Jake

Idle Thumbs 263: Disable Enemies to Reveal Enemies

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Oh, and I would totally listen to the DOOM soundtrack all day long for weeks on end. I'm hoping that an official release happens soon.

 

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Funny: minutes after being amazed at the fact that amazon video knows what actors are on screen in real time, the podcasters find solace in the fact that robots won't be able to know how and when they are talking about the robot overlords on the podcast due to its analog nature.

Haha, owned.

(Although, in our defense, we were referring to the fact that, compared to online video and online text, podcasts remain the dumbest form of online media. I'm sure in the future the robots will parse our ever syllable and meaning, but for the entire history of podcasts they have basically remained dumb MP3 files that you download to your computer or other device, and that's that.)

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When I was listening to the cast, I got stupidly excited that the anonymous emailer who delivered quotes from J. Allard's book was actually going to leak a heretofore unreleased J. Allard text, and that's why they were requesting anonymity. 

 

I hope I'm not alone in this. 

 

Also, I'm eagerly anticipating Breckon reporting back on Stellaris and hopefully a stream at some point. 

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I'm not sure I totally agree with the reader who wrote in saying that the earlier Souls games are easier. What I think is going on is after you've gone through one of these games, the subsequent ones feel much easier in comparison. Curious what other people's impressions are that have played the series out of order (I've played them in order).

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I found DS3 to be the hardest souls game I have played (I don't have a PS4 to play Bloodborne.) I played them in the order of Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, and I've used multiple different builds at different times. I found the bosses in DS3 to be a lot more mobile, and in a lot smaller spaces, making it pretty hard to play a primarily magic character. Also, that very first boss is a beast if you pick deprived.

 

Edit: I should mention that I'm still only about 1/2 way through the DS2 DLC, and those areas have been pretty hard as well. I'm using a pretty unconventional build though.

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I'm not sure I totally agree with the reader who wrote in saying that the earlier Souls games are easier. What I think is going on is after you've gone through one of these games, the subsequent ones feel much easier in comparison. Curious what other people's impressions are that have played the series out of order (I've played them in order).

 

I started with Dark Souls and went through in order, only recently (as in 2 weeks ago) going back to Demon's Souls. I found Dark Souls 2 to be easier than 1 (at least until the SotFS revamp), and 3 is about the same. Bloodborne was initially tough because I tend towards a defensive play style, and it took a while to get used to how quick and aggressive you need to be. Demon's Souls was by far the easiest for me. Some of the individual areas and elite monsters are still challenging, but almost every single boss encounter was incredibly simple and I rarely had to try more than once. It will definitely punish you if you're not being careful, but I think that as the first Souls game, a lot of the mechanics were still rough. A lot of the bosses have pretty simple patterns and a lot of the boss arenas have deliberately designed safe areas that let you catch your breath and heal up mid-fight, something that I think just doesn't happen in the later games. It's still a great game, and an interesting look into the series' origins.

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Oh yeah, I also haven't played Bloodborne. I have heard that one is challenging for a lot of people since your toolset does force you to play the game in a particular style that a lot of people weren't used to, so I think we should exclude that from the Souls conversation even though it is obviously a related game. Also I'd tend to agree that magic users seem to get nerfed each subsequent game, so if that's your build I could see that being an issue. In Demon's Souls magic users were really strong, and in Dark Souls 1 I think they were super viable, but in 2 and 3 I transitioned into a more traditional sword & shield class because using magic seemed like a poor choice in those games.

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After playing though Dark Souls with a shield on one arm and a catalyst/rapier on the other the entire time, I decided to play through Dark Souls 2 shieldless. I settled on a miracle/dual wield build and had a blast. Playing through a second time with the remastered version, I've been going shield and lance, which was serving me well right up until the bosses of the DLC areas. Dark Souls 3 I've just been running catalyst in one hand and rapier in the other the entire time, with three different rapiers depending on enemy weakness. Boy that's tough, especially for when you run into folks with heavy armor.

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if you want to dig mildly deep, i remember really liking the Otogi games, which From used to lay the groundwork for the Souls games. There are some bafflingly hard sections where you need to traverse a lot of aerial space in a game that doesn't have a distinct jump mechanic. You can do an uppercut that lifts you up, and if you start whomping on enemies you won't fall. so you'll chain a LOT of uppercuts and dashes to enemies. 

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I honestly found Bloodborne to be the easiest. The dodge moves you a huge distance, and gives you a ton of invincibility frames. The parrying mechanic is also very generous. I find parrying in Souls to be quite hard, and rarely worth the risk/reward, but in Bloodborne, parrying is basically no risk, all reward (huge damage, stun, regain health if you're damaged, regain even more health if you have the rune for it).

 

That said, when I played every souls game, I'd go once through sword and shield, then once through no shield. So I was used to not relying on turtling up. The free health regen in Bloodborne just made everything seem really easy, coupled with being able to carry 20 (!) healing items from the get go.

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Can anyone provide a little context on how deep the spoiler discussion of Uncharted 4 goes? Is this one of those "we're going to discuss the first few hours of the game and the basic premise, so spoilers if you're super sensitive" spoiler alerts, or is it more of a "it sure was surprising at the end of the game when..." true spoiler? I'm through to Chapter 12 now, so if it's the former I'd happily listen, but obviously I want to avoid the latter type of spoilers. 

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Can anyone provide a little context on how deep the spoiler discussion of Uncharted 4 goes? Is this one of those "we're going to discuss the first few hours of the game and the basic premise, so spoilers if you're super sensitive" spoiler alerts, or is it more of a "it sure was surprising at the end of the game when..." true spoiler? I'm through to Chapter 12 now, so if it's the former I'd happily listen, but obviously I want to avoid the latter type of spoilers. 

 

We were like two hours into the game, max.

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Regarding the Amazon Video "X-Ray" feature that shows actor and music info on an overlay: I was playing around with that a while ago, watching The Good Wife. At one point Chris Noth suddenly popped in as a listed actor seconds before the camera panned over to show his face on a campaign poster. I have no idea if this was some kind of facial recognition, or just a very zealous intern.

 

I had this on (not that I had any choice as far as I could tell - when will VOD services give us the option to turn all the extraneous shit off?) while watching X-Files and it only lasted up until around season 3 or 4, so I assumed it was done manually rather than with recognition software.

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