Top Ten Games of 2014

Since I've started this blog I've posted my top ten games of the year in text format. I'm going to continue doing that, but this year I also recorded a podcast where I discuss each choice a little more in-depth.

Keep in mind that these are my personal opinions, which may differ greatly from your own top ten picks for 2014. As usual I will start with the number ten game on my list and work my way to what I thought. If you want to read some more in depth thoughts on each game just click its name.

Let's this list going!

10. Transistor

The second game coming out of SuperGiant games, which shows they know how to make a good game. You play as Red, a singer who has lost her voice in a cyberpunk world. Armed only with a talking sword she must travel through the deserted city in order to find out what's going on.

The soundtrack, atmosphere, and combat blend together to create an unforgettable experience. I can't wait to see where SuperGiant goes from here.




9. Mario Kart 8


Mario Kart games don't really change much from year to year, but it's easy to tell when one is a quality product. Mario Kart 8 is certainly a quality product. It's the first HD iteration of the series and it looks beautiful. Nintendo has proven time and time again that they have the best art direction around.

On top of it looking beautiful it plays well. The karts have weight to them, and you actually have to slide in order to succeed. The game wasn't super surprising to me, since Nintendo knows how to make a solid kart racer. If you like Mario Kart, it's more of that!


8. Dark Souls 2

I got into the Souls franchise this year, and while the original Dark Souls is my favorite the sequel is pretty good too. It's more Dark Souls, but not necessarily as well thought out as the first. Still, you travel through numerous environment types and meet with infuriatingly difficult challenges.

With new mechanics it differentiates itself from the original, while keeping the experience fresh.




7. Rayman Legends

Rock solid platformers are getting increasingly hard to come by. Lucky for me Rayman Legends came out on current generation consoles, so I could take a crack at it. The Ubiart engine renders a beautiful world, that is backed up by some incredible platforming.

Rayman feels weighty, but glides through the air just right. More platformers should feel as tight as this does. It helps that there are a ton of unlockable stages and characters to boot!



6. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

This game made the list predicated entirely on the nemesis system. The Lord of the Rings elements
are completely ancillary to the experience. The nemesis system allows for you to make your own enemies and rivals. You get into fights with unique enemies who will remember you and react with tons of unique dialogue depending on the situation.

Rarely do I hope that developers directly steal from other games, but in this case I do. The nemesis system is super cool and I'd really like to see it in more games.

5. Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-

Guilty Gear has finally made its return. It looks incredible and is super fun to play. The story mode is like watching an anime, and more fighting games should follow its lead.

Very rarely do I go into training mode and practice combos in a fighting game, but with this I have. The combat system has been brought back down to a level that the average person has a chance of breaking in to. I'm not saying I'm going to get good at Guilty Gear, but I'm sure as hell going to try.


4. Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U

Smash is back. I love Melee, and what Project M is trying to do is admirable. I think that I enjoy
playing the new smash more than a mod though. The speed is the right distance between the slow motion of Brawl and the hyper speed of melee. It's a perfect blend of what makes smash very accessible and competitive.

The game is so jam packed with content it's hard to see it all. Out of all the games I played this year this one had the most fun multiplayer by a mile. Smash continues to be one of my favorite franchises of all time.


3. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call

Curtain Call brings back everything I loved about the original Theatrhythm, but adds the ability to
play multiplayer, and use the buttons as inputs. I still love to use the stylus, but it's cool that there is another option now.

The amount of music in this game is staggering. It has all the songs from the original, plus all of the DLC from that game. They then decided to add around one hundred more songs, and continue to throw out DLC. If you like rhythm games, and Final Fantasy you need to play this game.


2. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Initially I wrote this game off as being another dumb visual novel. I saw some footage of the game and decided to try it out. It's a visual novel, where you go into Phoenix Wright style trials, play insane
mini-games, and forge relationships. It mixes so many elements I love.

The main character is a talking bear, who wants high school kids to murder each other! It's over the top in a way that I can really get behind, but is appropriately grounded when it needs to be. The sequel somehow came out this year as well, and I'm chomping at the bit to play it.


