First Impressions: Dark Souls - Prepare to Die Edition (PC)

So there is this game that I have heard a lot of talk about for the past year or two and last year when I saw it on sale through one Steam sale or another, I thought I would pick it up.  The idea of playing in a fantasy world with massive bosses that would be pretty difficult seemed appealing.  There was also something about a dark atmosphere and/or setting that peaked my interest as well.  Dark Souls is this game.  Dark Souls II was also brought up in a recent episode of Extra Credits, which I think the real inspiration to give this game a go came from.

Sometime last week after Conklederp had finished playing Skyrim for the night, I thought I'd start up Dark Souls as my mouse was on the other side of the room and when I first booted up the game a few months back, I knew that it would be a game that I would have to play with a controller; just take a look at the keyboard configurations required:

and

and

I felt like I was looking at keyboard set up for a flight simulator (I'm looking at you DCS World).  Just the fact that there were separate keyboard commands for the camera movement was one of the key factors for me playing the game with the controller.  Because of Goldeneye 007, I knew that I could not personally move around a camera/field of vision with buttons, the controls had to either be a mouse or a joystick.  I am simply not that coordinated.

Once I got to this stage, it was time to create a character.  Jump to me now playing my fourth character (female knight for those who want to know), and I now feel like I did something wrong in the item picking stage.  I chose the "Tiny Being's Ring" as the description said that it would increase HP slowly over time, which I read to be that your HP regenerates.  As it turns out, "Tiny Being's Ring" only increases your existing HP by 5%.  Maybe I should have chosen an item that better suited towards being a knight?  The Internets are apparently telling me that the Master Key is the item to go with for almost every class (except the Thief, which it comes equipped with).  Blarg.

Presently I am about three and-a-half hours into the game and I could not really tell you the storyline.  There is an intro cinematic that went into the an origin story of some god-like figures and their war against the dragons (who are made of rock/stone) with the help of one scaleless dragon.  The game starts with your character waking up/coming to after being tossed in a dungeon cell.  And you are already dead.  Apparently being dead is something that remains constant during the game and I do not just mean that you die a lot, which also does happen quite frequently.  You do have the ability to make yourself whole or human (ie: not dead, I think), but the reason to do that is to be "taken over" by other people playing online, or so that you can team up with other people who are also playing online, I am not really sure on either point as nothing was mentioned in-game about this.

What this all boils down to, is that I do not get this game.  Yes, it is a beautifully created game with some wonderful vistas and the architecture of the structures is massive and imposing.  If it was not that I was dying/being killed every 20 minutes, I would probably be having more fun.  Additionally, dying would not be that big of an issue if all the souls collected from killing hollows (aka: enemies) were not "lost" after you are killed, but that seems to be a core aspect of the game.  Granted, those souls could be picked back up if you make it back to the spot where you died to retrieve them, but all the enemies have also respawned.  The enemies always respawn any time you rest/heal at a bonfire (which also acts as a checkpoint).  

Screen cap during my third character who was a male warrior; not the female knight I keep referring to.

At this point, I want to progress with the game, but I feel that I am just too weak to venture out far enough so that I am not killing the same 10 enemies over and over.  Grinding required?  Three hours with this one character, seven hours overall and again, I do not understand this game.  I find it very frustrating venturing out into this demonized world only far enough to kill a handful of enemies before having to trudge all the way back to the closest bonfire, save and then deal with the exact same enemies all over again.

I also apparently do not understand ranged combat in this game.  From what I have experienced, in order to fire your ranged weapon (knives, crossbow, long bow), you have to lock on to your target, but you are unable to lock onto enemies who the game considers to be too far away.  Which defeats the purpose of having a bow, at least in my opinion.  Enemies on the other hand will chuck firebombs (clay jars filled with oil that are set on fire) indefinitely at you because of course they do.

