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This thread is going to be amazing and I promised that if you made it then I would talk at length about my top 30 with the same kind of thoughts as I did Bloodborne. So that is what I will do.
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Jan 11, 2021 09:43
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fridge corn posted:I was thinking up some games I could post about but quickly realised that of the titles I came up with I really didnt have much to say about the games themselves but more so that they were important to me for other personal reasons: games that I was playing at pivotal moments, or were defining or nostalgic in some way to specific periods of my life, and nobody wants to hear someone ramble on and on with personal anecdotes only tangentially related to the topic at hand so idk I would like to hear them.
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Jan 11, 2021 13:46
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The Tomb Raider Series and why I love Anniversary The Most https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIWLT0QVPzw I hum this music a lot. There are a ton of video game musics that I hum when I see pictures or posts that involve them but there are a small number that I just hum because they make me feel good. Super Mario Brothers 2 first level is one, the early version of Jungle Challenge from Yooka-Laylee, Planet Wisp from Sonic Colours, The End of the World YorHa edition from Nier:Automata and from up above, the theme to Tomb Raider 1. The music of the early Tomb Raider games (1-Underworld) are the reason why I completely and utterly fell in love with these games. They are definitely more than a few tracks but my love of this series is inextricably linked to what I did in my efforts to listen to it and how the music has impacted other things that I do in my life. So here, have a one hour version of what I believe to be the very best track in all of Tomb Raider and put it on in the background while I attempt to explain why Tomb Raider Anniversary is high up in my top 30 games of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNqtgGUEZbA The first Tomb Raider came out in 1996. It was on the short lived Saturn as well as the long lived Playstation and it would be a revelation in gaming to young me. Mostly because at that particular time I was still playing 2D platformers and side scrollers on my MegaDrive while occasionally dipping my toes into Wolf3D and Space Quest 1-3 on my old 386 PC. My very good friend, D, had gotten a PlayStation about a year earlier and because most weekends I would spend at his house, this was the only way I could experience the modern games. His Dad was always ahead of the curve with tech and I remember the day he showed me cable TV, a powerful laptop and both his apple mac and big tower PC. We even rented DVDs because his big tower PC had a DVD player!! We would sit on uncomfortable chairs in the hallway and watch them enthralled that we were doing what we had seen on sci-fi programs! That the local video store only had a few to choose from did not deter us. One weekend we rented Sphere and Nothing to Lose. Nothing to lose indeed. My exposure to modern games (until I got a playstation a few months after this event) meant it was only the kinds of games that D liked that I would see. He and I differed quite drastically when it came to this and back when he had a MegaDrive, he loaned me a few games that he was gifted for birthdays that he hated knowing I would love them. One of them is Kid Chameleon, which also features in my top 30.  When our gaming aligned, however, it really aligned and Tomb Raider was an example. I had arrived at his house and he told me he had a game to show me. I still recall, vividly, getting up to his room and him turning on the TV and it booting up to the menu. He had to go grab something from downstairs, so he left me alone while I sat and listened to the opening theme. That violin opening followed by the full song blossoming was enchanting. It captivated me completely and remains one of my all time most favourite pieces of music from a game. Why that specific piece of music more than others? It links back to a particularly dumb story. In 1993 I was 11 years old and had just discovered a way to get our ancient video recorder recording. My parents were not tech savvy and we were not well off, so both their lounge TV and my bedroom TV were connected to the same aerial and our VCR was an old top loader whose remote control was wired. We only had four TV channels so there was not a lot to watch and I would occasionally set my videos going at 8:00pm and leave them recording until they finished and then watch random stuff for fun. I discovered a program I can no longer remember the name of, but was highly invested in at the time and had watched parts 1 and 2 a few weeks earlier. The final part was on one evening, but being only 11 I had two videos I used over and over and little space to record the whole evening like usual (as I had been saving things and waking up at specific times to get more programs). Part 2 I am sure ended on a wild cliffhanger so I needed to see the end of part 3. The day came and I made sure to get my video ready and an alarm to wake me to set it at the right time so all would be well. I woke up late. I frantically ran to the VCR and hit record and managed to record the credits of the last episode. For a number of years that was all I had. The first two parts and then the end credits, with no closure whatsoever. The end credits had a particular style of music and in the intervening years I listened to it a lot and formulated my own ending. It sort of haunted me that I missed the end of the show and back then it was not easy to find or do anything about, so aside from remembering the music I let go of it and moved on....until the day I walked into D’s room and heard the theme to Tomb Raider 1. It sounded so similar I immediately wondered if there was a link. Along I listened to that awesome theme and was reminded of the fact I had become so invested in something and it made me want to play the game.  And play the game we did. D had a habit of buying a game, playing through it, and then getting me to play it when I came over and sitting and watching me stumble or succeed. Tomb Raider was one of the few times he was stuck and wanted to see what I could do first. So that Saturday I sat down to play what would become one of my most favourite games of all time. To say I was unprepared was an understatement. That opening level entering the Tibetan tomb was the first time I realised Games could be this way. It sounds ridiculous now after 25 years of gaming, but it genuinely captivated me in a way I knew I had to get a playstation for this game. The long hallways, the traps, the whistling winds and creaks of the old tomb, the secrets hidden amongst outcrops, everything about this game was unique to young me. You could hold onto the edges of blocks and shimmy along. You could jump or run jump and you could make different kinds of leaps. Lara controlled so well despite using an interface that lacked analogue sticks. The look button being on one of the shoulders while everything else revolved around the d-pad meant that the level design was accommodating of it and it worked in her favour. Areas were comprised of squares and arranged to best resemble the tombs the designers had envisaged. You could always figure out where and when to jump if you paid attention to the seams in the layout. My very favourite level was St. Francis’ Folly. My bestie and I, upon first entering the room with the spire, gasped. It was the first time we had played a game where the level was so big the system could not render it. We called it ‘The Room’. Even now we will occasionally say “Hey! Remember the room?” And we know we are instinctively talking about a level in TR and not a film by Tommy Wiseau.  