Dark Souls 2

[Falconeer]

I take that article as a clever provocation, which is working very well based on the angry comments. I suggest that the writer actually loved all three games to death, but as he says in one of the comments, he's trying to provide "an alternative framwork for evaluating games". We could easily dismiss this piece by saying he's trying too hard every time he mentions Baudrillard or Ovid and shows off his classical studies, but games don't exist in a vacuum anymore and all in all I think -some- of his points are interesting: if there's a game that can blow your mind to the point where you fall into a dark, depressing meditative loop asking yourself why the hell do you even play games, and how are they changing the way you interact with real life, it's this one.

The title is nothing but a clickbait, the writer is lying, and the article is not what it seems.

Edit, about wasted meta potential: "The Throne of Want"? I am surprised he didn't use that anywhere in the article. I'd love to hear the makers of the game's opinion about this article.

[jakonovski]

I feel sad that the gaming community at large always takes a literal view on everything and is very hostile towards analysis (good or bad, but you can't have one without the other). Also, criticizing darling games get people frothy in a manner I just cannot understand.

Also I'm gonna post the smartypants things I wanted to say here, because no one's gonna look back at the previous page.

I think his point was that he's the type to play DS games obsessively, and thanks to the gameplay, setting and cyclic nature of it all, he ends up feeling bummed out after those hundreds of hours. Which I can totally identify with, when it comes to certain multiplayer shooters. The article is written in a very hard to read manner, but I think that's an attempt to emulate what playing the game feels like. In any case I find it amusing.

[schild]

He's kind of a shitty writer. By kind of, I mean, his editor is shitty. But you're still allowed to enjoy it.

[Typhon]

He was trying too hard.  He is a terrible writer and I'm going to arbitrarily judge him a a pretentious ass.  That he spent so much time playing and re-playing DS1 and 2 only to feel unsatisfied at the end implies to me that he possibly has a compulsive disorder and/or that he needs to evaluate earlier and more often whether or not he's having fun.

[Yegolev]

I think the key lessons in combat are as follows:

Interestingly, I had the exact opposite reaction.

[Falconeer]

At first I was failing a lot at rolling so I almost abandoned it. Then I realized it actually helps and backward is better, then I realized sideways is even better. Then I realized that it isn't really the direction that matters. What matters is where you will be at the end of your i-frames (invincibility frames). It is ALL about the size and the vector of the hitbox of the attack you are trying to roll away from. Imagine that -regardless of what the mob and its weapon look like- their attack has a box that has a unique (but invisible) shape. In some cases it is huge, in some it is narrow, in some cases it is only the tip of the visible weapon/limb attacking you, in some other cases it is the whole part. The key here is to make sure that you become invincible when that hitbox is touching you, and leave i-mode when that hitbox is over you. In some cases rolling TOWARDS the attack helps because when you get out of i-mode the attack has passed over you, and that's why in many cases it helps to roll towards the attack, to literally slide under it (this was the case in the previous D*Souls too). The problem here is that the i-frames seem to be a little less than they were in the previous games so all our muscle memory about rolling is messed up. Rolling backward helps because in many cases it just rolls you out of range, while rolling sideways helps with direct, straight attack cause you move out of the way. But that's just you rolling in a way that prevents your hitbox to be touched by their hitbox.

So the bottom line is that regardless of your perception, if you want to really dodge the attacks you have to roll in different directions depending on the attack. If, instead, you are relying on the i-frames then you could be rolling anywhere as long as you are in a safe area when the invincibility is over (which is the tricky part).


About "block beats roll", it's a personal preference. I thought so too and I finished the game as full tank, but now I am replaying it as a duel wielder who can't block and it's getting pretty good. Both seem very viable, as long as you get good at it, and that as usual contributes to make this games so fucking good.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I believe one of the stats in DS2 actually increases your iframes. (fake edit-looked it up and it's AGI that increases your iframes.)

[Falconeer]

Yes! As Jakonovski pointed out a fes pages back, some tests that seem to show that the increase in iFrames is negligible even if you max out the stat, but I am pretty sure that in the Souls games even single frames matter.

