I reviewed it when I got around to it, and put out an honest article. I did leave it there last week instead of posting the new reviews yet though. Because the next thing I knew the Rhode Island TV stations that we get locally in Southern Mass were all talking about this former baseball player whose new video game company was going bust, and bankrupting the state of RI. The next day brought the news of the over a million dollar check that former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling passed, which bounced. Holy crap dude, I would not want to be you right now.

Sadly the bottom line caught up with him. But like new restauranteurs that came from a different industry and “buy” a restaurant, being able to purchase a company does not make one able to run it. Career changes suck. Kingdoms of Amular sucked, not because it wasn’t pretty, or lacked a story, it sucked because it lacked the substance beyond the surface. They did not spend enough time in development, and most likely never hired enough coders.

It was a mistake to market Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning to compete with Skyrim. It lead to the game being dissected by gamers the same way it was. And Amular can not stand up to the comparison in any way shape or form. I thought that it’s major flaw was with the basic level design.

You can look at a masterpiece like Skyrim, and see that each area is designed from top to bottom. From the levels below the ground that might be where chests are stored, there are then layers for earth, rocks, plants and trees. Above it are your roads and buildings, and inside the building is the blacksmith or barkeep that is standing above that chest. Over his head are the upper floors of the building with items, rooms and characters. The items themselves are all interactive, and books can even be taken off the shelves and read. Even the sky is populated with birds, real time weather and sunshine. That is how you make a game. “Room” by room, layer by layer.

Didn’t anyone at 38 Studios ever play a table top version of Dungeons and Dragons? That should be in game design 101, because the analog mapping done in it, is the foundation of video gaming. At least the good ones.

Schilling’s game, as I said in the review was all glitter and had no guts. Jocks traditionally don’t have time for nerds. It is always a mistake to underestimate the gaming community. Hence a shovelware product. I can just imagine the meetings they had, geeks vs jocks about the game, which had potential, but needed another year in development.

I think it is also a mistake to think that if one is a big name in one industry, that it will carry over to another. A big baseball star may have name recognition for a large fandom, even in the millions. Though that might not be the same crowd that will go out and get a glitzy hack and slash RPG game because his name was attached to it. In fact the nerdy gamers that go for RPG’s like Skyrim most likely never heard of Schilling, or would care. I never heard of him and I live in Mass. Not everybody in Mass cares about the sporting events of local teams.

It’s the hardcore gamers of each genre that drive the industry. Whether it is Halo players, or WoW player types, it is the word of mouth online in the long run that makes or breaks a game. Especially RPG’s which take a long time to play and have a much longer review time.

Live and learn I guess. From what I have observed in the news, it seems as though some large karma is playing out over 38 Studios and this game. I am also curious why some sites gave Amular such inflated high scores. Since there are no coincidences.

Until a bit later in the game when the Goal became inflexibly a marriage and nuclear family. In order to complete goals between levels twenty and twenty four, you have to proceed with at least one couple fulfilling a Judeo – Christian based ideal. The couple must Date and become Engaged prior to moving in together. In that order, otherwise the game will become stuck, on the “Have Two Engaged Sims Move In Together”, Goal. Then they need to Propose Marriage, with a large diamond ring, using Life Style Points or LP given by the game at that moment. Don’t use those points on anything else or it will again become stuck.

There are many issues and glitches with the marriage and child parts of the game which have gamers up in arms all over the message boards. The update that arrived on May 10 is called, (face-palm) Toddler Time, and it has done nothing to alleviate these issues. There are several ways to dead end in the game. All of them occur when a player deviates from the strictly defined Goals of the Sims invisible dictatorship.
The main issue being the problem of the Baby. There does not seem to be a way to skip the damn thing. Not everyone is interested in playing around with little babies. There should be an option to skip over this inconvenient and annoying mission. It is not appropriate for all ages and is certainly not a metaphorical E for everyone decision. There are those who are too young, too old, or too hardcore for playing with baby dolls. The Sims needs birth control.

Things have improved for the Dog in the game. A food dish and water bowl can be obtained. However they go for around 15 thousand simeoleans for the two of them. The bone, frisbee and dog house cost astronomical amounts of Life Points which would take months to gather by normal means, other than making in App purchase from the store with real money. After the food and water bowl were filled the first time. The dog dug up LP’s twice consecutively, making a huge three LP.

