The Nintendo Switch

your*

it looks like a pretty straightforward, typical 'climb the stairs' progression type game where you gradually build up and improve as the game gets harder and you work your way to the top. it actually turns out to be more like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGPLNQzKGSA

it is great tho. it is a lot of fun and then it's not, and that's when you stop.

yeah that's more or less how i etc

there's literally a stress mechanic in the game

That game Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube was rad, it's the one that, the worse you did, the more it would fuck with you. It would, for example, suddenly ask you if you wanted to delete your saves, and when you in a panic hit "cancel" it would treat it like you hit "yes" and then declare "delete successful!" or whatever. Even though it didn't.

agreed on slippery stairs metaphor. Dark Souls was tough but fair. Darkest Dungeon is tough but not fair.

unfair not necessarily a problem and mitigating the unfairness a big theme in classic roguelikes. to dd's credit i'm thinking right now about booting it up again (this would be my third go) bc there's so much that /is/ compelling about it

correct me if i'm wrong, but i think you have a history of playing (and deep love for) immensely frustrating games though?

In my opinion XCOM and Faster Than Light are more stressful.

maybe FTL on hard difficulty

fwiw I think it’s one of the best 50 games or so I’ve played the last few years

*tries to count whether I can remember 50 video games I've played in my entire life*

where are your priorities, sic? ;)

i probably way overestimated the number of games i've actually spent quality time with, though. that number would be closer to 20 over a couple years. i often download demos or play free games on iOS for an hour or two, though.

I play the first 30% of a ton of games but far fewer to completion

sad but true for me.

I don't find it sad, if a game doesn't hook me or loses its hook on me, im not going to grit my teeth and push forward, I'll just play something else and maybe try it again later. There are even games that I wouldnt hesitate to call excellent despite them losing their grip on me for a while - I played breath of the wild for like 25 hours and then put it on the shelf for several months before it hooked me in for another session.

where are your priorities, sic? ;)

in the last year I've played a Walking Dead big gun and a sit-on-motorcycle game in an arcade for five minutes each, a few games of Galaga and one of Ms Pac-Man in a bar, half an hour of Mario Kart at a friend's, and probably 300 hours of Angry Birds Friends on trains and toilets

I REALLY REALLY WANT to spend hours and hours a week playing Mario Odyssey though!

I was on the fence about trying out Dark Souls when it is released, but I think I have come around. I think the secret is to realize the game is about patience and learning from mistakes. Nothing is terribly fast, nothing is unbeatable. You just have to persevere until you figure out how to beat it.

otm. and you will always be improving. you can't lose any items aside from souls, which is great cos souls are what you get from killing everything in the game. so you can do suicide runs where you see an item guarded by a daunting enemy, run and get it, immediately die, and it's yours forever.

if you are in a new area w few souls you have nothing to lose and are free to explore. if you are in a new area with a ton of souls because you didn't bother to level up, you may be about to learn a lesson in patience ;-) you can level up at any bonfire (checkpoint) in the game and levels are designed so that it is possible to run past every enemy and fight the boss. also if you have to go pick up the kids or something you can bring up the menu and hit quit, DS saves your game right where you stand. it's more or less a menu-drive pause button.

im looking forward to picking up the remaster. i never beat two of the DLC bosses and i barely touched the online component. it would be fun to play co-op with some newcomers on ILG (or just hear the stories of first playthroughs)

I guess if I ever finish Zelda, Dark Souls seems like the next level up.

Is Skyrim worth it? I played a little on the PS3 but it seemed kind of charmless and everywhere was brown.

Skyrim looks pretty drab after playing a bunch of zelda and mario and xenoblade

so does dark souls though tbh

what's xenoblade like? looks pretty

if you’re a fan of big anime boobs you’re in for a helluva time from what i can tell

if you like Zelda imo Souls is a good next step.

Skyrim would be more in the direction of an open world. there are literally hundreds of quests you can take on, all of them involving the same dozen or so dungeons cut and pasted to infinity. quest #500 may take place in the same dungeon as your first quest, fighting the same enemies even. the story is loosely attached to this gargantuan world, a supposedly all-important civil war having barely an impact on minute-to-minute gameplay. but im not gonna rag on Skyrim too much, i played it forever, it was a very fun RPG and if you want to customize your character and become an alchemist you can loose yourself doing that. if you end up playing, do the wizard school quest, cos once you have killed a dragon you have pretty much played the entire game.

