2680 replies to this topic

[king mark]

yeah , you have to press a second time to actually light them and activate the menus

[Quint]

Do you get bonfires positioned just before bosses? If so, are the bosses still a pain in the arse? I hate bosses in almost ALL games.

[king mark]

Well they're less far than the checkpoints in Demon's Souls

[Koray Savas]

yeah , you have to press a second time to actually light them and activate the menus

The thing is, by doing that you respawn all the enemies. It's the equivalent of dying sans starting at the beginning of the area. The one I was at was just a short walk away from a giant horde I had cleared out. I didn't want to respawn them so I lit the thing and kept walking. Makes no sense for your character to be able to light it without sitting at it, if lighting it does nothing whatsoever.

Do you get bonfires positioned just before bosses? If so, are the bosses still a pain in the arse? I hate bosses in almost ALL games.

I love a good boss. It's kind of the quintessential ingredient in a game. Without a final foe to overcome, I find endings to be less effective. There's no climax. Of course there are exceptions to what I'm describing, but games like BioShock 2 and Resistance 3 just throw a couple waves of enemies at you and the game's over. Boring as hell. For me, the ending should be the hardest part of the game. You get that awesome elation in the denouement. It doesn't even have to be difficult per se, just well written so you still get that feeling. Sometime's you get both, like with the Uncharted games. Among Thieves almost made me go insane on Crushing. I think I spent like 2-3 days just trying to kill that bastard.

Anyway, to answer your original question: As far as I got, which wasn't too far, there are bonfires in key areas. The first boss, the "tutorial" one, has a bonfire right before it. I never made it to another boss. The worst part of Demon's Souls was clearing out the entire area again if you died in a boss fight.

[Quint]

I just don't like arbitrary boss fights that are there purely out of an old gaming tradition. It's like a tall vertical wall is placed in front of the player and access is denied to what's beyond, until you hit the glowing red areas under the armour. Sometimes I'm plugging away after ten attempts, thinking, why?

The best bosses are the ones which are major players in the plot - MGS, Batman baddies, that sort of thing. They're usually the most inventive, too. Oh and the GoD of War titans are great fun.

[Koray Savas]

Okay, we're in agreement then. Demon's/Dark Souls is kinda like the brick wall variety. The games have no real plot whatsoever, so that's the primary draw of playing them: get your ass kicked by impossible bosses.

[Wojo]

I like bosses that feel organic to the plot and environment. I typically dislike boss battles when they lock you into the chamber and don't let you leave until the battle is won or find more interesting ways of bypassing them. That's very Mario Brothers-esque of the games.

The bosses in the Arkham games do that. They lock you in the room and prevent Batman from using his grappler to jump out of harm's way and pelt them from above.

[Quint]

It's next to impossible to find more than a couple of boss fights which don't work that way. I can't think of any right now.

[king mark]

The hardest thing in Demon's souls is that you can't save your game, and the auto save doesn't allow you to go back in time. Make a bad crafting decision or character building decision...your stuck with it

The worst boss is the final one in Demon' Souls. It can permanently suck off levels that took you several days of playtime to gain. And you can't load a save game from just before you tried to kill him.

Dark souls had a few hair pulling bosses, like the combo of Smough and Ornstein

[Quint]

Torturous and frustrating for the sake of it.

[king mark]

Yeah ,but the memories of epicness linger long after you finish the game. That's what makes great games

I'm ranking Demon's Souls /Dark Souls among the top 5 games I ever played, right up there with Ultima Underworld 2 and other classics

There's this area in Dark Souls (the Tomb of Giants at the bottom of the Catacombs) where it's literally pitch black and you have to rely on a lantern or light spells (of limited uses of course) . At some point a gadzillion baby skeletons attack you like piranhas. It's like WTF as your frantically swinging your sword around you . I get chills just thinking about it because it was actually horrifying

[Quint]

Yeah, I can certainly appreciate that. Games with oppressive atmospheres are brilliant.

[Wojo]

It's next to impossible to find more than a couple of boss fights which don't work that way. I can't think of any right now.

Even Skyrim, a game of wide-open outdoor exploration, puts a boss at the end of each major tomb that prevents (or at least restricts) backtracking or escape into the next section, which is often just a drop from an unscalable height back to the tunnel entrance. At least the dragon fights that happen outdoors (I think there is one in underground Blackreach, though it's marked as an outdoor region due to the scale) do not restrict your escape...provided you can run away from or evade a dragon.

