Demon’s Souls is a game that will make you into a man. A scrawny fourteen-year-old, after two hours with this game, will be grooming his muttonchops and ready to ship off on the next boat to fight the Kaiser. If you are already a man, it will make you into some sort of bizarre double-man. What’s that you say? You’re a woman? You don’t want to be a man? Too bad. Too bad. That’s the Demon’s Souls way.

You’ve probably heard that Demon’s Souls is hard. Pshh. Lots of games are hard. Some are even harder than this one. The difficulty is not the point. What sets Demon’s Souls apart is the way that it doesn’t just kill you, but also stomps on your genitals when you’re down. And it will make you realize that that’s what you needed all along.

It’s a lot like life. Sometimes in life you win, and sometimes the giant armored skeleton stabs your face off because the flying mantis monster you didn’t even see shot you in the back with a spike at just the wrong time. And when that happens in life, do you respawn at the same spot and carry on like nothing happened? NO, asshole. You go back to the beginning of the level, leaving all your hard-earned souls out there on the pavement, and you fight your way back. And you learn a lesson from the whole thing, because you should have been wearing your Thief’s Ring, now shouldn’t you? That’s life.

The trend in hard games these days is to unlock “Easy” mode for you once you’ve died enough times. Do you think Demon’s Souls does that? Do you think Demon’s Souls is so much as aware of the concept of “Easy” mode? NO IT IS NOT. If Demon’s Souls even knew we were talking about “Easy” mode, it would come over here and kick the shit out of all of us. And we would deserve it.

I’ll tell you what happens in Demon’s Souls when you die. You come back as a ghost with your health capped at half. And when you keep on dying, the alignment of the world turns black and the enemies get harder. That’s right, when you fail in this game, it gets harder. Why? Because fuck you is why.

Have I told you about the online elements? At any time when you’re in Body form, another player from anywhere else in the world can invade your game and murder you to regain his own body, or just to keep you on your toes. This happens when you’re in the middle of fighting armies of unthinkable monsters that are probably already three-quarters of the way towards killing you. And no, you cannot opt out of this feature! This is what you signed up for when you agreed to be a man.

When this happened to me — when a guy strolled into my game like it was Taco Bell and exploded my torso, costing me my body and all my progress in the level — was I mad? No, because I was too busy being in awe at how fucking hardcore the experience was.

Now, don’t let this dissuade you. Demon’s Souls is a pitiless master, but let it never be said that it is not fair. The game rewards handsomely those who stand up to it, and the greater the challenge, the greater the glory.

What the hell are you waiting for?

Harder than he’s ever done it before

He’s not over compensating. He is however saddened about the loss of his Quad Laser

This is the mooninite Ignignokt in the 3D Dot Game Heroes game. Took about 10 minutes to make.

So in what I assume to be a last hurrah for Final Fantasy XI, SE is releasing both a new add-on (conveniently split into three parts for your wallet squeezing pleasure) and increasing the level cap to the Final Fantasy staple of 99. I can assume this means two things. It will take about a billion xp to get that far and someone will do it within a week.

Those who know me know I’ve had this on again off again love affair with FFXI. Most people have no clue why, or rather, they DO but just aren’t connecting the dots. I’ve been playing FFXI since the US beta and in that time met a lot of really cool people, exploring the new worlds together and such through the last 8 years or so. The exact same thing could be said for my buddies that have played Warcraft since it came out.

Seeing Square also evolve in their story telling was also neat over the past few years. Wings of the Goddess really nailed character animation in cutscenes. The Shantotto add-on really drove home the humor of the taru’s.

Getting back on track, level 99 I assume will be quite the ordeal to achieve. Most mobs give about 200-300 xp a kill and to reach level 75 alone required 801,350 xp. Currently, at 75 you can max out your xp at 44,000. To get from 74 to 75 required 42,000. So let’s assume that each level will require 2000 more xp to level again (more likely it will be 3000 but humor me), it will take 2,088,000 xp to reach max level. Hopefully SE will also see this as mildly absurd. Somehow I doubt it though. They will probably milk it until the population dies off and ff14 takes over.  But let’s say they have a heart. I think the best way to do is from 76-51, have it sit at 45,000 and every five levels after that, increase it by 5k. Yeah, I know, wishful thinking but a man can dream can’t he?

Also touched upon are what new skills will that have for you on your sub jobs. SE’s already touched on that. Skills that define a job will be thrown out when it’s your sub. That means all the mages, your dreams of refresh will most likely be shattered. I know, I know heart breaking. And what about level cap quests? Please, no. I’m sure there will be at least one or two though. Probably one to allow you to go beyond 75 and then one that will probably be ridiculous to complete to go from 98 to 99.

