I finally got to playing Dark Souls 1.

+pros

Amazing level design. The interconnectivity, although you have to watch youtube videos for some parts to figure out how it's connected, is fantastic.
Some of the areas of Dark Souls are so fucking huge you just gotta stand and look. First entering Anor Londo, Ash Lake, Blighttown Swamps... awesome.

Monster design, visually these were some crazy looking enemies. Some looked fantastic, creepy. The bosses in particular. Probably the giant flying horse thing was the coolest, and the big ass butterfly boss. Best bosses in a video game ever? (visually).

The way the RPG upgrading worked was all pretty good. The right amount of weapons and armour, no inventory limit, nice way of upgrading your skills and weapons. That was all pretty good.

+cons

Shambler I notice you gave up on installing this a couple years ago. Well, you gave up early, GFWL was the easy part. Downloading and trying to setup all the unintuitive mods, changing the awkward controls (glovepie required), finding that alt-tab freezes the game so you have to play in windowed mode but that only works for a while until suddenly the cursor jumps in front of the game and makes it unplayable so you have to restart. The PC port is a piece of shit.

This is a game for a small niche set of players. The type that don't want to have a friendly game of tennis with their buddy, they'd rather have a match with Roger Federer and repeat the match over and over again until they beat him by learning all his moves and countering them the perfect way. All the while your playing with barbed wire wrapped around your feet. It's a game for people that enjoy being tortured because they know when the torture is over, it'll give them a huge sense of satisfaction. I am not one of those people.

I think the difficulty possibly hurt the game because while it does have an avid cult fanbase that rate the game very highly, and even gaming reviewers give it great scores, this is a small fanbase and the average gamer would never continue to the finish of this game. All the praise that's heaped on is by this cult fanbase. Even if you play almost every part of it, it's only about a 25 hour game but the average main story playtime is 50hrs. That's because you have to replay so much of it.

For me, the #1 issue is the checkpoints. A DS fan will argue that the checkpoints are perfect, but fuck that they're terrible. This is what made the game so frustrating for me. While you may die a lot, I can live with that. What I can't live with is repeating up to half an hour of gameplay getting back to where I was with all the enemies respawned. I think in the first 7-8 hours of the game I'd only found 3-4 checkpoints. Everytime I fell off a ledge in fucking Bighttown it was a 10 min sprint from Undead Parish > Lower Undead Burg > The Depths > Blighttown (with godmode on of course because there's no fucking way I'm repeating all that again). Maybe 40% of this game is running from checkpoints after you've died. That's no good. Also the checkpoints are often hard to find, or hidden. I have to consult the walkthrough just to find the damn things.

I think part of the difficulty is due to the PC controls. Not only are they just not suited to kb/m, but they're really, extremely unresponsive. In a game where response time is everything. Sometimes I'd be mashing the roll key and I counted three times before it would actually roll. I'd still be doing my swinging animation meanwhile the enemy has already ran around me and is hitting me from behind before the controls can react, and now I'm on the floor in an incredibly slow fallen over routine. Maybe this is why the PC version is so difficult, and the console version doesn't suffer from the unresponsive controls so much. Maybe no one ever actually plays the PC version, except me.

As such, I godmoded most of the game. Even then it was still a challenge not to fall off ledges. The Lost Izalith boss would be in the my top 20 worst bosses ever. And I still had to use equipment properly because I'm not going to spend an eternity wacking at enemies because I'm using useless weapons.

Also, the game engine is dated. Get up too close to textures and they look a bit shit at times, very bland details and straight box corridors. But that's pretty minor because the scale of the world is mostly fantastic and there's a lot of architectural detail.

Finally... a fantasy RPG with no story, just some tiny lore you have to really dig in to (apparently), to figure out?

No map also becomes a real pain in the ass. I got lost a number of times, and often had to consult a walkthrough. The lack of a map (and waypoints and mission objectives) are all part of the "challenge". The developer trying to annoy the fuck out of the player is also part of the challenge. 

Shit I hit the character limit...


Overall I can't help but think that perhaps this franchise could have been even bigger if it was a bit more accessible to the general gamer. Looking at sales figures, it did 3mill. Dragon Age Origins did 4.75mill. Skyrim... 19mill. It sold okay. But how many gamers were put off by it, because Darks Souls 2 didn't do as well. Who's even heard of their next game, Bloodborne?

