Co-Op Critics

March 21, 2013 In Uncategorized

Postcards from the Abyss–Part 6: Oh, Manus

Having made it through Oolacile Township and the Chasm of the Abyss, it was time for me and my two anonymous compatriots to face off against the big boss of the’ Artorias of the Abyss DLC–Manus, Father of the Abyss.

Manus is an absolute beast of a boss, and maybe the best boss fight of the entire Dark Souls game. As you enter his lair, a cut scene triggers that is creepy as heck, as you are grabbed by a giant ghostly hand and thrown down into his arena, where he slowly steps out of the shadows. He’s got one giant ghostly hand that he uses for long-range melee attacks, and he wields a staff in the other that he uses to rain dark magic down upon you with. For me, the first key to this battle was staying alive until my colleagues arrived, as there is a slight delay due to them having to go through the fog gate as well.

The battle begins with a lot of melee attacks, and the key for me was trying to stay out of range early, until I figured out the attack patterns. While the two other players distracted him, I was able to summon in Sif the wolf to aid us. Bringing Sif in is more of a novelty, as he doesn’t do a lot of damage and his main purpose is to distract Manus so you can attack.

I don’t have great ranged attacks, so I had to get in there with my Black Knight Great Axe and try to do some damage without getting caught in Manus’ sweep attacks. One of the players with me was a spellcaster, so they hung back and slung spells from afar while the other player and I whittled away at Manus’ health.

When his health dropped to about half, Manus changed tactics and started using magic primarily. One particularly nasty spell is Dark Rain, where he showers part of the arena with dark magic meteorites that are tough to dodge. luckily, I had gotten an artifact called the Silver Pendant earlier in Oolacile, which creates a temporary shield against dark magic. My strategy then became using the shield during magic attacks, and then running in to get a few hits in on Manus. My colleagues used pretty much the same strategy, and we eventually took Manus down. I was rewarded with 10 Humanity and 60,000 souls for the victory.

Overall, Manus is a blast to fight (if you have a friend or two along), and is easily one of the best bosses in the game. In fact, Artorias of the Abyss as a whole might be the best area in the entire Dark Souls game, which is high praise. It’s rare for DLC to live up to the quality of the main game, and even rarer for it to surpass the main game, but Artorias of the Abyss is some of the best add-on content I’ve ever played. if you’re a Dark Souls player, don’t hesitate to shell out the $15 for this content.

Side Note: There and Back Again
After spending so much time with Artorias of the Abyss, I was once again completely hooked on Dark Souls. I needed to finish the rest of the game with my character, and so I did.

After beating Manus, I went to New Londo Ruins, battling through the ghosts that inhabit the lace and then on down into The Abyss to take down The Four Kings. From there, it was back to the Duke’s Archives and the Crystal Cave to fight the white dragon Seath the Scaleless. From there, I trekked back to the Catacombs (via Firelink Shrine) and onto the Tomb of Giants to face Gravelord Nito. Finally, I traversed the Demon Ruins, taking down the Ceaseless Discharge and the Demon Firesage on my way to Lost Izaltih.

After defeating the Bed of Chaos, I had all of the Lord Souls I needed to unlock the patch to the final boss–Lord Gwynn. I took him down as well, finishing the game for the second time, and I immediately started on New Game+ with the same character.

As of right now, I have over 200 hours logged into Dark Souls. I just started a third character, a faith build this time, and I’ll be discussing that playthrough in a new series entitled Defenders of the Faith. Stay tuned!

March 13, 2013 In Uncategorized

The Year of B-Games–Binary Domain

I’m kicking off the Year of B-Games with a game that should not be on this list, because it’s too damn good–Binary Domain.

What is it?
Binary Domain is a third-person sci-fi shooter developed by the Yakuza team and published by SEGA. It debuted on the XBox 360 and PS3 in February of 2012, and made its way to PC in April of 2012. The game takes place in a future where robotics have advanced to the point of being able to pass for human beings. You play as part of a “Rust Crew,” a team that is sent into Japan to investigate a corporation thought to have breached international laws regarding the creation of human-like robots. Things go downhill from there.

