The Bard

The thing is, it ain't just the light, the controller has to provide at least some current to the internal microphone and the headphone port at all times, as well as the touch pad. It's a good pad, but it's super annoying to not even be able to get through a play session without it dropping to one bar from full.

@Fierce_LiNk You definitely shouldn't play all the previous installments first, because the story is legitimately the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic with a fetish for poopoo jokes (which is part of the appeal sometimes) - but you should play MGS3 if you get the chance because that is legitimately still a good game, and playable in a way that the first two just aren't. Ground Zeroes is a lot of fun if you can find it cheap, just as a sandbox that allows you to fuck around with different ways to play. It's made to be replayed.

Yeah I joined the vilebloods, which you need the Crown of Illusions to access, gives you the ability to buy the awesome looking armour I'm currently using.

That game is the shit, played it for months on PC and never spent a penny. Hopefully we can get an N-E platoon rolling on the regular when it comes out.

Yeah those screens are undoubtedly bullshots, but I liked the golden hue of the last game. Loads of painters use a prevalent lighting colour to create atmosphere and draw attention to the play of light and shadow in a frame. I really liked the way it made the game look. I'm actually quite happy that Eidos took this long to announce this game. Gives me the impression that they spent some time thinking about what direction they want to take the series in, rather than making it a bi-annual bore.

Tried to co-op with Daft for about an hour, but couldn't get into his game. Not sure if level disparity figures into Chalice Dungeon co-op? Cause I'm level 168, which probably means I'm going to have difficulty finding anyone to co-op with on my friends list.

RonPaulocaust.

Check out my dope getup

Took me four tries to kill Rom, kept going straight for him for the first few tries, and then figured I'd try killing all the little spiders first, which ended up working in my favour, since Rom himself is way too slow to actually hit you once you're free of all the other distractions. Really good article about Bloodborne and the Souls series' aesthetic choices.

His swipe attacks are annoying as fuck until you realise you can just stay underneath him, hit his hind legs until he falls over, and hammer away at him until he gets back up again. You want to watch out for the electric area of effect attack he does while you're underneath him, but other than that he's easy to manage once you close the gap to stop him pawing at you like a tabby at a laser dot.

Just finished off Darkbeast Paarl. Can't believe the coolest boss fight in the whole game is optional.

Halfway through my NG+ run - is there a particular Chalice Dungeon for farming Blood Stone Chunks? Trying to fortify the Burial Blade.

Finished it this morning after finding all the umbilical cords. Fuck me the bosses on NG+ have a lot of health. I've got Ludwig's Holy Blade fully upgraded with my skill stat on 50 and my strength stat on 43, and a heavy swing takes off maybe 1/80th of Vicar Amelia's health.

Wait until you get to the lower Forbidden Woods. Never felt so amazingly lost in a game level.

This is the best game. So much better than Dark Souls.

I can see into your mind, young padawan. You mean The New Order.

I literally just ordered it off Amazon. I hate myself.

I've never played Demon's Souls but yeah I'd agree with that as a more charitable interpretation that would apply to Dark Souls as well. It's incredibly cold and austere, and I kind of love that about it. What I hate is that there were character builds and path progressions that were almost completely untenable for a first time player, but the game made no effort to relate why this was the case. And there's no ability to reason these things out either, you just have to rely on trial and error. It's a completely different (and much harder) game if you chose a warrior build and put all your level progression into strength and vitality, compared to how it is if you choose a sorcerer build and take the master key as your starting gift. There were times when I played it though when it completely clicked. My brain is full of tabulations of enemies, their attack patterns, movement animations, as well as when and how to attack them. Paths to bosses and through sections of the game become completely ingrained, through a process of testing out new strategies and and that's where the fun of the game lies for some people. I liked that it was so open ended as well, you could tackle the game in a completely different sequence to someone else. It's almost scientific empiricism. There's no way you'll get anywhere if you tackle it like any other game, where you expect to have a good chance of beating any new obstacle you come across for the first time. You'll encounter a tough enemy, die, form a hypothesis about why you died or observe something about that enemy's attack patterns, trek back to that enemy, and test out that hypothesis by attacking the enemy in a different way, maybe die again, and repeat the process maybe after levelling your weapon some more. All the while your hands are shaking from either rage or nervousness because you know if you fuck it up again, you'll have to do it again. That's what makes it such a community project, and also why it's almost impossible to play the game without resorting to looking at wikis at some point, where the community's already done the busywork to tabulate the nuances of boss attack patterns, and all the little pieces of information that you would never be able to figure out yourself (and that the game makes no effort to convey), because you're a fucking adult without the wherewithal to approach a fantasy action game with the mindset of a scientist looking over RCT data.

