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

i had pre ordered this on Switch and wasn't counting on getting it for PC. but with the long weekend coming up, and the PC port being already out (and being by a different dev that one), and it being half price since i already bought PTD, it wore down my resistance. 2 hours to go...

ok i got it. they didn't remaster the intro cg, it's the same old one seemingly. but the game looks pretty nice and is a big step up from an initial view. the lighting is very nice and the game very smooth.

only one giant problem, the in-menus are entirely hidden for me.

figured it out. the game starts with all the settings turned to 0. there is no music or sound because all the music, effects, and voice tracks are set to 0. the HUD scale is set to 0. it seem in order to get the HUD to appear you have to set it to something. lol this is the most obscure bullshit imaginable.

Man I'm glad I don't play games on pc. That sounds too much like my day job.

i really like the lighting in the remaster. like when magic missiles are shooting down a hallway the wall gets some of that blue glow. and the metal on armor and shields is nice and reflective.

also the texture filtering is really nice. in Undead Burg it looks super hd, you can see all the pores in the stones making up the ground. the animated grass is kinda cheesy but i do appreciate the lo res texture used.

tfw you simultaneously want to defend pc gaming and to toss an elitist scoff at lol this is the most obscure bullshit imaginable

i had a thing recently in witcher 1 where the skin on heads had disappeared and everyone was just a pair of eyeballs and a bleached talking jaw floating above their collars

i know i promised you guys i'd play this when the remaster came out but after seeing it's mostly just upscaling and no significant new visuals i've decided to wait on the switch version

me playing this game again is basically indefensible but i'm p sure i'm going to switch it up

Anor Londo looks good in the remaster. the walls have a porous texture similar to limestone or irl materials. they fixed some glitchy stair camera moves as well. the shiny metal looks super rad as you parry the many Silver Knights throughout the golden mansion.

it’s possible that i might never get tired of playing this game

that feeling when you first get to Darkroot Garden... i love it. still my favorite Souls forest. the fog, the green moss, the sound design, it's so atmospheric.

really like the use of motion blur, it does wonders for smoothing out the 30fps animation to look great at 60fps. w the added blur combat almost feels like DS3 at times.

I've been having a good time invading. Been doing fine one-on-one but haven't figured out how to deal with groups very well yet, at least with this build (fast roll, katana). Currently past the Four Kings and at the beginning of the dlc, but before Lost Izalith etc.

Also the enemies definitely have a larger aggro range and follow you farther than they did in the original version. I had to bail on the Garden at low levels because they were coming from everywhere, it was ridiculous. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I'm pretty certain it used to be easier to pull one of them at a time, and that you could run by the initial ambush area without triggering it.

just beat the Duke's Archives. kind of had a realization that the area is a kind of spin on The Tower of Latria. the whole library section is kind of like the jail with the two opposing sides and the prison section has that spiraling staircase going down (Tower has them going up). what make me start making the connection was all the cthulu dudes.

oh i encountered my first vagrant! was running through Darkroot Basin and started getting hit and i turned around and there was this octopus looking dude spitting homing arrows at me. definitely a wtf moment

started a strength run too. it is way more difficult to play melee-only! the gargoyles are destroying me rn. upgrading your weapon is a must.

downloading this

i just made it to Ash Lake. this place is so wonderful. the sand looks very nice in the Remaster.

the trip through the Great Hollow was pain-free. it seems they have fixed the camera issues. i can recall several spots where i used to get caught up on the geometry & it would suddenly shift the camera in a very precarious way (this used to happen while travelling across the flying buttress in Anor Londo).

i only died once or twice on my descent.

Ash Lake is all-time. Also triggers some gamer PTSD in me.

The toadstool monsters in the Hollow are one of the better jokes in the game. Adorable... and then they punch you like a Mack Truck

gonna take me a bit to get used to the dark souls controls, every other action game i play uses X/Y for attacks. i get why its this way though, dont really want to remap them if i dont have to

but i've already died multiple times because i drank from my flask when i wanted to attack

xpost yeah the toadstool monsters are hilarious w that sucker pucnh. the wind up....and the pitch!

just defeated the Sanctuary Guardian and am in the DLC area. i love how it is clearly a version of Darkroot Garden from long ago. instead of being dark and foggy, it's bright and sunny, there's a nice garden (the moving grass looks really good here), and instead of getting sucker punched by toadstools you are having a pleasant conversation with one who is a godmother to the character you helped earlier.

there is that land bridge to the other side, which i guess in the present is that area by the waterfall. crossing that was the first time i realized where i was. Artorias fight is probably the best in the series, and im glad DS3 leans so heavily on it. the connection between him and Sif is imo the best story bit in the game.

it's funny playing this now that i have played Demon's Souls, it feels just as much a remake of that as anything. the fire dragon, the phalanxes, Patches, the gargoyles that take you to a place, the skeleton wheels, etc. so many things were present in that first entry. which is nice, it helps to have consistency across a series.

