Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 3)

Alright, back to what's really important.

So I knew that I was fast approaching the point in the game where I would have no choice but to tackle World 5: the Valley of Defilement. For anyone over 30 you may remember World 5 as being the pain in the dick world from every Nintendo game. The same is true here.

4.2 The Same Thing. Over and Over.

Of course, instead of leaping straight to World 5 and getting it over with I decided to tackle some of the easier levels first. Since I had such an easy job of 4.1 I decided 4.2 was the next logical choice.

This level cheats like a motherfucker. And that has totally nothing to do with my ability to work the controller. Probably.

Here is a transcription of the things going through my head during the many, many times I died:

• Since when did flying Manta Rays hang out right outside the door?!
• Fuck, a grim reaper!
• Goddammit woman! Don't step forward while you're swinging! That's a cliff!
• When did gold skeletons get an aggro range of three miles?!
• I did not walk off that bridge. Musta been the controller.
• Fuck! He respawned!
• Where the fuck is the grim reaper now?!
• Fuck, another another grim reaper!
• Where the fuck is the other grim reaper?!
• Fuck, a grenade! No, fuck, a group of fucking giant attack maggots! 

After finally making it to the Boss Chamber and spending a moment recovering from the shame of how badly I had just performed, I prepared to face the Old Hero.

His special attack is swinging wildly in the wrong direction.

 The Old Hero is a lot like the Flamelurker, only slow, blind, and, well, once you factor 'can not see things' into the equation anything else becomes sorta irrelevant.

While meleeing him is probably entirely possible, the Old Hero is so asking-for-it exploitable I can't imagine why anyone would want to bother. Especially being such an easy target after such a harrowing-ass gauntlet of a level with no shortcuts. That'd be like cancelling a resort vacation you've been planning for months because the hotel accidentally booked you in a smoking room.

5.1 The City of Eyestrain and Bottomless Pits

I zoned into the first level of the Valley of Defilement. The level is a poorly lit nightmare of camouflaged goons, bottomless pits, confusing walkways, camera obstructing scenery, and fucking plague rats that are too small to hit with anything but magic provided you remembered to save some. Which I never do.

Remembering all of this I suddenly had an amazing idea.

1.3 The Brightly Lit Castle of Normal Bad Shit

I would further put off the inevitable stress headache the Valley always gives me by beating up more zombies and Fat Officials.

Level three of this World is nothing much more than a slightly more labyrinthine version of the second level with stronger goons.

Having, for once, remembered to stock up on arrows I had no real problems with this level, as this game is so damn easy, provided you don't mind sniping everything from two area codes away.

 After opening the shortcut, I backtracked and released an NPC called Biorr, a level 50 Hypersomniac that specializes in attacking the nearest foe with his face, falling asleep, and being easy to capture.

The point is that Biorr, after being rescued and taking a nap after all of the excitement of someone killing the guard and opening his cell tuckers him plumb out, helps out in the next couple of boss fights.

Speaking of Boss fights, I was now at the Boss fight.

Penetrator, most phallic among men.

The Penetrator is another big knight like the Tower Knight, only he focuses on attack as opposed to defense. This is fairly obvious as he wields a Final Fantasy sized sword.

Luckily Biorr's strategy of screaming at the Boss, being knocked down, and having 6 million hit points worked long enough to handily dispatch the boss.

5.1 For Real This Time

Remember the character Goofy from the Disney cartoons? The goons in this level look like zombied him to me for some reason.

Having said that: fuck this level. Fuck this goddamn level forever.

Aside from the already mentioned surprise enemies, holes, and eyestrain there are also giant goofy's that always end up being way harder to beat than they seem like they should be.

Also: Fucking plague rats. One bit me and I wound up dying before I could even locate my anti-plague herbs.

After a seemingly endless amount of time spent fail-spamming my way through the level I finally came to the door of the Boss Chamber. The Boss of this particular level is called the Leechmonger.

Yes, it is a shit monster made out of monster shit and leeches.

There are two general strategies for tackling this thing. The first is to drain your own health, equip the Clever Rat Ring and Morion Sword to boost your attack while in critical health, and shoot the shit out of him from the doorway, which is just beyond his attack range.

The reason the attack boost is necessary is because the yucky motherfucker not only has regenerating armor, but regenerating health as well. I think this is because demon leeches eat waste instead of blood and he's standing at the entrance to the sewer of the world. I'm not exaggerating, this World is where all of the piss, shit, abortions, and diseased of the world drain out to.

Anyway, since by this point I had become acclimated to masochism I decided to try a direct assault against the filth spewing giant composed of shit worms. Somehow it worked.

Note to self: Somehow I'm better at bosses and worse at levels than I remember being before.

