Nordicus

The footage might be around 9+ months old and there have been major improvements/changes since then, but yup, that's Bloodborne Pushing up PS4 on my console priority list past WiiU. Sorry Xenoblade Chronicles X and Wonderful 101

Finished Divine Divinity Divine Divinity was kinda weird, it had charm and freedom of exploration and character skill development, but it was also kinda broken and janky as heck, especially the controls. I played as this Survivor character and tried to get as far as possible without using spells or non-thiefy melee options. This did not last long. Poison, while so powerful one could call it potential gamebreaker, does not do anything against the skeletons you fight for the first few hours. Daggers are also rather pathetic weapons even with the backstab skill maxed out. It felt like Larian Studios did not give a damn about game balance as long as the skill ideas were neat, or if they did, there were some elements they did not stress too much about, which gave me the same feeling as Morrowind's different crafting systems at times. Max out your Poison Weapon skill and you can potentially kill 50 enemies with just one flask. A boss that's vulnerable to poison is just a simple kiting job, that's it. Arrows don't even really need to hit for poison to take effect! I was actually stunned the game didn't let me use the "Have X Spirit Resistance or die" skill on bosses, because stacking Curse let me lower their Spirit Resistance to any amount I liked how I could just stumble unto quest items and objectives freely most of the time, there were a lot of little scripted sequences there seemingly just because and the characters, while not always well-written, were cheerful, silly and entertaining enough to overlook that. The game did kind of overstay its welcome after I had collected all the representatives of the different "races". I hated constantly fighting imps so very much in this new final map and the final dungeon itself was in certain sections full of crystal gargoyles that are immune to all elements except lightning, a damage type that I really didn't have a source of, so when these sections came up, rather than fight every gargoyle in melee, I ran past everyone. Did not give a damn. I continued doing that to the final boss, who I then killed with a few poison arrows while running away from his summoned clones. Did not even see him die, it happened off-screen because of poison. I'm glad I finished this, partially because it was getting tedious and partially because I wanted to see how it'd end. I'm glad I played this, but not enough to play Beyond Divinity. I'll move on to either Divinity 2 or Original Sin at some point, because despite its flaws, DD did show Larian can make something fairly unique and quirky with plenty of highlight moments

My friends and I are often drifting from one F2P MMO to another now that GW2's content updates have slowed down, and we're trying to look for one that sticks. Honestly, this one looks actually pretty decent so far, and I am a bit of a sucker for FFX Sphere Grid type leveling In the case it's "TERA but less creepy", then good enough for me

Street Fighter 5 and Pay-2-win. Really. No, I'm serious. REALLY Edit: Yoshinori Ono denying this in twitter

Oh lawdeh, please let the following bit about Bloodborne be true Hype rising even further.

I think you're confusing romance and casual ploughing.

Here's the same gameplay demo played by different people. The player here is actually quite good and sidesteps a lot of the enemy moves perfectly, pushes enemies and uses signs effectively, and to my pleasant surprise, the griffin has a rush move when there's distance, and it doesn't just ineffectively try to swipe at you while on the ground

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls (1)

The griffin fight needed more work in general. The thing with Arkham style combat is that it's usually made with more-or-less average sized humanoids in mind, and trying to fit a griffin into that looks a bit funny. The fight was at its best when the griffin leapt around and attempted dive attacks, doing stuff like a griffin probably would, but at the ground the attacks looked weak and the monster stood oddly still. Now, I'm not looking for a Nargacuga fight in a Witcher game (though that'd be amazing) but I hope the monster behaviour will look a bit better few months from now.

Naah, he didn't need Geralt for anything, he was just collateral damage, in fact it kinda bit him in the rear. He did maybe overestimate Serrit and Auckes' abilities, but it was necessary for him to get to Loc Muinne in time. 2 kings were already dead and so he hedged his bets

I know nobody else who has roided up arms like that. The other witchers from the first game will play an significant part in 3, that much we know from trailers and the secret letter in the newest one, so if Letho will reappear... My favorite foil in an RPG since Delita!

I checked the GOG pre-order site and saw this: Tempted, tempted.

Left 4 Dead 2 fan-made campaigns. In this case The Bloody Moors I want to slap the pills out of anyone who thinks that the key to making a fun fight is to spawn 2 tanks. There were at least 5 different spots where that happened!

That's VaatiVidya, there's perhaps just 1 person who breathes, eats, drinks, dreams, thinks and lives Souls games more than he does. This footage also existed in picture form few weeks back, so he's had time to prepare for more concrete evidence of a Souls game spin-off by FROM Software. The Shadow Tower mentions were all over the leaked screenshots back then

I managed to finally get a somewhat stylish outfit for my Dark Souls character, it's too bad that only the helmet is really good for its weight. Then again, I've played the game through enough times to have the confidence to sacrifice stats for STYLE. Just gotta play well and not get hit.

King's Bounty: The Legend Moment #1: "Aww damn son, I didn't realize just how many elf and female fighter related buffs my units and items have. Let's try a complete Elf faction army!" Moment #2: "Hah, "Strong" encounter my a**, Half of the undead are proper dead by turn 2 and and they barely get to retaliate because of my speed and initiative!" Moment #3: "Black Dragons eh, more like BLACK AND BLU- why did I deal 800 damage instead of 10k? Wait... "Magic Resistant"??? My physical units are bunched up behind my sprites and dryads because I thought their high damage retaliations would be enough! OWOWOW, THE FIRE, IT HURTS! I'VE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE!"

