Dark Souls 2 is excellent and a worthy successor to DS1. Though I think I liked DS1 better, DS2 is quite brilliant in its own right. I think it's easier than DS1 since it's a no-brainer to summon help (for the boss fights or just to get through a level) and there are no really frustrating (or inspired) bosses like Ornstein and Smough but other aspects of it are excellent. Duel wielding is pretty cool and even gives you a unique stance if you use similar weapons. I respec'd into a sorcerer and was dual wielding two swords that also acted as a catalyst allowing me to swing at close enemies and light them up with spells at range. It was quite satisfying.

I liked the ability to respec if I screw up or just don't like where my character is headed, something I was unable to do in the first game and caused me hours of frustration and do overs. You can't respec over and over, but it's at least possible now. DS2's world isn't as amazing as DS1's interconnected style, but each area has its own feel that I really like.

I avoided multiplayer in DS1 as much as I could, but in DS2 I really got into the sunbros. It was easy to summon and be summoned to help others. Awesome! Plus if you are hollow and you help someone kill a boss, you turn human again. Negating the need to use an item that was always in short supply.

I put in about 100 hours on my PS3 and another 60 on the PC version before moving on to other games, but I plan to jump on the DLC when it hits. The PC version is much much better than the PS3 in both resolution and framerate and is really the only way to play. I used an Xbox controller by the way.

Good deal! I was wondering when we'd hear anything about PB's next game. Risen 1 and 2 were excellent even with the strange play mechanics of Risen 2 on release (blocking in particular). Gothic 1 and 2 were also outstanding and PB always does such a great job of encouraging exploration. Can't wait!

Edit: Man, every time I post, the subject line is some old byline from months and months ago.

Prez wrote on Nov 24, 2013, 15:37:

Quinn wrote on Nov 24, 2013, 14:39:
Prez, does that game still only support controllers? I'm intrigued by your enthousiasm.

I play it with mouse and keyboard and it works great. The only thing is that as of right now there is no official key rebinding (not sure about mods or config tweaks) but future updates will include that. I think it's supposed to be in next week's update. Anyway, don't get me wrong - I'm not guaranteeing that everyone will love it like I do. I am just giving my personal impression of it; your mileage may vary.

I bought and played it for the first time last night and use K&M just fine. I also bound a few keys from within the UI without any mods.

I'm not sure who here on Blue's said this, but I agree now...Ego should have released this mess as a Steam Early Access game. The shape it is in now is pretty terrible.

I pre-ordered this after seeing that amazing scale & detail video in August. Having never, ever played an X game before I was excited about the exploration possibilities. Now, I'm just frustrated. The piloting around is decent with my HOTAS but the plot point mentioned in the review, the buy/sell 100 energy cells is a sticking point for me too. I cannot for the life of me figure out that trade screen. I’ve tried searching for an understanding of what I am seeing, but haven’t found anything yet. I mean, I see a slider with the name of my energy transport on the left and the station on the right but the numbers to the left and right are absolutely meaningless to me. When I went in to purchase 100 cells, I started to drag that bar to the left to transfer cells to my transport, but the numbers don’t make any sense. I ended up literally clicking the arrow to the left 100 times and ended the trade. Selling them again was a nightmare and again the number made no sense to me at all.

Some of the menu options have bewildering shortcuts on them like CO, DE, SM that when I click them, take me to other hud/menu choices but I can’t figure out what they mean either. I just know the last one takes me to the in-game map thingie.

I’m obviously an idiot for multiple reasons here. I can only hope that Ego patches this thing to a point where it even begins to come close to its potential.

doh, dupe posting.

That "Sponsored Content" and "You may also like" crap at the bottom of websites really is annoying. It's also not trapped by Adblock without a little help.

If you use Adblock Plus for Firefox, you can get rid of this pretty easily with a Custom Filter. Simply create a new filter group if you don't have any, then on the right side of the window add specific filter rules related to the company pushing the ads. For example:

||outbrain.com^$third-party
||nrelate.com^$third-party
||taboola.com^$third-party


Coming from the "I loved Amnesia" crowd, I was excited to find out more about this game when I saw it on Steam last night. Unfortunately the reviewers are hammering the game, so I'll wait to see if anyone here has tried it.

