YouTube Channel: Star Wars Battlefront Random Bits: Droid Run Domination

Here is a video of my sister winning four games of Droid Run in a row.

YouTube Channel: Bloodborne Random Bits: Chalice Dungeon Framerate Tank

There are a lot of weird things hidden deep in the chalice dungeons. Found this one room where the framerate tanked to extremely low numbers. I found what was causing it, but couldn't help but think why did this cause the framerate to die?

YouTube Channel: Bloodborne Random Bits: My First Invasion

Never been a huge fan of invading in the Soulsborne games, but having done pretty much everything else you can in Bloodborne I decided to build a character focused on invasion. This is my first invasion and I have to say it felt underwhelming mainly because I used a Chikage and Old Hunter's Bone combo while he was using a transformed Simon's Bowblade. Expect more invasion videos in the near future.

P.S. I've been invaded before and defended myself. This is just the first time I was on the other side of the coin.

YouTube Channel: Bloodborne Random Bits: Network Connection Fail

So I was engaging in some jolly cooperation against the Witch of Hemwick when my host's internet connection failed and reality kind of collapsed in on itself. It really funny actually.

YouTube Channel: Bloodborne Random Bits: Waifu Suicide

I'm back baby! It's been a hectic few weeks for me, but I'm back to making videos. So here's a random thing I found in Bloodborne. It seems that a lot of Bloodborne fans have a creepy obsession with The Doll as the abundance of Blood Stains around the Doll in the Abandoned Workshop make clear.

Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin Review: Attack of the Forlorn

Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of the "Souls" series, wasn't present for the design of Dark Souls 2 due to being busy with the development of Bloodborne at the time. And boy, does it show!

The character is one of the Forlorn, which are a group of dark spirits that invade you at random points throughout the game and are only found in the Scholar of the First Sin edition of Dark Souls 2.

Developer: From Software
Publisher: Namco Bandi Games
Version(s): PC, PS3, Xbox 360, PS4 (reviewed), and Xbox One
Price: $49.99
Release: March 11th, 2014

I'm going to say this right off the bat: Dark Souls 2 is a good game. While I have a massive number of issues with the game that I will cover in this review that make me seem like I hate this game's guts, my issues are likely not going to affect the average consumer. Dark Souls 2 and its rereleased version Scholar of the First Sin, which I played before doing this review because it is the definitive edition of the game, are everything they say they are. Dark Souls 2 is an extremely difficult action role playing games set in a dark fantasy world on the brink of collapse. If that is what you are looking for, Dark Souls 2 has you covered. But if you are looking for a game that is a worthy successor to Dark Souls 1, you will be severely disappointed.

This is a prerelease screenshot of Dark Souls 2. This area in the final game looks no where near as good as  it does in this screenshot.

The story of Dark Souls 2 is that you are some random schmuck suffering from the Curse of the Undead, who goes to the ancient kingdom of Drangleic, which supposedly has a cure for the curse. You get there and get laughed at by a bunch of weird old ladies. After that, you do to the tutorial area and get to the hub town, Majula. There you speak with the Emerald Herald, who tells you to seek the king and usurp his throne. So then the story goes from “find a cure for your curse” to “become the next monarch of Drangleic.” The story is divided into roughly three acts. Act 1 is to explore the land and find the defeat to Four Great Ones and take their souls so that you may prove yourself a worthy monarch. Act 2 is find out how to ascend the Throne of Want, and Act 3 is to find the crowns of all the previous kings so that you may become the "true monarch" -and this act is only available to players of the original version of Dark Souls 2 if they bought the DLC trilogy that came out after the game's release.

Brume Tower is one of the areas exclusive to the Crowns DLC Trilogy that came out after the original Dark Souls 2 and is integrated directly into the Scholar of the First Sin edition.

