DARK SOULS: if you need me i'll be in an induced coma so mvrch comes tomorrow

Will I be missing anything actually fun if I play only offline? I don’t want other jokers coming into my game. But I’ve never looked up how that works or what it does. (Will be getting Switch ver.)

Did everyone who hadn't already suddenly (like me) buy a copy of Dark Souls within the past week or something?

silby, you def want to play online. The notes at the very least are part of the fun. don't worry about getting gamecrashed; you'll need to play for a great many hours before that happens.

You might want to summon friendly help too (there are NPC phantoms, but that's not as fun).

Did everyone who hadn't already suddenly (like me) buy a copy of Dark Souls within the past week or something?

Pre-sale for the Switch, so you're going to get lots of me asking dumb questions until May, when I actually play the game for the first time. Some of my questions might be smart, though.

Did everyone who hadn't already suddenly (like me) buy a copy of Dark Souls within the past week or something?

I bought Dark Souls! But I just started replaying Demon's Souls (which is kind of misleading inasmuch as my initial attempt lasted about half an hour) so now I don't know whether to continue with that or cross over to the Dark side with the sudden rush of fellow newbies.

dark souls is the core, the heart music imo, and maybe a smoother introduction to the series so it might be easier to go back to demon’s souls once you’ve played it for a bit

i love Demon's Souls. in a lot of ways it feels like the closest game to Dark Souls III.

count me in for a Dark Souls NG in May when it drops on the Switch

Duuuude, I just killed what I guess is the first boss in Demon's Souls (giant spear-wielding snail thing that shits out smaller snail things) without dying. That was rad. Should I refrain from getting cocky? Well, too late.

o shit a souls savant

No worries, I only got owned a dozen times before I even made it that far. I expect to make it roughly twenty feet before it happens again.

(I wish I understood technology better so I could show you guys how stupid I made my Demon's Souls character look. I swear sometimes that 90% of the appeal of videogames for me is making my avatar look ridiculous and giving him/her a ridiculous name, e.g. my Disgaea party, all of which are named after McDonald's menu offerings or lead singers of shitty post-grunge bands.)

(PS, I am twelve, if that was unclear.)

my videogame avatars are usually hulking, hideous mutants called ‘fucknuts’

Hey, speaking of online, did they say if the Dark Souls remaster will be cross-platform playable or whatever?

It will not, unfortunately

So if I even wanted to play with online nerds, I'd be limited to nerds on the Switch?

I don’t think you’ll have to worry about there being under a million such nerds available

Does the Switch have a hatemail function?

(PS, Some asshole dragon immediately handed me my ass a half dozen times just after beating the aforementioned Demon's Souls boss, turns out this shit is haaaaard.)

git gud!

I knew this already about the Souls games, but I clearly need to curb my usual hack n' slash gaming habit of leaping into the fray like a hulkamaniac (this is probably why God of War is so bad and hated by me). I'm chill as eff with ranged weapons but put some cold steel in my hands and I'll happily make a mad berserker dash toward the spear pointed right at my midsection.

the secret to gitting gud is just patience, really - never, ever run your endurance bar all the way down, always have a bit in reserve to block or roll, learn your oppponent's tells, and just methodically chip down their health bar

oh, and trying to master parrying is a good idea

congrats, you are now gud

https://kotaku.com/dark-souls-expert-beats-entire-series-without-getting-h-1823662283

someone beat the entire Dark Souls series 1 2 & 3 without getting hit. it was a glitch-free and magic-free run! this is how fair & well-designed these games are.

Huh. I'll check that out, but I haven't seen clips of people doing stuff like that without, if you pardon the phrase, gaming the system. Getting overpowered, or exploiting a design weakness or something.

I've really been enjoying Doom on the Switch. I think it looks pretty great, tbh, though even post patch I have encountered a couple of tiny glitches. Hopefully they don't get worse. It does leave me a little dizzy after playing, though. I think that is more a function of it being a FPS and not like Dark Soul's ... third person perspective? Anyway, between the rampant death of Celeste and the challenge (and rampant death) of Doom, of getting myself prepped for Dark Souls.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/04/03/here-are-all-the-differences-between-dark-souls-and-dark-souls-remastered

i'm such a nerd i'm considering buying both the ps4 version to play it in super-smooth 60fps and the switch version so i can play handheld on the couch while my wife watches tv

pls send help

old lunch, how's your playthru going?

will try to demo the switch version at pax next weekend to see how good it feels on there

I tried playing Doom on handheld and it was just too small for me to see/fight well. So I suspect I'll be couching it up for Dark Souls.

using your vision to play dark souls is for n00bs iirc

Players can select the number of usable items, such as consumable souls or covenant items, to use instead of one at a time as in the original game.

thank god for this, really the only QOL change i wanted. no more standing in front of Queelag feeding her 30 humanities one item at a time.

Healing items will not be available during PvP with the exception of Estus Flasks. To prevent long and drawn out battles, the number of Estus Flasks is halved for phantoms.