Hand-to-hand combat is also something that I have an issue with.  Each character has a standard and powerful attack.  Each class (at least between the warrior and the knight) has different animations for their attacks, but it is the same every time.  I found this out while doing a strong attack with the knight.  The knight's strong attack is a lunge forward while swinging the sword across the horizon from back to front.  Every time.  Whereas the warrior lunges with his sword in a lunging motion.  I found this very worrisome considering that a fair portion of the combat takes place around cliffs, precipices and rooftops.  And you can very easily fall off while being surrounded in a cloud of flame thrown from a pyromancer and being attacked by some measly grunt and all you are trying to do is kill said pyromancer and in the course of the game catching up with the last time you pressed the attack button, the young knight plummets off the rooftop to die some hundred feet below.

You can also fall/die in large pools of water where your bloodstain will not show up, because fucking Dark Souls.  Also it makes sense that a bloodstain would not be floating on a body of water.

If you could not tell, I am not sure if I will continue with this game.  I know there will be (are) people who will say that the game is not about story, that it is a hack-and-slash that is supposed to be difficult and that you have to play at least 10 hours before the game starts getting good.  Maybe I am just getting old when feel that I do not have 10 hours to spend on a game to figure out if I like it or not.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

To Save Us All From Satan's Power

P.S.  And in the point between writing this article and its posting, I have created two additional characters, a male pyromancer and a female sorcerer to get a feel for the magick based characters and see if I enjoy the game even more.  Týr knows why I keep giving this game a chance.  Maybe it does have it hooks in me and I just don't know it yet.

A Review: Assassin's Creed (PC)

Similar to what I wrote for my review of sorts for Dead Space, I do not see the point in writing a full review for a seven year old game (as of 2014) that has over 134,000 hits when looking for a review of Assassin's Creed.  Granted the first game search will include the reviews for every game in the Assassin's Creed library due to it's lack of a subtitle or number, but I plod on . . .  Unlike some reviews (on Steam), I never had any issues booting up or playing Assassin's Creed.  The game never crashed spontaneously, the sound never cut out randomly and there was no visible skipping either by the game or by Altaïr.

So Assassin's Creed, the first game in the series of the same name, was released by Ubisoft back in 2007.  Before playing this game, I had played Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles back in February and that was it.  All I knew about the series was that you played as an assassin at various points throughout history. . . assassinating people.  I had no idea about any of the "present" day activities as Desmond or anything about the Animus accessing ancestors memories coded within the DNA of said Desmond.  That was a bit of a shock, although it did not bother me by way of a story telling mechanism.

I was a little surprised at the beginning of the game by the typical use of the Metroid-effect of starting out as Samus does in a fully powered suit only to have something happen that brings you back down to n00b status.  So that happened.  By the time I neared the end of the game, despite having gained all of my equipment back (better sword, throwing daggers, short sword, grasping abilities while falling), I never felt that I was the master assassin that I was supposed to be by that point in the game/story.  I felt that I was a guy who was great at freerunning/parkour and who was decent in a fight against anywhere from three to 15 enemies.

There's only eight here, but you can't see the other umpteen that showed up shortly after plus the couple that I had killed before the picture was taken.  And it's blurry because I done just killed a guard.

Being ganged up on was actually one of the most frustrating aspects of the game for me.  There would be times when I would be shoved by a homeless citizen (who has some sort of mental illness as they are always walking around, gibbering and will seek you out if they spotted you) into a guard and then you are wanted by every visible guard.  There were plenty of times when I would be fighting two or three guards, then a small contingent of four to six would reinforce the main unit and I would just give up as by the time they were all done swinging at me, my life would be down by a good eight to ten hit points.  Especially in the later levels, guards seemed to have gained in their sword fighting ability, multiplied in numbers and their proverbial trigger fingers were whatever is the next step after itching.  

There was one battle in particular that occurred near the end of the game that caused me to stop playing altogether.  Granted each time I would watch a "how-to" video my confidence would again perk up a bit, but then after two-to-three more tries and failing, I would give up.  <Pity>It would seem that each time I would reach a rooftop, I would be pursued by a never ending supply of guards and Templars and rarely would each enemy soldier patiently wait their turn to attack me.</Pity>

The information gathering missions were a lot of fun at first, but that was before the guards became increasingly aware and al lot easier to trigger into their blood frenzy.  The problem being that once the guards become aggressive towards you, any side mission you happened to be on (assassination, pickpocketing, physical interrogation, eavesdropping, racing another assassin or picking up flags on a short route throughout the area), your mission would end then you would have to evade the guards until your "Social Stealth Meter" which lets you know how noticeable you are to the guards goes to yellow which means that you can then hide which will then reset your "SSM" and then you can return to the person who gave you the task in the first place to start it all over again.  Whew.  By the end of the game (the last two stages I played through), I gave up trying to complete every single task and only completed the ones that I had to in order to proceed with the main assassination target for that portion of the storyline.

