Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Life Among Furries

Ahh yes, the Nintendo 3DS! Greatest toy I've bought in a long time. I've started experimenting with homebrew apps and custom firmware, which allows me to do all sorts of cool shit on the little handheld device. Streaming gameplay to the big PC screen, for instance. Behold!

Custom firmware allows for some really amazing features. I'll admit some of them are in a bit of a moral gray area. For instance, there's this nifty little tool, which lets you copy games off your cartridges directly onto your SD card, so you can always play your games without having to bring the cartridges. Incredibly useful, but Nintendo probably aren't too keen on people copying games off somebody else's cartridges instead of buying their own. And that's still one of the more harmless tools. There's also the FreeShop-app, which allows you to download any game off the Nintendo eShop region-free and without paying. That's no longer borderline piracy, it's flat-out walking in there and robbing them.

On an entirely unrelated note, I've come into possession of every 3DS game, ever. And I've decided to give Animal Crossing a try, because I see all this stuff about it being the "better Tomodachi Life" and what not. I've always liked Tomodachi Life, because it's so utterly bizarre, random and oh-so Japanese. It gets incredibly repetitive rather quickly, but so do soap operas and people never get tired of those. But apparently Animal Crossing lets you do more, allows you to interact with the characters more, it's bigger, better and totally off-putting to me from the very first look, because it's clearly aimed at girls, who are no older than five.

And there's a million other things I could be playing right now.

But in my job as a games critic I have learned to give every game a fair chance, no matter how stupid they may look. So I booted it up. Like all intelligent people, who don't have to show up for work during the day, I sleep when the sun is up and play when the yellow fucker disappears, so my adventure on Animal Crossing started at 3 in the morning. The game starts on a train. I just sat there and watched the landscape zip by. Which wasn't easy, because it was pretty dark outside. Ingame time is matched to your console's clock.

It didn't take long until a creepy cat person walked up to me. He asked me if it was 3am in the morning. "Why are you talking to me? Where are your pants? Who, what... why are you", is what I wanted to say. "Yes", I replied. He asked whether he could take the seat opposite to mine, didn't wait for a response and instantly began to quiz me. About my name, where I was going... well, I already saw him without any sort of pants or undergarments, so we were way past casual. "Wait... you are a boy, right", he enquired. Is this the part where I have to take my pants off?

At least it wasn't the creepy rabbit.

I told him I was traveling to the city of Bonk. It seemed like a good name when I made it up and he seemed satisfied with it. And thank fuck, the train finally arrived in Bonk, a place I had invented literally a minute ago. What a great age we live in!

I stepped off the platform and was immediately ambushed by a bunch of anthropomorphic animals, who welcomed me as the new mayor of Bonk. I told them they were mistaken, they chose to ignore it because of reasons and a minute later I found myself inside the town hall doing mayory things. Like compose a town tune, which now follows me around anywhere I go. They also wanted me to design a town flag. You can just draw one with the stylus. No, I did not draw a penis and yes, I really, really wanted to.

And that's where my first day in Bonk ended, because Animal Crossing thinks it's my mother and makes it impossible for me to play after a certain hour. All the shops were closed, all the NPCs were in bed, so all I could do was go to my character's tent and quit for the night. Oh, they also told me I had to cough up 10,000 Bells (money) to get a proper house, because they can't have a mayor who lives in a tent. Great. First day and already in debt.

You better pay up or this guy will judge you!

I started the game a bit earlier the next day. Shops were still open at that point, but I had no money and I still had a house to pay for, so my assistant from the mayor's office told me to go sell oranges. I had to spend the next two hours of my life walking around the place, shaking trees and collecting oranges. I'd get stung by bees and mosquitos every now and then until my character's face got all fucked up. Sometimes I got bit by spiders, fainted and respawned by my tent. Then I grabbed all my oranges, took them to a second hand shop and sold them there. Again and again. Then I bought a fishing rod, caught some fish and sold those. Then I bought a shovel, dug up some fossils, donated them to a museum and got fuck all for it, because that's how donations work. Finally, I managed to farm up the 10k for my house. Then I was told it would take another day to actually build my house and I should take it easy for a while. End of day 2, whether I liked it or not.

Over 90% of my play time so far consists of waiting for stuff.

I started the game up again when my house was done. Now I was supposed to hang with the locals and get an approval rating of 100 percent. My assistant told me I could also raise my rating by composing a town tune and designing a flag. Good thing I had already done that two days ago, so apparently it counted for nothing. Apart from that I was supposed to just chat with people and help them solve their problems.

So I walked around for a bit and entered a random house. Inside, everything was made of fruit. The table was half of a giant grapefruit, the wallpaper, chairs, everything was fruity. And the guy inside was an orange cat thing, which must also must have been a fruit somehow. I'd love to meet his parents. His name was Tangy. Figures.

Female, apparently.

Oh boy. I used Google image search to get a picture of this character for demonstrative purposes. Turns out rule 34 also applies to Animal Crossing. It also turns out Tangy's a lady.

