Los Santos is My Happy Place

Most people I play GTA with can't stand to hang out on there for very long, because we've done all the heists and most of the non-pvp activities are limited to only four people. We've done everything there is to do. And for as beautiful as the place may be, it's inhabited by the worst kind of assholes. Every character in this game is horrible, all the ads on the tv, radio and billboards are way over the top and none of that shit comes even close to how despicable your fellow players are, should you be stupid enough to join a public session.

I've played GTA with Claire and her mother tonight for about four hours straight. We tried to free some NPC from a prison bus. A mission we've played countless times, but it never plays the same. The guy got hit by traffic the moment he stepped out of the bus. Then Claire got out of our car to help him up. That's when a car crashed into the bus, causing it to roll over Claire. There were moments where she hugged a live grenade until it exploded, we failed a mission three times because someone kept on destroying the objective with an RPG and at some point I parked our car on top of a tree and couldn't get it out until Claire gave us a push with another vehicle. We usually laugh so hard it becomes difficult to breathe.

Pictured: Someone.

GTA is at its best when shit goes wrong, when physics act up or the AI just breaks right in front of you. There's a mission where you have to steal an old RV from a bunch of weirdos, so the three of us got in. This is where a bunch of said weirdos start chasing after you and shoot the RV to pieces. Except that time one of the NPCs climbed in the RV and sat down next to Claire's mother like he was supposed to be there. So we drove around for a while with that guy just sitting peacefully next to her until she leaned over and casually shot him in the face. It was glorious!

Traffic? I don't see any.

We sat on the sofa in our office building and played Tron, Snake, or 'Don't Cross the Line', as GTA called it, against each other. We parked cars on my yacht via helicopter. Claire destroyed my submarine. We followed a policeman through the woods until he started shooting me for no reason. Then he called reinforcements and 32 cop cars and eight helicopters started chasing Claire's mother all over Los Santos, because witnesses are bad. Claire picked us up with her cargo chopper and saved the day. Woohoo!

Batman wishes his car could do that.

Everybody loves to dick around and blow shit up. But sometimes we just like to hang out. I don't think I've ever played a game which looked and felt as real and immersive as GTA Online. Yes, I know, most of the shops and buildings are just empty facades and you can't get inside like you could on GTA 4. There are no umbrellas. Scared NPCs "escape" from a dangerous situation by leaving their cars. It ain't perfect.

But getting in your car in 1st person, watching the lights and the traffic go by, especially at night, feels ridiculously real. Sometimes that's all we do. We get in a car together, play some cheesy 80s synth pop and drive through the night. Which is something I'd love to do for real. Just drive around town. Stop at the gas station for some snacks. Just drive nowhere in particular, because you're not tired and sitting in the car seems kind of nice and relaxing.

We're doing on there what we can't do IRL. And that doesn't always mean murdering people.

Driving around at night was always the best thing when I was a kid. My family would always fight over all sorts of pointless, stupid shit. But driving was always peaceful. Loud music. Driving nowhere in particular. Hardly any traffic, what with it being the middle of the night. Nobody was arguing. It felt safe.

I miss that. I really do. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to afford a car. Heck, I wouldn't know where to put it if we had one. But GTA satisfies that craving surprisingly well. I get these same cheesy old songs on the custom radio. The traffic. The gas stations and the snacks. And when I get bored I can always just call in a tank and blow up everything around me. But I don't always want to. Sometimes it's just fun to drive around and remember some happy, peaceful moments.

My Two Pence: Dark Souls III - The Ringed City

The final DLC for the final Souls game brings some fantastic-looking new areas, great new weapons, a boss covenant and three fun boss battles. There's also a garbage optional boss and lots of cheap deaths. ATTENTION: SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Ringed City is hard as balls, even for Dark Souls. There's a massive increase in difficulty when compared to everywhere else in Dark Souls 3, including the previous DLC, Ashes of Ariandel. Sadly, the ultimate farewell to the series rarely feels difficult in a challenging way. Much of it just feels cheap.

There's a new giant enemy, who summons legions of invulnerable ghosts, which can wipe you out in seconds. Each area containing one of those summoners provides ample cover from the ghosts' arrows, but you'll ultimately have to leave your safe spot and stand out in the open whilst pummeling the crap out of the summoner if you want to kill him. That strategy works sometimes, especially if the baddie chooses to attack you directly or summons fairly slow and harmless melee minions. However, if he summons his army of archers, then it's pretty much a guaranteed death. This isn't down to skill or figuring out some sort of pattern. It mostly requires luck, which isn't all that great for a Souls game.

Stay in cover or die. That's a death right there.

There's another new type of enemy, a giant machinegun angel, which requires a similar tactic. You have to stay out of the angel's line of sight, or it will fire a laser barrage at you, which will kill you in under ten seconds, no matter how much you roll, dodge or attempt to block. You can permanently kill these angels by finding the guy who summons them, but unless you're really lucky (or looking up their locations on the internet), you'll be suffering a whole bunch of cheap deaths before you get rid of them.

