Ah! Dark Souls: Prepare To Die. A Rare Gem.

I've finally gotten around to writing about Dark Souls: Prepare To Die and my impressions of it.  I had to re-install my OS and a few other real life things so I haven't had time.

Before I start let me say I know this isn't a game for everyone's tastes.  This is a hard game, but the difficulty can also be what you make it.  It's not a button masher so heading straight into a fight expecting to win will get you killed 99% of the time even against the lowliest enemy.  Combat is a matter of planning and strategy, watching the enemy and how they move, and then reacting accordingly. 

Dark Souls requires patience and preferably low frustration levels....easy to say, not easy to do though. I've had my fair share of raging moments.  Falling off cliffs to my doom would come high on that list, especially when it's my fault for not always being aware of my surroundings.

The game has a huge learning curve.  There is no map, no hand holding, no quest log, one difficulty level, realistic and tactical combat, a HUGE interconnected world that opens up via exploration, and death, lots of death.  There is also no pausing the game during combat so make sure you have the correct gear equipped if possible for whichever area you are in.  For example, poison resistance in Blight Town, keep your weapons and armour repaired and never ever run into a new area without knowing what to expect . Well, you can actually open the inventory in an unsafe area if you wish, but that will get you killed post haste if you aggro enemies you haven't noticed or in the middle of combat. 

You also cannot manually save but the game autosaves often, and this game has consequences.  So if you attack and/or kill an NPC or make some other mistake you live with it.  Attacking an NPC will make them permanently hostile, however, you can get absolution from a particular NPC after a certain point but it won't bring back NPC's from the dead and is expensive depending on your level. The lesson is don't attack NPC's as they may be your vendors early or later in the game, or be helpers or have quests of their own.  In some cases you may as well start over if you go on a killing spree because it will adversely and permanently affect your game.

There are checkpoints throughout the game in the form of bonfires where you level up, repair and modify gear (if you buy the kits) kindle the fires which gives more healing items and to become human.  The currency for all things is souls.  You can't sell things until later in the game, but you can purchase a "Bottomless Box" to store excess items which is also done at the bonfire.  You can also trade for items with a certain NPC, but that is limited. Players in human form can drop items they don't need for others in co-op to pick up which is nice.

Dark Souls has it's own Lore which is discovered by talking to NPC's, reading item descriptions and generally exploring the world.  For more info on Lore there are some excellent videos by EpicNameBro on Youtube.

I more or less found out about this game by accident when I read about the petition to have it brought to the PC, but was too late to sign up.  Ever since, after doing some research and watching videos I pre-ordered it immediately and have been very happy with the game.

Considering there was a petition by PC users and FROM Software decided to port the game, there is still the usual and expected whining and complaining from certain sectors of the PC community.  FROM always said it would be a straight port as they had little experience with PC games and that's what we got, a direct port.  That means console graphics, tutorial tips using the Xbox controls, a 30 fps lock and a few other things that personally don't bother me.  Maybe they could have done more but the thing is they didn't even have to port it at all so those complaints are just that, more whining from the usual suspects.   I wouldn't blame the developers if they said screw the PC with their next game and didn't give us a PC version at all.

There is keyboard support and many players seem to get along well with it, but since I already have a 360 controller I prefer use it.

I've been gaming for over 20 years and I've seen and played worse.  This game runs smoothly, doesn't crash every five minutes, (or at all in my case), and has no loading between areas.  I'm looking at you Skyrim, and while I know these are very different games, it's a huge pleasure to not have to have a loading screen every time I enter a small one room building which irritates me even more when it's such a CTD prone game.  So much so that even though I installed it again after my OS I haven't bothered to play it and probably won't, but that's another story.  After Dark Souls it's just boring.

There's also the fact that the PC version of DS has had improvements like stat adjustments to weapons and armour, a few bug fixes, and more importantly a complete DLC of new content which the console players will have to pay for later in the year.  The game can be registered on Steam if desired, even with the retail version which I have, but I haven't seen any point in doing that as it still requires GFWL to run.

There are now mods for improved graphics and other things which can now be found at the Nexus, Reddit and I imagine other sites I don't personally know about.