The other thing I’m excited about is summoners are getting two new summons that we have been waiting on forever. Alexander and Odin. Both will require astral flow to summon and both will automatically activate astral flow if it’s not already active. This is interesting in the fact that this means you can only summon them once every two hours unless they are changing how astral flow works. Alexander will give a rather large defense and status immunity buff to the party and Odin will of course brandish Zantetsuken, his sword that allows one hit kills unless it’s a boss where it will just deal damage instead. The amount of defense given by Alexander and the accuracy of Odin’s Zantetsuken depends on how much MP the summoner has at the time of casting. This is also interesting. I’m curious to find out how long Alexander’s buff will last seeing as a 2-hour ability is required to cast it. Odin is pretty self-explanatory. They also already figured Zantetsuken would be abused by summoner burn parties and have made it so the more mobs in its area of effect, the less accurate it is.

There are a few other updates being listed such as a rewiring of some job’s abilities but there’s nothing really to talk about there until they release some new information. The really big thing was the level cap increase.

Things should be pretty interesting in the coming months for FFXI. It’s really up to SE to decide whether it’s a good or bad sort of interesting.

More info is FINALLY starting to trickle out about this game. Here is a weapon trailer telling you about the various weapons you’ll encounter in the game.

Over the years of playing fighting games with my brother, however, I developed an internal limiter. This was reinforced playing with Sean and Phil. If I didn’t hold back and let them win while looking like I was trying, they would quickly quit playing and I’d be stuck playing with the computer. This has unfortunantly crippled my development for online play. My brother can now wipe the floor with me since he had my copy of marvel when he went to college. Apparently he had a decent group of people and learned a few of the more decent air combos.

There was my MAS (see the above team) phase until Phil found Jin to be a great Servebot counter. Then I started using Mega Akuma and Wolvie. Wolvie would just tear Jin appart. He started getting good with Captain Commando, so I ended up swapping Mega out with Rouge. Not the best CapCom counter, but it worked.  My team has evolved considerably since those teams. Since playing SSF2HDR, I picked up playing Cammy because it was the only way to survive in online play. She’s amazingly fast but I’ve yet to figure out any of her good air combos. There’s Cammy for moving around and confusing people, pulling off her QTC back + PP to catch people in the middle of attacks. There’s Mega for playing a distance game with those pesky infinite Magneto scrubs (though he is sometimes switched for Felicia cause throwing waves of cat litter at people is fun). As for my last character, remind me to thank Phil for introducing me to the awesome of Jin. I’ve worked out an air combo that I can lead-in to a mech gun super. I can’t do it all the time, but when it works it looks awesome and can drain about 60% life on some poor unsuspecting kid (oddly enough, I’ve had most success using it against MC Wolvierine).

As a parting I leave you with these two videos. Do with them what you will.

Always remember,Oh you so Pringles, Where yo curly mustache at, and That Bitch is Blue like Candy. Remind me to thank Ben for these vids.

Firstly, some background:  I have an extremely short attention span when it comes to MOST GAMES.  Anyone who knows me will attest to this fact.  Even World of Warcraft, an admittedly great all-around game, has (historically) only ever occupied me for perhaps two months at a stretch, tops.  Although I will say that I’ve broken that barrier in the last couple of days… I’ve even managed to hold myself to three chars on a single server!  Hooray for me!

SO:  when a game DOES manage to pull me back to its bosom for any length of time, I view it as a sign of something positive.  In general, I’m not fixated upon any one facet of a game (Presentation, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, and Lasting Appeal, to quote the set used by IGN… for some reason.  I’ve never even been to the fucking site before just now) and I will DEFINATELY not be awarding numerical scores for any kind of catagory system.  Fuck scores for games anyways; I’ve enjoyed plenty of games that some jackass reviewer gave a 4 out of 10 (or whatever the fuck system they’ve conned themselves into believing is legitimate) simply because I found something fun in them.  Earth Defense Force 2017, for one.  No no no, I have a different purpose for this stuff; that purpose being to get you to try the games metioned at least ONCE.  The fact that I even mention a game in one of these (hopefully not too infrequent) articles counts as an endorsement on my part; if I feel there’s something really outrageously wrong with a game listed here, I’ll be sure to let you know what that something is.

