Dark Souls - A Brutal and Relentless Action/RPG Horror Title.

There's a game out there that is so difficult, so merciless and unforgiving of mistakes or poor planning and so punishing of failure that I'm almost afraid to play it. I am, of course, talking about Dark Souls, the action RPG that is as much an exercise in masochism as it is a hardcore gaming experience. Dark Souls is a sequel to Demon's Souls, an earlier game that I completely missed when it came out in 2009 because it was a PS3 exclusive and I draw the line at two consoles I rarely play. Dark Souls was released by Namco Bandai Games in the US on October 4^th for both the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, and the relentless blend of action and frustration provides an answer to the gamers who believe that quicksaves and infinite lives have made gamers soft. This is clearly not a game for everyone, as people who want a more casual experience to relax and unwind will no doubt be very, very frustrated with this game, because it kills you the instant you let your guard down. And then it kills you again, and again, and some more, until you wonder if the game is mocking you.

Expect your character to die several times before you even get the package open.

If you are thinking "That doesn't sound like much fun," one thing I neglected to mention is that despite the relentless, even punishing, difficulty... the game is (almost) never cheap or unfair. Every death is due to a mistake in either choice of weapon, where and when to fight an opponent, or just plain old-fashioned not being careful enough. The setting starts out without a massive amount of background information or plot to get you going, as the world is corrupted and all but lost to the demonic hordes, and your motivation is simple: destroy evil. Dark Souls, unlike its predecessor, is an open-world game, with freedom left to the player to go in whichever direction they believe they can survive, with no indication of where that might be, as death waits around every corner. Every time you die, you learn something new. Death is a strict teacher who shows you your mistakes immediately and demands perfection, and the lessons are well-learned.

The combat system rewards care, patience and selection of the correct tools for the job, whether that is a nasty two-handed weapon, heavy armor and shield for defense, or magical abilities, all are available to the player but none will suffice in every situation. You cannot gain enough magical power to run through sections of the game blowing things up at will, and you will find the predictable result of trying is, of course, another death. When you die, you lose your corporeal form and your collected souls, which are used to upgrade your character and equipment, and you respawn as undead... with half a health bar. Get back to your corpse, and you can retrieve what you've lost. Checkpoints come in the form of bonfires which can be lit to rest and make camp, but when you rest, the foes you have defeated rise again, meaning use of a checkpoint is a strategic choice.

The beacon fire. A place to rest and reflect on what lessons repeatedly dying has taught you.

On its surface, Dark Souls is a single player experience, but online play has been incorporated into the experience in several unique ways in keeping with the themes of the game world. First, it is possible to leave scrawled messages for other players in certain sections of the game, though whether you choose to heed the warnings or suspect they might have been left by a player trying to lead you to a quick death is up to you. The spirits of other players can occasionally be glimpsed moving through the same sections of gameplay as you are working your way through, seeing these damned souls in action reminds you of the consequence of failure. You can also summon spirits of other players for co-op play, but who is brought into your game world is random and communication with your spectral ally is extremely limited, a very different experience from loading a game and jumping in with people from your friends list. Also be warned that PVP players may, while you are in your living form, invade your game to assassinate you to regain their own form. In practice, you'll spend so much time as undead that this won't happen very often, but it is not optional or consensual, further adding to the danger for players who are doing well.

So much more of the game is meant to be discovered through play that I feel it would be a disservice to spoil it in a review here, but I can mention in passing a few other features. Despite being thrown into the world with only a very basic understanding of what is going on, that doesn't mean there is no lore or story going on in the game. By design, the player must earn tidbits by peeling away at the surface of this fantasy/horror world, and not telling you too much all at once helps keep the disturbing and disorienting tone of the place intact. For replay value, there is the covenant system. Without spoiling too much, I can say that covenants are the combination of faction/guild and alignment system in the game, and joining one will significantly change the play experience beyond the typical "good" or "evil" playthroughs in other RPGs. Every covenant comes with its own advantages and price to pay for membership, and some may make sections of the game easier or harder, or affect objectives.

