I made a lot of progress this past week in Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin. All primal bonfires lit, fought my way through Shrine of Amana- where I typically quit- and I'm cracking Aldia's Keep now after (for once) finishing up Lucatiel's storyline. Not sure if I'll get Benhart's done this time around, but I…

I just wish they hadn't returned to the well of creepy disembodied British children.

Probably something half-formed about Millennials.

56 year old journalists that need something to write about for the NY Times.

… they could have made this clearer.

Depending on my level of ambition I may try playing "Clean Up This Squalid Hellhole" or "Wallow In This Squalid Hellhole" at my apartment or split the difference and play "Well I'll At Least Vacuum and Clean the Bathroom". When I'm not occupied with that, there will likely be a return to Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the…

To blend in with the darkened movie theater. It's like you guys have never seen a film cricket before.

Shards are easy enough to come by that you can definitely take your primary weapon and firearm up to at least +3 as soon as you can. Old Yharnam will spoil you with shards. Twin shards in the early going are a little more difficult to come by, so I would stick with one weapon for those until you start seeing more and…

I caved in last weekend and bought Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin so I can play it on PS4. The new enemy placement is…. not great. It seems like they took a pretty dumb approach of just adding a clown-car full of enemies to parts of each area- which isn't usually the Dark/Demon Souls M.O. Typically, the…

After Blood Starved Beast (and getting the chalice), a door opens at the Cathedral Ward lamp- you can take that to the old workshop and descend to a backdoor entrance to Cathedral Ward proper. OR you can save up 10,000 blood echoes and get the captain's token (or whatever its called) from the bath messengers in the…

I'm just pumped to finally put a face to the Horse the Band song.

And what part to the Hunters play in this and to what extent do they still align with the Church and Choir? The source of Hunter's Dream is found abandoned and full of transforming villagers, while plenty of items explain that the Church had their own Hunters at one point, but Gherman wasn't part of the church since…

What's also interesting is that the Great One Oedon is singled out as being formless in the Formless Oedon rune; he exists only as a voice, with no corporeal form which probably aligns him most closely to the Abrahamic conception of God. Read that way, Arianna's parallel as a tragic Mary figure becomes even clearer…

So much of what's good about Bloodborne's themes are the fusion of the Gothic horror idea of fearing one's self and one's own urges, which gave rise to the werewolf and vampire mythologies we all know now along with the Lovecraftian horror of fearing the unknowable and sublime. The Healing Church turns our typical…

I tend to only pre-order when I'm sure I'll buy it either way. So, basically Dark Souls or Fallout. Every other game I wait for reviews. The same with Early Access titles on PC/Mac/Linux- if the game looks finished enough to be enjoyable (Nuclear Throne, Project Zomboid) I'll jump on that bandwagon even if I'm…

There's very little recent video game music that tickles my fancy enough to want to listen to it without actually playing the game. I think the simplicity of the SNES and earlier era stuff (especially Mega Man titles) made for more enduring tracks. Spelunky does have some excellent tracks- the smooth jazz of the Yeti…

Ludwig's Holy Blade is best waifu.

If you do more exploring in Yharnam, you'll be able to get the saw hunter badge from the sewer/aqueduct which opens up all the early Workshop-style weapons in the Hunter's Dream. Did you find the Hunter set also hidden in a section of the sewers? Leveling up can be helpful, but having the Yharnam Set or the Hunter Set…

I got into Magic when I was about 9 myself, in 1994 during the first big craze for it. While I don't consider myself bad at the game, I don't think I've ever had the kind of focus where I could go through a whole set of cards and winnow them down to a perfect deck strategy. In that way, I was always more excited for…

I just made a party of a Lizardman Knight (that endure elements trait is going to be so great late game), a Minotaur Barbarian, a Ratling Alchemist and an Insectoid Battlemage. I feel like I'm having a far better time with the game than I did with humans in the party. I've personally found the avoiding firearms and…