Looking down from the very top you would just see shadow that would eventually uncover as you worked your way down the tower. Each section had its own puzzle room relating to old mythology and the Damocles room evoked terror because of those swords in the ceiling. This whole level was simply a series of puzzles, bat fights and gorilla fights around a spire. I had seen slowdown before, but deliberately making a level that stretched the rendering of a console was new to me and that dark shadow was tremendously effective in making me feel that there was a grandness to the level. All the while, exploring these majestic areas and raiding expansive underground tombs there was the echoing footsteps, the ambient whistling of wind and the occasional but effective music. That theme had two more ‘versions’; one that was composed of the first half of the song and one that was the second half but edited in both the beginning and end so as not just a cut up pair of tracks. The music use sticks with me. Never overplayed and always at moments when you knew something important or fun was going to happen and foreshadowed by the little spin of the CD in the PlayStation. I did not complete the game while at D’s house in my first sitting, (unlike RE2 but that is for another ramble) however my parents bought a PlayStation for the whole family a few weeks later, then a few months later on my birthday I got a copy of TR1 for myself. From that point I became glued to the game. You can imagine the joy I felt when I discovered that every single piece of music (including the voiced audio from cutscenes and the ambience of caves) from the game was stored as separate tracks on the CD. You could put the CD in any player and listen to the music to your hearts content. I would. I would put the PlayStation into music mode and play the theme song on repeat while I cleaned my room or did my homework. Slowly over the course of a month I beat Tomb Raider - a few weeks before D did. He had put it down in the end Mines and said he was no longer enjoying it the way he had at the start. For me the game never let up. If I had made game lists back then, it would have been my second favourite game ever. Super Mario Bros 3 had the top slot for a few years and would take decades to be toppled but Tomb Raider 1 made the strongest case up until that point. What does all of this have to do with Anniversary though?  Well, when I say I think Tomb Raider Anniversary is the best Tomb Raider, I want you to know just how much I have given this proper thought. From Tomb Raider 1 all the way up until Tomb Raider Age of Darkness I got the newest game on or a few days after my birthday. I would then do nothing but play that game till the end. I even played and completed Tomb Raider 3 while unknowingly having bronchitis and it was me collapsing in my beanbag during the London segments that got my parents to take me to the hospital. Not that I was ignoring my health, just that I thought I was tired and trying to stay awake to finish the subway levels. I was stupidly obsessed with raiding tombs and each subsequent game was an attempt to capture the levels that TR1 had created for me. All themes from TR2 onwards were good. They were slight riffs on that original theme, but never quite straying too far to make it special possibly from fear of alienating fans. The gameplay also had the occasional beef ups like Lara’s hair moving, more weapons, better save points, revamped Croft Manor, bigger environments. However by the time they had reached Chronicles it was obvious that Core were burnt out. Age of Darkness was a mess but an interesting one. The music was again riffs on the original theme but this time played by a real orchestra and while the story and gameplay was all over the place, the music again stuck with me. Oh to hear TR1’s theme played with as much gusto and care as Age of Darkness’ amazing theme. Four years passes before we are given Tomb Raider Legend and amazingly it is a hit. This was not expected considering the diminishing returns brought about by almost all previous games but was true. It featured a better style of movement, more realistic looking environments, greater depth to the exploration, grander puzzles and the music was pretty nice. I liked it. If I had to rate it I would give it a B+. A very good entry. I was excited to see where the story was going. Then in 2007 we got Tomb Raider Anniversary.  Well. I am usually quite wary of remakes and I can say the vast majority of them miss something. Usually it is an attempt to give games contemporary graphics more than anything, but graphics do not make a game and a strong art direction trumps the modern style of the time. Mario Brothers 3 is still a fantastic game that pushes the NES to the limits of what it was capable of. Recreating it in the NSMB engine would do nothing for it at all. I went into this game with apprehension. A remake of my favourite Tomb Raider as well as my second favourite game ever better be stellar. There was so much to get right and was it even possible. Obviously me writing all these rambling passages is a confirmation that they did but you cannot blame me for being a little dramatic. I love this game. I love everything it does, everything it enhances and everything it modifies. Even now, fourteen years later, I will break it out and give it a play through. All those aspects of TR1 that were dear to me are still here, only they have been improved. The Room still exists, complete with almost non viewable bottom floor. (I think that was the second thing I was desperate to see!). It has the same structure as the original in both level design and plot but it runs with them more. Rather than just slapping a new coat of graphics, it makes tweaks and changes that you would expect to find now that they are using the newer Legend engine.  Lara’s movement is fantastic and all those moves your brain would make you see in the blocky world of TR1 was defined and visible within game. Climbing is no longer a case of running up to the wall, making Lara ‘oof’ as she faceplants, and then pressing jump to grab a ledge and pull yourself up or shuffle sideways. Those walls you saw 10 years previous have been redone to allow for the Legend engine to let you climb around them. To make you the master of the terrain without losing what made the original experience one of a kind. The story is still the same plot from TR1 but it has now been given some trails that tie it in to Legend and the subsequent game Underworld without feeling like it was done for fun or as part of a jumbled mess. These little strings of plot are there and avoidable if you never played Legend or Underworld. Dialogue has been changed a lot but the voice actress playing Lara (Keeley Hawes) absolutely nails the role and of all the voices Lara has had, she is my favourite. While I can recall quite vividly those lines from the first and am sad a few no longer exist (“You have my total attention now. I’m not quite sure I’ve got yours though. Hello?”) the increase of the story beats leading it to being more cinematic means that Hawes has more of a chance to show off her range and ultimately shine. I think the temptation to go really all out and completely revamp everything that was great about TR1 was probably there in Crystal Dynamics mind but they remade with restraint and I appreciate it more and more. Keeping the rough structure, the story and adding onto it with secrets and a slight rejigging of some of the later levels works for me. Keeping the tone and loneliness of TR1 was something they could have rolled back on after their success with Legend and Zip and Allistair, but they did not and it shows a tremendous amount of care towards the source material. Playing it takes me back to when it was one of the most important games I had played and that is a feeling I will keep revisiting for as long as I can play it.  