hey all,
I put in a little more time on Dark Souls, but the current area I'm trying to clear out is pretty vile. It is called Sen's Fortress. The guards are these big snake-headed dudes with giant scimitars and shields, and then there are these cobra-headed multi-armed guys that shoot lightning at you, and then there are the traps and narrow walkways with swinging axes. I've easily lost 10,000-20,000 xp trying to clear this place out, so I think I'm going to grind my character in the Darkroot Garden for a little bit. I was finally able to kill those troublesome black cats, so with them gone I can prey on some of the easier enemies and level up my stats and weapons and maybe my armor.
My B-day present from my mom arrived: Skyrim. And my does it look big! For the previous game in the series (Oblivion), I happily put in over 120 hours and still didn't manage to finish it. There were just so many quests to do, so many areas to explore, etc. Reports are that Skyrim is easily over 300 hours long. And so far it plays really well. The graphics are a huge upgrade over Oblivion, the level up system is really awesome, the quests are well-written and the voice acting is good so far. The geography and level design is also a lot more interesting than either Oblivion or Fallout 3 (both games designed by the same company which made Skyrim.). The combat is a lot more fun than in Oblivion, but it is no match for Dark Souls in that department. But then, there is a lot more to do in Skyrim: you can mine metals, smith your weapons and armor, enchant your weapons and armor, gather ingredients and make potions, cook meals, pick locks, steal, buy and decorate houses, join different groups and complete quests for them, fight huge dragons and many other activities.
I also just watched a video about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and boy does that look fun too! Unfortunately, that game is also an RPG, which means that 40-100 hours of game play would not be out of the question. As I still haven't finished Batman, Battlefield 3, Dark Souls, and I've just started the gigantic Skyrim, I'm not sure if I'll have enough time to pick up the game when it comes out in February. I'll just have to see.
Michi and I went climbing with one of my teachers from work, and that was pretty fun too. Overall, its been a great weekend. I'm still climbing somewhere in the 5.10a-b range, so maybe a little more practice and I'll be able to pull off a few 5.10c's or d's.
I realized yesterday that what I was posting about earlier with Pascal's triangle and the binomial theorem was actually a power set: the set of sets you can make from a set, not strictly speaking a combinations problem. Anyway...
Cheers,