I don't know about this, I'll probably get it eventually, but I'm pretty much done with 50+ hour games for the time being. I felt compelled to finish Dark Souls, but I kind of hated myself when I did. No other game I can think of prizes itself on wasting your time so much as Dark Souls, and it's wilfully obtuse in the way it relates information. There's, for example, no explanation of how weapon/stat scaling works in this game. Only part of the game consists of the actual playing of it, but most of it is reading through online Wikis, because frequently what impedes your progress apart from punitive checkpointing and the generally pervasive trollfaced tomfuckery, is some ancillary piece of information that the game forgot to give you, but that's key to progress. Disagree with the people above who say it isn't frustrating. When you've been killed by a boss for the tenth time and then spend ten minutes trekking back from the last bonfire, it makes you want to smash something.

Jesus guys. Fuck cancer.

But do you not feel that arguing about a complete abstraction like a score out of ten given to convey all of the nuances of a game is actually pointless, whereas arguing or discussing the ideas or actual design of a game is absolutely worthwhile? Also, publishers don't give a shit about your review if it doesn't have a score attached, simply because it can't be assimilated by an aggregation site. Publishers have found a correlation between Metascore and sales, and that's all they care about. Of course, this could prospectively create a pressure the other way, in that publishers would have little incentive to give a site or publication access to their games or their developers for interview, if they don't stand to gain a little free advertising in the way of a positive, scored review in return. @Rummy, there are likely few in the way of the same established incentive problems with scores on N-Europe though, because they're not aggregated on Metacritic or Gamerankings etc. At the same time, scores on here seem hyper inflated, to the point where you see some truly trashy, generic games getting 9s, and some of the reviewers have absolutely no sense of proportionality. And even though the same industry embedded problems don't happen with scores on this site, they still don't mean anything beyond what the text can already relate to you. Although of course this being a fan site, you do see reviews that pretty much bash whatever game they're reviewing in the body of the text, and then give the game an 8. At that point, you should probably be taking not only scores, but the text with a mountain of salt. But I get your point; if you want an instant indication of how likely you are to enjoy a game were to you to buy it, then I suppose scores might be fine for you, especially if you're intimately familiar with the reviewers predispositions already. The thing is I want more than a purchasing guide from games writing. I'm going to buy whatever I buy based on word of mouth from friends, and the general buzz around a title anyway. I go to the reviews and features after the fact to maybe gain some insight into any given game from a more knowledgeable, or more thoughtful perspective than mine, which is what any critic that works in a professional capacity should aim to be giving you, rather than a monosyllabic reduction of a complicated piece of entertainment into a single digit.

It was brutal, Ken Levine compared it to an Auto-da-fe, which is really not far off. He really does deserve an intervention and the mass adoption of a heavily sceptical attitude to his way of making games, but there were a lot of moments in the interview that were crossing the line from tough into unnecessarily harsh. I mean, essentially they're raking a guy over the coals and reducing him to tears over a videogame. It was a roasting rather than a confrontation.

So the erstwhile girlfriend is currently ex-girlfriend, just because she's in another country until she gets her PhD admission. Until then, I wish to caper nimbly in a lady's bedchamber, to the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

That's actually kind of sweet. Hence why it's in the good stuff thread .