I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls 3 lately, over 70 hours as of now. I'm now at the final boss in NG+ but I'm trying to farm some of the covenant items etc. before moving onto NG++. I really like the game, it's a much better Souls game than Dark Souls 2 imo, it feels like a proper sequel to Dark Souls. At first I thought the references to the first Dark Souls were very heavy handed and tacky, but as I played more and more I realized it was a lot more than just fan service. I liked a lot of the boss designs (especially Oceiros and Dancer of the Boreal Valley!), but sadly quite a few of them relied on some gimmick/had a very familiar moveset, but I realize that it's probably kind of hard at this point in the series to design bosses that feel new and inventive to a fan of the series. A few bosses did cause me quite a lot of trouble though (Aldrich, Nameless King and Pontiff Sulyvahn for example) and I had to summon help in some parts of the game. I'm using a Pontiff Knight Curved Sword +5 right now and rocking a Dexterity-heavy build. I also have fully upgraded Blood Claws that I use occasionally. It's so satisfying when you pull off the bleed effect on an enemy just by jumping and slashing away at them, very fun. But yeah, Dark Souls 3 is a really fun game.

Dark Souls 3 is by far my favourite Soulsborne game. It feels so refined compared to the others.
I've racked up 169 hours as of now, and I'm currently nearing the end of my no-healing run. I think I went through NG+ and stopped at Aldrich so I can keep this character at the PvP meta and host fight clubs after Pontiff's arena. The dried finger is so cool, it allows you to summon up to 5 phantoms/dark spirits, which makes hosting tournaments shitloads of fun.

The most trouble I had with the no healing run, funnily enough, was Crystal Sage, mainly because it's a boss fight designed to make the player tank through the wombo combos with healing items, which obviously I wasn't allowed to do. Pontiff took me about 5 attempts once I realised that you can parry the shit out of him, and on my successful attempt I managed to parry every single one of his attacks and beat him without getting hit once, the fight lasted about 50 seconds.

I get why people are annoyed about the gimmicky bosses, but I like the switch up, and I like how basically every boss has multiple phases. Ancient Wyvern seems to be a very hated boss, but I loved it because it's basically an epic action set-piece that's tense as fuck. Something which Dark Souls has never really done before.


The two most difficult bosses for me were Nameless King and Soul of Cinder, both of which I have yet to beat in the no healing run.
Favourite bosses have to be the Dancer (sexy af), the Abyss Watchers and Pontiff.

Also, to anybody wanting to get into PvP, the Dark Sword is OP as fuck, but it still takes some skill to learn unlike the fucking Estoc. You can grind Darkwraiths for it. You can also farm Black Knights for their Greatsword which is probably my favourite weapon in the game, despite being a dex user.

Phylum, prepare to be frustrated.

Overwatch convinced me it wasn't worth my time before the beta was even done downloading lol.

I don't like Blizzard. I think they make half-baked crap. I am perpetually outraged at the stupid effort they put into their dumb little CGI tech demos when the vast majority of their games are slow, irritating slogs. Also, none of their over-the-top CGI crap ever actually tells you anything about their games. I mean, this is a complaint people threw at WoW that is still completely relevant: Blizzard shits out some CGI, nerds go bananas and no one stops to question what the game is actually about.
I know that nothing I say will stop the millions of dollars they make every second, but I find Blizzard's 'creative model' incredibly irritating. It's homogeneous, uninspired drek.

Overwatch looked cool, and exciting. I'm not going to say new, because like all Blizzard products Overwatch's characters are all obnoxious, derivative shit. I watched a couple of trailers and could NOT figure out what the game was about. When it got to the point that I would have to interrupt the download of the 17GB Beta in order to download an 'exclusive' trailer I said 'yeah nah, fuck this noise'.

That's not true. Actually, I said that after the 9GB download of the beta only meant I had half of the application downloaded, and served no other purpose than taking me to a menu to say 'You cannot access overwatch beta yet!' at THAT point I said 'fuck this'.