5.2 The Level Fucking No One Likes

Except for me, apparently. After the eyestrain migraines and frustration of the previous level, being constantly poisoned and slowed down was a walk in the park. It'd be suicide to move above a crawl through this level, anyway.

I had no real problems with the poison swamp itself, as halfway decent preparation takes care of 90% of the difficulty: cure poison miracle, firespray spell for mosquitoes, resist poison gear, MP potions, arrows. That's it, really.

My main gripe with this level was the second half, after the swamp. That part found me back on more goddamn confusing catwalks with more goddamn junk blocking the camera and more goddamn goofies blending into the environment.

Luckily this level also had a shortcut allowing me to bypass the swamp portion of the level so I could switch out gear before the Dirty Colossus Boss and not have to sludge through the entire level again. I did manage to fall off of the bridge though because the fucking mosquitoes got me disoriented.

This guy is...what the fuck am I looking at here?

The Dirty Colossus is a giant...something made out of elephant carcass, old barrels,  and spikes that shoots swarms of poisonous insects to augment it's normal attacks.

I think it's sort of a weird decision that FROM decides to constantly put these anti-climactic bosses at the end of fucking nightmare levels. I mean, after all of the precision gameplay and strategy and care I just spent on the swamp it was kind of disappointing facing a boss where the entire fight can be summed up as

1. Apply turpentine to weapon.
2. Wail on Boss like a motherfucker.
3. Win.

 5.3 Whoever Thought This Up Needs Counseling

I figured I might as well press on into the Plague Swamp, the most fucked up of these fucked up levels. As the name implies, it's a swamp filled with more poisonous filth than the last one. Also: Zombie aborted babies. Fucking infinity of them.

The World is lorded, well, ladyied over by Maiden Astraea, some sort of exiled apostate guilty of some crime too heinous to name (too heinous to name, mind you, in a world with waterfalls of demon sewage and animated baby corpses,) that wound up here, caring for poor, lost legions of undead babies and monster Disney characters. Which would almost be touching if it wasn't buried under such a Japanese level of Fucked Up.

The Maiden herself is guarded by her lover Garl Vinland, the real Boss of the level, as he's the one that puts up a fight. He's also one of the trickier bosses as he combines Tower Knight's defense, Penetrator's offense and Maneater's on-a-narrow-walkway-ness.

On the plus side he's really slow, as his weapon of preference is a 600 pound lump of metal bigger than he is. He's also really, really easy to kite.

After beating Garl the Maiden suicided after I talked to her, the selfish bitch.

4.3 A Clearly Impossible Creature

I know asking for realism in these kinds of games is usually a wish best left ungranted, as it usually leads to tedious shit like farming simulators, first person shooters and every EA sports game, but for some reason I just really, really, really don't buy the flying manta rays that constantly shoot bone spears.

I mean, there's nothing to indicate that they're intelligent, so the flying and the spears aren't magic. And even if they're undead, other undead animals like the face bugs and zombie dogs don't have any kind of super powers that weren't just augmented versions of their alive powers. They just don't make any sense.

I mean, they're shaped like manta rays. That is not a shape associated with the sky. So much so that in reality they are so not capable of flight that the uppest they normally get is beneath sea level.

Anyway, the Storm Castle World Boss is a giant one of these called the Storm King.

That should not fucking work! Those aren't wings! They're fins!

 The Storm King hangs out in a big field with dozens of storm...peasants? Serfs? Storm smaller manta rays, whatever their rank. He can also be an almost impossible boss if someone doesn't know what to do.

Like the Dragon God, the Storm King has decided to spend his existence hanging out 50 feet away from the one weapon guaranteed to kill it: The Storm Ruler Sword, which shoots giant, manta ray eradicating shock waves into the sky when used in this level.

So the basic strategy is this: Cast whatever they call their Protect spell, dash to the sword, dash to the safe area next to the ruined building, massacre the goons before the King shows up, massacre the King.

Here's how it went for me: Forget to cast the Protect spell, get massacred. Cast the Protect spell, dash towards the sword, impulsively chase after a lizard, get massacred. Cast Protect spell, dash to the sword, get disorientated, get massacred. Cast Protect spell, dash to safe spot, stop to breathe, get massacred because I forgot it's only a safe spot for the actual Storm King attacks. Ragequit.

Later, after calming down, I tried again and managed to take out all of the goons and the Storm King on my second try. Which now that I think about it seems really fucking unfair for the bad guys. I mean, they can kill me all day and I keep respawning every 2 minutes, and they only get to die once. Now, if this game was truly Nintendo hard, then dying more than twice would send me back to the tutorial level with zero everything.

Anyway, at this point I fucked around for a while and completed most of the world tendency events, which mostly involve killing people, suiciding a few times, and then killing their ghost.

1.4 A Random Dead Chick Murders Everyone in the World

The final level of World One is basically just a long path full of mini-bosses.

