Started playing The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles recently. Loving it. So far, it's a great modern point 'n' click adventure. Puzzles so far have been quite logical. And, of course, it looks freaking beautiful.

Just came here to say.. Dark Souls.
Currently spent about 120 hours on it. Probably spent double that amount on Demon's Souls. I sleep during the day. Fucking summer.

I need a Microsoft account to play Dark Souls? Which I bought on Steam?? What???

Now I can't even fucking activate it because when I try it says my live ID is blocked or something (not sure how to translate the error).

Edit: Okay, it seems I can play offline with an offline account. Still fucking dumb.

Well, yeah, I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, but fuck Microsoft. Pain in the ass.

Yeah, well basically if I ever want to play that game online I need to register a Games For Windows Live account. I tried that with fake credentials but I couldn't activate the game for some unclear reason. What's annoying about this is that one reason I use Steam is so I don't have to deal with that kind of hassle.

I experienced the same thing after buying Fable III so fuck Microsoft, this is such bullshit.

The PC port is done quite horribly. But the Microsoft thing is plain bullshit.
The sequel's gonna be built on PC I believe though.

The reason we get GFWL ports is because Microsoft offers a kit that allows developers to port their games to PC in a much easier manner. The catch is that they have to use GFWL. Microsoft dropped it though, Microsoft still offers kit but the catch isn't there anymore judging from recent PC ports.

Pretty amazing how after initially being console-only and then eventually getting one of the worst ports ever, PC still became the main platform among Dark Souls players.

These voices always make me laugh

Hahahha fucking excellent. Thanks for making my one hour.

Apparently there's a ton of post E3 info about Dark Souls 2 scattered around the internet that I was totally oblivious to until now. This one gives a good summary of those (along with hands on gameplay impressions), so I'd like to hear your take on it.

As far as my 2 cents go, I'd say I hardly share the dude's enthusiasm about two features - namely the extensive stagger state after taking a hit and the backstabbing issue. The "positive" aspects of the former as per the YouTube user are what, in my eyes, makes the extended stagger feature ridiculously pointless since it forces you into an turtled-up, overly cautious playstyle which makes things rather dull judging by my experience with Dark Souls and is overall pretty stupid (I mean, what's the point of implementing a mechanic - parry and riposte - and then basically discourage you from attempting it?). Same reasoning applies to the taking-damage-while-backstabbing issue - yet again a mechanic you're discouraged from attempting unless in a one on one fight. It's also kinda redundant, since it's a cheap way to prevent you from expoiting the backstab added on top of a more sensible anti-exploit mechanic (AI designed to respond to your attempts properly).

With all that being said, there's always will be the caveat of the demo being a slice of a non final product/made more difficult than the actual game (some aspect of that difficulty might be the testers tackling an advanced scenario with base equipment with shitty poise rates, so that might resolve the gripe with the staggering).

Oh, and I'm also not a fan of a harder parry and riposte. These systems were difficult enough to pull off in the original (even too difficult in my opinion), why make them even harder?

I just want to play.

baahahahahaha

Here is some delightful fun for anyone who has played Max Payne 3's busted up fucking multiplayer:


http://youtu.be/b_PfPuyParQ
http://youtu.be/yDNjd5CRRuw
http://youtu.be/NmUcAOq9TMA


filmed yesterday and today.

Parrying is fairly easy against humanoid enemies. Although I believe it could be better to make it more difficult to parry, what's up with having a complicated command for ripostes? I mean, if you have already landed the parry, why make it extra difficult by making you go through another set of complications to riposte. The game is still in its early stages so I will reserve judgment however. I personally would like to be able to parry (not backstab) non-humanoid enemies, like the black slime thing in New Londo.

I hope they don't make it unfairly difficult. Rolling was one of the best features of the last two games. It added much of the game's dynamic feel. I certainly don't want to turtle through everything in DkS2.

Well, difficult was a wrong word to use I admit, it's just that the parries in DaS were based more on learning movesets via trial and error and not reaction, which is somewhat counterintuitive (as a lot of other stuff in the game really).

But anyway, some more digging reveals that the backstab is an actual attack now, a.k.a. one that you can actually miss. Which is kinda cool.

I backed my second ever Kickstarter (the first being Shadow of the Eternals which seems doomed to fail, come on people let's make Eternal Darkness 2 happen ) with this:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/119 ... ey-of-hope
A new 2D Super Metroid-like game, with some design decisions inspired by Dark Souls? Yes please.
Some more info here: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ghost-s ... dark-souls

Everybody here also talking (or at least, counting) retro games here?