It seems that the developers got the purpose of lore and plot structure of Dark Souls 1 mixed up in Dark Souls 2. In the original Dark Souls, the world you were exploring was very mysterious, strange, and you had little knowledge of what exactly was going on. Even so, what your goal was throughout the game was crystal clear. In Dark Souls 2, however, every character you meet over-explains everything about every area you go to ruining that sense of mystery that made Dark Souls 1 so great. However, when it comes to your actual goal in the game, the thing that is motivating you to beat it, the game is very tight lipped. In fact NPCs will often tell you you're doing the things you do "without really knowing why." Even the intro cinematic feeds you that line. If I don't know why I'm doing the things I'm doing, why should I care? None of the NPC ever seem to come up with a good reason to care about anything to be honest.

The intro cinematic for Dark Souls 2 is visually fantastic, but lacks any concrete context for your characters actions or goals.

Speaking of NPCs, another thing that makes the narrative of Dark Souls 2 far inferior to Dark Souls 1 is its lack of quality NPC storylines and quests. Most NPCs in the game have quest lines copy and pasted straight from Dark Souls 1 and the ones that don't are woefully underdeveloped. I also have a hard time remembering most of the names of the NPCs since they’re so unremarkable. The lone character in the entire game that I found extremely memorable was, ironically, a character that was forgetting who they were. Forgetting seems to be a major theme that Dark Souls 2 wanted to explore, but the developers were too afraid to stray too far away from Dark Souls 1 themes of fire and darkness, so they dropped it, and all that is left are traces of the theme of forgetting.

Lucatiel of Mirrah is one of the only interesting and compelling characters in Dark Souls 2.

From a mechanical level, for every step Dark Souls 2 takes forward it takes another step back. You can now warp between different areas of the game using bonfires from the very start which is good, but this seems to have caused the developers to be lazy in developing levels, since they could just put a bunch of bonfires in one level and not have to think as hard about the layout of levels. Contrast this with Dark Souls 1 where there was usually one bonfire area per area, and you opened shortcuts that lead back to the bonfire allowing you to bypass areas you have already gone through. Dark Souls 2 also touted the addition of a new lightning system that would have forced players to forsake a shield for use a torch in dark areas, but the lightning system was removed right before the release of Dark Souls 2 and the areas that would have used the lightning system had there brightness level artificially increased, which looks just awful.

This room was shown in early previews as a pitch black area that could only be lit by a torch. In the final game you can easily navigate this room without ever having to use a torch at all.

The balance between Dark Souls' real time combat and its stat building RPG mechanics have also been destroyed thanks to the inclusion of the Agility stat. In Dark Souls 1 the only thing that could affect your rolling speed was your equip load, but it was built around the idea of characters wearing light armor focusing on dodging, while characters wearing heavy armor rely on poise to absorb enemy attacks. The addition of Agility, however, makes it possible for light armored characters to get hit even when dodging and a heavy armored characters impossible to hit even at close range. It’s a shame that the Agility stat hurts the game so much because Dark Souls 2 has the best character building options out of all the Souls games thus far. The amount of armor sets, weapons, and spells is just amazing and one of my favorite aspects of Dark Souls 2.

The Agility stat forces you to put points into it just to be good the real time combat and discourages making more experimental character builds. 

Another good idea that the developers screwed up was the new Hollowing mechanic and how it ties into the multiplayer. In Dark Souls 1, when you died in human form you became Hollow and to get back you had to sacrifice a rare item at a bonfire to become human again. However the only real penalty of Hollowing was you couldn't summon other players for help, but you also couldn't be invaded by other players. So players that like playing by themselves never really saw a reason not to just stay Hollow unless they wanted to kindle bonfire for a few extra sips for their Estus Flask. In Dark Souls 2, hollowing is a more gradual process and every death would decrease your maximum health a small until your health was half of what it should be. This is, in theory, a good system that encourages players to try and stay human more often leading to more cooperation and invasions.

Dark Souls 2 has an abundance of NPC summons you can use to help with boss fights and tough areas. Which is great for when the online servers will inevitably go offline years from now.