The one side mission that I always completed was also the one that I had the most fun doing.  Climbing to the top of designated buildings would de-fog a portion of your map in the given district the stage was taking place in.

These portions of the stages were fun because you often had to parkour up to a building then jump to an adjacent building  leading to the tower/building that you had to climb.  There were a couple of specific leap/upper-body-pulls that always made me nervous even though being able to "make it" was guaranteed.  Guaranteed, unless you were already spotted by guards who would then shoot arrows at you (rate of fire was reasonable) or throw rocks if you were not too high already.

Another thing that bothered me about the game was the amount of time it took to exit out.  I understand that the process to quit the game was probably designed to create a sense of immersion for the game, being that because you are playing as Desmond who is viewing an ancestors memories through a machine, and in order to exit the game, you would have to exit the machine first.  That is all well and good in theory, but in practice it creates a series of unnecessary steps that only caused me annoyance.  To give you some idea, in order to exit out of the game, every time, you would have to go through the following steps:

• Pause the game to bring up the menu.
• Select "Exit Animus."
• This exits you out of your memory and back into the present, now controlling Desmond inside the Animus laboratory.
• Pause the game to bring up the menu.
• Select "Exit Game."
• This brings you back to the profile select
• Select existing profile, which for whatever reason only works with the mouse and not the controller.
• Select "Quit Game."
• You are asked if you are sure that you want to exit the game.
• Yes I am sure I want to exit the game.
• Exit game.

In my personal opinion, quitting a game should not take that long.  Maybe going from the pause screen to the quit button and if I'm asked if I want to "Save & Quit" or simply just "Quit," I am perfectly okay with those options.  Then I should be out of the game.  If there was something to do when you are outside of the Animus at times that are not designated by the game, then maybe I could see exiting the machine you are hooked up to, but from what I have seen, there is nothing.  You can walk around the lab and one of two people there continuously ask you to return to the machine so that they can continue with whatever it is that they are having you do.  Maybe this was something that was passed over in beta testing?

While this experience has nearly tainted the Assassin's Creed series for me, I do have the second game on Steam and I feel that after a few months, I will probably give that game a try.  I feel that some redemption might be in order.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Flowing Through the Loins of My Pain

A Review: Dead Space (PC)

Yes, I know that Dead Space 3 came out a couple of months back, but you know what, I heard that the original Dead Space was a fun/frightening game and I had really wanted to play it for some time.  Then, Steam had a sale last December (or was it November?) so I went ahead and purchased the initial two games in the franchise.  I began playing Dead Space last year in December and only in the last couple of weeks did I pick the game back up with the intention of taking the game to the end.  So now, here it is, everything that's already out there in the intertubes about a game that came out back in 2008.

But why bother reading a review of a game that came out 5 years ago that everyone and their third cousin has already played and written about?  Because you value our opinion.  And because some people may not have played it when it first came out (like this guy right here) and want to know if the game has held up since it's release.  Yes, yes it has.

You know what.  I'm not going to give our standard "Full Review."  This game's already been reviewed into the ground and the last thing the Internet needs is another review.  I'll just talk about things that I really liked (and didn't like) about the game.

The universe.  I like the universe created for the series.  Even though my experience in the universe is only based off of one game and the information is limited to what is found on the USG Ishimura, USM Valor and the Aegis VII Colony.  There are allusions to things happening on Earth, but not many and those are mainly snippets of information about the Church of Unitology.

Actually, the Church of Unitology is something that I was only slightly disappointed in.  Upon hearing about the Church of Unitology (from in-game, not from the mock-Chick tract that I got from PAX in 2010), I was really hoping that it wouldn't be a pseudo-Scientology-type religion, which it did turn out to be, but only in the way that there are special tiers that members are able to attain within the religion.  That's really all I know about Scientology and I'm not about to assume that I know more.

