Dark Souls II Review

Dark souls II Review: 

Like a moth drawn towards the flame.

Dark Souls 2 is the second entry to the Dark Souls series, but it's also the 3rd entry to the souls franchise as a whole. Taking more inspiration and guidelines from Dark Souls than Demon Souls. It attempts to merge the best of both worlds to improve upon it's own formula. It falls short though, thanks to poor planning and weak game design choices. Now, this doesn't mean the game is bad, it's just an echo of the greatness that came before it, it's not a loud or consistent one though.

Lets make our way from the most basic aspects of the game to it's most complex ones so we can see what improved and what went wrong. Souls games are about adventure, a sort of masochist journey riddled with clever level design and difficult boss battles that constantly try to wear you down as a player and as a hollow. To explain it rather quickly and waste as little time as possible, you are the chosen undead, a human who's doubtful of it's own purpose and a hollow shell only to be kept alive and sane by consuming the souls of the many other creatures in the kingdom. You must traverse the land, acquire the souls of the great ones and gain enough power to defeat it's decaying ruler and start a new era yourself.

it's also about trying not be gangbanged by stone horsehead creeps, mind you

The game tries its hardest to kill you which not only weakens your resolve as a player but also turns your character hollow. Every time you die a human you become more hollow and even when a little bit hollow, you cannot summon other players to help you and unless you get to where you died, you will also lose the souls you were carrying with you. Losing souls is a major mechanic because they serve as experience and money. So the more you die, the more difficult it gets for you.

Now, Dark Souls 2 is an improvement over the first one visually. For starters there are no poorly designed areas that will make the frame rate drop for no apparent reason. The game is lenghtier and manages to offer the player with more sights to see. But it does have it's flaws, pretty major ones too. Enemy designs, specially bosses, are repetitive and in a couple of situations feel out of place. The palette this time around is more diverse which might bother those of you who prefer the more eerie and shady looks some of the areas the first games had. Needless to say, this color palette and intriguing yet sometimes not so functional design manage to immerse you more in the lore and ambience as a result.

the game really looks gorgeous and the settings are really appealing, specially when youre not getting your butt handed to you by these huge green dudes that swing their spears at you

Music wise, it is far more varied than the first one, but it's still not a lot, which in my humble opinion has become characteristic of the series and is just fine. One of the objective improvements is the diverse boss themes which were almost non existant in the previous entry. Even though not memorable, it is far better to have variety than to hear the same tune time and time again.

As some of you should know, the story in souls games is delivered in a very unique manner, much like in the previously reviewed super mario 3d world, the biggest chunk of plot you get, comes from an opening sequence. After that, it all comes as a very cryptic, unexplicit npc dialogue and some item descriptions. This is most charming to some, but for those of you who look for a well delivered, entertaining story and didnt know of this, be warned. Dark Souls 2 is no exception and most likely won't appeal to your lore tastes at all.

let me sum it up for you: travel, die, fight, die, travel some more, die, get to this place, let it sink in and die some more

To wrap things up, lets talk about what Dark Souls 2 gets right and wrong, gameplay wise.

The Good:

Variety is the spice of life. Even though most people complete the game following the same paths in the same order, truth be told, you can actually mix it up a lot and take different approaches if you desire so. This also happens in Dark Souls 1 but there are milestones in DS that you can only overcome one way where in Dark Souls 2 you at least get a couple of choices.

The makings of a hero. There is a strong argument to be made that magic is still more powerful than any other character proficiency, yet the other choices are more much attractive and balanced now. The level design is constructed in a way that makes it so players who choose to wield a single type of weapon can beat it if they try hard enough but players who keep their arsenals wide will see themselves rewarded for it. Bows and crossbows are more comfortable to use this time around but they're still not even close to being fully viable. Dual wielding on the other hand is presented in a cool way, it works and it's balanced through a couple of rules and restrictions that ideally fit it.

Sense of progression. Not only does it borrow heavily from Demon Souls's concept of the nexus, it also makes it so it really becomes a beacon of hope and a place to rest for the player. Most npcs you meet can be brought to the "nexus" to sell their items there, increase their inventory, change their dialogues, give you hints and lore oriented speeches and even change the surroundings a bit for your convenience. This makes it so you have a sort of home to be attached to, which is a nice welcome feeling.

forgot to mention, you can play sword tag with zombies too! 

The Bad:

Unimaginative enemy design. Most enemies feel like they are just remodeled or reskinned versions of ones you find early on. Movesets dont vary that much either but Dark Souls 2 biggest offense in this regard comes from bosses. At the top of my head, the amount of bosses that are just a guy with an armor is about 40% and another 20 % is just a big monster flailing his arms around which leaves only 40% to the imagination. To be fair though the other ones are pretty neat, unfortunately, they are a bit easy and quick to beat so they dont really make a lasting impression on you.

Soul memory. The decision to make it so pvp matches were actually linked on soul memory rather than soul level is a terrible one. Instead of fighting people your lvl on the pvp tier you like, it becomes a full stat brawl with people just exploiting dominant yet repetitive strategies. This is such a huge downside because this time around pvp had the chance to be a banquet of builds, flavors and weapons that the previous souls games couldn't see.