Lastly, I need to talk about the music. If you did leave that YouTube video I suggested at the start playing the whole time you read this jumbled mess of positive thoughts then a) Wonderful! I hope it was as relaxing for you as it is for me and b) This is how I spend my hours writing both creatively and for work. When booting up Anniversary for the first time, I had hoped upon hope that the music was not changed too drastically. That memory I shared earlier is one of my most vivid in relation to gaming and I did not want Anniversary to have changed it too drastically. Hearing an orchestral version of the TR1 theme rendered almost exactly as it was sent the younger me soaring. I did not think it possible to take that piece of music and add onto it whilst still retaining everything that made the original so good. The little flourishes and added notes are a joy. If I had to have a piece of music replace the original, then this was that piece of music. Croft Manor, the 1 hour extended version I linked up above, was for me the pinnacle of the whole Tomb Raider soundtrack. Croft Manor had always been a fun extra alongside the early tomb raider games. It was a tutorial section inside Lara’s stately home. A load of crash mats to learn the movement, places to walk around and the occasional secret. Even a quad bike course in TR3. Croft Manor in Anniversary was more than that and almost its own other game. It had the tutorial sections and the outside assault course but it was packed with secrets to find and hidden doors and corridors throughout the mansion while still retaining that aspect of discovery. All the while, while you searched the mansion completely alone, this music played. You know when something clicks and you struggle to articulate exactly why? Exploring the secrets of Croft Manor in Anniversary was one of my game clicks. The layout, the secrets, the traps, the music, the movement, the graphics, everything came together as one and showed me why I had followed a game series for 10 years. Every little thing it did pushed every other little thing upwards in tandem until I realised I had lost hours messing about in an area that was not even the main game. All the while accompanied by music so beautiful that it helped open my creative thoughts. There are few games I have played where I lose time in such a fashion. I use that track (my own looped and extended MP3 that I created) at home whenever I need to be in a specific kind of zone. I have played it hundreds of thousands of times and it never wears itself out.  Without Anniversary I would not have a piece of music that matter so much in how I work. I would not have a tangible link to the way an old game made me feel. I would not have one of the best remakes of all time. Anniversary means something very personal to me and if these tangled sentences have conveyed even a percent of how I feel about it, then I will consider this tomb, raided.
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Feb 9, 2021 19:34
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Thank you everyone for the kind words.  Also Payndz I have only played TR2013. I think TR2013 (and to some degree Legend and Underworld) made me tire a bit of shooting human enemies. I am not about that. I know the fact that most enemies were not human in TR1 and was most likely done that way because of AI limitations and that they did not want Lara to be a murderer (she only directly kills one person in Anniversary). That TR2013 went so heavy on it felt like it was missing a lot. I also liked that the place Lara visited in TR1-3 were pretty much untouched for years and that was why they were so empty. I will give Rise and Shadow a go. I do own them and even a bad Tomb Raider game is still a game I would like to play
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Feb 11, 2021 09:20
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 2021 is the year of Dark Souls. I finished Bloodborne at the beginning of December 2020. I craved more of that game and went looking - the Surge, Nioh, and Code Vein to name three examples, but whatever I tried I just could not scratch that itch that Bloodborne had burrowed into me. The PS5 had just come out and I wanted to play through the Dark Souls Trilogy on that, but as we all know, the PS5 does not exist. So at the end of the year I tried a bit of Dark Souls. It was fine. Bloodborne to DS1 is a little rough and I am sad to say I was not quite enamoured from being a speedy zippy hunter into a slow and cumbersome cardinal roller. It was tough and I played a few times before Christmas. I had fun, but I did not have Bloodborne fun and I stopped because a couple of important things in my life came to the front and were needed to be done before I could return to Dark Souls. That break was the wisest thing as it gave me enough time to forget about Bloodborne combat, but not lose the love I was kindling for Dark Souls. I set myself a schedule for streaming the game (as this was my secret weapon in getting myself to finish games) and I would play Dark Souls every Tuesday evening, Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. I beat it and then immediately started Dark Souls 2 and then I beat that and immediately started Dark Souls 3, and beat that and now find myself in Sekiro - continuing the Fromlike journey ever onwards. I am a little empty for not having any more Dark Souls to conquer but am overstuffed with a lot of joy for discovering the truth that eluded me: That the Dark Souls trilogy is a master class in not only how to make a game, but how to not coast on successive sequels, create an engaging spanning storyline and test a player consistently with each encounter until a final boss makes you prove your mettle. I want to get deep into what I love about each one of these games and why it has meant so much to me despite playing so many years after initial release. The past few months have been a whirlwind of frustration and joy and contemplation and confusion and only ever the souls series has had this kind of effect on me. People use the term soulslike to describe games but as a descriptor I think it misses what the actual core of a 'soulslike' is and it has a very simple answer. A soulslike, at the very core, is a game made by FromSoftware. That is all it is. The Dark Souls trilogy is a collection of soulslike in that all three are Dark Souls games but all three are noticeably different to each other. They share similar ideas and similar systems but the biggest consistency across all three is that FromSoftware made these games. This is also why games made by other companies try to emulate and fall short. It is the studio itself that imbibes them with the 'Soulslike' feeling. This is shown even more drastically when you factor Bloodborne and Sekiro into the mix. There is a core feeling in all five of these games despite the quintet being different to each other. That core comes straight out of the FromSoftware studio. So I more often than not use a different term: Fromlike. Fromlikes have a feel that is easily imitated and rarely captured. At the time of writing this I am playing Sekiro. As mentioned earlier it shares very little in common with the Soulsborne games that came before it but the core familiarity is still present. This is most certainly a game made by FromSoftware. Their influence and experience permeates throughout the games they make and it is an indelible quality that strives people to copy it. As of right now I played the Fromlikes in this order: Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III and Sekiro. I have seen a distinct evolution of the kind of game they wish to make throughout my Dark Souls trilogy run and seeing the growth of a studio and their concepts refine is a joy. I have spoken, at great length, about Bloodborne previously and I will speak about Sekiro at another point in time. This essay is about the Souls Trilogy as a whole because while they are three separate games, they form a whole package to me and complete a small section in my heart for one of the best trilogies of all times. They also share more in common than Bloodborne or Sekiro so it makes more sense to me to discuss them as a group. So this is the story of how a simple game player found a hidden power inside and beat the whole of the Dark Souls Trilogy in 120 hours.  