lol. Linear Game is not the same as Linear Gameplay. 

Nitin has a point, there's different levels of granularity. Having a long corridor with baddies jumping out at you is different from having a square with buildings you can clear in a different order. Likewise you can have linear levels but a non-linear overworld, etc... 

C1 you play through the levels in a linear order, but the levels themselves are relatively non-linear.

C2 you play through the levels in a linear order, and the levels themselves are fairly linear (due to small size and city landscape).

Maybe the "massive areas" appear later on in the game though... 

As in most levels have a couple of parallel paths that do pretty much the same thing...

...but also pretty cool too. Definitely ramps up throughout the game, both in the spectacle of the ruined city and the intensity of the gameplay. Some of the alien fights are pretty fucking hard....in the Central Station Walker boss fight I felt anything but a god-like superhuman. As Crysis Of Duty 2 on rails shooter it works pretty damn well indeed.

Also had a great moment when I nearly got jumped by a Seph on a rooftop and got alerted by his shadow from the evening sun and shot the fucker in the face before he buttraped me....don't thnk I've had such a good demonstration of the possible gameplay benefits of a pure graphical enhancement before... 

Some of the alien fights are pretty fucking hard....in the Central Station Walker boss fight I felt anything but a god-like superhuman.

Ugh, that was probably the most frustrating part for me too. Forgot how many times I died there... 

That, exactly that.

There might be a challenge or 2 but I hate games where your super kinda overpowered superhero.

It just feels like a whole setup to offer cheap easy thrills - which are great and probably work well enough if your new to gamers / a young kid but it really makes it feel like a total waste of time playing the game.
No challenge, or artificial moments of simple challenge which boils down to a little timing. Hardly any skill input, just like following a formula to advance to the next "scene".
It has to be wrong if I don't feel like i got any better at the game. To me the fun of playing games is always somehow getting better at it personally - that is what allows to match the increased difficulty coming up, a failure to improve becomes a failure to progress without cheating.
And thats fine, thats what we call a GAME. Games are to be won or lost. Not just won and thats it. OMG that makes me think fuck Prey so hard for its death/respawn system. I puked a little at that.

If you want something else may I suggest a movie ?

And if you cant take the defeat then cheat. Please don't just make all games feel like they are on a constant cheat mode just to not irk some dysfunctional people...


/rant over 

It was a bit too much IMO, compared to elsewhere. The second Walker you fight in a better arena with only 2-3 Seph appearing through the fight, compared to the "fuckloads" in the station. Switching from zoomed in RL to zoomed out machine gun at the same time as switching on and off armour mode to let it recharge enough and dodging while it recharges, jesus. 

Just FYI this kinda negates Killes point above, not as an argument but the suit is not OP in the last half of the game. 

 

 

Agreed, it's quite brilliant, but mgah is it hard. 

Its not really hard, try the previous title Demons Souls if you want to play a hard game that constantly punishes you! Dark Souls has lots of new mechanics to forgive mistakes. I still play Dark Souls, I rarely play games much after completing them, but the first half of the game is just so good and the boss battles are awesome. 

i have both dark souls and demons souls for the PS3 still in their cellophane. Never did get around to playing them. :{ 

Play Demon Souls first, the second game Dark Souls is easier. You should hurry up because part of the enjoyment of the games is the co-op aspect for boss fights and the servers will not be around forever! 

Dark Souls is hard, but it is hard in a way that is totally possible to master.
You'll probably get fucked up by a balder knight the first time you meet one, but after a while you handle them easily. Not because you're necessarily stronger, but because you know how they work. Because they'll still fuck you up if you make a mistake.

I haven't played it that much to be honest, just about to go to gaping dragon on my first playthrough, but so far there has been nothing that has been really unfair to me. I lost about 4000 souls right before gargoyles because I got invaded by some prick in a top hat, that's the most unfair thing so far.

I have been watching a Let's Play alongside, so I kinda know what I can expect. I know how the game goes and what I should be doing, and I don't really mind having that "spoiled" for me, because I'm mostly here for one thing:

The level/world design is just A M A Z I N G!
Just stop and look for a moment how Firelink Shrine goes into Undead Burg, how that loops back and forth on itself, how you get up on the ramparts, where the drake bridge connects to the burg (even just the tiny detour on the bridge with the rats is brilliant!) and then to the Parish, and then how the Parish is literally sitting on top of Firelink Shrine...
And how the lower Undead Burg is intertwined with upper, and where the Capra Demon and Depths entrance fits in, and how Darkroot Forest winds around the moonlight butterfly bridge, and the tower with the dead blacksmith butts up against the burg, going to Sen's Fortress and realizing where Anor Londo is and how the entire world is sort of terraced like that...
And all of this just flows together completely naturally and seamless, I could go on and on gushing about the Dark Souls world.

My biggest wish for my "career" is getting to work on something even half so grossly incandescent with excellence as Dark Souls! 

OK I really wanna try Dark Souls now.
Guess i must of passed a Steam sale or 2 for Dark Souls but still.

Hadnt payed too too much attention but the more I look... 

http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?tag=dsfix 

 

The design of the world is good but the actual combat mechanic is what Dark Souls is good for. The way each weapon works and how combat can evolve with different tactics is awesome.

There are plenty of different enemies and they all have key features which makes them deadly if you screw up and make a mistake. The best feature for me is the boss battles because they have phases, good attacks and have unique areas which makes them interesting to fight.

The RPG elements of weapon upgrades, special boss items and stats is fantastic because it gives you so much to play with.

One other key feature, your actions have consequences, the world changes based on what you do and if you are idiot and try to kill everything then your game experience will reflect that play style. 

I'm way underpowered to kill him, so for now Firelink is off limits for me :( 

http://youtu.be/OHhgjKaLHJw 

Just went into Open beta http://www.warframe.com/

It's a fairly old-skool style 3rd person ARPG with randomly generated levels using tilesets.

It's made by Digital Extremes and there is certainly a dose of Unreal Tournament style movement and combat feel while playing the game.

I've been having a blast with this in the last week or so and recommend it very much. 

You can pay the merchant in the bell tower to remove your sins and it will de-aggro Lautrec.
The first time I played the game I accidentally hit Laurentius too hard when I freed him, so I thought I had to kill him (then I found out about the sin guy after I did the whole playthrough without access to the pyromancy spells). 

 

I did enjoy it. By the end, the consolised hand-holding, disjointed progress, gung-ho vocals and tedious immersion-buggering map scenes were annoying me far more than the linearity - but were in turn well compensated for by the gameplay, reasonable diversity, graphics, and spectacle of the city. Sure it is so much COD-like I could feel by brain rotting each time I played it, but as a shooter it's pretty fine and I'm definitely going to get C3.

Continuing with Space Marine...

The clunky controls and utterly on-rails progress (it's like a FPS side-scroller as far as lack of interaction with the cool backgrounds) are still annoying, the visceral combat and excellent level of violence are still good, more so now I've got the Melta too.