Where Dark Souls 2 screws this up in practice, however, is that cooperation is locked off the instant you die once in human form. It would have been better if cooperation was cut off after a few more deaths, giving you a few more chances to beat a boss before you had to use a Human Effigy to restore your humanity, and might have made it so the developers didn't have to give out Human Effigies in the end game areas like they were Christmas presents to compensate for the difficult boss fights in the end game areas. Also unlike Dark Souls 1, you can be invaded by other players while Hollow now, though thankfully you can block them for a limited time by burning a Human Effigy at a bonfire. Too bad you can't block the abundant number of NPC invaders Dark Souls 2 has to offer. These NPC invaders have also been designed to act like real human players, and some of them are just evil in the tactics they use against you. I would praise the AI of these NPC phantoms if they weren't so common and played by different rules from human player phantoms. To end this diatribe on the multiplayer of Dark Souls 2, the Covenants are as unfinished as they were in Dark Souls 1, which is just a crying shame.

The abundance of NPC invaders mean that players will be able to feel the thrill and terror of being invaded even after the servers are gone, but the fact they play by very different rules then human players is infuriating.

Enemy and boss design in Dark Souls 2 has also taken a major hit with the vast majority of them being large humanoids wielding giant weapons. Any enemy or boss that doesn't conform to the "dude in armor wielding a giant weapon" archetype are lifted straight from Dark Souls 1. Scorpioness Najka is just Chaos Witch Quelaag, but uses sorcery instead of pyromancy. The Royal Rat Authority is just Great Grey Wolf Sif without a sword and with four rat minions that inflict toxin to arbitrarily increase the difficulty of the battle. Enemies also track you with their attacks making it hard to dodge them, and often makes them look like they are standing on top of a record player. Hit boxes are also wonky with enemy weapons hitting the ground two feet away from my character somehow registering as a hit. Regular enemies also tend to have ludicrous amounts of health that makes them take many hits to take down, and they often attack in groups. This design philosophy of "if something seems to easy then dump a bunch of enemies around to make it harder" is the worst thing about Dark Souls 2, and it made me almost just quit on it multiple times.

The Smelter Demon represents some of the worst elements of Dark Souls 2 boss design.

I've spent the vast majority of this review criticizing the hell out of Dark Souls 2, but there are things I really like about this game. I'm a big fan of the streamlined weapon upgrading and boss weapon creation, even if you still have to jump through a lot of hoops to find the merchants that do it. There are a few levels I really liked such as the Forest of Fallen Giants, No Man's Wharf, and The Gutter. Some people don't like the new emphasis on weapon degradation, but I think it's a good idea. It encourages you to rely on more than one weapon and set of armor and experiment a little. I also like that magic feels better to use and is visually cool to look at… though I'm still mad that you can no longer be a Pyromancer when you begin the game.

The Gutter is one of the only areas that make use of the torch which makes for a very nice change of pace.

There is a lot to like about Dark Souls 2, but it simply just isn't as tightly focused as the original Dark Souls. Dark Souls 1 was about being a nobody trying to make an impact in a world so much bigger than you. A world that didn't care about you and could kill you are a moment's notice, but also didn't feel particularly malicious towards you either. The world of Dark Souls 1 was indifferent to you, but the majority of the people you met on your journey always wished the best for you. You felt that despite all the game was throwing at you that you could win and that the people that made the game wanted you to win too. Dark Souls was about keeping hope in the face of utter hopelessness and that it such a powerful message for a game to have and one I will never forget.

I will never forget the Kiln of the First Flame, the final area of Dark Souls 3, but I can't even be bothered to remember the Throne of Want, the final area of Dark Souls 2.

Dark Souls 2 on the other hand focuses entirely on you. You, the bearer of the curse. You, the next monarch of Drangleic. You, the one that will sit the Throne of Want. You, the one that will gather the crowns and transcend the curse. You are extremely important and everyone seems to hate you. The world itself seems to want you dead with impossible odds around every corner. The respites you do find feel undeserved as you had to resort to cheap tactics to win many or your battles because so many fights are simply stacked against you. You feel who designed these encounters wanted only to watch you suffer and die over and over again. And even you do succeed and either sit the throne or renounce it you feel nothing, it’s almost as if the game is mocking you for finishing it, after all you've been the only thing you feel is...Hollow. At least how I felt after beating Dark Souls 2. The exact opposite of how I felt after beating Dark Souls 1. It would have been a great artistic statement if I also wasn't sure that it was intentional or not. It feels more like the result of various designers disagreeing about how things should go and compromising with each rather than one creative vision.