Part 1: Dark Souls (or I should probably heal) Playtime: 27 hours As I mentioned earlier, I moved from Bloodborne straight to DS1. (I nearly jumped straight to DS3 or Sekiro but thank goodness I did not - more on that later). I originally held it against the game. The movement set of Bloodborne is specifically tailored towards a certain kind of style that does not exist in Dark Souls and I had a very real struggle to get used to it. One example is the rally mechanic. In Bloodborne I would make mistakes, get hit occasionally and gain my health back by being aggressive. I was absolutely aggressive in Dark Souls and I was punished because I forgot to heal or look at my health gauge. It became a running joke throughout the trilogy that I had to be told to heal because I brought my successful playset into a world where the benefits did not exist. I did not use shields in any of the Dark Souls aside from wearing the crest shield on my back to give me a stamina boost. Instead I preferred to dodge and run around and get hits in. Blocking? No thanks!! Eventually I got used to the big changes. Dodging in only cardinal directions, slower movement and more variety to levels and equipment. I felt a tad overwhelmed at the choice to Bloodborne's rather sparse setup but I played more and more and Bloodborne fell away from memory. Dark Souls began to consume my thoughts and the game started speaking to me more and more. Eventually, after 29 hours I finished all of Dark Souls 1 and its DLC. It had been a ride and one I was eager to remain on. Dark Souls 1 was the beginning of a slice of gaming magic that will endure long into the future. We will look back at it the same way we look back at Mario and Pacman and it is very easy to see why. The game on the surface is a third person action rpg but to distil it down to this is to do what it actually does a disservice. Dark Souls 1 and the two sequels are reimagining of an approach to gaming that was lost for a while. There has been lots said about the way Games hold hands nowadays; with pointers at the top of the screen and mini-maps, and direct statements from npcs telling you were to go and what to do. Dark Souls eschewed this in a year where some of the biggest games were all about that (Uncharted 3, Skyrim, Rage, LA Noire, and Assassin's Creed Revelations to mention a few). Dark Souls being a game where you are plonked into a world and left to decipher it on your own was so reminiscent of games from the earlier generations that for a lot of people it was quite alien. Coupled with how tough it was to face even regular enemies if you were not focused you could see how it would put off a ton of gamers and attract only a small set of others. Not everyone enjoys a slog through a kind of game you had not really been playing since the late 80s - early 90s. Approaching this needs you to think more in the Ghouls and Goblins route. Myself attempting this series 10 years later and all in a row gave me a rather unique experience compared to those who faced the Souls trilogy. Each hour spent in each game trained me and prepared me for the battles to come in each hour afterward. This is true of every game but the Dark Souls methodology feels like a bigger accomplishment because of the lack of hand holding. It is a tight balance walk the line between obtuse and enigmatic and it is far easier to hide mechanics and story than to trust that the player will learn and discover them for themselves. The game walks it with confidence. It hides a complex narrative within an interconnected world that is exactly as engaging as you want it to be. You get given a lot of freedom to make the path through the world and be the character you feel like being without any detriment to the story. To pull off this kind of storytelling, where the character decides how to approach these things, is always a feat and FromSoftware have demonstrated time and again just how adept they are. All three Souls games are open to any player picking up any weapon and set of armour and making their way of their own choices through the crafted worlds. Dark Souls has probably the most tight of the three worlds and the DLC fits into the game more a little more seamlessly than the others (with the exception of the ringed city from DS3). Adding chunks of game after the fact often feels like a suddenly visible point on the game map that you go off and visit. Oolacile, as a version of the past that has a tangible effect on the story that you may not even realise thanks to the exploratory nature of the narrative and npcs you can talk to, is completely optional and contains more for people who want more but fits firmly into the world as part of the multitude of magical things you will run across. That it contains one of the two best bosses in the game is icing. Dark Souls giving you viewpoints where you can look across the world and see where you need to go and reach it and look back up, like the undead parish and berg, is what goes such a long way to enhancing the 'realism' of the game world. Things like that have a subtle effect on your mind. Knowing that downstairs is a real downstairs and not just low poly textures as a background fleshes out how your mind recalls your journey and gives you the knowledge to run around the world without that pesky mini-map. There were a LOT of great bosses in this game and my three standouts were Artorias, Gwynn and the Bed of Chaos: Artorias was tough and besting him felt extremely satisfying. I would say he was one of the toughest in the game and that made the solo victory against him in only eight tries one of the sweetest. Bed of Chaos might be a controversial pick, but is one of my favourites due to the fact that I had been getting the hang of jumping in the game before this point. Having to run around and miss the sudden chasms with some funny jumping was refreshing and different and was a great change from a one on one battle. It did help that Lost Izalith and the demon ruins are my favourite areas in the game from a visual standpoint. I did not use quite a few mechanics in the game, but it turned out I did not need to. My trusty axe, lightning great sword and great club were all fantastic weapons that helped me get through the whole game. I like summoning friends and this is an aspect of the game that is a really wonderful idea. Other games should copy this because letting another player drop into your world to help you goes a huge way to fostering friendships and a game community. Likewise the trade-off being that you can be ‘invaded’ by users intent on causing harm feels like a good way to prevent the game from being a steamroll. This whole idea is better executed in later souls but works well here. I am still sad I accidentally ate the Firelink Shrine maiden's soul for my estus flask by mistake. I beat Lautrec to avenge her but it still stings. Maybe on another play through I will put right this wrong