lol leaky leaks everywhere... here it is.

Elden Ring, new IP by From Software and George RR Martin:

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1137134235221942272

I'm too lazy to go back and find it but someone in this thread was all "You gullible idiots theres no way From Soft and GRRM teamed up on any kind of IP"



I've learned not to doubt these weird vidya game rumors. Color me curious. I'll probably buy it regardless but Sekiro will be the first From Soft game I ever finish so my track record isn't strong.

Farming Senpou is super fun with Puppeteer.

I forget who, but they were responding to me. I've been a believer in this rumor since day one. I AM SO STOKED.

Hollow Knight completion to 107%. I'm dying.

It was me and I've never been more glad and willing to eat my own hat! All the same let me apologize MaleficDevilry; I didn't mean to come off as a dick, so I'm sorry that I did.

Holy hot damn though, can't fucking wait for an official announcement for this. I'd be fascinated to learn just what exactly GRRM brought to the table. Miyazaki has already proved himself a genius at worldbuilding and storytelling. I hope we get more info on that side of things at E3.

I didn't believe that rumour early on either, but lately I had confirmation from insiders, so I knew it was real, and then GRRM all but confirmed it when he posted on his blog about working with a Japanese video game developer. But now it's literally official, heh.

Unfortunately we likely won't see gameplay at E3, just a CG trailer, like for every Dark Souls game and Bloodborne. But no matter. I'm already sold. Why wouldn't I be? From's track record is gloriously spotless since Demon's Souls.

Been spotless since far before that though, IMO.

How quickly we forget about Ninja Blade...

So the trailer for Elden Ring is out. Cryptic as ever, but still pretty damn pumped for this. Can't wait!

Elden Ring reveal trailer and a Doom Eternal release date. The world is a slightly better place than it was yesterday.

EDIT: Of course there's not much to go on, but Elden Ring looks decidedly more Dark Souls in aesthetic than Bloodborne or Sekrio. Can't wait to learn more!

That trailer was weird as fuck, not gonna lie. But whatever, I know it'll be good.

Here's an interview with Miyazaki, which confirms a lot of what the insider has said:

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/06/09/ ... lden-ring/

Key points:

- Miyazaki is a huge GRRM fan and gushes about him and working with him. He also loves Fevre Dream and makes his employee read it
- 3rd person action-RPG
- open-world -- but Miyazaki says he's not sure if it's "the right term", it's their largest world to date though
- still has intricate levels
- exhilarating action combat and epic bosses
- deeper RPG elements than ever before

I mean, it's probably an insta-purchase for me. Like 99%. Unless the combat is just DS3 again, that might put me off.

I swear I'm not trying to be a hater but...does Elden Ring feel like a placeholder to anyone else, title wise? That's a real lame name, imo.

Edit: Oh and uh, O'rin of the Water and the first encounter with Corrupted Monk were both SHOCKINGLY easy. It's bizarre to feel like I've genuinely improved so much. Never felt that way on any other From Soft game. Usually I just beat my head against the wall until I squeak by on a boss. Now I go in ultra confident lol. Maybe Father Owl will break that.

Not really, no. What's wrong with it? It's clearly named after an item that's central to the story, and it sounds suitably fantastical. Does "Dark Souls" sound like a placeholder name?

The Messenger DLC got a release date for next month. Can't wait!

It honestly sounds like some LOTR fanfic I would have written in middle school. I don't know. Dark Souls at least makes me feel something. It's a pretty evocative phrase. Elden Ring, as you said, sounds more like the name of an item within a game.

NICE! I'm almost done with the game, just kind of stalled out again in favor of Sekiro. As pretty much everyone else on earth said, the backtracking to finish the game does get a bit tedious. I love the idea, it just needed more to spice it up. New enemies, mini-bosses. Something.

Razakel have you touched Katana Zero at all? Super duper highly recommended.

Nope lol man I'm lightyears behind on my indies. Still haven't even played Hollow Knight so we probably can't even be friends. At this point I might wait until the sequel gets a release date and then blast through it. My girlfriend's been hogging the Switch lately to finally play Breath of the Wild so I basically can't play anything for the next couple weeks. But I will be getting Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night as soon as it's released at the end of the month.

Hahah well that's understandable. Sharing is caring and all that. Hope she's having a blast with Zelda. I haven't played one since Ocarina of Time! We can still be friends, as long as you read my LOTR fanfic.