I've never been a fan of online games except for when I played Age of Conan obsessively last year, but I like the online features in Dark Souls. You can summon other real players to help with bosses, play co-op or even invade other people's games in PVP.  You have to be in human form to do that though as you start the game as an undead or "hollow." You can stay that way to avoid invasions or play offline if you wish. 

I've read that some people have trouble summoning but I've done it successfully to defeat a boss which was much appreciated, and been invaded which didn't go well.

Unfortunately, there are trainers and hacks for the game which some people use in online play.  If people want to cheat in single player only that's their business, but to spoil it for others online is just sad.  I really don't know what satisfaction they get out of ruining the game for others.  They are just scumbags with low self esteem trying to be superior, which is putting it nicely. 

I haven't played for a week or so because I've had other things on my mind, but for people who know the locations I have reached Anor Londo after many tries getting through Sen's Fortress which was made harder by Gravelords dropping their signs.  Unfortunately both times I reverted to human in Sens Fortress and Anor Londo I was invaded and immediately backstabbed by Red Phantoms before I could even get out of the way which pissed me off.  One instance was when I was about to enter the boss door to fight the Iron Golem and the phantom appeared right behind me and backstabbed me, and the other was when I was in combat with the gargoyle at Arno Londo which led to me backing up and falling off the ledge.  At least that one didn't actually get to kill me.  Both of them were assholes and I didn't have any Indictments on me.   Besides, I'm not really fully up on the system of invading and Indicting, but I do know next time I go human I'll try to watch my back a little better.  I'm still new at the game in a lot of respects really.

I forgot to mention Covenants, and I'm in the Forest Hunter Covenant so maybe one day I can get my revenge.  I relish a fair fight even if I lose which will probably be the case, but if you're going to invade me at least be fair about it and let me see you coming.   Don't back stab me before I can even see you.  Becoming human and being invaded is a risk and I don't mind that, but there are rules of etiquette that most players follow.   Maybe I expect too much, after all the point of invading is to defeat the host.  
 
Anyway, there's so much more to this game than I can write here and it's getting to be quite long, but if this game interests you I would advise getting hold of it.  Just be aware it will more than likely  take over your life..lol.

Dishonored - Will It Work On Windows XP?

 Update...November 13.   Things have changed so I've changed the title and the first paragraph of this post.  

I pre-ordered Dishonored and cancelled it, then renewed my order due to changing circumstances.  However, I'm not going to change the text of the rest of this complaint post or delete it.  I still have no idea if the game runs well or at all on XP so the question is still relevant, however it doesn't concern me now.

The system specs don't include Windows XP which a large number of people world wide, including myself still use.  This game is DX9 and not for XP.   Amazing.

Bethblog Info including system requirements -
http://www.bethblog.com/2012/08/14/pc-system-requirements-for-dishonored/

Support for Windows XP finishes sometime in 2014 so I just find that unbelievable.  As GStaff says in the above link it runs on XP but the drivers aren't supported.

So I ask, why would I pay $70 Australian for a game that may, or may not run on my computer and that I can't return if it doesn't?  I already have games that haven't lived up to their pre-release hype so there goes at least one sale.  I'll put my money towards Resident Evil 6 and other games that support an existing and still supported OS instead.

I'm not in a position to upgrade my OS as well as extra RAM and have no other reason to do so, especially for a game that's essentially another console port.  I can run The Witcher 2 at highest settings as well as other new games released over the past year.  Everything else checks out on my system according to the posted specs except my OS, which I'm otherwise very happy with.

I won't be buying Dishonored even if they add support for XP in the future considering Bethesda's track record for patches and rushed release dates even though the game is being developed by Arkane Studios.
The publisher (Bethesda in this case) has the final say after all.   I feel a bit sorry for Arkane Studios as they have produced quality games in the past and may lose out on this deal.

I still haven't gotten around to posting my views on Dark Souls: Prepare To Die, but suffice to say it's an awesome game out of the box even though it's a straight console port, and will keep me entertained for some time to come.  Dying has become an art form in this game and serves to teach you to learn from your mistakes and overcome them.