Why Does It Make the B-Game List?
While it has a Metacritic score of 72 (considered “good” on most review scales), Binary Domain is primarily on this list because it sold very poorly when it came out. In the month it debuted in the US, Binary Domain sold a total of 20,000 copies on the XBox 360 and PS3 combined. This game was completely overshadowed by the juggernaut that was Mass Effect 3, and it didn’t help that SEGA did very little in the way of marketing for it. This game came and went very quickly.in the US, although it fared better in Japan. On a slightly positive note, it does look like lifetime sales of the game are around 360,000 (according to VGChartz), which doesn’t seen too bad, but what do I know?

Why It’s Worth Playing
Let’s start with the story. Granted, I’m biased, as I know writer Antony Johnston, who worked on the story. But the story is a lot of fun, with nods to classics like Blade Runner as well as a few of John Carpenter’s movies (They Live, Big Trouble in Little China) along the way. The dialogue is well written and genuinely funny in a places. There’s an interesting love story woven into the game as well, and in general, all the characters are pretty well defined, if archetypal.

That leads me to the second reason this game is worth playing–the squad dynamic. On a basic level, you usually move through the game with a squad of three characters, which you can choose from a roster of several as the game goes on. In combat, you can either use voice or button commands to give order like “Charge,” “Fire,” “Retreat” and a bunch more. I found the voice controls to work surprisingly well, and because you can use them in dialogue as well, there are times where the interaction between you and the characters has a great flow to it.

You also get to manage your squad in terms of gear upgrades, improving both weapon performance as well s offensive and defensive capabilities. It’s not very deep, but it adds another layer to the squad management.

Finally, there’s a trust system with the other characters on your roster, and it’s based on how you respond to dialogue as well as your actions in combat. As you progress through the game, you can build trust with your teammates, which can alter how parts of the game play out, especially near the end.

Where does it stumble?
My only major knock against the game is that the squad AI is not great at times. Because the trust system is affected by how well you do in combat, when a squad member walks across your line of fire in the middle of a fight, they get upset at you and you actually lose trust. Granted, it’s not hard to get it back, but there were times that I had to work to get teammates back on my side because I accidentally shot them when they blindly ran in between me and an enemy. It happened enough times over the course of the game to be mildly annoying.

Other than that though, I really have no knocks against this game, It’s well put together all around.

Closing Thoughts
Just one: This game was criminally overlooked. It’s a blast from start to finish.

You can grab Binary Domain for $20 brand new on XBox 360 and PS3, and for $25 on Steam right now. It’s well worth your time and money.

NOTE: If you’re interested, check out this interview I did with Antony Johnston about the game when it launched last year.

March 8, 2013 In Uncategorized

Let the Year of “B-Games” Begin!!

A couple weeks ago I posted about how I just don’t have the time in my life anymore to play games as much as I’d like to. As a result, I’m buying fewer games, but spending more time with those games, trying to get as much out of the experience as I can. One of the byproducts of this approach is that it has largely freed me from the “new release” cycle of gaming, where I needed to play all the new games when everyone else was playing them, just to feel connected to the conversations of the moment. Now I pick and choose, buying games that I am really interested in, and often buying them months after release, when the price has dropped, or picking them up during digital sales on Steam, PSN or XBox Live.

One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that my gaming tastes have changed over the past few years as well, and they now resemble my taste in movies more than ever. Specifically, I find myself more interested in low-budget and overlooked games than in big budget, AAA releases. And I’m not necessarily talking about indie games. I’m talking about console games that, if they were movies, would be put in the “B-Movie” category. They could fall into this category for a variety of reasons. The most common reason is that they were made on a small budget compared to their more high-profile brethren. But, they also could have had a rocky development cycle, or a really short development cycle (as a lot of licensed games have). Or maybe they’re a port of a game that was put out on another platform. Whatever the reason, I want to play these games.

But wait, you might say, you don’t even have time to play all the “good” games. Why would you spend time with games that are, in many cases, not very good at all?

I will answer that by going back to my movie analogy. My favorite genre is low-budget horror movies. The reason I love these movies so much is that I’m always fascinated to see what the director, the cast, and the special effects team do with the limitations they have. Do they set the movie in one location? Do they overly rely on digital effects, or do they invest in practical effects at the cost of something else? What things does the movie prioritize, and what does it compromise? Does the story rely on a bunch of tropes, or really try to do something different? And if it does use tropes, how well does it execute on them?