Katana Zero will probably only get cheaper in the meantime. It doesn't really compare to Hollow Knight. That game is a full-stop masterpiece. Katana Zero is short but omggggg it's so fun and it really manages to fuck with your head and pull on your heartstrings at the same time. They're also steadily releasing content for it with a bigger DLC planned I believe.

I'm struggling a lot with Sekiro's combat system... i've managed to kill few bosses and mini-bosses, but everytime they didn't felt like legitimate victories (lots of ash and oil were thrown )

To any of the players here: there was a boss that made you finally get the combat? It feels great when i pull off a string parries, but most of the time i get comboed to death

Right now i'm getting my ass kicked by the Butterfly and the snake eyes something in the mountains where everything shoots at you

Finally caught up with all the E3 nonsense and surprisingly, I came away satisfied with something from nearly every showcase, except Bethesda and Square. I mean Doom Eternal looks fine, but Bethesda's conference was just so soul suckingly garbage that all my enthusiasm was gone by the big reveal and it landed pretty 'meh' to me. Boy howdy do I love shitting on Ubisoft but even they had a couple games I may or may not check out.

I have no doubt Nintendo's conference is going to be good (isn't it always?), but I'm still about as likely to get a Switch as I am a Nobel Peace Prize.

I loved Bethesda's conference, probably my favorite of all of them if I'm being honest. Don't even know if we watched the same thing based on your opinion. But then I am a fan of the games they showed, if you're not already playing or interested in playing the titles that were showcased then yeah why would you even be into it in the first place? They clearly made thousands and thousands of fans happy, though, me among them.

I'd consider myself a Bethesda fan like you. I've spent hundreds of hours in their worlds just like the next person likely has. I just didn't care for their heavy focus on their greedy little mobile games, their desecration of Commander Keen, or their very "hey we're finally putting NPCs into Fallout 76... like it was the plan all along!" attitude. I mean good on them for attempting to fix it, you can't fault them for listening to feedback and trying. I totally forgot about Wolfenstein Youngblood and Deathloop, both of which look interesting to a degree. But they aren't exactly my types of game.

A big part of these conferences is energy and presentation, and I just feel Bethesda missed the mark there.

If they would have showed another Starfield or ES6 teaser, that'd have been cool. Those were really the only things I was hoping for so in a way I guess I set myself up for disappointment. It's fine for them to be branching out to mobile games, I have no problem with that. But the type of people who watch E3 aren't exactly the mobile game demographic so, swing and a miss.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh new mainline Zelda tease made me fucking scream. And Link's Awakening release date for September. Thank you Nintendo!!!!!

Also very cool that Trials of Mana is coming to Switch.

The game that piqued my interest the most this E3 has probably been the new Watch Dogs game. Being able to recruit any NPC in the game to play as and have it be a unique experience doesn't sound doable at all. Seems extremely ambitious and I wonder how they are going to pull it off.

Holy shit there are AMAZING deals on the Nintendo eShop right now. I just bought Hollow Knight for nine fucking dollars Canadian! SO many other indies I want on sale including Cuphead, Celeste, and Undertale, plus pretty much every triple A on the system. Shit!

The announcements about the Division 2 DLC, Episodes 1-3, are huge. For reference, the plot of Episode 3 is hunting down the villain of the first game, and returning to NYC is going to be a blast.

Well, for the most part, another meh E3.

I'm happy with Doom Eternal finally having a release date.
Looking forward to Outer Worlds.
Jazzed though cautiously optimistic for Contra Rogue Corps.
Happy to see a remake of Panzer Dragoon.
Will likely get Link's Awakening remake.
Still eager for Cyberpunk 2077.
The dialog for Fire Emblem was terrible, but still getting it.

...and I think that's all that really got my attention.

Hey man I feel like this post was glossed over and I'm slow so my Sekiro love is at a fever pitch right now! Let's go in.

Genichiro. That was the moment for me. And I'm confused because if you're at the gun fort I would have thought you've beat Genichiro. If you managed to do that without constant pressure and deflects...well I'm pretty impressed in a way lol.

So the game tells you exactly how to play from the beginning. It's on hella load screens. But it's just words until you try it. My silly hit and run style from Dark Souls will work up to a point, and maybe you can even beat the game that way but...it's boring and lame and takes FOR EV ER. A shinobi blah blah CONSTANT PRESSURE AND DEFLECTS blah blah blah. That's it. Constant attack pressure until you hear them deflect you, when they deflect you they automatically counter attack in some fashion which YOU deflect, then the whole dance starts over.