Morrigan, I said GODDAMN! Ghost Song looks sexcellent. I think that may be the first Kickstarter I back.

Aaand backed. Thanks for the mention! Metroidvanias and Dark Souls are among my favorites!

Wow, Shovel Knight has some competition for me now.

Also going to make Devil May Cry 3 my first Platinum. I beat DMC4 on every difficulty, time to do it again heh. This series was too good.

Project Eternity looks amazing. Seeing this screenshot gave me chills. Looks a lot like Baldur's Gate.



Got Wasteland 2 and Torment to look forward to as well. Kickstarter is one of the best things to happen to gaming.

Oh yes.. I'm looking forward to this as well. Project Eternity looks absolutely gorgeous.

Oh, Shovel Knight looks pretty neat, too. I'll have to keep my eye on that one.

I just played a good 5 or so hours of Metal Gear Solid 4 earlier tonight. I'm way overdue on playing this...

Speaking of Metroidvania Kickstarters, check out Legend of Iya. It's looking pretty good, and there's even an early demo to try out. Admittedly the controls are pretty clunky right now, but the creator himself says it's a very rough demo; no doubt that will be fixed in time. Unfortunately its prospects are not looking very good right now, with a lot of money still missing and only three days left. Spread the word if you can.

I actually saw and backed that one after I searched "metroid" and "metroidvania" on Kickstarter, haha. But it meeting its goal seems pretty uncertain, as you said...

And I feel foolish for not buying that La Mulana game back during the Steam summer sale. It looks pretty cool, and Morrigan's impression sounded good, too.

I'm starting to get behind this phenomenon more myself. I am extremely picky when it comes to indie games and not that big on a lot of the popular PSN/XBLA stuff or whatnot, but yeah there's a lot of upcoming projects that I'm pretty stoked for.

Maybe I'm not alone, but I have the problem of wanting most of this stuff to look truly classically authentic. Pseudo 2D/3D usually makes me want to throw up, I liked Shadow Complex but the visuals were completely forgettable and nothing great. I definitely prefer if these waves of small time devs can do real sprite work or stuff like Project Eternity there that looks completely legit and like something that could have come out years ago. Shovel Knight is an obvious one as well, although I would have been fine with more limited audio, but it's little modifications like them adding more sound channels (than the NES could handle) that I can get behind and don't have issues with.

It's not like I want these people to mimic old stuff without doing their own thing, but yeah.

But yeah I'm sure this is just the beginning and this could keep the sidescrolling fever going. If mostly every big developer but Nintendo don't have the balls to do retro designed games, then the fans will perhaps. Maybe Koji Igarashi will quit Konami someday and do his own 2D Castlevania reboot, haha, would be amazing.


Just marathoned the HD collection myself, along with MGS4, and Rising myself last month or so. One of those strange series I forget... that's in my absolute top favorites. Still want to go back and revisit the original sometime soon and finally playthrough those MSX games.

Rising has like the greatest final boss ever.

Call me overdone eggs, but I still fucking love MGS2. Don't care what anyone says, I dig the more arcade-like design of the first two MGS games the most. And going through MGS2 again after all these years really makes me appreciate and love the mindfuck that is the last hour or two even more and how it brings up so many questions, and just about everything it predicted became reality (technology rules the human race, etc). This dude obviously overdoes it, but watching this stuff outside of playing the game is crazy enough, just completely slams on how hilarious society and everything is. Not only was Raiden completely played, YOU the gamer were a complete tool as well, playing the game, following its instructions, oh man it's gold. I wish Kojima could get back to doing stuff a bit more like this. The final stretch of MGS2 is 4th wall breaking at its absolute finest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V_HzEPHFYE

Oh on that note, now some of you might hate me, but I also replayed Zone of the Enders, and frankly that game sucks. lmfao, it's terrible. I'll hit up ZOE2 sometime though, but I know and have heard it's not groundbreaking either. I guess it's the Kojima attachment or something, but it blows my mind how crazy the fanbase is for this series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=uIKquqs2T74

Greatest main character ever!

Nobody, and I mean nobody, rips on Fighting Boner Robots on my watch!

But for real, the first one is really, really rough. It can be beaten in like two hours and the story is pretty cheap, with some hilariously bad voice acting to boot, but the combat is a lot of fun and that was really the main draw for me back then and now. ZOE2 is much better though, with (what I remember being) a much more fleshed out and interesting story with more interesting characters and upgraded combat. I bought the HD collection a while back but never got around to going through the second one again, but I remember liking it much, much more.