I think the same way about low-budget or “B-category” games. What did the devs decide to prioritize versus compromise? Does the game have some really interesting systems but really bad visuals? Is the story the strong point, but the mechanics are bad? What’s the game’s strongest quality? What did the developer decide to build around? What are the interesting qualities of this game, despite the fact that it might not be very good overall?

In many ways, as someone who enjoys thinking about the process behind the product, “B-games” are so much more interesting to play than most big-budget games.

Don’t get me wrong, I still play a lot of big-budget games, and many of them are awesome and very interesting. But there is something about those mid to lower-tier games that fascinates me. And the reasons I’ve been thinking about this issue now are twofold. First, I am fascinated by the discussion around Aliens: Colonial Marines, and I will be grabbing it as soon as it drops in price. Second, since we are entering the end of this console generation, there is a whole library of games that are available on the cheap. Games you would never think of paying $60 for can be gotten for under $10 in most cases.

So, over the next year I’m going to revisit some of the “B-games” I’ve played, trying to finish the ones I can and figure out why I left the ones I didn’t finish. I’m looking forward to writing about them.

I’m sure everyone out there has their own definition of a “B-game,” but here’s a list of some that I’ve played that fit my definition:

Velvet Assassin The Saboteur
Legendary Alone in the Dark
Alpha Protocol Dark Sector
Binary Domain Brink
Clive Barker’s Jericho Damnation
Deadly Premonition Far Cry Vengeance (Wii)
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra Hellboy: The Science of Evil
X-Blades Rise of Nightmares
Section 8: Prejudice Shadowrun
Two Worlds I & II The Conduit
Wanted: Weapons of Fate Wet
Raven Squad: Operation Hidden Dagger The Club

March 2, 2013 In Uncategorized

Postcards from the Abyss–Part 5: Oolacile and Chasm of the Abyss

The primary boss of the Artorias of the Abyss DLC is arguably the best boss fight in the entire game. Before I could even face off against him, however, I had to get to him. And that was no easy journey.

One of the primary tenets of Dark Souls is that you will die–a lot. So, you want to make sure that each trek into an area has a purpose, so you’re not just wasting time. Scouting runs are common. There are also times when you know you will die in a certain area, but you’re trying to get a particular item, so it’s worth the suicide run. Items stay with you after you die, so running into certain death to grab that weapon you want is worth the extra time you’ll spend retreading through an area later.

The other reason to go on a suicide run is to unlock a shortcut that can be used later to bypass most of the level. That was my primary purpose in heading into the Oolacile Dungeon. I used up most of my Estus Flasks (healing) and a good bunch of pyromancy spells along the way to unlocking the shortcut, because I knew I wouldn’t be going on to fight the boss right afterward.

The enemies in Oolacile Township and in the dungeon are pretty tough, and also some of the more interesting in the game. The main grunts are called Bloatheads, twisted former citizens of Oolacile that have been warped into creatures with eye-filled heads and oversized arms. Their arm swipes can break your guard, so taking them one at a time is preferable. There are also Bloathead Sorcerers, who fire ranged attacks at you while the the others try to beat you to a pulp.

I fought through several pockets of the Bloatheads before coming to the shortcut area, which allows you to take an elevator down from a point right near the bonfire you spawn at. Once I’d done that, I had to fight through another half dozen Bloatheads and then face off against an enemy called the Chained Prisoner–a brute that carries a ball and chain, as well as the pole he was chained to. He uses sweep and charging attacks, so evasion and ranged attacks work best against him. I blasted away with fireballs while trying to stay out of his way (sometimes unsuccessfully), and I managed to take him down. From there, it was a short trip to another bonfire, and then the final part of the level, the Chasm of the Abyss.

Chasm of the Abyss, is a fantastic and challenging area. For one, it’s steeped in darkness. Visibility is limited, and the initial part of the level is crawling with Bloatheads. There are also a ton of ghostly creatures called Humanity Phantoms lurking throughout the level, and their touch drains life from you pretty quickly. They cannot be blocked, so I avoided the ones I could, and tried to dispatch the others quickly. They attack in groups though, so I died a couple of times just trying to get through them.

As is often the case, I made a few exploratory runs into the level, learning and dying along the way. When I thought that I had a pretty good understanding of the layout, I became human and summoned a couple of players into my game. Things started out great, as my two guardian angels started making short work of the Bloatheads and most of the Humanity Phantoms. We even rescued the soul of Sif, the Great Wolf, which then allows him to be summoned for the final boss battle. As we were doing so though, I got the message that I had been invaded. What followed was one of the most surprising deaths I’ve had in the game.