I couldn't get this through my skull until I literally got mad at Genichiro and decided I wasn't going to worry about healing or dodging anything other than perilous strikes. I backed him into a corner and chunked off an absurd amount of health. I still ended up dying but I learned that I could limit his moveset to an extreme degree simply by never giving him a moment to breathe.

So constant pressure, deflects, and lastly capitalizing on every single possible opportunity for a Mikiri counter. The Mikiri window is MUH-HASSIVE kid! It's almost comical. I've successfully done them while in the middle of a dodge. I've cancelled out of a sword swing into a Mikiri. I don't even press a directional input a lot of the time, simple press and kind of linger on the O button or whatever you have Mikiri counter mapped to. It's crazy easy to time and it destroys their posture.

So basically Genichiro taught me how to play the game. Constant pressure, deflects, punish perilous attacks. There are a handful of giant bosses that you still occasionally have to run from but it's only for certain AOE attacks I swear. You can deflect bullets. You can deflect giant arms and swords and it's powerful feeling. Whatever boss is up next for you, try to beat them without any items or prosthetic. Just go heavy pressure and deflect their counter attacks until posture breaks. The health bar is far less important than posture.

If you've figured all this out since your post I hope to god you quit reading ages ago. Let me know how it's going!

I'm still wondering where the hell is Genichiro..
Right now i'm at the mibu village, i have really hard time to remember how i got here

By the way i think i got what you are saying: the revelation came with the shadow swordsman! (Or whathever english name has the ninja in the pit where you start the game)
I parried it a million times but his posture was untouched and mine destroyed, but after a lot of direct sword hits to the back his fast regeneration stopped and i was able to parry him to oblivion, it was damn exciting!

I really hope all i've learned will be useful with the butterfly, and the extra gourds will come handy

Also i had a really surreal fight with the Giraffe Centipede, my l1 button is severely damaged

Hahah I thought the Giraffe Centipede was super fun. I think it took me 2 tries, but he's such a rhythm game. Some mini-bosses and even real bosses melt their own posture if you get your deflects on point.

I'm genuinely baffled by the progression you've made if you haven't fought Genichiro yet. Did the gun fort lead you anywhere? I'm pretty sure you have to defeat Genichiro to obtain the key you need. If you're not sure where to find him, start with Ashina Castle.

He jumped in the hole in the Dungeon. You can do that at the very start of the game, if you can defeat that Lone Swordsman in the well. You can defeat the Corrupted Monk before even entering Ashina Castle, if you're good enough!

I had to put down Hollow Knight, for my sanity. I want this Platinum so bad, but FUCK Godhome.

I just started the original Dark Souls for the first time. I'm excited!

Ah that's so dope. I can't wait to beat the game so I can try NG+ and do things a little differently. Currently having a blast in Fountainhead Palace.

There was a time when I thought Hollow Knight would be my first platinum ever but there's just no way. It starts to feel like a grind and I hate it. I do want to get a more satisfying ending though. Fully expecting Silksong to be another masterpiece.

I didn't even realize it was possible until NG+3. I never spent much time in the dungeon until I wanted to do all the NPC quests.

I am up to the first Bell of Awakening in DS1 Remastered. I was expecting this to feel really dated compared to Sekiro/Bloodborne, but I'm quite enjoying the pace. It looks just as good as Bloodborne on my PS4Pro/UHD setup.

Really? I think Bloodborne is a way nicer looking game graphically. I was actually a bit surprised DS Remastered didn't look a bit better than it does. Really felt/looked like I was playing a last gen game, but that could be because I played it shortly after Dark Souls 3. Obviously still a great fucking game, though.

I have to say, and I imagine this might be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like DS1 kind of dips in the second half, say post-Lordvessel. I just feel like all the best areas and bosses are in the first half of the game.

Sword Saint Isshin is a BIH! Fun slaughtering his grandson over and over though. I'm so close but need a break, probably won't beat him today.

All the E3 footage for indie games has me wanting to finish Ori and the Blind Forest. I got stuck on some little puzzle and haven't touched it for a month or better.

Edit: apparently the same person who leaked Elden Ring has confirmed there's no Sekiro DLC in the works currently. That's a bit of a heartbreaker for me. Elden Ring looks neat but Sekiro is their first game I've fully connected with.

That's disappointing. I was hoping for a Lady Tomoe DLC. Maybe that means we'll get Elden Ring before 2020?

I wish Ori was on PS4. I just bought a bunch of indie games, plus the two Mega Man X collections. I still need to play The Messenger too.

Axiom Verge
Celeste
Dead Cells
Jotun
Necropolis
Pyre
Sundered
Transistor

I need games I can safely play in front of a 10 year old.

