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DukeofCA posted:Minor quibble, but Crow-Navi's name is Dust, not Dusk. Also, how much of the combat is going to be you spamming the hammer's charged air attack? Most of it; the hammer's charged air attack is massively overpowered and is vaguely balanced only by the fact that a lot of later enemies don't give you many options to get a full charge slam on them.
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Aug 3, 2013 11:54
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Oh hey it's that game I tested. This should be interesting.
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Aug 3, 2013 12:56
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Hope you don't mind me posting some concept art of the Crowfather from concept artist Paul Richards' blog. Spoiler tag contains spoilers for the next episode. The Crow Father Anyone who's been doing this long enough will tell you : your favorite stuff doesn't get in the game. Just sayin'. But look at all the fun you can have! These are some early designs for The Crow Father, a boss who shows up near the beginning of Darksiders II.  I was trying to push for him being more beast than man, or possibly all the way beast. I wanted to make him a piece of the surrounding architecture -- a living scarecrow.  When I found out he needed to be human, I tried making him into a chieftain of sorts...because over-sized beak helms look cool.  I gave him a weapon that shot a murder of crows, and toyed with the notion that he might have a "pretty boy" form in addition to his "old man" form. You know, for the ladies.  When you see the character in context, and know what his deal is -- how he's a prisoner, and how Death dispatches him (such a cool cut scene, btw) -- it wouldn't have made sense for the guy to have been a horrific, intimidating badass. Joe's version [which I did a turnaround of below] fit the role much better.  Here's the source:  http://autodestructdigital.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-crow-father.html?zx=f880918a21193249. The page itself isn't nsfw but his blog is, it contains drawings of nude babes and of course spoilers for later in the game.
Davinci fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 21:01
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Davinci posted:Lots of cool pictures... These are awesome and you are awesome. miscellaneous14 posted:Oh hey it's that game I tested. This should be interesting. So you're to blame / congratulate for all of the hard locks, crashes, glitches, OOBs, and exploits we'll be seeing in the future episodes? I'd love to hear some testing tales if you wouldn't mind.  WARNING: The following contains banal technical details: The next episode has been delayed a bit due to a computer crash wherein I lost all of the recorded commentary (fortunately the HDPVR kept the video). This means part 2 will have post-commentary (boo). Starting at part 4, the video bit rate coming out of the HDPVR has been maxed out which will hopefully provide a less artifact-y video in the end.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:12
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I'd love to hear about how the later half of the game was supposed to play before THQ crashed and burned and it got turned into the later 5% of the game.
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Aug 7, 2013 14:38
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Edo Animus posted:So you're to blame / congratulate for all of the hard locks, crashes, glitches, OOBs, and exploits we'll be seeing in the future episodes? I'd love to hear some testing tales if you wouldn't mind. I've heard DS2 is a buggy glitchy mess but I played it through twice and never saw a single one so I'm looking forward to finding out what everyone was whining about.
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Aug 7, 2013 14:40
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Neruz posted:I've heard DS2 is a buggy glitchy mess but I played it through twice and never saw a single one so I'm looking forward to finding out what everyone was whining about. This was more or less my experience. The news that people had problems with this game is pretty new to me.
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Aug 7, 2013 16:33
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFE6BMm1yLA In part 2, Death finally beats the Crowfather for real (last time the game didn't save after beating him) and gets sent to another world, id est the Forgelands. The Forgelands is (are?) my favorite part of Darksiders 2 and I'm sure David's as well considering his penchant for all things Irish, Scottish and Red-Haired. We met some new characters so let's introduce them:  Eideard is the chief of what remains of the Makers in the Forgelands. He is voiced by James Cosmo, best known as Lord Commander Jeor Mormont in Game of Thrones. He is the wizened caretaker of the dying Maker's world and introduces Death to the concept of Corruption.  Muria is a blind sage that can craft talismans for Death. Talismans are useful trinkets that are the only non-cosmetic armor slot for Death (they just give good bonuses). By beating Darksiders 1 (as we have), she gifts you one of War's Pauldrons and the Chaos Scythes which are styled after War's Chaoseater sword from the first game. The Chaos Scythes are kinda a lot of really good for level 1.  Alya, David's favorite due a convergence of interests, is the fire-haired weapons merchant at Tri-Stone. She won't be selling Death any weapons until a few quests are completed, though.  Valus is Alya's brother and the actual smith working in Tri-Stone's forge. The Maker's Forge (capital M, capital F) needs to be restored before he can get Death some more impressive toys to play with.  Thane is a sullen and sarcastic warrior, depressed at the ending of his homeland and kinsmen due to Corruption. He is a combat trainer for Death and for a few thousand gold will teach him new moves. We'll be coming back to Thane periodically to buy new moves. Achievements we get in this episode: 4:05 - Crow Carrion
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Aug 8, 2013 07:38
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I'm the only person who played this game with mouse+kb and enjoyed it much more than the first and loved the combat so much i played it on NG+ and through their 100+ wave challenge half a dozen times on every difficulty level.  The loot and upgrade system allowed for some ridiculous builds like insane freeze crit stuff that hits for like 20k damage every other attack while keeping enemies stunlocked. I never used hammers much, always preferred the speed and range of other types, so this will be interesting to watch. What difficulty are you playing on? Thanks for reminding me that the soundtrack isn't bad either and very fitting to their artstyle.
