WINNER ANNOUNCED: Congratulations to Mr. Nerve Damage!

Three and a half months ago, give or take a few days, Bethesda released the second of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s DLC packs: Hearthfire. Hearthfire allowed the player to build his or her own homes across Skyrim, customizing each one (to a certain extent) as the player pleased. It wasn’t really an action-packed release, but focused more on the actual role-playing elements of the game in allowing you to expand your character’s holdings in Tamriel. If you haven’t had a chance to build, here you go. Read the full story

Show of hands: who hasn’t had the opportunity to play Skyrim yet? If you’re one of the unlucky ones who aren’t able to raise your hand to this question, then you don’t know what you’re missing…or you know exactly what you’re missing, but you just don’t have the money available to not miss it. Either way, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an absolutely fantastic game. As with any game in The Elder Scrolls series, there is DLC. Skyrim’s first DLC, Dawnguard, arrived on XBLA in June, and became available for PC players yesterday, during QuakeCon. At 1600MSP/$19.99, it comes at quite a price. Does it live up to the cost? Read the full story

I’ve been re-watching a couple of episodes of Scrubs each morning before heading to work over the past few weeks (I’m in Season 6 now), so it should come as no surprise that the title of Marooners’ Talk Episode 033 is reminiscent of most Scrubs episode titles. “My First Import” comes after a missed episode last week, due to houseguests, and is one man short (Thom wasn’t feeling too “hit,” whatever that’s supposed to mean), but we managed to soldier on and get content out to you. We discuss the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut DLC, Skyrim’s Dawnguard DLC, Nintendo’s post-E3 E3 press conference (along with the lack of included power adapter for Japan/Euro 3DS XL and their reactive position vs. their past proactive/innovative position), and Anarchy Reigns’ North American delay to Q1 2013 (along with its availability fully localized and region free in Japan as Max Anarchy on July 5th, hence the episode title). Read the full story

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Skyrim’s upcoming expansion package, Dawnguard, has been given a release date. Apparently revealed at E3, this particular piece of information came our way via the Facebook page for The Elder Scrolls. Keep your eyes open for Dawnguard coming to XBLA on June 26th. Read the full story

Today’s episode goes just a smidge over our general hour-ish limit, clocking in at about two hours. Ok, maybe more than just a smidge, but it was fun, and screw you for judging me. Episode 031, titled “Too Cool for E3,” covers a wide range of topics. Insert a clever segue here, leading into Dawnguard and its beta, Injustice: Gods Among Us, LEGO Lord of the Rings, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, Hitman: Absolution, Diablo 3, cats, Mists of Pandaria, Bulletstorm, the Gears of War prequel, the Wii and Wii U and Nintendo’s future in the hardware business, Marooners’ Nosh as a response to Kotaku’s “Snacktaku” ridiculousness, and the hypocritical nature of Polygon’s creation as a counter to the standards of the industry while doing nothing more than rehashing the same practices that…well, nevermind. You’ll see. Read the full story

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I’m going to keep this one short and sweet. I’ve put over 120 hours into a single playthrough of Skyrim, and I held out replaying it when the patch hit adding so much fun stuff because I knew that additional play content would be out soon. Well, soon translates to this summer, and additional play content is the already announced Dawnguard add-on. It will be available for 1600MSP on the XBLM, with no mention of PC/PSN pricing. Doesn’t matter to me, I play on 360, and I’m getting psyched to CARVE A PATH OF DESTRUCTION THROUGH WHATEVER IT THROWS MY WAY. Read the full story

Today, along with confirmation that Bethesda is currently “hard at work” putting together the first Xbox 360 wave of new quests, locations, and more, we learned that, sometime this month, we will be receiving a free patch update to Skyrim with some big additions. Well, I suppose you could say one big addition that affects multiple aspects of the game, but either way, voice commands via Xbox 360 Kinect are making their way to Skyrim. Aside from the highly desirable, and somewhat obvious ability to speak in the Dragon’s tongue and activate Shouts, you will be able to issue ally commands, quickly change your left/right/dual equipped items, navigate your level constellations, quick save/load, sort items, navigate the map, and more. Curious to see it in action? Check out the video below: Read the full story

The original idea for this episode of the Marooners’ Talk podcast was to really get into our anticipated titles for the rest of calendar year 2012. While we eventually got around to that, I believe our first 30-45 minutes focused on Internet providers, Doctor Who, used games, and various other topics. Come to think of it, the last 15 minutes kind of got off topic, too, so you’ve got about 45-50 minutes of anticipation discussion in “Looking Forward,” Episode 023 of Marooners’ Talk. Read the full story

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It’s difficult for me to give Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning a fair shake right now. I’ve spent over 100 hours of the last 30 days running around the nearly unrestricted world of Skyrim, and it’s hard to transition from that kind of freedom and visual experience to the more visually Fablesque and linear style of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning without missing it. I loved Fable, I adored Fable II, and I liked Fable III, so it’s not that I dislike the visual style, world design, or gameplay of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning…it’s kind of like a “How can I follow that!?” feeling when being asked to perform after something legendary. That being said, playing the demo was very interesting. I did miss the depth of Skyrim, which I was playing immediately before trying the demo for Reckoning, but you know…Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning isn’t trying to be Skyrim, and making a comparison to Skyrim, while it will unfortunately occur, is unfair. Read the full story

I know I probably said this in the last episode (This is Episode 12), as well, but this time I mean it: Marooners’ Talk is returning to a weekly format! WOOO! FANFARE AND APPLAUSE! Today’s episode of Marooners’ Talk, titled “The One Where We Talk About Some Games…And Shit” (so titled because I forgot to think of a title prior to recording) marks episode 13 of our on-again/off-again series, and marks the first episode of a (hopefully) consistent string of weekly recordings. Read the full story

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