Sometimes I spoil stuff if I don't think I'll be interested at all otherwise. This isn't one of those games, I'm trying to not view anything from the game beyond the demo.

I'm actually seriously entertaining the idea of streaming my first playthrough though.

For work I pretty much just drive around and wait in parking lots for 5 hours or so, so whats a great game I should get for my 3DS to eat up some time?

I already own and played out Animal Crossing.

Fire Emblem and SMT IV are very long, good games.

Firebombs that you buy from the merchant also make short work of the boss even without any of the gimmicks. One thing that people have a problem with is that they are too intimidated by what seems like an impossible boss. So, they don't try blocking, or staying out of range, and just try to run away and get hit. It's mainly psychological from what I've watched on streams, that causes people to mess up.

I think the review is spot on about the game. Though, I'm surprised at how many people give up on Dark Souls after playing through the beginning. I never had a moment where I wanted to give up completely, though granted I managed to find the right way from the start and went with Pyromancer class so I had less trouble from the big baddies.

Spann Island

If the weapons are just marginally stronger than the default weapons until upgrading, then it should be fine. After all, most weapons in Dark Souls are of low power before upgrading, even the ones you find late in the game. The only problem is if they are as strong as the Drake Sword which isn't likely to be the case seeing as they are normal weapons. I think it's really only meant to assist the player in finding the stuff.

Can't lie, I'm a die hard console gamer (Playstation mostly), and that being said, I do have a fair amount of gamer pride.

However, when it comes to the Souls franchise, I got so far and ended up losing so much of my progress over dying unfairly.

I just said F it and moved on to the next game.

Dying unfairly.

Souls Series.

Pick one.

"Losing progress"

"Dark Souls"

That's an oxymoron too. You can beat the game in a few hours if you know what you're doing. (Okay, for most people it's more like 6-8 hours, when the first playthrough takes  50+ hours). The "progress" is all in the player's head. Learning the locations of upgrades, how to fight, places to go, etc.

The nice thing is that it's not like your typical RPG that is heavily linear and when you die you lose progress.  You can rush through the game as fast as you want.

The format of the game would already make it good if you only got 5 weapons to choose from. But the huge variety of tactics make it even better.

In my opinion, having to "select" pre defined characters defeats the point. If they are part of the plot, they should all be a part of the story. If they aren't the game should have a customization system so that you can make them any race you want. It's not too hard to put in a color slider or a check box for sexual preference.

if an artist portrays characters heavily influenced by his sexual preference, is that degrading, and a negative distinction to the gender she/he attracted to, and how?

it shows gamers as nothing more than sex-obsessed manchildren.

wait... they aren't?  

Sure, it's possible for an artist to be influenced by their sexual preference. But when that's all the entire game industry bothers to do, simply because it's easier, then of course the only people playing these games will be sex-obsessed manchildren. It's not because the only potential audience is white males, it's because they don't bother to target anyone else for the most part.

And it's not really just "influence", a lot of more prominent games have a large lack of tact.

lol wut


I thought the xeno series was generally known for having better stories than most JRPGs too. Or is it just more convoluted.

The idea of 110 hours to beat xenogears kind of kept me away from that series.

Given the way people describe it, Xenogears seems like a long convoluted plot masquerading as a "good" plot. It may have been groundbreaking when it was released, but it's probably sub-par by now.

Xenoblade does have a cliched plot, though it has a few twists and turns that kept me playing. I'd give it a 6 or 7 out of 10 - decent but could have been better. Maybe a 6 because Riki breaks the cardinal sin of annoying mascot races, though his race's homeland is f*** awesome. It has one of the best overworlds, music and battle systems in an RPG though.

Games have never been truly "realistic", so I feel like this "white people are realistic" idea is a moot point. After all, we take liberties with other interpretations of history, such as moral viewpoints. Having other races isn't merely politically correct, it makes the game more interesting.

If you have customizable characters, at least, there's not really a good reason to limit character race to "white". I was a little miffed about that in Fire Emblem despite being able to dye your hair purple and blue. It certainly has darker skinned characters in the game itself.

Remove the combat from an RPG and you get a visual novel or adventure game. So I don't think it can really be a true RPG without combat of some sort.

nah, "rpg mechanics" in videogames basically means some form of character stat management. you can have that without combat.

Usually they call a game with RPG mechanics but no combat a "stat raiser" or "sim" rather than an RPG.

Remove the combat from an RPG and you get a visual novel or adventure game. So I don't think it can really be a true RPG without combat of some sort.

How did he game the system?

I heard he made fake accounts to upvote it, though that might just be a rumor. It seems pretty suspect considering the quality of the game itself. But even if it became popular of its own accord, both the graphics and gameplay were cloned from other games. Not exactly the same, but still cloned. It's not really "his" accomplishment, only that by a stroke of luck his game somehow took off.

I interpreted that as his frustration is with the infamy that comes with owning such a successful game, not that he hates the game or success or money itself.

I can't blame him. If I saw a comments section filled with angry rants about how terrible was something that I did, it'd bother me too. The $50k per day would help me feel better, though.

It's clear that he's receiving a lot of flack over his less than ethical tactics. You wouldn't want the only thing you would be known for in history to be "that guy who made a rip-off game with Mario graphics", especially if you gamed the system to make it popular.

Phil Fish quitting Fez 2 (if he really quit) is something that is tragic. The first game was original and high quality, an artistic achievement. But this guy seems to have, by some accounts, stolen the idea wholesale and doesn't want the publicity.

1) I started as a kid, tinkering with RPG Maker mainly. I was always a fan of RPGs and story based games.

2) Mainly due to my love of video games and writing. I feel like I may want to do it indie forever, as a hobby, since the game industry is very volatile. However, I've spent a lot of time this past year learning about game dev.

3) Yes, Fordham University, NYC. I learned game dev by myself though, their game dev classes were just getting off the ground when I graduated. I don't consider myself a coder, though.

4) At fastermind.net I have made a few free indie games, did a Kickstarter for my first commercial game that will be released soon. It is already "done", but we are adding voiceover to it.

I think F2P games have taken up an audience that wasn't necessarily there to begin with, basically catering to a different casual audience. I don't think that they are cannibalizing players from typical games, so there's no need to compete with EA.

I don't think people will be that stupid to think that paying $70 for a "free to play" game is a good value unless they have really never seen any other video games before. Which implies they are a casual audience who doesn't really care about games anyway.

One negative is that they drive down the price of mobile games. But that was already happening before F2P came into the picture.

The truth is that indie games are not of lower quality than AAA games. The only major difference between the two is the amount of money pumped into the art budget. Most AAA games have the same or less depth of gameplay and story than indie games.

There are some people who can see past that and enjoy indie games. However there are others who can't and play a game because of looks, rather than how it plays. Case in point: the new Battlefield is a pretty looking game but a glitchy mess technologically.

There are equal amounts of "bad" indie and professional games. There will always be standouts in either field. Assuming that professional games are all good ignores the tremendous amount of shovelware from "AAA" studios.

The only reason professional games can get away with selling for more is the fact that they have superior marketing budgets, and perhaps fancy graphics. The underlying systems tend to be the same and never change because why bother if you can make money from pretty graphics?

Can't be that hard for a server to detect if a player has more stats than they're supposed to and boot them. If Dark Souls 2 can't detect cheaters, then they've failed hard in the multiplayer.