1. Inazuma Eleven

I don't have the appropriate words to describe how much I love Inazuma Eleven. It's anime soccer on the DS. This year it finally got released in the U.S. on the 3DS Eshop. I bought it on a whim and couldn't put it down. Shortly afterwards my obsession with the game spiraled out of control and now I've beaten every game released in English and imported a European 3DS.

It's an appropriate mix of action, strategy, fun characters, and cool moves. There's a lot of content in Inazuma Eleven, and it's fun to find all of it. You put eleven players on the field and draw lines with the stylus to lead them, or tap the screen to have them pass/shoot. If they intersect with someone, or shoot on the goal they have the opportunity to use a special move, most of which are amazing. Axel Blaze catches the ball ON FIRE!

Inazuma Eleven grabbed me in a way that a game hasn't in a very long time. You could say I became obsessed with it. It was consuming every ounce of my free time for around three months until I had completed all four of the games released in English currently. It's a blast to play, and I'm glad I found it.

     -Manny

GOTY 2014 Podcast

2014 has come to a close, which means that Game of the Year is upon us. As usual I have selected my top ten games. For a change of pace I got together with Noukeo and we recorded our talk about what we believe to be the top ten games of 2014. Our lists are both quite different but share many similarities.

The audio is a little weird for some inexplicable reason. At random intervals my mic will echo for a few seconds. It seems to be some kind of feedback from when Nouk and I talk at the same time. *Shrugs* It's not too bad, but it was enough for me to notice it.

I hope that you enjoy our discussion! If you're not a fan of Podcasts I will be posting a text version of my list within the next few days.

Dark Souls 2: Darker, But With Less Soul

I've been putting off writing about Dark Souls 2 for far too long. Now that the first DLC has been released I feel like today is as good a day as any to finally get all these Dark Souls 2 thoughts off my chest. The reason that I'm not playing the DLC right now is that I'm kind of worried about it. 

I loved Dark Souls. It was an experience that is still fresh in my mind months after playing it. Since Dark Souls 2 came out so soon after I finished the original I was looking forward to it with anticipation. The fact that I'd be able to go through the new game with a sense of discovery was something I was super excited about. Discovering everything with the entire world at the same time was a really cool experience. The issue is that I can barely remember any of it. In order to understand that I had to leave myself to ruminate on the experience for a few months.

Leading up to the game's release info about the new and differing mechanics were being trickled out. Word on the street was that the game was a lot harder, which it was in the beginning. By the end I was walking through the game with little to no issue. 

Darker?

Many people play the Souls series for the challenge it provides. While I liked the challenge in Dark Souls, it was never really my main draw. Yes, I did feel good about myself when I overcame a challenge. I'm just not a huge fan of games being hard for the sake of being hard. Dark Souls was punishing, but it was often my fault if I died. I'm not in the majority with my thoughts though, so people obviously wanted the game to be more challenging.

Initially I found the game to be much harder. The main contributor to that is that when you die, you lose a percentage of your max health. So now you lose all of your souls, and have less health upon death. You can still reclaim your souls, but it's not quite as easy to reclaim your lost health. In order to do that you need to use a consumable effigy. Early on these items are very scarce, so I found myself often walking around with around half my max health. The early game difficulty is exacerbated by the lack of healing available to you. At first you only have consumable healing gems of varying sizes, which are also far and few between for a while.

The creepy old witches give your your first effigy.

Eventually though you get your very own Estus flask, which you can upgrade until you have 11. Unlike the previous entry you don't have to kindle each bonfire. Your upgrades are permanent, and like the previous game the flasks refill at each bonfire. Dark Souls 2 has far more bonfires and areas than its predecessor, so refilling is never a difficult task. It also helps that you can fast travel between all bonfires you've come across right from the start of the game. This had to be added, since you can no longer level up from any bonfire. You need to talk to the cloaked woman near the bonfire in the game's hub city Majula. 

