Bed of Chaos is annoying; everyone hates that fight. I'm surprised you had the patience to leave your summoning sign out for it. IIRC my second playthrough was pretty easy as well, the only boss that gave me a hard time was the Four Kings. I keep meaning to go back and do an LP for Dark Souls but I haven't found any recording software that I like.
The funny part is I found it to be the easiest boss fight in the game. Once you know the paths to take and the safe spots, he is incredibly easy. The only times I ever didn't beat him was when my summoner died. There are several safe spots all around the place, and if you have a bow and arrows, it is even easier to beat him. Honestly, easiest boss in the game. I think the fact that everyone else hates him made it that much easier for me to farm souls and humanity against him. People seemed more than happy to let me charge in and kill the guy. Half the time, that was all I did. I'd run in and kill him before the guy who summoned me even knew what was happening. Four kings was a pain in the ass (I saved that one for last), but I had two people helping, so I got through it.
The new SSX game comes in the mail today! This is very exciting because I've always loved the series and thought it was a done deal after the last game came out for the original Xbox. Hopefully it lives up to the hype.
I downloaded the demo/trial (weighed in at 4 gigs) and just finished playing TDM on a few maps. There were a couple of guys using infiltrator, so I developed a habit of using the melee on teammates and lucked out a couple of times. It took about 6 or 7 matches for me to realize that you can resupply ammo on the field instead of trying to sneak up on people with the knife when I ran out of ammo. It looks like the trial ends when you reach level 10. I'm at 5 so I'll be sure to try out the other game types. Its been fun so far, and for 15 bucks I'll probably end up buying it after I finish Deus Ex.
No more love for Twisted Metal?? Holy shit, this is the most fun game I've played in ages. Hard as shit online, hard as shit single player, but so balls out insane you can't not have fun. I'm not thrilled about the change from individual drivers to teams or whatever, the balance is kinda shitty, Talon is irritating, and some awesome cars are missing, but even with all those negatives its still ridiculously entertaining. As much fun as CoD4 when it was brand new. Once the servers get fixed it's gonna destroy my life. Also, single player is SO FUCKING HARD. I don't know how people got gold on everything on Twisted to unlock Warthog... Nuts.
I actually picked that up yesterday. I had a blast with SSX tricky, and when I saw that the new one was getting some decent reviews, I decided what the hell. Only got to play for about 45min-1 hour, but I enjoyed it enough so far. The real test will be to see how much content it actually has and the replay value.
I'm buying it today after work. I'm pretty fucking excited for it. The demo was a ton of fun. I've died more from snipers and or people just getting good drops on me more than I have from Infiltrators. I've maxed out Engineer (or whatever they call it.) Turrets are like streaky players, sometimes they can have beast mode games, other times they do nothing. I'm working on the sniper class now. I'm not nearly as good as it, but having that cloak is pretty damn fun. Playing between KZ3 and MW3, its good FPS action.
Im still on the fence. I haven't played a minute of multiplayer, I have high hopes it turns out amazing. Im 2/3rds finished with the story mode. Like you said the single player is hard as fuck almost to the detriment to the gaming experience. Since they decided to add more game modes and eventually combine them all, the learning curve for tactics becomes a huge fucking chore. It took me a solid 40 minutes to beat that Iron Maiden bitch because they threw everything in the book at you. Frustrating to say the least, I can't imagine the final boss. There is a very fast pace to the action which is fun but like I mentioned when I played the demo it is so fucking relentless that you have hardly any time to explore or experiment with the levels. Seriously fuck Road Boat and his dildo magnet that fucking rips you out of the action. Most annoying fuck in the game. There is a decent learning curve for the controls as well but I've basically got them down and I like experimenting with the multitude of weapons and weapon power ups. The single player story is also pretty cool in that cheesy straight to DVD serial killer movie way. I hope if they do have DLC they bring back Spectre, my all time favorite TM car.
