Bjorn

So Twitch is getting into the video games sales and financing side of things, including funding a game that is entirely designed around being played on Twitch with audience interaction/participation.

That video goes from neat to increasingly horrifying, and fast.

Yeah, Cracked Red (and Blue for invading sinners) Orbs are now a limited resources on NG. You can farm them, or you can earn them dueling in dedicated arenas for each Covenant, but neither is so fast that it's going to let someone have a huge stockpile easily. Once you're on NG+ you can buy unlimited Orbs from the respective covenant leaders. Then there is Soul Memory, which is the total amount of Souls you have earned with that character. You only match up with people who are within a certain range of your Soul Memory, though that range increases as the total goes up. This is to combat experienced people remaining low level and preying on new characters while wielding high level gear. Besides being invaded while being Hollow, you can also be invaded after clearing the boss of an area. There are basically no conditions anymore under which you can't be invaded, except for being in areas that are exempt from all invasions/summons. But I've taken one character well into NG+, and have another character about halfway through NG, and I have only been invaded a handful of times total (not counting the dedicated PvP areas where invasions happen constantly). My character that is still in NG has never been invaded. Once the PC version drops, I'm thinking that my first character will be a dedicated invader, just to let people have the rush of getting invaded.

Fire Bombs, Ion Stunner and Hacking are a frighteningly efficient combination. Hack shields to seal the doors and trap one guy. Set fire to room, then stun him to prevent him from putting the fire out. Drop another firebomb on the weapons after this, and then just watch the enemy dance, trying to salvage anything. To make it more ridiculous, the game gave me the Explosive Replicator augmentation as well. I already had so many bombs, they might as well have been infinite at that point. It almost did fall apart during Phase 3 of the Flagship (didn't have enough direct damage weapons to take it out quickly), but I pulled it off with 2 hull points left.

Don't go hollow...

You can have a good time, and yet get none of that "spark" or sense of physical/sexual attraction that drives a possible romantic relationship somewhere. If you don't think that part is there, then you are really leading someone on in a bad way to go on another date or two, as you are going to have different expectations of the possible outcome.

I'm personally a huge fan of the total Souls package, PvP, co-op and single. I love the rush of getting invaded, but appreciate that not everyone wants that. I'm actually a bit disappointed by the lack of invasions in DS2 so far. They really curtailed invading in NG by two different methods, so most of that action is in NG+ now. As for co-oping, they just fixed the humanity reward in the most recent patch. It was broken and completely random, sometimes you would turn fully human, other times get nothing. In DS2, you slowly hollow, losing 5 percent or so of your max health with every death. Successfully co-oping restores one step of that now. Which there are items that instantly and fully restore you to human as well, but you can co-op if you are low or want to horde those. There are also several items you can get, including covenant rewards and stones you can trade to a particular NPC for various items. There are 2 white summon stones as well now. The regular white stone acts like normal, you get summoned in for a long duration, can help clear an entire area, etc. The Small White Stone only summons you for a max of 5 minutes, and that gets cut down for each kill, then you get a reward when the time is up. This turns out to be surprisingly useful when you just want help to clear out one bottleneck, but don't want an escort for the entire level. I both summon from and use the small stone a lot.

That's my problem with F3. Like 80 percent of the wasteland is completely empty of anything interesting. The 20 percent that has stuff is great! But I really wanted a world to explore, and too often that world was boring. Makes sense for a post apocalypse, but that doesn't mean that it is interesting.

Its not out on PC yet, 9 more days. It's not using GFWL and is going to use dedicated servers instead of a P2P network like DS1 (and I think Steamworks? not sure). So yeah, online should be a 1000 times better. I'm playing the PS3 version until the PC version comes out, and the online on it has been much better than the online on both PS3 and PC for DS1.

I'm floored that Jake is a Kansas City guy originally, don't think I knew that. And that Steve was born in KC. I'm not used to having people in the games industry have roots or connections around here.

Yeah, who knew you could make Dark Souls erotica feel so natural to the world. I'd say that in all 3 Souls games, I've been far more likely to die to the environment or trash than I have to bosses. I rarely take an ill advised or impatient move against a boss, but I will against regular enemies all the time.

I played it on the original Xbox, then PC, then the 360 HD version. I don't remember having any problems with the PC version versus the other two.

Honestly, the combat mechanics range from simple/boring to amusing (the combos with partners), but Cine nailed why I loved it with his early post. The variety of mechanics overall and the unity of the world/characters/themes/mechanics just make it one of the best overall games ever made.

I'm so sorry....Dark Souls erotic fan fiction (it's brilliant, in its own special way):

JL8 and Strong Female Protagonist are both fantastic. Thanks!

I was just honestly surprised they let him go at all, he's been as iconic a figure at Bungie as any developer there. And that it wasn't handled in a better way, seems like there was a real opportunity there to do something positive, and instead you get headlines like that. It's always been surprising that Bungie had a staff composer in the first place.

Now I really want this mod for DS2, since it has amazing fist weapons. The DS mod should have been applied to the Crystal Ring Shield though, since it has a ranged/thrown attack.

That's just an inexcusable choice to make for a reporter or editor.

WTF? Where was that used?

This is an unexpected headline: Halo, Destiny composer O'Donnell says he was fired 'without cause'

The Vulcan is soooo much fun. Pre-igniter also eliminates the first, and longest, charge period, which takes care of their biggest negative.

In which Jade discoverers she has a twin sister, only to find out that she's eviiiiil.

The TV Tropes article mentioned it, I looked up a couple of forum posts on it. Apparently the Horde were taken over by a new leader for awhile that some viewed as bringing Nazi vibes (racial purity and superiority, along with some other stuff). Like I said, I'm not a WoW player, so no first hand experience.

My friend taught me how, it turned out I had been doing it backwards my entire life! I didn't understand the point of a honing rod, nor was I going in the right direction or angle. It was pretty simple once I had someone who knew what the hell they were doing explain it to me (like so much in life).

Ah, I was taking as a rather firm stance. Though in this case, I'm not convinced that Luftrausers is itself a bad example. Going back and reading their apology/explanation, they do clearly say that they didn't intend for you to feel like you were playing a "Nazi." But they did very, very much want to convey that you were on the wrong side of history, the bad guys, the evil empire. And they did that by trying to draw on imagery associated with historical context (including Soviet and Nazi Germany stuff). Clearly what they finished on cleaves mostly, or even wholly, towards Nazi imagery. To the extent that looking at the splash screen on Steam, I would just assume this was a WW2 dogfighting game. That it is that clear doesn't feel like it is as divorced from historical context as you've claimed. You've made the argument that they went with that aesthetic because it was badass and/or seductive. But their explanation holds as much water as your accusation, that they wanted you to immediately identify that you were on the evil side. Which drawing on the iconography of Nazis is an easy (even lazy) way of doing that.