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 

The default PC game controls almost always are set up assuming WASD is movement. I hate WASD. They don't line up straight and they're surrounded by other keys.

I push the keyboard to my left and use the arrow keys for movement. Then I set R.Shft, R.Ctrl, Num.4,1,0, as needed (crouch, jump, use, whatever).

Games that don't allow full control over key re-mapping really piss me off. 

I agree with you about custom key mapping. PC Games that dont have this feature are shooting themselves in the foot.

Although I disagree with you about WASD for precisely the reasons you stated as a negative... the reason WASD is best is *because* it's surrounded by keys. :P 

Well, it's not like the arrow keys are lonely. Their arrangement and slight isolation from the nearby keys make it hard to hit something else when moving around, and the other keys are close enough to reach easily. I guess it's just something I've gotten used to over the years.

Most often R Shft is run, R Ctrl is crouch/sneak/duck, Num 1 is use, Num 0 is jump. 

Right/left mouse - Walk forward/backward
,/. - Strafe left/right
M - Use
Space - Fire
Right alt - Jump

Then I sorted my shit out and started using WASD because I figured out if literally all games came preconfigured that way it was probably for a good reason, and I've never looked back. 

wow czg, that is kind of odd...

I think the only thing I ever did that might be odd is have inverted mouse look. I don't use it any more, no idea why I started or stopped. 

You're pressing and holding the right shift/control keys with ... your pinky finger? I can't imagine that not hurting like a son of a bitch after awhile.