My new hobby? Taking potshots at ice trolls.

Yep, I finally caved and bought Skyrim. Well, all right. Patrick bought it for me because I waffled around about it and wasn't sure if it was worth it, blah blah blah.

I think mostly he was just sick of listening to me complain about not having anything to play.

So now I am happily thieving everything in sight and murdering baddies. Yay! It's lame how there are very few games that two people can play together on PC that aren't shooters. I don't really want to play Counterstrike or Gears of War or any of that ilk. I enjoyed World of Warcraft for quite a while, but I've lost interest in that. Supposedly Diablo III will be fun. We shall see. But in the meantime, giving each other pointers on our separate Skyrim games will have to do.

Us right now. So true.

  I loved Morrowind. It's too bad you can't play Bethesda games jointly. I heard someone was working on a mod for it, but it wouldn't help us since we're playing on two different platforms (he on XBOX 360, I on PC). The PC version does have some upsides, mostly the command console. Using that, you can fix your perks if you screw up a point allocation. Otherwise it's basically like Diablo II, where you'd end up having an entire character wasted due to a single misclick. I can't tell you how infuriating that was.

Speaking of infuriating, the PC version has its downsides, too. There was some crazy mouse acceleration lag (which sounds like an oxymoron but is a real thing, I swear), and the main character design screen is broken beyond belief for someone using a mouse. I nearly rage-quit, and then Patrick nearly sympathy rage-quit his own game trying to get that godforsaken piece of garbage to function long enough to get a decent character out of it.

Finally we staggered through it, and after some really inventive cursing and internet querying, we finally solved the crazy-making mouse lag problem. Come ON, Bethesda. Just insert the damn code yourself instead of making us do it for you. I say "we" finally solved it because I actually did actively participate, instead of just sitting there and screaming, like I totally wanted to do.

Before we fixed that problem I somehow managed to kill a dragon, even with the mouse lag. This was nothing short of a miracle, and probably mostly happened because the AI of your follower is actually pretty good, coupled with the initial dragon's stunning incompetence. I think I won the incompetence arms race, since I could barely select anything and couldn't manage to make the cursed weapon fire for about half the fight, but the dragon was a really close second. Good thing, or Rage Quit #2 might have been in the offing.

WHY RELEASE A GAME THAT HAS PROBLEMS LIKE THAT? Didn't they test it first? Were their testers dead or on drugs to not notice that absolutely retarded problem? It was released as a PC game and it doesn't work with a mouse unless you manually change the game's coding yourself. WTF.

I half hate you, Bethesda. I also half love you, because once the stupid thing works, it is really good. I can see why this game turns into a giant time sink if you let it. It's very pretty. Tragic that WoW didn't have more of a real sandboxy feel to it and better graphics. Once you got to the end of the line leveling-wise, you either had to raid or do endless dailies. There wasn't a lot else. And I suppose that with the giant world Blizz put out, better graphics would make most people's machines throw up on themselves and die. Oh well.

Next up? Stealing ALL the things.