of the past. Estus healing is a great mechanic. Having a limited health regen system that is replenished on death is how I originally thought Bloodborne did its healing. Turns out if you die to Father Gascoigne 75 times but keep all those blood vials collected along the way stored in the bank, you will never run out and it will look like the Dark Souls method of healing. The messaging system is a big plus. I always laughed when they would trick me with statements of illusory wall and I would often read aloud what they said before my brain would catch up with the words But and Hole used together so much. Well played Soulsians, well played. One of the themes that runs through the trilogy is that of loneliness. There are npcs that you can talk to for sure, but the amount of enemies are sparse and the world you run around is large and quite empty. You are at the end of civilisation and the sound design works to confirm this feeling of isolation. I always noticed how little music there was in the main game and that in the places where you are guaranteed to hear some it is for a specific purpose. The calm but saddened tones of Firelink Shrine to let you know this is a safe haven, but a safe haven in a world that is close to death. Whereas the boss battles generally have bombastic, frenetic and thunderous orchestral sounds to keep you anxiously on your toes as you know you are about to make irreversible changes to the world. The one track that combines the two deftly is Gwynn's theme and the best track in the whole game. The final boss and when you meet you are expecting a thunderous and loud roar to go alongside the battle. Instead you face this King who controlled the first flame with a gentle tune played only on the white notes of the piano. It is haunting and stark and makes it worthy of being the final thing you do in a game that has been building to such a poignant moment. Gwynn was a very special moment to me because defeating him meant I had beaten a souls game. He tested me well. His arena being these loose piles of pale ash, the music so harrowing and knowing what it meant for the story was the culmination of the very atmosphere that the game had been cultivating. Everything lead to this point and I will not quickly forget the outcome. Dark Souls, from beginning to end, was a game that seemed to subvert the preconceived notions of what games were at the time and it succeeded tremendously.  Part 2: Dark Souls II (or Clubbed to Death by Rob D.) Playtime: 57 hours. Near the end of the first Dark Souls I had switched my weapon over to a great club. I found it at the bottom of blight town and once I started levelling my stats into it, I discovered the joy of pummelling things right into the ground. It was a powerful and slow weapon and fit my playstyle. I had slowed myself down dramatically from Bloodborne and being able to judge distances and do a huge whack helped me rejig my muscle memory. So I created my character, named Ruckus, and went out into the world of Drangleic in search of a great club. From the very start of my Fromlike journey there were people who said to skip DS2 or that DS2 was terrible or made by a B team or not really a Dark Souls game and many other things. I admit when I started I genuinely was unsure what to expect. You hear all this gushing about the first and then all that is turned upon its head for the second and you feel a little worried. Finishing Dark Souls it is obvious that any follow up to a game like that would be under severe scrutiny and would have been properly hyped up in the years between releases. Three years is a long while for people to think of what their perfect sequel might entail. I did not have any idea what to expect. I went straight from DS1 to DS2 without a single clue in the world. I think my sheer obliviousness was a super power. I like Dark Souls II much more than Dark Souls and throughout the 57 hours it took I had so many more highs that I was even uncertain if Dark Souls III could compare to it. Dark Souls II could easily have been a cash grab kind of sequel. They struck gold with Dark Souls and releasing the same game with a different map would have been the easiest thing to do in the world. Dark Souls II said 'Nah. I am going to do my own thing.' and for that reason alone I respect it. The reason I love it is due to the things it did caused me to fall head over heels again for Fromlikes as I did when playing Bloodborne. Dark Souls II feels like it is approximately 3 degrees off from Dark Souls. Some of the same mechanics are here: Bonfires, estus flasks, levelling up of the self and equipment but they are ever so slightly different. Bonfires are plentiful and right from the bat you can use them to travel to any other bonfire you have found. There is also a helpful menu showing you the number of bonfires in any given area by making them misty, but also showing you the ones where your soul level means you are more likely to get invaded. The warping between bonfires mechanic was in Dark Souls but only to specific bonfires. This makes sense as the world of Drangleic is considerably larger than the world of Lordran. To make up for this, the change to levelling a character and an estus flask means having to return to Majula, this game's Firelink Shrine, and talk to the Emerald Herald (who I accidentally kept referring to Esmerelda). She will take your souls and level you up, much like the doll did in Bloodborne. Estus flasks only being upgraded when finding an item in the world, as opposed to using humanity to kindle bonfires, is also a change I like. It being a reward for exploring the game world is never something I would shy away from. If a game world is good then I like diving fully into it and finding things. In this regard, Dark Souls was a sprawling behemoth of a world with much to find and locate. The world not being as sensible or interconnected as Lordran from Dark Souls is often used as a point against it, but for me the fact that it is this way fits with how I absorbed the story. I said earlier that a pervading sense of loneliness and isolation filters throughout the trilogy but Dark Souls II brings an extra dimension to its fear: memory loss. From the opening cinematic of a family melting away there is a palpable fear of forgetting the very being of what makes you, you. This is a fear shown by many of the npcs you talk to throughout the game. One of the most memorable is a fighter named Lucatiel. Her questline requires you to meet and befriend her, then bring her to three boss fights as a summon and keep her alive in all of them (one being the Smelter demon, who she absolutely trounced with me). At the end of her questline you find her in an abandoned shack outside Aldia's Keep. She is struggling to breathe and keep herself from going hollow. She almost begs you to remember her name because she is aware that she is close to the moments when she will no longer be able to, but if there is just one person out there who can say the name Lucatiel then in some way she still lives. It is a heart-breaking moment. An npc begging to be remembered in a world that is surely crumbling is a beautiful bit of storytelling and make no mistake: Drangleic is crumbling. The game is set thousands of years after the end of the first game, in a world when the first flame being kindled too much has led to where we are now. This idea that deliberately preventing the age of dark and prolonging the age of fire is a mistake made over and over is fully realised at the end of Dark Souls III but it properly takes root in the series here and the story is stronger for it. The world is a mess and nowhere is it shown more than the lift from Earthen Peak. Earthen Peak has a windmill sat atop it, and within the windmill are poisonous floors