Taylor

Hatred is a lot tamer than the teaser suggested, but it's still going to be the pin-up boy next time something bad happens however unfair that may be. The matched animations are so jarring in actual gameplay. It's one thing for a melee action game to pause the action while Kratos pops someones face out of their face joint, but freezing time to grimdark execute someone in the noggin during a firefight is another. Surprised it did so well. As with Huniepop there seems to be a lot of money in exploiting tools posting under a certain hashtag. Stick it to the man, buy my game.

Shit there was another page. That medium blog thing is awesome.

I do not mind links, most of that Sol Sidewinder example video is made of links. but I am against the idea of learning one-frame timings just to connect two ground normals together. It's boring to learn, do and watch. AFAIK the only games with plinking are SF4 and MvC3.

Yeah, and when you do start doing the more training-mode combos it’s not to link two crouching punches together, but to do something cool like have May RC her throw and setup Applause For the Victim so she can jump on it later. I think it’s a very well put together game, and really gets the risk/reward right where things that do damage take a setup or leave yourself open. Plus I still can'r get over how nice it looks. I remembered that Valentine (Or Ramlethal as she's called now for whatever reason) has a dragon punch that you can only combo from if you just frame. It's not a real just frame, you just have to end the input at down-forward rather than doing the scrub shortcut, but it's pretty needless edition. That's my only real gripe execution wise, though. Plinking is exclusive to Street Fighter 4 because of an input bug, but I guess you meant the idea of links? In theory they are hard to stamp out, especially if you want combos more interesting than normal chain -> special -> super. Although Mortal Kombat X is quite draconian with what you can do, and will actually pop the enemy neutral if you attempt to link something it doesn't like.

I think high level execution is actually a lot harder in Guilty Gear, really. Accent Core is probably the most technical 2D fighter out there and characters like Eddie only a handful of people could play properly. There are certainly links, but Slayer is the only character who needs them just to make ground normals connect like some kind of mug. It generally does execution in a much better way: See Sol Sidewider loops versus grinding one-frame links. Xrd is a little more lenient, most noticeably it removed FRCs, but it can get pretty hardcore. It's a pretty cool game, more than I could've hoped for given how bad BlazBlue has become, I just hope they add more of the classic cast soon.

I don't think so! It does have Insight as a not-so-dynamic difficulty adjustment, but it seems a lot more subtle than this and doesn't have a respawn activation. I guess it's more similar to Demon's Souls World Tendency but less obfuscated. I think they want to channel you into the Chalice Dungeons for this, but not all the regular bosses show up in there. Once you get a Chalice you can use it on vacant headstones with some reagents to enter a randomly generated dungeon, and the rewards are usually more reagents or new Chalices, and you can reset/remove them as you see fit. So, you can find a Chalice with a boss refight in it and then clear it multiple times. You can also sort by seed, so if someone has generated a particularly nice dungeon (lots of Blood Echoes, interesting bosses, rare weapon drop) they can give people the id... but I've not figured out how this actually works!

There are no negatives for summoning help, but yeah it is dead permanently in your world, so to fight it again solo you'll need to start over or reach new game+ AFAIK. Some bosses show up again in Chalice dungeons, but the Cleric Beast is not one of them. One of the later bosses is kind of Cleric Beast two, though.

I'm doing NG+ now with some wiki help because I've earned it. I completely missed Eileen first time, did not know she even existed until now! I don't think there is a way to be forgiven in BB, but also the NPCs aren't such a huge deal.

Yeah, these games really like to throw you to the wolves at the start (and literally in Bloodborne's case), but eventually it all clicks into place. Leveling helps in the long run, but the main thing is you getting better at the game and learning the areas, which I guess is what it's trying to emphasise with the rough start where you can't upgrade. I'm not going to say it's smooth sailing from here on out, but it sounds like you're past the opening campfire hump and are now Bloodborning With Attitude. You lose your Blood Echoes when you die but I assume that's what you meant as everything has blood in its name... You have one chance to retrieve your Blood Echoes from where you died, but if you die again they will be lost forever. While exploring new areas you'll often find a lot of Frenzied Coldblood style items, which are consumables that just give you a lot of Blood Echoes that you can latter pop in town for some reward for exploring despite your inevitable death. Vitality, Endurance, Strength and Skill are probably your main stats IMO. Skill kind of does the same thing as Strength, but eventually your stats have diminishing returns so it's good to focus on both of them (I did not know this until much too late). Skill and Strength are also going to be the common item requirements for weapons. Bloodtinge is weird as it's for ranged weapons that all have terrible base damage and limited ammunition, but then there's some late-game special weapons that really benefit from it and you might want to try a new gun every now and then. Similarly Arcane won't do anything for you at this stage but is required on all spells. Also:

Yeah, meeting a boss will also give you insight and unlock level ups! Given I can one-shot everything I'm not sure how helpful this will be! But here's the route to unlock that shortcut. Edit: They recently released a patch that really cuts down the load times. It's super effective.

