Old & Aging Game Discussion

[Mr.]

lol mesk <3

To answer your question, yes, Dark Souls improves on a LOT of things from Demons' Souls. One thing in particular I'll mention: healing. No more grass. Instead you have Estus Flasks, and bonfires. The flasks are your healing item, and you have a limited quantity. They are refilled to a cap whenever you rest at a bonfire. But, all of the enemies also respawn. So you basically have X swigs of your flask to make it from one bonfire to the next. As you progress, you can upgrade the amount it heals, and the quantity you get, but you never have to farm for healing again. You can also never stock up on 10000000000 healing items, either.

Also weapon upgrades are simplified a lot. You still get plenty of options, but they're easier to comprehend, and much easier to acquire the materials for. And you can upgrade armor. And there's no bullshit carry burden. And you don't have to teleport home in order to level up. PC version with new content is out in about two weeks.



ANYWAY, stat bonuses. They rank as E, D, C, B, A, and the inexplicable S as the best. What it means is that the damage scales based on how high your stats are. I THINK, in that picture, from left to right, they are Strength, Dexterity, Magic, and Faith. It's been a while since I've played Demons Souls, and they're slightly different in Dark Souls. In any case, if a weapon has a high rank for Strength, then the damage increases based on how much you pump up strength. A low rank might give you ~1 point per stat, while a high one might give you ~5. Definitely worth paying attention to, as they will make a huge difference, particularly late game. Also, I hope that you're not using that weapon in the screenshot, because you don't actually meet the stat requirements to use it, you don't have enough magic. The game will still let you equip items when you don't meet the requirements, but they will be significantly less effective.

The Damage reduction is the percentage of physical/magic damage that you absorb when blocking with something. That item has shitty reduction because it is not a shield. Also, the guard break reduction is a number that reflects how much of a beating your shield can take before you get staggered, and I believe how much stamina gets taken away when you block. Get a shield with a high stat there, and you can take more hits before your shield gets knocked back.

As far as upgrades, each different upgrade path for the most part modifies the stat scaling. Greystone increases strength scaling, but reduces dex scaling. Bladestone increases dex scaling, but reduces strength scaling. There are also 42 other different types of upgrades which do different things, just check out all of your options when you upgrade, see how the stats are affected. (It makes a lot more sense in Dark Souls)

[Milldawg]

One of the earliest computer games I played was Rebel Assault 2:
So many Easter eggs in that game.

As a younger kid, I loved Ancient Empires:

I also played Lords of the Realm II, HoMM3, Populous TB, AoE2, and others. I'm sure there were other notable ones that haven't yet been mentioned, but I can't remember them right now.

Oh, there was also

I couldn't find a screenshot, but most of the game is just photographs of Mexican ruins anyway.

[IskatuMesk]

Instead you have Estus Flasks, and bonfires.

Ah, so they did change the healing quite a bit. I was curious about that.

Also weapon upgrades are simplified a lot. You still get plenty of options, but they're easier to comprehend, and much easier to acquire the materials for.

Well, I didn't think the materials were too hard to find (at least not yet) as you can grind a few areas that drop reasonable amounts of basic mats, it's more like "where am I going in this upgrade path?" Right now I have a +6 winged spear and a +2 quality scimitar but I have no idea what options will open up for either as I continue, or if going Quality is at all worth it, etc.

PC version with new content is out in about two weeks.

Unfortunately I bought the ps3 version a long time ago already so I'm probably gonna stick to that. That and I'm really scared of console port controls. But we'll see.

ANYWAY, stat bonuses.

I had no idea the upgrades were effecting those, I thought you needed a higher tier weapon lol. And no, that's just a screen cap from one of my videos when I was sorting through new stuff I picked up. I'm going to have to take a much more careful look when I get enough resources to upgrade again.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

From what I understand of Luck is this :

You are essentially better off to keep it the lowest as possible (except for 1-2 specific reasons such as a Luck-reliant weapon). Yes, very low luck means many less drop rates but the few you do tend to give more reasonable odds to get better items rather than countless shitty items.