I kept waiting for the invader to appear, but he didn’t–until just the right moment. We had made it almost to the end of the level, and we had to descend a fallen pillar, balancing on the thin pathway to get down to the fog gate and the Manus fight. Out of nowhere, the invader snuck up behind me on the pathway and blasted me with a magic attack from behind, knocking me off the pillar and sending me to my death. I screamed and laughed the same time, as I was so close, yet that was such a great kill on his or her part.

Lucky for me, when I respawned at the bonfire, I was able to summon two other players into my game again, one of whom had just been with me when I got ambushed. We moved through the level pretty quickly and made it to the fog gate for the showdown with Manus, which I’ll talk about next time.

February 14, 2013 In Uncategorized

Celebrate Valentine’s Day With an Extra-Large Episode of Co-Op Critics!

In this marathon episode of Co-Op Critics, Brian and Dan are joined by Christina Grenhart and Erik Haltson to talk about the current culture of gaming, from online interactions to how games are covered by the enthusiast press.

You can either listen to the episode here on the enbedded player to the right, or download it here.

You can follow Brian on Twitter @BrianLeTendre and check out his blog at www.seebrianwrite.com.

Dan Evans can be found on Twitter @Sk8j

You can find Christina’s amazing blog “Bioware According to Mom” at biowareaccordingtomom.tumblr.com, and you can follow her on twitter at @clgrenhart

You can find Erik Haltson on Twitter @Erik_Haltson, and he will also be posting on Co-Op Critics blog in the future.

For more gaming discussion, head over to www.co-opcritics.com!

January 25, 2013 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Video Game Championship Wrestling III

WWE’s Royal Rumble 2013 will take place this weekend, so it’s as good a time as any to check on one of my favorite online video gaming streams, Bazza87’s Video Game Championship Wrestling.

Several developments have taken place since when we last checked in with Video Game Championship Wrestling. The most significant development has been Bazza87’s agreement to a partnership deal with Twitch, which caused a number of fans to raise their concerns about how the stream would theoretically need to change in order to maintain the partnership. In many ways, Bazza87’s partnership with Twitch, which would generate revenue for Bazza87 for the work he puts into making the stream one of the most interesting views on the Web, reminded me of when independent wrestling companies sign deals with television stations and must change.

When Extreme Championship Wrestling, at the time the third largest wrestling promotion in the United States, signed a national television distribution deal in 1999 with TNN, which was then known as The Nashville Network and transformed into The National Network and is today known as Spike, Extreme Championship Wrestling fans balanced their hope for the company’s survival because of the revenue that this deal brought and the concerns that the company would have to tone down its content in order to satisfy TNN’s advertisers. In many ways, Extreme Championship Wrestling fans’ fears were ultimately confirmed. Recently, when Ring of Honor, the largest independent wrestling company currently in operation and in many ways Extreme Championship Wrestling’s successor, signed a national television distribution deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group, the same concerns about how Ring of Honor would have to change its content in order to satisfy Sinclair Broadcast Group and its advertisers arose among Ring of Honor fans. The fear boils down to the effect money has on art.

Extreme Championship Wrestling, the cautionary example for all independent wrestling companies that followed.

Modern professional wrestling tradition dictates that a wrestler who is perceived to prioritize money over the fans must be taunted with chants of “You sold out!” I can’t say that the chant originated in Extreme Championship Wrestling when its wrestlers would leave the company for more lucrative contracts with World Championship Wrestling or World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment), but its use in Extreme Championship Wrestling certainly popularized it. So, when Bazza87, through “Baz McMahon,” his avatar in Video Game Championship Wrestling show, announced his deal with Twitch during the January 22, 2013 Video Game Championship Wrestling show, he piped in the “You sold out” chant into his show to tie his show to professional wrestling tropes once again. He then addressed his fans’ concerns that the partnership would cause Bazza87 to stop using certain songs during the show by stating unequivocally, “If I play certain music that I don’t have permission to use…this channel could get shut down. Well, what stops me from making a new channel if that happens? I’d lose my partnership sure, but VGCW will live on. So let’s answer the question. Will I stop using certain music? No chance in hell.” And of course the scene ended with “No Chance in Hell,” the theme song for both Baz McMahon in Video Game Championship Wrestling and Mr. McMahon in World Wrestling Entertainment.

