Dusty souls

It's been awhile.  Y'know, classes, new puppy, work sucks.  EXCUSES!

Anyways, one of my biggest problems with the original dark souls is that everything after beating ornstein and smough just feels like....busywork.  The bosses I mean, the areas themselves are well designed and interesting for the most part, but with the exception of gravelord Nito, the fights are all rubbish.

Seath especially is laughably bad.  Like with the gaping dragon, the only thing that makes the fight difficult, are extenuating circumstances.  Fighting the gaping dragon with the channeler still alive in the sniper spot is frustrating beyond belief.  Fighting Seath and trying to get his tail is equally difficult.  Mostly because the window for hitting his tail and actually severing it is so small.  You have to hit the very tippy tip or it counts as a body strike, and you have just enough time to make it there before he throws his temper tantrum.

After you've gotten his tail though, it's simple enough to just stroll on up to him, smack him a whole bunch, and then stroll away.  As long as you don't get too close to any of the tentacles you are golden.

For a guy that features so prominently in the lore, and for a guy who is absolutely stunning to look at, fighting him is just....embarrassing.  Seath and the gaping dragon are the only two bosses who didn't kill me on my first play through many moons ago.

I've nearly beaten the game entirely, and still the only thing I like more about the first game is the design of some of the areas.  Being locked into longsword combat isn't helping either.  I really feel like the quicker durability loss helped the second game flow a lot.  You took a more balanced weapon set because you HAD to.

I mean don't get me wrong.  Dark souls is one of the greatest games I've ever played in my life.  I just like the second one too.

Looking forward to NG+

Heads up, more dark souls

The absolute worst part of the entire souls experience for me personally?  The bed of chaos fight.  URGGHHHH.  SO BAD.

Now, It's not that it's a gimmick fight that bothers me so much.  The ancient dragon from demon's souls was a gimmick fight that basically played out the same.  What bothers me so much about the bed of chaos is the overall design.

To win, all you have to do is strike the three glowing weak points.  Not obvious at first, but easy enough to figure out.  Obviously she can't just let you do this or it wouldn't be much of a fight, so she has these massive sweeping and pounding attacks that stagger you and knock you all over.  Fine.  The problem comes when you break the first seal and the ground starts breaking away.  All of a sudden these massive sweeping attacks go from painful and annoying to instantly deadly.  Which would be fine, if the arena was set up in a way where you could watch the boss and pay attention to not falling to your death.  After the second seal the flame blast attack starts and things just get out of hand entirely.

I've never beaten this boss on the first go, no matter how good I get at the game in general I always get hit by something, and stagger for what feels like an eternity, and then get brushed aside into the hole.  You can't watch the boss's attacks, or you fall in a fucking hole.  You can't watch where you're going, or the boss hits you and you fall in a fucking hole.  There's something just so terribly unsatisfying about dying this way, and it really ruins the entire experience for me.  I'm not against bosses with heavy attacks that 100% kill you if they land, but being knocked down a hole just isn't the same.  Trying to get your souls back here is a fools errand as well.

Two guaranteed deaths, every goddamn time.  At least the seals don't respawn.  Man I would probably STILL be stuck there on my first play through if that were the case.

The ancient dragon, comparatively, is so much better designed.  Sure his attacks are instantly lethal, but he's always in view, and there are very clear indicators of when he is going to destroy you.  You have just enough time to get from point A to point B and it works really well.  It's still not an actual fight, but it is much more enjoyable.

So needless to say, I beat ornstein and smough.  After about three attempts I got frustrated beyond belief.  I had gone out of my way to get the rite of kindling and I couldn't even touch them without using all my flasks.  So I took a break.  I wandered around new londo and killed the guardian of the seal (which made me feel like a piece of shit.) grabbed the very large ember and upgraded my longsword to +15.  Then I wandered around a little more until I had calmed down and leveled up a couple times.

When I got back a couple hours later I just had a zone moment.  I pulled ornstein away by exploiting his dashes, rolling and running for smough, getting a few quick hits in on the fatty and hauling ass out.  Doing more than 40 damage per hit helped a lot, but mostly not freaking out helped the most.  Once I got rid of smough, Super ornstein was a joke.  I keep hearing that he's the tougher super form boss, but really, his spear has a minimum range, and once you roll inside of that, he only has two attacks that can hit you, both of which are easy to spot and avoid.