I did what every considerate person would do and started going through Tangy's stuff, since there weren't any pots to smash. I also nagged Tangy into letting me nick one of her chairs. Heh! A nick-nag. Then I went to the second hand shop and sold it. I also bumped into a Koala named Sydney, who told me she had to shop for more summer clothing. Well, that's interesting! There was also a rooster who told me he's paranoid about buying stuff at the second hand shop, because he can't tell whether stuff is overpriced or not. Come on, man, they gave me ten grand for a bunch of oranges!

As you may have noticed, none of the townsfolk I've met had any freakin' problems! How was I supposed to raise my approval rating if nobody needed my help? So I've spent another hour selling oranges and fish, bought a net and started catching bugs. Then I came across another house, went in and said hello to Whitney.

Woof!

So after a rabbit with a pornstache, a chubby koala and an orange-cat-hybrid I bumped into somebody who must have been a dog or something. She was also the first one to actually ask me for help. She asked me if I liked her shirt and I had to rate it on a scale that went from boring to perfect. So I did what every gentleman does and pretended I give a fuck about her clothes, telling her she looked perfect. She was super thrilled and I was so in there! Or so I thought until she gave me one of her shirts to wear. Great. Shirt buddies. The one NPC I didn't instantly hate had friendzoned me, probably thinking I'm gay for caring about her clothes.

She said I look really good in her shirt, though. I think she still wants me.

I went back to my assistant Isabelle and told her she was stupid. Only one of the people had an actual problem, my approval rating was at a shitty 33 percent and I had nothing else to do. So now what? Isabelle gave me a stack of paper and suggested I'd go and write some letters to the people I had met today. Because apparently they love that kind of shit. So I went down to the beach, collected a few beautiful shells and thought about what to write.

My first letter went to the pornstache-rabbit. I think. I'm not very good with names. "Hey. Your stache looks really cool. You were the guy with the mustache, right? If you're the chicken, can you tell the rabbit I said his mustache is really cool?"

Then I sent one to Tangy. "Dear Tangy. Which one was your dad? The cat or the orange? Could you maybe draw a diagram or something? XOXO The Mayor."

And one to Sydney. "Who's a good girl?" I've been told that dogs love being asked that. Then I realized my mistake. Sydney was the freaking Koala, not the dog! I'm such an idiot! It's right in the name, god damnit!
So I went and wrote a letter to Whitney. "Yo! I think I confused you with Sydney. Sorry. I'm not very good with names." I have very poor social skills. Then I put one seashell in each envelope and took the letters to the post office. All the other shops were closed, all the NPCs were in bed and I was done for the day. Again. Sigh!

I WASN'T DONE SHOPPING FOR RIBBONS, DAMN YOU!

The next day I finally got some problems to solve. Tangy wanted to eat an orange, so I went and shook one off a tree. Wow, there's so much variety in my daily activities on here! She thanked me and gave me some furniture in return. Then I went to Sydney, who wanted some furniture to replace stuff she had thrown out. I gave her the crap I received from Tangy a minute ago. I also had a bunch of letters in my mailbox!

The first one was from Tangy, who said she was happy about my letter and will always treasure it and blah, blah, blah, I didn't really read most of it, because I assumed Tangy was male. She also somehow managed to attach a T-Shirt to my letter, which I dumped in my wardrobe. Pornstache rabbit said time really flew by as he read my mail. Judging by his response, it became pretty clear that he didn't read my mail at all and just sent a random generic response, much like Zendesk videogame techsupport. I think Sydney wrote something, but I didn't read it, because she's fat and a koala. Whitney said she reads my letter every day before she goes to bed and she always keeps it with her, because it makes her so happy. Whoa! Clearly her loins were aching for me, so I had to compose another letter.

"Dear Whitney. Meet me behind the photobooth at the train station at 8.37pm tonight. Perhaps you could help me bury my bone?"
Girls love smart, sophisticated conversation and that's what I'm all about! But it was only 2 in the afternoon and I didn't wanna wait until night time, so I came around to her house. She wasn't there.

Do I pee on her fence now? That's how dogs leave a message, right?

Perhaps she was already the the proposed meeting spot, just to be sure she wouldn't miss me? Maybe she was getting edible underwear in town, just for the occasion? I went on my way to the shops when I noticed a new house that wasn't there last night. A new neighbour? I barged in and caught Whitney with him!

TWO pillows? What's going on here?

Of course! The new guy is a fucking bear! How could I ever compete with someone so fluffy, so wild and so hairy? They're all furries on this island, after all! This was the heart-wrenching moment where I realized that my pink, fragile human body would never be good enough. I walked out without a word and left them to do whatever they were doing. I'm not going to the photobooth tonight. Even if she did show up, I don't want sloppy seconds or pity-sex. But I'll be jerking it whilst reading her letter. She was all mine when she wrote that.

Tree of Savior - Sharing Steve

62 hours and 130 Levels (on my main character) into Tree of Savior I can say that I'm probably enjoying the game a little too much by now. It combines some of my favourite elements from Ragnarok Online and - fuck you, I'm totally going there - Path of Exile.
You may strongly disagree with the latter, to which I say that you know nothing.

The part I'm comparing to PoE is, of course, character development. My main character is a mounted knight, who rides into battle with a nasty charge attack and impales baddies with his lance. He then proceeds to slam the impaled monster into other monsters (i.e. hitting a motherfucker with another motherfucker), while the victim remains attached to the lance. Then there's a quick weapon swap to dual one-handed weapons, chopping up the leftovers while the mount turns into a battle pet, dealing its share of the damage. I'll wait here while you name another MMO where you get to do all that on a single character.