[jakonovski]

The dude that co-wrote the official guide (epicnamebro) said in his youtube videos that as far as he can tell, the main effects of adaptability are faster estus use and its interaction with other stats. IIRC some aspects of endurance and dexterity are capped by adaptability, ie. whichever is lower determines your bonus.

edit: as far as block vs. roll goes, I think playing on pc versus ps3 has a lot to do with it. Shitty framerate makes rolling fail more often.

[Lakov_Sanite]

As a sword and board melee I find myself both rolling and blocking depending on the situation.  Having a mix of the two seems to work really well for me.

[Yegolev]

Rolling sideways can put you into a great attack position.

[Ingmar]

Playing a Souls game with a mouse and keyboard to me would be like trying to play a racing game with a mouse and keyboard. It's probably technically possibly but I have no idea why somebody would want to do it.

Maybe because they read this:

[Falconeer]

Yeah, that's the misleading and unfair part. Instead of that crap it should say: "Warning! You can use M+K but this is meant to be played with a controller!". Or at least have the decency of removing the word perfect from that stupid statement.

I gave it a fair spin with mouse and keyboard and I think that if a console version didn't exist I would have still loved the game and I would have learned to play it with the M+K. It sorta mimics the control scheme of Vindictus and it wouldn't be so incredibly bad if it weren't for the uniquely unforgiving nature of Dark Souls. A mouse with more than three buttons also helps a lot. A friend of mine refuses to buy a controller (like Zetor) and while he hated it at first, he now claims to be very comfortable with it. Weird.

[Zetor]

Oh, it's definitely playable. DS1 was also playable.. but that doesn't mean the kb/m implementation 'good' in any sense of the word.

Like I said, I completed DS1 with kb/m. In DS2 I'm up to the ruin sentinels, and I can say it's not the kb/m deficiencies that are getting me killed over and over again, but rather my noobishness (and/or lack of knowledge about the fight, especially the tells). What's getting me is that the devs seem to treat the mouse as a 3-button controller (along with a screwed-up concept of what doubleclick means) and trying to do some things like plunging attacks and guard breaks with kb/m doesn't work like it should (if they work at all). Stuff like the complete mess that is the keyboard configuration screen combined with the inability to show the bound keys on the screens instead of the xbox controller buttons is just the cherry on top.

e: btw, you can NOT bind mouse side buttons at all, so having a gaming mouse doesn't help. This'll probably be fixed with a mod like dsmfix and I could probably do a workaround with some out-of-game macro software if I wanted to bother, but it's a good indication of the dev / porting team's cluelessness.

[Falconeer]

e: btw, you can NOT bind mouse side buttons at all, so having a gaming mouse doesn't help. This'll probably be fixed with a mod like dsmfix and I could probably do a workaround with some out-of-game macro software if I wanted to bother, but it's a good indication of the dev / porting team's cluelessness.

No, but if you have a gaming mouse you can tell the mouse to emulate keyboard keys with each of the side buttons, can't you?

[Zetor]

e: btw, you can NOT bind mouse side buttons at all, so having a gaming mouse doesn't help. This'll probably be fixed with a mod like dsmfix and I could probably do a workaround with some out-of-game macro software if I wanted to bother, but it's a good indication of the dev / porting team's cluelessness.

No, but if you have a gaming mouse you can tell the mouse to emulate keyboard keys with each of the side buttons, can't you?

Yeah, that's what I meant by out-of-game macro software. Thing is, you can only bind alphanum keys and some things like home/end/pgup/pgdn (you can't bind ` and [], f'rex), so you'd basically have to bind your side mouse buttons to a letter. Then, when you played other games and used the side mouse button (I use it in almost every game, single player or MMO), it'd spam that key... unless you built a custom mouse-keybind set just for DS2 (making sure to enable it before launching and disabling it after exiting), and that's also past my "want to bother" threshold.

[Ingmar]

Presumably that would work, although you'd need a mouse with software that handles multiple software profiles so you don't break the built-in mappings that most games let you do.

[Yegolev]

This seems a lot harder than using a controller.

[Lakov_Sanite]

There is also the very remote possibility that some games, whatever platform they are on are, by the very nature of the gameplay, better on controllers.  M+K is not some magical formula that everything is inherently better on so long as they are designed for it.

