toxicitizen

I suppose that largely depends on your idea of fun. It's certainly a niche title, it's not for everyone. Going from what you just said, I suspect it probably won't be for you. The thing is, it's not about dying until you get it, it's about being careful and cautious every step of the way. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as "fun" in the general sense. It's not Mario Party "fun" but calling it fun isn't as completely out of place as with something like The Last of Us, either. Rewarding is a better word for it. If you're dying over and over again on the same section, you're simply not learning from your mistakes. In that situation, it can definitely feel like going up against a brick wall. Also, coming out of a gen where we've been getting COD-like shooters out the ass and most games are often regarded as being way too easy, when something like Dark Souls comes along that prioritizes good design and brings back a true old-school kind of challenge but without the bullshit, of course a lot of people will embrace it. That being said, the Souls fanbase does have an unfortunate tendency to be up its own ass, I can't argue with you on that one.

It definitely can feel that way if you're going about it wrong. But really, there's rarely any need for grinding in the traditional sense. Soul levels aren't all that significant (look up onebros if you don't believe me). Upgrading your gear is more important than leveling up. It's not immediately obvious but discovering that is part of the experience. I wouldn't even say "decent chunk". The levels really aren't very large. On a first pass they seem big because you're going carefully and progressing slowly, but after a while you can clear the path between any two given bonfires rather quickly. Losing souls, while frustrating at the time, is ultimately meaningless. If you have a large amount and don't wanna risk losing it: spend it. Oh and Dark Souls II actually changes the gear durability system. In short, as long as it's not broken yet, resting at a bonfire will fully repair it. That's one of the few changes I actually really like. Well, it certainly isn't all in your face with the story, but it is there. The main arc of the Chosen Undead's quest is rather thin but there is more to the backstory and lore, you just need to look for it in NPC dialogue, item descriptions, etc... It's not really fanfic since there's evidence to support most of the accepted speculation and theories. Lol. I like this one better:

Really? Serious question: do you play all your games on easy then? I honestly can't understand the thinking behind what you said. Failing is just a part of playing for me. Do you not like challenge in games? I'm not sure why you even bother commenting on the subject, then. By your own admission, you have no idea what you're talking about. What you're describing has almost no basis in reality. Well, to be fair, Demon's Souls was kinda like that. But in Dark, other than a few specific exceptions (i.e. one or two areas with no or very few bonfires), you never have to replay anything remotely close to a "significant portion of a level" upon death. Seriously, they're great games. The difficulty and how "hardcore" they are is blown WAY out of proportion. Get the first one on Steam next time it's 5 bucks and give it a shot. I'm sure you won't regret it.

That's pretty far off the mark considering they're some of the most rewarding games I've ever played. It's incredibly satisfying to hone your skills and wipe the floor with a boss. Or simply upgrading your weapon to get the edge you need. If you're getting pissed at the game, you just need to step away from it for an hour or so. It's not the game, it's you. To be perfectly honest, they're not actually that difficult. They're challenging for sure. But mostly they just punish carelessness.

Hahaha, yeah this series does that to you. Just ended a five hours Dark Souls II session myself. I actually forgot to eat dinner.

Welp, 6 hours and many deaths into it, the game is pretty damn great. That being said, so far I am NOT a fan of the changes to health and healing. Reducing your max health with every death is way too punishing, imho. It sucked in Demon's Souls and it sucks again here. It just makes death more frustrating and I end up feeling like I'm wasting my human effigies. Also, I miss the old Estus Flask. I run out of life gems way too fast and upgrading the flask a single charge at a time takes forever. The old one was kind of overpowered after a while, though. So it's not like I don't see why it was changed. But still, I miss my +7 Estus Flask with 20 charges. I miss it so much.

Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate Deluxe Edition It's alright, I guess. But a few major issues kept it from being great. Nowhere near as good as the main series but I never expected it to be. Glad I was able to get it for 10 bucks, though, because at 20 I wouldn't be happy with my purchase. My main complaints would be the terrible boss fights and environments that can be very frustrating to navigate because of a map that's about as unintuitive to read as you can get (apparently it's even worse on Vita, if that's even possible). Oh and at the very end you get sent on what I can only describe as "the stupidest bullshit back-tracking fetch quest since Wind Waker". At that point I was already fed up with the map and back-tracking so it actually made me groan when it started. Come to think of it, that's a pretty serious offense for a metroidvania game...