Certainly games like Fallout 3/NV and the Elder Scrolls do have bosses, but aside from the ones mentioned above, these usually do feel organic to the game itself, and are often just bad guys with extreme amounts of hit points or better abilities/weapons.

It's games like Deus Ex 3 that reward you for playing one kind of character by presenting a boss that must be executed in order to advance.

I have to restart that game; I didn't realize that the bad guys in the prologue count towards the "don't kill anyone" statistic, and I spent so long exploring HQ that the hostages were killed. At least the joke about entering the woman's bathroom was carried over from the first game.

[Quint]

You have to restart a lot of games, Wojo

[Wojo]

You have no idea.

[king mark]

Wojo, the way your playing you won't finish any game, controlling the outcome of every quest perfectly is almost impossible

I spent way too much time in Skyrim forging weapons and armors, but I did all the scripted quests in the game I think. The best ones were the Daedric artifacts

[Wojo]

"You're"

No, I'll tell you what will keep me from finishing any game. I have not touched Skyrim since 3/17. I have only invested 36 hours of my life into the $40 purchase. That sounds about right

[Quint]

Finished The Walking Dead Ep1. I've never gotten into a Telltale game before, but this was very interesting. More of an interactive movie than actual gameplay, it was a surprisingly involving and genuinely gripping experience. The bad controls seem deliberately designed with stress and panicky decision making in mind, and it just works terrifically well as a device of terror - an absolute rarity in video games.

Priced at 400MSP, the two hour long first episode is an essential purchase for both fans of the franchise and point and click adventures. I for one am very much looking forward to the next installment. 7/10.

[Chaac]

I saw most of Uncharted 2 on youtube. It was fun.

[Drax]

I have a question. I'm thinking about buying a PS3, but I just want to be sure about the AV aspect. I want to use the HDMI to connect to my TV for video, but I want to also use the standard AV output to plug into my 2-channel stereo amplifier for sound. Is it possible to run both the HDMI and AV out on the PS3 at the same time?

[Koray Savas]

I'm not positive, but I think there is a setting that allows you to. Let me check real quick on my own system and I'll let you know.

Yeah, under Audio Output Settings, you can choose HDMI, Optical Digital, or Audio Input Connector/SCART/AV MULTI.

[king mark]

yeah you can Drax. You have to chose "multi - AV" in the Audio settings. Took me a week to figure it out

PS3>>.HDMI out to TV
PS3>>Optical Out to Amp

Picture will run through HDMI and sound both in the HDMI and Optical Out

[Quint]

Finished Half-Life 2 and Episode 1. My Orange Box marathon continues with Epi 2 and I've even started Portal again, to wrap up some achievements.

Over five years later (HL2 is nearly ten) these games are still head and shoulders above the competition. Just absorbing design genius at every turn; even if the HL2 campaign is a rather bloated 12hr trawl.

[Stefancos]

Oh, sorry...wrong thread

[Drax]

Excellent, thanks guys!

Also, to get me started, I want to play those Batman: Arkham games. Are they are good as people say?

[Quint]

Every bit as good and more.

[Marian Schedenig]

I have the first one and got bored by it after the first third or so. But as far as I know, I'm the only one.

[Quint]

I don't think Koray got into it either. So now I know two people.

[Wojo]

Arkham Asylum is excellent. I played it on the PC up until the penultimate boss battle, but quit because with mouse and keyboard, I didn't really have a smooth grasp of the controls. In the long drawn-out fights, mastery of the combos is absolutely essential to dole out damage without taking any yourself; I was a button masher who had just been lucky up until that point. So I had no idea how to beat that sequence and earn the right to face the final boss.

Since then, I have purchased an X360 controller, which is great for side-scrollers like Super Meat Boy and Shank. I just have not returned to Arkham Asylum since making the purchase; I've been busy.

I bought Arkham City during Steam's winter sale, but because of the vast amount of blood, plasma, and baby goats that must be sacrificed in order to make a game work in both Steam and GFWL, I have not gotten it to work yet.

[Koray Savas]

I don't think Koray got into it either. So now I know two people.

I enjoyed it, but never got to finish because I had borrowed it from a friend.

[Luke Skywalker]

I liked Arkham Asylum. Waiting to get the second game.