Right away I ran into the somehow human forms of Phalanx, Tower Knight and Penetrator, which would have probably wrecked my shit if I wasn't still pissed off about the Storm King and not in the mood to fuck around with melee to prove a point.

As it turns out the trio are, just like fucking everything else in the game, weak against arrows from outside their aggro range.

Past a couple of black knights I came to the second dragon which, like the first dragon, seems to spend his entire life spraying fire on bridges if anyone tries to use him. He flew off before realizing he could have easily sprayed fire into the doorway I was standing in and not be slowly plinked to death by arrows.

Past another Fat Official I came to the next bridge the dragon had decided to guard, where Biorr was fighting the dragon using the strategy of screaming, charging directly into a fireball, and then that again.

I remembered from previous playthroughs that there was a certain angle to dash through to avoid the flames. After guessing wrong and slogging back through the level I guessed right and slowly killed the dragon, which was too stubborn to adapt his strategy for a foe from a slightly different angle and too stupid to fly away when its life was in jeopardy because of that.

The final mini-boss was the black phantom of Ostrava, the prince of Boletaria. Which brought me finally to the last real Boss of the game, the False King.

Fuck this guy.

The False King is a fucking nightmare in melee. Not only does he utilize the Flamelurker approach to combat, which involves charging at and instantly vaporizing his opponent's defenses with the force of his attacks, he even has an attack that drains levels off of your character. Since I was both hungry and cranky by this point I decided to be a man and man up and approach the False King like a man and cast poison cloud on him and wander off to make a sandwich while the Boss slowly died over the course of the next several minutes.

The End of the Game

The final level and Boss of Demon's Souls are kind of a joke. It's a corridor inside of a big tree with no enemies that leads to the Real King Allant, which turns out to be a pathetic, almost completely defenseless blob.

So that's Demon's Souls. Overall, it's a lot more challenging than most games that come out these days, but not that hard for someone raised on 8-bit systems.

Playing through it I could kind of tell that this game was made on a budget. Especially after playing through Dark Souls. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent game, but in comparison one can almost see all of the cut corners and content that had to be jettisoned prior to and during development. And that's good, because it led to a fairly well-balanced and extremely engaging and fun game.

It's not perfect. There are parts that seem really empty, like the Latrian Prison, and parts that feel rushed and incomplete, like the lack of variety in Boletaria and some of the Bosses. And of course the Old One level, while nice to look at, had literally nothing in it. But if you have a Playstation 3 and 20 bucks and haven't played this game, then I can almost guarantee that this would be the best use of your money.

Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 1)

It was just announced that Dark Souls will be released as a PC port this summer. Dark souls was the not-sequel to Demon's Souls, the 17th best game ever made according to the arbitrary list that lives in my brain and changes constantly depending on my mood and if it was a game I only played as a child and/or while drunk and may be way better or worser than I remember.

Yes, dragons and wizards and shit.

Demon's Souls, despite being a pain in the ass to enunciate, became a huge sleeper hit, largely because of it's difficulty. Words like 'punishing,' and 'brutal,' and 'fuck you, this game sucks,' were constantly paraded around in reviews, despite the game not being that hard.

Sure, it was a lot harder than most games from the last five years, but most modern games are way easy. So much so that most strategy guides are a single page that reads:

1. Turn power on.
2. Have eyeballs.
3. Have thumbs.
4. Be awake.
5. Congratulations!

And Demon's Souls was a nice break from that, even though it was not nearly as hard as it was made out to be, and certainly not Nintendo Hard. Play Friday the 13th or Ghosts 'n Goblins and you'll see what I mean. The only reason those games weren't half an hour long was because instead of padding the story out with bullshit, the developers chose the easy route of killing the player repeatedly and gleefully, then sending him to the beginning of the game until he stopped sniveling and memorized the exact sequence of 73 timed jumps and 94 attack patterns needed to finish the zone like a big boy.

Tiny naked man vs. giant armored punch monsters? That's balanced gameplay!

Demon's Souls wasn't that hard. But it did follow the same Bizzaro logic that asked players to learn how to push buttons effectively and remember where the bad guys are.

Just to prove what a not-hard game it was and how superior my opinion of myself is I decided to give it another playthrough. Here's what happened.

1.1 This Shit is SO Easy

After mowing through the first few zombie guards, and feeling very proud of myself for being so awesome at parrying after only playing the game for about 150 hours when it came out, I fell into a hole while performing a flawless roll to avoid an arrow.

Seeing as the hole clearly wasn't my fault as I didn't give it permission to be bottomless OR to even be there in the first place, I tested my prowess on an even field with a black knight guarding a mausoleum. Despite my peerless strategy of creeping forward, panicking and fleeing out of aggro range when he spotted me, almost damaging him, and fleeing again I somehow died.