There is supposedly a Wedding Dress and Groom Suit offered in the Update, which I have not found yet either in the character customization area or at the in game purchase portal, which is now indicated with a purple shopping cart. The wedding itself takes place privately, so there is no opportunity for a wedding party. The Update generally does not address the major issues, add flexibility or fix the problems that gamers have been asking for.

In fact once you get to twenty five or so, the goals become nearly impossible to finish without paying. The game does allow you to play for quite some time, for free but it does not go on forever as is claimed in their advertising. It would be more fun if it was an open world. A wider variety of interests should be offered for items. Animal Crossing on DS had more items than this iPad game.

Gamers who get to around level 30 have said that there is nothing left to do in the game, or by then one goal or another becomes glitched and the game is broken. The game requires politicians, but none of the laws can be changed or customized, that’s a fatal error in a god-game.

Tedious! Some folks speculated that perhaps some of the Goals could be skipped by paying out LP points to get past some of the more unreasonable missions. Looking at that dreaded Plus One over the crib, no amount of tapping around the user interface will make it go away!

EDIT: The wedding dress and groom suit are now in the store. The in App purchase is 4.99. A total rip off for something the characters would use for a twenty second ceremony.

They have said that starting April 10, players who pre-purchase the Guild Wars 2 Collector’s, Digital Deluxe, or Standard Editions will receive guaranteed entry into all beta weekend events and a three-day headstart prior to launch, giving them the opportunity to be among the first to secure their character and guild names. As a bonus, players who pre-purchase any edition will also receive an exclusive Hero’s Band, which will provide their characters with a broad range of power boosts and other goodies

as they venture into the world of Tyria in Guild Wars 2.

The Guild Wars 2 Collector’s Edition offers fans an unparalleled collection of physical content that goes beyond the game. The centerpiece of the Collector’s Edition is a detailed, hand-painted 10-inch statue of the bestial warrior Rytlock Brimstone wielding his signature flaming sword. Along with the Rytlock statue, players will receive a custom frame along with five stunning Guild Wars 2 art prints from world-renowned artists, a 112-page Making of Guild Wars 2 hardback book, a Best of Guild Wars 2 Soundtrack CD by award-winning composer Jeremy Soule, and five in-game items, including a Mistfire Wolf that will fight alongside players and a miniature Rytlock who will accompany them on their travels through Tyria.
The Guild Wars 2 Collector’s Edition will retail at $149.99 MSRP, the Digital Deluxe at $79.99 MSRP and the Standard Edition at $59.99 MSRP. Players may also pre-order Guild Wars 2 at select retailers, allowing them to reserve their copy of the game at launch. Players who pre-order Guild Wars 2 will receive a one-day headstart prior to launch.

For additional information on the pre-purchase program or Guild Wars 2, visit www.GuildWars2.com.

After completing the Mages College quests, I didn’t want to become immediately involved in another long quest line. The game provides some intriguing alternate quest-lines, involving thieving in the Thieves Guild, murdering in the Dark Brotherhood, becoming Companion werewolf or a vampire. None of those appealed this time around. The advantage of replay-ability is something to look forward to. There are many whatifs in the game that would provide a completely different experience. The opportunity is there to try it all over again. Maybe with a prettier character this time, and a prettier wife for her. One look at the barkeeper Klepper’s daughter Hroki,
and I was looking at Wikia for a way to divorce the dowdy but reliable Camilla. Unfortunately my characters love for her was one sided, Hroki isn’t able to marry and Divorce isn’t readily available for Console players. Marriage seems to be a non-repeatable Quest. I am still fond having a Follower and Wife as separate characters in the game to be an advantage. Camilla is a trader, and even though she never has more than 750 gold to spend, she pays me a 100 gold share daily.

The Imperial vs. Stormcloak war looms in the future for my character, as well as the dragon slaying of the Main Quest-line. Additionally I have been enjoying playing the game as a party of four with Esbern and Delphine continuing to tag along, fight, and do generally weird glitchy things. So I am in no rush to loose them to the normal progression of the quest -line. One challenge with having the four person party is keeping Delphine and my loyal follower Jenassa from murdering each other.

I haven’t taken up the Dadric Quests altogether either. Not all the Daedra are “nice”. They resemble the tales of old pagan deities who had their own agendas, and self interests, which barely include humanoids as minions at best. The complicated religious system in Skyrim left my character with some choices to make. As the Dragonborn, she has the genetic lineage of the line of Talos. The Amulet of Talos grants the wearer 20% faster regeneration of the Shout power, which only a certain few possess. However, the Imperials have forbidden the worship of Talos, although Necromancy is ok this time around for some reason. l think it was to appease the creepy Thalmor and keep their Necromancers out of trouble.