But really, the game is all about hand to hand and lazery shootery space fights via giant flying mechs with massive dongs.

Dragon's Crown is addicting and fun as hell. The multiplayer system works great and the game gets pretty damn hard even on normal difficulty, think I'm going to be playing this for quite awhile. Also Rayman Origins for 10$ (5$ on PSN+) is a steal, that game is also amazing.

^What class have you playing with in DC? I'll have to wait until the end of the month the get it but I can't wait.

I picked fighter because my friends all wanted to use the squishier classes (elf, wizard, sorc) but tomorrow I'm having 3 people over to start a new 4 player game from lvl 1 and I'm probably going to try the elf... All the characters look like they will be fun to play from what I've seen.

So... Papers, Please. Loving the hell out of the game, but I don't know whether or not I'll recommend it. The mechanics start off as a basic spot-the-difference, "why am I doing this on my free time?" kind of thing and evolve into a total clusterfuck (a good excersise for your brain and attention to detail though). The design and "story"/atmosphere totally sell the game though in my opinion.

Glory to Arstotzka.

Anyone still playing Dark Souls? I just got to the Gaping Dragon, and man, what a bastard. To backtrack a little, the first time I went up against him I was cursed, so I stood absolutely no chance. Seeing as I was out of purging stones, I made a big expedition back up to the surface to a) gather 6,000 souls, then b) buy a purging stone from the woman in the tower. Then I decided to go even further and trek over to Andrei the blacksmith in order to repair my main weapon, which had broken. Went ahead and upgraded both that weapon and my shield while I was at it. So after all this was done, I finally made it back down to the Depths and to the Gaping Dragon (having successfully avoided getting cursed again), and he still stomped a mudhole in my ass. I have a feeling this miserable bastard is going to take a while....

Gaping is really easy, you just need patience and caution. What is your weapon?

Go human and summon 1 or 2 people if you can or just keep attacking him in the tail area, be careful and make sure to run when he jumps or turns towards you. What level are you? he's usually not to bad. After you beat him getting down through blighttown the normal way is a lot more annoying than the dragon.

I'm level 25, wielding a +4 halberd. I'm probably going to swap out my Knight Armor for my Leather Armor so as to be lighter on my feet and quicker with the rolls. Thanks for the advice, folks.

Yes, mobility is important. Poise is good too, but for some bosses it won't help you that much cause your poise won't be high enough (yet) to tank through the attacks. It's better to learn how to evade as soon as possible, anyway.

For what it's worth, as per my most recent playthrough there are exactly two bosses that I DIDN'T beat without two handing my weapon (and even that is due to me trying to accomplish something very specific with them). It's just a matter of learning when to roll and where to, so yeah, mobility is quite important (although the final word on the matter should ultimately be dictated by your playstyle; as you've probably figured out by now, high mobility and high defense/poise rarely come hand in hand). In Gaping's case, I'd recommend rolling mostly backwards (except for his walking attack, which is completely negated by not being in front of him during it).

I find that it just hasn't aged well at all.

I never owned one, though most of my friends at the time did. I was filled with envy whenever I went round to their houses; the graphics looked so much cleaner and vibrant than what I was used to on Playstation, the lack of loading times, 4 controller ports and of course some brilliant games.

These days, going back and playing those same games, the graphics tend to be blocky and devoid of charm, just awkward looking (whereas even some of the grainiest PSX games still look quite cool). There were a handful of great games on the console, just not enough.

Plus, fuck the controller.

SNES forever.



EDIT: Wow, quoting a post from the first page of the thread, what a dumbass. Oh well, I had a nice little nostalgic trip while typing my response, and the sentiment still stands.

EDIT 2: Of more relevance, I'm watching the Dragon's Crown E3 Stage Demo right now and it looks fucking good. King of Dragons with more shit going on, yes please! Too bad Europe has to wait.

I remember getting absolutely wrecked by him the first few times, but after I got the hang of the fight it was easy, but long. He has an area about 1/4 of his tail starting on his body, where if you hit enough you can mutilate it, like the Gargoyle. It really helps not having to dodge that annoying tail sweep of his. And you can also summon Lautric and Solaire on the floor above, and I'm sure there are plenty of other players leaving summon signs around too. And are you really getting cursed that much? The basilisks are easy to deal with it unless you get mobbed.

By the way, how are you dealing with invasions so far, if you had any?