leading up to a circular arena where you fight a boss called Mytha, the Baneful. Think a sort of Medusa kind of creature. Once slew, you go to a small room behind her and into an elevator which begins to rise. What is at the top of this elevator? Well. While walking into a lava filled world with a castle so heavy it is sinking into said lava would not be hidden at the top of a windmill does not make sense at first glance, it does make perfect sense in the broken world of Drangleic. So much of Dark Souls 2 is reminiscent of past adventures in Lordran but like I said earlier, off by a few degrees. It is as the world is trying to form from foggy memories but they are so well forgotten that the form ends up misshapen. Earthen Peak may have had a road that lead to the Iron Keep at one point, but it was not via an elevator and it does not matter. Drangleic needs to end is what matters. The first flame needs to be extinguished because letting it be rekindled over and over brings us to this. An elevator into a sky full of lava. I love this story so very much. Battling half remembered bosses in oft familiar locales is realised in a way that does not feel like a reskin of the first game; it feels thematically relevant to the point it is trying to get across. In terms of the gameplay, much about it is improved. Being able to roll in more than just the cardinal directions is sorely welcome and allowed for a little more movement than one, even if I discovered very late into the game that my adaptability had been a bit of a hindrance. (That is definitely a weird move that I do not get). Walking and running 'feels' heavier somehow despite being quicker. This crosses over into combat. Greatly improved upon, dual wielding weapons work so much better and there is a wealth of moves for your character based on what you are carrying. You can also power stance your dual weapons to combine them into a series of extremely powerful combo moves. At one point I was powerstancing two great club and while the move was slow when it connected it absolutely connected. Being able to equip four rings instead of just two was very welcome indeed and considering just how many items you could find in game made experimenting with your build midgame a very pleasant affair. In terms of the actual story, I blitzed through the game with my club, every session giving me more fun than the last. There were a ton of bosses and unsurprisingly to me all the best ones were in the DLC. There is something about the way FromSoftware is able to focus on making superb DLC after the fact. Again the DLC was part of the world itself and you could find the keys to open the doors to the places you needed to go with exploration. It is very easy to beat the game having never found them, but you would miss out on some of the best environments and moments in a Souls game. Walking along a giant metal link chain to a tower full of ash, or stepping into a blizzard on the outskirts of a walled off castle, or seeing an ancient pyramid like structure with the base surrounded by water are environments that rival every other place in the main game. The DLC is also easily the point where the games' difficulty ramps up - far more than the DLC for the first did. They know that if you are wanting more then you probably need a challenge. Fume Knight and Sinh are two of my most favourite bosses in the whole series but both required me to summon for them. I needed that extra bit of help. Aava and Burnt Ivory Knight, however, I did not summon. I managed to beat them both solo and I have to say that the feeling of overcoming bosses in Dark Souls II garnered even stronger feelings within than Dark Souls. Dark Souls II can be accused of going overboard with bosses as there are almost double the number if you factor in the DLCs but as someone who likes facing the unstoppable foe I do not count this as a negative. I believe the majority of Souls' bosses are tests for the player to ensure they have been paying attention to things in the game and keeping you on your toes. One of the best memories I have of Dark Souls II is beating the Dark Lurker. I struggle exceptionally at bosses where the numbers are skewed against you. One versus One fights are something I can handle. Two (and higher) versus Me is a weak point of mine and the Dark Lurker splitting itself in two midway through removing its health turned it into a boss where I struggled. Did I ever struggle! I had done a lot of the run up to the Dark Lurker but was conscious that every time I made an attempt I lost a human effigy, and I had already bought out the supply from every merchant around. This finite resource plied pressure on top of me because it required me to make my way through the gauntlet of blue coloured enemies to then get to the Dark Lurker. They became a bit of a White Whale (alongside another boss that was 5 versus Me) and due to both being optional I had sort of resigned myself to perhaps not facing them. On the day I beat the game I made a conscious effort to face them both. I had spent an hour on Aava and was feeling buffed by my successes. The Dark Lurker run had a couple more fails and I only had 10 effigies left. The health mechanic in Dark Souls II is one thing that does not fully work. The more you die, the more you lose a chunk of maximum health until it stops at around 50% of your health bar. You can see the missing chunk and using an effigy brings it back to full. I ended up never removing a ring that prevented this from being a big deal but it requires you to give up a ring slot until you get so good that you never die. That taunting missing chunk can have a negative psychological effect and I do not bemoan anyone who dislikes the way they changed health. I did die a lot and even with the ring equipped I would still need to use an effigy to bump it back up to full now and then. A finite resource I was using to fight a boss that I was very weak to. Effigies are also burned in bonfires to prevent invasions. One of the biggest changes occurs with PvP. In Dark Souls you had to have become human in order for other players to invade and attack you. In Dark Souls II they can do it whenever they feel like (providing they are around the same soul level.) unless you have used up one of your finite resources. In my very last session I ended up being repeatedly invaded by another player named TheCoolSmelt. Firstly, I was amazed at the name. Secondly, he absolutely destroyed me. I am not good at PvP. I am unable to hit people no matter what weapons I use and am always resigned to the fact that if I get invaded then I will die at their hands. People are so much less predictable and being able to tell their move set is not something I could ever manage. This is fine and while I tried, TheCoolSmelt too me to task. About ten minutes later I was invaded by TheCoolSmelt again, who this time was wearing a completely different setup and proceeded to demolish me. We laughed again at the return of Smelt and went on with our way. Then I was invaded again. At this point we on the stream thought perhaps he was focussing on me. He kept appearing, always dressed differently, and always up for a battle. TheCoolSmelt, though, lived up to his name and was exceptionally cool at how he approached me. He would leave me items and teach me tricks, all before battling and vanquishing me. He gave me a shield to use when my great club broke in the middle of a battle and waited for me to equip it and then fight with only shields. (He won of course). He gave me the items needed to transform myself into other forms after chasing me as a big chunk of ice and we had an impromptu prop hunt battle around the castle in DLC3. We imagined he might have been watching my stream and laughing at my ineptitude but truthfully