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Sunday, December 25, 2011

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review

When The Elder Scrolls: Arena saw its release in 1994 for DOS computers, it arrived under the pretext that you could be who you want and do what you want, the essence of the RPG genre. In the games that followed, – Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion – The Elder Scrolls franchise held true to that mantra while concurrently growing in both scope and ambition with every step. And now, with Bethesda’s fifth game in the series, Skyrim feels in every way like the next logical stage in the evolution of The Elder Scrolls. It is bigger, bolder, and – thanks to the new Creation Engine – prettier than its predecessors, and every bit as engaging. Considering the pedigree, this is not an achievement to be taken lightly. Here is a game that doesn’t just command endless hours of time; you will willingly give them up. The few gripes are ultimately inconsequential, not impactful or plentiful enough to tarnish the experience. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is likely to go down in history not only as one of the best RPGs of all time, but as one of the best games, period.



Set 200 years after the events of Oblivion, Skyrim is more of a spiritual successor to the previous game rather than a direct sequel. Things start off with your as-yet-unnamed character sharing a prisoner’s carriage with other criminals, set to be executed by beheading. You’ll catch grumblings of the state of things in Skyrim during the transport; the High King has been assassinated, resulting in a civil war between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, of which you are assumed to be a member. As you are being sentenced you’ll get your hands on the extensive character customization options. Pick from ten different playable races each with their own unique attributes and spend an inordinate amount of time changing the way your character’s face looks – if you want to, of course, as the tools are there, even if you won’t see your character’s face much at all in the hours to come. But just as your character is about to join the headless party, a dragon attacks the town in jaw-dropping fashion. And thus you have the primary crux of Skyrim: Defeat this new threat to the world, the dragons.

No matter which character race you choose, you can continue along any of the three primary classes as you go: mage, warrior, or thief. But these ultimately serve as guides rather than rules. Instead of an obvious tally of “experience points,” advancing character levels in Skyrim is accomplished through the consistent leveling-up of individual skills, in turn accomplished by simply using said skills. Make the conscious decision to traverse the mage’s path but end up with a particular fondness for one-handed weapons? Hit a bunch of enemies with the mace and watch your skills improve. At first decide to be a warrior but develop a propensity for fire? Set foes ablaze and gain advances in Destruction Magic. Starting from one skill path might hurry things along in that appropriate stream, but you’re absolutely free to decide what kind of character you want to be whenever you want to be it, provided you are willing to put in the time to learn.

With enough skill advancements, you’ll begin gaining full character levels, choosing from a vast array of “perks” with each level, separated into the individual skill categories. From here, you can choose combat perks like improving weapon damage or magic usage, or you can advance your character in other ways such as lock-picking, weapon/armor-smithing, or speech (improving bartering skills and persuade/intimidation successes). There are tons of different options here that compliment numerous different play styles, and you’ll have to spend many, many hours in the world of Skyrim to even attempt to try them all.

But that’s just the thing with Skyrim: you’ll want to spend that much time in its world. The dragon menace is the all-encompassing issue facing the land, and following this main plot line tells a wonderful tale of the Dovahkiin (the “dragonborn”), the Greybeards, and your Thu’um – your voice – and the important role it plays. The story does an admirable job of feeling truly important and world-changing from start to finish. Walking through a town making small talk with the citizens and being attacked by a dragon never ceases to be awe-inducing.

As satisfying as the primary quest-line is, where Skyrim truly shines is everywhere in between. Your quest to discover and defeat the source of the dragon scourge will take you to the corners of the huge game world and beyond, but you’ll never get from point A to point B without discovering something. And this discovery won’t be just a valuable gem, rare weapon, or the occasional cave. You’ll discover entire communities, complete with their own personalities and social issues that are completely unrelated to the primary scope of the plot. The major civil war between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, House Grey-Mane feuding with House Battle-Born, the Mage’s College of Winterhold making new and potentially dangerous discoveries, and even an aging man’s fascination with the Elder Scrolls themselves… Skyrim is ripe with self-contained struggles large and small all across the land. This establishment of a complete, living and breathing world is perhaps most evident after completing all of the primary quests. It is at this time that it becomes clear that even after the devastating world threat has been quelled, every single remaining issue in Skyrim still exists. Simply, life goes on, and there is still much to do.