I'm into this (DS3 style).

I didn't really play online the first time around, so I'm looking forward to giving it a shot after untold hours on the other games.

Also, not that I really care about graphics very much, but imo the original looks better than the remaster here (even if the blades of grass didn't wave or whatever): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_aTqCCZgBw

doesn't look radically different. most notable difference will probably be the framerate.

That narrator sounds like he's about to cry.

more than you know:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWLedd0Zw3c5RCXboUsPwHsZJlXB2CzCz

been lurking around the internet a bit for news on the remaster. it's pure chaos right now, pixel counters and console warriors analyzing scant off-screen shot video. the improvements sound nice. being able to do more than 1 item at a time is going to make a huge difference. they are also including additional HUD options, including DSFix-style (without having to edit an .ini file) UI scaling. feel like this will come in really handy on Switch, where you can have standard size HUD on portable mode and scale them down for a more cinematic view when docked.

there is a new bonfire in the Catacombs to enable quick access to the Vamos the Blacksmith. which is nice cos making the trek down there and back was such a pain. new players take note - this is a huge change to the game and an accommodation towards "easy mode" critics that decry the gamemakers as cruel. this essentially nerfs quite possibly the most difficult part of the game. that pit in the bottom of the world filled with rolling skull wheels. they were also in DSIII but far far easier. i wonder if you will still be in constant danger of stun-locking. they have said there are no combat changes, which is good imo.

as for the graphics and effects and stuff, i won't know what to think until i am playing the game. im pretty sure it will be great for all systems. i am only getting it on Switch because i already bought it on PC and the fucking controls stop working from time to time. Steam gets a patch and my joystick will suddenly have LR/UD axis switched and the buttons wrong. i try to calibrate it. maybe i have to download new drivers or a new version of X360ce or configure Joy2Key. i would rather have Mario be chillin next to Zelda with no BS and a 1 press Dark Souls button.

^ consoles are great for this, input never just stops working right unless you pour jelly all over your controller and maybe not even then

Ha, I had to get a new PS4 controller because I apparently dropped mine one too many times...I would be doing DS3 invasions and every so often my character would randomly do an R2 two or three times in a row, very embarrassing. Once or twice it was beneficial because of the sheer unexpected stupidity of that tactic, but usually would result in death.

The great thing about not having any new console after the Wii, and no HD console at all, ever, is that all these graphics look great to me. Like, I've already run into framerate issues with Doom, which is annoying, but the game still operates better than most games I've played before, and the graphics look cool to me. So I suppose the secret is the same as any technological device, just avoid using something better/faster than what you own. Which is to say, if people are disappointed that Dark Souls doesn't look better on switch than it did 10 years ago, that means nothing to me, cuz I've never played it before.

Same, I‘d rather have small quiet hardware than max shadows

graphics fetishism is a big scam anyway, art direction is 90% of what makes good-looking games look good

I'm psyched to go through the contortions necessary to get a red eye orb in this game.

if people are disappointed that Dark Souls doesn't look better on switch than it did 10 years ago, that means nothing to me, cuz I've never played it before.

if anything they are complaining that it isn't changed enough. i think many wanted a remake in DSIII engine or Bloodborne engine or something. there were some rumors/fake news on that front (i think i even said something as much on ILX even, oops ;-) with most games i am a fan of playing them as designed so the lack of a visual tune up doesn't bother me. in fact i am glad it guarantees that world design, brought on by geometry and textures, go as untouched as possible. world integrity is a huge part of this game in particular so perhaps no news is good news.

the Switch might be the authentic choice as the game was designed for 30fps. game physics & combat, rolling distance, dodging, jumping distance, etc, are all affected by unlocking this framerate. with DSFix it affected the physics of the PC/Steam game. 60 fps meant your rolls & jumps weren't as long as they were in 30fps. your dodges - moves essential for combat - cover less ground. there is a shortcut in Firelink Shrine that becomes much harder to get to playing in 60fps. presumably they will fix all of this for the PC/PS4/XBX ports but who knows.

Reports of Dark Soul's performance on Switch are positive.

yeah it looked like a pretty stable 30fps from what i saw. I'll likely play it on PC though since i don't imagine it to be an ideal on-the-go game so might as well make it look super pretty

bummed for the Switch delay but i can wait a month.

more bummed that Dark Souls II doesn't work anymore! i bought it on Steam like 3 years ago and have been playing it off and on. just tried it the other day and it crashes every time i try to boot. i re-verified the files and nothing. i deleted the game, downloaded the entire thing again, nothing.

exhibit one why im buying physical for the DS remaster.

could be more than a month, they haven't given a date yet. guessing this close to release it's some supply-chain/manufacturing issue with the carts, they had the full game running fine at pax east and anything else could just be fixed with a patch

personally hoping they realised that releasing this without video capture support would be unacceptable in 2018... but yeah, it does seem like its logistics and not a code rewrite.