And what an awesome mount it is! Also, someone's itchy, I think.

Tree of Savior calls these Mount/Battle Pet creatures companions. They gain levels and can be trained to tank for you or deal a lot of damage. And all of your characters get to share them. The other night I felt like trying a new character, so I rolled an archer and took my level 67 companion with him. I didn't really have to do anything, because my pet murdered all the bad guys for me. What's better, I can level up the archer to become a beastmaster of sorts, who makes the companion perform all sorts of special attacks, making him even more powerful. It's pretty amazing stuff, really.

And while I was already at it I decided to create a cleric. I don't usually play healers in MMOs, because I simply don't like (healing) people. But they're ridiculously fun to play in ToS. Casting the basic heal spell creates a bunch of magical healing fields on the ground. If you or a party member steps on them they'll restore your health. However, if a baddie steps on one, they'll deal massive amounts of damage. I've spent the rest of the day "healing" monsters until they exploded into tiny pieces. Which they literally do.

All your characters share a room and their pets.

I'm currently playing my Cleric like some sort of murder-tank, who wipes out entire dungeon floors with ground-targeted healing magic. I've added some lightning-flavoured elemental spells to the mix and I have yet to encounter a boss who survives for even ten seconds. Sure, it seems a bit broken and overpowered, but in a game, which is designed for people to gain some 450 or so levels, what's a few boss-oneshots in the mid 20s?

I'll slap a few paladin levels in there for good measure (they get to convert enemies into allies after all), as well as a dash of voodoo to summon hordes of zombies. That's a crazy, massive amount of fun abilities and skills and a really enjoyable play style. For comparison, Claire's cleric is aiming to become a shape-shifting druid in the long run, able to transform into any plant, beast or monster she chooses to become. Getting that perfect character does require a bit of planning ahead with a skill simulator, but it's not the huge pain in the ass a certain other game wants to be.

I love Path of Exile, but this is fucking stupid.

Playing multiple characters provides certain benefits on top of the shared companions. The relative strength of your characters will raise your team level, which results in passive bonuses. Completing collections hidden throughout the game provides stat-boosts, which are shared between all characters. There's also a shared stash, which lets you trade items between characters if you're a premium member. And at the time of this entry it's impossible to actually dump a few pennies into said premium membership, which sucks. Apparently, non-premium players also don't get to sell more than a single item on the marketplace (read: auction house) at a time, which sucks even harder.

Apart from that, I don't feel like I'm overly limited as a free player. I'd throw my money at them if they let me. According to the website, they're working on implementing payment options within the month. Let's just hope they won't go over the top. Because with games like Warframe and Path of Exile being perfectly enjoyable for free, ToS can't afford to rip people off.

Tree of Savior - A Better RO2 Than RO2

The first MMORPG I've ever paid subscription fees for was the (somewhat) English beta of Ragnarok Online ("RO"), which would eventually become iRO. I've probably created my first ever PayPal account back then, just so I could play this game. That was before WoW or even Final Fantasy XI and you know what they say about your first love - they'll always have a special place in your heart and you'll never forget them. If you've never heard of Ragnarok Online, then you're a maggot and you don't deserve to read this blog. Basically (and I'm grossly simplifying here), the game played a little bit like certain 16bit RPGs such as Secret of Mana, but in a ridiculously massive MMO world with thousands of players everywhere. And since we didn't have fancy-shmancy broadband back then, everything was 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds.

My childhood kicks your childhood's ass. Fucking millenial!

Ragnarok Online eventually split into kRO, iRO and euRO, as well as a bunch of pirate servers, a version for the Philippines and probably a few more I can't even think of right now. Then came WoW and the already divided community thinned out some more and... well, fast-forward a few years past RO's release and suddenly there was a lot of talk about Ragnarok Online 2. Early footage looked a lot like a mix between RO and WoW - same game world, visual style and everything, but in third person 3D. And people got pretty hyped. Except the game didn't actually come out for roughly a decade.

Classes, gameplay mechanics, new races and tons of other stuff were created, removed, the entire game got scrapped and remade... by the time people actually got to play RO2, it ended up feeling like yet another cheap, awful WoW clone, completely devoid of Ragnarok's charm and soul. Failed attempts to create a more modern version of RO also spawned weird games such as ROSE Online, which was originally introduced as "Ragnarok Online Second Edition", only to be rebranded to "Rush On Seven Episodes".

It really wasn't all that great.

Today you can still play Ragnarok Online on Steam. Most of the RO2 servers were shut down, though the NA version refuses to die for some reason. Let's just say that anyone hoping for a worthy sequel has been massively disappointed and most of us have since moved on. And then Tree of Savior ("ToS") had its Free2Play launch a short while ago. It's a new MMO created by Kim Hakkyu, who also developed Ragnarok Online. Could this be the decent successor RO fans have been waiting for? Well... yes and no.

It sure looks like a modern RO!

RO had no quests to speak of, especially in the early days. You'd wander off into the world, literally kill thousands of monsters and level up that way. It was the ultimate grinder. There were no pointers, there was no real story, nothing to give you directions. If you wandered into the wrong area you'd get instagibbed by monsters, which were way out of your league. The only way to tell whether or not you could realistically defeat a baddie you've never encountered before was by attacking it, which would often result in your untimely death. Fun times.

