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Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I've been making my way through this game for a few months now. For the first few hours of the game, which is equivalent to the first two missions, Deus Ex was a chore and a tease. The early gameworld is full of situations and options that you can't possibly exploit or enjoy until you have many more upgrades and the necessary skills to interact with certain mechanics. You have terminals you can't hack, walls you can't punch through, heavy objects you can't move, etc. This slow start and out-of-reach feeling led me to take long breaks from the game initially because it just wasn't fun. Yet.

I'm currently much further into the game, and things have changed for the better. Deus Ex finally has its hooks into me, and I've built Adam Jensen so that he genuinely feels like a cyborg badass. I have fully upgraded my hacking skill trees so that no treasure is off limits. My stealth cloak allows me to sneak past soldiers and robots so that I can find my way to a hackable security terminal and turn the robots against the soldiers. The Icarus landing system allows me to drop from any height and not take damage, which makes me feel like Batman when I'm out in the open world, stalking across roof tops, and falling down to street level. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for all the cool skills I now have. This is the best stealth game I've played in a while.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution started off really boring and slow for me, but if you do all your missions, gather your XP, and upgrade your skills, the gameplay and available options evolve into an incredibly satisfying experience. I'm probably over halfway through the game now, and I'm looking forward to the remaining quests and locations.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope

I've also been playing this game for a few months off and on, but unlike Deus Ex I've been enjoying Star Ocean right from the start. There seems to be so much meat on this game that I have no idea when I'm going to finish. On Xbox 360 the game is spread across 3 discs. I've put 45 hours into the game and I'm only on disc 1. What the hell is on the other two discs?

At the moment I'm on the planet Roak looking for a way to fix my busted space-ship, and look for more clues into some nonsense. This game carries completely on the combat and exploration. Running around and getting into battles is so incredibly addicting and time consuming that I couldn't care less about the story. The awful characters make it even harder to care about the story. At the beginning of the game I gave the characters a shot. I thought they were just quirky and silly like any Japanese game, but now they have all devolved into insufferable excuses for human beings. Every non-skippable cut-scene that shows up makes me cringe and want to lobotomize myself. The script and tone doesn't appeal to adults, or children, to comedy, or drama. The jokes always miss horribly, the timing is awful, the animation is awful. The sexual content and innuendos are confusing and disturbing at times. The overly emotional and nearly psychotic nature of the lead character Edge makes me realize that if this were real-life he would end up in a military prison for how irrational and unprofessional he is.

The cut scenes are like watching reality TV with a cast of bi-polar preteens who are only ever screaming at each other or coddling each other. At least the combat and music are great though, they make this game worth playing and exploring. I still love this game.

Dark Souls

I'm still on my first playthrough of Dark Souls, and if you keep up with my blogs you know I've been doing the Dark Souls Diary sharing all my favorite battles and experiences as I play along. I haven't had a new entry in a few weeks because I'm stuck on the Four Kings boss battle in New Londo Ruins. Once I beat this section of the game, a new DS Diary entry will be on the way detailing Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, and New Londo Ruins.

When I say the Four Kings have held me up, I mean they have stopped me dead in my tracks and completely demoralized me. First of all, I'm terrified of New Londo Ruins in general. The ghosts really scare me. There aren't a lot of ghosts, but they still spook me and I try to avoid them when possible. The Darkwraith Knights are okay, I can dodge them and do backstabs to kill them, but when I see a floating ghost appear and start coming at me I panic. Sometimes I run off ledges and die, sometimes I get surrounded by ghost ambush and die, and sometimes I just retreat until they go away. By all means I could use my Transient Curse to let me do damage to them, but I mostly run away. Luckily I've opened all the shortcuts in the ruins, so when the Four Kings kill me and I respawn I can take a much shorter route from the Firelink Shrine bonfire to the boss arena while avoiding the majority of the ghosts.

Back to the Four Kings though, I need some strategy advice from Dark Souls brethren and at the very least just some spirit lifting inspiration. I've been trying a close-up melee approach and I haven't been doing well. My character Andromeda is a warrior class, pretty high strength, high dexterity, upgraded light armor, fire sword +10, bow of Pharris +11, silver knight shield, and I've been wearing the Cloranthy Ring (allows Stamina to recharge very fast) while fighting the Four Kings. When the first King shows up, I charge him and start running around him while slashing. When he uses his sword I try to block attacks with my shield. Eventually he uses magic and destroys me, or uses a grab attack that does a good deal of damage. That's just with one guy too, when the other Kings start showing up I don't stand a chance.

Dark Souls boss battles are very difficult but they are always quite simple and require you to just use great timing and technique. I haven't found my technique for defeating the Four Kings yet, so I need some encouragement and advice if possible. Once I find a technique I'll start fine tuning it till I hopefully win. I've been trying to beat the Kings for a few nights now, but the first King has been so overwhelming that I'm in despair imagining how I'm going to get through all four. Have mercy on my undead soul.