While the sprawling land of Skyrim is Bethesda’s crowning achievement to date, the combat mechanics and presentation are also at a high point in the franchise of The Elder Scrolls. When wielding a shield and a sword, the block-and-counter combat results in a satisfying combination of technique and the spoils of skill advancement. Successfully sneaking up behind an enemy and quietly taking them down is as satisfying as ever. Magic-using is vastly expanded with the introduction of powerful “Shouts” and the ability to assign the same spell to both hands, resulting in powerful dual-wield attacks. And the Creation Engine helps the world come alive all throughout. If you can see a mountain in the distance, you can get to it. Begin scaling it and you’ll be witness to weather changes as the swirling wind and dynamic snowfall bring about shivers of your own. And when you do reach its peak, you’ll look down, astounded that not long ago you were in that town that now seems so tiny in the valley below. The more you explore, the more that the epic scope of Skyrim will sink into your skin. Even the standard interaction with townsfolk feels more natural, as Skyrim has dispensed with the awkward “chat mode” that zoomed in on characters’ faces in games past, instead opting for conversation that takes place right there in the game world with no obvious changes to the UI. It’s a small adjustment, but it makes a tangible difference in immersion, which is further aided by the surprisingly short load times throughout.

The few issues with Skyrim are not with the core game design, and are thankfully not likely to be permanent on the PC. While effective, the aforementioned user interface is undoubtedly geared towards the use of a console controller and can feel a bit clunky when employing a mouse and keyboard. It does not take advantage of the myriad of keys that a PC player is presented with and comes off rather menu-heavy, resulting in periods of pausing and searching that seem unnecessary and otherwise avoidable. Fortunately, the game plays quite well with a controller, as its pure gameplay doesn’t require the meticulous, instant, pinpoint aiming that an action-oriented FPS would. And for those hoping for an optimized PC interface, the mod community is hard at work, having already released multiple UI overhauls that make much more effective use of the tools available to PC users. The remaining gripes come in the form of occasional glitches and crashes to desktop, but they’re neither crippling nor numerous, and Bethesda has already begun to roll out patches to fix issues as they arise. For a game so large in scope, it is – dare I say – surprising that there are so few launch issues, which is either a boon to Bethesda or a result of the sad release state of games in the current generation; take your pick. Either way, it’s difficult to consider these easily surmounted and ignorable issues as true “problems” when they simply do not get in the way of the overall experience, and are temporary, at that.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a game that undoubtedly meets its lofty ambitions. By encouraging exploration that is consistently rewarded with satisfying discovery, Bethesda has created a game world that invites you to become lost in it for hours with no true end in sight. Enthralling open-area dragon battles complement the well-designed and claustrophobic dungeons, all while setting a new standard in the scope and presentation of the role-playing genre. Completing the engaging primary line of quests can actually leave you feeling like you’ve only scratched the surface of what Skyrim has to offer. From scaling mountains to descending into caves, from slaying giants and mammoths to defeating vampire and werewolf cults, from reading countless texts and books to aiding the everyday struggles of townsfolk, the situations offered by Skyrim seem infinite. Your personal experience is likely to differ from everyone else’s, and you cannot soon enough begin your foray into one of the finest RPGs ever crafted.

 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Download

Friday, December 16, 2011

How To Get .edu and .gov Backlinks For Free!

If you are a blogger then you must be aware of the importance of having at least one .edu backlink for your blog. If you are not aware of what .edu backlink can do for you then I am explaining it here and in this post I am going to tell you how to search for .edu sites which allows you to comment and by that way, you can earn a valuable backlink for your blog. I hope you will like it as usual!

First thing first. Well, .edu is a domain which can be owned only by the education institute so they are not in a bunch like .com domains. Normally, .edu have better PR and search engine rankings so getting a backlink from those blogs can get you too a high PR and a better search engine rankings.

Due to spammers, some of the sites having .edu domain has decided to make their links nofollow instead of dofollow. So try your luck!  Below I am showing you the method of searching Google for .edu sites which allows you to comment on their articles in which you can include an HTML code with a link to your site.

Find the right sites

It is not always enough for you to know about any of the college, university or a school blog which has an .edu domain. So you should know what exactly you want and how to search for it. Below is the first command to have a simple list of .edu sites. Go to Google and perform a search.

site:.edu inurl:blog

Focusing on good blogs

Our aim is to have only those results in search which allows us to comment. Blogs on .edu sites which doesn’t allow us to comment are useless for us so we will have to narrow down the search only to those which blogs allow to post a comment to it. Use the line below and perform a search.

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment”

Removing useless blogs

Now after getting a result of blogs which allows you to comment on their post, you will need to remove all those blogs and articles on which the comments have been closed or not allowed after several days. You will also need to remove al those blogs which can allow comments only if you are logged in. So now copy the below line and perform a search.

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in”

Finding the right niche

Now after performing the search from the above point, you will need to find the right niche as per your site or blog you own so that you get a proper backlink traffic. This will get you some targetted traffic as per SEO and also earn you a backlink. Use the line given below and perform the search and you will get the final result.