All that being said, these will NOT be comprehensive reviews by any stretch of the imagination.  Hell, I plan on including at least one relatively old game in each issue if I can possibly do so.  Once again, my goal here is to bring to your attention a game I feel is deserving of your time, if only briefly.  Do you have Gamefly (or something similar) yet?  If not, just fucking get it.  I’ll SEND you one of the myriad One Free Month coupons I’ve got horded in my TV console.  Gamefly is a beautiful thing because it allows possibly A.D.D. individuals like myself to blow through games at a fairly quick and inexpensive rate.  It serves to enable the PLAY IT ONCE philosophy I so heartily endorse.  I believe strongly in pre-screening a game before I purchase it;  Gamefly allows me to both preview newer games AND sample games I’d never pay exorbitant fees to Blockbuster to play.  So… yeah.  On with the useful stuff.

FEAR 2:  Loads of fun.  I enjoyed the hell out of the first FEAR game, in part because I could sympathize with the main character: the spooky ghost chick.  Yes, she’s actively trying to kill the protagonist.  Yes, she’s a bit quick to destroy your teammates.  Yes, she has a really unnerving habit of flashing in and out of your field of view, causing you to drop your Kool-ade.  A LOT.  But she’s been through a really rough childhood and I feel that she’s pretty much justified in splattering random living humans across the walls and/or ceiling with psychic fury.  Plus I consider this game to be a departure from the Survival Horror genre by simple expedient of the protagonist’s ability to acquire massive amounts of firepower and a regenerating Bullettime power.  So even WHEN creepy shit starts going down in the fucking elementary school you just HAD to take a shortcut through, you are startled and, yes, creeped out, but you are ALSO secure in the knowledge that no matter WHAT comes after you one can always hit the slow-motion, evaluate the threat, and blow its fucking head off.  AGAIN, in the case of headless non-corporeal beasties.  Conclusion: play it first, get through the main campaign (which is what you should be playing this game for anyways), TRY the multiplayer, and if the multi does it for you, go ahead and buy it.  I’m prejudiced, but only the addition of Creepy Dead Girl Mode would make the multi feel worthwhile to me.

Ace Combat 6:  Yeah, released in ’07, but tons of goddamn fun all the same.  I threw this game in the Gamefly queue after hearing it mentioned in the same breath as HAWX over at Penny Arcade.  Specifically, if memory serves, it was described as “designed for single-player campaigns, and much harder than HAWX, which was obviously designed for multiplayer”.  Such things make me interested for some reason.  Had I been able to attend the Air Force Academy, I would have opted (against the grain, apparently) to be a ground attack pilot… taking out radar, critical infrastructure, supply lines, etc. holds great appeal for me.  Ace Combat 6 allows me to do just this; in fact, I can kit out my wingman for an entirely anti-air role and grab the F-117 Nighthawk (or F-15E Strike Eagle, the F-117 just has greater aesthetic appeal) and perform NOTHING BUT ground attack missions for nearly the entire game.  Rather like being Luke Skywalker gunning for the Death Star’s thermal exhaust port and having the Millenium Falcon guarding your back… but without the 80′s haircut.  And the incredible dorkyness.  Conclusion: IF you like flight sims at all, THEN buy this.  The sheer number of aircraft and weapon choices can give the campaign itself replay value, let alone the incredibly interesting multi modes.

Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway:  This game was not terribly well received by the majority of people I’ve met (all of whom generally fall into either the Call of Duty/Halo camp or the Rainbow Six camp) because, I imagine, it’s not CoD, Halo or R6.  I understand.  Please stop hyperventilating and LISTEN.  The game does deemphasize the role of the player as badass killing machine; it does so in order to drive the squad based tactics system.  I ADORE the ability to check the basic layout of an area, plot suppression/flushing/flanking maneuvers, and dispatch my fire teams to implement such WHILE STILL BEING SHOT AT.  There is a special kind of joy in my heart that I can only get by slaughtering an entire company of Nazis while firing not a single shot of my own.  I feel a deep resonance between this game’s playstyle and ACTUAL combat, as opposed to gun-and-run or cover-sniping tactics employed in pretty much every other FPS ever.  If it’s any consolation, the writing and voice acting is hella cliche, grandad.  Conclusion: this game is about using your fire teams to kill enemies, NOT your own l33t fragging abilities.  If the thought of being the de facto weakest member of your team (from a lethality perspective) bothers you, move on.  If not, this game is only like 15 bucks through Gamefly.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!:  Here’s the oldie for today, and it remains awesome in spite of the passage of time.  Pirates! is one of those games I keep installed on the Lappy not only because the XBox version is teh suck but also because I always like having it as a potential game choice when bored.  I enjoy especially the ship battles, the need to not only broadside the crap out of your target but also take into account wind speed and direction and what type of damage you want to deal out.  If you’re just looking to sink the bastard, that’s fine, but there are times you may want to take the ship alive so you can loot the cargo holds (the most reliable source of pirate booty in the Carribbean outside of Tortuga)… and if you want to steal the ship itself, you’ll REALLY want to avoid doing damage to the sails, as well.  As with all Sid Meier games, there’s a lot of strategery to supplement the combat; indeed, the strategic aspect is the entire reason you engage in combat in the first place.  As, to be honest, I feel it should be.  Conclusion: you’ll have a real hard time trying to find this game for SALE anywhere anymore, so just acquire a copy through “legitimate means” and write Sid a nice thank you note.  I know you’ve got the hard drive space, just fucking do it.