Another change is that weapons degrade much faster. This would make the game more challenging if they didn't get fully restored at every bonfire. If your weapon does end up breaking you'll need to repair it at a blacksmith, but it never costs a whole lot. Your rings can break now as well, and those do actually cost a lot to repair, because most of the time their effects are amazing. They did however, make it so you can wear four rings now, which will net some pretty insane stat boosts. One ring in particular, the cling ring, makes it so you can't drop below 75% max health from death. Needless to say that's a pretty good one to have. 

There are so many more bonfires now.

Leveling in Dark Souls 2 comes much faster as well. By the end of the game I was a way higher level than I was at the end of the original. Granted, the stats are changed up a bit to compensate for the greater amount of souls available, but there was a point where I started to feel overpowered. In this game I took up the slower moving great sword, and sometimes I would also have a shield to block. A lot of people say that this makes the game easy, but I don't believe in sacrificing my enjoyment of a game in order to make it more difficult.

The thing that really made the game harder at first though was the difference in movement. I'm not a huge fan of the movement in Dark Souls 2. To me it feels way less sensitive. You really have to push the stick in order to get moving, where as in the original you could lightly touch the stick and creep along. It made the player character in the original feel much heavier, whereas the character movement in Dark Souls 2 feels kind of light and floaty. This much is just personal preference, but it definitely took me a while to get used to. If you don't know how your character is going to move, it's a huge issue when you need to make precise dodges and attacks.

This was basically me the entire game.

Dark Souls 2 is much different, but it's also largely the same. It's the same franchise that people have come to love, with some differentiating features in order to make it more difficult. It was harder for me at first, but by the end I was crushing everything I came across pretty decisively. There was certainly no Ornstein and Smough moment of sheer frustration in this game. At most I got stuck on a boss for three or four tries.

Much Less Soul

Before I get into this section I want to say that I enjoyed my time with Dark Souls 2. It was a well crafted sequel that was very much meant for fans of the series. They tried to do all the right things and a lot of them worked in favor of the gameplay. So now I'm going to get into exactly why I liked Dark Souls 2 way less than its predecessor. I'm willing to admit that the gameplay is improved overall, but the way the world design was nowhere near on par with the original.

I have come to terms with the fact that I didn't like Demon's Souls, because of its level based structure. I did however, fall in love with Dark Souls because of its open world nature. The entire world was connected in a logical way, and it was even connected in physical space to boot! I loved the fact that you could turn a corner in a new area and find yourself in an area that you had visited hours before. It was truly a well planned out world that felt like so much time had been out into it. I don't want to say that Dark Souls 2 was less thought out, but it certainly was not as well designed from a world building perspective.

This map is not possible if you go by the way everything is laid out in the game.

The town Majula acts as a central hub, much as the Firelink Shrine acted as a hub in the first game. From Firelink you could go to one of a few areas, which were all interconnected. From Majula you can also choose to go to a few areas, but none of them are connected at all. Instead of being a huge interconnected world Dark Souls 2 consists of several spokes that all come to a close in a dead-end. There's nothing less appealing to me than coming across a dead-end in what is essentially an open world game. My issue goes much deeper than that though. In the original you could see everything in the world. You'd be on a mountain top and be able to see other explorable areas. This is not the case in Dark Souls 2, and it bothers me because of how completely different each area is. Yes, it's cool to have a ton of different terrain types, but when you can't see the fiery volcano that's insanely large from anywhere else in the world it really breaks the experience for me. 

The physical world isn't the only issue I had either. Let's take the bosses for example. There are a ton of them, but if you asked me to recall any of them I'd only be able to think of a select few. In the original Dark Souls whenever you came across a boss it was a crazy encounter and each one felt unique. In Dark Souls 2 there may actually be too many bosses and far too many are humanoid. It's like someone saw how much people liked fighting Artorias in the first game and decided to do throw a ton of humanoids in. If they were all interesting it wouldn't be an issue, but many of them are very straightforward fights. There were a few cool ones though like the fight with a giant spider for example. 