Bazza87’s broadcasting pace has not slowed; since our last post, Bazza87 has held shows on December 23, January 1, January 5, January 13, January 16, January 17, and January 22. The regular scheduling has also continued, but it does not seem to have negatively affected Video Game Championship Wrestling’s popularity. Each show continues to be viewed live by 2000-3000 viewers, and the Twitch chat and the NeoGAF thread remain active during shows.

The Video Game Championship Wrestling championship churn that I discussed last time seems to have stabilized a little. The VGCW Championship bounced from Proto Man to Donkey Kong on the December 19 show and to Solid Snake on the December 23 show, but it has since remained with Raphael, who defeated Solid Snake on the January 1 show. Raphael has defended against Dr. Eggman’s master plan twice and Dan Hibiki. Meanwhile, the team of Dr. Eggman and Dr. Wily, collectively known as The Practice, defeated GameCenter FU, the team of the Angry Video Game Nerd and GameCenter CX’s host Shinya Arino, for the Co-Op Championship on the December 19 show. The Practice defended their titles against Ganondorf and Zangief’s Gerudo Skies before losing them to Mr. Satan and Dan Hibiki’s Raw Power, who have so far successfully defended their titles against Mega Man and Proto Man’s Team Light.

F.K. In the coffee!

Bazza87 has also tried to refresh the roster by introducing new characters, such as Capcom’s Mike Haggar, Gary Oak, Locke Cole and Sabin Rene Figaro from Final Fantasy VI, and Ron Burgundy while also removing characters like Wreck-It Ralph. Every viewer probably has characters whom he or she thinks should be eliminated or added, and the Video Game Championship Wrestling Wikia now has a character suggestion page to accommodate the fans’ desires. As always, Bazza87’s ability to meet fan requests for characters depends on the availability of the Create-a-Wrestler model in the PS3’s WWE ’13 online community, the need to balance introducing too many new characters and eliminating old favorites, consideration of whether the character would appeal to enough viewers, and whether the character was imbued with enough personality in his or her home game to make him or her worthwhile in a freeform meme melting pot like Video Game Championship Wrestling. For example, Francis York Morgan from Deadly Premonition might be a great character to introduce because of Deadly Premonition‘s cult status, the notoriety of “Life Is Beautiful” from the Deadly Premonition soundtrack, the sheer number of remixes available for “Life Is Beautiful,” and the memes that originated from Deadly Premonition, but he wouldn’t be a good character to add because he’s visually similar to Phoenix Wright, who’s already in the game.

The intersection between the information that viewers bring with them and what happens in the game’s simulation continues to be a primary source of Video Game Championship Wrestling’s entertainment. In the Pokemon cartoon, Ash Ketchum toiled in Gary Oak’s shadow. On the January 6, 2013 show, Gary Oak debuted in Video Game Championship Wrestling to challenge Ash Ketchum and remind him that Gary Oak is better than Ash Ketchum. To the viewers’ surprise, Ash Ketchum beat Gary Oak, as the game’s AI decided that Ash Ketchum was better than Gary Oak on that day.

Ash was no loser on the January 6, 2013 show.

Furthermore, Bazza87 has addressed the difficulty of creating compelling professional wrestling storylines caused by his inability to directly control the matches’ outcomes by relying more heavily on WWE ’13‘s story creation tools. The current storyline concerns Phoenix Wright’s quest to uncover who ran down Little Mac with a sedan. Nappa joined Phoenix Wright in this investigation, while Baz McMahon continued to hinder their attempts to uncover the culprit by pitting them against his stooges, Ezio, Raphael, and Gary Oak. On the January 22, 2013 show, Phoenix Wright, Nappa, and Solid Snake were able to defeat Ezio, Raphael, and Gary Oak in a tag team match, which then allowed Phoenix Wright to arrest Baz McMahon. However, Bazza87 was able to use another tool available to him, direct text insertion into the Twitch video player, to create a cutscene to show that Baz McMahon was only a red herring and that there is someone else responsible for Little Mac’s accident.

If Baz McMahon wasn’t the real culprit, who is?