Games For Windows Live Rant

After setting up Dark Souls: Prepare To Die, which I am enjoying very much and will write about a little later after I die a few more dozen times, lol, and remember to get a screen shot.  I am making progress which is very satisfying.   Most of the early deaths were due to not being familiar with the gamepad after so many years of not using one, and luckily I already had a 360 gamepad that I bought last year for another game and never used so I didn't have to go out and buy one.

All the later deaths are because the game is brutally unforgiving, which I'm loving, the combat is awesome and I need to practice more.

BUT I'm about to have a raging apopleptic fit over Games For Windows Live.

GFWL...doesn't even deserve it's full title.   What a rage inducing piece of crappy software.  Many people hate STEAM but I'd have that any day than the debacle I went through with Live.  In fact I've never had a problem with STEAM and I've used it since the Half Life days.

OK, so I install the game and have to setup a Live account which I knew the game would have but wholeheartedly wish it didn't.  I really wanted the game so I'm not complaining about not knowing about it beforehand.

The login is your email address which is pretty easy you would think, but no, it wouldn't accept that and kept telling me either my email or password was incorrect.   I tried more than half a dozen times until I discovered it wouldn't accept my email address which is from the largest ISP in Australia for heaven's sake.

So I had to change it to my Yahoo address which was accepted.   I then get an email at said Yahoo address to verify the email so when I try to do that I get a blank page OR a Live page saying there's a problem and "Try again later."  Later is two days ago with several attempts until I finally searched Google and found out how to get them to send me another confirmation email, which actually worked.

Stupidly, I ticked the boxes to auto log me into the game so I don't have to enter the details every time and now when I start the game I see another person's user name flash by at the top of the screen and I seem to be logged as that person in the game.  I cannot find out how to change the auto login for the game despite extensive searching and the Live help files don't say anything about it.  I can login to the Live site with the correct details but can't change that bit, so who bloody knows.

When I get over my rage I MIGHT reinstall the game although I don't want to and see if that fixes it, but I'm not hopeful.

Edit:  Sorted this out or at least found out it is my account but not the user name I provided.  At least I can play the game so I suppose it's something. 

This is THE last game I will ever buy with GFWL no matter how much I want it.   I'm going to try and setup an offline account which will probably mess with my saves but I'm not that far in so I can live with it as long as I can actually save offline.

Big Brother Is Watching Indeed

Well we shouldn't be surprised at this.   The Australian Government has passed new Cybercrime laws to enable unprecedented access to our information.  1984 here we come.  That's the book by George Orwell for anyone unfamiliar with the term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

It can be argued that if you're doing nothing wrong you don't have to be worried, but let's see how long before this is misused.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/news/article/-/14642453/amended-cybercrime-bill-passes-senate/

In case the article is changed or the page moved I'm quoting it here. 

"New Cybercrime laws have passed the parliament, allowing the government unprecedented access to our information. What do the changes mean for you?
Phone carriers will soon have to store text messages, emails and other data to help police fight cybercrime.
Government legislation that will allow the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and foreign law enforcement agencies to seek communications data under warrants cleared the Senate on Wednesday.
The bill allows for increased co-operation between local and overseas cybercrime investigators, extends the scope of existing Commonwealth computer offences and brings Australia into line with the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.
Attorney-General Nicola Roxon hailed the passage of the bill.
"This will help combat criminal offences relating to forgery, fraud, child pornography and infringement of copyright and intellectual property," she said in a statement.
During the Senate debate on Wednesday, Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlam raised concerns about stored data being given to foreign countries for use in criminal cases involving the death penalty.
But cabinet minister Joe Ludwig argued the federal police had strict guidelines about the level of co-operation it provides to foreign agencies.
Senator Ludlam argued there was a need for laws to catch up on technological developments so authorities could net tech savvy cyber criminals, however, privacy protection should not be completely sacrificed.
He pointed to the location data from mobile phones as an area in need of privacy safeguards.
Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis said Senator Ludlam's concerns about privacy were laughable because he was a key supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had published thousands of diplomatic cables.
In doing so Assange had disregarded the privacy of those mentioned in the cables.
The Senate passed government amendments to address 12 out of 13 recommendations from the joint select committee on cyber-safety, covering privacy protections and assistance to foreign agencies.
The amended Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 will go back to the lower house for approval."