Breathtaking environments and deadly foes are literally around every corner.

Is this a good game? The graphics are gorgeous, most reviews agree that the gameplay is incredibly tough, but in a fair sort of way barring one or two scenes that drift close to unfairness. The starting class is more like declaring a play philosophy than committing to a single set of options, as weapons, armor and abilities can be swapped out as needed to progress. If you are the sort of gamer eager to overcome challenges and believe firmly that modern games are too easy, this may just be the game for you. If dying over and over until you struggle toward the goal of hitting a beacon sounds too much like inflicting pain on yourself because it feels so good when you stop, I'd give this one a pass.

Fair Warning: I mentioned here that I planned to take a week off from posting as I get adjusted to a full-time job again, I plan to take that week from 10/15 through 10/22, so my vacation starts... now.

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There vill be.... SANDVICH! - Team Fortress 2 Free to Play, one week later.

And... I'm back. Many thanks to Sarah for her Origins articles, since I'd written all the articles posted last week before we left town, it was almost like I was on a 2-week vacation. (Do the unemployed get vacations?) Now, with that behind me, what did I do with the time I had not researching and writing articles, finding appropriate images and trying to ascertain as best I can their copyright status, layout and posting? Did I write the Great American Novel? Nail down that elusive job that'll make me adjust this blog's title? Charity work? Nope, I played a lot of video games. Those who know my love for Steam or who follow me on Tumblr can already guess which one.

Team Photo 2. Immediately after this was taken, everyone put on funny hats and started jumping around.

I don't cover nearly enough shooters, or so I'm told. I've declared my bias against the genre in the past, but it isn't as though I don't play them at all. I think my twitch reflexes aren't up to snuff to be really great at these sorts of things, so there might be a little bit of sour grapes in there somewhere. This might explain why it took over four years and the decision of Valve to make it Free-to-play for me to finally try Team Fortress 2. The game's been called “the most fun you can have online,” and I think I can see why. I'd like to take a few moments to explain TF2 to the people who haven't played it (yes, both of you) and then directly give some tips to others who just started playing from the F2P crowd on how to get started.

Released in 2007 as part of the Orange Box edition for Half Life 2, Valve updated the team-based multiplayer hit Team Fortress Classic with redesigned gameplay, a totally new, cartoony graphical style, enhancements to classes and changes to weapons loadout for each class. Using teamwork to accomplish objectives on levels was mastered by the earlier game, as before TFC, most multiplayer was deathmatch/arena style “kill everyone else” gameplay. Team Fortress features nine different classes, who perform different roles on the team, three are designed to attack on offense, three are defensive, and there are three specialist classes.

Classes? this is a game about HATS!

The classes are Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper and Spy.

Offense:
The scout is super-fast, has the least health, can double-jump and carries by default a scattergun, a pistol and a baseball bat. Soldiers come equipped with the rocket launcher, (which allows for rocket jumps by blasting at your own feet while timing a jump) shotgun, and entrenching tool. The Gas-mask wearing Pyro has a flamethrower (which can ignite players and detect disguised spies) a shotgun and a fire axe.

Defense:
The demoman (a black scotsman with an eyepatch) has his grenade launcher for indirect fire, a sticky bomb launcher to set a field of remote-detonated mines, and a broken bottle. The Heavy has the most health, moves slowest, and has the devastating minigun, with a shotgun and his fists for backup. Engineers have pistols and shotguns, but their real strength is in building machines; their blueprints allow them to make dispensers to refill life and ammunition, teleporters to allow fast travel around maps, and deadly sentry guns to automatically defend positions.

Specialists:
Medics have a needle gun, a bonesaw and the healing gun which restores life and builds up a “charge” that at 100% makes the medic and his target invulnerable for a short time. Snipers wield sniper rifles, naturally, which can one-shot most classes with a carefully aimed headshot, with a machete and submachine gun for backup. Finally, the Spy has his disguise kit, which allows him to look like a member of the opposing team, stealth watch which allows him to vanish, a revolver, a sapping kit to disarm engineer machines, and a butterfly knife that is a one hit kill in a backstab.

