eot

K-pop used to be a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, haven't listed that much to it for a while. To be honest the behind the scenes business reality of it puts me off a little. Plus, Jessica left SNSD

I hope the strafe jumping physics are similar to Quake 3. I spent close to a decade practicing that shit.

Looks more like an Unreal Tournament game to me. I wish they would have gone with a less visually busy art style. I think if you look at Quake 3 it still holds up fine today.

It's a good one to have anyway in case you travel abroad somewhere.

Since it's already bumped For what it's worth, Polygon's reviewers don't score the games. Some editor who reads their review does it for them (pretty strange if you ask me).

Ah, fair enough

I think it was much earlier than that (2006/7). I bring it up only because I have a distinct memory of it being the very first game I actually purchased on Steam. The game never clicked with me but it's been ages now so maybe I should go back to it.

Haven't played it myself. but I think a complex 2D map is harder to memorize than a 3D one. Maybe because you only see a small part of it at once and don't have the kind of sightlines you get in 3D. In Super Metroid I know how to go from one area to another, but I don't actually have that good a sense of the world.

I just got back from close to a month in Tanzania with a group of friends. We climbed Kilimanjaro and I have to admit it was pretty tough, and I didn't even really get any altitude sickness on the way up. I'm in decent shape, but it's more challenging mentally than physically. On the day before the summit attempt we ascended 1000m, then got four hours of sleep, woke up at 23:00, left at midnight and climed another 1200m (in complete darkness), so the body doesn't have time to adjust. It is crazy how exhausting it becomes to walk even at a snail's pace at that altitude. The scenery was breathtaking though and I'm already starting to forget the bad parts haha. All of us made it to the summit, which was pretty good considering the success rate for the route is only about 40% (that's what I read anyway). We saw a few people who had to be rolled down on some wheelbarrow looking stretchers. edit: oh, I forgot to mention. One of the things I kept thinking was how much parts of the country looked like Far Cry 2. I've seen a lot of media from East Africa, but the never ending light brown and muddy greens of FC2 capture what it looks like better than anything else I've seen. Then when you spot two guys with AK-47s just standing somewhere it feels like you're in a game, it was a bit surreal.

Are there any highlights from the GB E3 coverage? I don't have 20 hours to watch their VODs and they're usually full of people talking over each other or making inside jokes, but sometimes they have a really insightful guest on there.

Whenever something Zelda related comes out I always feel out of touch. So many people seem to be losing their minds over that trailer, while to me the most prominent thing was that it looked like a 360 game. I mean, I can understand why people get excited about it, because they're watching it in a different context, but it still feels strange. Nothing about the trailer looks remarkable if you don't specifically place it in the context of this series people go apeshit for.

It was great watching Nick go from being owned in seconds to recognising all the attacks and their tells. Aldrich is a pretty good boss I think, his attacks are much more distinct than say Pontiff's so they're more manageable to learn. I might have missed it, but did he pick up the Estus shard in the main hall before the boss? If you didn't Nick, now you know there's an Estus shard in that room.

Real life got in the way a few weeks ago, and after that I completely fell off the game. The trend of decreasing interest with every game sadly continues :/ I did make myself play some more in the hope of getting back into it though and I beat Nameless King. It's not going to be among my favourite Souls bosses, but I think it manages just the right level of challenge while not resorting to any BS. The only issue I had was the camera in the first phase, but that part is easy enough that it doesn't pose a huge problem.

That section isn't nearly as bad as the one it's referencing. I mean, there are places to take cover.

Referencing traversal mechanics in old Quake mods and Jake didn't mention Urban Terror? Hah

Regarding using embers to heal, I don't really agree with that tactic. By not using the ember before the fight your Estus is going to be less effective, because whenever you heal back up to full you're using your healing less effectively. By using the ember before the fight you can much more easily wait to heal until your health is low enough that you don't waste any healing.

Obligatory Dark Souls Space Slam

I ran my first 10k this week. When I signed up for it my goal was just to finish, and going into it I thought to myself that I'd be happy with sub 1 hour, but I ended up coming in just under 54 minutes! Pretty pleased. I didn't run that fast when practicing for it, and the most I ran was 8k (once).

I posted this earlier I think, but since Pontiff is the current theme:

I do want to play Quake 3 Arena forever. I did once hear one guy say that he liked it. Agreed about the narration though, that added so much to those games.

If it weren't for the fact that I've played so many of these games I think it'd be among the harder ones. There are lots of enemies that do very long combos for a ton of damage, so simply relying on a shield feel less viable to me while at the same time poise doesn't seem to be very useful so you can't just tank the hits either. In terms of bosses though I think it's been on the easier side, but I had a lot of ones that I just barely got on the first try while embered that I could see having taken a few more had I died.

There's a lot you can do to make that fight easier, for example gold pine resin that Domhnall of Zena sells and the slimes drop green titanite shard that can get a fire or divine weapon to +5.

I haven't played the game, but I remember the big fuss around the walking speed in it and the developers being really adamant that nobody move too fast. They're free to design their game however they choose of course, but I think having an absurdly slow walk speed has the opposite effect from what they intend. For me it does anyway, because it doesn't calm me down, or make me pay more attention to the environment or whatever. It brings all my attention to the controls, it makes my middle finger hurt because I'm holding 'w' for an hour straight (Dear Esther). I get that they don't want you bunny jumping, but walking around an art exhibit (or just walking in general) is different from using a controller. One can be inherently enjoyable and the other one can't.

Can you get Gunman Chronicles legally anywhere?