Congrats. Man I can't wait to see how you deal with future bosses... ^^

Oh look, for the PSN holiday sale, Bloodborne is only $10 ($8 for PS+ members). Complete edition with DLC is less discounted but still a good deal at $25/$20. (Weirdly enough, in CAD, the regular game is $12 CAD for PS+ members, but the complete edition is the same at $20... so Canadian members get an advantage here?)

For those who were still hesitating, I don't think it's ever been that low, and it's the best game on PS4. Go go go

reminds me of when I first played DSII and basically went straight to The Rotten instead of the "normal" progression. I didn't read anything about it on first playthru and that area was soo unbelievably annoying at low level. By the time I finally beat it I was completely out of all my resources and flicking off the screen vigorously after I finally killed the boss!

Tried two demos today.

First was Nier: Automata. The older Nier game was some sort of cult classic (never played and it honestly looked like shit but what do I know), and now Platinum's involved which has everything going OMG HYYYYYPE. I'm not a Platinum fan but whatever, it's a free demo, who knows, maybe they'll finally convince me...

....Haha nope. That demo was garbage.
The constantly changing camera is annoying, combat is boring, too many interruptions and nonsense scripted sequences and the enemy encounters were very dull, story and characters were of zero interest (mediocre English VA too) and the game is ugly as sin in every way (technical: jaggies everywhere; environments: brown, brown and more brown oh btw here's, guess what MORE BROWN; character designs: disgusting -- seriously everything was honestly horrible looking). Even the music was underwhelming, after all the hype I heard about the music in these games I was not impressed.

The only good thing about it was the fully customizable control scheme. Oh and I guess the controls were responsive (to be expected since it's Platinum) and it's 60 fps on consoles (still can't explain the ugliness, DS2 and Nioh are 60 fps and look way better because they have decent art and a minimal effort at having shadows and AA), but it was zzz to play.

~~

Second was Gravity Rush 2. Haven't played the first one so I can't compare. But it's a pretty original game. Combat is a bit clunky, but it doesn't appear to be the main focus (I hope). The main attraction is that you can fly. Literally fly, pretty much everywhere (it depletes a gauge so you can't abuse it all the time, but it's fairly generous). Also a cat follows you around. And the environments are kinda cool. And there's cute comic book-style vignettes for cut scenes and an invented language like in Panzer Dragoon! I think I might like this game, though if the final game has too much combat I can see it being a bit annoying. I hope there's puzzle solving and stuff. It's already way more fun and interesting than Nier, that's for sure.

Soooo, rather than jump back into Path of Exile, I decided to give Diablo 3 a spin. I do have a soft spot for Diablo-like games, so owed it to myself to give this game a fair go.

I honestly can't remember how my first PoE playthrough went, but I've been steadily jacking up the difficulty in Diablo 3 and have basically not had any trouble at all. My health pool never really drops in any appreciable way, with the sole exception of enemies who are able to freeze me (which seems too last WAY too long) but even so I basically have a 100% foolproof failsafe as one of my passive skills, which makes any killing blow that would have landed on me instead take me to 15% HP with 95% global damage reduction against me for several seconds, with a 60 second cooldown, which effectively makes me unkillable. Maybe things will change once I get more toward the endgame, but at the moment this game is a hilariously easy walk in the park compared to PoE. At the same time, though, the lack of customization is notable; it really does feel like a single-player MMO in the Diablo vein more than anything else, especially considering the difficulty. Play the "single player" content in most MMO's and it'll be a faceroll as well, with the real challenge coming from group-oriented combat. Hopefully things get more tactical and challenging in the late game, but at the same time I hope the game is less grindy that PoE.

Kinda like WoW, Diablo 3 is meant to be super-easy until you get onto the endgame hamster wheel, where you'll be repeatedly punched in the dick until you step up your game...or find the right armor set. And even then, you can keep ratcheting up the difficulty until you end up at Greater Rift 91+ and literally every single enemy will turn you into a grease stain in one hit.

Yeah I haven't played Diablo 3 myself, but my brother loves it so I've seen him play a fair bit of it. On one hand, he's put untold hours into the game and upgraded himself into a force to be reckoned with, but on the other hand no matter which stage of the game I saw him playing, regardless of difficulty, he was still just steamrolling everything with no real threat of dying. I remember Morri saying it was way too easy as well. Maybe it's fun regardless, my brother is a seasoned Dark Souls player as well so I know he loves a good challenge, but I dunno, seemed kinda dull to me.

Sure, but that said I've got a couple different MMO's' endgames under my belt. I was doing essentially the hardest content in vanilla WoW and not only doing the hardest content in LotRO but also knocking out server firsts (and damn near a couple of world firsts) so I'm not particularly worried about a game like Diablo kicking my ass in that regard.

Yeah Diablo 3 has like... no meaningful campaign. They only pretend they have one but it's almost impossible to die. It's all about the end-game grind and... well, fuck that. Boring as shit.