Back to the game.  Another thing that I really liked and felt was a bit of a departure from other survival horror-esque games.  Your character, Isaac Clarke, isn't some bad ass super soldier sworn with protecting the world from unnameable evils.  He's a middle-aged repairman/engineer whose girlfriend is on board the USG Ishimura, which is purely a coincidence (at least it is after the first game).  And your primary weapon?  It's a Plasma Cutter, which uses plasma energy to cut rock.  Yes, eventually you're able to purchase a legit non-mining tool/weapon.  Even the other mining tools that would be used/described as "magic" in another game, are explained well enough that you don't question why a miner would have the ability to have kinesis module or the ability to slow time at a directed object.

Oh, another thing was this:

 What are you looking at?  It's a maintenance inspection card for the elevator.  We've all seen them anytime we go into an elevator and probably shrug them off.  I'd just gotten into an elevator and while hoping that a necromorph wouldn't pop through the ceiling and attack, I noticed this little thing that wasn't anything beyond set decoration.  But, for me, it helped to maintain my investment in this universe.  That, even in this fictional universe, it is good to know that elevators are still maintained on a regular basis.  It's little details like that that help me to enjoy the game for more than what it is.

I also really liked the layout of the ship.  That it seemed plausible that the layout of the ship was how it was, um, laid out.  I don't know how else to explain that.  I never questioned why something was where it was or what it was that I was doing and why.  Every mission within the ship was pretty straight forward.  Can't send out a distress signal?  Go find out what's wrong with the communications array.  Even the NPC's started getting annoyed at how many things seemed to be going wrong and how much time it took just to get something done.  I liked that.  A lot.

Oh yes, how can I forget the intro movie.  Shots of the USG Ishimura with a slightly creepy woman singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."  Each line sung sounds like it's an effort just to keep going and to finish.  And, upon hearing the song over and over, I began to wonder if the words were the actual words as they almost sounded too creepy to be from a children's song. Alas, the words are in fact the real words, which I thought was pretty cool.

Science? SCIENCE!!

Lastly, I'll talk about my time playing the game and how I went through it.  I spent 23 hours playing the game, but only 14 hours was saved, meaning that I had spent 9 hours trying to get through different areas many, many (many) times and failing.  Specifically the first time with the ADS Canon and when you run into The Hunter in the large medical bay.  Conklederp can attest to my bouts of "Fucking fix it Hammond!  I don't care about your hangups, fucking. . . fucking damn it!" and "Run, fucking unlock the goddamn door!"

In the game, there are a number of weapons that you can purchase from the ships store, although I stuck with the the Plasma Cutter and the Pulse Rifle.  I did purchase the Ripper, although not really knowing how/when to use it, I sold it back to the store, probably to purchase additional med packs or power nodes to upgrade my equipment/gear.  For the most part, I didn't feel the game was too difficult, with the exception of the two mentioned times involving the ADS Canon and The Hunter and having played through the game on Normal/Medium difficulty.  Even the final boss held to a distinct pattern that once I got over the massiveness of the thing, I was able to calmly defeat the creature.

I will add that there were some aspects of the game that I didn't actively "participate in."  Apparently using parts of the necromorphs as projectiles with the kinesis was "a thing."  I rarely used the kinesis module except when moving heavy equipment or to acquire items that were out of range.  Also the secondary function on the Pulse Rifle apparently could do a lot of damage and the only times (used twice) I was in close quarters and when it fired an energy pulse into the air, I thought it was being used to light dark areas, so I practically never used that function.

Lastly, I will say that while Dead Space was a fairly frightening game, it didn't have a lasting sense of fear and terror.  This is most likely due to the fact that the game primarily took place in outer space and the monsters were horribly 'mutated' humans.  They were nothing that I could possibly run into, in a setting that I will probably never be in.  Those elements made the fear only present in the game and not outside of it.  That's not a criticism about the game, just something I felt like pointing out.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Slaves of Fear