. Sure there is all sorts of weasel type answers along the lines of, "We never outright SAID there'd be no Kinect...or Coop...or Multiplayer..." but it was very strongly implied LONG after Bioware knew it was developing all of these things in a seperate studio internally.

There IS such a thing as a lie of ommission, and Casey's quote up above says that Biwoare knew FULL WELL that many of the things that they were keeping under wraps would be controversial and not greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm by gamers in my camp. KNOWING that, and continue to imply that we had nothing to worry about and that Mass Effect was envisioned as a singleplayer experience is a LIE OF OMMISSION past a certain point.

Yes, it can be accurate to say that Bioware never openly lied, but that's a politician's answer.That's like saying, "I never had sex with that woman" when it's technically true that only oral sex happened and not the "other" variety. It's technically true, but also complete BS from a reasonable person's POV. (AlthoughI swear I still miss Bubbha at times. He was always entertaining. But I digress.)

The point is that Bioware has now officially lost what remains of their credibility with me. Yes, I'm one individual.Yes, I'm sure that plenty of people will now say, "Oh who cares. You're in the minority anyway."

But you know what, the Soapbox exists as a place for people like me to come and state my views and I can't remain silent any longer.

Getting back to my original point, it is not ONE THING. It's ALL OF THOSE THINGS. It's the trendline that anyone who isn't willfully ignorant or painfully stupid can see happening. It's the accelerating nature of the strategy where one thing leads to another which leads to another.

It's the fact that it's completely, utterly, totally, and in all other ways supremely obvious that Bioware values a different target market over mine and that, when the two come into conflict, mine will ALWAYS lose out.

When Kinect came out, my viewpoint was, "Damn I hate that idea. I'm not going to use it at all.I think it's a gimmick and a waste of time and I wonder how much the game got delayed adding it. So much for a renewed focus on RPG elements if you're spending your budget on that. On the other hand, hell, I suppose SOME tradeoffs need to be involved to maximize profitability to fund future games. Fine...I'll keep my mouth shut and accept it."

When online COOP came out, my viewpoint was, "Oh for the love of Zeus. Isn't it bad enough that Bioware dropped the turd that was Dragon Age 2 on us after Witch Hunt and a subpar Awakenings? They've screwed up one franchise that I loved with DA2, can they PLEASE come back home to what I loved about them? Where does this stop? When does it end? Oh well, I'll cancel my preorder and get the game used and hope they get the message."

Now that full MP has been revealed, I have my answer.

It doesn't end. There is no stop. They'll keep trying to keep gamers like me in the fold with weasel tactics, but the Bioware I loved is now dead.

Congratulations Bioware, you've lost my business for good.I know Mass Effect 3 is going to be great despite all this distraction/fluffy crap. I know that there are a lot of people on here who I like and respect who have a different viewpoint and can legitimately make the argument, "It doesn't necessarily HAVE to hurt the singleplayer experience."

To them I'd point to, again, the TREND. It is not ONE THING. It's that you can now export a MP character into the single player campaign. It's that you can now impact galactic readiness with the coop stuff. It's ALL OF IT.

Congratulations Bioware, you've lost my business for good.

I'm breaking up with you. And yes, for the record, it IS YOU.

...she goes there! Link This brought a smile to my face today.

I'm hooked. Bad. The game could still stand to give you a bit more direction about a few things, and there are some technical issues that make my eyes roll such as frame rate drops and monster weapons hitting you through walls and their being able to shoot through each other (unlike Demon's Souls where arrows could hit other monsters), but minor issues aside this game IS Demon's Souls come again. It's one of the best games that I've played in months. Right now, I'd rate it slightly below Demon's Souls, but it's very close. I can't get enough of how much I love the boss battles and all the visually unique and splendid settings. The level design in this game is just a joy to observe. It's fiendishly clever and viciously evil and challenging, but mostly in a fair way. The Gamespot review is correct that every once in a while the game veers into cheap/cheese territory, but overall when I die I mostly blame myself. A few more minor complaints that I've noticed. 1. I don't know if it is multiple servers or something else, but it seems to be a lot harder to find either black phantoms (or dark spirits as this game calls them) or helpful white spirits to bring into your world. This goes for the comments as well. There doesn't seem to be as many of them left by other people in this game and they are almost never rated. This is unfortunate because, while everyone knows I'm not normally a fan of multiplayer, in Demon's Souls it was really one of the most compelling parts.