The unsuspecting Wild Engineer, and its natural predator, the Spy.

The combination of playstyles and different abilities across the classes really make this more than just your usual first-person shooter. An engineer or a spy are so different from a scout or soldier that it is almost like you aren't even playing the same game when you switch to certain classes. Different team compositions present strength or weakness depending on the map objectives (capture the briefcase, secure control points, or pushing a cart with a bomb strapped to it down a track that runs into the other team's base) and whether teams are on defense or offense. The game is fast paced, and as you play, different equipment for the various classes unlocks (weapons and cosmetic items like the hats the game's become famous for) both at random intervals and for completing achievements.

Unless you are a crack shot with great twitch reflexes, I recommend starting players learn the ropes by playing the pyro, heavy or medic classes, and maybe get a feel for the engineer and/or spy (though I think spy is a little trickier to learn.) Stick with groups of players and try to play an offense class while attacking, defense while defending while still learning the controls and pace of matches. For me, the toughest classes to play with any sort of skill have been scout and sniper, but I might just be a terrible shot. The community is all over the place, with intolerant, abusive and elitist toolboxes and helpful friendly folks willing to be patient with new players all over the place, sometimes on the same server. Unless you have a thick skin for online abuse, I recommend turning off voice chat in-game while learning.

My screen looks like this when I play the sniper, the instant before I pull the trigger
and the heavy moves 2 feet to the left.

I've had some great moments in the last few days playing TF2 with both strangers and friends. Detonating a cluster of stickybombs right under a scout trying to escape with my team's briefcase in CTF, blowing up a spy disguised as me, masquerading as a soldier and having an enemy medic heal me until I hopped behind him and backstabbed him, and earning hats and new guns along the way. It is also worth mentioning that an upgrade to a premium account (though that pretty much only means crafting and trading once you start to get duplicate items) comes with ANY purchase from the in-game store, and there are a lot of $1.00 items in there. I used a spare dollar from my Steam wallet to get a few spy-themed accessories.

I'm not impossible to find on Steam, if anyone has the inclination to look hard enough. If you add me on Steam, however, put a note in a comment, this blog's facebook page or email somewhere letting me know you came from the blog, so I know to accept. Now, back to earning hats.

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The PSN Outage - Playstation 3 Online Facts, History, and Wild Suppositions.

When it comes to geeky news, the last few weeks have been particularly interesting. One story that has set a lot of people, particularly gamers, to chattering has been the recent and persistent outage of the Playstation Network. As a video gamer, this is the sort of story I'd usually jump on right away. I didn't because I don't own a PS3, never really gave serious consideration to buying one beyond initial week one fantasies of selling one on eBay. However, the longer the outage continues the more interesting the story becomes even to someone who would never have any desire to connect to PSN.

I like to imagine lots of smoke and the clanging sound of a wrench thrown into gears when the outage started.

Sony has done pretty well for themselves in the console gaming world, especially considering they very nearly partnered up with Nintendo and never got into the business themselves. (What a different world THAT would have been.) One area where they've found it difficult to compete, however, is in taking their consoles online. The PlayStation 2, their largest commercial success, only even had online capability fairly late in the product's lifecycle, support for online play was sparse at best, and there was no consistency between game publishers regarding fees for online gaming, matchmaking or anything of the sort. Xbox Live, by contrast, was sleek, internally consistent, easy to use and it was completely supported by Microsoft from the Xbox 360 launch. It seems they worked out the kinks in gaming online on the original Xbox, and had it down.

When the PS3 came out, it at least had the hardware built in for gaming online to be a priority. The Playstation Network launch was rocky, with multiplayer gaming still not as streamlined as audiences prefer, and many other features copied from the Xbox360 or the Wii (custom player avatars, achievements in the form of trophies, etc...) One of the few unique things about the PSN, the Home social network/virtual avatar lobby was criticized for being a solution to a problem gamers didn't know existed. You could take your Mii... err... Avatar, and customize an apartment for them, walk them out in public spaces and interact with other Avatars, but like a lot of people, I asked “What's the point?”

