Aperson

On the subject of ultra difficult games I'm currently in the Duke's Archive in Dark Souls. I've made a fair bit of progress, got through the fakeout Seath fight which proves you can't truly go through this without dying. Can I just say how annoying all these projectiles are? Seems like you always have someone firing at you so you have to fight the enemies with your shield facing whoever is shooting arrows or stand in a place where you won't be killed by magic. You can't even kill all the archers as a melee character because there's one standing on top of a bookcase which you can't drop off onto and then there's another standing on a ledge which you can't reach. I am also noticing a rather large amount of instances where you travel along a narrow pathway towards an archer and the point where you get close to an archer the wall on either the left or the right opens up. I figured they might do exactly the same thing they did in Tomb of the Giants so I rolled as soon as I approached the archer because, sure enough, there's another enemy hiding behind the corner waiting to ambush you. I think enemies hiding behind corners is FromSoftware's most used design technique from what I can see, it's kind of evil but I suppose you just roll whenever you see a corner that could have a blind spot... I haven't made any more progress than the third bonfire in Duke's Archives but I have kindled that bonfire to 20 as I have the feeling there isn't going to be another bonfire until after Seath.

Made some more progress on Dark Souls. I ventured through the Tomb of the Giants and after a few bits of difficulty, eventually stumbled into Nito. I thought it might take me a while to figure out how to beat him but... I beat him on my first try. Turns out if you get round the back of him he's easy. So there's now just three Lord Bosses to defeat. Also I had to take down my Top 10 Games of All Time video due to audio issued and reupload it. Fortunately it's back up now:

To everyone who hasn't played Crash 4 yet because they've been waiting for it to come to Switch... get ready for the TRUE Dark Souls of platformers! Still a really great game though, but the box gems are rather evil!

Regarding FF12 I wouldn't say its especially hard. Moreso annoying with how long a certain dungeon is and how repetitive it gets >.> It's kind of a Xenoblade-lite in a way in how its a single player MMO style game except they give you more freedom over how your party controls... too much freedom in some way to the point where the game can just play itself. So what I did was have Gambits on every party member but the lead and had my lead pick all the actions. Anyway, alongside Dark Souls, of which I am now finally properly in the Tomb of the Giants after successfully reaching the bonfire (wound up killing Patches after he shunted me into the pit below) I played a whole manner of games... for recording purposes. I went and made the longest Top 10 Video Games of All Time video on Youtube lol... (video removed due to audio issues that need to be fixed). There are more than 10 characters in there, wanted to make things a bit less obvious >.> I've got video chapters to help skip through the video as I know it ended up far longer than I wanted it to. Will note that there are some spoilery aspects to my discussions about some of these games but it was hard to get across why certain games were where without going into slight spoiler territory, though I avoid completely spoiling everything.

Tell me about it. The first copy of the game I got hold of was a fake. I managed to finish it but eventually the fake cartridge (which had two shinies on it as I had a Shiny Crobat and a Shiny Seaking) went and stopped working so I went and had to pay the full actual price for a replacement (a SoulSilver). Had to play through the entire game again with a less interesting team... though I did have fun nevertheless.

Made more progress in Dark Souls. I travelled to the Catacombs and after a rather extensive trip, beat the hardest boss ever... PINWHEEL... ...Only joking of course. He went down in 4 hits and his attacks were very easy to dodge so I was able to get the Rite of Kindling with relative ease. I then immediately died by slipping off a pit in Tomb of the Giants... ...SOOOO then I went and backtracked to find the blacksmith... before going back towards the Tomb of the Giants and that's my progress update for Dark Souls.

After much extensive griding and a complete rethink about how I've been levelling up my character, as well as more deaths that helped me learn the boss battle and it's mechanics... I have finally beaten Ornstein and Smough! As soon as I got to the second phase for the first time and began to realise how much easier that second phase is I felt that if I can find a way to make the first phase take shorter I can beat it. Eventually I realised that instead of just spacing by a pillar and waiting for Ornstein to charge at me, dodging the charge and attacking from there... it was far quicker to just hide behind the nearest pillar that forces both of them in your eyesight. For the most part their attacks cannot hurt you if you are standing behind a pillar and that made it easier to close in on Ornstein and atatack. With about 38 Dexterity or something my +5 Silver Spear did quite a lot of damage to Ornstein with every hit, so much so that Ornstein went down in 9 hits. From there, Smough was mostly manageable and I stuck to a simple strategy of circle strafing around hium, except if he used his Lightning butt stomp. Until I got hit by a horizontal attack while doing this. As soon as I realised that, I changed my attacks and... that was the successful attempt. Remembering the fighting specifics from the Soulcalibur series in how the 8 way run allows you to dodge vertical attacks but still leaves you vulnerable to horizontal moves I started to watch more carefully WHERE Smough was swingin his hammer and punished his vertical moves, rolling back from the horizontal ones. This paid off, I was able to down Smough and now I have the Lordvessel. My next plan is to go to the Catacombs and go after Nito. Supposedly the easiest of the four major bosses I'm supposed to go after. From there I'm going for Seath, then Four Kings and then go after Izalith.