Then again, I also hear SL50 is high for the first time through, but whatever.  I beat them, alone.  I definitely will take out ornstein first next time, he's easy to lure away and then roll inside of.  Though I do think the massive buttslam aoe of super smough is more difficult than anything ornstein has on offer.  OOh I gotta buy his armor set too before I forget.

This fight is by far the defining experience of dark souls.  It breaks a lot of people.  I still remember when the game was new people telling me I had to summon, that doing it alone was suicide.  Beating them on your own was an amazing feeling.  It still is today.  The fight is well designed and brutal, but once you have a clear head and know what you're doing, it is winnable.

I've been told there is a similar fight towards the end of the second game but it isn't nearly as well designed and is super frustrating.  I look forward to seeing it first hand so I can compare.

Best point so far?  Great Wolf Sif.  It's bad enough they make you fight a giant beautiful wolf that's protecting its master's grave, but then it limps when it's almost down, and its attacks are wild and ungainly, clearly not posing any more real threat.

Most of the enemies in this game are hollow, repugnant monstrosities, but Sif is a grand, noble creature.  Killing him feels wrong.  Killing him IS wrong.  But you have to.  The four kings have to be put down and the only way to do it is with the ring of the abysswalker.

OH GOD SIF I'M SORRY!  ;_;

Brings a tear to my eye everytime.  I need a break before I go after Seath.  I definately wont feel bad killing that asshole.

Also, killing crossbreed priscilla basically makes you a monster.  And you don't even HAVE to kill her.  Unless you want that platinum trophy, and let's face it, you do.

You monster.

And onward

So I've been playing more through DS1, beaten quelaag, and worked my way through anor londo up until biggie and smalls, and I've gotta say, there are definitely a couple things I do not miss at all.

First and foremost, invasions, jesus christ.  I think I actually prefer the "be invaded anytime" style of the sequel to the first.  I'm not sure how bloodborne pvp works yet, I've heard you wont get invaded until you ring the bell for co-op, but I'm not far along enough to know either way.

Anyways, in dark souls one, there was never really a REASON, to be human, you only needed to unhollow long enough to kindle and summon co op buddies for a boss if you need them.  I always fought bosses solo though so I ended up with tons of humanity at the end of the game when I played through originally.  Now though I used some of my soft humanity to kindle a bonfire at the beginning of the game and was immediately invaded.  At SL1 that's pretty laughable.  There are so few people playing the original anymore that there are hardly any messages, but because of the revive system anyone who unhollows is instantly a target, because as I said, there is little/no reason to invite invasion.  It isn't like DS2/DS where you lose a chunk of your maximum hitpoints being hollow, it just feels, clunky.

That said, I fought and killed the guy who invaded me at SL1, (Yeah I healed, fuck you.  You invaded me asshole, why should I show you any respect?  This isn't a duel.) the guy who invaded me at the base of blighttown though?  Fuck that.  I'd rather fight quelaag.  Which is still a fun fight by the way.  It's still a challenge, not because of the shitty environments, but because you have to manage her lava pools and stupidly powerful attacks.  One mistake and you're trudging through slime again to try one more time.

Also, stray demon fight, I remember this being super hard because you basically start the fight at half health, but he's basically a joke when you figure out to stand behind him and back away when he ass blasts.  So is the iron golem at the top of sen's fortress.  God that place is awful though.  Speaking of which, DS2 gets a lot of flack for recycling Ornstein even though he was basically everyone's favorite, but what about this asshole?  Iron golem is basically just tower knight from demon's souls.  Both fights were way more fun the first time.  Maybe that's the point though, given the overall theme of rebirth and entropy.

Secondly, I've run into a lot of simple fights that were made difficult only due to the fact that I've had to struggle to be able to even see anything.  I don't know if the areas are just more open in the other two games or the camera is just better, but fucking hell, it gets stuck on everything in DS1.  It happens sometimes in bloodborne, but not as often, which is weird because everything is super claustrophobic and over designed.

I think that's a hallmark of miyazaki's "A Team."  Things are designed first, and the player's progress is a secondary consideration.

Like fighting a silver knight in a narrow hallway with no maneuverability, something that happens a dozen or so times.  I get that backstabbing these chumps makes them stupidly easy, but cmon.