TheCoolSmelt popping up all over my game for those seven hours was proof that FromSoftware’s approach to PvP in games can be magical. I could not use effigies to stop TheCoolSmelt from invading, and not because I needed them to fight the Dark Lurker, but because this was a living and breathing version of the Shadow of Mordor nemesis system in action and I did not want it to stop. My effigies had another purpose. I needed them for the rest of the game in case there was a boss tougher than The Dark Lurker but I also was feeling down about this one boss being such a stumbling block. I was forming a negative feedback loop. Every death to the Dark Lurker was two losses; a chunk of health and the means of restoring it. With ten effigies to go as well as the end of the game I decided that it would be a mistake to keep bashing my head against this boss. I gave myself two more tries, just in case, but had little hope. The following video is the end of that first try: https://clips.twitch.tv/OpenPlainOwlPMSTwin-n3FLlEpHtbnkEfuI Whenever I see this moment I remember exactly the elation I felt at crossing off that enemy. This enemy that had been plaguing me taken down in the luckiest and ballsiest of moves. A twin club smash. It inspired me and in that one session I smashed every last boss left and finished the game. The defeat of the Dark Lurker spurned me forward and gave me confidence and truly this is at the heart of why when these games work they really do work. Overcoming adversity is an emotion we can all feel in many different arenas of life. The Dark Souls trilogy has perfected the art of handing you out these moments of confidence building while overcoming struggles. Dark Souls II was where I started to understand the reason these games were SO beloved by SO many people. All in all, Drangleic was more than a jumbled recollection to me. It was a place I briefly and happily called home. I will always remember you Lucatiel.  Part 3: Dark Souls III (or Twin Sells Words) Playtime: 37 hours. As I said earlier, after finishing Bloodborne I craved more Bloodborne. This kind of reaction happens to many who finish that game. Something about the way it was made grabs you like an Amygdala itself and drives you to want the experience to last forever. At the time someone mentioned Dark Souls 3 as being the closest to Bloodborne and I admit I was tempted to play the Souls Games in a wonky order just so I could have more BBesque adventuring. Not doing that was one of the smartest gaming decisions I could have made. Dark Souls III is, in my opinion, the best Dark Souls game and as a capstone to a trilogy so incredibly influential it sticks the landing it knew it would have to make better than if the floor was metal and its feet magnets. Dark Souls III is the last FromSoftware game to have a specific kind of Souls DNA and is the second most recent game they released. Sekiro does its completely own thing from this point on so you can look at Dark Souls III not just as a cap to the story started in Dark Souls but as a cap to the kinds of games FromSoftware had been making. If Sekiro is a sign of things to come then Elden Ring also has the potential to be something drastically different from what came before. Dark Souls III is a blendered version of all previous Souls games and Bloodborne and comes out with a mixture of their strengths and weaknesses. You would think it would suffer from it, but that is the beauty of this studio. They get their products much more than the average studio and were able to pick apart the majority of the high points of the previous games and assemble a 'best of' that stands just as tall as those before it. Dark Souls III is confident about the kind of Souls game it wants to be, wears it proudly and scoops you up to bring it with you to the end of everything. If I want to be grabbed by a game, I want it to have the audacity and pride that Dark Souls III has. Of all three this is the game where the combat has never been more refined and more in tune with how I played Bloodborne. It would have been so easy to switch from Bloodborne to Dark Souls III and I would have barely given it a second thought. The speed at which you are able to attack enemies and move around the most stunningly realised environments in a souls game is unmatched and the environments in this game have never looked better. Working my way through the trilogy though gives me the ability to appreciate it far more and that is the ultimate reason why I think this game is the best. It is something it shares with Mass Effect 3. Both games are superb but only because they have the foundation laid by those before it. If I had jumped straight to Dark Souls III I would have missed a story that takes into account two full games and explores the themes of finality. Loneliness, Memory Loss and Finality are spread around the three games, but each one concentrates on a specific one for its main theme. The finality of Dark Souls III is draped across the opening areas tantalisingly and grows with every step you make to the final boss where the cyclical nature of the games takes its final form. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing is meant to last forever. The player in all three games (when completed) has been the one to protract the age and with thousands of cycles and years passing it has caught up to the Soul of Cinder, a boss surrounded by a chaotical map where cities rest upon other cities. Alternate universes collapsing in on itself because the age of fire is extended over and over and over. Everything in this world must end because it cannot keep revolving around reigniting the flame that has weakened with every cycle. The overlap of worlds between all three games is shown upfront. You can probably tell how proud and happy I was to discover Lucatiel's armour description explain that this armour belonged to a hollow who implored a comrade remember her name. That her memory still lives on, even in this collapsing world, is a comfort to me. However, the references to people and items from Dark Souls and Dark Souls II strewn about the world of Lothric is a not just fan service to those who liked them but there to expound upon the message that 'This MUST Stop'. I suspected this was the case in Dark Souls, I thought I may be able to do this in Dark Souls II and I made it happen in Dark Souls III. Seeing the world as it had become, a kaleidoscope of broken realities leading to a final boss that was the amalgamation of every kind of player character you could be in phase one, thus kindler of the flame, and Gwynn, the first to prevent the end of fire, in phase two was truly inspired. You are fighting against your worst nature and the originator of Dark Souls. When I beat the boss I got the ending that was neither continue the age of flame, nor extinguish the first flame. My character absorbed the flame and brought about the Age of Hollows and thus ended the continuing cycle. As an end to the series I dig this finality so much. I did the DLC after the main story and as an epilogue, I could not be happier with the way it turned out. While the main game deals with finality, the DLC involves the idea of leaving behind creations to move on elsewhere. It can be seen as the desire for the team at FromSoftware to tell another story and the danger of, again, continuing the same thing over and over. The painting piece that Gael holds outstretched in the Cathedral is the reality in which the Dark Souls universe resides and both Ariandel and the Ringed City deal with the obsession caused by clinging on to this worn out universe. It is no mere coincidence that Dark Souls has the painted world of Ariamis and Dark Souls III has the painted world of Ariandel. Both these words start with an unusual combination of