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. 2)

The great thing about Demon's Souls is that once you stop sucking at it and start making progress it lights up the reward center of the brain like the Vegas Strip. For a recovering drug addict that's like a legal drug that doesn't cost any money and only results in minor consequences, like the loss of friends, lovers, weight, sleep and employment, which can all be replaced.

2-3 The Underwhelming Whelp

Usually the last level of a world is just a corridor leading to a boss fight. Since the Dragon God is by far the easiest world boss in the game I decided to prove how easy this game is in the game's one mandatory semi-stealth section.

You can't melee him. Lucky for him.

The corridor involves hiding behind pillars until the Dragon God looks in the other direction, and then running to the next pillar. Some of the pillars block the path and have to be smashed.

Side note: The Dragon God is actually the Boletarian God of Crap Security Guards. He is the patron deity of those whose jobs entail looking slowly back and forth between whichever monitor doesn't contain the ninja infiltrator.

After reaching the far ledge I used the why-is-this-here giant arrow siege engine to take off  45% of the Boss's health. Why in the fuck a Dragon God would want to spend its entire existence hanging out in a room with the only weapon that can kill it placed near the door, armed, and pointing directly at its head is a mystery I've not yet solved.

After creeping across to the siege weapon on the other side of the room, firing it, and dispatching the crippled and helpless Dragon God, I zoned out, fucked around for a while, and went back to the Castle World.

1.2 The Overwhelming Whelp

Upon zoning in, I charged forward into the next chamber and was promptly almost massacred by a herd of Phalanx goons that I swear weren't there the last time I played the game.

Being a little more fucking careful I made my way out to the bridge where I knew that the dragon that roasted me before was about to try to roast me again. He did so. Not because the game is hard or because I'm bad at it, but because I got distracted by my character's ass and timed the dash wrong. That's what happened.

After making the next dash with no problems I had further no problems for the rest of the level as it's basically just a tube with zombies in it. I decided it was time to slay another dragon.

Climbing on top of a turret thing with my bow I took aim and loosed every single arrow I had into the scaly beast's face.

I am now out of arrows and the dragon is very not dead. Fuck.

Kicking myself for forgetting to upgrade my bow and buy more arrows before doing this, I made my way back to the teleporter and totally wasn't roasted alive again when I timed the dash wrong. Again.

After grinding more money that I needed because of my repeated case of dragon breath, I upgraded my bow to a sticky bow. Which is both silly and disgusting sounding, but it's like the best weapon in the game if you're a fan of cheap bitch tactics like I am.

After finally dispatching the dragon I made my way to the Boss chamber, which was the Tower Knight.

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the knight to a fair fight? I'm still not doing that.

The secret to a stress free existence with this Boss is to climb up the walls, murder the archers, rain arcane death on the Tower Knight when he drops his guard during his comically slow wind up animation, then take a step backwards when he shoots back.

This game is so easy. Providing you don't mind being the asshole kid that always picked Sub-Zero and relied entirely on the freezeball+uppercut stunlock to win.

3.1 The Oddly-Designed Prison of Tedious Jailbreaks

Remembering that goon-strength spikes significantly in 1.3, I decided to run through The Prison level of the Other Castle World.

The Prison of Latria has excellent atmosphere, and was really effective at making me feel filthy and hopeless and surrounded by tentacle monsters. For about ten minutes. Then it just became tedious back-and-forthing with me occasionally falling into a hole that wasn't there last time.

Whoever designed this prison does not pay his guards hourly, as they'd be well into overtime by the time they made it to the time clock, and I can't imagine a prison containing three prisoners and 70 caged zombies over the space of 950 square miles has much of an operating budget.

Halfway up the final (senselessly long,) corridor leading to the Boss chamber, I was attacked by a black phantom, which is like a goon but with high stats and better AI. I think they're supposed to simulate the random invaders that popup during online play, but I don't play online because I hate people, competition, teenagers, surprises, acknowledging the existence of people that type things like "fag nigger is fag," and being interrupted during masturbatory escapist fantasies: all of which are synonyms for online gaming.

After circling each other for fucking ages in a level that already has too much nothing happening in it, something in my brain broke off and I started flailing wildly at the phantom's shield. It was at this point that I remembered that this phantom is a stealth character, and as such is deft at executing back stabs.

