General gaming discussion

Has anyone ever actually said this? Like really?

I've said before that it was Jedi Fallen Order that ended up being my gateway to FromSoftware games. I'd tried Bloodborne a year or two before but just couldn't get into it. Played Fallen Order and loved it, and it was Souls-like in terms of the respawn, meditation point mechanics. And I saw people say the combat was like a poorer version of Sekiro. So I tried Sekiro and absolutely loved it. But it also gave me a greater understanding of how FromSoftware design their games, why they're so hard at the start, why failing isn't always a bad thing etc.

So I gave Bloodborne another shot and got into it that time. Then Demons Souls remake, Dark Souls 3 and then Elden Ring.

I don't know if I ever would have played Sekiro without playing Fallen Order first. Yes, the combat and Souls-like mechanics of it is a dumbed-down version of Sekiro, but it was a useful stepping stone to make me give Sekiro (and by extension the FromSoftware games) a try.

It depends on who you ask, From fans will always say From games are reasonably challenging and that's how they're supposed to be, adding difficulty levels will create the temptation of lowering the difficulty and missing out on the intended design and the reward of winning a difficult fight. The right lessons are in Elden Ring, that is when things get tough go somewhere else, level up some more and then return, maybe respec, maybe try a different weapon.

If you want unreasonably difficult, then Returnal is that.

The Jedi games were indeed brilliant and IMHO the best SW games EVER, unfortunately they were plagued by performance issues and progress breaking bugs.

Just to be clear, I was not saying that From games are unreasonably difficult. I was saying that their many imitators just make their games unreasonably difficult because they think that is what makes those games appealing. They completely miss the fact that From's games are challenging but fair (most of the time). When a lesser developer tries to copy them you usually end up with enemies that hit way too hard or have very cheap attacks etc.

This is the correct answer, TIE Fighter is the greatest SW game ever.

One of the things Sekiro and then my second attempt at Bloodborne taught me about FromSoftware games is that they appear very difficult for the first few hours, but that's because the game is trying to drill the mechanics and tactics of the game into you. You die a lot at the start because if you're just rushing in, you're going to get smacked the f*ck back. And so once you play the game as the game was trying to teach you, you start progressing and die a lot less.

There are still very difficult enemies, bosses, platforming (by far the most janky and worst bits of FromSoftware games imo), and the game will occasionally just say F*ck You and throw in something that will almost definitely kill you if you have no prior knowledge of it. But that brings up the second thing that you learn from playing FromSoftware games; death does not equal failure. If anything, it can help you. You die and drop your souls/echoes/ruins, but provided you can make it back to that point to collect them, you'll have earned more on your way back to them and end up with more than you had the first time, and now you're forewarned about whatever kind of trap got you previously that you can use that caution going forward.

There can definitely be a frustration if you're repeatedly dying over and over at the same point, but the early parts of the games as well as all the memes about how often you die gives a false impression that that's how the entire game/franchise is. That's rarely the case. You tend to die far less as you go on, except maybe to bosses/special enemies. But even then, if you perserve, there can be more to gain from deaths than lose.

Elden Ring was a strange one for me. I looked up what people found the hardest bosses were and I beat some of them first go. The ones I found hardest were the optional bosses like the Bell Bearing Hunter in Caelid who must have smashed me like 50 times

I couldn’t count how many bosses I’ve gotten down to a sliver of health on the first try only to be completely obliterated the next 50 times.

Several in Belfast city area have opened since March

The Newry shop is open years.

Amazon UK have physical Hollow Knight Switch for about 30 euros. Not sure what price free delivery kicks in, but "free" delivery with Amazon Prime.

It's 2023 and PC gaming is still a pain in the arse. Every now and then there's a rare game that's interesting enough and isn't available on console yet so I give it a go, and it's always stupid amounts of hassle.

This time with BG3, I purchases on launch day on my macbook, since Steam specifically said it was available for OSX. Only after paying up and then downloading 70GB of data and opening the launcher does it tell you, no, it's not actually available for macbook and this is just the early access release.

So over to my desktop to download all that data from scratch again, which took me way past any chance of playing on launch day. Got to it a couple of days later (between responsibilities and family I can't carve out much time to go and sit in the home office on my own) only to find it needed a game update, so I waited for that. Then when that was done I opened it up to have to go through a bunch of custom account registration stuff while it through constant ads at me for digital deluxe editions and board games. Was done with that only to find it then needed a driver update so I had to wait for that. By the time that was done I had run out of time to play.

So just I was about to have a go at actually playing the game for the first over lunch time, and it needs yet another driver update which I am now sitting waiting for. Maybe I'll actually get to the tutorial this time, who knows.

Should have just waited for the PS5 release.