There's also a bunch of extra chunky baddies, which should be murdered via plunge attacks. That's easy enough to do and fun for a while until the game decides to throw six of the asshats at you at once. And having to drag each and every one of these guys up a stairway so you can plungefuck them from a nearby bridge isn't fun. It's tedious. Not all new enemies are annoying, though. The ringed knights are basically darkwraiths on crack, who are extremely aggressive and use badass fire-based weapon arts against you. They're fun to fight, though you have to be careful around the ringed city. Pretty much all the new baddies can take you out in about two hits, no matter how well-geared you are. Heavy armor has received a buff and offers more protection whilst weighing less than before, which is noticeable in the original areas of Dark Souls 3, but once you make it to the Ringed City, you may as well be wearing cardboard. Bye, build diversity!

And hello, shitty camera!

The new boss battles are incredible, with one major exception, but I'll get to that in a bit. The first new boss fight features a pair of demons. You fight both of them at the same time and you need to kill both of them. The last demon to die will then come back to life in a superpowered form, which is massive, fucks up your camera if you stay locked on and gets a bunch of beefed-up new attacks. The fight is challenging, but not too difficult. The game even donates two NPC phantoms if taking on two bosses at once is a little too much for you and you don't feel like inviting random strangers over the internet.

Another great boss is the Spear of the Church, which is actually another player with a bunch of NPC helpers, if you're playing online. First you have to take down a fairly harmless AI boss (spoiler: It's that summoner again!), then you get invaded by a painting guardian, who will quickly multiply if you don't end the fight fast enough. The final invader is an actual player, whose life bar turns into the boss life bar at the bottom of the screen. It's a lot like the mirror knight battle in Dark Souls 2. If you play in offline mode, you'll get an NPC invader, which isn't anywhere near as fun, so I highly recommend playing this one online. You can also join a new covenant by defeating an optional boss, which allows you to be summoned as the boss for this fight. That's right - equip the new covenant item and whenever somebody in your level range starts this particular boss battle, you will be summoned to destroy that player. I absolutely love this!

The new DLC makes you the boss!

The DLC's final boss battle is easily one of the best in the entire series. You take on the manifestation of the Dark Soul itself. The guy who swallowed the soul has a (relatively) human shape, so you can lock on that camera without any trouble, the moveset is easy enough to read and memorize and the fight is absolutely spectacular, with thunder and lightning crashing down in the arena everywhere around you, the boss jumping and leaping all over the place, a lot like Artorias, only to pause on occasion to riddle you full of holes with an automatic crossbow.

I have only two minor gripes with this fight. First of all, this boss (like all bosses in the DLC) has a stupidly huge life bar, so you'll be chipping away at him for a long while. Meanwhile, all it takes to get yourself killed is usually two hits, so it can be pretty frustrating to whittle the guy down to the final 5 percent of his health, only to fail because you make a stupid mistake at the very end of the fight. Secondly, the boss himself is a guy, who was only just introduced in the previous DLC. He's just not a very fun or interesting character until he decides to start eating random pygmies and ends up gobbling up the Dark Soul. He just doesn't sport the same level of awesomeness you got from Gwyn or Artorias or some of the many other memorable characters and bosses. Of course this doesn't make the fight itself any less awesome.

Fuck this guy. Figuratively.

And then there's the new optional dragon battle against Darkeater Midir. This fight combines every flaw and problem that could possibly make a Souls boss battle terrible. Awful camera, AoE-instakill attacks, which can be impossible to dodge when your positioning wasn't perfect, as well as a comically huge life bar. Be prepared to chip away at this fucker's health bar for twenty minutes, if you even manage to evade his stupid oneshot-abilities for that long. Midir has quickly become the most hated, most annoying boss of the entire series. Well done!

The good thing about optional boss battles is that they're, well, optional, but if you want to join the cool kids in the boss covenant or craft the mighty new edgelord katana, you're gonna have to go through this dragon. Enjoy!

#micropenis

Like in the previous DLC, The Ringed City throws a bunch of awesome new weapons with powerful new weapon arts at you. Everyone's new favourite are the paired ultra greatswords, which stagger everything up to and including most bosses. They've been nerfed a bit in an update this week, but they're still insanely powerful. You can also craft a mighty new greatsword, the final boss' gatling crossbow or loot a fun little dagger, which turns into a lightsaber. Or how about a ridiculously oversized hammer, which crushes your enemies in an avalanche of exploding rocks? There's a lot of really cool new stuff here.

There's also an assortment of +3 rings in the game's most popular flavours (havel, favor, steel protection, chloranthy and so forth), which annoyed a few people, because you can get these powerful rings on your very first playthrough, while other +2 and +3 rings would only drop once you've beaten the game at least once, sometimes twice. That's fair and all, but The Ringed City is so insanely hard, if you manage to get your rings there, then you've probably earned that shit.

I liked the final DLC for all the new bosses except one, I love the new weapons and many of the new enemies. I could have done entirely without cheap shit like machinegun angels, ghost archer barrages and half a dozen instakill-fatties cluttering up a stairway. Enemies hit stupidly hard and bosses have ridiculously large life bars. The new covenant is awesome. The Ringed City is flawed, but there's a lot of good stuff in it and it's easily twice as big as the previous DLC. Yay!