After cursing my way back to the phantom and this time winning I proceeded to the boss, the Fool's Idol.

Whatever she's reading must be a goddamn good book. She doesn't stop reading even while being arrowed to death.

The Fool's Idol isn't as straightforward as most of the other Boss fights, which mostly involve either being charged by an enraged giant demon, or hiding just outside of the Boss's aggro range and plinking it with arrows or poison spells and hoping it doesn't become enraged and charge.

For the Fool's Idol, the fight mostly relies on cunning, but not very well implemented traps, such as tiles that paralyze your character while she blasts you with magic, the Idol copying herself leading the player to run around whacking dopplegangers, and the best trick: A zombie not even in the Boss's chamber casting resurrection spells on her.

These kind of fall apart, as the floor tiles are few and small, the zombie cleric is the one you probably noticed before coming into the Boss chamber, as he was the one in a magic circle surrounded by glowing light and swearing up and down and he wasn't doing anything suspicious, honest, you can trust me, guv, I'm a right ole honest undead, I am, wouldn't 'urt a flea, now would I?

As far as the Boss herself, she just sat there, facing away from the door. Literally. She seems more boreder with this level than I did.  So the entire fight involved shooting at her and ducking behind a pillar while she slowly turned around.

Returning to base, I decided to take a shot at the Ruined Castle World.

4.1 Fucking Robot Skeletons

That's what the primary goons look like in this world, anyway.

I spent quite a while running around pillaging the level for all of the awesome weaponry that, oddly, was just lying around next to goons that could have easily used them to make my life quite a bit more difficult for me.

After that I decided it was time to give The Vanguard, the Tutorial Boss from the beginning of the game, his comeuppance via my fucking sword in his fucking ankle!

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the Vanguard to single combat? SO DID I!

It went really well too, right up to the point where he somehow, perhaps by using game glitching wizardry, managed to get his gigantic axe past my defense and liquify me.

Luckily this level is reasonably sized and is made up mostly of shortcuts, so I didn't spend the next half hour inching my way back to try again. Trying again worked.

After meandering through the rest of the level and only occasionally being impaled by a spear shot out of an improbable flying manta rays, I made it to the Boss Chamber.

Really skinny goons, really fat bosses.

Luckily the Adjudicator has been ignoring his diet since the fall of the whatever kingdom this is. As a result his only real attack options involve a slow, clumsy chop at the small area in front of him that isn't stomach, and falling down, leaving his wrecked vagina of a head open for axe attacks.

If you've ever played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, it's almost the exact same strategy used by King Hippo: 1. Make no attempt to disguise your very obvious weak spot. 2. When your weak spot is attacked, drop all defenses while your opponent hacks off a third of your health bar.

Now that I've turned myself into a walking declaration of war, it's time to switch back to the Other Castle World.

3.2 Castle In the Sky

Latria, at least those parts of it that aren't endless prison, is composed entirely of narrow walkways and bridges with no safety rails surrounding a central tower powered by a giant heart. Seriously, you can't design a castle like this and not expect it to be overrun by tentacle demons and giant scorpions with human faces.

Anyway, I remember this level being way more of a pain in the ass than it turned out to be this time. Maybe my already impossibly good video game skills have somehow gotten even better. Of course it's also possible that the 15 or so hours I spent two years ago falling into holes and being knocked off of the same three ledges by gargoyles was buried so deeply in my subconscious that I can now run this level blindfolded.

Since I have to wait until I have pure white world tendency to unlock all of the extras in this level I decided to just make a crazed dash for the Boss Chamber. Since this involves charging at full speed past giant, flying gargoyles over several miles of narrow walkways, and then charging past acid spitting face bugs in a poorly lit bog of narrow walkways there was no way in hell it could possibly work.

Except it did. But it goddamn shouldn't have. I was tempted to throw myself into a hole to see if I had somehow accidentally turned God Mode on.

Anyway, that brought me to the boss, The Maneater. Even though it's a them, and they're snakes that eat Gargoyles and wear them like suits.

Gargoyleseaters doesn't really roll off the tongue. But neither does Demon's Souls.

A fact almost as widely known as the second Maneater that swoops in halfway through the battle is that the first Maneater can be arrowed to death through the door of its chamber. However, I'd been having so much luck...I mean skill in the past few levels I decided a direct, frontal assault was called for. And on the off chance I died I could always come back and kill the motherfucker from the other side of an impassible barrier the way nature intended.