My favorite house right now is Proudspire Manor in Solitude. It’s an Imperial city where Marayas the Arch Mage is a Thane. The Jarl Elspeth is an Imperial, her husband was killed by Ulfric Storm Cloak allegedly. The lines between Talos worshipers and Imperials blurs when she sends my character to run a mission to a Shrine of Talos. If the Storm Cloaks win, what will become of Elspeth, my wife Camilla and my property? For now my plan is to move the family and the treasure to Honeyside in Riften if things get scary with the war.

For my character the choices seemed to point to siding with the Stormcloaks, having found herself originally in an Imperial prison in Helgen to begin with. But this decision may put some of the other female characters in the game at risk or at odds. My character’s wife Camilla is an Imperial. My character is a Breton. To complicate things more a faction of old Bretons is revolting against both the Storm Cloaks and the Imperials. Their King Madanach describes their plight as enslavement, and the appropriation of their ancestral lands, as theft and betrayal. My character sympathized with them though the Forsworn Conspiracy missions in Markarth.

The missions in Markarth seemed too easy, and a little too mundane. I got my character all suited up with armor, potions, weapons and foods for No One Escapes Cidhna Mine, and it took like ten minutes and there wasn’t even a fight. My character’s persuasion level is so high that everyone just does whatever she wants.

Now that some of the games many secrets and dungeons have been explored and exploited seems to be in finding something to do that isn’t repetitive and quick. I’ve kept my mMage on the side if order as much as possible. She hasn’t stolen much, her lock-picking, pickpocketing and sneaking skills aren’t much.

Her Thunderbolt and Fireball spells are tremendous. The lightening spells can even disintegrate the corpses leaving only ash piles. These spells have to be used carefully inside dungeons, so that she doesn’t take herself and her own party out. In fact getting out of battles without killing her own followers and towns people is a problem. When Dragons show up in the various towns, NPC’s rush in, and sometimes I don’t see them until it is too late and they have been hit by something that was meant for the Dragon. Some of the most annoying, are townspeople, my various horses, and the one of a kind dog Meko. There should be a way to prevent the horse from running headfirst into certain death. The dog and the Followers can be told to Wait Here, but they do not always listen. Often they will jump out of place into a battle they can’t win, or right into a trap, once my character starts to fire off some shots.

It was easy to gain enough gold to buy houses in Skyrim with one or two exploits there is more than enough treasure and wealth to purchase and decorate Proudspire Manor. It was a good purchase, there is much more storage than in Breezehome. Placing objects around the house in any house, in Skyrim is very clumsy. It take lots of trial and error to get bottles and jugs to stand upright, and then to stay where you put them.

With a good deal of effort, and way too much time, I managed to get a collection of pottery bowls, candlesticks and jars that I took from each area I plundered, to stand and stay still around the foyer and front parlor room in Proudspire Manor. I got two golden statues of Dibella in the game, which I did not steal by the way. One of them is displayed in the kitchen of Proudspire. As soon as you walk in you see it bathed in light at the end of the hall on a table before a stained glass window. It looks like a niche made perfectly for it. The other one is on the table in the upstairs dining room. I cleared away the food items, brought in an ewer and water jug from the Temple of Dibella in Markarth, and set the statue on the large table. The sunlight comes onto the room and makes it shine like an altar. I surrounded her statue with silver goblets, candlesticks, soul gem fragments, Juniper and Jazbay to make it look ready for magic.

There are so many screen shots that I wish I could have taken of still life inside the homes, scenery, and battles. I don’t know why screen caps and movies of gameplay cannot be made of this game on PS3. It was supposed to be available on all games, and only a very few of them have enabled the feature. I used to really like my PS3, but ever since last year it seems to become more lame, and left behind on everything.

Luckily my game has continued to load for me. I am glad to say I have not encountered the biggest problem with Skyrim that other PS3 owners have had. It has frozen occasionally when Fast Traveling. Then it has to be shut off manually. I do save often. I have cleared out anything from memory that I did not need before playing Skyrim. I Save before during and after missions, before Fast Travel, before and after purchases,and kills. I try never to rely on the Autosaves. I keep separate Saves for Proudspire which is my home base right now, and separate Save blocks for when I am at Honeyside in Riften, and an ‘on the road’ block which I Save over as missions are progressing.