[Khaldun]

I actually thought that article had a reasonable point.

I like these games but they sometimes seem to me to be fantastically upgraded and elaborated versions of Dragon's Lair. The combat is not loose and improvisational. Neither is it the complicated choreography of MMO combat, where you learn to rotate powers, be in the right place at the right time, etc. It really often is a combination of intense optimization of character development + repetition of one of several repertoires of approaches to different kinds of enemies. There is a lot of memorization and repetition, which I end up enjoying in many ways, in part because of the excellence of its implementation (visually, mechanically, narratively).

But if I was making a spectrum with "open world games" at one end, these would very nearly be at the opposite end despite the fact that you can ostensibly go any number of places at most points in the game. You "can" but not really, as anyone who tried to wander around Dark Souls I found out. And yet they're not at the same opposite end from a real open world as narratively-driven on-rails games like Bioshock, which is part of what makes them so interesting--they're really their own kind of thing.

[Falconeer]

From Software bought by Kadokawa.

[Typhon]

I actually thought that article had a reasonable point.

I like these games but they sometimes seem to me to be fantastically upgraded and elaborated versions of Dragon's Lair. The combat is not loose and improvisational. Neither is it the complicated choreography of MMO combat, where you learn to rotate powers, be in the right place at the right time, etc. It really often is a combination of intense optimization of character development + repetition of one of several repertoires of approaches to different kinds of enemies. There is a lot of memorization and repetition, which I end up enjoying in many ways, in part because of the excellence of its implementation (visually, mechanically, narratively).

But if I was making a spectrum with "open world games" at one end, these would very nearly be at the opposite end despite the fact that you can ostensibly go any number of places at most points in the game. You "can" but not really, as anyone who tried to wander around Dark Souls I found out. And yet they're not at the same opposite end from a real open world as narratively-driven on-rails games like Bioshock, which is part of what makes them so interesting--they're really their own kind of thing.

See, what you wrote was readable and reasonable and made me think about what you said.  I agree, in player-execution, this game IS more like an on-rails game - the world isn't living/breathing, it's a set piece where every mob is lovingly (hatefully?) placed.  The player CAN go where ever they want, but they will die horribly in all but a few of those places unless they have leveled up a bit.  Your two paragraphs were an interesting read, thanks.

On the other hand, that author's writing style made me want to stab him in the face because what he could have said in a sentence or two, he made three paragraphs and a dozen references to show how literate he is.  All I got from his article is that he failed to recognize that, especially with these games, it's the journey, not the end, that matters.  ... and even that is wrong, because he clearly did stop and smell the roses along the way.  Fuck, now I have to go back and read it again.  Goddamn you!

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's the journey not the destination should come on the box art for the souls games.  DS1 has a nothing ending by nearly any standard but it's one of my favorite games of all time, I don't even think the ending detracts from it.  By the end of the last one I didn't need fanfare, I didn't need some huge spectacle, all I needed was a nice little line saying "you did it, good job"  because I had met the ordeal and come through on the other side. 

[schild]

From Software bought by Kadokawa.

This is what happens when Sony has absolutely zero internal capability to judge skill among developers.

Anyway, Kadokawa owns a number of great companies. This is a better fate than getting bought by, say, Sega.

[Yegolev]

Video put me to sleep.

[Falconeer]

"Project Beast" is the next From Software game for PS4?

Leaked pictures seem to say so. Hoax or truth?

[schild]

omg gimme

[jakonovski]

Dude has a shotgun.

[schild]

I really, really hoping it's you hunting wild legendary beasts and not playing as a beast.

[Falconeer]

The shotgun worries me a lot.

[schild]

Doesn't worry me. Demon's Souls with guns would feel like a more agile RE4.

Besides, what's the difference between a gun and a crossbow?

[Falconeer]

Anyway, since the rumors point to an exclusive, this is why I am happily going to save and buy a PS4.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Exclusive might just mean "no xbox" as is often the case lately.

[Yegolev]

[schild]

That gif doesn't quite have the oomph that it did when people were buying Wiis for no discernible reason.