That moment when you're playing Rocket League with randoms and get shit-talked the whole game after being down 0-4 until 2:00 left, then make the comeback and win 6-5...and blow them the hell away 4-0 in the next game...and they still shit-talk when you're countering everything they can throw at you.

So this boss is considered hard. But I've found a way to break the game and fuck him up so fast, the music in his second phase didn't have time to kick in:



Defiled Hotdog/Amy were still a pain, though. ;_; I switched back to the saw cleaver for Amy because fuck that noise, I need the range.

Killing that guy so fast that you don't get to hear the second part of his OST must feel really anti-climactic I actually almost like to drag that fight out, if only because it's such an epic set up and I don't want it to end once I'm in the zone.

I never bothered to play Diablo 3 because one of my friends (who started playing D2 with me in 1999; actually his dad bought it so I went over there every day to play) told me that it was awful and nothing like D2. The "Pay to Win" shit also killed it for me, which is the major reason I don't play many new games. The loot system isn't as good, the flashy WOW-type visual presentation is NOTHING like Diablo should be, and the skills suck.

Pay to Win? This hasn't been true of D3 for years now.

Careful with that E-peen man, it's an antique.

So for the first time in about 2 years I've got into a video game. It's a 2D open world survival game akin to Terraria called Starbound. They've changed about quite a lot since I last played it (so much so that my old save was wiped, but no matter!) and I've also learnt that I suck really bad at it. A fun game though, making good progress in the fairly standard story they've implemented.

Sure, but so are the game mechanics so it's all gravy.

As for the actual Diablo-ness of the game...there's still some there, I guess, but the addition of several WoW-isms definitely changes the experience. The main negative so far is that the change in visual style mixed with the much more forgiving difficulty level takes away a lot of the fear factor that made D2 great. The game also seems pretty aware of it's own categorically less intense nature, as the bosses you're after are Lesser Evils rather than the three Prime Evils you took on and defeated in D2. So in that "diablo factor" I'd say Path of Exile does have it beat.

With regard to the actual game mechanics, it's typical Blizzard, really. Basically just take all of the archaic and unforgiving stuff from previous iterations of the game and, instead of really coming up with innovative new systems, just change what was there so that everyone's happy, stripping away some character and a lot of challenge in the process. Annoyed that great items keep dropping for other classes? Fine, the only stuff that drops will be for your class! Annoyed about item stat requirements? Just get rid of them and give melee classes a flat damage reduction rather than have them be able to wear high str/dex armor. Skill tree unforgiving of mistakes? Fine, just make it so you can change specs on the fly with zero cost or investment.

I dunno, maybe it'll be a different experience at endgame or with other classes, but playing on the hardest available difficulty (Expert) it really does seem impossible to take notable damage except when I get frozen, and seems like it would always be impossible to die.

You haven't unlocked any of the Torment difficulty levels yet? I thought they opened up pretty early on.

No, you need to get pretty far into the game to unlock them. It's ridiculous.

Decided to gift myself with DS:Scholar of the First Sin today, couldn't find in any local stores, need to get it from internet... and the new dota patch sucks soo much, maybe Ill make a new char for the first DS... or take a break from games.

Over the past week, I finished the two Boxboy games on 3DS. Highly recommended if you like puzzle games. These titles have a surprising amount of mechanics in them.

The 2.0 patch that came out alongside Reaper of Souls totally gutted D3's campaign. D3 vanilla was not a cakewalk like D3 currently is. Beating Inferno Diablo solo self-found was harder than beating Hell Baal singleplayer, IMO. Both in terms of gearcheck and player skill.

Since the game is online-only, you can't play vanilla D3 anymore, so don't play D3 unless you want to grind rifts endlessly, since that's all the game is good for now.

I picked up a bunch of games from the playstation store on week 4 of the holiday sale: Odin Sphere, Bridge, Witcher 3 complete, The Talos Principle, Unravel, and Viking Squad. I probably should have tried to post this yesterday since the sale is now over

Odin Sphere is so freaking good, beautiful artwork and gameplay from Atlus/Vanillaware and it's infinity times better than stupid FFXV! I played Bridge for about an hour and holy shit what a trippy, dark and twisted game, for $2.50 what a fucking steal. Unravel looks incredible although I haven't played it yet, but I would definitely check it out since it's still super cheap. Viking Squad seems like a great Castle Crasher/Golden Axe party multiplayer game.

I have no idea how The Talos Principle plays, but for $7.50 instead of $50 and its glowing reviews I couldn't pass it up.

Huh, interesting to read that.

Anyway it took one day after hitting lvl 70 before I got geared up enough to start doing mid-to-high Torment difficulty stuff. I still have yet to die though I have come close a couple of times. The big bummer is that basically I've seen all of the content that there is now, with only higher Torment levels still to work on, and I know exactly what I need to do to be able to do it (basically, just improve a couple of gear slots, which will drastically pump up my damage output so that I can focus more on damage reduction multipliers in other areas in order to not get killed).