ToS does no such thing. Instead, the game immediately gives you quests, highlights directions and leads you through a story with tons of (written) dialogue, cutscenes and boss fights. Fully exploring every area and talking to every NPC provided me with enough quests to conveniently level up and become strong enough for the next area. I never even had to buy any gear, because monsters usually drop all the stuff I need. In the 70 or so levels I've played as a swordsman, difficulty was nowhere near RO. I haven't died a single time and soloed absolutely everything, apart from one instanced dungeon, which provides you with a handy LFG tool. Cool stuff! Most dungeons in RO were impossibly difficult and had hilariously overpowered bosses, which were usually camped and farmed by powerful guilds, leaving no opportunity for casual players to defeat them and get their hands on their juicy loot. ToS seems to be on the other side of the spectrum, where absolutely everybody gets to be awesome. It's not a very difficult game so far.

Bosses get some beautiful artwork, though.

Character creation and growth in ToS is fairly similar to RO. Where RO had you starting off as a novice, who would eventually choose a basic newbie class, ToS has you choose from four noob classes (swordsman, archer, wizard, cleric). There's a tiny selection of haircuts per gender and no dyes, so 14 year old RO actually offered more options than ToS does in its current state. However, ToS shines when it comes to character development. My swordsman would eventually turn into a greatsword-wielding highlander until I upgraded him to a fierce barbarian. From there I'm gonna turn into knight of sorts, who gets to mount the battle pet I've adopted along the way. After that I'll focus on the corsair class and start dual-wielding. There's a total of 80 classes, which allow for some 200 combinations to make your character truly unique.

ToS also lets you distribute points into stats such as strength, intelligence or dexterity, so you get to decide how tough, smart or agile your character is. There doesn't seem to be any non-premium possibility to respec these points, so there's a realistic chance for fuck-ups. Same goes for class choices. Don't like the new class you've picked after several dozen hours of play? Well, too bad. Stick with it or roll a new character. Korean MMOs, yo.

Steve shall become my noble steed.

The one part where ToS absolutely fucks up (apart from stopping bots, goldsellers, killstealers and spammers, because again, Korean MMO) is the social aspect of the game. The strictly linear quest line, phasing, being able to solo absolutely everything reduces the need for cooperative play to almost zero. Sure, you can join grinding parties or sign up for the aforementioned instanced dungeons, but that's pretty much all there is to the multiplayer portion of this game. When my friends start playing ToS, I'll be miles and miles ahead and even if I weren't - why would they need me in a game where you can solo just about everything? Maybe stuff gets more difficult in the post level 70 areas, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

I won't lie. Other people are the main reason why I don't really play MMOs anymore. I don't want to depend on others, have my fun ruined by random assholes, have strangers constantly effect my gameplay experience. But I'm not sure ToS is doing it right. If you've ever played RO, then you'll know how fun it was to just sit outside Prontera, meet random strangers, have a chat or simply enjoy the cheesy music.

You had to be there.

Another unwelcome "feature" that makes its return is the lag. Granted, things never got as bad for me on ToS as they used to get on RO, but certain quests can become a huge pain in the ass to complete when there's a 1-2 second delay after every click. In one instance I had to activate four clickies within a short amount of time, which took me dozens of attempts, because there was a massive delay between clicking the item and my character actually using it. Another quest required me to dodge magic orbs, which caused me to instantly fail the quest if I touched one of them. I failed countless times, because the orbs were never really in the spot my screen displayed them at. Most of these problems can be fixed with a quick relog, but they're inconvenient all the same.

Production values are all over the place in ToS. Most of the music is in every was as fantastic as the tracks from RO (same composers and everything), but then you get tracks, which went through all levels of compression hell and literally snap, crackle and pop as a result. The character and monster sprites look fantastic and are really well-animated, but then you get graphical glitches, disappearing geometry, messy textures and visuals, which would have been outdated half a decade ago. The English ingame text isn't as bad as the game's awkward title suggests, but grammar and spelling is just as inconsistent as everything else in the game.

I'm pretty sure a human head is not supposed to spin this way.

ToS is the closest thing to a new RO we're gonna get anytime soon. Much more so than the abortion which is RO2. ToS gives you directions, tells you where to go and lets you grow and level up without constantly depending on the help of others. In doing so, it kills off the social aspect which made RO so fun back in the day. Sure, you could play with friends - but why would you?

On the other hand, you actually get to kill a bunch of bosses and you're no longer forced to sit around and watch while only the top guilds have all the fun. Everybody is powerful, everyone can be a hero - it's not as challenging as RO, at the cost of the sense of reward and achievement you may have felt on RO when you finally scored that MVP award or unlocked your final class.

Fortunately, ToS is free to play. There are some premium features, hairstyles, costumes, but nothing essential. I haven't spent anything to play this game and so far I haven't felt restricted in any way. And at a price of zero, what's there to lose, apart from a little bit of your time? And if you're curious, here's what the game looks like in motion:

Dark Souls - Pretend To Be Good!