The world design is top notch though, I'll give it that.  It just doesn't feel like it was....meant for you to be wandering around in, swinging your sword at things.  Maybe that's the point, that you're this tiny insignificant thing in this alien world with inadequate tools at best to overcome insurmountable obstacles.  Yeah, bravo I guess.

Yeah the load times are unbearable in bloodborne, but that game makes me so fucking angry that I don't even mind the chance to calm down.

Also the weapons, for better or worse I always picked up a new weapon and at least tried it out in DS2, and Bloodborne, but in DS1 and  DS I pretty much just grab the first longsword I can get ahold of and use that right up until the end of the game with very few exceptions.  Nothing is as well balanced as a long sword and that's a damn shame.  I mean I use halberds in the second game and a bloody giant hammer in bloodborne, so I dunno.

I'm going to experiment with magic eventually, I only ever used heal and soul arrow on my first play through back in the day on the 360, so maybe I can develop an opinion on why everyone says magic is so damn broken.

Anyways, the house is finally empty, so I'm out.  Looking forward to getting wrecked by Onstein and Smough over and over.

Second verse same as the first

I've decided to make my way through all the souls games with my free time and decide which I really like the best and why.

Like, at first I didn't really appreciate bloodborne, because fast and loose has never been my preferred playstyle in these sorts of games, but I do have to admit, that the changes have forced me to basically start from scratch and relearn everything, in a playstyle I never would have chosen otherwise.  Which creates a feeling as close to my first day with dark souls as I can get without a lobotomy, which is pretty great.

Holy shit though, Father Gascoigne?  Why the hell is this guy the gatekeeper for 90% of the game?  He's brutal and unrelentingly aggressive, especially in his final stage.  Basically he says "Now prove you can use what you've learned or I'm never going to let you past this gate to the rest of the game."  It feels like having ornstein and smough in the beginning, especially with how much the game opens up afterwards.  With the way progression works in this game though I guess it makes sense.

Boss music is amazing though.  Like seriously.  When I finally beat him I had to take a break.  I had no blood vials left and was too afraid of what might be past the gate to go on.

ANYWAYS.

One of my favorite criticisms of dark souls two has always been how people say "It isn't harder, it's just more cheap."  And to that I have only two words to say in response: "capra demon."  This fight is right in the beginning and the absolute nadir of the experience for me.  The combination of the end game monster that you're not prepared for, with the two dogs, and the closet you have to fight it in, makes the fight an absolute clusterfuck.  The only challenge comes from surviving the first few seconds out the gate.  When you enter he is already in mid wind up, so you better have a shield up or dodge, but the dogs are also on your ass, so if you get stuck and can't get away it's game over in about 20 seconds.  If you manage to survive long enough to lure the dogs away and take them out before capra manages to lumber back over your only concern is not getting the camera caught on the extra scenery while you bait and smack a bog standard enemy to death.

It's badly designed is what I'm saying.  You win not by skill and learning a complex enemy's attack patterns, you win by luck and exploiting the terrible A.I.  Don't even tell me that's not why that pointless staircase is there, because it totally is.  I know from a design perspective the fight is to show you how much stronger you've become, when you spank the enemy later in the game without any trouble.  But from gameplay design it is just garbage.  Without the shitty design of the arena you fight him in, capra would be an absolute joke, and that's probably why his boss fight is what it is.

My point is, don't call dark souls 2 cheap and pretend the first one isn't, because it totally fucking is.  Don't even get me started with the bed of chaos, "fight."

Why I never bothered with walking dead:

     Walking dead, as a series, was ruined for me the moment Merle cut his entire hand off in one of the first episodes, though seeing as what the series has become, tapping out at the early stupidity was probably a good call.  That thought got me to thinking though, water world was ruined in the first moments when Kevin Costner decided to drink his own urine after filtering it rather than the salt water all around him.  Sure, salt water is bad for you, but he has a water filter right there!  You know what's easier to filter drinkable water from than piss?  Salt water.  If the hacksaw is too dull to cut through handcuffs it is going to have a bitch of a time cutting through human bone.  Not to mention all the other better options.  Yes I did just compare the walking dead to water world.  The walking dead blows.

The games are ok though.

cracked annoyed me again.