Majula, the central hub area of Dark Souls 2, looks gorgeous and has beautiful background music, but feels no where near as lively as The Nexus from Demon's Souls or Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls.

So if you're in the mood for a decent dark fantasy role playing game, Dark Souls 2 has you covered as long as you don't expect something that blows Dark Souls 1 out of the water. I'm not sure how Dark Souls 3 is going to play out, but it looks like it going back to its roots taking elements from both Dark Souls 1, Demon's Souls, and even a little Bloodborne to make the best Souls game there ever was. And with series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki back as the director, I think that Dark Souls 3 will be just fine.

You can buy the original version of Dark Souls 2 for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 for $20 at pretty much any game retailer, but I would highly recommend getting the Scholar of the First Sin Edition which comes with the 3 Three DLCs bundled in and a host of graphical and design improvements for $50 at most game retailers.

This review was written by The Gaming Lycanthrope and Edited by Forma.

Dark Souls Prepare To Die Edition Review: A Flawed Masterpiece

Dying in a video game has never been so compelling.

Developer: From Software
Publisher: Namco Bandi Games
Version(s): PC and PS3 and Xbox 360
Price: $19.99
Release: October 4th, 2011

In recent years the Soul series of game have taken the video game community by storm. After the cult hit Demon's Souls From Software release a spiritual successor in the form of Dark Souls which went one to be a major success and eventually spawned a direct sequel and a spin-off franchise in the form of Bloodborne. I absolutely adored Bloodborne and with Dark Souls 3 right around the corner I wanted to dive in and experience all of the Souls games. I have beaten Dark Souls, almost done with Dark Souls 2, and currently starting Demon's Souls. I decided to start with the game that make this series a mainstream hit and I was skeptical of it living up to they hype that has been built up around it over the last few years. Thankfully, it did indeed live up to those lofty expectations.

Characters gather around a bonfire at Firelink Shrine.

Dark Souls begins with the creation myth that tells of an unchanging gray world ruled by everlasting dragons that is challenged by four powerful gods that have gained immense power from something called The First Flame who defeat the dragons and establish the Age of Fire. However the Age of Fire is ending and mankind is afflicted by the insidious Curse of the Undead. Those afflicted are unable to die and will endlessly be reborn at the mysterious bonfires that scatter the land until they lose their minds and go Hollow, attacking anyone on sight. You are an Undead locked up at the Northern Undead Asylum who is saved by a man named Oscar of Astora who asks you before he goes Hollow to go to Lordran, The Land of Ancient Lords, and fulfill the Prophecy of the Undead that will liberate mankind from the Undead Curse. When you arrive in Lordran you are told to ring the two Bells of Awakening so that the fate of the undead can be known. Thus, begins a quest of seemingly endless trials and many, MANY deaths.

You will die many times in Dark Souls and I'm certain that this drake will be responsible for at least one of those deaths.

That is the clearest idea that most people will have of the backstory of Dark Souls the first time they play it because Dark Souls does not spell out it story and themes for the player. Instead it communicates it narrative though environmental storytelling, item descriptions, and conversations with friendly NPCs that you find in the world and slowly builds a massive world with many characters, locations, and factions to get to know. The environmental design of Dark Souls is for the most part some of the best video games have to offer with every level connecting to each other in logical and natural ways which makes navigating them so stratifying. Levels like the strange forest of Darkroot Garden and the trap filled Sen's Fortress will forever be etched in my mind.

Darkroot Garden is an area that is simply dripping in atmosphere.

But Dark Souls isn't known for its excellent environmental design its know for being hard and yes Dark Souls is a very hard game, but not as hard as some people may think. Dark Souls gameplay is split between a real time combat system revolving around stamina conservation and weapon combos and Dungeon and Dragon style stat building that governs the effectiveness of your combat prowess. Getting the hang of the real time combat is very hard and even in the early game the simplest of enemies can wipe the floor with you, but the stats that you slowly build throughout the game using the souls of the enemies upgrading you character and your weapons to better deal with the dangers of Lordran and conquer Dark Souls legendary boss fights. 

Great Grey Wolf Sif is many people's favorite boss in Dark Souls.

