Any advice? (without sinking to the depths of walkthrough-like detail) Is the manual any help? I have the feeling this game might take a while to hook me, but it does/ I "get it" I also think it will eat a lot of my time.

Have a pro (well, somewhat more advanced than you) tip: if you're taking too much damage and deal too little - you're probably not supposed to be in the area you attempt yet. Also, do you know what you're supposed to be doing at the moment?

Not really. I'm guessing that the "very very deep" place is supposed to be traversed after the "slightly high" place? Maybe if I am stll stuck in a few days I'll feel the need to ask what I'm supposed to be doing, but that is the kind of thing I would like to discover for myself.

Yeah that's a beginners trap. Go the other way, lol.

The worst part is that when you can finally traverse through that area, they give absolute crap exp. Guess it would've been easy to exploit at the start if they gave decent amounts.

I disagree - the experience is pretty balanced in the game (as in - you get the amounts you need for leveling up and buying equipment), which is one of a very limited handful of compliments I'm willing to pay this game.

Post-patch, maybe, but pre-patch the skeletons dropped exactly 0 souls. lol

But yeah, sortalike, I'll let you discover the game for yourself, but just know that you are way underpowered to tackle the skeletons at the moment.

Finally, after 38 hours of Sleeping Dogs... 100%.

Can we get a spoiler free yay or nay?

I did it in case no one wanted to see a bland ass picture, but sure there are no spoilers.

I think he wants your final thoughts on the game.

Oh...

Not worth the $49.99 full price, but fun game that will keep you entertained with the melee alone. Collecting things and attaining 100% is why it took so long to complete, but otherwise it's a decent 20 hour (give or take) game that'll have you enjoying the various types of missions and mini-games. Voice acting is fine and the plot is decent. It's a dark game, so expect lots of blood and gore. Most of the mechanical issues have been plugged by patches. Don't expect much out of music, though, as the radio stations in the game suck - ESPECIALLY the Roadrunner Records half-assed station. As much as I like Ghost Reveries by Opeth, I don't think I'll ever want to hear "The Grand Conjuration" for a while.

So yes, get it, but when it's around $29.99.

Honestly with the way Steam is these days, no PC game is worth full price. They nearly always go on sale within months of coming out, so if you have any patience at all it's easy to snag them for at most $19.99 a little down the road. I can't remember the last game I paid full price for.

Yeah if I had an up to date rig I'd still probably never buy anything brand new. I rarely do that as is anyways with consoles too and all. Not worth it and when 1,000 games come out a year, I can keep myself busy with the few I enjoy while waiting for others to drop down in price.


Um, probably what Morrigan said even though I played just a month or two ago, probably post-patched... and maybe I tackled that area way later than the norm, but I swear they were dropping like 50-100 exp. I was getting like 500-1500+ per kill on average everywhere else where I was at the time. Unless your point is for something else, you confused me.

The boss in the catacombs was also the easiest by far. I think there was even some player messages on the ground afterwards that were like "That was it?" or "Boss...?", haha. Apparently there was a ladder around there to the Tomb of the Giants that I missed. That's where I need to go and finish off all the Four Kings.

Should the Demon Ruins be saved for last? That place seems insane, I fought one minotaur which was fun and epic, took awhile... then I see like 12 others standing around in the same area. lol

Demon Ruins is pretty long and epic, at some point it's mostly just a bunch of bosses. Usually I do the Tomb of the Giant last, it's probably the most daunting part of the game, but finishing with Demon Ruins > Lost Izalith is fairly common too. Oh man, Lost Izalith pre-patch was such a nightmare... I'm almost jealous of those who played only post-patch, it's much easier now. Also, one word to describe Lost Izalith: KRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRRKRRRRRR (Dark Souls veterans will know what I mean... if not, try saying it out loud xD)

Oh, did you do the Duke's Archives yet? Pre-cave Seath is an asshole, isn't he?

Minor tip for when you get to the boss Lost Izalith:
Also, tip/minor spoiler regarding Lost Izalith and the Tomb of the Giant:

Get through the RHEM series without a walkthrough and then get back to me

I'm sure I couldn't touch you when it comes to adventure games. lol

@Morrigan: I just got the Covenant of Artorias so I think I was going to go to The Abyss next, then I guess probably the Duke's Archives.

If you're asking about DS - yay, "high place" and "low place" are a good starting point, I'll leave figuring out the wheres and the hows to you.

And Xeorged, I thought you were speaking of something other than the skeleton area. Also I don't know anything about the patch in question since I play it on the PC.

sortalikedream, if you're playing DS on a PC, don't miss out on Durante's dsfix for internal resolution fix, constant 30 FPS goodness and SMAA.

Did any of you guys play Castlevania: Lords of Shadow? I'm a few hours in and it seems pretty cool. Definitely some problems with it but I'm a fan of the series and my brother bought it so I thought I'd give it a play through. I've heard they're making a sequel, too.

I like it quite a bit, but it has the worst opening sections ever, crazy boring. So, if you like it so far, it just gets better. Controls are wonky at times, and the contextualization buttons are rough, but it's pretty good.

I hate it as a Castlevania game, but it's better at being God of War than God of War. Ending was insanely bad though.