Yeah, the game starts a lot harder than it conceivably should and, once you get past the campfire the area, it's also a lot more sprawling and less obvious about its shortcuts. If you really are stuck then I could probably stick something on youtube in like 4 minutes that’ll show you the easiest route to open the shortcut (oh, share button, how much I never knew I needed you). If you have Madman’s Insight and some Coldblood it might also be worth using them and returning to the Hunter’s Dream, as gaining 1 insight is the prerequisite to being able to level up.

I made something for it. http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=5556

So, I was doing pretty well in this. I was at the sixth boss, by my count, but I was also exploring the 4th gravestone because I'd gone off the rails a little. You know how Bloodborne tells you off if you exit by turning the console off because you can corrupt your data? Well I had a power-cut while it was saving. It's all gone. Honestly, you fly through the second time. 15m in and I had unlocked the routes to both bosses, upgraded my weapons, levelled a few times. But man, I was salty as hell. Just beat the 4th boss and I'm heading back down to the witch. (spoilers) I'm kind of playing Xrd! I'm not very good at it, despite being a huge Guilty Gear fanboy, not sure how the connection will be but all my games are against people in NA/JP anyway as it's not out in the EU. So, yeah, by all means hit me up.

I didn't need it for Guilty Gear, but maybe that's because it also has a PS3 version. The online feels a lot more hands-off until end-game, but it's still nice to get the notes, blood and maybe the option to coop bosses if YOU'RE SHIT.

I got it for the long weekend and I've just beaten the second boss being hit about twice, after a long chain of attempts where I was completely pummeled into the ground. There's a lot of things I like about it, but there's also a lot of things I really don't like. The 40 second load times are something special, as is the frequency you get completely stuck in geometry and have to quit. The AI really isn't great when it comes to non-combat things. The whole opening section seems based around pulling enemies away from groups like you're in an MMO to seemingly highlight this point. I've heard the opening bonfire section is actually some kind of masterclass in level design because it's a disproportionately high spike that sets the tone. But, personally, I think it's just a bit rubs. The guy bashing the door is a normal enemy, you fight them in groups like 3 rooms later, but it serves as his introduction. If you get close he attacks... and if you sneak past him he'll show up halfway through the next major fight and lamp you in the back of the head.

I don't understand the fascination with creating a mobile game with Unreal. It's a unwieldy beast and you won't even get to use the big boy features.

You did with Unity 4.

I can't say I've been excited by the gameplay of a "blockbuster" AAA for a long time. I do feel with The Order that a lot of the coverage and response before it was released was pretty negative and it was going to have to be extra special to break this preconception. I do know that a few of my friends who've played it have said the reviews are much too negative. It's by the numbers but it's not bad.

All you people complaining about the gameplay need to remember that gameplay is just a necessary evil in a videogame.

You can see this exact process for HuniePop. It got a bad review for being a bad game, so the author cried to GG and they put it in top ten sold overnight to stick it to the man like a bunch of tools.

?????

Be in a clique.

I've finished Ys IV: Ark of Whatever. It's cool, but Ys: Origin and Ys: Oath of Thingy are much better games IMHO. I'm back on the Guilty Gear and League of Legends. I did play the Blue Revolver Demo and it's pretty good! I'm going to give it another whirl in a few minutes and try and beat the developer scores (Just shy of 4m right now). These guys worked together on a Ludum Dare game called Red Entity that was also really cool. I love Woof's art and danbo has written some really good articles on various topics so I have high hopes.

Avalon is awesome! And the whole deception and bluff calling on that level is something that we've not really seen in videogames yet. Coup and One Night Werewolf are also really cool if you don't have time for a full Avalon game. Or Battlestar Galactica if you've got 5 hours and want to shed some friends.

There's the upcoming Mini-Ludum Dare 56 where you pick random things and nobody really cares about the rules or anything. I selected these prime cuts: So far I have created this. And I think it's probably the best thing I've ever made. http://www.alexandertaylor.net/stuff/MLD/