I guess I'd better make it official in the game diary then. So yeah, back to playing Dark Souls (PS3) again. As mentioned above I'm still stuck on Onrstein and Smough but I have changed my build to a more Dexterity focused one and have been focused on levelling up that particular stat. I am now far more manoverable and can dodge Ornstein and Smough's attacks but I'm finding my biggest problem being that it's so easy for them to just kill you out of nowhere. When trying to avoid their attacks I sometimes end up pressed against the wall by both of them and it becomes incredibly difficult to escape and roll away from both. Like some sort of madman I have grinded all the way up to Level 70. Like some inexperienced madman my stats were incredibly balanced with a lot of them in their 20s, I have since changed that by only levelling up Dexterity. I can now three shot the Sentinels I've been grinding for and one hit on Ornstein does more than a bar's worth of damage. The only thing left to do is get a good rhythm for the fight and pay more attention to their tells. I have learned all their attacks and generally know how to dodge them all, I'm using the pillars as my safe point most of the time and focusing on Ornstein, more specifically hitting Ornstein if I manage to dodge the room lunge or whatever its called. I'm also intending to grind up a single level after a certain amount of failed attempts, just so that I can feel like I'm making some sort of progress and it becomes easier to kill Ornstein while allowing me to save Flask if needed >.>

Haha. I'm surprised this game does chug so much with the frame rate, perhaps it was too ambitious for PS3! Is it worth killing the Fire Keeper in Anor Londo? I only have +1 on my Estus Flask, most people I see doing Ornstein and Smough have +2. There's a bonfire lower down in Anor Londo with not many enemies between it and the normal one so I don't feel so bad about not having access to the bonfire near the start.

For what it's worth I'm playing the PS3 version. Anyway, now I'm just grinding souls to power up my new Crimson Armourset which actually allows me to move better. Looks like I'm going to need Titanite Chunks to power up the Crystal Halberd which is the recommended weapon according to people online and the only reasonable way to get those seems to be killing the stupidly OP Sentinels in the hallway before Ornstein and Smough but I have a strategy for them and that strategy is to snipe them with arrows.

Fair enough. I just checked my file and I'm level 54. Will try and grind for a bit to get up to Level 61.# EDIT: I was wearing Elite Knight Armour. A lack of manovarability might be why I struggled to much to be able to beat either of them! That explains quite a bit now...

I didn't think this season could get any worse but... it has! What was that deadline day? In the last few days our best midfielder Matt Smith has been recalled from loan to Arsenal. Fair enough, we have quite a few loans now in an attempt to fix the defence but that should NOT come at the expense of the midfield and unfortunately we've now lost our best central midfielder. As if that wasn't enough we've replaced him with Christopher Missilou. A player who has only ever played in League Two in this country and a player who struggled to get into the Northampton team. Then to add to everything else we signed Jordan Garrick on loan from Swansea, which is nice but what's this? Kieron Freeman has joined Swansea as part of the loan deal? What? The cost of getting Garrick on loan was to just give away Kieron Freeman. You know what's even crazier? Freeman ONLY JOINED THE CLUB IN JANUARY! Yes, you read that right. OK, that's not all, Diallang Jaiyesimi was sold to Charton. So that's our other best player now gone. Conveniently enough transfer deadline day is coinciding with a court case that the owner Lee Power is having to attend over the club's ownership. He wants to sell the club but has been challenged by investors over whether he actually owns the club entirely and if they win, they would have to consult him over the sale. It's such a farce. This club is a sinking ship and all this happened right before a massive relegation six pointer against Wigan who've been almost just as bad in the league as us this season. We should never have appointed John Sheridan and Lee Power clearly doesn't care what happens to us anymore. He's been in charge for 7 years and managed to give the club at least some form of stability as well as make progress on the training ground but its come at the expense of Swindon constantly slipping in standards from being a club that was midtable in League One to one that is struggling to even stay in League One before it slips straight back into League Two. Who knows? Conference if things get worse. Sheridan Out. Power Out.