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Aug 8, 2013 11:46
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Edo Animus posted:So you're to blame / congratulate for all of the hard locks, crashes, glitches, OOBs, and exploits we'll be seeing in the future episodes? I'd love to hear some testing tales if you wouldn't mind. The <2 hour speedrun someone did made me wanna kill myself. I'll probably chime in with relevant stuff as I see/remember it. I don't think there's anyone left at THQ to give a poo poo about ex-staff talking about their experiences, though I won't bring up anything specific to coworkers. Other than this one mention of Joe Madureira just because the dude was never at the office (while I was working there) save for his going-away party. 
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Aug 8, 2013 12:19
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miscellaneous14 posted:Other than this one mention of Joe Madureira just because the dude was never at the office (while I was working there) save for his going-away party. Was Joe Mad even in charge of Vigil in any way after Darksiders was completed? From what I remember (which isn't a lot, to be fair) all he did for Darksiders II was draw some concept art and tell people what (not) to do for the game. After that he bolted right back to the comic book industry.
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Aug 8, 2013 12:30
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Gotta say that I love your presentation of the game - It's a bit of an odd duck to me. It kind of feels a bit like a couple of other games that have come out lately that are ostensibly single-player game, but take a lot of cues from MMO style games - experience, damage numbers, loot, skill trees, etc. It's not exactly out of place, but it does feel a bit odd to me. Plus, there's the fetch quests and what not, in that regard it reminds me a bit of Borderlands, there's definitely a lot of similarities. Also, the voicework in this game really is top notch, it's a pleasure to listen to just about all of the NPCs.
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Aug 8, 2013 14:21
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I concur completely and totally with David about Alya; she's definitely my favorite character in DS2.
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Aug 8, 2013 14:59
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Like I did with the Crowfather, I can comb through a bunch of concept artists blogs and post any concept art I find of the game as you guys progress though. I suppose I'll stick to characters and bosses unless anyone has any specific requests for enemies or environments or something. My internet is being slow today though and none of the images are loading so I guess I'll edit the Maker concepts in later, unless anyone doesn't want me to for whatever reason. Also, a question for the LP, are you guys planning on going through the DLC?
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Aug 8, 2013 20:23
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miscellaneous14 posted:The <2 hour speedrun someone did made me wanna kill myself. The glitches in the game don't take away from it at all in my opinion, at least the ones that let you get out-of-bounds and other silly things like that, so don't feel bad! People play games for different reasons and one of the reasons I got a lot of extra hours out of this game was just poking at the seams of the levels looking for cracks - it's quite fun to do. The speed run for Darksiders 1 is just as confusing and broken with its infinite dash jumps through unloaded levels just to activate loading zones only to reenter somewhere else and collect one of the end game weapon pieces. I'm actually really looking forward to Darksiders 2 appearing at AGDQ or SGDQ sometime in the future (assuming someone wants to run it). The only annoyance I have from this game is the high level decision to make only one save file (that can't be copied). What was the point of this? Was it to try and prevent exploiting drops or duping, because you can still do those things very easily... Regardless, I'm looking forward to some THQ anecdotes. Davinci posted:Like I did with the Crowfather, I can comb through a bunch of concept artists blogs and post any concept art I find of the game as you guys progress though. Yes, keep posting the commentated concept art, it is quite interesting. There's only the two major DLC areas if I remember correctly, but I only have one of them at the moment (Argul's Tomb). I don't see why we couldn't go through them, even if they're strangely cordoned off from the main game. Hopefully, they'll work with unpatched versions of the game on the xbox for reasons discussed in-depth in part 4 and 5 (BAM, teaser!).