2. Without going into too many details, there's an item you can get that allows a limited amount of teleporting between bonfires in the game. This is great! From my previous blog on this subject, you guys will know that the lack of fast travel options bothered me. But why so limited? The world of Dark Souls is so much bigger than Demon's was. Why not allow teleporting to any bonfire you've previously visited? 3. Similar to #2 above, I can understand why the game has multiple blacksmiths that work with various different types of weapons. It makes sense from a realism perspective. But it's also annoying to have to go all the way to these usually out of the way blacksmiths every time I want to modify/upgrade to a different weapon type and then have to go all the way to a different one to upgrade a different weapon. Still, these remain minor issues with my enjoyment of a game that I'm really unable to put down. Once again, I love the fact that I work from home and can sneak off to play during the day.

Damn that hurt. But it had to be done. A message had to be sent, even if it was in my own tiny, insignificant way. After months of all but openly stating that the rumored multiplayer and coop play in Mass Effect 3 was a myth, Bioware has confirmed it. This approach, a weaselly "we never lied because we never CONFIRMED no multiplayer", is unacceptable to this long-time customer. The thing is, Bioware knows full well that they're ticking off customers like me. Their "known features" thread on their official forums still has "No MP for ME3" in it. Casey Hudson's twitter said that it wouldn't be what people were "afraid" of. They can't claim ignorance that they don't know what a huge portion of their fanbase feels about making the third game of a singleplayer RPG trilogy a coop or MP one. Well, I don't have a lot of ability to impact their decisions. But I can vote in my own limited way. I said two months ago that if multiplayer for ME3 was ever confirmed, I'd cancel my preorder. Now I've put my money where my mouth is. Bioware will not be getting any cash from me on this one. It's going to the second-hand market. But it isn't just this item that drove me to make this decision. It's a combination of a string of decisions clearly geared towards the Call of Duty crowd. It's Dragon Age 2. It's DLC of the quality of Witch Hunt and The Arrival. It's turning KOTOR3 into an MMO. It's Kinect support for ME3. It's a buggy and half-finished Awakenings. Basically, the breakup has been going on for a while. I just made it official.

So I picked up (or rather, had Chili pick up) Dark Souls yesterday and I've been playing it pretty much constantly ever since. I figured I'd throw out a few thoughts comparing and contrasting it to Demons Souls to people who either already have the game or are on the fence about getting it. The Good: Same great combat as the first game. Each weapon is distinct and different and finding one that fits your style of play - and even acquiring one in the first place - is still an adventure all by itself "Dark Spirits", the new name for Black Phantoms, invading still is as heart pounding exciting as ever The environments are truly varied and well designed, adding to the challenge of the game while also being immersion promoting and beautiful to look at A few new features, such as the ability to actually jump, are a nice step forward. The Bad: The game misses having a central hub in a BIG way. I know the reason behind the design decision. It was done to make the game even more challenging and isolate the players even more. But, frankly, for me this is more aggravating than anything else. Not being able to warp to certain common destinations is annoying and tedious. For example, not being able to warp to a blacksmith is a downright pain in the rear, So far, the story and characters are even more lacking than the first game. Not really surprising, but it would be nice if they gave you a more tangible REASON to go through the aggravation of dying again and again and again. I don't mind a challenge, but to me accomplishing something in the game world is a part of the reward for a challenge. Overall, so far I think that the game does a very good job of staying true to the look and feel of Demons Souls, but I'm not liking the open world, sandbox type design all that much. It makes the game feel random and unfocused to me. I've played maybe a dozen hours or so already and the game just seems to lack direction.

You don't really know where you're supposed to go in what order, and the instruction manual is downright pathetic when it comes to even really basic things like "What do I do with the humanity that I collect and what are the benefits of having it?" It almost seems like corner cutting/cost saving on the developer's part under the guise of "We did it deliberately to make the game more challenging." Don't get me wrong. This is still a very good game, but it definitely has not hooked me in the same way as it's predecessor did.