[Aptorian]

Been playing a bunch of stuff:

I finished Magrunner: Dark Pulse. Started out interesting but became decidedly mediocre the further it went. For those unaware it's basically a portal-like puzzler with Lovcraftian elements. Only, it's not just Lovecraftian-inspired. Actual Chtulhu and similar creatures appear in the game.

This was an eye opening experience actually. I think we've all at one point or another wondered how cool a Lovecraft movie or video game would be. Turns out, as soon as you actually show an Old One instead of just describing it with terror it loses all power. It felt almost insulting playing through the ending.

I went through all the episodes of Tales from the Borderlands. What an excellent game. Pretty much everything you'd ever wanted story telling-wise from a Borderlands game. I was surprised at how willing Gearbox/Tell Tale were at creating important changes and sacrifices in Pandoras story. I suspect that this game was actually Gearbox's farewell to Pandora.

I then played through Fable: Anniversary. This is the HD version of Fable 1 that was released a while ago. I had only played Fable 2 and 3 so wanted to experience the first game. It's terrible outdated but also holds up surprisingly well. The core gameplay and good/bad dynamic is still there, just rougher. I had fun playing through it but mostly it just left me hungering for a Fable 4.

Hopefully the new Fable game that is coming out this year manages to at least rekindle a bit of the main series magic.

I started up COD: Black Ops 3's campaign but put it down again when Rise of the Tomb Raider came out. BO3's campaign seems pretty cool. I love what they are doing story telling-wise with the digital reality stuff. It gets a bit confusing though. The game is almost a bit too frenetic for me to keep up. Way too much clutter in the environment.

I am currently playing The Witness and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

The Witness is amazing, confusing, satisfying, frustrating and slightly disappointing. I really love what it does in regards to introducing a new gameplay element and how it teaches you through practice and intuitive understanding. It doesn't hold your hand but it gives you the tools you need to solve every puzzle if you're just clever enough to understand what is going on.

Unfortunately I have been running into some puzzles that seem to be slightly broken or down right contradict rules that it taught you 30 minutes earlier. This has led me to be unsure about what is happening when I get stuck. Is it me or is it the game? I reckon I will keep playing it for another week with out guides or walkthroughs and eventually I will just power through the rest of the stuff I don't understand.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is god damn fantastic. I am playing this on the PC and I think that this might actually be the best game that came out in 2015. It's an immensely well crafted blend of story, action, environment exploration and puzzles. Everything in this game feels ridiculously well polished. Movement, menus, dialogue, combat, crafting, etc. Everything just works.

Rise takes what the Reboot did well and just runs with it. It's so incredibly engrossing to explore tombs or climb old Russian installations or hunt animals. I've been playing it all weekend and I am sort of sad I can't just lie here on the couch for ever playing around with this game.

[Maark Abbott]

Resident Evil 0 HD. Great game. HD remaster has actually had a lot of love put into it - there are no Gamecube-res backdrops like ReMake HD had. Most of the cutscenes have been polished as well. And it still plays beautifully.

[Aptorian]

Powered straight through Rise of the Tomb Raider in a matter of 4 days. Amazing game. Now I have to wait another 2-3 years for the next installment.

I tried to pick the Witness back up but suddenly realised that not playing this game for 3 days means all knowledge about puzzles apparently disappaered in the mean time. Boy is this an uphill battle. Especially since it seems like I have finished all the "low hanging fruit" and now the puzzles are getting stupid.

So I decided to play something easier... Dark Souls.

Right, I've had Dark Souls sitting in my library for years now. Now is the time. Maybe. Perhaps.

I've played a little over an hour so far. I think I did a classic beginners mistake.

I came out of the dungeon. Opened the big door and encountered the Abyss Demon asshole. Now, knowing the Souls games are meant for masochists I thought I was supposed to kill this bastard with nothing but a broken sword hilt. I must have fought that thing 20 times getting completely pummeled every time. I could only do 2-4 damage per hit and never got it below 90%. I was about to ragequit but checked a guide. Turns out I overlooked a side door. Sigh.

Got a shield and a sword, got some health potions and found the ledge ambush site. Then I fucked up. I had actually seen the attack from above move before but I froze. I looked over the ledge and the damn demon was looking up at me. I looked at him. He looked at me. Even as I was gathering courage to jump down on his stupid face, the fucker jumped up and bashed me out of the air. Then he stomped me well and good again.