Beating a boss in Dark Souls is hands down one of the best feelings that I have ever felt and only got better with each new challenge I faced. The great secret of Dark Souls is that if you know what you are doing the game can be surprisingly easy. It has a Legend of Zelda-esque design of always having the right tool you need to beat an area or boss. I remember feeling that the Bell Gargoyles guarding the first Bell of Awakening were impossible until I realized that I had a shield that could block fire damage and that the gargoyles were weak to lightning and I had found a resin that I could use to buff my weapons with lightning damage. Even though I still had to dodge and block the gargoyles attacks in real time I was more than able to put the odds in my favor. 

The Bell Gargoyles are what I and many others consider the first real boss fight of Dark Souls.

The main thing I deeply respect about Dark Souls is that it respects your intelligence and your time. You can see a lot of the devious traps and enemy encounters the game throws at you simply by taking a minute to stop and look around. The game is does have harsh penalties for death which involving losing all of your souls upon death. But you are always given a chance to get them back and even if you fail you just have souls items that you find throughout the game that you can fall back on if needs be. You can pause the game which is kinda dumb, but the game auto-saves every few seconds so you can pretty much quit at anytime to take a break and never lose that much progress. This auto-save system means if you make a make a choice you can't undo it so it makes every choice you make feel all the more important. 

One must tread cautiously to brave the traps of Sen's Fortress.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of Dark Souls is its very unorthodox and obtuse multiplayer. To even access the multiplayer you have to be in human form , but if you are you might notice glowing white symbols on the ground. These are summon signs that players leave on the ground and you can use them to call them into you game they can then help you with the boss and after you beat the boss they disappear. However, being in human form also makes you vulnerable to invasion in which other players invade your game and try and kill you. I have never been a huge fan of the competitive multiplayer of Dark Souls as the odds are almost always in the favor of the invader and the only incentive to invade is gain Humanity which you need to access the multiplayer to begin with. There are multiplayer covenants that you can join to gain rewards by cooperating or invading, but they are for the most part underdeveloped. My favorite part of the multiplayer element of Dark Souls is the messages that you can leave on the ground to either help or hinder other players progress, though most of them are sadly left by trolls that leave messages on the sides of cliffs that tell you to "try jumping." If you are playing offline you can still reap the benefits of being human as you can summon help from NPC allies against certain bosses, but it also opens you up to being invaded by NPC characters as well. For the most part, the multiplayer of Dark Souls is ambitious, but underdeveloped though I feel that its inclusion still benefits the game by giving meaning to player interactions in world which helps pull you into the game even more.

A player fighting a giant rat in the Depths with the assistance of another player summoned into their world.

While I have spent the majority of this review praising Dark Souls to high heaven there are quite a few issues I have with the game. Weapon upgrading is confusing and the game never really gives a good explanation on how to forge powerful weapons and finding all those different embers and blacksmiths is just tedious. Certain enemy encounters also run counter to Dark Souls "difficult, but fair" design philosophy with a pair of archers in an area called Anor Lando taking the cake. The entirety of the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith levels scream of cut content and feature some of the worst designed boss fights in the game. There are some appalling frame rate issues in certain areas of the game particularly. And as I have already stated that the multiplayer while unique and ambitious is underdeveloped.

Knight Artorias is a boss exclusive to the Artorias of the Abyss expansion pack.

But in spite of those few issues with the game Dark Souls is still a masterclass in environmental design, interactive storytelling, and deep game mechanics. I would recommend that any person that considers themselves a gamer should try at least once. And if you get stuck at anytime in the game the Souls Community is one of the best online gaming communities I have ever been a part of. While there still is the occasional elitist asshole that scoff at newcomers most of the community is more then happy to help newcomers anyway they can. Dark Souls is truly something special and proof that video games can be something truly spectacular and worthy of being called a piece of art. 

You can find Dark Souls at most video game retailers for pretty cheap these days and I highly recommend picking up the Prepare to Die Edition if you can as it comes bundled with the fantastic Artorias of the Abyss DLC which adds a fantastic new area, four new bosses, and a lot of narrative elements that make the base game feel much more complete. Dark Souls is available for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.