I have recently finished my Dark Souls III no shield dual wield playthrough and it got hard as balls, especially towards the end. When I played the first Dark Souls, I went giant armor or Havel's stuff, greatshield and Zweihänder all the way. It's the easiest, cheesiest way to beat Dark Souls. And I felt a little guilty, because according to the various comments sections of the interwebs, using a shield means you suck. Using powerful gear means you suck. Everybody can totally beat this game at Soul Level 1 simply by "gitting gud" and Dark Souls is actually super easy unless you suck at it, blah de blah. Yeah, about that...

The fun thing (to some) about the internet is how you can talk shit all day without ever having to back it up. I've seen invaders, phantoms, sunbros, the reflections and bloodstains of other players and you know what they all had in common? Fucking shields. Lots of greatswords and other cheesy setups, too. Lots of them also summon friends and AI buddies to help with the difficult boss battles. Why? Because it fucking works and because Dark Souls gets so much harder if you actually play the way you pretend you do on the internet.

This joke gets put down near every single butt in the entire game.

The Souls community is a bunch of whiny bitches, whose high-pitched cries make the communities of games like Call of Duty or League of Legends almost tolerable by comparison. One feature in this game is that you can invade other players' sessions to kill them. Monsters won't come after you or hurt you when you invade - all you do is run after the guy who fights all these enemies and stab him in the back, ideally while he is distracted and cannot defend himself. This is the basic idea of pvp in Dark Souls. Ironically, people who love to invade have made up this stupid honor code. Because invading people against their will to kill their characters is somehow honorable now. You are expected to play a little bow animation at the beginning of a fight you never wanted and you are not allowed to heal or summon a friendly player to help you. Doing so earns you the eternal scorn of the pvp community or something.

You suck if you use certain items the community deems too powerful. You suck if you play with friends. You suck if you use a shield. You suck if you heal in a pvp match you never wanted in the first place. Oh and "Dark Souls was never supposed to be cheesed with powerful items and co-op, this is not how a Souls game is meant to be played", yada, yada, yada. Because the fact that all of these items and features exist clearly shows they're not meant to be used, apparently. Here's what the Steam forums have been like since day one:

If you equip weapons and armor or defend yourself in unwanted pvp, you suck!

Of course it's also possible to "flag" yourself for voluntary pvp. You put down a pvp sign and anyone who wants to fight you gets to summon you and then you can be as fucking "honorable" as you want. But people don't want a fair fight, they don't want to duel somebody who is prepared for them. They want to invade the session of somebody who is ass-deep in monster hordes and can't fight back, then bitch when the invaded player heals, summons friends and does whatever it takes to make the invader's life miserable. Because it's only dishonorable when the other guy does it. Sounds like a social experiment more than a video game.

Having finished the game without a shield and using mostly the relatively crappy dual claws, I believe that the Souls games don't even reward "skill" or fast reactions that much. It's more about memorizing the game. I didn't breeze through certain areas or defeat bosses after a few failed attempts because I'm oh-so talented. I did it because I memorized shit. Attack patterns and monster positions. Go down that corridor and something drops down on me from the ceiling, stay away from the boss lady when she arches her back like a cat, because she will grab and oneshot you, that sort of thing. There used to be a time where games were heavily criticised for that kind of gameplay (i.e. you keep dying until you memorize everything) and Dark Souls gets praised for it. Funny. :D

And still just winning by the skin of my teeth.

The next time you feel like throwing the controller through your screen or strangling your cat in frustration at one of the many boss fights in Dark Souls, just remember that the vast majority of people who brag about how easy they thought the game was, how they could solo everything on the first try with no gear and no level-ups, are full of shit. Dark Souls means learnin by dying. And if you feel the need to cheese it by summoning helpful players or using an ultra greatsword, just go for it. Most people do - and that shit wouldn't be implemented if it really was against the spirit of the game in some way.

And following my own advice, Claire and I have decided to co-op all the way through with each other on NG+! Well... that and the way of the dragon, because fuck soloing that shit. Besides, I am clearly overestimating the range of my melee weapon. A lot.

So prepare those hate posts on the forums, get ready to start bitching, because if you invade us we're gonna gank the everloving shit out of you, we're gonna heal as much as we want, we're gonna sit and wait in a spot that doesn't have any traps or monsters for you to use against us and the only gesture you'll get in the end isn't a bow, but a fucking golf clap when your dead ass gets sent back to your own session. And if we're being perfectly honest, there's a 75% chance you won't get to see any of that, because the shitty netcode makes it impossible to see animations in the first place.

Fuck Yeah, Dark Souls!

The original Dark Souls is one of those rare gems I have bought, installed and never uninstalled since. It's still sitting right there, I'm on my 8th or so New Game + and I still fire it up every now and then, just because I'm scared I'll end up going full noob again. To me, this isn't like swimming or riding a bicycle. You don't just get the hang of Dark Souls and remain good at it forever. I stop playing, dick around in other games for a bit, come back to Dark Souls a few months later and immediately suck again.