While Phoenix Wright’s investigation continues to be the central storyline running through Video Game Championship Wrestling, my favorite has been the rise and fall of Vegeta, jobber extraordinaire. Vegeta had earned his reputation for futility by losing almost every singles match in which he’s participated until he faced fan favorite Charles Barkley. While Charles Barkley has one of the best theme songs in Video Game Championship Wrestling, he’s had middling success in matches. He reached his lowest point when he lost to Vegeta on the January 16, 2013 show; this loss started a small feud between Vegeta and Charles Barkley and between Vegeta’s fans and Charles Barkley’s supporters. While Charles Barkley was able to win a Best Out of 3 Falls match against Vegeta, Vegeta has actually won 2 matches against Charles Barkley, to Barkley’s eternal shame. Everyone enjoys stories of redemption, and Vegeta’s little redemption at Barkley’s expense was particularly entertaining.

Finally, the community’s involvement with Video Game Championship Wrestling expanded when the Video Game Championship Wikia opened. Fans sprang to action to create entries detailing each wrestler, the stream’s history, and documenting the universe that Bazza87 and the fans have created, such as the sordid history of Table-san. This type of community involvement is key to Video Game Championship Wrestling’s sustainability.

Time passes and things change, but Video Game Championship Wrestling continues to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the gaming community that I’ve experienced. There was a rumor that the organizers of the Evo Championship Series were willing to exhibit Video Game Championship Wrestling at Evo 2013, but nothing seems to have come out of that rumor so far. Bazza87 has addressed some of the major concerns about the stream’s sustainability that I outlined in my previous posts about Video Game Championship Wrestling, and I look forward to how Video Game Championship Wrestling will continue to evolve in the future.

January 12, 2013 In Uncategorized

Postcards From the Abyss–Part 4: Here There Be Dragons (Well, Just One, Actually)

I cannot tell you how much I love the new Artorias of the Abyss DLC. All of the areas and bosses have been interesting, no more so than the final two bosses. I’m going to talk about them in order, but I actually fought them in reverse order.

Black Dragon Kalameet is a giant undead dragon that inhabits the valley between Royal Wood and Oolacile. In order to even fight him, I had to go interact with an NPC named Hawkeye Gough, one of the four Knights of Gywn, and a Greatarcher, a group who used to fight Dragons. When you interact with him, he helps you by wounding Kalameet with a great arrow so that he can’t fly. You then proceed down into the valley to fight him.

Having scoped out Kalameet, I knew I would need help with this battle. I actually let myself be summoned into others’ games a few times so I could face off against the dragon and hone my strategy. I’m a melee-based character with heavy armor, so evading isn’t my strong suit. I needed someone to keep the focus off of me so I could get close and do some real damage. So, I enlisted a couple of summoned characters to assist, and into battle we went. My preparation had paid off, as I knew Kalameet’s patterns when I faced him in my world. He has breath weapons that uses both in an arc, and in a concentrated blast by jumping up and firing directly below himself. He also uses head and tail swipes as his primary melee attacks. He also has a vicious telekinetic attack that results in you being susceptible to double damage for a time. I knew enough to avoid that one due to previous deaths at the hands of it.

The strategy was fairly simple–I needed the other players to distract Kalameet with ranged attacks so I could get in and use by Black Knight Greataxe. The great thing is, the other players knew this. Because there’s no voice chat in Dark Souls, you need to pay attention to what you can see from other characters. I chose to summon one character who was a spellcaster, and one who looked fast but used melee weapons. Since I’m slow but pack a lot of punch, they complimented my character well.

The battle played out according to plan. The spellcaster fired Soul Arrows and Soul Spears (magic missiles for you D&D fans), the other character dodged and struck, keeping the attention focused on him (or her), and I was able to land enough big shots to take the dragon down on the first attempt. We also managed to cut off its tail, and I was rewarded with an obsidian greatsword, a cool looking weapon that served as an alternative to my greataxe for awhile.

Kalameet is a really fun boss to fight, and I went back at least a dozen times to fight him with others before finishing my playthrough.

Next time I’ll recount my battle with the big bad of Artorias of the Abyss–Manus.

January 4, 2013 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Awesome Games Done Quick 2013

I can’t remember the last time I turned on my Xbox 360 to play video games. The backlog remains, but I haven’t made any attempts in months to clear it. Most of my play takes place on my iPad these days, and the actual experience of gaming feels very disposable these days. More than anything else, though, I seem to be spending a lot of time watching other people play. Whether it’s archived Let’s Play videos, Bazza87’s Video Game Championship Wrestling stream, or various videos on GiantBomb, my gaming experience these days seems to be composed of vicarious thrills lately.