Hmmm why can't you see this insane lava wasteland from anywhere?

I know I'm in the minority, but I really like the story of Dark Souls. Finding out about each individual character and boss was interesting. The world was very well built and had a ton of backstory. I feel like a tool saying that Dark Souls 2 isn't as well built, but it definitely seems to be lacking something that the original had. I had barely any idea what was going on with the plot of Dark Souls 2, and I was actively looking for it a majority of the time. Maybe it's something I needed to dig deeper for, but the fact that you just suddenly kind of appear in a new world isn't exactly the best plot setup.

 Perhaps it's the fact that Miyazaki didn't have a direct development role, or maybe my experience with the original game is something that can't be replicated. I just can't help but feel that some of the magic of the first game has dissipated in the second.

On to the DLC

With all of this being said I can't wait to try out the DLC. It will be coming in three episodes, all of which involve looking for crowns. Maybe this will have the interesting story I was looking for in the game, or maybe it will at least fill out a lot of the gaps. At the very least it will be interesting to see if I can get right back into the way the movement works, or if I'll have to get used to the way everything works again. I liked the game, but I just can't help but feel like it could have been so much more.  

Dark Souls 2 was a fun experience. I enjoyed it while I was playing it, but that experience has almost completely faded from my mind at this point, which is extremely disappointing to me. I could still tell you about the story of the original game. If you set me down in the world of the original I could still give you directions and tell you exactly what you need to do. I could tell you where bosses are, and what strategies worked for me. It's an experience that is solidified in my mind, which rarely happens anymore. I just wish Dark Souls 2 could have replicated that. 

Game Time - March 2014

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't spend a majority of this month playing Dark Souls 2. In fact I'm taking a break from it right now in order to write this. I've decided to not write anything about Dark Souls 2 yet, because I haven't beaten it. I have a feeling I'm very close to the ending, so when I get there you can bet I'll have a whole lot to say about it.

There were a few things this month that tore me away from Dark Souls 2 though, which is what I'll be telling you all about in this installment of Game Time. InFamous: Second Son came out, which I believe to be the first true next generation game for the PS4. It looks incredible for a console game.

I finally got around to playing Fez too, now that it has been released on PlayStation consoles. I bought the PC version for like $2 a while back during a Steam sale, but only played it for an hour or so. This time I downloaded it on the PS4 and actually completed it. I now understand why people praised it so highly when it originally came out.

I also played the newest addition to the BlazBlue franchise, but I'm not very enthused with it. It's another BlazBlue game and I find it harder and harder to get excited about the franchise. It's even harder now that ARC System Works has shown Guilty Gear Xrd Sign. It just made me realize how much more I like Guilty Gear than BlazBlue. That's not to say that BlazBlue is bad, I'm just not as into it as I once was.

Welcome to Game Time.

InFamous: Second Son

When a new console comes out, I find myself wanting to show it off. When the PS4 came out this past November there really weren't any games I could do that with. If I was going to do that now though I would definitely use InFamous: Second Son. For a console game it looks incredible. The graphics are amazing, but they're accentuated by the ridiculously awesome motion capture of all the actors. Delsin Rowe, the main character of Second Son is a Native American in his early to mid twenties. The way his body and face move it's almost like he's a real person. It's weird though, because it doesn't have an uncanny valley feeling that games like Heavy Rain had. It probably helps that he's actually a decently well written character while Cole, the protagonist in the previous 2 games, was generally pretty awful.

Second Son takes place in Seattle, Washington. The city itself is nothing special, but it sure looks good. It's like any other open world city really. You traverse the world in order to go from mission to mission while random events take place. Like the previous games you can choose to be either good or evil and the events will help you work towards either side. What really impressed me about the city is that the textures on everything didn't look like total shit. If you walk up to a sign you're actually going to be able to read it and it's not even blurry, which is some next level stuff.

Look at the texture on Delsin's hat. That's true next generation right there!