Somehow this worked too. So for anyone wondering how to win at this game: Take the most suicidal, least likely to work strategy and perform it as quickly as possible before the game realizes you're daring it to kill you.

3.3 The Curse of the Lazy Development Monks

The Final Boss of Latria is another sorta unimpressive one, as it's another black phantom. In the online mode the game actually yoinks in another player to do battle with you, but since this game's online community speaks solely in an impenetrable and terrifying language of capitalized consonants and Internet Troll involving phrases like "GW and DBS? You're worse than the uchi push lock noobs! Try HoG and CRR solo against FKA!" I'd be damned if I'm gonna try my luck against someone that takes games that seriously.

Instead I fought the AI phantom, which is like a regular goon, only he has a goofy hat and randomly shoots homing missiles that hurt like a motherfucker. I avoided these by cleverly hiding behind chairs.

The actual Boss is the robe. Immortal witch queen, gargoyle eating snake demons, and a robe.

Next Up: I Tackle the Levels That Really Are Hard

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

Unexpectations

I know I said I'd be posting about beliefs this time, but screw it. I don't feel like pretending to be serious.

I'm not playing Skyrim. I probably won't be for a while. Nerd hype kills any kind of hope in me quicker than Obama throwing the working class under a bus for the fifth time in a row. I'll probably pick it up here in about two years the inevitable Game of the Year edition will be available for under 20 bucks.

Nerd hype never delivers. You remember how hard we wanted The Phantom Menace to kick ass? Or The Crystal Skull? Or the Transformers movie? Or Avatar? Or Final Fantasy XIII? You remember how all that hope congealed into an overly-polished turd, Shia LeBeouf, Shia LeBeouf+Dick Joke, furry porn, and Terrible Anime Everything, respectively? The next time more than one internet nerd tells me something that looks like something I'll enjoy will be something I will enjoy, I'm avoiding that something.

This shouldn't really come as any kind of surprise, since I name 'pathologically contrary' as one of my character assets, but what does surprise me is that more people don't feel like me.

Anyway, today I'm going to talk about some games that should, goddammit, should have been good. Like, it would be hard to mess these games up. You would almost have had to set out with the intention of destroying these ideas beforehand to come up with train wrecks of this caliber. Also probably a lot of illegal drugs.

Dragon Age II

Spoiler: Nothing else in the game is this dramatic.

Dragon Age: Origins (and it's 9 billion expansions,) turned out to be one of the best CRPGs of this generation. What was extra surprising was that the console port was well executed. It's a well-known fact that console gamers think that computer gamers are sticky blobs of pizza and energy drink with 40 fingers and zero reproductive organs, while computer gamers think that console gamers are criminally insane sub-humans that struggle with any concept more complex than A=punch. And if the internet is to be trusted, they're both right.


DA: Origins:Awakening of the Return to the Golem Witch Assassin Spawn walked a very fine line between appealing to most and alienating to half. It pulled this off by having a combat system that could either be live-action button-mashing (with squad-mates AI programmed before-hand,) or constantly paused and micro-managed.

Added to this was a relatively deep character customization system in the Diablo vein, where leveling up would allow for a couple of attribute points and a skill point to be dispersed in one of several different schools of discipline. This led to a variety of viable builds for each character class, with only a couple of builds that were notably broken (such as allowing a mage to use intelligence to meet strength requirements for weapons/armor).

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't completely without fault. Having a rogue in your party was mandatory, since there is exactly one way to open a locked chest or disarm a trap. Bashing the lock with a sword or shooting the trap with a fireball were role-playing options that would have to wait for a sequel.

Bashing locks and shooting traps are not in the sequel.

Nor are the multiple origin paths that made the tutorial levels in Origins so (for once,) engaging. Instead, this has been swapped for the option of importing a save game from Origins to determine how the events in DAII will play out. Only not really.

The world also comes across as quite a bit smaller in the sequel. Granted, Kirkwall is a gigantic-ass town, but there's still only one of it. Add to this the fact that there only appear to be about five dungeons shamelessly recycled to do the work of 20. They attempt to pull this off by blocking off and opening up certain paths on each map, but one look at the mini-map reveals that this haunted mansion is the exact same haunted mansion as the last three.