EDIT : Plus, in general, you mostly need the other stats first anyway. Having a higher level but less base stats due to higher Luck means you are more likely to die if phantoms enters your game and such. Phantoms' levels tend to more or less scale yours and probably likely to built up better.

[IskatuMesk]

I don't have networking on for this. I rather not get farmed up by griefers. But yeah, I've been trying to pump luck and it seems... futile.

[Mr.]

Oh, yeah, luck is not the most useful stat to be pumping, and it's pretty much just going to make it that much more expensive to level up your base stats (Vit, End, Str, Dex).

That and I'm really scared of console port controls.

lol I'm plugging in my PS3 controller and using an emulator for an XBox360 controller. It works amazingly well for a lot of different games.

I had no idea the upgrades were effecting those, I thought you needed a higher tier weapon lol.

For the most part, there ARE no higher tier weapons. There are a few special weapons that you can acquire or create, but they're usually not THAT much stronger than normal weapons. Faster, lighter weapons tend to do less damage, but obviously attack faster. Heavier weapons do more damage, but attack slower and you leave yourself open. As should be obvious. You pretty much find a moveset that you like on a weapon, upgrade it to match your stats, and win. The special weapons tend to have extra bonuses, like slowly regenerating health, or in one case, slowly draining health, but doing more damage, or one weapon scales based on your character tendency (another dumb system removed in Dark Souls). The special weapons work great if you're making a specific build, and combining various effects for absurdly broken results. But to make it through that game, anything could do as long as you upgrade it.

Hell, I played through the entire game, my first time through, with just a regular old dagger. In retrospect, not the smartest plan (although they do increased backstab damage, I believe), but it worked for me.

And you're quite correct, NONE of this is apparent when you're just playing the game. After I beat the game, I still didn't really have much of an idea of how it all worked. I even played through NG++, in order to get all of the trophies for it, including maxing out every upgrade path, and I still wasn't even really sure what was going on. It wasn't until after beating Dark Souls once or twice that I got a good grasp on it.

I could post a listing for you, of what they all do, but I don't know if you'd rather not use any sort of guide for it, or something. Going to the wiki makes it far too easy to get spoilers on absolutely everything, so I would recommend proceeding with caution if you take that route.

EDIT: God, now you've made me start playing Demons' Souls again.

[IskatuMesk]

I avoid using guides or wikis for LP's because of spoilers and stuff, and because it effects my review. I guess if I get super stuck and I need some kind of crafting guide I would refer to a wiki, but yeah. Kind of surprising to hear there's no high tier weapons, but I was starting to suspect this after killing bosses and only getting their souls + maybe some mats or the like.

I assume you're talking about motioninjoy for emulating - that's how I played Battle tanx (n64) and stuff for my LP's. Handy for sure, though I also have a 360 controller too.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

lol I'm plugging in my PS3 controller and using an emulator for an XBox360 controller. It works amazingly well for a lot of different games.

Hmm, about PS3 controllers ... are using Windows 7 or XP? I remember with that XP that I pretty much needed a special program to even make it half-work and then kind of gave up due to screwups that ended up happening.

[Falchion]

Today's post is dedicated to talking about Submarine Titans, AKA Starcraft Underwater. My next intended review concerns Emperor - Rise of the Middle Kingdom, which I felt it was a step backwards from most Impressions games. I'll tell you the why there.


SUBMARINE TITANS:

DEVELOPER: Strategy First
PUBLISHER: Ellipse Studios
RELEASE DATE: August 2000
GENRE: RTS, economy-based gameplay

In the post concerning Rising Kingdoms, I once stated that, if people asked me for a copycat of Warcraft/Warhammer, my blatant answer was Kingdom Under Fire: A War of Heroes, before RK came out, only losing to KUF because my reviewed game is way more incomplete than anything I've played, because not everything was tested and it seemed it was released on 15% production due to a largely incomplete story, and one that doesn't make any sense, behind even WoW: Cataclysm, and the lack of cutscenes. There not even a fucking intro or outro for the game. Seriously incomplete to that level.