So I bought BattleBorn instead, and maybe even a little bit out of spite for Blizzard's shitty talking gorilla that is a direct ripoff of Beast from X Men.

What really clinched it for me was the 'Dragons' trailer. The one with the inexplicable homosexual imagery. Sorry, but it's true. Two healthy dudes alone on a classy roof rubbing their snakes together, one's face is covered by a mask while the other contorts his features in ancient eastern ecstasy. It's gay as fuck. Blizzard is gay and also stupid as fuck.

Here's the Blizzard business model, broken down:
-Spend 2 1/2 years making an elaborate, toneless and pointless CGI cutscene of a piece of poop exiting a butt and hitting the toilet water. The second the poop splashes, smash cut to "POOPO 2020"

-Spend 5 years drumming POOPO 2020 to be the next great thing. Release more CGI of Poopo sliding down a wall, hitting a window, and being stepped on while in a paper bag and on fire. Announce a beta.

-Release the beta. All the game consists of is manipulating a hand in first person view but with turn-based mechanics. Everything is grossly lower poly count than the trailer. Gameplay consists of picking up Poopo and throwing him against a mirror, over and over again.

-The full version of the game is released for $89.99+39.99 DLC Season Pass 6 months after its intended release date. Millions of people buy it. An asian country makes it their national past time.

-10 years of milking Poopo with expansions, more cutscenes and possibly teasing a sequel. Movie plans in the works.

-Release trailer for Pee's quest, where the camera swoops in and out of a stream of urine to examine ammonia particles. The cycle begins anew.

Blizzard is fucking stupid simply based on the association they now have with this awful post.

It's a competitive (competitive to what degree is uncertain) multiplayer shooter. Who gives a fuck about the CGI stuff. I watched the initial reveal thing with the little boy and the money, but I haven't bothered with the other stuff. The game is fun, and if you want a shooter with some competition that isn't as slow as CS:GO then it's basically the only option right now.

The guns are fun to use and the movement feels pretty good. It's doing better than 99% of the shooters out there for that.

Got to say I'm impressed with how the new Doom felt though. Holding off buying it for now because I hated the MP in the open beta, but the single player looks amazing and it's definitely one for me to grab in a Christmas sale.

Thanks Vlam for the tip off that someone else disliked Overwatch?

I thought the trailer was cool. I like the mix of ancient China and futuristic sci-fi, that being said it told me nothing about the game and I probably won't be playing it.

I have no idea how it's supposed to be gay, Mac's just talking out of his arse. I guess that means UFC is gayer than buttsex, right?
I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't two dragons being all gay because that would've been hot as hell. Way to get my hopes up, Mac.

Yeah, sorry to disappoint. I woke up feeling like bitching and moaning about something. That post will go down as one of my best worst posts. A little homophobic maybe, but that's never been my habit. I will probably end up playing Overwatch, truth be told.


So DOOM is amazing. Really, it's fantastic. I would argue it's worth waiting a little while since it cost me almost 100$ to preorder, but don't wait too long. It's really, truly engaging and fresh.

I'm playing it on console, which raises so many questions about why we can't just use a fucking mouse and keyboard to play shooters on consoles. Much as I enjoy my PS4 and the various exclusives, DOOM's gameplay focuses more on mobility than strategic gunplay and none of the configurations for the Dual Shock 4 really suit the momentum you can see in footage of people playing on PC. There's plenty of auto-aim compensation to keep it from feeling like you're flubbing all of your shots, but it's still a glaring flaw to be unable to jump and aim at the same time with all but one of the controller configs.

I mean, I can tiptoe around this but the fact is: Play DOOM on PC. It is simply less functional without mouse and keyboard.

Still, it's fantastic. The Multiplayer is somewhere between Quake Live and Halo multiplayer. It's very quick and visceral, and it's really hard to leave a match feeling frustrated or bad when every kill is immensely satisfying and quick. You can really fuck people up in this game. I mean really.