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Aug 8, 2013 21:06
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I rather enjoyed this game and I quite like the makers in general as well.....Though Eideard was ruined for me very quickly when someone pointed out those braided beard bits coming from his armor I thought that was odd and they said it must be his braided nipple hair.  I haven't been able to see it otherwise since.Still looking forward to someone who good at this game breaking the parts I had difficulty with over their knee. :P
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Aug 8, 2013 21:47
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Wow that Paul Richards guy is a really amazing artist, but holy crap he is super dirty heh.
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Aug 8, 2013 21:56
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There's 3 different DLC's out. Anyways, here's some Makers. Meet Your Makers : Forge Sister The assignment here was to build an entire "Maker" race based off Ulthane's proportions [top right], starting with a female.  ...This took a bit of coaching from Sir. Joe "Mixalot" Madureira. [lower left body sketch]  ...because I'd initially gone skinnier with them. My high concept was that male Makers made stuff out of magically forged iron and stone, but female Makers could create living matter like trees and flowers and adorable chirping birds (women being life givers and all).  This one got a little closer...  ...and below was the sketch that was picked for further development, becoming the design at the top of this post.  Her elaborate headpiece was reduced due to animation and/or budgetary concerns. This is what concept artists call "getting gimped" and what all other game developers call "making a working asset, you stupid concept artist." And here's one from Avery Coleman's blog, provided with no comment.  Back to Paul Richards' blog now. Meet Your Makers : Sentry This was an idea that didn't get off the ground : perimeter guards. Imagine an army of these dudes, all in the same garb, with little flames coming from their helmets that would get snuffed out after dying with honor on the battlefield. Then someone let me know, "Nah, the Makers would never have soldiers."  Even so, I thought they looked cool. Meet Your Makers : Shaman The Darksiders franchise is, for the most part, a big, spike-covered sausage party. Enter the Maker Shaman, the first pitch for whom was somewhere in between a peacock and a belly dancer. People weren't too jazzed about her.  (I'm including the lights-only version here because I like it better than the color version.)  Round 2 is difficult for me to talk about, because the inspiration was a girl I was crazy about at the time. Man, was she something. A healer in her own right. Ultimately, the design, much like my relationship with the girl, was too ambitious and didn't gain enough traction. I look back on both and think, "How beautiful. I put a lot of myself into this, and it was so worth it."  Round 3 : More simple?  Round 4 : Well, how about these?  Round 5 : Number 3 from the previous round got a good reaction, so I worked that up a bit more...  ...but, no dice. Joe had something different in mind, so, like the dutiful henchman I am, I did a clean and turn of it. Then Avery Coleman did a paintery clean of my clean, and that was that.  Making a concept is a bit like building a relationship. Sometimes, despite your best efforts and intentions, they go in another direction. But, in most cases, it's for the best. Here's looking at you, kid. Meet Your Makers : Elder Come to think of it, this guy was the first pass of the Shaman, then became some other character later on. To the lower left is a thumbnail painting by Phu Giang, who was, in turn, riffing off a statue sketch I'd done earlier [lower middle -- full version of this page coming later]. The process is highly collaborative, as much as we're all glory hogs deep down.  Here he is minus color. I remember having to shave down the back of his garment to appease someone with technical concerns. The rest survived pretty much intact.  This was a quickie explanation of a muddled part of the design.  And yes, I based him off Willie Nelson. Meet Your Makers : Warrior The Warrior became a mashup of these four thumbnails.  See?  Lazy Pro Tip : rather than drawing the same weapon again from the rear, you can cheat by drawing an entirely different weapon and referring to it as "alternate" or "bonus." "Wow!" your art director will gush, "That guy's really going the extra mile."  Meet Your Makers : Forge Brother I'm SO happy with how this guy turned out in the game. I was initially bothered that they wouldn't have his mask snap back for a head reveal, but the fact that you never get to actually see his face -- and that he's a mute -- works so much better.  So yeah, this guy's a blacksmith, and his anvil is his loving FIST. You're welcome, Vigil!  Despair Death's ride, Despair, is a good place to start.  Despair was built off one of the Abyssal horses from the first Darksiders. We just pocked a few more holes in his hide and threw on a saddle no one in their right mind would want to sit on.  Originally, Despair was going to be called "Shadow." I had this idea that he was basically a skeleton horse (think Muramasa), enveloped in "shadow matter." When at a standstill, the shadow matter would creep in over/inside his bones, creating swirling, opaque flesh, but when he busted into a gallop, you'd see it fly off. I also thought it would be cool if he littered bones, like a jerk. "Sheesh, do something about your horse, guy! Fuckin' bones all over my frozen wasteland..."  Can you tell I never draw horses?