Apparently they let just anyone who wanders in off the internet write for cracked now.  This article is pretty bad, I've had discussions with my friends as children that made more coherent arguments, but for the sake of a writing exercise and getting back into the swing of things, I'll rip it apart, for funsies.

Yeah I know, picking apart an article as brainless as "fantasy beasts that wont work in real life according to science" is sort of juvenile, but that's literally what it made me think of, childhood arguments.  So since my inner child apparently has better imagination and more common sense, here we go:

#5: The minotaur.

Firstly I barely even want to acknowledge this one, because his entire argument relies on the minotaur being like a cow, with great peripheral vision but lacking predatory vision, like cows, and then links to an image of a minotaur drawn with binocular vision, like humans, thus negating his entire argument.  Anyways, to quote him, "The minotaur was a monster to be feared: a brutally effective predator, nimbly stalking through his intricate maze prison."  The minotaur wasn't any of those things.  The minotaur was a hulking musclebound brute, an abomination locked away within the labyrinth specifically so it wouldn't escape.  It didn't hunt there, it was fed there.  It overpowered its foes with sheer brute force and strength, y'know, like a bull.  Also the maze wasn't even that intricate.  The labyrinth of crete only had one path in or out, in sort of a spiral design.

#4: Shrunken people.

According to "honey I shrunk the kids," no mass is lost in the process of shrinking, the "empty space between atoms is removed."  So they wouldn't freeze to death, more likely they would superheat, or fuse into some heretofore unknown element.  They'd probably die yeah, but I'm doubting by living long enough to freeze.

#3: Werewolves.

Ugh, just ugh.  This one reads like it was written by someone whose only knowledge of werewolves comes from twilight.  In the traditional werewolf lore you don't become a wolf, you become a were wolf, IE human with the features of a wolf.  There would be no dramatic bone structure change, or any other bodily replacements, just a bunch of new hair in weird places and new hormones.  It's...an allegory for puberty isn't it?  I just now realized it.  Anyways, werewolves don't kill for food, they kill for fun, because they're crazy and angry with no self control or inhibition, y'know, like humans.

#2: The Hippogryph.

Well I sort of have to give him this one, yeah a hippogryph could probably never fly in the real world, that's sort of the point.  It flies in harry potter's world via magic.  Saying it couldn't fly without magic is true, but kind of obvious.  I mean, candles can't fly either but I'm not going to write an entire article about all the things at hogwarts that don't work in the real world.  Gryphons on the other hand, probably could fly, though they would probably be more house cat than lion.

#1: The hydra.

The hydra wouldn't be crushed under the weight of its own heads because that's not how snakes work.  The body doesn't support anything, the muscles in the long necks support each individual head, and it isn't just the head that regrows.  If the hydra died of anything, it would either be blood loss from replacing just a few heads, or the strain to the heart having to pump new blood to all the extra heads, unless it is also growing entirely new internal organs for each head, which I guess would be possible, it's a fucking fantasy creature.

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The point is, if you're going to write an article this juvenile, at least use some goddamn imagination.

Also any time you copy and past something from cracked it auto adds in a link with the text.  It's neat, but what the fuck?  Seriously?

Silver Lining

Yeah, so Hunted: The demon's forge is not a very good game at all.  The good news is that Duke Nukem forever is so skull fuckingly horrible that I can actually play Hunted and get some value out of it now.

Hunted is a dreary slog utterly devoid of charm and two of the worst, most hackneyed characters imaginable, but compared to the utter garbage that is Duke Nukem Forever, it's a godsend.

I still can't fathom how it came out THAT BAD.  Sure I expected it to be garbage, but not as bad as it is.  Between the tiny uninspired levels, the unbearable load times, the soul-less monotonous combat, dated last gen graphics, and dialogue that would've embarrassed me as an eight year old, I just couldn't bear to finish it, which says a lot because I finished Wall-E.

Hunted kind of reminds me of "Dark Sector", just not anywhere close to as fun with forced co-op jammed in, and godawful fantasy instead of generic sci fi.

Forced Co-op wasn't a good idea in resident evil 5 either....or army of two.  Granted in that last one the ridiculous co-op was its only selling point.

A better question would be why I'm playing any of this shit when I have a stack of legitimately great games sitting on my desk waiting to be finished.  Who fucking knows.

Also Dungeon Defenders is fucking rad.