I'd only recommend to gamers that like a really tough game and have many hours to sink into it. 

 

haha czg did you love the bit where i said "I godmoded most of the game" :P 

You said "Who's even heard of their next game, Bloodborne?"
Uh... everyone? And it sold 2mil (which is quite good for a platform exclusive, higher than expected anyways).

It's good that there are still people making niche games. 

I just want to read a Shambler review of Dark Souls. and no god mode please (kona wtf?) 

I use godmode and cheats myself in a lot of games. Haven't done it in dark souls though, but that would have made things so much easier.

The things I did react to though:

You used walkthroughs, but still missed the bonfire in the depths. The blighttown bonfire is pretty early and easy to find as well. And somehow your shortest route to blighttown was from the parish? WTF? The bonfire above the blacksmith or the one after the dragon bridge? Either is a wtf. Shortest route into the depths is IIRC from firelink through the waterway.

Mashing roll during a swing won't make you roll any sooner. Doing anything commits you to that action until it completes, and the entirety of the gameplay revolves around knowing when it is safe to go in for an attack and when to time your dodges and blocks.
I agree it's a shitty PC port though, and I've never tried playing with m+kb, only with a xbox controller which works perfectly.

There is not much of a plot related to the actual actions of the player no, but there is a world lore and metanarrative to go with it that is so completely brilliantly genius it staggers the mind, and makes me sad that it is unlikely to ever be topped.

And Bloodborne fucking owns bones! It and Dark Souls are two of the best games ever made. Bloodborne is literally third person Quake with melee weapons. 

sorry about that 

Nobody likes that "fight". 

 

I hadn't really heard of Bloodborne, but it might just be because it was platform exclusive, might have missed it and skipped over news on it. Yeah I noticed sales on it were pretty good considering it's just the 1 platform.

Re The bonfires, the 1 above the blacksmith was the parish one I was referring to. Never found one in the depths :( I might have just skimmed some parts of the walkthrough, I think in the depths I was just fumbling around in the sewers until I just happened to find the right path. But yeah actually, shit, the very early one at undead burg would have saved me maybe half my trip. Ah well, I only had to do it maybe 4 times till I finally youtubed where the first blighttown one was (almost blind jumping off a cliff). Still there were other ones that were probably worse, ie. New Londo Ruins with no bonfires at all.

Re controls, I look on youtube gameplay and it just seems so much faster and more responsive than I found. Ah well. I don't see axe swinging animation still going on while the enemy is already on the other side of the room having a picnic. It's not Risen 2 levels though.

Re Lore yeah I heard it was pretty awesome, it's kind of a shame they didn't really get that into the game a bit more though. All I really got from the game is I had to ring a couple bells, defeat some boss, and they were some really cool sounding places.

Re cheats, I hate to godmode but I still really enjoyed Dark Souls. I got to experience the whole fantastic atmosphere and design without the frustration. I don't mind doing the odd thing in a tougher game like no reload/recoil, faster movement, maybe even a bit of extra xp or cash to start out with. Godmode is better for a final boss that's cunting me off, but hell in DS every enemy is a boss.

Did you like DS2 as much as DS1? I've been reading it's not as good. Graphics barely look upgraded but I haven't watched too many videos yet. 

Exactly what I was thinking. During my playthrough I couldn't help thinking about how much I wanted to blitz through yharnam w/ a shotgun and RL 

New Londo and the run to 4 Kings without any bonfire is awful yeah, I agree there. There are shortcuts so you can just drop down and run past the darkwraiths, but coming all the way from Firelink each time is a pain.
You don't have to jump off a cliff for the blighttown one, but that's the fastest route. You come across it eventually playing the normal way.
There are a few bonfires which are hidden in a shitty way, like all the ones behind fake walls, but for the most part you find them naturally, especially if you read messages.

Did you max out your equip load? How much equipment you're carrying determines how fast you move. Keep it under 25% for superfast, 50% for decent speed, and I don't know if there's one at 75% because above 50% you're so slow it's not even funny.