Oh and stay away from IGN's review and previews on the meta sites as it's a pretty big spoiler (as you probably should anyway since it's, you know...IGN).

Though Siri may not be so hot, the dictation tool built into every program that uses a keyboard is beyond awesome. No need to try to squeeze in a text or email to your spouse while driving to work now. Just use the built-in speech to text.

And yet Dawnguard is Xbox only.

So I took the new block ability out for a spin and combat is quite a bit easier. You can still get overwhelmed by multiple enemies if you aren't careful, but the new dodge lets you move quickly enough to compensate a little. It's pretty fun with multiple enemies now.

So far, I've been able to block everything except Sand Devils, they are still unblockable. I think Jaguars are still unblockable, but I didn't test well enough to be sure. UPDATE: their pounce can't be blocked but everything else can be.

I've been able to block:
Alligators
Ghouls
Giant Crabs
Grave Spiders
Jaguars (block all except the pounce)

On another note, it seems like I am finding more provisions than before as well but that may be a coincidence.

This comment was edited on May 10, 2012, 15:00.

I'm about 30 hours in and really enjoying the game. The added dodge is nice but I wasn't having too many issues after resetting the difficulty back to medium. Maybe I can bump it up again now.

I am a big fan of every PB game I've played (didn't try Gothic 3 though due to the horrible comments about it) and Risen 2 is as good as all the others. I dig trying to work my way deep into areas I shouldn't be in yet and hoping to come up with some nice loot and this game doesn't disappoint.

I've been meaning to say something about this game since I read Ray's comment on the big Risen 2 thread a few days ago, saying something along the lines of, Pyranha Bytes is a disgrace and should be shut down as a studio. I completely disagree. I love RPGs and seem to get into PB games more than anyone's (Morrowind not withstanding). I can understand some players not liking the controls of Gothic 1, or the combat deficiencies of Risen 2 but on the whole, the PB games always seem to scratch that exploration itch I have.

gilly775 wrote on Apr 10, 2012, 11:42:
Ever hear of preview/press copies?

This can't be your first time on the Internet can it? Is humor that hard to spot?

I'm willing to give it a shot and see what happens.

Verno wrote on Oct 3, 2011, 13:32:
A...something, something, something.. King's Field.

King's Field? I wasn't aware that From did King's Field too. I've generally thought of them as the Chromehounds guys. Awesome! Both the first and second King's Field on the PS1 were my favorite at the time and for a long time afterwards. It wasn't until Gothic years later that I had that same amazed and excited feeling while exploring.

Thanks for the information Verno!

Acleacius wrote on Aug 22, 2011, 16:43:
I certainly hope the game deserves the great review scores. Can anyone suggest a mostly spoiler free review? I've avoided the leak and 80% of the press. Thinking Ars-Technica usually is spoiler free, maybe I'll start with them.

I'm trying to avoid spoilers too and the Rock, Paper, Shotgun review is spoiler free (at least I think it is. If the paragraph looked like it wanted to stray too much into the plot, I skipped it).

I think it is. I'm about 8 hours in so far and loving just about everything about it. I don't really know how long the game is though as I'm trying to stay away from the Steam forums and any spoilers.

I just broke out a pen and paper to map out one level as I kept getting hopelessly turned around. In these days of auto-map, I haven't had to do that in a long, long time.

Great game!

I'm a big fan of this genre and really liked their previous game Penumbra Overture. I went back to my Steam account and saw that I only played the first 5 hours of it though. I need to revisit again after I work through Amnesia.

EDIT: actually it was Penumbra Black Plague I only went through for 5 hours, I still have Overture available. Damn, and here I was bitching about nothing to play until Dead Rising 2 comes out.

So that's where Witchboy went, Arkane!

It's the 4th generation of the iPhone I would assume. Original, 3G, 3GS, 4G.

DangerDog wrote on Feb 5, 2010, 18:39:
I really don't see it as a new game, it's only new to people who never played the original, which I would surmise is most console gamers today.

In my neck of the woods, all the console gamers I know grew up on the Atari 2600 and Coleco Vision (and the Atari Jaguar since we're talkin' AvP).