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “seo”

You can replace the word “seo” as per your need.

Leaving a comment

After getting the result and selecting the blog article of your niche, its time to leave a comment there. You will need to act a bit wisely here. You will have to leave a sensible comment as per the article topic. Writing just one line with your blog link might not help you getting your comment approved. So be sensible in leaving a comment.

For .gov blogs, it is all the same, but instead site:.edu , you write site:.gov, everything else is the same.

Well, this is all you have to do to get an .edu backlink for your blog and believe me, it can create wonders for your blog if you succeed in getting couple of backlinks from a blog which has higher pagerank ! Wish you all the best.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

FB Influence, the Ultimate Facebook Marketing Guide

Facebook Influence or FB Influence is one of the most complete and thorough guides you will find that is up to date and actually produces results when it comes to marketing on facebook. In case you are not up to speed on the real time internet we are experiencing, Facebook marketing is one of the best ways anyone can get started advertising for their businesses, products, and services.

What is Facebook FB Influence?


Facebook Influence is co-created by Amy Porterfield, Lewis Howes, and Sean Malarkey is courses full of marketing strategies that can help you explode your Facebook presence to create traffic, generate leads, and increase your profits all from one place.

Let’s be real as the Internet era is exploding right now social media platforms and Facebook is king out of all of them. Facebook is already approaching 1 billion members and is the site where everyone online is spending time. The truth is most successful business depends on people, to be in business you got to have people interested in what you got to offer and this is one of the main reasons why you simply can’t ignore Facebook.

You can’t ignore Facebook Marketing because:

• Facebook is the largest social network with almost 1 billion members, users, and businesses
• Everyday Facebook users like or comment around the web over a staggering 2 billion times.
• Facebook users post over an unheard of 30 billion articles and pieces of content every month.
• Facebook has already reach 1 trillion page views in June 2011.

All of these facebook statistics are great, but what can that mean to you and your business? The Facebook Ad Marketing platform is simply an amazing source for lead creations and has the potential to attract real quality prospects has no limits if you know what your doing. Up until now, there have been many facebook marketing courses, guides, and tips all over the internet, but the new FB Influence is easily one of the best all in one solutions for all of your facebook business needs.

Because of Facebook’s online success and presence, the potential to grow your business through this social media platform can not be ignored. If you are seriously interested in branding and creating followers for your products and services, facebook marketing with FB Influence is an absolute must. You must have a plan you can implement to start taking advantage of Facebook. That’s exactly what Facebook Influence can do for you.

Facebook influence is simply the complete step-by-step program for leveraging Facebook drive traffic to your pages and start building your brand.

The Facebook FB Influence Marketing Complete Course covers everything:

• Tricks to attract highly targeted prospects that want to do business with you.
• How to start getting leads 24/7.
• A simple and powerful way to help you get testimonials on autopilot.
• How to start getting recognized as a powerful leader in your industry, fast and simple.
• What to say to your leads and how you should phrase your titles.
• A simple but powerful paragraph to create fans and a community of follower that will help you spread the word.

If your Facebook presence is still a little weak, you know its time to stop wasting your energy and time and dive right into Facebook and make it work for you. This program will give you everything you need to know to make it happen plus Amy Porterfield is a master on creating real solid relationships and creating marketing strategies to help capture your customer.

Who is Amy Porterfield?

These two internet marketing leaders have been around the industry for many years now with very well established and reputable careers to date. Amy has worked for many top notch names and businesses along the way, and Lewis Howes has even been on major networks and helped them with their own promotion through facebook.

amy porterfield facebook influenceAmy really concentrates on the best proven strategies to increase your Facebook fans in just 2 days and how you can position yourself as the #1 expert in your field no matter what experience level you might currently have. She also has many FB Influence bonus offers like five little known ways to attract highly-targeted prospects on autopilot using your facebook business pages and easy marketing tactics.

She has even focused and written a book called Facebook Marketing all in one for dummies that has 9 books rolled up into 1 with all of the latest facebook marketing trends and knowledge you need to know to get your business off the ground.

Facebook Influence Bonus Offers

As if this was not already a steal of a deal in getting so much value in the FB Influence marketing course, they offer a handful of highly valuable bonus offers 100% free. Some of these facebook influence bonus offers are amazing as many people on the FB Influence Facebook page said they would have gladly paid for just for receiving so much value in the FBInfluence course.

Instead of reviewing you all of the bonus offers, just head on over to the FB Influence page and you will see what we mean with the incredible value these bonuses have.

Fbinfluence - The #1 Facebook Product On CB

 

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