Gwardinen

Yeah I use werewolf form for when I'm having trouble with a humanoid or a group of humanoid enemies. As a mage it's nice to have a button that makes me into a crazy physical monster (literally). That said I never use it if I don't have to since you can't skill up at all in werewolf form and you have to go back over any ground you cover in a dungeon in your natural form to actually search and loot everything.

I don't know if you actually want to do this, but it's worth pointing out that the difficulty can be changed at any time. Also if you're not a hardass warrior spec I recommend taking an ally with you pretty much all the time. There are a few you can get via quests, and some inns also have a mercenary chilling in them who can be hired.

I've noticed that they try to talk to you less if you don't go too near them, so I give a comically wide berth to a lot of NPCs these days. Yeah... perks are freaking me out but I'm doing my best not to think about it. I'm just putting perks in whatever interests me at the time and hoping it adds up to a cool character. That said, I did end up putting perks into bound weapons and using them more specifically because I looked ahead and saw a perk (that I now have) that basically makes them automatically steal souls. So now I'm farming souls with my bound weapon (as long as I have enough gems) and then using them to spam enchantments to level enchanting with the end goal that I might be able to apply some of my neat magical robe enchantments to actual armour at some point. I'm playing a weird conjuration/destruction/melee mage hybrid thing right now. I don't really know how it's going in terms of effectiveness, but it's both pretty and entertaining. Having a companion most of the time makes such things way more viable than in Oblivion. Might just be memory tricks, but to me it feels exactly as floaty and stupid as Oblivion. Also, yeah, having played Dark Souls recently just makes the melee combat feel even more underwhelming and ridiculous. It also makes me block too much.

I'm pretty sure I've already put at least six hours into this and I've barely gone anywhere. I don't really know how to feel about that. On the other hand, I can (early shout power spoiler) you guys.

Oh, something I didn't mention. You can still be summoned to help someone else for a boss you've already done. So if you beat a boss and enjoyed it, or just want to help others out and get some souls and humanity, you can just put your summon sign somewhere convenient (the latest bonfire before the boss is often used if it's close enough) and potentially get summoned in for it.

I had a good middle of the two styles you're talking about experience tonight. I was on my way to a dungeon with a companion and my fire atronach, when I saw a dragon fly overhead. As of yet it either hadn't spotted me or just didn't give a crap, so once I cleared the enemies out that were guarding the dungeon I then continued to climb the mountain, looking to get closer to the dragon. Once I was close enough it swooped in and started doing frost breath (first time I've seen that) and the three of us fought and killed it in glorious combat.

Yeah, invasions can be annoying. I just want to make sure you're aware - when summoning others into your world you're not placing anything, you just find their sign and use it. To be summoned into someone else's world you use the white summoning sign, and you can do that whether you're human or hollowed. It's a good way to get some souls and see parts of an area you might not have already done yourself. It does, yes. Clearing a boss basically turns off multiplayer (except for messages, I think) in that area. It's worth noting, though, that there are actually more "areas" in the game than there are named areas. For example there are two separate bosses in Undead Burg, one in upper and one in lower - the name is the same and you'll never get a new area name popping up if moving between them, but there is an invisible dividing territory line.

Were you doing it while Hollow on your own? If so I can understand the feeling of accomplishment, but if you'd reversed the hollowing and been in human form before going into the fight you could have summoned Solaire to help you, and probably another player as well if you were online. The gargoyles fight is almost designed to be done with 2-3 people.

I don't find the perks menu confusing but it is annoying to navigate, as trees that don't have right angles tend to be. Actually moving between perks can be a bit loose and the fact that it lets you go left or right while inside a tree to another tree was probably meant to be convenient but usually just results in mistakes. Also, I tried that sharpening mod and didn't have great experiences. With FXAA on, it looked the same as the default game, with it off it looked like a jaggy mess.

I've also been playing with a 360 controller, after I had the same problems as some of you with the menus while using mouse and keyboard. It's not that they weren't navigable, they just felt way more optimised for a gamepad than PC controls. Turns out they are. Going to try out that sharpening mod, see how I like it.