For me, the original and purest source of vicarious gaming thrills is still the Speed Demos Archive, the repository of speedrun videos since 2004. In my previous post about the New Game Masters, I stated that the participants in the Penny Arcade Expo’s Omegathon and players like Ray “Stallion83” Cox carry the spirit of masterful play, adaptability, and comfort with all kinds of games and systems that players on Video Power and in the Nintendo World Championship Series had, but I neglected to talk about speedrunners who conquer games as quickly as possible. Their speedruns show old games like Jackal and Metroid in new ways that I would not have considered. Without speedrunners, I wouldn’t have thought about sequence-breaking in games like Super Metroid, where Power Bombs could be collected before the Grapple Beam, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, where items from all temples can be collected before finishing the first temple.

Speedrunners are perfectionists, players who patiently explore every facet of the games that they play to discover any secret that might lower their playtimes by seconds. In my experience, this can be done either through relentless experimentation achieved through playing the same game over and over or by browsing into the game’s actual code. They approach games like they’re puzzles waiting to be deconstructed, and like the players who post Let’s Play videos, they speedrun through games because they love them.

Speedrunning records confuse my eyes every time I read them, even though I’ve watched enough speedrunning videos at this point that I could understand on a basic level how they can be done. As with many other things in life, context is everything. For example, I have the achievement for completing the XBLA version of Contra in under 12 minutes. I played through the game often enough to memorize enemy placements and platform patterns. I knew when I could pick up the Spread Gun power-up and which enemies had to be fought and which could be avoided. So when I watched David Heidman, Jr.’s run of the NES version of Contra in 10 minutes and 11 seconds, I can understand on a fundamental level how he did it, which adds to my admiration of his skill and respect for his accomplishment.

From January 6 to January 12, the speedrunning community will be participating in Awesome Games Done Quick 2013, Speed Demos Archive’s charity marathon to raise funds for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Certain scheduled speedruns, such as Aftermath’s attempt to complete Darksiders in 1 hour and 50 minutes and TheEnglishMan’s attempt to complete God of War 2 in 1 hour and 40 minutes, stand out because I devoted dozens of hours to each game, and the idea of beating either game so quickly is astounding. Other scheduled speedruns, such as Mike Uyama’s attempt to complete Earnest Evans in 20 minutes, intrigue me because I haven’t played those games, and I’m willing to dedicate some time to watch others navigate through them masterfully.

So, please visit Speed Demos Archive’s site for Awesome Games Done Quick 2013, join me and watch some of the new game masters apply their craft, and donate to the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

December 22, 2012 In Uncategorized

Postcards From the Abyss–Part 3: The Dark Knight (Artorias)

Holy cow, you guys. Soooo much has happened since the last time I posted. Remember how I said I’d spent 130 hours in Dark Souls? Make that 150 now. I have spent almost 20 hours with the new Artorias of the Abyss (minus a few for some side treks into the rest of Lordran), and I love everything about it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Last time I left off having just defeated an invader as I began my trek into the Royal Wood area. Scarecrows and Stone Guardians abound in Royal Wood, but you can avoid a good chunk of them if you’re not interested in treasure hunting. After making my way through the area, I finally arrived on the outskirts of Oolacile Township, a great hub that leads to a few different areas, kind of like the Undead Parish in Lordran. From there, you can travel down into a valley and fight a dragon, or move into the township proper by defeating Knight Artorias, which is the route I chose to take.

The story behind Knight Artorias is that he was a great hero who, along with his trusty wolf Sif, battled the forces of the Abyss, led by Manus, Father of the Abyss (more on him later) as they tried to rescue Princess Dusk of Oolacile. The task proved too much for the duo, and Artorias ended up sacrificing himself to protect Sif. He was corrupted by the Abyss, and his corrupted form is who you face as the second boss in the Artorias of the Abyss DLC.

And what a fight Artorias puts up. The first couple of times I tried to battle him myself, just to feel him out and guage his attacks. He wields a greatsword and has some attack patterns that are similar to Sif, where he spins in an arc with the blade. He throws an inky substance (the Abyss itself?) in an arc around him, and getting coated in it saps HP. Neither of those is what did me in, though. I actually got in some good licks, and thought I was managing his attacks well, when he dropped the hammer on me. Artorias can charge up his power, then leap into the air and perform either a spinning attack or a giant slash. The giant slash was the one I got caught in a few times, and it’s a killer.