I can kind of see what you mean. I originally picked up Dark Souls a few years ago with the intention of playing through the entire series, with the reasoning being all my irl friends are in to the game and the series and it was a critically acclaimed game... several years later I'm still yet to beat the original Dark Souls never mind tackle any of its sequels. Its slightly annoying really because I see many people who have beaten multiple Soulsbourne games including a friend who started at Bloodbourne and subsequently has played the entire FromSoftware Souls catalogue yet I only ever got about halfway through the game and struggle to get very far in the first phase against Ornstein and Smough. I put the game down years ago and keep finding new games to play while Dark Souls remains untouched. This is not a good sign for Dark Souls because games like that in my collection that end up in that state can take anywhere from 6-14 years to finally get around to finishing, by which point I don't have much motivation to play the rest of the series

Imo The Doom is a worse level. Lost Impact is far from great but I found it bearable back when I played the game. Been playing a bunch of different games lately but to say what they are would spoil an upcoming Youtube video... so basically I haven't started Symphony of the Night yet!

Bought a bunch of new MTG cards for Commander... again. This time I decided I wanted to put a few new lands cards into my decks... into both decks I decided to put this card: One of the decks I also added this card to: Also acquired a few of the creature lands: A few non land acquisitions too Bought three of these, one of the Commander deck and two for my casual Izzet Flying deck, which I also upgraded my counterspell on with this card: For similar reasons I also delved into buying a few Pokemon cards to make that deck a bit better.. all Trainer cards x3 x2 They're subtle tweaks and this is only supposed to be a casual Expanded deck but I sometimes play it on PTCGO so that's why those have come in...

So this is a quote from the beginning of the 2020 Gaming Dairy thread... which is a follow up to something I wrote in the 2019 Gaming Diary thread I finally did it, in 2021 I went and bought Castlevania Symphony of the Night off the PSN Store on PS3. Yet to actually play it though. I am also playing through the original Castlevania on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Switch, just reached Stage 10. Also playing more Soulcalibur VI, I have most of the custom character items now, but there are quite a few locked outfits for the female characters and... let's just say I can see why they are locked. Bandai Namco wanted people to work for their um, minimalist outfits for female custom characters. >.>

So I went more on Soulcalibur VI and... did more than just create characters, I actually played the game! Granted it was to play Libra of Souls and finally get round to getting the missing Soul Chronicles that I never got, I did part of Raphael's Story mission and just waiting until the final part shows up before I can actually unlock the mission that gives me stuff. Through grinding missions however I earned a ton of Gold so I decided to cash some of that in on Soul Points and FINALLY get round to unlocking all of the missing Custom Character parts that I didn't have. Granted, some of them were... a bit lacking in actual clothing to put it politely :/ But there was also the Horse's feet so I can finally make Donkey in Soulcalibur! I'll do him later, still involved in getting the extensive cast of Magic the Gathering into Soulcalibur! I also made Jace but I'm not entirely happy with the final outcome. While Season 2 is out for SCVI and improves the game tremendously I am still missing the actual DLC content that requires the Season Pass, so there are a lot of Create a Character parts I don't have access to because they're behind the Season Pass. I would buy the Season Pass but... I'm waiting for it to get a price drop. At least when creating characters the expanded music list means you get SO much more variety when listening to music. The entire stage soundtracks of Soul Blade, Soulcalibur I, II and III are in this game, in fact the entire series' music history is in VI! You need the Season Pass for the IV and V tunes but I've been listening to the music from I and III thanks to the game coming around and it has given me a few new favourite songs from when they've come on... like Immortal Flame from the first SC! Yes, probably should go in the best VGC area but I've taken up the last few posts in that thread and don't really want to post again in there for some time... If I keep at Libra I might be able to unlock everything in the base game that I don't yet have, that should be good!

Well this is a sad but inevitable outcome. They had something of a mixed track record in terms of games and were arguably better at interpreting already existing ideas than making new ones themselves. That being said, they can take credit for doing anti gravity driving in a kart racer 11 years before Mario Kart 8 ever did. Still, they played a bit of a role in my early gaming days, especially in my early teens. I had Crash XS, Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Fusion on GBA during 2003-04 and remember being impressed at the use of pre-rendered graphcis with XS, this was the first time I'd ever seen something like that. They also made the DS version of Downhill Jam which I also played and still own. Admittedly they also did a TON of Movie tie-ins (a lot of Pixar games like Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo) so their track record is very much a mixed bag but I think there are a lot of gamers out there who may have ended obtaining games made by VV well before the N. Sane Trilogy came out. Ultimately, I have to thank them for both realising the classic Naughty Dog Crash game formula and converting it successfully to handheld and also remaking those same games for a new generation and helping Crash Bandicoot to return. So, this is for you Vicarious Visions:

Went back to Crash 4 to at least attempt at trying to get that 100% ending. Mopped up a few gems I missed on the backtrack and what is very noticeable is how level knowledge makes these levels significantly easier to complete. Apart from Jetboard Jetty because the boss and certain aspects of that level is making the 3 death gem extremely hard for me to get :/ I did manage to get an N. Sanely Perfect Relic when going through an N.Verted level though: I also uploaded something I haven't done in a long time, a Soulcalibur VI Custom Character fight:

Three things. First of all I finally got round to doing the bonus episode of Let's Play Metroid Prime 3 Secondly I went back to Soulcalibur VI to redo a few of my Custom characters. The Crash one still looked pretty bad and someone in a Youtube comment told me that the Ornstein needed a "lot of work". So using Youtube videos I redid both of them: Thirdly I beat Crash 4 last night. Will spoiler box things from the final boss fight and ending.

