Dewar

I beat the next two bosses with no problems, so I guess it was just a blind spot I had with that particular stage of that boss. I also figured out that I'm way ahead of my request box, because I got through another 10 days or so of requests and I'm just now getting tutorials on using special moves, taking monsters with you to fight, etc. I've been doing the max number of requests pretty much every day, but I think I've been doing the non-critical-path ones too much or something. Anyway, I have all of the crafting licenses and equipment besides pro cooking, and I'm chugging along now.

Just cause they put out a new one every year doesn't mean they expect you to buy it every year. I'm sure you could coast 3 or 4 years between, depending on how high of settings you want everything to run on.

Hmm, it seems to work about 50% of the time or so for me. I wonder if the R trigger on this DS is messed up.

Hmm, I got used to the D-Pad after a while, but then I was a heavy X360 player for several years.

I was just getting ready to watch a Youtube video and the pre-roll commercial was a 2:30 add for "Executive Spray Tan Parties." I thought it might be a wierd joke, but I got about 45 seconds in and it seemed like it might be a real thing. I couldn't handle watching any more and hit the skip button after that. Edit: Aha, it was a joke. For some reason I can't post a link here, but it should be easy enough to search for.

You should, they own everything now anyway, so it must have been their fault at some point in the inherited past.

Blame Disney

Basically, when they tell me to go to a dungeon, I go there the first or second day because I get tired of everyone bugging me about it. I'm really confused about the R button, because I felt for sure it should do something like a dodge and couldn't get it to do anything. I think I'm going to go upstairs on my break and see if I can figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Interesting that with all the tutorials in the request box, they haven't talked about how to have townsfolk come with you at all, and barely mentioned any monster stuff besides the grooming and feeding bits. I had to look up on the gamefaqs forums what the "LR BTW" prompt on the dialog boxes even was. Maybe I'm ahead of the curve? How far in the game were you at the end of the first Spring?

Twitter is blocked at work, can someone let me in on what Kojima said?

I have been humming Christmas Carols for the last few weeks. I guess work finally let off on the stress enough for me to celebrate the holidays in my heart.

At the moment, I don't really have access to any better gear. I guess I just need to waste items "improving" random gear in unhelpful ways until my forging skill gets high enough to learn some new reciepes. I had just gotten the Monster Barn the day before going in to fight that boss, so I haven't had a lot of time to explore bringing monsters along yet (when I did try that, they died almost immediately to the boss anyway.) I have plenty of healing items and food, but often don't get the chance to use them because I'm getting killed in one or two hits. Strangely, the regular bad guys in the area don't give me any trouble at all. Erm, I don't think I have the ability to dodge. Left trigger is the pocket, right trigger just makes me walk. Is that something that unlocks later, or did I screw up my controls somehow? I also can't get any of the unlocked dash attacks to trigger either.

I doubt the people who play Candy Crush know who King are let alone anything about the "brand." All I'm saying is that being one of the biggest games out there is going to net you a lot of copycats, and once you make the decision to start fighting them, it can become an indiscriminate weapon.

I watched the first Demon Souls video on Giant Bomb. I think I'm going to have to buy it. It's a shame I don't get a lot of PS3 time these days, I probably won't get a chance to finish it before Dark Souls 2 comes out, which will present an interesting conundrum.

Wow, there's a huge jump in combat difficulty between the first and second boss. I was swearing up a storm last night trying to take out that damn horse. I finally got it on about the 15th or 20th try. I need to get some better armor or something, because if he even touched me in his third form, I was stun locked and dead. Really enjoying the gameplay at this point as it's opened up further, but still not really into any of the characters and I don't think there's enough dialog to get a clear picture of most of them. I felt more attached to the folks in Animal Crossing with their randomly generated text than the preset dialog here.

The US trademark and patent system sucks. Remember when Bethesda tried to stop Mojang from calling their game "Scrolls" because it was so much like "Elder Scrolls?" Scroll is a hilariously common word too. If someone were actually to create a game that's trying to copy one of their Saga games and they protested the name, a lawyer from that other company could point at the Banner Saga as proof that the term is in common use and the trademark should be disallowed. Still very dumb and probably a little over-zealous on the part of the lawyers, but it makes sense given the way the system is set up.

OK, late to the party I guess but this is as good a place as any to ask why Allard and Kotik. And am I the only one who feels bad for Nick?

So, Linked-in I guess. Lots of talk about it, but I've never really bothered using any social media stuff for work before. Any advice?

I think it was the Idle Thumb's first appearance on Tested's Octobercast that got me here, either that or some piece of Giant Bomb craziness a few years back. This has certainly been a nice landing place after my last forum finally collapsed into near-oblivion due to lack of intrest. People are really thoughtful around these parts, but not so much as to be self-righteous.

The newer Xbox360 controllers with the "transforming" dpad are supposed to be pretty nice, but I haven't actually used one.

I'm pretty sure that you can only throw in 8 directions. I think Chris is just really used to that arc and positions himself correctly.

I disagree about Monster Hunter, I think there's plenty there to play solo. I put something like 60 hours in MH2 on the PSP and another 20 or so into MH3 on the 3DS and had a great time. In a lot of ways, it scratches the same itch as Dark Souls, seeing that big huge boss and knowing with enough practice and work getting the right equipment, you'll kill it some day. I also don't think the circle pad pro is really required to play it, but then I played it enough on the PSP to be used to the thumbstick/dpad combo. On another note, I got Rune Factory 4 for my Birthday. The tutorial take a while to get through, but I'm enjoying myself so far. I really wish they'd get rid of the limit on the request box. If I'm willing to go to the bath five times in a day to get everything done on the list at once, it should let me. Also, the personalities of the different characters don't really show all that well in dialog, but I'm hoping that improves.

GOTY actually from 2013: Zelda: A Link Between Worlds I was really struggling to look back at stuff that came out this year that really excited me, then I got this for Christmas and completed it in 4 days. It sucked me in like no other game made this year and made me glad that my wife bought a 3DS for Animal Crossing then never touched it again. GOTY played in 2013, but actually older: Dark Souls I fell into the late hype pit for this game along with a lot of the gaming audience, but man is it one of the few games I've played that really lived up to that hype. Of the games that you really can "beat" (basically not Minecraft, Crusader Kings, or MMOs) this game ate the most time, had me doing the most research, and was the most satisfying at every step of the way.

Isn't the game supposed to make you feel dirty and uncomfortable about these things? I always assumed that it was designed that way to ilicit that sort of response, like Papers Please or DEFCON.

I certainly don't buy all that many games at release anymore, but I think I spend about the same amount each year on games now as I did five years ago, just spread around a lot of smaller or sale-priced games instead of a $60 blockbuster every month. The real debate is how many customers are you getting who would never buy the game until it was sale-price, versus the number of customers that would have bought it full price, but now wait for sales. I think banking on gamer impulse buys from people who wouldn't normally purchase your game is a winning strategy. Impulse control problems abound in our hobby and the US populace in general.