Oh wow. You're speaking my language! You got some gems. Celeste is world class. It's Super Meat Boy with a heart and soul. Axiom Verge is a game I literally just got into tonight, despite owning for a while. It really is fun if you're a Metroid fan. Even if you're not.

Sundered ran like shit on my PS4 for some reason. Let me know how it goes for you. I got this weird stutter-frame thing whenever enemies spawned which is pretty much the whole game. It's beautiful but I couldn't tolerate it. Need to re-install and see what happens.

Necropolis is really cool in theory but I never put much time in it. I struggle to connect with rouge-lites. I hate seeing my character die. Starting over. Only Dead Cells seems to hit for me in that vein. I've never beat the second level of Enter the Gungeon.

I bought a cheap PC just to play the Messenger (lol whoops) but Ori was a bonus. It's honestly a Ghibli film where you play the main character. The movement upgrades they give you feel godlike. But I get frustrated with childish puzzles and quit. Bah. I need a more comfy computer chair.

I've actually never played a Castlevania or Meteroid. I did buy the Castlevania Anniversary Collection to give the series a try.

I played a bit of Sundered and it was fine. No issues. I'm on a PS4Pro though, so maybe that's why. I haven't experienced any frame rate drops while playing anything yet.

Jotun and Celeste will probably be my go-to for daytime play. Hollow Knight was a big hit with the kiddo. It's the only game she'll sit and watch me play like it's a TV show.



You will get to a point where you will kill Genchiro without getting hit before you beat Isshin.

Hey Jonpo I also just bought Celeste on the Nintendo eShop sale. Just played it for about two hours and I love it so far. Amazing platforming, perfectly challenging but not frustratingly punishing. I imagine I'll blast through this pretty quickly!

Also pre-bought Bloodstained today. \m/

Sekiro has absorbed me at the level that only Bloodborne managed to reach

I'm slowly mastering the game and fights like Genichiro, the Butterfly and the Guardian Ape (i got an heart attack) belong to video game history... Also the change that happened in the castle was exciting and upsetting

Now i think i've did the wrong thing: i sided with the father (damn my italian genome that always screams "family first!" ) but i can't wait to replay everything with everything i learned to back me up

Ah man I think most of us get that. I've put almost every other game on hold, only started Axiom Verge to have something "light" to enjoy in short bursts. And yeah, Guardian Ape is one of my favorite boss fights of all time, any game.

@Malefic Genichiro is a weak ass punk ass little chump and I enjoy destroying him quickly before each new attempt at SSI. I only made about 4 or 5 runs at him over the weekend. Got to the 2nd phase on one of them, got mowed down pretty quickly. It's fun, I'm looking forward to completing my first ever FromSoft game, mostly just to start all over and go for a different ending. I'm not sure what I did wrong but I never got to do the 2nd trip to Hirata Estate. Gonna have to consult the interwebs I guess. There are a few things I'd like to talk about but I don't want to spoil them for Morn of Solace. Let's just say Fountainhead Palace had a lot of fun surprises. Especially 2 underwater, fun surprises.

@Razakel good move my man! I can't even imagine how much fun Celeste will be on a mobile format. Platforming while you poooooop!

Genichiro, but even so, I still died like a bitch repeatedly to [Hirata boss v2] and the last boss, lol

If you want real brutality that makes you question your skill, do NG+ without Kuro's charm. Ahhhhhhhh. I still need to do a full charmless playthrough some day, but when I attempted it, I gave up at Great Shinobi Owl (after beating my head repeatedly against Guardian Ape and finally getting it, but Owl broke me).

---

I hate to be "that guy" but FromSoft games really kinda ruin most other games for me. It's hard to find something of similar quality. Some games I played lately:

- Nioh 2 network alpha. 'Twas good, of course. More Nioh is good. But everyone calls it Nioh 1.5 rather than Nioh 2 and to be frank, they're not wrong. I'm still getting it day 1, but yeah, it's not a big leap.

- Code Vein network test. It's... pretty bad. It's a testament to the quality of the "Souls-like" gameplay loop that I still played it for as long as I did, but I also wanted to give it a fair shot and all while it was free to try. But yeah, it's kinda trash. Everything about it sucks. It does literally nothing better than Souls (at least Nioh improved on the combat, and lets you replay levels/bosses, and has cool innovations of its own).