Respawned. Ambushed the asshole and murdered him by sticking my sword up his ass 10 times. Felt pretty good. Now I am in the starting area and the game feels a lot more accessible than Demon's Souls but also pretty mysterious.

Any tips for a new Souls player? I've played Demon's Souls before so I get the premise. I rolled a Knight.

This post has been edited by Apt: 02 February 2016 - 06:54 PM

[Morgoth]

Apt, on 02 February 2016 - 06:52 PM, said:

Powered straight through Rise of the Tomb Raider in a matter of 4 days. Amazing game. Now I have to wait another 2-3 years for the next installment.

I tried to pick the Witness back up but suddenly realised that not playing this game for 3 days means all knowledge about puzzles apparently disappaered in the mean time. Boy is this an uphill battle. Especially since it seems like I have finished all the "low hanging fruit" and now the puzzles are getting stupid.

So I decided to play something easier... Dark Souls.

Right, I've had Dark Souls sitting in my library for years now. Now is the time. Maybe. Perhaps.

I've played a little over an hour so far. I think I did a classic beginners mistake.

I came out of the dungeon. Opened the big door and encountered the Abyss Demon asshole. Now, knowing the Souls games are meant for masochists I thought I was supposed to kill this bastard with nothing but a broken sword hilt. I must have fought that thing 20 times getting completely pummeled every time. I could only do 2-4 damage per hit and never got it below 90%. I was about to ragequit but checked a guide. Turns out I overlooked a side door. Sigh.

Got a shield and a sword, got some health potions and found the ledge ambush site. Then I fucked up. I had actually seen the attack from above move before but I froze. I looked over the ledge and the damn demon was looking up at me. I looked at him. He looked at me. Even as I was gathering courage to jump down on his stupid face, the fucker jumped up and bashed me out of the air. Then he stomped me well and good again.

Respawned. Ambushed the asshole and murdered him by sticking my sword up his ass 10 times. Felt pretty good. Now I am in the starting area and the game feels a lot more accessible than Demon's Souls but also pretty mysterious.

Any tips for a new Souls player? I've played Demon's Souls before so I get the premise. I rolled a Knight.

Learn to hunker down behind a shield. Make sure you're not too encumbered to do proper rolls when you dodge.

[Mentalist]

One of these days I have to get into that. But i'm partially intimidated by having to mod it to play nice with M+K.

[Aptorian]

I am done with Dark Souls for the night.

I got into undead berg and went exploring. I kept dying, retreiving the souls, exploring a bit more, dying, rinse and repeat. I eventually made it up to some Bull Boss and fuck that thing. I'll just call those 3000 souls a write off and go level up some where else.

[Traveller]

Heh, it's taken you a while!

I wish I could go back and play it fresh again.

I haven't played for ages, but I'd say first up, speed and and ability to roll and dodge are more important than seeing how much armor you can get on, when you find it that is. The lighter you are the better imo - stamina drains quickly otherwise and leaves you open to getting squashed when it runs out.

Learn to backstab.

The Drake sword is pretty easy to get early on, and will last a while. You just have to cut it off the Red Dragons tail first..

Also, get a bow.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 02 February 2016 - 08:58 PM

[Morgoth]

Nah, don't start out with attempts to backstab. Or to parry for that matter. Get a proper shield and a spear. You can keep your shield up and attack at the same time, and can learn the movements of the enemies at a more leisured pace.

Though to be honest, my favourite character was a dex/int cross class thing with a rapier and a sorcerors staff. It was fast, strong, and fun, but requires some play time I think.

[Aptorian]

Yeah, I tried experimenting with the parry but I don't have to coordination to time the parries yet.

I want to play with a shield since the Souls games are the only real video games that let me play out my Knight with a shield and sword fantasy.

[Macros]

Finished red alert 3 allied campaign last night.
Forgot how much I enjoyed this wacky universe and its camped up characters.
Tim Murray for premier!!

Will.start the soviet campaign tonight.

For mother russia!!


Also, totally forgot about the Hoff

[Traveller]

I didn't learn to backstab until really late on. And some, not all, enemies are really weak to it, so inwished I'd tried it sooner.

And anyway its only an extension of the sidestep/attack - you just step a couple more times! Wait til you meet Havel.

That reminds me though - enemies really are weak to specific weapons. The first big undead knights with shields are tricky at first, until you swap sword for halberd - and they're suddenly beatable.