3.5 hours? That's actually pretty good, longer than I expected. Harley Quinn's Revenge was less than half that, iirc. Really want to give it a shot as well but between studying for finals and Dark Souls II coming out friday, all my gaming time is going towards finishing Thief right now. I already took a (way too long) break from it because of Reaper of Souls. If I don't finish it before DaSII, it might stay unfinished for a while. And I still need to play Burial at Sea Ep 2...

Yeah, it was like 8 bucks for a pack with some DLC.

Both were grabbed over the course of the sale GMG just had. Typing was mostly out of humorous curiosity but it's actually kinda funny, enjoying it so far. Plus, turns out it includes the actual House of the Dead: Overkill game, so it's not just a joke game. Doom 3 BFG, well, even after all these years I've yet to actually play Doom 3 all the way through to the end and this seemed like the best version to do it with. I've been eyeing it for a while, the price just hadn't gone low enough for me to bite until now. I know a lot of people think it's inferior because it lacks mod support and such but I'll take proper widescreen resolution support over mods any day. Doom 3 suffers from a stretched HUD when you force widescreen and that shit drives me fucking nuts. This one was kind of a last second impulse purchase. I've been hearing it's decent for a while but I've ignored it until now, in part due to everything that happened surrounding 38 Studios and the uncertain future of the IP. Curiosity got the best of me, I guess. That and it looks like a pretty solid WRPG. I've built myself a bit of a JRPG backlog for the summer so I thought having a different kind thrown into the mix would help keep things interesting.

Fez. There was a few hours left for the related Playfire rewards so I figured I might as well fire it up and try to get some. Turns out I was pretty close to finishing it. I had stopped out of frustration while hunting down the last few cubes. Guess I just needed a break cause I was able to get the first ending in about an hour and then get into the NG+ stuff. I'm using a guide for the more cryptic stuff, though. I don't have the time to get into all that shit right now and honestly, half of it I probably couldn't figure it out on my own. I wasn't familiar with the "quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" phrase so right off the bat I'd never have figured out the game's alphabet. Anyway, say what you will about Phil Fish but Fez is a pretty damn good game. One of the most creative indie platformers I've had the pleasure of playing. The perspective shifting never felt like a gimmick and some of the puzzles are really clever and inventive. And while there isn't much of a story to speak of, what's there was pretty intriguing and was enough to keep me wanting to progress. Also, I have no idea what they did to the PC version but holy shit it got glitchy since the last time I played. I was getting crazy screen flickering, which at first I thought might just be part of the whole glitchy theme the game has got going, but when it started happening in menus and overlapping with the Steam overlay I kinda figured something wasn't right. Also, sometimes I'd bring up the menu and the text just wouldn't display. To fix these issues I had to force vsync through Catalyst Control Center and disable my GPU on-screen display, respectively.

PC Gamer gave Durante (DSfix guy) access to the PC version and got him to write a report on it. http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/2014/04/17/dark-souls-2-pc-port-mod-god-durantes-verdict/ Looks to be pretty damn solid, his verdict is quite positive. Also looks like he has a follow-up piece coming up on how to tweak the game to get the most out of it.

We still don't know if we'll even get the 64Gbs cards and you're already thinking we'll get 128GBs? What? I'm not sure if that's very optimistic or just kinda foolish. Let me guess, they'll bundle them with the Vita TV? Because that's totally coming here as well.

Ethan. Hot Heart. If this doesn't kick all kinds of ass there is going to be hell to pay! Also because I remembered being really interested in it when it first came out. I was tempted to also get Batman 2: DC Super Heroes but I didn't really want to spend more than 10 bucks on these and I figured I should probably play the original first, anyway.

I think it says a lot about how surprising this is that even I, someone who neither plays nor really cares about Halo, was aware of how great that series' music was. I mean, that main theme is just amazing. It has a similar effect on me as the MGS theme or the Uncharted theme. And I never even played a damn Halo game.