On one hand I do appreciate how quick you get get a character to endgame in D3, but on the other hand the lack of content challenging enough to be gated behind high-end endgame gear kind of saps away a huge amount of impetus to keep playing after you have that level of equipment. But, I'm a sucker for min/maxing in games like this, so I'll keep playing for now.

Just curious, does anyone here mess around with gaming YouTube stuff? I've started uploading (slowly) some of the games I play to my channel. I enjoy watching others do gameplays and whatnot. If you have one, show me your channel and I'll sub it. Here's mine (for those interested in that kind of stuff): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDOHNo ... GZ0WDQU9Tg

Odin Sphere Leifthrasir is indeed pretty awesome. Just finished the second character's playthrough. It's a bit repetitive, like all Vanillaware titles, but the shuffling of levels and bosses, the unique character abilities, and the unique bosses per character are just enough to keep me going.

That said, so far I only stick to the earlier abilities picked up by the characters. Even though I unlock more abilities, it feels like either the early ones are better, or I already invested phozons to upgrade them so I keep to them instead of being spread too thin. Hah.

Yeah, I just got to the 2nd character last night, but I also stuck with a lot of the earlier abilities for Gwen. The needle strike and spinning forward dash ability were just too good not to use. I wish there were a few more hotkeys, but other than that everything is awesome. I used some of the more powerful spells "manually" by just pressing L1 and selecting it when I didn't have it on a hotkey. 2 of my friends at work also just started playing it so it will be interesting to see what everybody thinks

Unlocked Mercedes, she is quite fun! The bow + persistent flying really changes the fighting style.
Too bad she's such a garbage character though. I mean none of them are great and the story is just pompous jumbled nonsense regardless of character, but ugh, she's such a fucking moeblob. >_<

Also, LOL

CNN uses screenshot from ‘Fallout 4’ to show how Russians hack things

moeblob, is that some weaboo shit? lol

That Fallout 4 thing was funny, there have been a thousand memes making fun of it since that happened. Good stuff.

Yeah I can't believe everyone playing Fallout 4 has actually been working for the Russians all this time! I don't know what a moeblob is either, but I like it. Odin is the worst leg day skipping offender of all time:

Yep. You know that ultra-cutesy saccharine style with the really cute soft little voice... yeeesh.

Oooh, yeah. I know what you mean, thankfully I don't watch a ton of anime but I'm familiar with that type of character. The only convincing "cute" little anime girls that are actually adorable IMO are the ones from Ghibli. The sisters in Totoro were so awesome.

Yeah, Ghibli cute is actually good/legit kind of cute. Moe is something else, and there's always something vaguely creepy about it too.

Vaguely? Some of that shit looks like it was created for the Japanese equivalent of Gary Glitter.

I was browsing Steam looking for game demos, and the only demos available were all for fourth-rate indie games. Several years ago, I thought indie games might revitalize the game industry, but now I actually avoid most indie games because they're usually either derivative, low-rent, shoddy crap or "meta"/"art" games that seem more dedicated to making their designers feel clever than entertaining the player.

Ys Origin has a demo and it sold me on the game. Try that?

For good indies, what kind of games are you looking for? Action, RPG, Metroidvania, puzzle, adventure...?

So I caved in and re-bought Dark Souls II, though this time for my PS4, and the Scholar of the First Sin version (all DLC's included), for $30, so a bargain... Been speed running through in co-op to get to the DLC's as quick as possible (though The Iron Keep still fucked us up haha), and has been fun as fucking all hell, even if I do Prefer DS III overall, and The Gutter/Black Gulch still sucks balls just as I remember, but Jesus... The first DLC area we got in to - Shulva, Sanctum City, has been a downright tough struggle. Poised out the arse enemies are not the only problem as the city itself is a maze of torment (pun intended), and the large Aztec-styled pyramid is a pure death trap! How do you fight a ghost? Left a sizeable chunk of souls where that first bastard is, and now have to brave it all the way through again, after I packed it away at 2am this morning haha

All in all, I'm late to this deathly party, but well worth it. So much brutal fun. Hopefully there will be more than one DLC for Dark Souls 3.

I really liked The Gutter because of the torch lighting and it reminded me of Blighttown, but yes, Black Gulch is fucking crap and irritating level design at its finest.

I only played the first DLC, and it is pretty damn good. A better area than all of the stuff in the Vanilla game.

Regarding the ghosts, you need to find their stone bodies and destroy them. Destroying those makes those enemies vulnerable for the rest of your play through.

I aint even gonna bother with the new DS3 dlc, can't FROM come up with anything new instead of just rehashing DS1 things? i feel most of DS3 was just like "you remember this from DS1 don't you? well here it is again! woo nostalgia!"

DS1 is far superior

Man I hate Wolfenstein: The New Order after playing through Doom 2016 sooo many times now. It feels chopped up, inconsistent and slow. I guess my standards have raised, cause I still loved that game last year.
Still nice worldbuilding and scenario though.

sorry if its been talked about but what do people think of resident evil 7? i think its a huge step forward though vomit on a stick is a step up on 6 from what i have heard