This time, the question is the "Closest Copycat to Starcraft". There are two worse ones in that order, the latter being the worst of all time: Submarine Titans and OutLive, aka Brazilian Starcraft. The former is pretty reviewed down here, the other I'll shortly resume it to you. We, Brazzos, are ashamed we tried to copy Blizzard's former shine and distorted it to an insult point that was OutLive. Everything worse you can imagine of this game (And I'm not teasing) you can find there: Worse, largely untested, gameplay, poor audio, insulting story, everything. Not to mention it was from THAT game that RCX had the audacity of stripping off some of it's graphics for his Zeji/Mekani TC. RCX didn't know of Submarine Titans, which is far better in general than OutLive and had a more appealing graphic.

I was pretty young when I first viewed Submarine Titans and got my interest in playing it. Well, most besides you guys. Of course, one part was having interest, other part was trying to find new, fresh air, and the final part was in attempting to forget the shameful, destructive, irresponsible experience of game that OutLive was.

Submarine Titans is published by Strategy First, whose only decent piece of work I remember so far was the copycat to Homeworld called O.R.B: Off-World Resource Base, whom I had to admit narrative and mechanics were far superior to the gameplay shown by Relic. Of course, being the bastard brother has the consequence of being left over to rot, despite being more advanced and solid, for being a bastard copy. Typical America and their fan-boys database...

Eventually, for a time, I came to play the SubTitans demo, but my lack of knowledge in encountering the full copy of it made me forget for a very good time. The only time I came to get back the interest in it was two months prior to my recent HD Crash and eons of work destroyed because of my father's 'yours truly' incompetence.

Submarine Titans has the usual glitch of Populous: The Beginning of having to shut down Explorer.exe just for the color fix and other features. From what I could basically see of mission design, it'd be easily Blizzard level quality graphically, but not in gameplay: At it's core, it's Red Alert 3 with a Homeworld twist on it. The only thing leaving behind is supply caps, but even Homeworld had a limit. Whether I'm to break this limit is still to be seen.


Being isometric-driven, like Starcraft, it becomes pretty easy to get convert these designs to Starcraft, but unfortunately in a hard way: The insult of the internal files prevents you from getting the graphics with animations, so you must PhotoImpact it and/or record it for a glimpse of getting these animations per frame, the most infernal work ever.

Graphics, as you can witness, are somewhat a more advanced and polished Starcraft, the only thing being ugly and out of place being the cliffs and particle system, pretty disturbing for a 2D game, but that's about it. It seems that in every company nowadays, from Relic to EA, Blizzard and others think more on graphics than any other. Sure, this helps in the immersion of the player into the world, but you can't just leave audio, story and other critical features behind. And nothing is done, IMO, because: Blizzard is protected by the thrall of teen fanboys, EA is so hated it becomes boring and Relic won't give a fuck.

Speaking of story, it's Starcraft without the Starcraft feel and even the Blizzard writing is more talented than this. Even WoL has more emotional feeling than here, it's your simple build and destroy without something else to add. There is no character development, nothing. Don't ask me about audio here because there's virtually none here. I suspect audio won't come close to or pass the 10 MB because of the very few voice acting, other than the briefings, and there isn't any in-game voicing as well. Not to mention the acting lacks any emotional at all, it feels more of a news reading than an actual military briefing at all. Yup, audio is ignored here, as is the music, which is blank and doesn't add to the misery. It adds more to the insult. The only relief is this is all better than OutLive. Serious. If you guys play this Brazilian game, both in Portuguese and English and I'M BRAZILIAN, you'll ask yourselves "What the aunties fuck is all this?".

In the end, IskatuMesk is right about what he says: If you play hoping for the story, audio or graphics, you'll be SORELY disappointed.

Gameplay


Apart from a few techs, the two humie factions (The white Commie Squids and green American Hillbillies) are the same, like in Homeworld. There's not much separating them and that alone kills interest in matches.