I wish I could say that InFamous: Second Son had a whole lot to offer outside of its awesome visuals, but I just can't. In terms of story it's the same kind of thing that always happens when super powers are involved. Some people think they're really cool, while other people feel that anyone who has them is evil and should be imprisoned. In the InFamous universe people with powers are called conduits, but the people who fear them call them bio-terrorists. Delsin discovers that he's a conduit when he comes into contact with a conduit who has the power of smoke. Turns out Delsin can take the powers of other conduits and use them himself.

As you may have guessed since Delsin can steal powers he receives a few different powers throughout the course of the game. He has to seek out new powers so that he can fight an evil lady with cement powers who is imprisoning conduits. Oh yeah, he also wants to get the cement shards out of his family and friends so they can walk again. I don't want to spoil the powers, but I will say that they're all pretty cool. You start off with smoke, which lets you go through vents to get up buildings, dash through fences, and shoot fire from your hands. It all handles very well and makes you feel like a proper superhero. You can get up buildings easily and move around with little effort, which makes traversing the huge city of Seattle fun. It feels a lot more smooth than the other InFamous games, which is nice. The only downgrade is the climbing. Previously you could just mash the jump button to climb up a building, because you'd stick to almost any ledge. This is no longer the case, so climbing is rarely ever an option.

Smoke is a cool power, but I like the second power you get the best.

I really like InFamous: Second Son, but at the same time it's extremely disappointing. The story was pretty good for the first half and then it starts to go downhill. The second half has a few missions that don't really seem related and then all of a sudden the final showdown is happening. The whole second half felt very rushed and the ending is super abrupt. What's even more disappointing though is that the only really cool thing about this game is that it looks awesome. Sure that's great and all, but I want the PlayStation 4 to bring new gaming experiences to the table. I realize that this is very early in the console's life cycle, but Second Son is just more of the same with a new character who has a different set of powers. Yes, it does control better, but that would have come with iteration anyways.

Second Son is a fun ride that looks pretty, but it's short lived and ultimately the same as the previous 2 entries in the franchise. If you have a PS4 it's definitely something you need to check out, but I have a feeling that once more games are released for the console it won't be remembered for very long.

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma

I'm not good at fighting games. This is something that I've come to terms with over the past few years. I'm decent at Super Smash Brothers Melee, but that's a very different beast from your traditional fighting game like BlazBlue. The only fighting game that I ever got remotely good at was the original BlazBlue. I could actually do a combo, which is something that I certainly can't do anymore. I used to like buying new fighting games to try them out and have fun, but I can't really do that anymore. A lot of the people around me are on a much higher level than I am, so there isn't ever really a period where we're on a level playing field. I get destroyed on the regular and don't really have any fun doing it. The last fighting game I really had fun with was Jojo's All-Star Battle, but since it's not a competitively viable fighting game no one will play it with me.

Despite knowing all of this I bought BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma anyways. I mainly got it for the story, which I suppose I'm still interested in. The entire series I've been waiting for my favorite character Jubei to become playable. He's a cat-man with a huge sword and I think he's awesome. Somehow, despite being a main character in the story he's still not playable and it's killing me! Somehow they can make up totally new characters who are playable in each game, but leave out a previously existing character who plays a major role in the story!

I just want to play as Jubei! *Weeps*

So far I haven't played a whole lot of the story, but I do enjoy it. It's in the form of a visual novel. High-res character art of two characters appear on either side of the screen with a text box. It's all voiced and fairly well done. At times it can be a bit unbearable though, which is what's really bogging me down. Sometimes the game can be just a bit too Anime. The characters interactions can be super dumb. It gets even worse when you stumble onto a joke ending. I don't think they're funny and I find it had to believe that anyone thinks they're funny, but I'm sure someone must otherwise they'd stop doing them. I hope they stop doing them.

I'm going to enjoy the story. I just don't know why I keep buying these games. I don't enjoy fighting the computer and get frustrated with my general ineptitude. Hopefully I can re-ignite my passion for fighting games. Guilty Gear Xrd Sign might be the game to do that, because it looks amazing. Also I really like Guilty Gear.