Dawn Of War 2:  oh, delightful.  I wasted hours and hours playing the original Dawn of War, and the Risk-esque territory strategy aspect of DoW:  Dark Crusade made this one of my favorite games of all time.  DoW 2 keeps this overarching strategic goal system and adds a bit of RPG flair to the RTS portion.  Admittedly, I was a touch disappointed by the near-complete removal of the building aspect of the RTS; plotting infrastructure needs and erecting base defenses has always been my strongest point.  This is pretty much gone from DoW 2.  However, given the “these few elite squads against the innumerable alien hordes” RPG dynamic, I can definately see that base management would get in the way of the action.  This game is NOT for people who win RTS’s by amassing a huge mixed group of units and ploughing a swathe of destruction directly across the map and headlong into the enemy HQ.  This is a game for, again, people who have a basic concept of small-unit tactics and are able to use a few groups of differing weapon types to destroy an enemy’s cover advantage.  I would have enjoyed this concept immensely even WITHOUT the ability to use level-up points to buy new perks and abilities for your squad leaders.  Conclusion: if you are an RTS fan, go directly out right this very moment and buy this damn game.  I’m pretty sure you can purchase and download it online, too, if you don’t feel like leaving the house.  Even hardcore engineer types like myself will find much glee to be had in being deprived of their normal environment of choice.

And finally:  the acronym for this type of article DOES, in fact, sound exactly like “Gestapo” when spoken aloud.  I did not do this on purpose;  the title came first, I typed out the acronym “GYSTPO” for the hell of it (and to create a tag for this article type), realized it sounded close, and added in the “a” to make it (GYSTaPO) more obvious.  I think it’s a kickass title, and quite hilarious to me given my philospohical proclivities.  Watch this be the one thing I’m under fire for during my political campaigning days.  Ah, irony.

UPDATE 22 FEB 09:  Received the happy word that Left 4 Dead (360) is now on its way to me, due to arrive Monday.  In theory.  So assuming it actually shows up, should be able to explore THAT avenue of zombie destruction relatively soon.  ALSO:  played the Resident Evil 5 demo… the “legal” one, not the fucked up Japanese version Gerry tried to get me to download and install.  I was not happy with the game, a verdict which I’m sure will get me shunned by the gaming community in general;  lucky for me my opinion of the gaming community in general is pretty damn low already, so no worries there.  The reasoning behind this unpopular opinion will require some additional explanation, which I choose to place below the page break.  Oh, the suspense.

I am not alone, either amongst my immediate friends or humanity in general, in my hatred of the undead.  In fact, I derive a great deal of visceral, instinct-type joy from the wholesale slaughter (re-slaughter?) of zombies.  AS SUCH:  I have a greater intrinsic love of games that allow me to dispatch as many loathsome undead as possible, preferably with gas-powered gardening implements.  I particularly enjoy games that keep true to the time-honored tradition of headshots/decapitations as sure-fire one-hit kills, as it makes sense (to me) that the brain (and nervous system, by extension) would be the one human organ a zombie would actually need to function and that damage to that organ would result in instant redeadening.  ( <—— NOT A REAL WORD)

THEREFORE:  Nazi Zombies! in CoD: WaW?  YES.  Left 4 Dead?  VERY YES.  Dead Rising (the 360 version)?  OH GODS YES.  Dead Rising (the Wii version, where there’s, what, like 5 zombies on the screen at a time)? Not so much.  House of the Dead 4, where you can blow a zombie’s head clean off and they keep right on coming and somehow manage to knock off one of your fucking four life chunks? NO.  Zombie Revenge, a little known Dreamcast game set in the House of the Dead universe where multiple delightful weapon systems are available for the slaying of, let’s be honest here, retarded zombie fodder?  SUPER YES.  Zombies Ate My Neighbors?  A mild yes, if only because melting a zombie with a holy water balloon is hilarious; props for using the materials at hand.  Monster Madness: Battle For Suburbia?  Definitely yes, even though zombies don’t even APPEAR in some levels; if you haven’t played this one, dude, give it a damn try.  Record of Lodoss War?  Absolutely YES, if only for the opportunity to cut down zombies with a fire sword.  Grabbed By The Ghoulies? …I’m slightly embarrassed to endorse this one, it’s a KIDS’ game, after all… but so was Big Sky Troopers, and that game was awesome, so fuck it: this game was pretty fun and included killing zombies with holy water-filled Super Soakers.  Plus my wife (then girlfriend) enjoyed the hell out of the game herself, and thus did I reach second base.  Never underestimate the power of video games your significant other might be good at (two words:  TETRIS ATTACK).