Yeah, the only way I see this region locking affecting piracy is by encouraging people in those countries to pirate the game, since you apparently can't buy it legitimately. Who actually thinks region locking a digitally distributed copy of a game is a good idea?

Yeah IGN are known for their low scores, hard-hitting critique and daring use of the whole review scale. Disclaimer: I hope this isn't necessary, but the above statement was not made in seriousness.

I don't have a specific link to go to, but every interview I've seen regarding coop as it relates to singleplayer has said you do not need to do coop to get the best ending, it's just that you can contribute to your singleplayer ending with coop. Obviously everything is subject to change and these interviews were conducted just as the coop feature was being unveiled, but since BioWare guys made a point of saying that it seems like they understand it'd be a bad move to do otherwise.

Well either they knew ahead of time about the release date or they're very quick to update. It doesn't begin a conspiracy theory, though, since the Dark Knight/Batman Begins BluRay bundle has existed for a while I believe. If it happened to have been scheduled for release on the 25th and then Arkham City was delayed, I would have lost my mind. As it is I suspect the extra week is just to give it a bit more distance from things like Assassin's Creed, Saint's Row and the long tail on Skyrim and Modern Warfare. That said, it does sort of make the problem of being "late to the party" even worse, so who knows at this point which path results in the fewest lost/delayed PC sales due to this nonsense. Let me put it this way; if I hadn't gotten a code for the game free with my new GPU, I would have bought/rented it on a console by now, giving Warner Brothers a smaller cut/almost none of the profit.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/08/batman-arkham-city-pc-delayed-again/ I may cry.

Phoenix Wright's hair doesn't really look right in that, but everyone else looks perfect. I'd definitely be interested in watching a subtitled/dubbed version. Actually in this case a dubbed version might even be preferable for the sake of hearing "OBJECTION!" shouted in English. The Japanese word doesn't really have the same punch, and the Japanese male low tone of voice when attempting to sound authoritative doesn't have the same shock impact as the higher than normal pitch things are usually shouted at in English.

It's a pretty good list, actually. I just happen to be the kind of person that begs, borrows or steals to play any game I'm remotely interested in. For the record, anyone that hasn't played Arkham Asylum and has a PC capable of doing so should immediately take Erkki up on that. That game is great and since the sequel just came out it's excellent timing. The same goes for Uncharted 2 but in a different way and without quite as much of a recommendation.

Rather than trying to address your addressing of each of my notes so far, I'll just give a general response to all but two. I get the feeling I may need a little more distance from the game before my opinions really crystallise anyway. You mentioned quite a lot of the things I was concerned about will be fixed in the patch, and actually I noted some of that too. Unfortunately, while those are probably all steps forward, they're not relevant the game I played. I'm not trying to be anti-patch here, patching is a good thing and I'm not one of those people who demands that version 1.0 be the be all and end all, but from a purely personal point of view, the patch makes no difference to my experience. It's been more than long enough for a large section of the players of this game to have finished it now, and the patch still isn't out anywhere but Japan, so I also don't feel like it's particularly wrong to ignore it to an extent from a wider perspective either. You also had a different personal perspective on several of my points, and in fact it seems like some of the things that might have irritated me or others actually caused you to enjoy the game more. This is something that has come up a number of times as I've been discussing the game with others, and I really can't say much about it other than that it's sort of interesting that a game can provoke such a spectrum of responses. As to the graphical thing, really? Maybe I have unrealistic expectations at this point, or maybe playing the Witcher 2 so recently has screwed up my sense of it but there were several occasions in which I thought "man, the art is great but it's really being held back by the graphics here". Here are the two points I will address directly: Firstly, the upgrade supplies thing. No, you're quite right in noting that RPGs are definitely not in the habit of telling you beforehand how much you're going to get. However, Dark Souls differs from most current RPGs in a few fundamental ways that make this more of an issues. The first is sort of obvious; Dark Souls is harder than most AAA RPGs in current times, so it's just genuinely more important that you get this stuff right. Even more crucially though, Dark Souls doesn't really scale equipment with progress through the game. This is actually one of the things I quite like about the game, as it means that although there is some neat shit in later areas, you can pick up a good weapon type in the first few areas and upgrade that as much as possible and it'll be a genuinely effective tool all the way through the game. In many RPGs the halberd I found in the second area would have been replaced by a purple halberd right before the end boss, or something (as it was I actually finished the game with that halberd from outside the church in Undead Parish, albeit heavily upgraded). My final issue with this choice feeds into a more general one with the game; Dark Souls almost seems designed with a meta layer - much of the payoff from the game is in terms of comparison to the community and knowledge that you've succeeded in this notoriously difficult game, and there are so many parts of it that directly reward you for having an understanding of the metagame. Not to mention it's almost required to go to a wiki for some information (such as how summoning, invading etc. work - those are only some of the features not fully explained in game, nor Covenants, nor sins, etc.). See earlier comments regarding character deaths. Secondly, the progress paths thing. Yeah, you could say it's a shame people don't grasp that the path is clearly too hard and just try something else. However, the marketing for this game, the community for this game and all the meta layer of information for this game are all constantly saying "Dark Souls is hard". The tagline for the game is "you will die" so you can hardly condemn people too much for playing it, running into something difficult and just considering it to be difficult rather than the wrong path. I definitely don't want to give the impression I didn't enjoy the game, I finished it and I'm glad I did. It was also very interesting to see the various areas and doing some of them with a friend was genuinely exciting. I just also feel like it's a very complex game from a review judgement standpoint, and how murky it is any time you try to figure out what's a design choice, what's a bug and what's From Software just being weird and Japanese doesn't help.