Dark Souls is a hand-crafted world. it is more like Metroid or Castlevania in that respects. you will backtrack through areas, unlocking elevators, the world revealing a tightly-compacted no-loading-screen spiral of a sprawling dark fantasy world. each area has unique textures, unique atmosphere, unique enemies, traps, shortcuts, etc. it is like the NES Castlevania but that linearity split into a cool unlockable puzzle of a seamless world. yes the graphics are ugly and almost muddy but the art design demands this because this is an ugly, muddy, dark world. the presentation can be stark in places but that just makes the prettier stuff (the crystal caves, the intro post-boss area) stand out all the more.

enemy design is continuously evolving as you traverse the world and the different environments. there are no generic dungeons, there is a basement, there is a swamp, there is a magical forest, for this is a realized world. the enemies, including the bosses, are all designed to live in their environments. Dark Souls III takes cues from Shadow of the Colossus for a lot of bosses, and imo there is that level of dramatic presentation, of a real weight and character design in use, in Dark Souls. so many bosses have really cool intro cutscenes that are very impressive and terrifying intimidating on first view. it is just one more element that makes victory soooo satisfying in this game. the feeling you get after defeating a boss the first time is incredible. the lack of a map and the lack of a pause and all kinds of other design decisions weigh on the player experience and inform the world and this experience. Dark Souls is a really well and holistically designed game. the world design cannot be under-estimated. the first area you see after defeating the intro boss is so gorgeous and imo competes with stuff released nowadays. add to that some quirky and non-stock dark fantasy stuff like the giant crow and the slow but heavy-hitting boxing mushrooms.

/rant out lol sorry i probably sound like a nut. there is just a lot to the game that is pretty unique and fun. hope some people play the Switch version (and i will be down for co-op with any ILGers!)

once you have killed a dragon you have pretty much played the entire game.

you kill a dragon in like the fourth mission!

Thanks Adam! I will def check that out now.

this looks cool too

http://www.korg.com/us/products/software/korg_gadget_for_nintendo_switch/

what's xenoblade like? looks pretty

― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, January 19, 2018 6:25 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's an extremely anime JRPG. excellent music and environments, complicated but fun combat system. starts off in a very shonen style (teenage male protagonist, sort of a saturday morning cartoon vibe to the writing, the power of love and friendship etc) and slowly morphs into the weirdo religion/mythology/philosophy stuff that the xeno games are all known for. it's uneven, overambitious, and i loved it a lot. you probably have to be down with anime and anime tropes as a prerequisite for liking it though.

that's a good post, adam

So in Dark Souls, how much of it is micro-managing all these little details like strength or agility or whatever? And does it give any direction of how to find the thing to do the thing, or is it a lot of random discoveries or, worse, making it to, say, a battle and finding out you needed to snag something earlier that is essential to victory?

I guess I have months to prep for this. ;) But I have watched a couple of clips and people are all "normally the blowdart toxin would be a lot more effective, but since I am wearing the ring of whatever I am more resistant." Like, his finding that hypothetical ring and learning its powers just trial and error, or is it something you know you have to keep an eye out for and put on at the right time? Or another example, I saw a clip where a guy found a better shield in some hard to reach place. Did he know the shield was out there to be found? Or might one get stuck getting their ass kicked over and over again because they didn't have the better armor or sword or whatever that was buried in some grave somewhere or something like that?

that stuff is all there if you want, but more or less unnecessary. there are wikis full of builds and stat calculators and all that, but i ignore it all. certainly throwing together stat boots will help you if it turns into a game of inches (and sometimes surviving for one more second/hit is all you need to win) but it's not the only, or the best, way to play. if you want to nerd out you can but the game is designed so that skill is more highly prized. people have beaten the entire game fighting with their fists with no armor and never leveling up.

every item comes with full stats, game-lore, and description. so the game is not completely obtuse about things. some weapons have requirements, like you may need a lot of strength to use a giant axe. once you pass this, the returns you get from dumping more into strength will be ever-diminishing. better to upgrade the weapon itself, and upgrade materials are common drops, so your weapons will become more powerful by just fighting random badguys.

having a ring to combat the blowdart toxin is nice and all but will only make you die a little slower than you normally would when poisoned. best to avoid being poisoned at all (or just carry anti-poison consumables). with just about every problem this game presents there are numerous ways to tackle it, no one way really being OP or abusive of the game's systems, so it's kind of up to you to play how you want to!