I mean, come on, Bioware. Randomized dungeons are fine. Reusing the same artwork is even fine, but the same damn corridors? Did you really think moving a chest across the room and switching the giant spider with a demon, and then switching the demon with an assassin and bricking up a passage would fool anyone?

The plot is another area that fell apart from the first game. Origins, despite its many, many subplots, had a clear, distinct goal from the very start: Slay the archdemon and end the blight. DAII has no over-arching plot, just a few not-very-interesting-or-coherent subplots strung together linearly: Reclaim your ancestral home from slavers by partnering in an expedition to the Deep Roads, stop an uprising of the Qunari, end the conflict between the Chantry and the mages.

In all honesty, I don't think any of those narratives should rank above side-quest. And on a practical level, they don't. While running mindlessly between quest markers I realized, more that once, that the main plot and the subplots are so indistinguishable that I had forgotten what the point of the game was.

And that really sucks, because narrative was Dragon Age: Origins strong point. Beyond having the least shitty moral choice system I've encountered in a video game (although it did have a lot of Saint Two-Shoes, Joe Doldrum, Ima Bastard choice options,) It had one of the most interesting worlds that hasn't already seen a dozen different incarnations. And it was fucking enthralling.

When I first played Origins, I was immediately gripped by the narrative. I remember thinking "what the fuck is a Grey Warden? Oh, a cursed knight that kills zombie demons? That's badass!" Origins was a masterpiece of nonlinear storytelling. I could, depending on my actions, ally myself with werewolves, clerics, mages, paladins, elves, dwarves, or even the bastard that betrayed the king when it came to the final showdown with the archdemon. I could, depending on my decisions, recruit a host of fairly interesting and unique characters, and then, depending on how I acted around them, have them idolize me, fight me, or have gay sex with me.

Incidentally, I still maintain that there must be some way to play a dwarf, have sex with an elf, and create the race of halflings, the sickly, bastard mules of fantasy fiction.

It would be logical that in the sequel, since they had spent so much time crafting this wonderful world with a rich culture and history, they would capitalize on that and send the player on a quest not just to save the country, but the world. Instead they decided to focus on petty political struggles (recycled subplot from the first game,) racial and class inequality and misunderstandings (recycled subplot from the first game,) wizards being either possessed by demons or lobotomized (recycled subplot from the first game,) and raising money for a mining expedition. I'm not kidding, like 90% of the first act is spent scrounging up enough change from side quests to buy into what is basically another side quest.

For the entire game, the events of Origins are treated as not-very-important. A couple of characters make an appearance, but they're used in such a way it seems like the developers are almost embarrassed by the original. Flemeth shows up early on, which was exciting, since she's such a kick-ass character, then disappointing, since she just gave me an unimportant side-quest and left for what I presume is a much better game.

Alistair, arguably the central character of the first game, shows up as a drunk in a bar. He then contributes nothing.

Anders, the mage from Awakening makes it all the way into your party. Which would have been nice if he didn't then develop multiple personality syndrome to compensate for everyone else's lack of backstory and development. For the whole game he pinballs wildly from charming ladies man, to militant revolutionary, to whingey self-persecutor, to wimpy shoe-horned in love interest, to psychotic demi-god.

I'm not kidding about the love interest. Getting someone to fall in love with you in Origins took intentional, concentrated effort. Here it just seems to default to Anders-wuvs-you, even when I'm nailing the pirate lady he hates and is constantly treating for orc herpes.

Speaking of the Loose Pirate Lady and personalities: Everyone else you can recruit has matching personalities and job descriptions. The Weird Elf Mage is weird, an elf, and a mage. The Dour Runaway Slave is dour and a runaway slave. The Scheming Dwarven Archer is a dwarven archer that schemes often. It's the old shitty slasher movie formula that focuses on personality traits, instead of personalities. Only there's no Jason Voorhees to root for/try to vanquish.

Another thing that really irked me were the way dragons were treated in the sequel. I mean, I'm not a dragon fetishist or anything, but, look, the name of the game is DRAGON Age. In the first game there were only like 3 dragons that you fought, and each one was a BIG deal. In the sequel they've been moved into the generic sub-boss category. Like, hey, there's a dragon, I wonder what it's guarding? Oh. 27 silver and some not very good pants. Hooray.

Alright, moving on.