I did not play the beta so I can't compare the two experiences, but DOOM's multiplayer feels very complete, there are no missing pieces but it could always use a few extra maps.


BattleBorn/Battleborn/Bottlebarn/Bollywood is a ton of fun. I've never played a MOBA style game before but I loved the first Borderlands and Battleborn had that same promise, I could feel it in my guts. However for an 80$ game it needs some more freaking maps. Six on release? Uh...okay....TWO per game mode? Oh fuck off Gearbox. Just slap something together in Unreal and call it an update, fuckers.

I was motivated to buy Doom and BollyBorn as a counterweight to Dark Souls 3. DS3's multiplayer has yet to be balanced and everyone's ganky as hell and fucking estocs and dark swords. I needed a break, but I don't think I've played Dark Souls in about a week now.

See, Doom hits this sweet spot in the multiplayer where you feel competitive and gloat over every victory and bemoan every loss, but it's...fun. I am a mad guy, and Doom doesn't leave me mad. I am generally extremely satisfied with Doom. Sorry to keep harping on this, but it has a great dichotomy; I never really display frustration with a game (yelling out YOU FUCKERS!!!! for example) but Doom brings that voice out of me. "CUNTSSSSSS" I will hiss at a loss. "EAT IT FUCKERS" I will bellow with a win. It's perfect.

Battleborn is different, it's a bit more personal because you aren't just some nameless marine meatbag, you're...a character, probably one you like if you're playing as them with the intent to win, so dying or losing is more furstrating, but you have plenty of oppurtunities to get people back.

I completely understand why DOTA 2 and LoL are so huge though. The MOBA style is extremely competitive and since there is ALWAYS something to do if you're not intent on killing other players, you really feel let down for not accomplishing something with a life. I'm still getting out of the habit of rushing into combat on my own, but Battleborn has a lot of promise. I would suggest waiting for the complete edition on this game.

But, get DOOM on sale if you can. It is an immensely fun and gory experience and worth every penny, but still, couldn't hurt to pick it up at a discount.

Now, let's talk about Doom's singleplayer. It's really, really, really good. My first time through I found the plot a little cheesey: 'HELL ENERGY', but despite a sincere cliffhanger of an ending it's overall a really solid experience. It doesn't feel like a training mode for the multiplayer, which I think is important for a game separating itself from a lot of shooters these days.

It's not Doom 3. It's not survival horror, there are no flashlights or jumpscares, you are a badass. The player character, the Doom Marine is appropriately silent but there are a handful of times that they use the bluntness and destructivity of his character for decent comic effect.

Peter Cullen (guy who voiced Optimus Prime) plays a quasi-antagonistic robot/god emperor who is a lot of fun, completely humorless and manipulative. He guides the player, but I never got a sense he was necessarily a good guy, just the lesser of two evils.

In Doom 3 you start the game before the demonic invasion actually hits. It's a neat little intro, and you learn a lot about the world. There are things happening that are completely outside of your grasp.

I think DOOM makes use of the world built in Doom 3; you are ostensibly on the same base that was attacked in that game, the world works much the same way except instead of a cold industrial empire, the UAC facilities feel like some kind of nightmarish high-tech cult.

It's a great balance between the story-heavy elements of Doom 3 with all the quickness and necessity for action that the original Doom and Doom 2 had. You can go through the entire game with no real understanding or direction whatsoever or you can explore a little and learn about how the UAC created such a mess.

It's a great shooter experience after years of tactical/military style games. It feels fun, has a distinct (if derivative) visual style and plays like a dream. All I'd ask out of a sequel are more horrific designs for the monsters; google the various designs for the Mancubus, and you might see what I do in that the DOOM mancubus is just missing something to make it truly horrifying. The Doom 3 designs were generally unsettling and weird, but most of the baddies in DOOM feel a little too...bright. Again, the Doom 3 mancubus has glossy black eyes, a tenetacle/gas mask face and is covered in sallow, rotting skin. It makes unpleasant groaning sounds just looks too horrible to exist, let alone look at. The DOOM mancubus looks like the Shadow Broker. It irks me.