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Aug 8, 2013 22:06
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Holy crap, nice post Davinci. I actually bought and played every DLC and the non trivial ones generally add 2 or 3 dungeons as seen in the regular game. They're not long but definitely worth the few dollars when they were on sale (or in the humble bundle). I also agree that exploits aren't a bad thing necessarily, seeing people discover those in a game always impresses me and i usually don't think worse of the game for it. Unlike save issues, crashes or other playthrough killers, those can get hosed (luckily i never had any of those myself).
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Aug 8, 2013 22:46
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Funny Story on my first run through of this game I completely missed Muria, like never even noticed she existed. Somehow I just did not turn right.
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Aug 8, 2013 23:38
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Edo Animus posted:The only annoyance I have from this game is the high level decision to make only one save file (that can't be copied). What was the point of this? Was it to try and prevent exploiting drops or duping, because you can still do those things very easily... It's likely they didn't think of including it, as I never even heard the subject of implementing save data copying brought up once. Of course, it could have been at one point, but maybe it would interfere with that instant title screen feature. Don't really have a clue on this one. MadHat posted:Funny Story on my first run through of this game I completely missed Muria, like never even noticed she existed. Somehow I just did not turn right. You wouldn't be the only one, she's pretty easy to miss considering the crit path doesn't take you to her. If I remember right, there was originally going to be a mandatory quest when you first got to the Forge where you had to talk to each of the Makers, but it was removed for whatever reason. For what it's worth, she is involved in at least a couple sidequests.
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Aug 9, 2013 06:45
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Awww yesss, I've been waiting for this since I marathoned you guys' Darksiders 1 LP, which I found faffing about youtube after watching an episode of the Syndicate LP.  Those concept art posts are awesome as well, thanks for taking the time to put it together, Davinci.
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Aug 10, 2013 17:49
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Edmond Dantes posted:Those concept art posts are awesome as well, thanks for taking the time to put it together, Davinci. No problem at all, I actually discovered Darksiders through Paul Richards' website (Different than his blog,) when he posted his Darksiders 1 work. Just trying my best to share that magic I felt when I first saw it and thought "This is it. This is the game for me." Davinci fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Aug 11, 2013 |
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Aug 10, 2013 19:15
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I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your first games LP. You two are one of the few LPers that I enjoyed having a cocast. Tossed you a sub on youtube even though I have no idea if that does anything either. Eagerly looking forward to watching this since I never finished this game.
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Aug 11, 2013 05:56
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Ramadu posted:I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your first games LP. You two are one of the few LPers that I enjoyed having a cocast. Tossed you a sub on youtube even though I have no idea if that does anything either. Eagerly looking forward to watching this since I never finished this game. Do subs help with income, or is it just views?
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Aug 11, 2013 06:03
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atfXsm_f3lA After exploring Tri-Stone and talking to its inhabitants in the last episode, why don't we fight something? Death can challenge Thane to a duel at any point after reaching Tri-Stone and it's probably a better idea to fight him with better gear, but that's no fun. The game will actually get significantly easier as we progress, so I'll try to stack all of the hard/impossible optional fights at the beginning just to make them more entertaining! Darksiders 2 actually has a very good combat system and it is possible, by using the invincible frames of dodging and casting wrath spells effectively, to fight enemies and bosses that out level you by a lot. I don't think most people know this though since an extremely difficult boss fight can also be overcome by getting better gear and button-mashing basic combos. It's probably good that both types of players can get something out of it. Samizdata posted:Do subs help with income, or is it just views? I'm pretty sure ad revenue is by view count only, but subscriber count is another number that can increase so it's always nice to see it go up! Seeing numbers increase is the primal motivation for all video gaming.
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Aug 11, 2013 06:46
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Pfft, if you're not going to use the starting gear to fight Thane, you might as well wait until you're level five. What manner of self-imposed challenging is this? 
JordanKai fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Aug 11, 2013 |
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Aug 11, 2013 07:38
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Haven't watched the episode yet but will be immediately fighting all the newbie trap bosses and not just Thane?
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Aug 11, 2013 14:22
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JordanKai posted:What manner of self-imposed challenging is this? Asehujiko posted:Haven't watched the episode yet but will be immediately fighting all the newbie trap bosses and not just Thane? In no sooner than the very next part we'll be murdering Gorewood, so yes. (I even managed to beat The Scar in one of my practice files at level 7. This is extremely painful and not recommended if only to maintain the integrity of your controller.)