Fallout: New Vegas

Something I loved about the first three Fallout games was that it had the best of both worlds, narratively. Not only does the world of Fallout come packaged with a rich backstory to draw from, it's also never tied to any specific storyline or plot thread, so it's always fresh.

While in Fallout two you played the direct descendant of the protagonist from the first Fallout, in Fallout 3 (the one that got made,) was centered around Washington DC. As for the Fallout 3 that ran out of money, it was set to be centered around the Colorado/Utah area.

So, basically, we have an entire radioactive continent from our old future to play around in. Fallout 4 could have gone anywhere. Mutant oil barons in Texas a la the Road Warrior, a dystopian steampunk society built on the remains of New York, drug wars in a nightmarishly hyper-verdant Florida, it could have been anything. I mean the Pitt expansion of Fallout 3 made Pittsburgh awesome. Pittsburgh! You know what else is awesome about Pittsburgh? Me neither.

After Bethesda did the impossible by making a big-budget sequel to a cult classic that was good, they handed the development torch off to Obsidian. This was seen as an ominously smart move, since many employees of Obsidian were with Black Isle for the development of the original Fallout games. Bethesda money and Black Isle design?  Fanboys wet themselves in anticipation. Cynical fucks like me waited for the shoe to drop.

Unfortunately, Obsidian made their first mistake at the first opportunity for mistake making, and it went on to ruin everything after. That's just my opinion, but it's the goddamn right opinion to have.

This mistake was this: They took a look at the history of Fallout, the universe they helped create, and then someone said "Hey! Why not, hear me out, instead of setting it in some super-dangerous radioactive wasteland on the bones of a once-great society, why don't we set it in the one location unaffected by the Cold War Where Russia Wasn't Bluffing?"

And no one said "Because we're paying Ron Perlman good money to talk about nuclear war and it's consequences in the opening fucking monologue."

And no one said "Because the fucking game is named "Fallout," not "Red Dead Redemption+Lasers." Idiot."

And no one said "Because the whole "what happens in Vegas" meme is already old and the game will look horribly dated before it's released."

And no one said "Because California and Washington DC are important places in the American subconscious, the way the Hoover Dam and the Vegas Strip aren't."

And no one said "Because the middle of the fucking Mojave desert is a fucking stupid place for man to rebuild society."

And it got green-lighted.

Sooooo, here we are. Hundreds of miles away from the central plot with nothing to go on but a description of the guy that shot me in the opening cinematic and some vague directions along the lines of "Vegas is north, but you'll die if you go north."

Similar to Fallout 3, there were different factions you could ally yourself with. About 12 dozen different factions in fact. In my experience all this added was needless convolution. The 'three main factions' theme of the previous games managed to to be concise, without falling into the Dr. Doom vs. Superman Vs. Deadpool stereotypes most three-choice systems seem to fall into. NCR vs. The Brotherhood of Steel vs. Some Third Thing worked. Adding in The Roman Reenactment Society, Meth Nazi's, Elvis Impersonators and The Impractical Weapon Convicts just turns everything into a mess while devaluing everything that was important by lumping it in with all this other silly bullshit.

The gameplay/graphics/ect. are almost exactly like Fallout 3. This is fine, but they made the odd choice of making odd choices for things to improve. VATS, for example, isn't a magic 'FREEZE TIME" button, but it still freezes the fucking game in the bad way. They added new enemies, but since the most impressive of these was a giant Deathclaw herd that I killed with headshots from 5 miles away it seems like they could have been better implemented. Like, I don't know, put it at the end of a sewer maze, minotaur style.

They added a hardcore mode that made eating and sleeping at certain intervals mandatory, and I totally ignored that option for the same reason I fucking hate fishing minigames. Realism is fine in areas like enemy AI, dialogue, jiggle physics and weapon damage. It's irritating bullshit when when it's used for cooking dinner or using the restroom.

Maybe I've been spoiled by Demon's Souls, or maybe spending like 90 hours playing Fallout 3 made me over-qualified, or maybe it was a childhood spent playing games that fucking hated children, but the difficulty curve seemed to go backwards. It started challenging enough, but about two seconds after I had a sniper rifle and shotgun 'danger' became a thing of the past. Especially since the obnoxiously easy to reach level cap had turned me into a walking Doomsday Weapon two thirds of the way into the game.

This motherfucker has killed me WAY more than anything in Fallout ever will.