Evette San the Spiced Wine lady walks in front of Proudspire Manor each morning when my character leaves the house sometimes Evette San is submerged in the brick road up to her shoulders, while talking to me, her talking head in the road is very creepy. Another time, she was walking about twenty feet up in the air as if she was in contact with an invisible road up in the air. When she got to her stall she was standing on top of it. She remained there as long as I was in the market area of Solitude that day.

Proudspire itself has it’s quirks. Not all of them are bad. I’d rather they are in my favor. There is the well known texture glitch in basement above the mannequins. Those mannequins duplicate all apparel except for the special quest related ones, and those which I enchant. If they are acquired all ready enchanted, then they will reproduce them. You just Give, and then Take back all the Apparel you Give them, and close the window. When you go outside and return, they will be wearing and carrying whatever you gave them. The mannequins in Riften d the same.so the houses pay for themselves and more. They have reproduced all Apparel Including the Arch Mages’ Robes, amulets glass or ebony armor, helmets, shields and bracers. Jewelry, circlets and even rare clothing like the Tavern Clothes will duplicate. I duplicate whatever I want and store one copy asis. Then if I want to Enchant or Improve anything I can do it again when ever I want. I particularly enjoyed gaining the Artificer Trophy. If is fun to be able to mine the ore, smelt it shape a weapon or necklace and using potions I made to enhance my skills, and then enchant it, customizing the piece from beginning to end.

Of course there are a few weird things in the houses that can mess with your items. Non of the shield racks worked at first, the large sword rack does not work on one end. They did fix these up somewhat in an update. Test your weapon and shield racks in your house carefully at first using steel weapons that are cheap. Save beforehand. When it says Activate Weapon Rack, instead of giving the name of the weapon you hung there, you don’t want to do that because it will eat the first weapon, or hang another one on top of it, mangling how it looks. The bookcase upstairs dining room once filled, will eat all the books if you try to Read or Take any of the ones off the shelf.

One time when I came into the basement in Honeyside in Riften one mannequin was standing across the room near the door with its head partially embedded in the ceiling. That was spooky. I didn’t spend much time in that house that day.

I watched a funny Youtube video narrated by a guy who had a great Skyrim accent. He was right, if you can find it, there is a Skeleton who still reproduces the Doors of Oblivion book. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZcQGyZBB0A

Married life in Skyrim is very dull. As I mentioned in Part One of this Skyrim PS3 Review my character’s wife Camilla is very docile. Her vocabulary of remarks is extremely limited and repetitive. At this point her voice is annoying. I’ve heard her repeat her lines thousands if times now. In the morning she does spend time bent over the Enchanting Table in the basement of Proudspire, giving opportunities for funny sexually themed scenes, which unfortunately I can’t capture.

I have seen several reviewers complaining about their wives “disappearing” after the wedding ceremony. Typical males, all you have to do is just talk to your new wife at the end of the ceremony! Of course she leaves in a huff if you do something other than that. She did get to open her store, but her independent streak ended there when she became a housewife. The dialogs about her chauvinistic brother are gone too.

My character Marayas the Arch Mage always carries a large platter. That humble platter will take you right through most walls. The gates that have Expert level locks on them can be simply breached by going into first person mode. You then drop your Platter on the ground, be careful not to loose it or drop it down a cliff. Press and hold the “X” button to Take the Platter and you will be able to hover it in the air. Place the platter up against the gate or wall you want to pass through, as if it was a mirror. Then hit the run button L2 and you should pass through the Platter and the obstacle. It will not work on double thick walls or solid rocks. Don’t forget to retrieve it, right through the wall, because you will need it to get back out.

I spent lots of time attempting to get under the ground with the various exploits offered by youtubers. I found them to be very persnickety and could not get it to work reliably. I did get under the texture a few times, it was a thrill and addictive. I had to stop trying to get under and around the game itself, because I could spend an equal amount of time checking it’s underpinnings as playing the game. That is where the PC gamers have a definite edge. They are able to do Mods and are creating some great home brewed content for Skyrim.

Weird things happen inside the dungeons as well. A Dragur Death Lord I killed became stuck in ceiling. I was still able to loot him anyway. Thum attacks knock away weapons and then you can’t find them again. It is perpetually annoying when followers and Meeko get stuck in doorways and won’t get out of my way. Long, long load times when going from one location to the next, including like just outside the front door.