(Dark) Fantasy has always leveraged that kind of nerdy cataloging of these strange worlds. it is fundamental to the genre, in both movie/tv/comic/lit sci fi and fantasy and the real history of mythic archetypes. if you read Renaissance era magical grimoires they are full of this stuff, lists of items and lore about legendary figures. they even use the same language that modern RPGs use for elementals & supernatural beings. DS does a good job of producing its own very unique spin on Dark Fantasy and it is intoxicating.

I thought this was neat:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--AMJkHcKO--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/i14sumaq3uydutjreszc.png

i love that map. the world design is reason enough why this game is so beloved.

was fighting Treant Gardeners in the Royal Woods today and saw the ones with the shears just trimming trees and ignoring me.

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/local--files/npcs/marvellous-chester.jpg

Marvelous Chester is a trip. like a character from a T-Rex song or something. he's from the future? some say he is a link/hint to the future game Bloodborne.

New FROM game looks exciting, although I'm a little bummed that it supposedly won't have the now-traditional co-op/invasion system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OgoTZXPACo

yeah that game looks cool! i like how they are switching it up. i always heard Nioh was lacking in level design, which is why i never checked that out. w From and Miyazaki doing level design on this then i am in.

not gonna miss invasion, personally. lol. every time i play as a human in the Remaster i get invaded and some red idiot inevitably backstabs me as i'm fighting my way through enemies. it has made me not want to do co-op as much.

Lost Izalith has the glowing hot effects somewhat lessened. i think i am among the few who actually loved these areas and the art direction. i remember first getting to the room w Solaire by the bonfire and seeing the insane bloom. it looks like it should hurt to look at, imo it is a very immersive design choice.

Dag, Dark Souls on Switch went from a hyped prime-positioned Direct announcement to sharing a release date with the other consoles to letting convention people play it to it getting delayed with no firm date beyond a vague "summer 2018" and now apparently it's been downgraded to a generic "2018." I wonder what happened?

Quick question that I don't think I have asked before: I have a copy of Dark Souls and a copy of Bloodborne, but which should I play first? I've heard that the latter perfects (or at least improves on) a lot of the ideas of the first, but there's something to be said for starting at the (more or less) beginning and rewarding myself later with the sequels/spinoffs.

Josh just pick one and play the damn videogame

Play both in alternating sessions so you can do a comparative close reading

I've heard that the latter perfects (or at least improves on) a lot of the ideas of the first

this is inaccurate and is helping to give you the wrong impression about the relationship between the two games. they're like 2 different takes on a concept, rather than a continuation/development/improvement.

there's both great games and you can't go wrong, but fwiw i don't believe there is a consensus that bloodborne is better than dark souls

Play Dark Souls first.

They're probably as close as you can get to opposites in the series -- DS promotes a slower and more deliberate approach, BB is weighted toward speed. It would be more of a shock to adjust to DS speed after playing BB than the other way around, so I say start with Dark Souls.

Will do! (Eventually)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2tZyh4pwM0
faster pace but unmistakably a fromsoft game

Obviously going to play this, but it'll seem a little lonely without multiplayer

JIC asking the important questions so I don't have to! Thanks!

Ha, just wait until the delve into the controversial matter of player build!

I thiiiiiink I'm making real progress on Hollow Knight, so after that I will likely knock off Doom (which isn't hard so much as reliant on momentum) then hopefully move on to DS!

So you’ll get to Breath of the Wild sometime in 2020?

If I'm being honest, probably ... late fall 2018 or winter 2019. I play the long game (and these games are long).

Temperature's down, overcast day ... I think I'm diving into Dark Souls later! Wish me luck.

bookmarked

this year i finally got to grips with this game after dying a lot when i gave DS3 a feeble attempt a few years ago.

you're gonna have a great time!

lol was stuck on the very first screen, where it says to adjust the brightness so that you could see the fire but not the dragon. But I could never see the dragon, even on 10, so I set it to 8 or something. Otherwise, so far, so good! I haven't made it that far, but I did kill the asylum demon (on my third try?), and I've been accumulating ... stuff. No idea what any of it does. And while wandering into that graveyard early on gets my ass kicked by skeletons, I don't think I've lost all my souls yet. Unless I just did, but quitting the game before I retrieved them from where the skeletons killed me? Doesn't matter much, I used most of my other souls to level up a few things at the first bonfire.

This is my first even PS4 game, btw, so I have to get used to the controller/camera. Also, creating my character was kind of dumb, but that's neither here nor there. Someone recommended being a warrior your first time, so that is what I am. Others have recommend playing defense more by movement and less with a shield, so I have been fighting like that so far, too. But I'm enjoying it!

I’ve got a preorder for the Switch ver on the books but I’m tempted to cancel since I’m not sure I’ll care. But on the other hand it’s a whole phenomenon I haven’t experienced yet.

I was going to get it on the Switch, but then I thought fuck it after the umpteenth delay. The only advantage is portability, but for this type of game the screen is too small for me.

you almost waited long enough to start playing it for the Switch release to roll around!

That's true! Though there was just as good a chance that had I waited for the Switch version I would have just started my mental clock then.