I've encountered a lot of complaints about certain levels where things like poison darts or mosquitoes or whatever are inevitable, and there is a long stretch between checkpoints, so there's a lot of dying and starting over and over again. Or, for example, I saw a dude fighting a giant spider woman, and he kept getting injured by lava despite being nowhere near it ("the box" or whatever). And he was a total pro. So I can imagine how frustrating that would be for an average dude who can't afford to be damaged by weird physics or random bug toxin.

hah that is Blight Town. this is an infamous area.

the first release of the game had lots of technical problems, frame drops, etc. and this compounded the fact that it is the bleak, dark, punishingly isolated refuse pit of the undead (also including a secret exit to an entirely optional side area that is perhaps the most light and beautiful area in the game.). the area is dark and so atmospheric, it is areas like this where Dark Souls really shines. you are fighting undead monsters, this should be terrifying. most other games have maps and arrows pointing where to go, the exit is right around the corner. modern games often want to hold your hand through the whole thing. this level is the antidote to that.

a good reason to get this remaster is they will now support up to 6 player online. this means you can have 6 player co-op and have half a dozen people fighting against a single boss or level (a very Nintendo-friendly solution to difficulty spikes!). the framerate issues i think have since been patched and will be improved and the remaster will probably fix up some hitbox problems. i think for the most part the hitboxes in Dark Souls are really good and some of the best and most accurate in all of gaming.

https://i.imgur.com/6aDUpc3.gifv

more good DS hitboxes

https://imgur.com/a/51qLp

I've read some complaints about the Doom port, which I guess was done by a third party. Who handled this switch version? The original company, or another third-party?

not sure but it looks like Bandai/Namco. they did the PC port i have been playing and it has been very solid, only glitches and crashes happen when i use the DSFix mod and that is user-made. i think enough people will get this so that if they fuck it up the hardcore gamers will complain until they patch it.

See, I've heard Doom being farmed out is actually why it has yet to get a patch. Third party contractors have less of an incentive to do extra work after the fact, and given compromises necessary to even have these high processor games run on the Switch port problems seem inevitable.Then again, I don't know what I'm talking about!

most after-the-fact ports are done by third parties, it's just how it is. studios don't want to move resources off their next game just to get their previous game on a new piece of hardware.

Exactly, which is why they're in no hurry to fix flaws or glitches.

Josh, you shop for games as if they're mazdas

what will it take to put you in this '14 dark souls miata TOday

YOU LEASED

YOU LEASED

YOU LEASED

Haha. Dark Souls is an absolute masterpiece of a game that qualifies for ~Video Games as Art~ imo but it really isn’t for everyone. I don’t know if I’d say “if you like Zelda, look at this” even though I proselytize for it as much as I can. It is, by design, abstruse in mechanics (+ story/lore, it’s all intertwined) and will make you suffer. But the thrill you get if you stick with it is pretty unparalleled.

If you’re worried about long stretches between checkpoints and how annoying poison darts might be before you even play it... might not be your thing.

lol @ YOU LEASED

i haven't played the Switch DOOM but from the sound of things the main issues come from it being a brand new game and them having to push the hardware to get it to work at all. DOOM was designed so you could play it on a brand new PC with resolution cranked. DS is an older game that was designed with the lower res and framerate in mind (in fact if you unlock it to 60fps the world physics break somewhat).

dark souls is the greatest game of all time

i never really understood the idea of video games being a "power fantasy" because i've never felt powerful playing them. to me, i was still just controlling a triangle shooting blips at squiggly circle asteroids or whatever. with the souls series "it's no one's fault but your own" philosophy of game difficulty, a certain level of abstraction was removed between myself and the avatar. MY skills were being put to the test in the game. and when i got to a certain level of confidence to be able to face up to a 50ft tall wolf with a 100ft sword without hesitation, it was a feeling i've never experience before in a video game.

xp the switch dark souls is gonna be the remake though, they rebuilt the entire game in the DS3 engine apparently. so it won't necessarily run like a game from 2011 would