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Not going to argue what the better game is, there are unquestionably some things Bloodborne improves on, but for me Dark Souls taken as a whole has an aesthetic value that I can't compare to other games. It won't matter if Souls game x or y has more fun bosses, no bad areas like Lost Izalith or more fluid combat, because even though I love playing these games just for their mechanics there's something to the first one that makes me like it on another level. It may just be that I played it first, I'll probably never know, but just as an artistic work it feels by far the most accomplished to me. From all the subtle ways the theme and mechanics intersect, to the different emotional notes it strikes. I love the other games too, but it's BioShock 2 syndrome and I don't even like BioShock.

As someone who bought a PS4 just for Bloodborne, it's not really worth it. It's a good game, but it feels quite light compared to the other ones and is not as re-playable. I think the people who love the game are the ones for whom the theme really clicks. It's a bummer to me that a lot of the stuff it does best is the new stuff, but the things it messes up are things the other games had already done well.

You might want to look into a mod for the weapon degradation, depending on how much it bothers you. Weapons are quite.. brittle in that SS2.

AVP is a weird game. Your run speed as the marine is on the level of Doom and it has some terrible brief FMV. I think it's still the best Aliens game though, because the insane pace of it and the lethality of the aliens captures the feel of that movie quite well. Also, I think you should've played Half-Life now that you're immersed in the context of the era. I think doing that gives one a better appreciation for how much it moved the genre forward, but that's just my opinion of course

There is also a specific item that raises it.

Regarding the console on a monitor thing, just make sure you can get audio out. If your monitor does audio then you're set of course, but otherwise you're left with just the optical out or the headphone jack on the controller if you have a PS4.

I wouldn't tell anyone else they're cheating by summoning, but if I did it then it would feel like cheating to me. The satisfaction of beating the bosses is a large part of my enjoyment of these games, and if I summon then I deprive myself of that. However, for someone else their frustration threshold might be much lower and if their enjoyment comes from simply progressing through the game then by all means summon. It's there for the people who want to use it.

The reason your hard humanity sometimes ticks up is because there's a hidden kill counter for enemies that were once human, and by killing enough of them you eventually accumulate enough for one humanity (different enemies increment the counter at different speeds). If you pay attention to the soul sucking animation (I think you get what I mean) you can see that when you gain a humanity it looks different, and you can see the humanity sprite being scooped up You can gain a max of 10 in each area I believe, and only before killing the boss. You could say it's one of the subtle ways the game ties its "story", or maybe world building, to its mechanics. For example, there are certain enemies that don't look human at all but still increment this counter because (in the lore) they were actually human at some point. It's hard to discuss the storytelling without making an essay out of it, and even harder when you haven't beaten the game. I'd say it's pretty normal to not understand what's going on when you're in the middle of it. It's more something you piece together later, but I would recommend the bonfire side chat podcast. They dissect the entire game, area by area, so it can be fun to listen to after you've gone through a particular part of the game. The subsequent seasons they did weren't as good, but I like the first one.

Man, now you're making me doubt if I found that or not. They break on their own don't they? Spoilers for a the Isi***** boss

I've been keeping an eye on this, but I heard the system requirement were quite steep. Anyway, even though I know it's unfair my main question is: why would I play this over Quake 3 OSP/CPMA?

I got them all the first time I ran across. It's a cool setpiece. I suspect I'm around, maybe slightly past, the halfway mark now and the last few areas have been really great. I played the first 10 or so hours shieldless, and I was never that afraid of the enemies, but now I'm slowly creeping around corners with a raised +6 shield haha. Love it. That's hilarious. These games have a great sense of humour.

I've found a good amount of illusory walls now. Feels really good when there are no messages that point it out for you. They are more sneaky in this game though. Also been taking the time to appreciate some of the views. The world doesn't loop back on itself as much as Lordran, but you can still see a ton of the world from many places. There aren't a lot of games where I enjoy simply standing around and looking at stuff. I think I'm warming up to this one.

I've never liked the idea of it. Last fall, when the new Battlefront came out, I remember critics complaining that you could get to max level and unlock everything in a short amount of time, with the implication "then what?". What about playing an MP game for the fun of the game? It boggles my mind when people complain about the game not trying to manipulate their psychology.

But yeah, I love how this game rewards exploration. I was going to say that with regards to something else later on. It's better than both DkSII and Bloodborne in that regard.

You could maybe take luck man slightly further into the game, but it's almost like doing a no levelling challenge run which gets very difficult (everything will kill you in one hit eventually). You're not too far from being able to respec actually, but there's a fair amount of challenging stuff in between. Also, people said you should explore more because there was quite a lot to the first two areas that you never found, including two Estus flask upgrades (that give you one additional use of it each). Most of them are not hidden, and you don't need to find them all, but having say 10 flasks instead of 5 makes a huge difference, so it really pays off to look for them.

I would say that Dark Souls III seems to have more enemies with crazy damage potential, and long combos. At the same time the 'easy' build of going heavy armor, big shield and strength weapon is much less powerful because poise basically does nothing and blocking everything is less viable. Not sure it's harder than Dark Souls II, but that game slipped into unfair territory quite often. So far this game hasn't for me.

Dark Souls PC supposedly works online again, for those of you who were thinking about playing it.

Those are good reasons. I would add that Dark Souls III is heavily referential of Dark Souls (and to a lesser extent Dark Souls II). So to me it makes more sense to play the original one first. I also think that, even though the other games fix some problems with Dark Souls, it is in many ways the best one in the series. At least in the ways that matter to me. As for the online being broken, I think it's fine to play it anyway. You'll miss out on the messages and the ghosts, which while being neat are mostly background elements, as well as the co-op / PvP which you may or may not engage in, but it something you can always return to later. You can still summon NPCs if you get stuck on a boss.

It is probably the most annoying swamp level they’ve done, and they’re all annoying to some degree. I do love the bridge area above it though, if we count that as part of the same zone.

I finished it tonight and thought it was harder than the swamp. I also took the worst possible route through the swamp, spent ages down on the floor of it.

For strength weapons, give the boss soul weapon of the second boss a go. But yeah, I hear the Greataxe is good.

You guys finding any illusory walls? I don't have PS+ and therefore no messages and I haven't found a single one yet

His moveset is identical to the one in the Undead Parish in Dark Souls. They were always hardcore tbh. The carry stat seems kinda useless to me, because the only penalty for carry weight (until 70%) is decreased roll distance. Same stamina recovery, same iframes. I probably won't put any points into it. Regarding the world/level design, I think that just like in Bloodborne the individual areas are well designed but they way they're stiched together leaves something to be desired. It's how I thought it would turn out when I heard they were includingn fast travel from the start. I just unlocked a major shortcut between two areas and I'll literally never use it because its only purpose is to show that the areas actually are connected. This game sprawls, and while it can be impressive to see the scale of the world and the environments in it one of the things I liked most about Dark Souls was the economy of the level design. The levels aren't huge, they're actually quite small, but they make good use of every little part of that world. When the levels are as large as they are in this game there gets to be a lot of surperflous stuff. Maybe designing Lordran was hell, because it's the only time they've done something like that, but by giving themselves the constraints that they did they ended up making something singularly great. I'll never be able to walk through the world of this game in my head. When you make something this big every part of it can't be memorable.

The amount of calories that you burn running isn't super high. It helps of course, but you gotta run for a while just of offset a high calorie snack. If you hate running then it's probably a bad weight loss plan because you'll have more trouble sticking with it. It's much easier to use less olive oil than to run for 30 minutes. You could do something else, like swimming maybe. It can be a killer workout without being as harsh on your body.