I think i beat Joker with the button smasher technique wojo... (took me a hell of a time...didnt want to play that part again ) i dont remember doing any difficult combos

[alicebrallice]

[king mark]

100 hours into Kingdom of Amalur...

still 1/3 of the map I haven't visited

[Quint]

What did you think of the Dragon's Dogma demo? It looked and felt pretty interesting I thought. The combat was very God of War.

[king mark]

Haven't played the Demo, but I'm definitely getting it

Here's my mid term lineup:

Tales of Graces F
The Witcher 2
Dragon's Dogma
FF13-2
Darksiders 2
Mass Effect 3

[Henry Buck]

Mass Effect 3.

Wow. Very, very impressive. It suffers from the same flaws as the first two games, but a lot of tweaks are put into place that make it feel a little smoother and balanced. The scope is huge. Almost everything that was hinted at and promised by the first two games is delivered on. And yeah, the ending is weird, but I think players who feel their choices didn't count weren't paying attention to how much their choices already paid off throughout the course of the game. You can't really expect that there would be dozens of different endings all based completely on who the player saved, killed, united, whatever. It's the buildup to the ending that counts.

I suppose the soundtrack is a little bit of a weak spot. While the first few games also had five composers, lead composer Jack Wall did a great job of managing them and creating unity in sound. They worked as part of one studio. For this game, it seems like Bioware just hired five different composers to fill the different mood needs. Clint Mansell actually contributes very little, though his two compositions at the beginning and end are wonderful. Sam Hulick, the only holdover from Jack Wall's team, brings some needed musical continuity, composing some excellent new material as well. But there's a liberal reuse of tracks from the previous games rather than an intelligent development of their musical material. Example: you'll briefly hear the Sovereign theme from Mass Effect 1, restated exactly, then completely new action material by Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikiciyan. So the Reapers lack a leitmotif. Shepard's own theme is only heard once or twice; there's a great track (composed by Sam Hulick) that gives a really climactic, fully delivered version of Shepard's theme. It's great. There isn't enough of that. The soundtrack is too aimless.

At its core, this game succeeded not because of action and spectacle, but because it, and the whole series, appeals to our curiosity, the fascination humans have always had with the infinite unknown of space. (The voice actor chosen for the very end is a wonderful tribute to this curiosity.) And this simple fact makes Mass Effect so much more important than an action spectacle like Transformers. It helps us have faith that there is more to the universe than us.

[Quint]

Henry Buck! I'm so please you're not dead!

Anyway, I'll never play ME3 now. The first was masterful, but the bloated and unfocused sequel divorced me from the franchise in one fell swoop. And after the farcical response of the devs after the outcry over the ending (by the spoilt brats), I have no interest in finding out "how it all ends". Bioware should have stuck to their guns, and at least then they'd still have my respect as storytellers.

[Wojo]

That's one franchise I'd like to never touch. Another is Bioshock, although I may play the next one set in the clouds. The girl with the wide sad eyes and push-up bra might sell it for me.

~*~

In the past two weeks, I have revisited Skyrim for the first time in two months. I'm currently waddling through Ivarstead back up to the haunted barrow, over-encumbered by 1000 pounds. Then I'll start selling stuff. I keep forgetting that I make so many potions that I don't think about, and they are what take up most of my inventory weight, even if I keep everything poisoned and ready to go -- even my pickaxe, which is only a good weapon to use when I'm bored, since weapons don't break in this game, forcing me to use it as a backup.

I played a bit of Tell-Tale's BTTF game. Very charming. I very nearly gave a squeal of joy when Doc Brown used the word "shit" in his "When this baby hits 88 mph" line in the prologue; I was hoping that the game would keep the swearing level intact.

And I played a bit of Mount and Blade, which is a rather primitive but ambitious open-world RPG, in that it features horse combat. I spent about fifteen minutes fine-tuning my character and decided to take on a quartet of bandits before I really got the hang of accurately using my sword while on a horse. Archery aim? Pathetic. So after I killed the first two, I thought I could take on the other two on foot. No dice. Instead of being killed, I was captured and eventually set free. Ugh. I'll start over.

[Maglorfin]

Has anybody played Sniper Elite (1 or 2) on PC? I'm considering buying it but I'd like to hear some opinions first.

[king mark]

How can you even play Sykrim if your over-encumbered. No wonder you quit. Just by the house in Whiterun and dump all your stuff there.