I'm also loving DOOM. It's frigging fantastic fun. However I have no plans to touch the muliplayer though due to my other online commitments (That being Dota) and Overwatch being just round the corner.

I... I have no words.

All I saw was some great animation and two characters with a cool backstory. Also yeah I love Overwatch. It's literally the only Blizzard game I've cared about.

I'm also still playing Bloodborne, very slowly. Very, very slowly. I doubt I'll be starting Dark Souls 3 anytime soon. Maybe DLC will be released by the time I'm done with Bloodborne.

Doom multiplayer is fun enough... It's just such a step back from what's already out there with Quake World, Quake Live, Warsow and Reflex still very playable. That's without even getting into some of the more niche Quake 2, Quake 3, Quake 3: CPMA and even more recently Quake 4 circles.

The guns in Doom feel good, but every fight is basically just decided on aim - there's no fun combat. Also 50 damage direct rockets? That's fucking bullshit. That might be what these console hippies like but damn in open beta it was taking 3 direct rockets to take most mothers down and that just does not fly.

The guns feel good too. I don't know why they're limiting us with these 2-gun loadouts. Let us have more. The best suggestion I've seen is to allow 3 - a shotgun, a projectile and a hitscan. That way at least if you like guns other than shotguns you can fight back against someone who actually has one. The shotguns were too powerful. Again, great for consoles but shitty for KB+mouse.

Basically this should be 2 games. One on console with powerful shotguns, and one on PC with better projectile guns. On PC you have more vertical maps. On console you keep things mostly flat. Funnily enough the Overwatch team have explicitly said that console and PC will be balanced differently, which is an amazing decision.

In conclusion here are some videos.

Amazing combat like this can never happen in Doom. Look at the way Cooller dodges forward and back from the ledge to turn the fight around from nowhere, despite having the low ground.



Here's a clip from my channel of a fun fight that came down to the wire. I love hitting direct rockets like this, and these tense fights are the reason I come back to Quake time and time again:



And this is an absolute classic match - casting by 2gd before he turned to the dark side with DOTA2:




Anyway Doom is better for the money than Overwatch in my opinion. But I need Overwatch now keep up with the multiplayer side, so Doom is taking a back seat.

I played Fallout 4 for the first time today. Three hours in, and I'm trading it back in later today. How the hell can people enjoy this shit? I've never been so fucking bored playing an AAA game in my life, especially a Fallout game, which I've put hundreds of hours into Fallout 2 and NV.

Everything that was wrong with Skyrim is everywhere in Fallout 4; the shitty dialogue, lack of depth, pacing is terrible and the RPG elements are gone. Don't even get me started on the dialogue wheel either, it's so poorly implemented.

http://i.imgur.com/hMAC2uS.jpg

Loving Shadow of the beast (the new one). Little short, but so fun and the combat feels so good.

idk if i used those colons right LOL
 

Yeah, it really is a travesty. I'm hoping so bad that the NV team comes back to make another side story, but it seems like Bethesda and co. are still salty that they got outdone so hard.

Anyways, I've been playing the original Dark Souls again. As much as I love 3, and will probably continue playing it forever, it just lacks a certain level of balance and worldbuilding. OG Dark Souls has perhaps the most immersive and interesting world I've ever seen, it truly invites a feeling of exploration as well as isolation that you just can't get with all the dead ends and instant teleportation that you see in 3.

Also I tried doing a paladin build and it just feels like it's nigh-impossible to get gud at being something other than a heavy strength slammer or a dexterous slashey combofiend That's my biggest issue with the game: classes seem pretty unbalanced. My pyromancer is rather good, but from what I understand it's the closest you can get to a solid non-combat class, which is sad to me because in the original (as well as in Demon's Souls from what I understand), virtually any play style is viable.