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Aug 11, 2013 15:12
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Another Jeff and David Let's Play?! Loved Syndicate, tuning in for this one. Hope you guys have less problems with erased commentary and un-auto-saved files in the future.
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Aug 11, 2013 15:59
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Edo Animus posted:Darksiders 2 actually has a very good combat system and it is possible, by using the invincible frames of dodging and casting wrath spells effectively, to fight enemies and bosses that out level you by a lot. I don't think most people know this though since an extremely difficult boss fight can also be overcome by getting better gear and button-mashing basic combos. You've played Dark Souls, right? vvvvvv Okay good.
SpruceZeus fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Aug 11, 2013 |
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Aug 11, 2013 17:05
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SpruceZeus posted:You've played Dark Souls, right?
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Aug 11, 2013 17:13
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If you really want to break the difficulty curve in half, buy up all the Arcane+Arcane Crit+Arcane Crit Damage damage items you can find and use the weapons dropped by the bosses from Thane's quest.
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Aug 12, 2013 00:51
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So, I have some spare Xbox-Live points collecting dust and if I were to spend them on DLC for this game, which one(s) should I go for?
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Aug 12, 2013 17:39
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Sylphosaurus posted:So, I have some spare Xbox-Live points collecting dust and if I were to spend them on DLC for this game, which one(s) should I go for? None of them. There are 3 DLC expansions available - Argul's Tomb, The Abyssal Forge and Demon Lord Belial. Argul's Tomb came free for people that bought the game new but the others both cost $10 and, according to reviews I read, offer up about an hour of mostly storyless extra content. The game by itself has a ton of dungeons so spending an extra $10 on 1.5 to 2 more isn't great. Your milage may vary , though. I've only played Argul's Tomb and it's just a fairly large dungeon with no context in the story or payoff at the end aside from a unique boss fight - so there's that I guess. If you really want to buy something Darksiders 2 related, you could get the Crucible pass (another thing that came free with new copies). It's basically bloody palace from DMC (i.e. fighting waves of enemies), with a unique end boss (no spoilers!), and has achievements tied to beating it. Having to pay for access to achievements if you didn't buy the game new is just another brilliant marketing move by THQ. I'll shell out the MS points and put the extra DLC dungeons into the LP so you don't have to!
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Aug 12, 2013 21:54
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Oh right, the crucible thing was a preorder bonus when i bought it on steam i think? That's unfortunate.  No idea how Xbox handles it but on steam the entire franchise was on sale for 80% off for half a dozen times and included in multiple "pay what you want" bundles. Full prize is a bit much at this point.
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Aug 12, 2013 22:16
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Sylphosaurus posted:So, I have some spare Xbox-Live points collecting dust and if I were to spend them on DLC for this game, which one(s) should I go for? Get the game on steam on a sale. You can get the game and every dlc for like 10-15 dollars. It's nuts.
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Aug 13, 2013 02:22
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So i skimmed through the book it's title is The Abomination Vault and is mostly centered around Death, War has a few spots it as well and Fury and Strife are also in it albeit briefly, hunting down people trying to break into the aforementioned vault. While he doesn't do anything amazing the Crowfather do make an appearance as a, more or less information broker, we do find out that he gave Death Dust at some point and has connections Heaven and Hell from which he gathers his info.
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Aug 13, 2013 02:55
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I completely adored the Darksiders 1 LP, so I'm extremely excited for this one. Maybe it will even get me to pick the game back up, though it will probably just make me replay the first instead. I don't have any specific weapon requests, but if you're planning to use a hammer through the whole game, I'd love to see just one episode using a gauntlet or armblade or the like. From my experience, switching to a really fast subweapon after playing a big chunk of the game with a slow weapon makes for an interesting experience.
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Aug 13, 2013 13:21
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TGYR posted:I'd love to see just one episode using a gauntlet or armblade or the like. Worry not, with the vast amount of weapons in the game both randomized and named we'll be seeing all of the weapon types. Although my first love are hammers due to their ability to break the game as well as enemies, each subtype has a particular use. Axes have a great ground charge attack and their air attack doesn't lose you much altitude (which is good for setting up infinite jumps). The glaive type weapons have an awesome dash attack. Maces are great for hitting home runs, plus their air charged attack has a great amount of horizontal drift to it (to get into unexpected places). Armblades and their sonic booms are fantastic for long range cheesing strategies and, finally, the claws (or was it gauntlets?) have a charged air attack that also has a suspicious amount of horizontal and vertical movement to it (again, for fitting into areas you are not supposed to fit in).
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Aug 13, 2013 22:20
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