Fez

I wasn't a part of the Fez zeitgeist, but after playing it I wish that I was. The game is amazing. I thought this was going to be one of those indie titles that I finally get a chance to play and then find out it was blown way out of proportion. For Fez that certainly wasn't the case. Everything is awesome whether it be the music, art style, or gameplay mechanics. Everything in the game congeals to make a completely unforgettable game. Fez is the epitome of a polished video game. You can tell that every fiber of Phil Fish's being was put into creating this awesome game.

Fez at first glance is just a 2D platformer, but the protagonist Gomez quickly gets the power to rotate the world with his magical Fez. He is given the knowledge that the world is truly 3D, which makes the game very interesting. In order to make it so that Gomez can get to his destination you must rotate the world, which is in actuality 3D. When you rotate the world you can use new objects as platforms. If you see somewhere you don't think you can get to there is a high probability that you can actually get there if you rotate the world just right. Describing it makes it sound sound really boring, but in action it's really something amazing. It adds something to a genre that's been done to death.

It blows my mind that this image is just one of four possible options of this game state.

In order to advance in the game you need to collect golden cubes. You can also collect anti cubes although they're much harder to get. Golden cubes you can get by picking up bits of cube, or by completing platforming sections. Anti cubes require you to go a layer deeper into the game and figure out its ridiculously deep secrets. For one of the anti cubes I got I had to download a QR code reader on my tablet that gave me a button combination to enter on the controller. What's nuts is that that's one of the easier things to figure out. A lot of them have to do with a language derived from what look like Tetris blocks.

Once you beat Fez the journey isn't over, but it might be for me. There are all kinds of secrets to be discovered and the additional powers you get from completing the game allow for you to do some pretty crazy stuff. It makes you realize that nothing in Fez is just an art choice, or a piece of the background. Everything means something and it's up to you to figure it out. When the game first came out I remember the internet collectively working to figure out how to unlock all the secrets the game had to offer. I don't know if I'll ever get around to decoding the games crazy Tetris language, but it's cool to know it's there. I'm thinking about looking up a FAQ just to go through the insanity that happens after the game is "over."

I love the Fez Soundtrack so much.

I feel weird talking about Fez because it's so old now. I can't believe it took this long for it to come to PlayStation consoles and I don't know why I never bought it on the Xbox 360. It's a very immersive game. I originally planned to play it for an hour or so, but ended up not stopping until I had beaten it, which probably took around 6 hours. Most people have already played Fez, but if you haven't then you really need to. At least look up some of the amazing tracks on the soundtrack.

What's coming out?

I don't think I have any new games I'll be purchasing in April, which is good because I need to catch up with the ones I already have. As I mentioned at the top I'm still deep into Dark Souls 2. I've also started playing the HD remaster of Final Fantasy X for some reason despite the fact that I hate Tidus with every fiber of my being. It's even more annoying that they pronounce his name Tee-dus.

I'm sure I'll play a whole bunch of stuff, so we'll meet back here next month to talk about it.

    -Manny

The Darkest of Souls

There are so many people who sing the praises of the Souls franchise. Up until a few months ago I truly could not comprehend why. I picked up a copy of Demon's Souls a few years ago and never got into it. I tried so hard, but I felt like the game was actively trying to make me dislike it. Yes, it's super hard, but normally that kind of thing doesn't make me give up on a game completely. For some reason I felt directionless and devoid of all hope, which is why some people like these games in the first place. Hoping that I was just not in the right mindset I tried to get into Demon's Souls multiple times. Each time I'd beat a boss or two and then completely lose interest. This is the reason I was never interested in Dark Souls, until now, that is.

I've been hearing the praise of Dark Souls since it came out. I even started watching people play it somewhat frequently to try and see if I could glean some kind of enjoyment out of it. I didn't really end up enjoying it at all though and would often not pay very close attention. Something clicked in my brain a few months ago though that made me want to try it out. People always talk about it as if it's some kind of rite of passage, which in some sense it is. It's a truly difficult game, but if you're willing to put in the time and figure it out the game's not nearly as impenetrable as people make it out to be. In a way me trying out Dark Souls was like me trying out Monster Hunter. I just had to know why everyone thought it was so great. Turns out, I think Dark Souls is great too.