I used the trusty platter to break into the Tower of Mzork which is an abandoned Dwemer tower located in Blackreach. The massive underground gardens and ruins of a Dwemer city is approximately 4 square miles in size. It’s lit with glowing mushrooms phosphorescent plant life, glow in the dark critters, and their eggs. You could spend days exploring it. I found that the Quest to Discover the Secret of Crimson Nirnroot down there was lame – collect 30 of them? Seriously?

When fast traveling the same scenarios always play out. The same NPC’s say the same thing every time. “Wanna play tag?”
“I thought adventurers were supposed to look tough.”
“If you are going to the Blue Palace, you might want to think twice about wearing that outfit.”
After a few dozen times I want to just stab them all to death, but that would not be good.

Most of the time the exploits took longer to accomplish than it would to just earn the gold and pay your way. The not so hidden chest in Dawnstar is the easiest. Except when the dragon attacks in Dawnstar cause weird interactions. Sometimes if the Kajit caravan is camped at the edge of Dawnstar, when the dragon attacks, my followers would attack and kill the Kajits including D’Jargo. Or sometimes Delphine and Jenassa would kill each other, or Delphine would kill me for some bizarro reason. Occasionally Jenassa would drown. She seemed unlucky if there were crabs or other menacing sea life. She isn’t good at climbing rocks. A rocky coastline could do her in if I am not careful and leave her too far back.

Cooking allows you to combine raw ingredients to create food items. The cooked food provides more substantial benefits than raw food. The Apple Cabbage Soup kept my character going through many extended battles. Cooking can only be done at camps, cooking pots and cooking spits. Specific recipes must be followed, for the foods that you need to collect. You get all of the recipes at the start of the game, and don’t need to unlock them.

My character fell down a hole in the Midden Dark, and out onto a snowy mountain ledge. The exit to get back into the Midden was too high up and there was no X to activate returning inside. A dragon was way too far up to notice our shooting fireballs and lightening at it. So we could not teleport, since there were Enemies Nearby supposedly.

The Merida statue was bugged in the Break of Dawn Quest. The unconcerned Daedra dropped my character from the clouds repeatedly. To get past it, I had to press the Run button L2 to avoid her treating my Mage like a rag doll. In the Quest with Erandur his glitch was at the doorway. I learned that in missions where an NPC is involved, you have to follow them, as slow as they may go, or they will get stuck and won’t open doors as they should. One time when loading from a Saved game my character materialized behind a Tapestry inside of Ilinalta’s Deep, from in there it immediately triggered a hidden bookshelf. I continue to look behind the tapestries, and go backwards into them to see under the texture. Occasionally backing up into a corner of a cave or dungeon will take you right inside the walls.

I’m still exploring Skyrim. Still finding things, and it has been four months of playing little or nothing else. With the varied radial Quests, the War, and the Main Quest-line still yet to go, the amount of content given for the money in Skyrim is staggering. It puts many games of 2011 to shame. There are a fair number of glitches and bugs. But in my experience there weren’t enough of them to hinder the score. It isn’t perfect, and the imperfections are humorous rather than unplayable. For me Skyrim is a perfect fit. It has just about everything I could want in a game. I’ve wanted to play a first person wizard battle for a ling time. The crafting is fun without being tedious. The story and the characters are amusing and detailed. The NPC’s have plausible AI.

Skyrim is hands down the best game I’ve played on PS3 in a long time. It deserves all the hype. It is well worth the purchase and has a ridiculous amount of content. I give Skyrim Elder Scrolls V, 9 Gold Emerald Rings out of 10.

Many of the people writing those articles are just too young to remember when Apple Computers began in a garage. Even though  the original founders of Apple, Steve Jobs a  software engineer, and Steve Wozniak the inventor of the personal computer respectively, have evaded the ‘dark lord’ reputation that Bill Gates acquired, they did have some techno – karma to repay.

Nowadays people may regard The Beatles as some lordly muses of musicology, and refer to them in awed tones. Or they may indeed fail to see the relevance of the band entirely, even though Rock Band sales of their music has done well. Perhaps fewer still remember that The Beatles were not rock gods at first for many years after they began. Certainly not everyone in the sixties thought that The Beatles music was all that good. Several other bands of the era had enormous followings and in fact still do. The first rumblings of metal would soon reverberate across the pond as well.