No matter how much I love the first one, I never bought Dark Souls 2. The game looked like total ass upon release, nothing like the awesome preview footage shown off by From Software (I refuse to buy Ubisoft crap for the exact same reason) and then everyone who bought the original Dark Souls 2 had to buy the enhanced version that looked a little less awful just a few months later. And while I'm sure that part two is a good game in its own rights, I was still perfectly happy with the first one and simply didn't feel ready to move on. And then this happened:

Dark Souls 3. Holy shit. I didn't even wanna play it at first, because first every fucking Youtuber out there got the stupid preview release ages before the game came out. Then every moron, their mothers and their dogs went and bought the Japanese version, which also came out before the western release. Great. There are fucking walkthroughs all over the internet, most secrets have been revealed, all I'm getting here is sloppy seconds and I can have my session invaded by assholes, who have been playing this thing for weeks. Then again, that doesn't even matter, because From Software just love to keep things simple for cheaters. Savegames are still stored locally. Heck, tweaking your soul level is as simple as firing up Cheatengine. Because having some asshole with infinity hit points invade my game to kill me is so much fun! Sure, I can just play offline, but... sigh. And I could have just stolen the game and played online? WTF?!

But that's pretty much it. That's all I can find to bitch about right now. Yeah, yeah, bonfires can crash your game if you crank up the lighting settings, there are some FPS drops here and there, fuck you, it's a brand new game, patches and driver updates will fix most of it before too long... it's not exactly Arkham fucking Knight, is it? And Dark Souls 3 may very well be the most beautiful game I have ever played.

I don't mean beautiful in the "Oh it's so pretty, I want to live there" kind of way, but the aesthetic, the artwork, the whole thing is absolutely breathtaking. This is a game world at its end, everything is utterly fucked, it's all rotted and dusty and falling apart in such a stunning, melancholical way. You can wear a knight's heavy plate armor, but it's battered and bruised, your cloak is little more than a holey rag. The people are all insane and/or turned into people jerky, some of the undead will turn on each other if they don't get to kill you... and through all the dirt and grime you catch the occasional glimpse at the past. At how awe-inspiring and glorious the world must have been at some point.

Disneyland

I'm enjoying this game a lot. It plays, sounds and feels like Dark Souls, but it looks a million times better. Yes, there's some texture pop-in, some textures aren't super detailed, eat a dick! The art style is absolutely incredible and draws me right in. And I don't even care that, for the most part, it's really just rehashing previous Souls games, because that's what I want. Yes, the high wall of Lothric is the undead burg, featuring most of the same fights and even the fucking dragon. Yes, some of the bosses look cool and pose next to no challenge to anyone who has ever played a Souls game before. It's some of the best parts of previous games mashed together and presented with some of the most stunning visuals I've seen in any game.

What makes the game even more fun is the combat system. Combat works a lot like it does in the first Dark Souls, plus added weapon arts. But enemies feel faster, (somewhat) smarter, more aggressive. And you get paired weapons for sweet, sweet dual-wielding action. I started off playing Dark Souls 3 just like the first one, inching forward, hiding behind a shield, wearing enemies down one hit at a time. I did so for about 30 minutes. Then I've put the shield away and I've been using dual scimitars ever since, hacking baddies to bits in a furious hail of strikes. It's a whole new way to play for me, something I never managed to pull off in the previous game, but it feels incredibly satisfying this time around.

And they look so damn sweet!

Difficulty... blah. So many articles out there about this, some of them more awful than others. Yes, it's tougher and a bit more unforgiving than most modern "let's place a checkpoint everywhere and make it impossible to fail" games. I'd go as far as saying some parts are simply a bit unfair, because shit attacks you from every single angle, sometimes in a way you couldn't possibly know until it happens. There are parts here and there where you are almost certain to fail, so you'll have to learn from that, come back and be prepared. With all that said, it's not the brutally difficult game some people crack it up to be.

Blindly rush in, play the game like your average brainless hack'n'slash title and you'll die. Lots. But if you take your time, use your brain, fight enemies one at a time where you get the chance, wait for them to make their attacks before you move, it's all perfectly doable. Most enemies, including bosses, telegraph their attacks quite clearly, you'll have enough time to prepare a dodge roll and with the right timing you won't take any damage at all. Of course that requires practice, of course mistakes still get punished, but lots of deaths can be avoided simply by being patient.

And I don't need health or estus to destroy a boss. The magic pixel is my friend.

In other news, the miniatures finally got here. The paintjob is okay-ish, nothing stunning, but I suppose you can only do so much when you're a six year old Chinese kid who only gets ten minutes per miniature.

Life is good.

London, Tabletop, Kitten Jr.

Hoo boy, what a week it has been! Can you believe that in the six years I've been living here we never had a chance to go to London? And it sure wasn't for lack of trying! Whenever I bring it up, people would tell me I may as well ask for somebody to mug me, which would leave me in every way as broke and disappointed. Turns out London is actually relatively affordable if you do it right.

The most difficult part was getting there without spending our entire allowance on travel tickets. I tried to book train tickets online to save some money, but the cheapest ones started somewhere around 40 Quid (per person, single trip!) and went all the way up to 140! So it could have cost us nearly 300 Pounds just to get there from Nottingham - return tickets not included.
Instead, we opted for a much cheaper (albeit waaaay slower) coach ride. Booking website claimed it was gonna be 5 Quid per person, but they slapped on so many fees and other crap that we ended up paying 15 per ticket. Which is a lot more than the amount they advertised, but still not anywhere near the ridiculous amount we'd pay on the train.