But Resident Evil 5?  FUCK NO.  First of all… tentacle heads?!?  That shit makes me look back on Resident Evil 1 and 2 with nostalgia, and I hated the hell out of those for quite some time because you got like twelve damn bullets to last you the entire fucking game.  And not even good bullets, either… we’re talking 9mm here people… I’d put three of those in an actual human if I wanted a sure kill, and zombies are much more durable in the torso regions.  Eventually, I came to enjoy the puzzle opportunities presented by the Survival Horror genre, but I could never play them for long due to my frustration over not being able to just lay into my undead foes with wild abandon.  Resident Evil, what, was it 4?  The one where they threw boxes of ammo at you like the village had been planting bullet trees for generations?  THAT one very nearly redeemed the entire series in my eyes.

I guess my ideal zombie situation is some kind of combination of Dead Rising (huge hordes of fragile zombies) and either Too Human or Viking (another underrated game; I love how each area culminates in a massive viking assault on some fort or whatever, with dragon-based fighter-bomber-esque assistance; Gamefly the shit, you’ll see what I’m talking about)… so, a bloodthirsty bezerker-type encounter.  Look, Dynasty Warriors: Zombies would be an AWESOME game to me.  Just the thought of Lu “Cockroach Man” Bu holding Hu Lao Gate against a tidal wave of zombified peasantry is delightful to me.  Shit would go down like “My Lord Liu Bei!  Cao Cao’s forces are nearly upon us!  We must flee!”  “No, Zhao Yun, I must buy the rearguard time to evacuate the peasants… I MUST defend my people!”  “But Sir, your people are all gray and stinky and they’ve eaten the rearguard!”  “…No shit?  Fuck it then, Cao Cao can have ‘em, he wants ‘em so much.”  “Right on, my liege.  Yo!  Zhang Fei, Guan Yu!  Wrangle up all the healthy wenches, we’re gonna fuck off out of here and rebuild the Kingdom of Shu our damn selves!  Yes, yes, the rice wine, too!”

…You know what?  Fuck it.  I’M MAKING THAT GAME.  Gerry, halt all production on whatever that TD game was that I’ve been out of the loop on for so long:  we are reprioritizing towards development of Zombie Plague of the Three Kingdoms XIII: Fucking Off To Japan.  It’s a civilization development game interspersed with resource-gathering sorties into infested villages with alcohol and desperate fighting withdrawls towards the port city of Qing Zhou.  And should the port prove full of the undead, as well?  Over the Great Wall. It’s a story of love, loss, and huge fuck-off halberds.  MY WILL BE DONE, god dammit.

Anyways.  I have faith in Left 4 Dead because it’s always seemed right to me for the last vestiges of humanity to eventually be impossibly outnumbered by the mindless undead.  It seems only just, in such a world, for a small band of competent, well-armed heroes to be carving a swathe through thousands upon thousands of zombies, pausing only to rest and rearm at rare safe havens before venturing once again into a seething, moaning ocean of reanimated hunger.  Why do they continue on as they do, their bodies, minds and spirits being slowly ground into nothingness by the relentless grasping hordes?  Do they strive towards a final safety that may not even exist?  Do they seek to drown their useless, vestigal sense of humanity beneath their grim, neverending harvest?  Or… are they reaching, unconsciously, towards the sweet release of death that their comrades and, tragically, even they themselves cannot find the courage to provide?  I choose to believe there is something about indomitable odds that drives people towards a final, explosive blaze of glory… and if a person can take as many of the enemy along with them as possible, then we should honor their effort all the greater.  That the Left 4 Dead zombies seems to tear apart under gunfire like used tissue paper gives me hope that the body count for this game will be truly great.  Our Norse forefathers will surely greet us heartily in Valhalla.. while the slow and the weak will be left trudge the Earth forever while you and I quaff mightily and laugh at them from on high.

Comma bitches.