The silver knight looks so cool!

Yes, the game is difficult, but not impossible. I think that people make Dark Souls' difficulty out to be much more than it actually is. I see it as delayed gratification. In most modern games you're killing something every few seconds, and powering up as you go along. People like fast paced games that make you feel powerful. Dark Souls isn't fast paced and really makes you work in order to truly feel powerful. Sure, you can eventually get strong weapons and armor, but those won't necessarily make the game any easier. In order to truly get better you need to learn the ins and outs of the game's clunky systems. You need to approach every encounter with caution, because even basic enemies can strike you down at a moment's notice. Your character's movements are slow, deliberate, and filled with animation priority. You don't get thrown constant power-ups in order to keep the endorphin stream to your brain going. Souls, the games currency and experience, need to be earned through hard fought battles. 

Dark Souls makes you take time to think. It makes you value what you have earned. When you fall in battle you lose your souls. As long as you don't die again before returning to where you died, you can reclaim them. However, if you do die before reaching the blood stain your corpse left behind they're gone forever. The first time I lost a ton of souls I was devastated, but it taught me to be much more careful. It's cool, because you actually learn lessons in Dark Souls. You actually have to adapt in order to continue on. In some cases though you just have to persevere. 

The super heavy Havel armor helped me through to the end.

I try my hardest not to get angry with video games, but sometimes I just can't help it. Mid-way through the game Dark Souls decides to throw two bosses at you simultaneously. Those two bosses are Ornstein and Smough. During that fight I was literally screaming obscenities at my television. My rage was palpable. Ornstein kept flying across the room and impaling me with his spear, while big Smough and his fat self butt slammed me all day long. I fought those two for hours on end, until finally I had killed them both. The elation I felt when those two were beaten cannot even be described. I had a strategy that I knew would work, because I could get so close to winning every time. I kept running straight back into the battle until I won, which as I mentioned took hours. Dark Souls is a game of both learning and perseverance and that makes it unique.

In a lot of ways Dark Souls reminds me of Monster Hunter. They both seem impenetrable from the outside, they both have communities filled with elitist assholes, they both have clunky systems, and they're both inexplicably popular. Monster Hunter is more of a Japanese thing, while Dark Souls has a huge following both here in America and Japan. There are so many obscure things in Dark Souls, but passionate fans have figured all of them out. The wikis out there for the game are very in depth and you can learn anything you could possibly ever need to know about the game.

Just seeing these two fills me with rage,

I'm writing this the day before Dark Souls 2 comes out. I'm going to be picking it up at midnight and diving right in. What's scary is that there's hardly any information about the game on the internet right now. It's also a very exciting thing. Playing through Dark Souls I needed a lot of information in order to understand what was going on in the beginning. Without that I probably wouldn't have kept going, because some of the things the game does seem obtuse just for the sake of being obtuse. Kindling at bonfires for example made no sense to me and the broken English describing it didn't exactly help. Going into Dark Souls 2 I will be carrying my basic knowledge, but if I get stuck I'm not necessarily going to be able to find help. Going through the game at the same time as the rest of the community will be a completely different experience than I had with the original Dark Souls and I couldn't be more excited. 

I understand now why people like this series. It makes you work for everything. Hell, it doesn't even really tell a story unless you really go searching for it. You can go through the entire game and have barely any clue why anything is happening. That's quite a ridiculous notion, but somehow it works. For a lot of people exploring an open world and defeating enemies is enough, which just goes to show how well put together the game truly is. 

The DLC is pretty good too.

As a person who plays quite a few video games I'm proud that I was able to see Dark Souls through to completion. It's crazy to me how popular the franchise has become and I hope that it continues on, because there's really not a whole lot else like it out there.

     -Manny