letters. The word meaning a self-contained piece for one voice as part of a larger body of work reflects upon the truth to these two places. They are one and the same just at differing points in the collapsed upon itself universe. These painted worlds are parts of the larger body of work despite being solo adventures to one side. Ariamis and Ariandel are cold and inhospitable places but in Ariandel it matters more, for nothing can survive in such conditions and should not. Friede knows that you alone have the power to end the painted worlds, just like Crossbreed Priscilla before her and this is why you are told to go back. She is under the impression that Ariandel is safe as long as the painting scrap it is part of no longer contains you. Gael's quest to find more 'paints' to bring the picture back is the obsession that dooms him and allows him to 'save' FromSoftware. Getting through the ringed city, 'safe' from the collapsing of the universe will bring you to Gwynn's lost daughter who has been in a slumber and kept this broken universe together all this time. The player reaching her and touching the fractured reality she guards brings you to the final moment at the end of everything. In a wasteland where existence itself has reached its own finality you stand atop mountains of dust from the erosion of everything. Corrupted from a long and uncertain amount of time feasting on the hollow souls of those in the ringed city stands Gael, desperate for paint to recreate the painting at the very end of eternity. This battle is for the future of FromSoftware. Should Gael (a boss who straddles the line between Dark Souls and Bloodborne) win, then FromSoftware is 'stuck' making the same game over and over. In a way they are Gael, looking for those paints to make their pictures. They are unrecognisable from the Gael you met in the cathedral and he has become a large unstoppable tank with his chest ripped open. His insides are visible and you can see that his heart is no longer there. His heart is not in it anymore. You must win this, not just for your sake but for FromSoftware’s sake. You must overcome a challenge that stacks everything you have absorbed from the first game onwards to help them defeat their avatar. Gael is an extremely tough fight and requires you to be on your toes for the whole time, (perhaps a little bit of foreshadowing about what Sekiro was to bring to the table). He was a boss that pushed me further than almost any other boss and then when he fell a cathartic release overcame me. This was to be the last proper challenge of the souls game. This was me letting go of the Souls trilogy. Taking Gael's dark soul to a lone painter back in Friede's chapel and granting her the permission to paint a new reality in my name, freed FromSoftware from having to return to the Souls universe. Letting go is something that many people struggle with. Think about the numerous pieces of media that have been spoiled by continuing through extra series or sequels. Or the whole idea of sunk cost fallacy where you have put a certain amount of time and money into a venture or relationship that you no longer feel anything for but would hate to have feel you wasted. This is FromSoftware and essentially you the player letting go of the Souls Trilogy and becoming content that these three games will be it. From here on FromSoftware will do newer things because you helped them move past. It is poignant and complete, and if I was ending a trilogy responsible for changing the face of gaming then I could only hope to create something this memorable. And now here I sit at the end of it all. These games are masterpieces and the praise they get is deserved. I can take pride in being able to say I did it, I overcame these games. It has been a true journey and there have been so many moments where I thought perhaps I was simply unable to progress further and that the next ledge of progress was beyond my grasp. Never giving in to those doubts and tackling every single challenge head on taught me that even if I had not had the confidence in myself at the time, From Software did.
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Apr 28, 2021 10:44
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Escobarbarian posted:(the game is trying to guess if he’ll heal or not and it’s really easy cos the answer is ‘he won’t’) *Makes the face in my avatar again* (and thank you) Jerusalem posted:Great write-up, VG, and I can't wait to read your Sekiro write-up. I adore that game. Thank you! As a brief preview, I already think it is better than all three DS games and possibly better than Bloodborne but I am still sorting through my feelings and I still have lots of game to go! fridge corn posted:Beautiful post Veeg Thank you!! Luceo posted:Thanks for that post, VG! Before playing DeS on PS5, BB was my only From game, having platinumed that a few years ago. After DeS though, I hungered for more and am working my was through DS1R, and you've convinced me not to skip DS2 when I finish it. I hope you have as much fun with DS2 as I did. I genuinely think coming to the series much later and not really having any notions of what a sequel might be was a huge boon and part of why I loved it so. I had no time to imagine what a sequel might be let alone three years. It was simply end credits of DS1 right now we start DS2! Klaaz posted:That post made me buy the first one, never played a DS game before because hard games scare me I really hope you manage to get into it  Harrow posted:Awesome DS stuff This is so cool and you should also write more long form stuff I am just an interested. Plus tonight I can watch that video you linked me!Escobarbarian posted:One thing Veeg didn’t mention was that it turned out TheCoolSmelt actually WAS watching the stream. They only made themselves known at the very end. It was awesome Yes! I forgot to mention that. They also stuck around after all the invasions to watch me beat Dark Souls II. That whole stream was the most powerful amount of gaming I have done so far (the sheer amount of bosses and progress I made in that seven hour window has yet to be surpassed). Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed that long old post
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Apr 29, 2021 09:08
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There have been some amazing posts in here and I especially love the UT2K4 one. So many hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing that. Facing Worlds being one of the most ridiculous maps, or the two vehicles one. I had a bullet time mutator and when you pushed the start key you would have an audio clip of Morpheus saying 'You gotta let it all go Neo. Freee....yooooouuurrrr.....minnnndddd' and the last three words would get stretched out and you would be able to do amazing stuff. UT2K4 RPG with stats from kills and whatnot was also fantastic. It was also the first game I remember having great fun with ragdoll physics compared to Half Life 2.
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Jul 1, 2021 10:04
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I added the list to the op
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Jul 6, 2021 08:04
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Thanks to that Gunslinger post, I started it Tuesday night and played it on Tue evening and Wed evening. It was a lovely, fun and quick game that I have been meaning to try for ages. Thank you so much for the rec!
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Jul 17, 2021 08:28
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Thank you so much for posting this, it was an awesome read
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Dec 11, 2021 18:38
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