Dark Souls - Prepare To Die

Finally!   I've been waiting for this game, watching Youtube videos and reading about it for ages and now I have it in my hands.   Picked it up today from EBGames and it includes a hi precision gaming mouse, a beautiful artbook, poster, soundtrack and behind the scenes disc...all for $68.00 Australian.

I just got home so haven't installed it yet, and I'll post my impressions a bit later, but I'm excited to actually play this game.  I'm not a newbie at combat games of this type and this might be me for a bit with this game, but I can't wait to get into it.   

 I'm afraid Skyrim is going on the back burner for the foreseeable future, probably until a game of the year edition comes out in a year or so if I even care by then.  I have no intention of buying Dawnguard or any other DLC until, and if ever the bugs are actually addressed by Bethesda and their treatment of the PS3 players is sorted out to their satisfaction.    I must say I'm surprised and dismayed at them this time round and their forums, (particularly the PS3 section) are running hot with complaints that are not answered.  I'm not going into all that here though as anyone can read up for themselves, but I do know if their next game uses the Gamebryo engine, even tweaked as the Creation engine, I won't be buying any of their buggy games in the future.

I just hope they don't screw over Arkane Studios with Dishonored.  One of my favourite games in years past was Arx Fatalis and that was a game well ahead of it's time.  I'm tempted to pre-order Dishonored, and probably will unless I can resist the temptation and wait for user reviews. 

Anyway, I'm now about to install Dark Souls and see how far I get before I die. 

Addit:  Well that was quick.  Even though EBGames was allowed to sell it from today (23rd August) it seems I can't play until Friday 24th when Windows Live says it's actually released.  Oh well, at least it's installed.
I called EBGames to let them know in case they get calls from angry customers...lol.

Still Playing Skyrim

 I know haven't written anything for awhile...not a lot to say at the moment, but I'm still playing Skyrim and working on other things.

At present, and with the 1.6 patch, my game has never been more enjoyable and that's saying something after all the problems I've had and complain at length about.  My only issue, and I've seen this on the Official and other forums, is regular and more frequent CTD's in the open world, but on the other hand I'm not having the annoying freezes so I'd rather have a CTD than a freeze.  Trouble is both can happen just standing around doing nothing, or in a dialogue or any other incomprehensible reason. Something changed in the patch as far as stability compared to 1.5, but that gave me too many total PC freezes, so I'd rather choose CTD over hard lockups.

I've also noticed some sound issues since this patch and I use no sound mods at the moment.  Things like fire crackling not playing properly and often looping sound on cell transition which nearly always happens in Riften and entering the Thieves Guild.  Sometimes the music stutters when changing tracks for a few seconds as well.  Possibly that can be fixed by reinstalling my sound drivers, but it's not a big enough deal at the moment and it doesn't happen in other games or programs like iTunes etc.

I also have to wonder when Bethesda are going to fix the dire dialogue bugs they introduced since the patch was released early in this month and now it's the 30th.  All I can say about that is thank goodness (again) for the Unofficial Patch.  Since I won't be buying the Dawnguard DLC until or unless there's a disc version, I imagine my choice of mods will lessen due to many that will require it.  I'll have moved on to other games by then so I can wait, or not bother.

It's possible the CTD's are caused by mods, but I find it unlikely due to the type of crash which as I said above can happen just idling or even in a menu.  I'm using the same mods, updated where necessary, that I've been using through several patches and a new game, so it's my opinion, right or wrong, that it's the crappy Gamebryo engine, thinly disguised as the new Creation Engine that's partly at fault.

I've also had a few corrupt saves and been unable to actually save after some of these CTD's, but I managed to overcome that without getting too frustrated.  Lost some progress, but at least not 100's of hours of play as in previous save corruption events.