Next, I was roasted by a dragon that I knew was there! Clearly the game must have auto-updated when I wasn't looking to patch 1.Harder.

Having finally come to the boss fight I proved to myself and the world just how easy this game is by not dying at the boss which, to be fair, is one of the easiest things in the level, if not the game. The boss, Phalanx, incorporates a strategy of being completely defenseless and unable to attack once his slow-moving, move-telegraphing goons are dispatched. The goons are also weak to fire, magic, all weapons, and being slowly walked away from.

Boss Strategy: Attack him. That's it, really.

2.1 In the Mines of Cheap Bitch Fireball Throwing Fat Guys

I decided to switch to the mine level since the game flows sorta horizontally. Plus you have to beat world 2.2 to unlock the good weapon upgrades. Not that I need good weapons, as I could no doubt beat the game on level 1, naked, armed with nothing but brass knuckles and throwing daggers if I wanted to. It just so happens that I don't want to.

After immediately falling off of a cliff that I swear moved towards me while failing to kill a cowardly lizard, I made my way into the mine where I activated the first elevator, which I rode up to meet the first bitch-ass, laughing-ass, pain-in-the-ass-ass Fat Official, who I bested readily despite nearly dying when I forgot that he could throw fireballs, and then almost dying again when I immediately forgot that he could throw fireballs.

I managed to not nearly perish again until yards later while trying to fight off the lungey, jumpy fucking zombie dog enemies that shouldn't be allowed to attack in packs like that.

After opening the gate, which is sort of the first check point in this level, I was snuck attacked by fire lizards that I could have sworn were supposed to flee from my towering femininity.

I should probably mention that I always try to play a female in these games, because if I'm going to be staring at cartoon ass for 70 hours, it had damn well better be girl cartoon ass. Plus girls have access to the cool looking armor.

After carefully retracing my steps, I made it marginally further into the corridor where, doubtless because of the mystery patch, I was ambushed by a group of deceptively fast slow-moving lizard men that were cunningly hiding in plain sight directly in front of me.

After carefully retracing my steps again, I managed to activate the second elevator, which shortcut back tot he beginning of the level and opens up the blacksmith's shop.

Side note: all of the merchants in this game are assholes.

Returning to the main path I fell in battle while valiantly slaughtering two of the 90 lizard folk that shouldn't have been able to be that quiet while hiding around a corner.

After carefully retracing my steps again again, I vanquished the horde of lizard men by using the tactic of sneaking across the building above them and running away. This soon led me to the Boss fight.

The Armor Spider is, as the name would suggest, a spider that is armored. He also attacks by shooting webs and flaming somethings in a pattern that can best be summed up as fucking haywire. Calling on my inner knighthood-dom-ness I bravely charged halfway up the corridor leading to his chamber, hid nobly hid behind a corpse, and threw shit at him until he stopped moving. Told you I was good at this game.

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the spider to a fair fight? That's not what I did at all.

2.2 The Bad Guys are Now Much More Stronger Than Me

After soldiering onward and promptly being exploded by a mine cart, I realized that my current weaponry would be no match for the powered-up fatasses, lizard miners, rock tentacles, exploding lava cockroaches, and on-fire everything in the upcoming level.

At this point I went back to 1.1 to farm upgrade stones and grab an anti-fire spell..

Returning to 2.2 I was, in quick succession, almost pickaxed to death by a miner, exploded by a second cart, and almost fireballed to death by another Fat Official. After weighing my options and deciding 'fuck this,' I decided to backtrack and take the short cut.

The short cut involves dropping down a succession of inexplicably placed bridges in a shaft to bypass the level. After only plummeting to my death a dozen times I decided to cheat and watch a YouTube video to help jog my memory of the correct sequence.

The correct sequence, it turns out, is one I could have sworn I had tried, only it worked somehow this time. Which only proves that the game was cheating, so that made things even between us.

I realized that I was probably no match for the Flamelurker Boss. Not because I wasn't a total badass at this game but because I had, objectively, shit gear, low levels, and a habit of panicking when things that are on fire punch at me.

The Flamelurker, by the way, is a giant fire monster that attacks using fire, punches, lunges and fucking lunacy. Then he aggros further when his health hits a certain point, upping his overall dangerousness to offshore oil refinery levels.

Still, after casting water veil, entering the chamber, and praying to Richard Dawkins, I some-fucking-how managed to win out in melee combat on the first attempt.

Not pictured: Me, crying in the next room.

At this point, gloating to my pet plastic cacti (that I named God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit to avoid arguments with mouthbreathing rednecks,) about how fucking great I am and how kinda easy this game is, I turned the Boss soul into the blacksmith to unlock better weapon upgrades and decided to take a break.

Next Time: I'm Still Awesome and All Deaths Are Well Within The Margin of Error