Anyone having major Skyrim lag? I went to play it after a long, long time and I noticed the stutter. My PC is tits (I can play Witcher 2 maxed out with no problem for reference) and when I first played it there was never this kind of slowdown. Now the game is unplayable. I cleared out all my mods and started a clean download and installation (steam) and I still have the issue. Can't even get through the intro on the god damn carriage without quitting the game entirely. Is this a 1.7 issue? I also don't have Dawnguard. Video card drivers are good, too.

Yeah, I have a fairly decent pc as well and if I play for more than a couple hours I start seeing memory leaks and such. Change the graphics to a lower setting and it should fix it if you want to play for longer periods of time.

I've been playing Borderlands lately. Gotta say, I'm hooked. Although the bosses tend to be a little difficult- I've been fighting that Sledge guy for like, 45 minutes straight and he hasn't fucking died. Hell- I've even run out of ammunition. Twice!

I thought I was late to the game with this one. I just put Borderlands for the first time about 2 weeks ago [after receiving the GotY edition for christmas '11] and I'm addicted! I can't stop playing it! I actually just beat Sledge last night. Did you pick up the rocket launcher before the fight? I didn't at first, but on my second time around I stumbled upon it right before the elevator to the boss fight, and let me say, it really helps!

I've gone from uninterested to TOTALLY stoked about Borderlands 2.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I put in Resident Evil 5, and was reminded why I hadn't played that game since pretty much right after I picked it up (about January '10, if my memory serves me) and I had it back in its case about 15 minutes after I put it into the XBox. The controls feel clunky and slow. The story so far is terrible. I hate the gun play. Not being able to move while I shoot is terrible. I have never been a huge fan of the RE series, but I gave 4 a chance and it was reasonably fun... RE5 is not.

Rocket Launcher?

Nah, I ran through grabbed a bunch of ammunition and an smg. Perhaps I should go back through

What's your level in relation to the quest level? If the difference is greater than 2, you're just not going to have success.

Random loot, man!

Have to say that Borderlands got boring halfway through the game and I just kept going for the ending. It's just too damn repetitive.

Speaking of Borderlands, I've been almost obsessed with it too recently. Never gave it much thought watching gameplay videos at the time of release, but I just got more curious until I caved in and bought the GOTY edtion 3 weeks ago. Now I love it although the bosses are an absolute pain in thine arse.

Nope, actually I found them fairly easy most of the time. Example: In the Knoxx DLC there's a huge buildup for Mr. Shank. The level leading to him even was kinda hard, but when I got to him I just shot him three times with my badass pumpgun and he's dead. Sledge was a pain in the ass though.

So far my first encounters with bosses seem to always be two levels below theirs, but after leveling up a bit and going back it becomes much easier; just gotta lower shields, shoot, run, shoot more, run.

Except with Scagzilla. Fuck Scagzilla.

Hahahaha, just wait till you get to Mothrakk.

How heavy are the RPG elements in Borderlands? I love RPGs, and am not so enamored with FPS's. I bought Halo: Reach and my roommate plays it way more than I do.

Diablo's loot system and some kind of a cross between Fallout and Ocarina of Time. Someone else could probably give a better answer than me though... I've only been playing for a few days now.

Yes,

Uh maybe, never played,

.....??? How so?

Sortalike: the RPG "elements" are thin, I'd say, and I'm pretty liberal in my definition of an RPG. It works for me, though, and I'm really, really not a fan of FPSs either*. So yeah you have random loot with random stats like in Diablo and you have a very minimalist skill tree for your character, who otherwise levels up just to gain more health and power.

*In fact, I played it on Steam (with an Xbox controller xD) using a mod or keyboard shortcut thing that allowed me to put it in third person, at least at first. But for some reason that kept getting reset and I got tired of changing it, so eventually I stayed in first-person and got sorta used it (except for the jumping which always sucks in first person).

Borderlands is better in coop, IMO. It's a fun game but the quests are often trite and repetitive, I wish they had put more thought and work into them. Also it's a really, really easy game. I didn't die that often and I'm a complete FPS noob (the kind who refuses to play with mouse/keyboard, y'know), I also tweaked the config file to play on harder difficulty and I was still overpowered for most quests because they weren't really balanced (if you did all the subquests or even most of them you'd gain enough experience to be at least one, if not two levels over the recommended level for the main story quest). Even when I played in single player, I rarely struggled.
Oh and that stupid robot needs to die a painful death. He's not funny, he's just annoying and lame.

With the whole class mod thing. Sure it wasn't as advanced in OoT, but you did have added benefits with the tunic from the fire temple or water temple and so on. I think... I'm still getting the hang of Borderlands. I could be way off


also that feeling when your about to get second life or whatever and you run out of ammo. when your enemy has like 1 hp left

Claptrap's New Robot Revolution DLC is the answer to that non-question.

I hated every single moment I had to hear him.

I couldn't get past the middle of Borderlands. It was fun at the beginning, but it started getting boring as HELL and I couldn't be bothered to finish it.

Exactly, though I pushed myself to finish it and there were still a few interesting moments, it was mostly doing the exact same thing over and over again in slightly different settings. They could as well have named the game Ultimate Grinding.

It does drag in the middle but got way better when you start fighting the... military guys, whatever they were called. I loved it again from that point on.

It had the worst ending ever, but overall I had a ton of fun with the game. 2's gonna be off the charts.

What was changed about Lost Izalith to make it easier? For me, Dark Souls on release was a bitch because summoning people was basically impossible. Which looking back, wasn't necessarily a horrible thing. I feel like people are kind of missing something when they go through their first playthrough summoning people for every boss.