I chose to begin the campaign left to right after a quick draw on the tutorials, meaning White Sharks would be the first, expecting to see obvious western-like bullshit after my hiatus of experience amongst CC and their ultimately honest reviews. I've already seen the failures of Starcraft 2 in it's modding area, the most advanced project being the basical Desert Strike and TD maps, I've seen the shameful end of Command & Conquer and it's gradual downfall in both gameplay, resource system and storyline, I've seen it all.

When I started Submarine Titans, I expected to see the beginning of the end, instead I faced something... different, despite of only one confirmation amongst such stuff. The confirmation of it's resource system, which is the basis for the shoddy Red Alert 3 system, AKA, all resources being Vespene Gas. Contrary to what people would believe, I think Warcraft/Starcraft's resource systems are most modern of all. Yes, they do have this Vespene Gas sort of thing, but they don't abuse like they did in Rising Kingdoms, Red Alert 3 and Submarine Titans. The only change in resources here is the Protoss and it doesn't do that much of a difference.

The gameplay here involves virtually to little to no micro at all in this game. That's because of the shoddy response time of EVERY unit in the game, making you feel you're playing a multiplayer match instead of a SP campaign and even MP is longer to respond, and the fact that the subs usually go up and down to 'avoid' enemy fire doesn't remedy either. It's obvious that macro was more thought here than actual gameplay, and the way it's fucked up makes you think this is another Relic game before even relic showed up. Also, the unit's AIs themselves are pretty bad, most preferring to pursuit their enemies to certain death instead of holding still, making you have a paranoia of controlling your subs most of the time so they won't go to the enemy base, because here, if you lose your whole sub army, you're anal fucked because it takes too long to rebuild one and the costs aren't lenient.

Yeah, like Homeworld, Supreme Command, Sins of a Solar Empire and others, macro is more focused here, so much in the game as in the AI. The enemy AI itself is pretty bad, with only the most basical of functions, and, even with the on-board AI editor here, which is introduced even in Wikipedia, it's not much of a remedy. And that's because I don't know it and I don't understand AI so much like many people here and out there.


Behold the underwater Protoss, i.e. the Silicons. They have a different resource system, multiple tech trees, but very few units that can differ between the humies. The dependency on the Silicon (Pink pile of shit), however, is what will make or break you if you don't make a VERY aggressive eco start here.

In the end, as I stated, Submarine Titans is so much the same copycat to Starcraft as O.R.B: Off-world Resource Base is to Homeworld, the only difference being that O.R.B had it's minimal share of effort while SubTitans didn't. But it's still a lot better than OutLive, and those who play the Brazilian shame first hand will very well understand the why.

[Mr.]

lol I'm plugging in my PS3 controller and using an emulator for an XBox360 controller. It works amazingly well for a lot of different games.

Hmm, about PS3 controllers ... are using Windows 7 or XP? I remember with that XP that I pretty much needed a special program to even make it half-work and then kind of gave up due to screwups that ended up happening.

As Mesk suggested, I'm using Motioninjoy. I've used it to play Fallout: NV, Fable III, Super Meat Boy, Psychonauts, a bunch of those platformers from the indie bundles... works great.

[UntamedLoli]

The more I hear about Dark Souls PC the less I care about it.

The latest internery is the backbuffer being locked at 1024x720. That means playing at 1920x1200 on a PC, everything is upscaled. Fucking emulators do better.

[IskatuMesk]

lolwut? That's a lower resolution than what I get out of the ps3. :3

[Mr.]

Yup. That's the word on the street. I don't really care, though. It's still Dark Souls, with new content, even if there's no graphical improvements.

[UntamedLoli]

The point is I already have the PS3 version. That content is coming to the consoles in winter. They pretty much mangled any reason to get the PC version outside of the 3 months exclusive deal that I hate more than bad porting.

[mark_009_vn]

SUBMARINE TITANS:

DEVELOPER: Strategy First
PUBLISHER: Ellipse Studios
RELEASE DATE: August 2000
GENRE: RTS, economy-based gameplay

Lol, my friend played that game, and he gave me a USB with the game pre installed. It's the same USB that stored the virus that almost spelled the doom for Black and Sunny, go figures what happened next....!