Soo... they are like Miis, but you can dress them up as hipster d-bags.

Now, I've declared my bias as a PC gamer, and admitted that I've never even wanted a PS3, but I have to give credit where it is due. Features have been added and improved over the years to the consoles online capabilities, and it has a few distinct advantages over the competition now. The PSN service is miles ahead of the Wii's clunky “friend code” handwave at online capability, but to be fair, faulting the Wii for being a poor online console is a little like complaining that your melon baller is a bad soup spoon (you COULD use it for that, but it isn't really what the device was made for.) And what about Xbox Live? The venerable titan of online console gaming services has a lot to offer, but there is a monthly fee to play games online. Sony's PSN has that beat cold. It is hard to compete with free.

All of the childish racism, sexism and homophobia as XBox Live with none of the monthly fees!

So, the PSN is coming into its own, the lack of a subscription fee has it moving into position to finally challenge the Xbox for dominance, and then the worst happens. On April 20, 2011, without warning, the service is suddenly shut down. At first, customers are told the outage is “for maintenance” and that the cause is “being investigated”. Sony representatives apologize to customers, thank them for their patience, and say it may be “a complete day or two” before service is restored. Boy, was that ever an understatement of a huge problem that created an industry scandal.

The outage of the PSN began to spark rumors almost immediately as to the cause, malicious hackers bringing the network down over a beef with the company's practices concerning a user who hacked his PS3 (I'll be vague, as that story is long enough to merit an article all its own someday) being the frontrunner. These rumors grew in strength when, a few days after the outage started, Sony confirmed that the downtime was the result of an “external intrusion” which affected their network and services. Fans continued to become upset as “several days” turned into “several weeks” with no projected date of return of service, and little new information from Sony itself. The worst was yet to come.

Almost certainly NOT behind the outage.

Nearly a week after the system was first shut down, Sony told its customer base that consumer data may have been accessed in the intrusion into their systems. Personal contact information, all account data including purchase history and even credit card numbers may be at risk, and Sony doesn't have any information about what, if anything, was copied or accessed. The bad press surrounding this event immediately went supernova, critics blasting Sony for the delay in communicating to their customers about the potential theft of data, and class-action lawsuits were prepared to be filed.

So what really happened, and can Sony's reputation recover? As of the time of this article being written, the PSN is still offline, though services are supposed to be restored within the next day or two. Anonymous sources from within Sony (so take this “leak” with a HUGE grain of salt, it may well be pure fiction) claim that the issue lay within a “Developer Network/Mode” in the PSN that was susceptible to hacking. The Developer Network purportedly allowed settings concerning individual accounts on PSN to be changed, including removing bans on accounts from use of pirated software, and setting up other accounts so that violating terms of service would not raise a red flag at Sony, allowing copied games to be played online without repercussions. The lack of proper network security on the internal developer network was supposedly due to the fact that most people didn't know about it, or what it could do. Time will tell if this tale is an outright fabrication or merely a plausible explanation with a few missing facts, but it is a good story, which is why I relate it here.

This event is not a good sign in this stage of the game for a console already declared "3rd Place" in this generation's console wars.

Sony is preparing to compensate subscribers for the time they lost access to the network, and continues to apologize and thank fans for their continued “extraordinary patience” as they redesign the network from within to keep events like the intrusion from ever happening again. The process has been time-intensive, and with the recent release of Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat, the timing on such a scandal could hardly have been worse for Sony's brand image. Gamers tend to be a lot more forgiving once they are happy and playing again, and compensation after the fact doesn't hurt.

I planned to start passing out “Stylish Blogger” nominations today, but this article ran a little longer than I thought it would, and I just got a new toy partway through writing, which I will probably feature tomorrow. Sound off about the PSN outage scandal in the comments.   

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