That's one of the best things about DS - lots of weapons and ways to upgrade them, but they all have a purpose, and have different moves and speeds.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 03 February 2016 - 10:29 AM

[Tiste Simeon]

I have a feeling I'm getting AC:Syndicate for my birthday tomorrow so I'm holding off on starting any new games for now.

[Aptorian]

If they bought you some kind of special edition of AC:Syndicate I will recommend you don't use the bonus weapons. They are way too powerful and basically ruin the feeling of slowly growing stronger.

Played some more Witness and Dark Souls.

The Witness.
After finally getting out of the marsh/tetris puzzle area (I had to use a guide because holy crap) I powered straight through the Sand Ruin place and the tower garden areas. Much easier or perhaps much more understandable to me. Now I am stuck in the quarry area. They are beginning to combine a lot of different type of puzzles now. It's doing my head in.

Dark Soils:
I defeated the Taurus demon and made my way into the Undead Parish. There's a giant armored Warthog there that is fucking impossible to fight. I can see there's a tiny opening in its ass but getting behind that thing is impossble.

In other news I went looking for that Drake sword and shot some dragons tail 20 times. I love the damage upgrade but this sword is pretty cumbersome compared to the ordinary long sword I was using.

[Khellendros]

Completed Donkey Kong Jr. A pretty straightforward and short game obviously designed around repeating the levels over and over for a higher score. But it was cool to see the evolution from the original Donkey Kong, with different types of climbs and platforms and even a goal which was other than 'get to the top.'


Now on to the original Metal Gear!

[Aptorian]

The original SNES games? I remember playing that back in the day. The graphics were mind blowing. It was one of those graphical revolutions where you just couldn't believe a video game could look like that.

Loved riding around on sword fish and rhino's to get them bananas and letters.

[Macros]

nearly finished the russian campaign, considering its the campaign they recommend doing first I'd say its the harder campaign, especially the iceland/ betrayal mission

[Grief]

Apt, on 04 February 2016 - 11:33 AM, said:

Dark Soils:
I defeated the Taurus demon and made my way into the Undead Parish. There's a giant armored Warthog there that is fucking impossible to fight. I can see there's a tiny opening in its ass but getting behind that thing is impossble.

If you want a tip:

Spoiler

Iirc you can get it to run into the fire.

[Morgoth]

Destiny is dull. Bloodborne is awesome.

[Khellendros]

Apt, on 04 February 2016 - 07:18 PM, said:

The original SNES games? I remember playing that back in the day. The graphics were mind blowing. It was one of those graphical revolutions where you just couldn't believe a video game could look like that.

Loved riding around on sword fish and rhino's to get them bananas and letters.

You're thinking of Donkey Kong Country No, this was the original NES game, or rather, the sequel to it.

Started Metal Gear - man, it's amazing just how much of the story, the noises (like the you've been spotted alarm!), the gadgets and other things were already present in 1987. Already by far the most complex game I've played so far. Some cheap tricks though - like you can only equip ine item at a time. So you equip a gas mask to go into the gas room, only to get out you need to equip a card key to unlock the exit, which means taking off your gas mask and losing a third of your health...

[WinterPhoenix]

Was going to suggest a great way to cheese the Taurus Demon, involving a jump slash from the tower with the two bow-wielding undead with pine resin equipped (which you can have by that point in the game), half it's health in one hit, plus no pesky arrow fire during the battle either.

You can kill that dragon on the bridge as well without it ever landing, so long as you have a bow/ammo combo that does enough damage to offset it's healing when it covers itself with it's wings, just stand underneath the bridge close to the room with 3 rats (kill the rats lol) and fire away until it dies and drops juicy souls, uber cheese Though I'm not sure it's possible with the first bow you can acquire, it's been a very long time since I played DS1 only had a digital copy on an old 360.

Have you tried to fight any of the Black Knights yet? As of the Warthog encounter there are two you could've encountered iiirc, one in an alleyway in the Undead Burg, and the other atop the circular tower right before the Hog itself. Fun encounters, plus a great way to force yourself to learn backstabbing.

Not sure if you have made it past the Warthog yet, but please post your thoughts vis-a-vis the Gargoyle's or the Capra Demon after your first fateful encounter with said baddies

(PS Absolutely freakin' love DS1, getting all the trophies on 360 was hands down one of the best gaming experiences of my life )