I did not enjoy DS2 as much. Mostly because the world design was nowhere near as well thought out and interesting, but also because their approach to gameplay seemed to be to make things difficult by just throwing tons of shit at you at the same time.
I stopped playing when they redid the bell gargoyles fight, except this time there are even more gargoyles! Yay! 

Sure, I can do that:

Shambler I notice you gave up on installing this a couple years ago. Well, you gave up early, GFWL was the easy part. Downloading and trying to setup all the unintuitive mods, changing the awkward controls (glovepie required),

That was it. Fast forward a couple of years and I could finally fully delete it off Steam.

"Bloodborne Is Literally Third Person Quake..." ...is the biggest pile of shite I've read this year. Aesthetically, graphically, stylistically, yes, and it looked amazing in Cohh's playthrough. Gameplay-wise, almost the polar opposite, for all the obvious reason of 3rd person controls, targetting, boss arenas, repetitious deaths, no quicksaving etc etc. The direct simple control, the comprehensible monsters, the ability to fight your way out of situations and the crucial option to save if it all gets a bit one-shotty, all missing.

I'm with Kona on this one, I'd like to see an actual PC version of these games, combined with actual skill settings and actual saving (feel free to put it hidden in the menus as "Noob mode ur so ghey u can't cope with Souls" so that all the macho bullshitters who have spent 200 hours reloading from distant checkpoints to learn the minutiae of yet another boss combat can wave their virtual dicks around and laugh the the gamers who actually want to enjoy it) so that more people can play it... (Kinda like XCom EW did with a bunch of skill settings, it didn't force you onto Ironman or rookie randomisation or what else, it allowed the player to ramp it up as much as they want). 

About PC controls. Pretty much every game on PC is a console port, apart from MMOs and some indies, right?

I recently started playing Skyrim on PC because my 360 has just about had its chips and I can't be bothered buying a new console for a while.

The first thing that struck me about PC Skyrim was just how terrible it was using mouse and keyboard - the interface is horrific - your mouse never clicks on the right HUD element, and navigating it is a nightmare.

In game, having all my fingers scrunched up on WASD, and then having to play Twister with my fingers constantly to hit E, R, Alt etc all the fucking time in the middle of combat is horrific.

Luckily I have a 360 controller for my PC and as soon as I plugged it in and started using that, the controls were an absolute breeze. 

Player arrives to investigate hostile force, turns out to be interdimensional cosmic horror aliens.
Oppressive, gothic horror environments.
Darkbeasts, Paarl, Cleric Beast, Amelia = Shamblers.
Amateur hunters in streets of Yharnam = grunts and enforcers.
Hostile hunters = other players in DM.
Church hunters = knights and hellknights.
Snakes = crawling scrags? (uuh?)
Werewolves and beasts = fiends.
Church executioners = ogres?? They shoot grenades in the DLC.
Winter lanterns = spawns because you react with terror and screaming whenever they appear.
Fistable pigs = our own dear Mr Shambler. 

I certainly do NOT think the hardcore checkpoint reload boss-fest aspect of Souls should be removed or no longer be the default. People like that, fine, sobeit, that should be the Souls standard. There should just be a noob mode as an additional option.

Kinn, no problem with Skyrim controls for me, worked perfectly on PC. Very much like fantasy Quake in places, especially Dwemer ruins. 

There's God mode?? Maybe I can actually finish this game! 

I'm glad you switched to a pad. The keyboard and mouse controls are terrible. It's OK to shit on dark souls, games are subjective.

It's a game you talk about with friends,discuss strats and share knowledge. Like the good old days. Playing it blind would make the game unnecessarily hard to the point of being bad. 

I'm of the opinion that if you're going to play a console port, use a controller. I don't know why you'd do anything else. That's what it was designed for. 

Luckily I have a 360 controller for my PC and as soon as I plugged it in and started using that, the controls were an absolute breeze.

Oh I forgot the most important part: I can now recline comfortably in my chair, and don't have to awkwardly hunch over my keyboard as I slowly morph into Quasimodo. 

Note to self: write that FreePIE script for Quake that I keep telling myself I'm gonna do... 

 

Snakes = crawling scrags? (uuh?)

This is the best thing ever