Dark Souls

[brisk]

Can't wait for this. Demon's Souls is easily in the top 5 PS3 games of all time for me and now the 360 tards can finally get a chance to see what all the fuss is about. When half the trailer is dedicated to showcasing the myriad of ways you are going to die, then you know you're in for some fun. This + Skyrim within a month of each other. God damn.

[Mat Linnett]

Let's hope PSN is back up by then

[Don Carlos]

360 tard? Oh B... :/

[brisk]

I own a 360 btw.

[Don Carlos]

Good lad

[Mat Linnett]

Nice interview with the game's director here.

I think my favourite piece of information is that there is no DLC planned for the game, meaning that it'll ship complete. I'm getting increasingly annoyed with publishers shipping games with paid-for DLC immediately available upon release. It makes me think I'm being short-changed; if I pay for a game, I want the complete thing thank you very much.

Oh, and he obviously has to remain platform neutral, but clearly the PS3 version with free multiplayer will be the better one

[brisk]

Yeah, I pre-ordered the PS3 version, mainly to avoid any port-related issues, but also cos of the free internets

Still annoyed the guide book has now been changed to a downloadable PDF though :/

[Mat Linnett]

The guide from the American version of Demon's Souls was brilliant and invaluable, even though the ink on the cover came off. The UK version was prettier and better printed, but nowhere near as in-depth.
'tis indeed a great shame only having an electronic version instead of something physical that can sit next to you on the couch.

[Don Carlos]

Preordered thanks to Brisk and his amazing heads up on amazon's hyper offer

[brisk]

I am king of the pikeys. I will always find a good deal for me and my bros

Oh and in other news, the devs are trolling their fans already

[brisk]

http://uk.ign.com/videos/2011/09/28/ign ... qus_thread

24 hour livestream now, hosted by a butch lesbian and a guy with an anti-sex beard.

[Mogul]

I barely get the point of this game and its predecessor, Demon's Souls. A game that exists purely to be brutally difficult, even to the levels of absurdity, just doesn't appeal to me at all. In my college days I would have loved it. I am no stranger to the hardest-core of hardcore games, but I can't see a working adult having any part of it, really. Maybe this game's hype and success can be attributed to a reaction to the "hand-holding" game design "hardcore" gamers have been complaining about for so long.

I know some people here play WoW, and so do I, so I will relate it to a WoW experience I had.

Back in Sunwell, the final raid zone of TBC, I was in <V A N Q U I S H> and we earned top-5 US kills for every boss there, including the world first Kalecgos kill.

During M'uru progress, my guild spent over 500 attempts over the course of 16 nights of raiding to finally bring him down. Seeing M'uru (Entropius) go to 0% health finally, after all that, remains the highlight of my gaming experience, and probably will always hold that top spot. I know what hardcore is. But having been at a pinnacle of sorts, I don't see the point in carrying on with it.

I am sure everyone still here from the earliest days of this forum have asked themselves more than once, wow did I really spend a thousand hours of my life on that game? In the case of some of the hardest-core games, maybe you've found that you've spend multiple thousands of hours, all to gain a sense of accomplishment that is only a fleeting sensation.

tl;dr: there are better ways to spend one's time than bashing one's head into a brick wall in a video game until one "succeeds."

[MKJ]

anti-sex beard

Winner: Dark Souls

[brisk]

tl;dr: there are better ways to spend one's time than bashing one's head into a brick wall in a video game until one "succeeds."

There are also better ways to spend your time than writing a dissertation on a quake forum, pre-judging a game you've never played.

[Κracus]

It doesn't look impressive...

[Mat Linnett]

Demon's Souls wasn't "Hard" in an MMO sense, which I find the most annoying sense (increase HP and damage of mobs so that only masses of people can defeat them).
Demon's Souls is tough but fair throughout. It never once holds the hand of the player, but all obstacles can be overcome with a modicum of planning.
I'd argue that Demon's Souls is hard in similar ways to the Metroid Prime games. In fact, compared to certain Metroid Prime bosses (Omega Pirate for example, hnnnnnngh), Demon's Souls is pretty damn easy. Once you learn the tricks, it becomes a LOT easier, but you should also never, EVER underestimate its ability to fuck you in the ass.
If you don't get over-confident with Demon's Souls, you'll do well.

In essence, don't buy into all this new wave gamer bollocks about Demon's Souls or in all likelihood Dark Souls being hard. Compared to really hard games, they're walks in the park.

This ain't Battle Toads.

[MKJ]

battle toads

[brisk]

Spot on as usual sir. I'll even go as far to say that Demon's Souls is actually pretty easy, once you get decent gear and understand the game mechanics. The initial challenge is due to the fact it throws you in at the deep end. It's a bit of a shock and you have to get out of the COD-style mindset and back into the old-skool style mindframe, that expected you to learn by failing. It's all about knowing when to attack, when to defend and when to run away like a sissy.

Despite NG+ being supposedly 40% harder than the default difficulty, you find yourself dying less, simply because you know the enemy attack patterns inside-out now. Learning opponent patterns is pretty much the most fundamental aspect of video games in the first place and has been since Pong. If you honestly don't want to put any effort into a game, then you'll probably find it a dull, unrewarding and ultimately forgettable experience. Maybe stick with Farmville or something if you want a quick fix with minimal effort.

Go play any competitive online FPS game against a decent team, who are 100% in sync and know every worthwhile tactic in the game and it'll be 10000000% harder than Demon's Souls ever would be. Human patterns are much more difficult to read than a set of scripted computer enemies.

Put simply, Demon's Souls (and subsequently, Dark Souls) isn't fun because it's hard. It's fun because it's a great game that just so happens to be challenging.

[Don Carlos]

All this shite about preordering and I have realised it is the wrong fucking game and I have been playing Darksiders

[Mogul]

Fyi brisk, i played demon's souls.

e: because I was at a restaurant, I didn't have time to type this all out there.

Yes I am fully aware of the "learn by mistake" model. Quake requires it, raiding in MMOs requires it ("500 attempts over the span of 16 nights" on M'uru wasn't an exaggeration -- most guilds probably spent 40-50 hours over a couple of weeks learning that one encounter -- that ONE encounter); any "hard" game requires it.

re: human teams are harder because you can't "read" them. It would seem that way, and in a way that's true. But it's not the end-all-be-all of difficulty in games. Watch a Quake demo from top players. Even they fall into patterns on these maps that have been played for over a decade. Players always set up the same rail shots, the same item spawn-traps... teams often have a "point guy" to always get quad. Thinking of Fix from Clan Malfunction in QW there.

AI difficulty can be brutally hard, whether it's for lame reasons (Battletoads, as you already cited) or for great reasons (M'uru, Heroic difficulty Lich King, etc; not that I expect the lay person to know what any of that is or fathom the time or effort that it entails from 25 people simultaneously). It depends on how tightly the encounter is tuned and what you're capable of doing. Learning a pattern is crucial to success in any of these games, of course.

All that said, I find it refreshing that someone here is saying Demon's/Dark Souls aren't that hard. Still, the die/learn (hopefully)/repeat scheme is pretty tiresome and that was my point in the first place, even if I didn't spell it out that explicitly.

[Mogul]

Also darksiders was a pretty fun experience. Enjoy.

[Don Carlos]

Yeah rocked Tiamat! Game is fucking epic dude, not my usual style either but I prefer it to Gears 3...

[Deathshroud]

Wow, I just started playing Darksiders as well. The Tiamat battle was a blast!

[Mogul]

Unfortunately, Tiamat is the climax of boss battles, gameplay-wise, even though it's the first one in the game.

[U4EA]

This entire game is dork sided