Great game, though, and don't get me wrong. I think it's miles ahead of Dark Souls 2: the core mechanics are at their best (for the most part) and the bosses are exhilerating (for the most part; treeman and skeleking can frig off). I just wish there was a bit more versatility with the classes/play styles.

You prefer 1? I think 3 is the best Souls game to date. It has all the core mechanics have been perfectly refined and the PvP is fun as fuck. The characters are just as great as the original's too.

The only place it falls down compared to 1 is probably level design, but it didn't bother me that much. I enjoyed 3 way more than 1.

Playing a little more CKII at the moment. It's taken me roughly 16hrs to get to a point where I understand enough of the game to have fun. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't really an empire game like Vicky II or Europa Universalis, it's much more micro. Anyway, I'm playing a game as the King of Castille or something. I just killed my sister, my brother, executed their children and relatives, put my wife in prison for six years for her own protection and accidentally dissolved my country into three separate kingdoms.

Oh also Harold Godwinson died fighting Harrald Hådrade and so William of Normandy fought the Battle of Hastings against Norwegian England. Thirty years later Northumberland tried to break from the country, accidentally triggering a secession movement that reliberated England...now I get why people like this game.

The DLC policy is a piece of shit though.

Hi. My name is ASR and I've died nearly 20 times against Laurence, the First Vicar in Bloodborne. Somebody relieve me of this existence.

Try beating Nameless King in Ds3 without healing. Then you have something to complain about.

I’m just over halfway through a play through of Shadow of the Colossus. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff from fans who’ve dissected the game in minute detail over the years and it got me in the mood to replay it, since I’ve only ever done a complete play through once.

It’s interesting how many flaws seem to jump out much more obviously on the second run. I wonder how much of it is to do with simply knowing the game better than before, and how much is actually flaws introduced or exposed by playing the PS3 re-release instead of the original PS version.

Regardless, it’s still one of my very favorite games, and one of the only games to get really strong emotional responses out of me – the desolate landscape creates an unsettling loneliness; the mournful music played on a colossus’ death makes you wonder if this killing is right; the colossus fought in the lake genuinely scares me with the fear of being dragged deep underwater by a monstrous creature.

I got up to Laurence's last form today. I'm making progress. My confidence is growing.

DOOM really is great and it's a great return to form. I quite like new executions that were definitely inspired by Brutal Doom. The multiplayer is alright, it reminds me a lot of my Unreal Tournament days. Graphically it's super tight and oh-so fun.

Lately I've been hooked on The Division. It's had it's share of problems and haters but for me it's just what I wanted in a modern MMO/cover shooter. I'm dipping back into Elite Dangerous as well, forgot how great it was. The AI is pretty tough though, if you're not careful you can get blown to bits in the space of 15 seconds!

Fighting games are hard, yo.

I'm playing Lisa: The Painful RPG.

It sure does live up to its name.

A little late, But I played Journey a couple of days ago.

I'm so glad I finally played it. Because holy christ, what a beautiful game. The visuals and the soundtrack are outstanding. Breathtaking even. It was definitely an experience I won't forget anytime soon.

I grew even more attached to it when my mate told me that the "NPC" that followed you was actually another person playing the game.

Blew my frigging mind.

Currently playing a couple of games.

Right now the one drawing most of my attention is the original Abe's Oddysee because I'm having fun with the level editor ^^;

I've always been playing the original Xenoblade Chronicles and falling in love with it again.

Also been playing a small indie game called VA-11 HALL-A. It's like an 80s styled visual novel where you play as a bartender serving anime girls alcoholic drinks while an AMAZING soundtrack plays in the background; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-G_E3iM9aI

DAMN! That shit is my fucking jam. If you like this you should check out Dance with the Dead, Kavinsky and Perturbator.