London looks 100% the way you picture it in your mind.

Going by coach ain't soo bad. They're nice and comfy and you can do all kinds of fun, sneaky stuff on there. Huehue. And a three hour ride is perfectly fine and not significantly longer than going by car - they all get stuck in the same traffic after all. Then you grab the all day tour bus ticket for 30 Quid, get carted around all the sights, have them all explained to you in 12 different languages and there's even a journey on the Thames included in there.

Hmm... moisture.

We've checked out all the sights they force you to learn about in English lessons and went on our merry way. Because apart from the usual attractions, every city is the same now, anyway. Fucking Starbucks, Subway, McDonald's all over the place, same food, clothes, touristy souvenir shit wherever you look. I'll admit London was a little more pretentious and up its own ass with the whole organic food places and fucking yoga advertisements. Look, nobody gives a shit about your hip vegan lifestyle if all you get at your organic grocer is a fucking coffee to go with a plastic lid on top, you pretentious cunt. And "yoga" the way it's practiced today isn't some ancient mystical art from thousands of years ago, but really just started somewhere in the 1860s. In a way, the people and shops in London were a lot like the stuff you see in Los Santos. Which is sad, as Los Santos isn't even based on London. But like I said - you see this dumbass wealthy, stupid, decadent first world behaviour pretty much everywhere today. I think I prefer remaining a poor, uneducated asshole for now.

Oh hey, our Paizo miniatures for Pathfinder got here! Well, "here" being the local post office until Monday, because the parcel ninja left a note saying he couldn't reach us. On a Saturday. Where we've been up since 9am. Sigh.
The Pathfinder starter kit thingie comes with a crapload of really incredible cardboard miniatures. They contain pretty much everything you could wish for in most campaigns and the artwork is nothing short of stunning. Alas, they're not very cat-proof. Our first adventure ended when the cat jumped on the board and ran off with my fighter. You can actually see the bite marks all over his face now. Grrr!

So being the special snowflakes that we are, Claire went with a D&D kenku sneak to represent her tengu rogue. Paizo tengus are hard to find, because they're not one of the core races and reeeeally pretty damn optional. Even the advanced rulebooks only cover them in a few small paragraphs about tengu society. Lots of people prefer their human characters or they won't go any further than your usual dwarves and elves and the like. Which is fine, but we like things to be a little more exotic, so...

They get to peck and glide and do birdy stuff.

It was even more difficult to find a gnoll in heavy armor which doesn't look like total ass, so we weren't entirely successful on that front. The figure looks big, heavy and scary enough, but it also sports one of the shittest paintjobs I've ever seen:

Because painting teeth is hard, so let's paint that whole area black!

I lack the tools, talent and money to fix that guy, so he's really one for the "eh... close enough" category. He's still better than my little cardboard dude who smells of old catfood!

Kitten Jr. spent the day here yesterday and he's naturally good at Golden Axe coop and eating pizza. You see, Golden Axe multiplayer is designed in a way that makes you hate other players. You can attack one another, steal food and magic potions and the freaking mounts, which usually results in a whole lot of revenge-kills and in-fighting. Growing up, my brother and I killed each other more than we fought the baddies. But for some reason it all worked incredibly well yesterday. Boss monsters were kicked back and forth between us in really well-played sessions of baddie-tennis, items were distributed depending on who needed them the most at the time and we didn't kill each other by accident (or deliberately, for that matter). Fun stuff!

And then came the pizza. Delivery guy brought him two pepperoni pizzas instead of one. The kid sat there clenching both pizza boxes like Gollum protects his precious ring. He chomped away one slice after another until the first pizza was completely gone. I tried to take the second box off of him, so he'd have more space whilst gaming, but he held on to it and started eating the other freakin' pizza. o_O
He killed half of it, then took the other half with him when he left. I don't think I ever ate two pizzas in one sitting when I was 13 years old. Fuck, I don't think I've ever done it now that I'm in my 30s!

Oh well, it's all back to the usual business now. I've got quests to write (for work! How cool is it that I can say I write videogame quests for work?) and there's translating to be done. The more work I get done, the better. We gotta bring the kid's computer fund to a level where he can afford a decent gaming machine, so we can play some Warframe, GTA and all those other glorious multiplayer games, which require more than a potato to run. I'm hoping to introduce him to my friends at some point so we can all play together like Haggy did with his nephew. Multiplayer gaming is awesome, because it really brings people together. To think how many times I got told off by my teachers and my own stepmother because gaming is oh so antisocial. Ha!

The Sexy Adventures of Lonk and Epwna

I grew up in a strictly Segan household and was never a fan of Zelda. So when people played Zelda on the NES, I had Phantasy Star on my Master System. It was basically this...

Yuck!

compared to that...

Rawr!

And yes, in the SNES era Zelda fans had this...

Yawn!

But I had this here...

Fuck your Zelda.

Spare me the lectures on how I'm comparing apples to Phantasy Star - both games were console JRPGs available at the same time on their respective system. And I happen to prefer Phantasy Star, which was eventually punished by Sega for changing the entire franchise into something completely different, because they hate their fans and love to shit on the childhoods of everyone who loved Phantasy Star, Shining Force and Sonic, to name just a few.