Today some might even say that it was the press, and the particular way that crowds were filmed, which made The Beatles package seem like it was a bigger phenomenon than it actually was. Regardless of your interpretation of the biblical amount of Beatles history, the acquiescence of the ‘other’ Apple signals not only a truce, but the sunset of a fifty year era.

Apple and Apple reaching across the aisle has more significance than just a mere economics lesson. It is the death of a particular zeitgeist. The sixties, heralded as America’s creative, flower strewn past is fifty years gone by. Michael Jackson who at one time The Beatles publishing rights, has passed on. Over time, The Beatles franchise is no longer guaranteed success with the next generations. Musical tastes change. Exclusivity, and keeping the songs off online distribution meant dwindling into obscurity.

During those early  not – so – popular years The Beatles attempted to start their own rudimentary brand. The Beatle’s Apple grew in the1960s to replace a first failed attempt, called Beatles Ltd. They produced some records as Apple, with the green granny smith apple spinning in the middle of the vinyl. But that didn’t last long and they changed labels. You could say that a green apple and a rainbow apple are not the same thing. One was a graphic design, and the other was a fruit photo. Apple Corp. might sound like a different enough name from Apple Computers but it wasn’t.

Beginning in the late seventies when I was in high school and college, I remember well all the disputes between the two Apple companies over their trademarks rights. Those legal battles continued right up to 2007.

As a condition of the settlement, in 1981 Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps agreed not to enter the computer business. However as time went by and technology grew, computers used music for games, MIDI and audio-recording. Many game franchises that are still going on today began on the Apple II, which was the first to have an Ensoniq synthesizer chip. So in 1989 they were all back in court.

The legal battles stalled the advancement of music technology. Who knows, something like iTunes might have come a couple years sooner. As late as 2003 Apple Corp. was suing Apple due to the use of an Apple on iTunes. Finally in 2006 the court ruled in favor of Apple Computer. It was time for Apple Corp. to get over it. There was just no way that The Beatles defunct company logo had any reality as infringing on iTunes, which they never could have imagined back in the sixties.

The settlements ended the ongoing trademark lawsuits between the two mega companies. Hands Across the Water. It must have been tough for guys who were Beatles music fans, to accidentally get screwed repeatedly to the tune of millions of dollars and years stalling the advancement of technology. To be so embroiled in multi million dollar money pits against The Beatles management company, is ironic today. If you need to check a logo for copyrights, you can look it up online. Those legendary garage geeks need to use a time machine, and tell themselves to invent the Internet at the same time as the PC. One thing is for sure, we can expect more of The Beatles music on future Apple Computer press roll outs.

In Companions there are two game modes, which are the quick play ‘Single Map’ mode, and the Campaign mode. Each of the members of the four person team has a little backstory. The controls are simple taps on the characters and then a tap on the enemies to attack. Each party member has three special skills that they can equip at a time. They are limited by cool down times as you would normally see.

Graphics are limited. It’s very pixelish. You don’t actually see your characters in three dimensions. They look like little icons, or pac men. I’m not one for retro style gaming, it might be a love it or hate it type of choice of tastes. I prefer the newest most cutting edge in graphics and gameplay. The old days don’t hold any charm for me. Also the characters are so tiny and hard to see, it is difficult to know what they are doing. For the amount of graphics that are here, it might as well be a text adventure.

There were a few things that bugged me with this game. Annoyingly your characters will not attack correctly unless they are in range of the enemies and facing the right direction it’s a pet peeve of mine. I thought we were done with that old problem, now that we’re using iPads. I don’t know what they were going for here when they have competition like Order and Chaos by Gameloft to contend with. The group formation and party-wide commands do make the game act more like a strategy game, or even a puzzle game than an RPG.

Another problem is that the four of them are always are always static Minotaur, Female Elf, Human, and Dwarf and are not customizable. There are three classes to choose from for each of the the races in the four member party that changes up their stats, but still not enough to make it interesting, or to keep up with other iOS games. This one still needs some work because when you tap a particular character and nothing happens it leads to unnecessary deaths.

Companions has an inventory system, with randomized drops falling you can collect loot. Although there isn’t any shop, yet anyways. There is a way to control time in the game which is different. Called a ‘tactical pause’ it stops the game while you set up. The time is limited, but it provides a work around for the other troubles in the game.

Though Companions isn’t a perfect game it will appeal to those who like strategy games and don’t mind a challenge. If you go into it without expectations you may find it to your liking. It has the retro ambiance to it that some people really like. For me it’s a Pass, perhaps until there are some updates.