If anyone here enjoyed Limbo they should play Inside. It's short like Limbo but it's a very memorable experience.

Paragon is my new time sink.

Wait - Inside is out already?! Holy shit, how did it slip past me?

What's Inside? I'm surprised I've never heard of it. Fucking loved Limbo.

I've listened to a bit of Kavinsky but not too much. Any songs you'd recommend from any of those guys? :P

Finished it at 100% last Sunday, superb game! I recommend playing it ASAP as you don't want it to be spoiled for you.

Also Overwatch is ruling mightily over my game time. :p

Bumping this on user's request

Played Garry's Mod for the first time last night. Threw stuff around for a bit, rode an elevator, then played prop hunt. Good times.

Mainly Overwatch. Tryharded the crap out of Competitive Season 2 for the first week and got to the Rank I wanted. After that, I played way more casually and actually enjoyed it a lot more. The new arcade mode and 3v3 is where my playtime is going right now.

Overwatch is for sure my game of the year. It's so frigging good. It's actually refreshing playing an FPS again, after me and everyone I knew quit TF2 and moved onto Dota 2. And whilst that's fun, I just straight up prefer First person shooters. Overwatch is the game I needed to fill that gap.

If anyone plays Overwatch and is on PC. My battle.net is Wariopunk#2703. I main Tracer. But play as almost every hero apart from Widow. Fuck Widowmaker. I can't snipe for shite.

Phylum is also playing it.

So over the past five months or so, I played through all of Dark Souls 1 including the DLC and it was fucking great. I loved it. Then I started playing Dark Souls 2, and I didn't love it as much. I tried to go into it with an open mind, because I knew that it got a lot of shit, but it just feels kind of disappointing overall. Not that it didn't have any good moments, because it definitely does, but it just felt lackluster in terms of design and a lot of the bosses. I'm actually very slowly playing through the DLC now and I'm seriously on the verge of just quitting and starting DS3. The DLC is bullshit, man. Not even like the fun type of bullshit either.

It's just boring and aggravating, but I'd feel bad if I was skipping out on some cool bosses. I've beaten the Fume Knight who was fun to fight and have been trying to beat Sir Alonne, who's also really fun. I'm not even going to bother with the stupid recolored Smelter Demon. But right now it barely seems worth it.

I just wrote a massive essay on why DS2 is nowhere near the level of 1 and lost it when my phone decided to disconnect from the internet.

Summary: 1 is amazing, 2 is shit, 3 is amazing and has the best boss fights in the series. It's the most fun but 1 is probably better in terms of world design.

Also, I find it weird how you hate 2's DLC, it's almost on par with 1 in terms of quality.

Lately I've been playing a my fair share of The Witcher 3 (such a good action-rpg with a nice world to explore), there are often nice little rewards hidden in nooks and crannies. Plus the creature and character designs are really cool. I'm chipping away at Fallout 4, but everytime I die I seem to end up quite far back... guess I don't use autosave enough. Then there's the new Survival Mode in the Division. It basically turns the whole game into a 40-90 minute fight for survival. You try to scavenge guns and essential supplies and try not to freeze to death by warming yourself up in buildings or by the fire. Works quite well although I've had a few deaths due to dodgy servers/lag.

I'm replaying Banjo Kazooie Nuts N Bolts because fuck that's a great game.

Fennec was awesome enough to buy me Ori and the Blind Forest for Christmas and it might actually be my new favourite platformer ever. The game plays so well, it's fluidity and easy-to-learn, hard-to-matter gameplay make it addicting as fuck.
Not to mention the story is great, and it definitely jerked my emotional cock a great deal, which hasn't happened in a game since SOMA.
The soundtrack and visuals are beautiful and compliment each other perfectly.
So basically you should buy this fucking game

Is it? Internet gave me an impression it was the MO of the Banjo Kazooie games. I never played it, though.