Combat is total jank, hitboxes are bad, weapon animations and impact really suck.
The art style is horrendous. Basically the most generic weeb shit in terms of characters *, and boring mushy grey and brown walls of concrete for the environments. There is no visually or aesthetically pleasing vista anywhere, nothing in terms of mood or atmosphere, nothing ever interesting to look at.
Technical-wise it's also garbage; low fidelity, low-res textures, bad animations, AND it runs like crap... on a PS4 Pro. I'm serious, this runs as bad as PS3 Dark Souls at times, despite basically looking like a last-gen game upscaled to 1080p.
Netcode is worse than Souls; when playing as a cooperator, enemies would teleport, animation would freeze, damage hits would get delayed, etc. Even Souls, except during extremely major lag spikes, was never this bad. And that's whenever I DID find another player; for the most part, the online activity was thoroughly dead. Not that I can really blame people for not wanting to play this...
Music? Also bad. The music that plays during boss fights is super goofy.
Level design? Almost non-existent; linear corridors with occasional branching corridors that sometimes loop back around, little to no verticality. Nioh's level design wasn't nearly as good as Souls's best, but it still trounces this.
Dialogue/story? lol.
The one redeeming value I can give is that the RPG/skill mechanics have some merit. Basically lots of action-skills with cooldowns and some equippable passives, which you can "master" to continue using/equipping when switching class... not bad. Not a fan of cooldowns in general though, but whatever. It vaguely reminds me of how God of War did it.

tl;dr: take the very lowest point of the Souls series you can think of. Then make it much worse still, in just about every single aspect, and you have Code Vein. I'm not kidding.

* Don't even get me started on the gross sexist designs too

- Cuphead. This game is too hard for me, fuck. I'm probably going to give up on it. It's brutal. I can do Sekiro no problem, but I can't take this. It's so, so pretty though. I really wanted to like this. Maybe I'll try the coop mode with HB some time.

- Ori and the Blind Forest. That was pretty good, for the most part, but when I finished it, I was kind of glad to be done with it. I wasn't having a lot of fun by the end; the escape sequences are just too frustrating and basically completely anti-fun. I guess I prefer my Metroidvanias to be more combat-oriented than hardcore platforming-oriented, because I much prefer Hollow Knight, Valdis Story, etc. over this type. It's absolutely beautiful though, both musically and visually, and the feels, the feels... :'( I'll probably still play the sequel some day, just for that.

- Sonic Mania. Decided to give this a shot since it's a PS+ freebie and I had my eyes on it. I really loved it early on... but... I kinda rage-quit First, I'm a bit disappointed with the number of levels that re-use assets/themes from previous games, even if it's from the good/retro ones. Even if they re-did the level structure/layout, I mean... one or two throwback levels would be fine, but this is too much. You start at Green Hill, then right after it's Chemical Plant... really now? Then you have a new level, cool... still kinda in the veins of Casino Night, but at least it's new. Then it's Flying Battery, another old one. Come on.

But anyway, it's still classic Sonic and fun so I was enjoying myself. But... then came Hydrocity. I always hated the water levels in Sonic, and while Hydrocity Zone was always a huge improvement over Labyrinth Zone, it's still way less fun than the rest. And I stopped for the night, but when I reloaded, all my accumulated lives were gone and I was back at 3 (whatyearisthis.gif). And in the middle of the level, there's an annoying escape sequence (if you read so far, you know how much I looove these) with insta-death if you don't do a perfect run (which is maddening to do when underwater), preceded by a short but unskippable cut scene. After a Game Over, I was taken back to the level of the boring-ass water level... I noped and closed the game. I'll probably return to it eventually, but I just got annoyed and frustrated. I think overly retro-style platformers/challengers aren't for me anymore...

- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Another PS+ freebie that I had sitting for a while. I'm... not entirely feeling it yet? After Dishonored, this just seems... so bland and kinda dull. I dunno. I miss being able to Blink/teleport all around. Still too many air vents, it's beyond silly at this point. Also still too many hacking mini-games fucking everywhere, even when you snoop around for codes and passwords to bypass them there's still too many, and they kinda suck with a controller (the rare time where I switched to mouse when I played Human Revolution on PC). The performance is crap even on Pro, it can't even keep a stable 30, and some parts of Prague are lagging immensely. Loading times are a bit heavy too. Story is OK so far, but the whole Aug apartheid thing is kinda dumb and heavy-handed. I haven't abandoned it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if I end up not even finishing it...

I also get annoyed at how skipping dialogue skips the entire character's dialogue, instead of line-by-line. I read the subtitles way faster than they talk and want to accelerate the text, but if I hit the skip button, I miss out the rest of what they say.... argh. Prague is a decent hub area though, I like it.