Man, those LEGO deals are pretty tempting, especially Marvel and Batman 2. 5$ is total impulse purchase pricing. Problem is I grabbed the first LEGO Batman a while back and still haven't touched it so I have no idea whether I'll actually like the series or not. :/

I'm feeling the same way about Blackgate. Not as good but the metroidvania design translates back to 2D pretty naturally. Freeflow combat works surprisingly well, though. The PC version also looks surprisingly decent. Static art in cutscenes is a bit weird at first but the only thing that looked ugly so far was enemy textures when seen really up close and that only happened once or twice during scripted scenes.

Uh, I guess I beat the Trials Fusion Closed Beta? I dunno, I'm not really counting it but whatever. It was a weird beta, more of a glorified demo, I suppose. At first there was only the first three sets of tracks but there were planned updates on April 5th and 12th that added an extra set each. Well, the April 12 update pretty much just broke the game (wouldn't launch at all, I'd just get the "Thanks for playing!" Uplay pop-up with a playtime of 0h00mins) but they fixed it today so I was able to play through the last set just now. The devs said they were working on improving performance but I haven't seen any major improvements over the course of the beta. Runs about as well as Evolution Gold did, which is kinda meh. At least it's not locked to 720p this time. Anyway, it's about as much fun as I expected but I actually think it might be a bit too easy. I was able to gold medal every single track, most of them on my very first attempt. I mean, that was to be expected on the easy ones, but the last few they added were medium difficulty, so that seemed a bit weird. I wonder if my progress will carry over into the final release because going by the in-game stats screen, that's half the campaign I played through. Compared to Evolution Gold that basically had two full game's worth of content (Evolution plus the tracks from Trials HD), that's rather disappointing. I'll be grabbing the season pass eventually because I love the series and will undoubtedly want more but I'm kinda getting the sense that at some point they decided to take the chopping axe to the game to have a product to sell earlier and then have the other half be DLC. I dunno, maybe I'm just being cynical. I can't really complain because the game still seems pretty good and it's not like 20 bucks is an unreasonable price for what's there. It just kinda sucks if that's what happened. They should've just released it whole and made it a 30-40$ game.

9 bucks on GMG after discount and voucher. Had some leftover credit but I didn't feel the need to use it, I've got a bunch of Playfire rewards waiting to be transferred so I'm saving it up for something bigger. Oh and kind of a reverse post but I made a last minute decision to cancel my Conception II pre-order. I still want it but I remembered that, on top of having to finish Persona 4 first, I also grabbed Ni no Kuni, FFXIII-2 and Tales of Xillia over the past few months. So I didn't really need another JRPG right now, there was no way I'd be playing it anytime soon. Besides, I'd rather save the 45 bucks to spend on Transistor and the PC port of Killer is Dead next month.

Has there been any actual hype around it since its official release? I mean, it's a successful free-to-play game and it has a decent community but it's certainly no TF2 or Dota. But I think a big part of it is the business model. Grinding Gear Games went out of their way to avoid the pay-to-win bullshit many F2P games end up being. I guess people responded very positively to that. Makes them more willing to throw money at the devs, I suppose. And if the game is decent on top of that, then you've got a pretty good combination for lasting appeal.

Who needs Baba Yetu when this fits so perfectly! https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z_WSgMhfuic

Well, I'm now up to date on The Wolf Among Us. Man, I fucking love this game. Definitely my favorite Telltale game so far. I already mentioned how much I like the visual style but the soundtrack is also pretty great. It has this synthwave-like sound that works really well with the source material. It's clear they took some inspiration from Drive and I am loving it. It's also good to see Telltale have finally found a gameplay style that consistently works for them. Prior to Walking Dead, their games were kind of hit-or-miss. But now I'm getting really hopeful for their Game of Thrones game. The wait for episode 4 is going to be painful. Guess I'll have to settle for Walking Dead Season 2 until then.

Steam says you have about a hundred more than that. I only have about 125 but that's actually a lot for me to have on a single game. My only other games with comparable playtimes are XCOM and Diablo III. And by now Reaper of Souls must've caused Diablo III to take the lead.

Which one are you again? Bottom right?