Dark Souls III: The Ringed City DLC Gameplay

This is what I think is great about Dark Souls games.

Think of how long it must have taken to figure out exactly how to fuck with the player's ingrained habits and routines for how they interact with these environments. 3 games in this series, and still they find new ways to catch people off-guard. It's cheeky and I love it.

I kind of wish the main game had content this clever.


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~A.H.

Feb 06, 2017

This morning I woke up full of affection and a need to shower love on... something. Anything, really.

Then I dropped hard. Now I can't sleep because I'm so uncertain about who I am or where I should be or where I can go, or what I should do, or even what I WANT to do.

I never thought I'd have an identity crisis. I don't like it. I REALLY don't like being lost. I hate being without answers and knowing no one can help me, and I can't help me.

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The Last Guardian plays like a Fumito Ueda game. You do have to fight the controls and the camera quite a bit. But his games aren't meant to be loose, smooth, fast-paced arcadey experiences. I'd say they're much more focused on mood and setting than being "fun". In that sense, it's kind of the opposite of an action game, where the gameplay is the primary focus and the story is an afterthought.

And oh my fucking God, Trico is so precious I can't stand it. I'll bet the years and years it took for this game to be developed were spent just figuring out how animals behave and trying to make that work in a fictional creature's animations. I think I have a stronger stomach for animals in media portrayed in danger, but even when this thing is mildly sad or whatever it hurts my heart. I don't think I could recommend this game to someone who loves animals.

I don't know what happens past the first couple of hours, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Tragic Circumstance later. There was a part like that in Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda's previous game... But then again, they did go back on that during the credits, so... *shrug*.

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I've heard a good way to make money as an artist is to learn how to draw anthropomorphic characters. Apparently furries are rolling in the fat stacks of cash.

I tried doing some sketches, and it didn't feel right to me. I don't know if it's because I'm not good enough at it yet, or if I just don't want the association of being a "furry artist" or whatever.

I admit that is a prejudice on my part. I've known people who despise furries, and I think that's silly, but I do feel some apprehension about drawing this stuff. But if I learn how, I might be able to make some money which I can put towards good causes as well as selfish bullshit. So maybe I should just suck it up and learn to draw?


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~A.H.

Light Up The Night

I got the platinum trophy in Fallout 4. Makes it the 3rd game I've been able to do that in(besides Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne).

I bought The Last Guardian. I probably should not have splurged this month. I plan to donate to stuff like the ACLU, and I want to send something to Flint, Michigan, since I hear they still don't have clean drinking water because of their scumbag government.

...I mean, I guess this will be a monthly thing, so I guess it doesn't matter which month I splurge on something for myself.

...God, I really hope the resistance going on right now isn't a fad. I've depended on the United States to be stronger than I am, in the event of a global catastrophe. I really don't want that to be another thing I regretted believing in.


I'm also only just now getting acquainted with the work of The Protomen. I regret not listening to their stuff sooner.


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~A.H.

Every Empire Falls

You know what the worst part of this election was?

The fact that we have to see and hear Donald Trump every day for the next 8 years.

But the second worst part?

It was being left out of the conversation by the Democratic Party, who ignored the candidate people wanted, in order to back someone that would be easier to control. A person they knew people hated.

But the third worst part?

Finding out that there are way more monsters in the United States than I once thought. And now they have all of the power for the next few decades(remember: Donald gets to pick the replacement for Scalia on the Supreme Court. That shit is going to haunt you for the rest of your natural lives, at the very least).

But the fourth worst part?

It was totally preventable. And no, I don't mean in any kind of fantasy about assassinations, I'm talking within the systems we were given. They had all of the time in the world to prepare for this. They had the whole world, and Donald himself displaying exactly why they should not have let him win. They had everything they needed to win fair and square, and they fucked everything up.

The system did not fail. The people did. The people failed to understand the most important part of a presidential election in the U.S.

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The Walking Dead And Buried

If a television show is at least decent, but I don't like any of the characters, I'm less likely to watch it.

If a television show is bad, but I really like one or more of the characters, I might watch it.

If a television show kills off the only character I liked AND devotes itself to being brainless, godawful dreck, I write bitter articles about it, apparently.

There is nothing left for me in The Walking Dead. I've given it a chance in video games, in comics and on television, and in all three cases it quickly deteriorated my will to live. Not just because of the death and misery it gets off to, but because of how smugly self-assured this franchise is that it's Saying Something Important, or that it's smart and compelling drama.

Usually about five seconds before turning into a dumpster fire.

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Dark Souls 2: No Deaths Playthrough Ending

A couple of days ago, I beat Dark Souls 2 without dying. It took 9 months of constant fuck-ups and swearing and resentment, blaming myself, my controller, the game(and to be fair, I'd say they were all valid targets of blame at different points). But it finally happened.

I set a goal for myself last year, and now I've achieved that goal.




Granted, I overleveled the fuck out of my character, and I wasn't going for some kind of insane world record or anything. The point wasn't to try and be the best person to ever play the game, just to see if I could beat every boss in the game without dying in a single playthrough.

Was it worth it? I mean, I didn't feel any different. I always knew I COULD do it, theoretically. I'm just surprised at how many bullshit deaths these games threw at me before I got this far. If nothing else, it provided a welcome distraction from the upcoming US election.

So umm... yeah. That's what I've been up to this year.


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~A.H.

One: 2

Could someone explain what the hell happened to video game titles? What the fuck is a “Horizon: Zero Dawn” or a “Bravely Default”? Or “Kingdom Hearts: 218/2 Days > Destiny Divide = Fart” or whatever. Do they leave this up to a random number generator? What is the reason for this? How does this get past all of the people in corporate and all of the people who are paid to make sure you don't have a stupid-sounding brand?

Another one: Games in a long-running franchise that have the exact same title as the first game in the series, so talking about it is prefaced with confusion.

“Hey, have you played Doom?” 

“Yeah, I remember that game when I was a kid.” 

“No, not DOOM Doom. The new Doom. The one that’s also called Doom but came out more recently than the other game that’s called Doom.” 

Sonic the Hedgehog. Tomb Raider. Thief. Mortal Kombat. That’s like if the next big JRPG were called “Final Fantasy 2″. People get paid millions of dollars to come up with names for these products, and everyone apparently forgot that subtitles are a thing?


You know what the new Spider-Man reboot is called? “Spider-Man: Homecoming”. See, they put another word in there to distinguish it from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, as a small courtesy to anyone who tries to talk about this shit. Especially in an age where word-of-mouth social media regurgitation-as-free advertising is so important.


This reminds me: there’s an old PSX-era EA game I played a demo of called “One”. And I always thought, man, what are they gonna call the sequel?

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~A.H.