After seeing the range of attacks Artorias had to offer, I summoned in an ally and we were able to take him down. The key alternating attacks so he was always distracted by one of us. There were times where he would roll right into the other one. Even with two of us, it was a tough battle, and a leaping attack almost took out my ally in one hit. We managed to survive, though, and I was able to press into Oolacile Township.

But I didn’t. Not right away, anyway.

After beating Artorias, I spent some time helping others through the battle as well. That’s the great thing about the way multiplayer works in Dark Souls. It’s like an unwritten code. There will be times in the game where you will need someone else’s help to get through a tough battle. And when you are able to summon someone into your game, it’s because they are making themselves available to be summoned. They are putting a symbol on on the ground and then waiting for someone to reach out. Sometimes you get summoned two minutes after you put your symbol down. Sometimes it’s ten minutes, or twenty, or forty, or more. That means there are times in Dark Souls when you are literally doing nothing other than waiting to see if someone needs your help.

How awesome is that? I like to think of it as being “on duty.” Whenever someone helps me through a tough boss fight, I make sure to come back to that area and see if other people need help. Sometimes I’ll grab a book and read for a couple of hours, leaving my summon sign out and my character waiting. I might only get three or four summons in that time, but that’s okay.

When I do get summoned, my character bows to the person that brought me there, and then we go to battle together. It’s a beautiful thing. There are many times when we fail, either because I died or the summoner did, and I am sent home to my world, likely never to see that other player again. But when we succeed? It’s a moment that I’ve never experienced in any other series of games.

The whole summoning aspect of multiplayer also functions as a way of grinding for souls to level up your character and gear. With my first few forays into Oolacile Township, and the Chasm of the Abyss below that area, it became clear I would need to level up some before completing those sections.

But more about that next time…

December 16, 2012 In Uncategorized

Postcards From the Abyss–Part 2: An Unfriendly Welcome

In the first thirty minutes of my time with the Artorias of the Abyss DLC, it already provided me with the best aspects off the Dark Souls experience.

Right off the bat–boss fight. As soon as I arrived in the new area, I ran into a fog gate, which means one of two things–either it’s your first time accessing a new area, or there’s a boss waiting for you. It was the latter, and what a boss to start with. A manticore called the Sanctuary Guardian pretty much destroyed me in my first encounter with it. A combination of charge attacks, lightning bolts and a vicious tail whip did me in. For my second attempt, I summoned in a couple of good samaritans and between the three of us, we took down the Guardian. I also got a sweet whip weapon for taking off the Guardian’s tale. Bowing to my anonymous friends, I soldiered forth as they returned to their home worlds.

After stopping to rest at the creepy but beautiful Oolacile Sanctuary, I crossed a bridge and entered the Royal Wood. I was immediately faced with a couple of Scarecrows, which i dispatched. I didn’t have long to pat myself on the back however, as I was then invaded by another player.

And such is the double-edged sword that is summoning in Dark Souls. You have to be in human form to summon allies into your game, which I did in order to defeat the Stone Guardian. But, walking around in human form also leaves you open to being invaded. It’s this type of risk-reward proposition that makes Dark Souls so exciting.

Anyway, back to the invader. He (or she) was a savvy player, and I almost fell into the trap he was setting. He used ranged crossbow attacks to bait me into chasing him farther into the Royal Wood. Not being familiar with the area, I didn’t realize there were giant Stone Guardians roaming that area, which he attempted to lead me into. I retreated just in time, and then a twenty-minute cat and mouse battle ensued. Seeing that I wouldn’t fall for the trap, my invader then poisoned me and tried to wait me out. I summoned an ally in, which he led into the Stone Guardians and an untimely death. I then drew him closer to me, where he still attacked via crossbow and tired to retreat whenever I got close.

At one point, I backed him into a corner and got a few good licks in, He then used Humanity to heal himself back up, and we started the dance all over again., He had actually worn me down to one Estus Flask (healing potion) left, when I finally defeated him with a couple of halberd strikes. It was a pretty epic battle, and a very rewarding victory.

All in the first half hour of my time with the new DLC.

Dark Souls, I love you.