I did have an N64 and played Ocarina of Time back in the day, which was absolutely amazing and nothing short of breathtaking for its time. It also had the worst fucking water temple in any Zelda game ever, which is why I never completed the damn game. I beat the temple, mind you, but I had absolutely zero motivation to ever touch this game again when I was done with that bit. So, while the Zelda games are certainly all great and well-loved by their fans and what have you, I simply didn't play most of them and completed zero. Just not my cup of tea.

Anyone else sense a butt?

But then I ran out of stuff to play on my 3DS. The Terraria update is still not here, I've finished the first Fire Emblem and refuse to buy the second one three times in order to get the complete story, I'm done with Bravely Default and Bravely Second bores me to tears. And then everyone went a bit nuts over Hyrule Warriors Legends, which is a huge Zelda-Allstars hack'n'slash thing, so I figured, eh, why the fuck not and grabbed it. It's got some pretty sweet music, too!

I've put a ton of hours into this game and it simply doesn't end! It has some 24 or so playable characters, a ridiculously long story mode and tons of additional game modes and features, so you can probably play this thing for as long as you live. Granted, every level is pretty much the same, but with some changing baddies and scenery, but the mindless button-mashing action is extremely satisfying on the go. It's quickly turning into one of my favourite games, even though I know next to nothing about most characters and I reeeeally don't care.

Okay, I won't lie - I probably had a boner for Midna and I don't give a fuck if you judge me. I know someone who flicks it to Star Trek porn fics, another acquaintance of mine dresses up in a bunny costume before sex and one of my friends wants to fuck a cartoon hedgehog. Looks like absolutely everybody is into weird shit and apparently potbellied midgets do it for me. Anyhow.

Claire watched me play Hyrule Warriors for awhile until she decided to have another go at Twilight Princess. Alas, the ol' Gamecube is at her family's place, so we had to fire up Dolphin in order to run the game. Twilight Princess has aged fairly well for a decade-old game, though most textures are incredibly muddy, even if you crank the game resolution all the way up to 4k. A low-quality texture is a low-quality texture, no matter what resolution you play on. So I looked into emulator texture modding and one thing lead to another and....

I used Dolphin quite a bit over the years, but my biggest concern was always running stuff like F-Zero GX and Smash Bros. at acceptable speeds. Or playing the Metroid Prime Trilogy with mouse and keyboard, which is actually pretty awesome when you get it to work. It's also a huge pain in the ass, because one configuration may be perfect for one game and totally break another, so I never spend any massive amount of time trying to actually finish any of these games.

Today, Dolphin runs on DX12 (kinda), it's faster and more stable than ever and there's even support for all sorts of post-processing effects. And yes, apparently you can insert custom textures into all your games to make them look a little less dated. Twilight Princess may not look "next gen" by any means, but it still looks hell of a lot better than it did back in the day.

And now I wait for the content strike from Nintendo.

So now I get to enjoy this old game with ambient occlusion, depth of field and all sorts of other fancy shit I won't pretend I understand, which all helps make the game a little less ugly. It's a bit of a mixed bag, as some of the more photo-realistic textures clash heavily with the surrounding lower-quality stuff. But it's still a big improvement.

The tree bark looks amazing, but that fern in front of it looks like total ass.

I'm also not a huge fan of how the whole thing is limited to 30 FPS even when you emulate it, but that's what I get for being a spoiled PC gamer. For what it counts, I'm enjoying the whole thing a little more than I enjoyed Ocarina back in the day. Though Midna is a total cunt, so far. Shame. She's pretty awesome in Hyrule Warriors, so maybe she'll become more likable in Twilight Princess as one progresses through the story. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and hang on to those rule34 bookmarks for now.

Speaking of all things gaming and HD, it looks like Youtube finally supports resolutions above 1080p at 60 FPS. In the past I could only choose between 60 FPS and resolutions greater than 1080p, but never both. Now I can have both, which should be a cool feature for upcoming Warframe videos. Bit rate still isn't ideal, there are some annoying artifacts and footage never looks as good as the actual game, but it's better than it was. Look!

In other news, Haggy beat me for the first ever time (well, first three times, really) on Street Fighter V. Counting all our matches in Street Fighter IV, King of Fighters XIII and SFV I've probably won 100 or more fights in a row. He switched characters to Laura and I have absolutely no idea when it's safe to attack, when I should defend or how to defend against Laura's attacks. Which is great, because this will finally force me to improve and learn something new. The first time we all played together in a lobby with 7 people I constantly had to queue back up at the end of the line after beating everybody, because people were getting tired of fighting me. Maybe this is finally gonna change things a bit. I'm happy he kept on practicing long and hard enough to finally get the hang of it. In a perfect world we'll get this friendly rivalry going where we'll take turns at who gets the upper hand, constantly forcing each other to learn new tricks. It's how I used to play Street Fighter 2 against my brother and it's really the best way to play any fighting game.

I only ever play one character, because I'm lazy. I could try and pick something else for a change, surprise him a bit and mix things up a little, but that's just not my style. I'm just gonna dick around with Ken some more until I get the upper hand again. This may take a while and I'm okay with that. It's about time I get a challenge and something to master. Wiping the floor with everybody is fun, but you learn nothing that way. This is where the real fun begins.