Despite all that I'm being constantly amazed by the quality of mods being released for this game.  I'm having a great time with horses and the Convenient Horses mod which is just so well executed it seems more of a professional addon than a mod.  Then there's Wearable Lanterns, Deadly Dragons, Skyrim Monster Mod (Lore Friendlier Replacer) and my latest excellent find SkyRe Skyrim Redone.  Not to forget the brilliant lore friendly armours and weapons.

 To be clear, when I say Lore Friendly, I mean they fit into the world and don't look out of place in the environment.  Otherwise I don't really care about Lore as such.

To elaborate a little on SkyRe Skyrim Redone...that has brought back some (a lot) of enjoyable challenge to a game that was just too easy, no matter which difficulty was chosen.   Now I have to really use strategy and have even found it necessary to leave a few dungeons and come back later which never happened in vanilla.  I wasn't going to use followers this time, except for poor Meeko who I will always have with me, but I find I have to if I want to survive.  So, Marcurio...once again you're hired!  He's the only follower that doesn't get on my nerves and operates better than others I've tried, but I could do without his Chain Lightning spell which decimates everything in it's path and causes issues with other friendly NPC's, including Meeko.  A little FUS RO DAH usually fixes that though.  However, there have been many times I've been grateful for it with my latest game.

Marcurio "might" be retired soon though as I'm getting up in levels and I'm using summoned creatures, ie a wolf pack as a distraction, but I actually like having him along and he has his own horse.  Speaking of horses... I don't need my follower as a pack mule now because my steed has an inventory which comes in very handy when I've found hunters or other NPCs dead (by other means than myself) who have a huge amount of loot that I can use and hate to leave behind.

In other game news, unrelated to Skyrim, I bought Risen 2 which is also a very challenging and hard game, as I hoped it would be.  I'll probably start a topic for it later, but I'm really enjoying the pirate life.  I haven't played it lately because I'm on a roll with Skyrim and don't want to jinx it, but I think it's very good, even though there are some flaws.  I don't think the combat is as good as in the first Risen game, and I always find myself wanting to use a shield, but pirates don't use them.  I've gotten used to it though and have a pistol in my off hand, even though it's a bit useless at the moment.   I really love the voice acting and humour and the graphics are beautiful.

Anyway, that's about it for the moment.  Not much happening besides continuing work on LETHE the Indie game I'm involved with and progress is being made there, as well as a couple of things I'd like to be able to report about it, but can't yet.

Skyrim 1.6 Beta Patch - So far So Good

I've been playing with the Skyrim 1.6 beta patch and it's recent small update for around 20 hours and I must say the performance has been very good.  I'm running it with my existing character who is level 52 (I want to start new when it's official) and all the mods I was currently using and have had few problems.

The game runs better than it ever did, but I have had some CTD's and a freeze.  However, I put that down to mods, mainly the removing and adding I've done which is probably screwing up my saves and is my problem, so I'm very optimistic about a fresh game.   It's much better than the 1.5 performance and it's constant freezing, possibly due to the navmesh bug as I've been using the same mods without any changes for awhile now, and corrupted saves which so far hasn't happened again.  Fingers crossed.

I'm sure, unless it's my imagination, that my character now runs noticeably faster and more importantly, walks faster which was one of my bug bears when escorting or following quest NPC's.  At first I thought it was a fps increase and still may be, but I'm sure they increased player walk and run speed as well.  If I'm wrong, well I'm not complaining about it.  The game in general runs smoother, and load times have reduced noticeably even though they were pretty quick before anyway.  I've never had lag anywhere in the game since I first started playing, even at Markarth as some do, so I'm pretty happy at the moment with performance.

I rarely fast travel but when I did with the 1.5 patch I would often get a CTD on arrival or a never ending load screen, and sometimes a few areas would become off limits and I had to find another way round, which I attributed to bad spawns or navmesh issues and those spawns.  This hasn't happened so far with 1.6 as I've been fast traveling a bit more just to get this character through the main quest before I start over. 

I read the Official forums and the complaints about horse combat and animations, (and other stuff that is mod related), but I wish people would just use some common sense and realize if they opt in to a beta they should expect there may be issues.  After all, it's not Bethesda's responsibility to optimize the game around the many mods people may use.  The only thing they are responsible for is the vanilla game.