Continuing my efforts to finish Crash Bandicoot 4 and I am ALMOST done with the game. Will spoiler box my progress because the events deserve it really.. I wound up streaming the final level on Twitch so that's why the level clips there are from Twitch Clips instead of Twitter video.

Kovar was not very good for us at all, very much at fault for all our cheap goals that we were giving away, hence why we sent him back to you guys and brought Travers in instead.

So... as a fan of League One side Swindon Town I have to say what a complete and utter mess this season has been. After winning League Two last season I knew the task at hand would be to stay in the division. Keeping the squad that won the title together was going to be the key to that and enhancing it. Nope, we lost Michael Doughty, Eoin Doyle, Lloyd Isgrove, Kaiyne Woolery, Keshi Anderson and Jerry Yates among others, we brought in replacements like Tyler Smith, Matt Smith, Jonny Smith (yeah, three Smiths I know), Jack Payne and then to replace Steven Benda we picked up Matej Kovar from Man United on loan. Of course, with a completely different team there has not really been room for them to gel to get to grips with this division, leading in turn to an ambitious Richie Wellens questioning his future at the club, he leaves for Salford City, we get John Sheridan in of all manager and in January are rooted deep in the relegation zone. I thought last week's win at Ipswich would be an impetus but we just went and lost 2-0 to Doncaster at home and making the same silly defensive mistakes. We have a better keeper in Mark Travers now but we cannot account for the fact that our defenders are just passing the ball to the opposition strikers on a regular basis. It's calamitous defending, like they belong in a circus or something. All our best defenders are injury prone but it doesn't seem to matter who we put in defence they just concede sloppy goals. Zeki Fryers is not a good centre back at all, the fact that he's one of the better ones we have available tells you a considerable amount. We need a centre back who is experienced, can play at League One Level, is good enough to compete with League One players and who ISN'T injury prone, someone who can lead the backline, organise the defence and most importantly stop conceding these reckless goals that are going to turn us into a yoyo club if we're not careful or worse just be back in the same situation again before Wellens came to the club. Sheridan seems to be looking at strikers but I feel like we have about six centre backs at the club right now or two left backs acting as centre backs and none of them are good enough defensively for this league.

Not really sure which thread a post like this should go in but it really feels like the state of government is the worst it's ever been right now. This global pandemic has seen so many bad calls by the government as they only seem to care about improving profitability and productivity of those already in employment and those higher up the food chain, they are showing a complete lack of understanding in how properly to handle trying to contain a global pandemic and not listening to the people who actually do know, aka scientists and health professionals. The worst part of all of this is that I feel they are being unchallenged in many of their decisions because the Labour party are not providing the counter balance and not looking after the general population of the UK as they are supposed to be doing, instead just letting everything go without question. The one person who could have actually handled this global pandemic well was Jeremy Corbyn but the people in charge of our local newspapers just scared people off voting him but bigging up anti semitism. At least there's a vaccine available now but I feel like the pandemic is masking bigger problems with the country and they're only going to become more apparent when everyone has received the vaccine and this crisis is over.

Well, it's that time again. Time for us all to look back at this year and determine which games that we played or came out this year were our favourites. I'm going to do it in two categories, a top 5 of games that actually came out this year and a top 5 of games that the poster has bought and played for the first time this year. Will give a bit of flexibility to those who don't necessarily buy that many new games. So, without further ado, here's my list for this year: 1. Final Fantasy VII Remake 2. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (only just started this but I'm enjoying it a lot) 3. Spider-Man: Miles Morales 4. Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Connected. I don't have a 5th... didn't actually buy many new games that came out this year mainly because of a lot of my gaming time these days is spent on online on Magic Arena or Pokemon Trading Card Game Online, neither of which qualify as they both came out in previous years. I wanted to put Among Us on the list but that doesn't count as it technically came out in 2018. Now, top 5 games that I acquired this year 1. Final Fantasy VII Remake 2. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time 3. Metroid Fusion 4. Timesplitters: Future Perfect 5. Spider-Man: Miles Morales This was a year I also finished other games like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Dragon Quest IX for the first time while also replaying Metroid Prime 2 and Prime 3 for Youtube. So, over to you guys...