Nice list. I actually have/have played/don't want all of those so far, but I appreciate the gesture.

Those are complicated questions, actually. I've spoken at length with a friend about the game and still not really come to any decent conclusions. The things that bothered me were a combination of technical issues and userunfriendliness. Also, partly because it's a Japanese company and partly because they're just genuinely somewhat inscrutable, it's often difficult to tell which choices From Software made because they genuinely wanted things that way and which were oversights/bugs. Case in point; it is impossible to tell without the use of wikis how many of any given upgrade material you are going to get throughout your playthrough, and the drop rates are pretty measly. Most types also aren't purchasable anywhere. Is this deliberate? Is it a mistake? An oversight? Bad design? Good design for their sort of game? I'm hardly sure at this point. The fact that Twinkling Titanite is becoming purchasable in the patch (which still hasn't hit for anywhere but Japan) and that drop rates are being increased across the board, does suggest it was at least not completely thought through, though. Additionally, there is a character in the game that will actually murder another, quite important, character - this will lose you their functionalityl. No warning is given. To try to fix this mistake, you have to do something not entirely obvious at a fairly late point in the game. Is this cool? Kinda, yeah. It's certainly interesting, and in terms of interesting narrative by way of gameplay, it's neat. On the other hand, it is sort of bizarre and obtuse and much like most things in the game, doesn't give you any help whatsoever to figure out what you're meant to do about it. The combat and stats systems are mostly really great! However, they include the resistance stat. It's almost 100% pointless, and putting points into it is a horrible waste. How the hell do you get such a smooth and enjoyable fighting system and not notice something as basic as "one of the main stats is useless"? Bizarre. The weapons aren't even vaguely balanced. There are a few weapons early in the game that you're effectively gimping yourself if you don't find at least one of. Then later on, you need a divine weapon for a certain area or two. Other than that there's no reason not to find a weapon you like (from within the given list of actually effective weapons) and make it as high a rank of Lightning as you can. Lightning weapons are nuts overpowered, as they generally do the most damage total, almost nothing has strong lightning resist and they don't even bother with scaling so you can just pump points into Vitality, Endurance and whatever else you want without worrying about your damage. PvP isn't even vaguely balanced either. Not only are there a number of different ridiculously cheesy items/weapons/spells, the way the multiplayer system works means that someone can go to a later area, pick up aforementioned cheesemonger device, then go back to as early an area as their soul level will possibly allow (soul level being a VERY rough judge of character strength, which barely actually tracks with effectiveness) and invade with it. Furthermore, since the invader knows they're going to be in PvP and the host doesn't, all of their gear and spells will be set up for it. Totally bugged items such as the magic shield that shoots out projectiles with the damage of your right hand weapon don't help matters. Things like the fact that they can show up anywhere in the level and that mobs don't attack them I have more ambivalent feelings about... those are interesting, but they do contribute even more to the feeling many hosts get that they just don't want to progress anymore when there's an invader in their world. Co-op. I have gone back and forth on this so many times in my head. I don't know whether I think it should be easier to play with people you know. I genuinely don't. As it turns out, the game is very enjoyable played that way. But there is a certain atmosphere that can be lost. I'm just not sure. Framerate issues. Basically anywhere with water has terrible framerate issues, it's pretty weird considering that there are several areas like that. Blighttown is damn near unplayable in spots, particularly if you have phantoms in your world. Graphics. They're kinda crap! The aesthetics and art design are