I too, have been a fan since the first one. So far, I'm not thrilled that I have to play as Zoe in the beginning. I like to pick my person. The opening courses are pretty cool but I feel like the game is taking itself too seriously. Everything has to be extreme with the environments. I also miss the fact that I used to be able to hit other boarders and create rivalries so intense that they sacrifice winning just to hit you.
I will say, that "story" part of the game has been my least favorite part so far. I've been mostly playing the exploration and even more so the Global Events modes, I like being able to do a run and see where other actual players are ranking and trying to improve to beat them as opposed to generic, arbitrary milestones.
Information is out about Assassin's Creed 3. Below is the box art released by Ubisoft, and they're announcing the game formally on March 5th. Spoiler Yes, it takes place in Colonial America, presumably during the revolutionary war. That is the new protagonist killing someone with a fucking tomahawk. Awesome. As a person who loves U.S. history, I am now more excited than I reasonably should be for this game.
I burned a great hour on Killzone 3 today. Its great to see the community with a little spurt. Games were definitely a little lopsided, but it was still so much fun.
My trial ended today, so I bought the full version. Warzone is tough, but I'm addicted to TDM. I've played about 5 or 6 maps and the junkyard is one of my favourites so far. I've been using the marksman class exclusively and haven't spent any of the upgrade points yet. What's great about this game is that I can play with the most basic setup and still not be significantly disadvantaged in a match. It feels balanced and I haven't encountered any campers yet. It's a great buy for 15 bucks and I definitely recommend others to take advantage of the free trial.
You can't camp with infiltrators. Unless you're a really good engineer with a close by ammo crate and creative proximity mine placement. Does the multiplayer only come with all the DLC? I also finally got to put some time into Deus Ex. I know I'm late. I'm playing on "Give Me Deus Ex" which I guess is hard. That first boss fight wasn't even fucking fun. Even worse that I didn't put any points into the bullet armor. I read a FAQ that basically says, get some shots headshots off, toss some EMPs, then hide for about 10 minutes when he runs around blowing himself up with grenades, them come out and shoot him. It actually worked.
All maps are included, but I haven't gone through a whole rotation yet. The DLC maps don't seem to be available in botzone, which sucks. I just finished Deus Ex a few days ago. I went through it on the medium difficulty, but did the pacifist challenge so I could only kill bosses. Carrying non-lethal weapons was using up too much inventory space so I dropped them and relied solely on take-downs. Not being able to shoot guards really slowed the pace of the game for me. I would have to hide around a corner, knock out a guard, hide his body, wait for my energy to recharge, and repeat for the next guard until the room was clear. The game appears to have multiple endings, so I'll play through it again sometime with guns blazing. I don't know if this will work on hard mode, but the shotgun with extended mags and a speed re-loader really helped me out on the next couple of fights you'll have.
This could be great, but I can't stop thinking about how other games royally fucked up the colonial setting (Age of Empires III anyone?).
So...any Mass Effect 3 players out there? I'll likely be getting mine today, if my local Best Buy has enough in stock (debit card issue prevented me from doing a pre-order). The major publications that got their hands on the game are giving it rave reviews, so I'm pretty excited to see how the trilogy concludes. Hopefully not a caveat, but the user score on Metacritic seems pretty low for the game. Although from reading some of the negative reviews, I get the feeling that its just trolls doing what they do best. On a related note, I think this franchise could do pretty well on the big screen. Although judging by previous video game translations, its likely to fail.
Getting mine through Amazon today. I'm skeptical on both sides. Reviewers tend to give high-expectation titles huge praise for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, a lot of those on Metacritic are bashing the game based on a leaked script from November without even playing the game.
The hard drive on my laptop took a nosedive, so it looks like I'm gonna have to start up a new Shepard from scratch starting from ME1. I suppose I could just go in straight to ME3, but I had such a blast playing an Infiltrator Shepard that I really don't mind starting over again. And ME1 and ME2 aren't exactly long games, so it shouldn't take too much time. Either way, I'm definitely looking forward to ME3. The hope is that it provides enough of a distraction until Blizzard finally feels like releasing Diablo 3.