Since then the story has fallen completely off the paranormal radar. What interested me was that the quality of the metals being described as expensive and difficult of not impossible to reproduce. The pictographs them selves were quite interesting, and I’ve considered many different Celtic, Anglo Saxon, Oghams, Pictish and other extinct forms of writing to be close but not it.

What does give the story of the Grasdorf plates have less credence is that they were found below three sets of identical crop circles. Most crop circles that we have seen pictures of are faked. Grasdorf was one of, if not the first crop circle ever discovered. So it could be that it was the first and best hoax, which was later copy catted? Or is it that the first was the only real incident, where the gold, silver and bronze plates were brought up? Who can say now because the plates themselves have been taken into the custody of an unknown private collector.
Looking at the plates one might think of them as a star map. There looks to be a cluster on there of four stars. I couldn’t be the first one to think of the pictograms from the Grasdorf Plates as being a star map of the Trapezium Cluster am I? Studying the photos of the plates only seems to lead to more questions. Perhaps an astronomer could tell us more about the meaning of the pictographs.

If something other than present day humanity did create these plates, then just why was it so important to show us these designs, and what is their significance?

I would love to have the resources that the SyFy network has at their disposal when they send out the Fact or Faked team, they always have the newest cutting edge paranormal and engineering equipment to use. I would like to see radiation tests, and geology tests, ultra sound and dowsing results from that area. A night scan would be great for gathering even more information too.

Some of the background on the incident is that it happened July 22,1991 near Grasdorf in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony. The large German crop circle was not discovered until the next morning by people who were out jogging past the farm. The crop circle was said to be roughly 110 yards long by 55 yards wide. The whole pattern of circles were said to have covered an area of about 6,000 square feet. The pattern consisted of different seven symbols within thirteen circles. One pattern had attached an ‘x’ to the circle, which looks similar to many ancient symbols of the sun.

The location of the find could have archaeological significance. Nearby is the Thieberg, which was a “Thing” or an ancient Teutonic tribal sacred space. The historically rich area in the immediate vicinity is the Wuldenberg, which is an ancient Germanic Wotan sacred site. Like many pre christian sacred locations it was sacked and razed then a church was plopped on top of it by Charlemagne. The Holy Grove of the Teutons, which was fought over right into the Middle Ages, until a feudal lord gave the order to fell the sacred grove in 1273, he was murdered by the people of Grasdorf, and a small war was the result. The enchanted wood stayed untouched until the 19th century. This neo-pagan wonderland has the heritage of ancient Saxon heartland. The spirit of the land there remained alive far longer than in other places and resisted being christened. The grove of the Saxons, had been sacred for at least 4,000 years.

There is a report that someone named Christian Fiedler from Grasdorf had seen an orange colored, pulsing light, that night in the area in question.

The three metal plates were found there one an unusual type of bronze, a very pure silver and a very pure gold disk too. They were said to have been shown at an internationally UFO conference, “Dialogue with the Universe”, in Dusseldorf, Germany in October, 1992. Which I would like to see confirmation of, or clips of.

A piece on the Grasdorf case was made for for the US TV program, “Encounters” in April, 1994. In addition ot os said that:
“Tugingen lawyer, Dr Roemer-Blum, arranged a scientific evaluation at the German Federal Institute for Material Research (Bundesanstalt fur Materialpufung) in Berlin. Their conclusion, after carefully analyzing both plates was: “Plate one (silver color) consisted mainly of quite pure silver, with an additional ingredient accounting for less than 0.1%. The weight of the plate was 4.98kg (11lbs). Plate two (bronze color) consisted of a copper-tin alloy (of which the tin content amounted to 10%-15%), nickel and traces of iron amounting to less than 0.1%”.

Sources at the time reported the silver plate consisted of 99.9% pure silver, even purer than sterling-silver. A spectrographic analysis done of both plates proved that they had not been made from a cast but from some kind of conglomerate of silver nuggets and natural copper and tin pieces of the type found in Germany’s Harz forest, not far from Grasdorf. They had been produced, in an unusual fashion, that could not be determined at the time. Neew testing methods could certainly tell us more if the plates could be brought forward. Some theories of how they were created is by heating metal globs up to a degree that partially melted the metals, or they did it in a low-gravity environment. The gold plate was said to be made from some of the finest quality that had been seen by the examiner.