great, and it really makes me that much more sad that the actual rendering is done in such an outdated way. It almost looks like a launch game for this generation, which is bad, but considering these people were working as PS3 exclusive developers until recently and I'm playing on a PS3 (supposedly more graphically adept) it's just weird. I get awed by the view down Anor Londo, and then I see certain armour sets or monsters up close and just cringe. Progress paths. I didn't have much of this problem myself as I made liberal use of friends and wikis to figure out where I should be going, but for fairly significant stretches of the game there's no real indicator for which areas might be doable and which probably aren't. Again, there's a certain charm in that, but for the most part it just creates confusion and wastes time. Of particular note is that of the three ways out of Firelink at the beginning of the game, only one of them is realistically usable for a new character. No indication is given as to which one this is, and due to Dark Souls' reputation of difficulty, the fact that the others are hard can be misinterpreted. Certain simple and unwarned against mistakes can be absolutely crippling. Curse is the biggest offender here, it is a major problem for low level players particularly, and yet it's encountered quite early (in the Depths, for example) with more or less no information on how to cure it. Honourable mention; sins. It's pretty easy to accidentally sin against a covenant and be charged a VAST amount of souls to have the sin forgiven. If you don't, you can never join that covenant and one of the other covenants will send people after you, leading to more unbalanced PvP invasions! There's more that I don't like, more that I'm ambivalent about and more that I thought I wouldn't like but ended up finding quite interesting or enjoyable, but I've definitely rambled on for long enough here. I've mentioned several things that are already being changed in patches, which is mostly interesting insofar as before the patch was announced, fans were often saying that these were just examples of how From Software does things. Or that they added to the ambience, or the feel of the game. As I mentioned, it seems like even the hardest core of Demon's Souls fans don't really know what the people at From are thinking regarding any given feature/design decision. This makes me wonder how much of what I enjoyed of the game was somewhat of a fluke or through situations of my own making, and how many of the things that are obtuse but potentially defensible are actually just mistakes, oversights or just more curious decisions from another Japanese developer.

So, I finished this. I'll be sending my rental copy back tomorrow. I don't really know how I feel about it. I was unsure about the whole concept going in, and I've had highs and lows and still don't really know what my relationship is to this game. The only thing I can say for sure is that it's pretty unique, and even the fact that I've thought about it so much and that it pushed me to spend all this time finishing it has got to be lauded. We're always crying about a lack of interesting, unique experiences, and whatever else Dark Souls is, it is that. I also just sort of hate finishing things in general, I always feel a bit hollow (no pun intended) and at a loose end afterwards.

So because of this brief reminder that Blood Bowl exists, I've actually got kinda into it again on Fumbbl. They have a spiffy new Java client for the Ranked and League (unranked) divisions and I've been reminded how entertaining the game is, particularly if you sort of know the people you're playing. If anyone's interested, feel free to hit me up and I'll help you figure out the website and/or the game.

Wow, that's great. Makes me want to play the game but I'm still unsure if it's worth it to buy full price right now just for the multiplayer.

Yeah, the end of the second game is stupid, but it's stupid in a very specific way. Once I got the "trick" (which basically boils down to getting the crossbow and learning to use it effectively) I didn't find it any harder than any other part of the game, it's just sort of bizarre.

Yeah, iTunes is stupid. It doesn't make me break my head open on the wall anymore, we've come to a sort of uneasy ceasefire, but it is definitely stupid. Unfortunately I have an iPhone so I'm sort of beholden to it.