King's Bounty: The Legend This game has various points where it starts to drag and I feel Freedom Isles was one of them. I just keep sailing around, trying to beat the enemies starting from the weakest and grabbing all the loot I can before I start fighting. Usually it's either that or bashing my way through the direct path to next main objective which is usually filled with fights where my damages/costs outweigh the gains. Then I went "F*** it, let me grab the map from the pirate by killing Redbeard and do some progress", and thankfully the mines that it unlocked let me get my first Level 5 unit, The Giant. This thing... kinda rocks at this moment, if you let me understate. Horrible mobility, but once every 2 rounds he can do massive damage to every enemy ground unit in battle.

"Could you join me for dinner?"

I'm fairly willing to back down from this stance if you can point out 10 quests not in the main story which satisfy these requirements: - isn't a glorified FedEx mission - doesn't essentially boil down to "go to this place and kill people, possibly take their stuff, too" / "go to this place and sneak past people, also take some stuff" - can't be solved essentially by clicking repeatedly on the admire/intimidate button for 10 minutes OR: has elements of the above, but is saved by some twist that makes these activities somehow interesting. Alright, I'll give it a shot. 1) Gradually building your own Great House stronghold and getting the needed staff for it. 2) Find Athyn Sarethi's son who has been hidden in Venim Manor as if this was a Thief game, while fittingly being on the lookout for guards who will become hostile if you're seen doing anything suspicious (not a loss state, but turns this quest more combat-oriented) 3) Blackmail Cunius Pelelius into giving Imperial Cult 500 gold. Granted you can pay the sum yourself, but you're supposed to either break into his office or interview various employees around town and the mines to see that he's skimming off the ebony shipment. Disposition is irrelevant. 4) Collect 1000 gold from East Empire Company. Again, you can pay yourself, but when you actually go and ask for the money, it turns into a 3'000 gold embezzlement case where you're supposed catch the thieving clerk, with the clues that his girlfriend is a Telvanni and that he's been using Guild Guide services. Once you track him down, you have multiple options to deal with him. 5) Memorize and act a play while watching out for any assassins 6) Work as a bouncer for Winged Guar bar 7) Discover the Telvanni spy among Mage's Guild members. Through interrogating guild members in the various places, you'll find the most likely office, hear about one member's oddly perfect alibi and then finally see that their credentials are badly written forgeries. You can also succesfully accuse the original questgiver just for laughs if previous Mage's Guild quests ended a specific way. 8 ) Do a pilgrimage to 7 different shrine across Morrowind to become a proper member of Tribunal Temple. In one of these shrines, you must deliberately drown yourself to solve a riddle 9) Re-enact the historical event of Vivec getting Mehrunes Dagon to throw a rock at him (by taunting the calm Dremora next to this before mentioned rock in Maar Gan) 10) Deliver an important report to Carnius in the middle of a hostile and dangerous forest in Solstheim within 10 (real-time) minutes. However, Constans put a trap at the start which causes excessive burden and a debilitating decrease of speed and agility. Chances are that you'll have to do the delivery basically naked like I did. There, that should fill your requirements decently. No main quests from vanilla or expansions, no Daedric Prince stuff, I only touched a few factions mainly based on my last playthrough. Not even the quite remotely related main quest stuff like faking a high Telvanni wife out of a slave for an ashland tribe leader

Oh the quests and dialog in Morrowind are definitely boring... ...if by Morrowind you mean Balmora guild newbie gruntwork

Metal Gear Solid 2 HD Okay, first parts with Raiden, and this is basically a second tutorial right now because people are allowed to skip the Snake portion at the beginning. I've only met Rose for 5 minutes and I already see why people dislike her. Colonel: "Rose, call him Raiden during this mission alright?" Rose: "Okay, got it" *30 seconds later* Rose: "Hey Jack, do you know what day April 30th is?" Raiden: "Err no, is it something important?" Rose: "It is important enough. But I won't tell you why if you're not going to figure it yourself" *pout* Goddamnit Rose!

Yeah, I might be misremembering things, but I recall the Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke explicitly saying that they want to make Original Sin feel a lot like playing Ultima VII

What? Reference to an old poster in these forums who was more than happy to do that with DA2

Cloudbuilt It's a new indie 3D platforming/speedrunning game where you clear levels with different paths (some obvious, some not) using your jetpack, wallrunning and simple energy pistol, as there are a few enemies that work more as obstacles rather than something that you really need to fight. There are 22 stages plus plenty of different modes, such as one where you have infinite fuel. Spent good 13 hours on it so far, haven't finished it yet because I like to get at least a B ranking (ranks are from D to S) on the stages and that tends to take plenty of retries and practice on harder ones. The controls took a bit to get used to, but I now think I have the hang of it (managed to get an A rank here or there) and this game is really scratching that skill-based 3D platforming itch I've had for years. Lack of any replay/ghost function, and how picky the game is about momentum at times are probably my biggest complaints. Like, in some spots where I like to sequence-break in a sense, if my jump is just a little bit short, I don't have the upwards momentum to start vertical wallrun, and then fall to my death.

And yet, I'm glad Spec ops exists because having the criticism of modern shooters manifest in a game will likely have more of an effect than any forum post, single game journalist editorial, Tasteful Understated Nerdrage, Jimquisition, petition, etc. will. I will not say Spec Ops presented its point 100% perfectly, and I'll have my avatar's reaction when somebody argues "But Spec ops' gameplay is designed to be boring!", but god damn did I feel like I needed a cigarette when that game ended, and I hope your preconception of the game isn't heavily influenced by the opinions of a forum where everything, except some really obscure/old RPGs that even only very few fans of the very genre have played, will get tons of snarky ****