Lackluster story. Even though Dark Souls 2 makes a big effort trying to have a more compelling story, it falls flat on a washed up canvas. There is really nothing new or exciting. It feels as if the plot was just copy/pasted and then tweaked a lot. It's final delivery for the player after about 30 hours of gameplay is very tasteless to be honest.

this was supposed to excite you, now all you do is wonder about how far ahead of you down minmax road this guy is 

Visuals: A definite improvement upon it's predecessors. The game looks great and thankfully no stupid areas drop the fps for no apparent reason, movement and particles all seem more fluid and pleasant to look at. The aesthetics changed to be more colorful and varied and it's up to you to decide whether or not that's a good thing. It looks amazing, it is a shame though that most enemies disappear on death and the lighting is nothing like what was originally advertised. 8.5/10

Gameplay: The gameplay is a theorical upgrade over the previous formula. More variety, more options and a better feel to it all, its actually an outstanding feat to see such an elaborate and well polished system made even better. Unfortunately though, the reaaally stupid numeric decisions From Software took regarding soul memory and the stat point resetting option just killed both pvp and replayability for the game and this I hope someone fixes or patches up because it really hinders the game's potential to an almost incalculable degree. 6.75/10

Music: Songs that are well composed and somewhat fitting to their respective settings make the game feel more alive without risking it's previous musical identity, it all sounds nice but its ultimately nothing to write home about. 7/10

Story: This is probably the only aspect of the game that is really a downgrade compared to the previous ones, it just seems too familiar yet unpolished, like they tried to cater both new and old players to the franchise but somehow managed to dissapoint both. Better conveyance just worse ending and creativity overall. It is by no means a bad story, it just leaves a bad taste on your mouth because both newcomers and veterans can feel an enormous amount of unexploited potential. 6/10

Final Verdict:

Dark Souls 2 is sort of like a spoiled rich kid who's parents forced into soccer practice. He has a good P.E teacher, healthy food and diet, gym at home and crazy cool shoes and shirt to play soccer in. Hell! He even has the talent! Yet it seems like it's not really giving it's all. Mix that with colossal yet simple numeric decisions on it's developers that ultimately hinder the experience and you get a great game that offers a lot of cooperative goodness and solid gameplay with no replayability or fun competitive grounds to enjoy yourself in.

7/10

*Sorry for the 2 month hiatus, college is tough and all, I've also been doing a lot more reading and less gaming so that's part of it. It's also convenient DSII's DLC was recently released so you guys can read on this now if you were actually waiting for it. Thanks for reading!

**For the native english speakers, I apologize for the grammar errors. I'm still getting the hang of this language, it is in my best interest to write as adequately as possible but please do not let those mistakes take away from the article's meaning and objective.

Remember to follow me on Twitter at "@pegasus_boots" and Instagram account "pegasusbootsgb" hope you enjoyed the read!

Dead Space 3 Review

Dead Space 3 Review:

How does a great and modern franchise fall?

Dead Space 3 is the latest entry up to this date on the Dead Space franchise. It has already been a while since it's release and I was avoiding it because of the critics it received and overall poor feedback from friends of mine who loved the franchise as much as I did, if not more. I don't mean to say Dead Space as a whole is doomed and may never see the light of day again, but I do believe they attempted to turn an otherwise excellent franchise in a horrible, thorn riddled direction. In this review I would also like to draw some parallel lines between this last installment and the 2 previous ones so you guys can see which aspects I believe were lost and which were gained during this series's evolution.

I decided to make this review even though Dead Space 3 was released back in February because I brought myself to play its campaign with a friend in the famous co-op mode this entry brought to the table. So without further explanations to give and no desire to drag this around any longer here's what Dead Space 3 is all about.

this is what I've been doing on holidays, am I not the most social human being there is, playing co-op dead space 3

Summary: The Dead Space franchise WAS (past tense) a horror and survival game oriented series, they take place in the eerie, terrifying setting that is well, as it's name would imply, outer space. You play as Isaac Clarke, a space engineer haunted by nightmares and horrible experiences that must save humanity from a zombie-like alien infection. In the first entry you find yourself in the creepiest place in all of the series, the Ishimura, a mining space shuttle and ship that just never ceased to run chills down your spine. Almost every nook and cranny had an unpleasant surprise for you and its confined hallways warrantied nervous breakdowns when you saw yourself crammed in them with a bunch of necromorphs (the alien zombie things). On the 2nd entry you saw yourself roaming around the city of Sprawl. a space colony that is a bit more open and comfy to Isaac, but still filled with unnerving new enemies and a couple of places that beat the Ishimura's butt in terms of sheer creepiness. Finally you see yourself in a city in a moon that located well, umm... somewhere (shit's too wacky and not explained well so I don't quite remember) and you are tossed around by this group of half terrorists half rebels that want to gather an alien artifact that you've already dealt with a couple of times, so that makes you the right guy for the job.

So, let's talk positives first, in this particular entry, you can play the whole story with a friend! And if you do so, you even get some extra hours of gameplay! So that is pretty cool, the only downside to this feature that I couldn't quite understand is that you need 2 copies of the game to do so. What I mean to say is: It's not local, in order to play the co-op version of the campaign you need 2 consoles or computers each one with a working copy of the game. This baffled me. Why wouldn't you just make a split-screen mode!?

I know this game was terrible but the split-screen was a welcome feature, cmon EA stop trying to empty our pockets

Another kind of cool feature is the revamped crafting system which lets you basically pack 2 weapons into one and give secondary effects to its sight or its bullets. There is one problem with it though, when you reach about 60% completion if you've been paying attention, gathering blueprints and pieces, you can make some overpowered weapons that will practically make 9 out of 10 encounters a walk in the park. (I beat the game on hard mode, I know it isn't hardcore but it was still very very easy)

Now for negatives and boy o' boy are there a bunch of them this time around. First of all, the game changed genre's and just to be clear, I saw this coming since Dead Space 2's release only DS2 didn't make it so obvious. Dead Space 3 is a 3rd person shooter action game. All of its survival elements are gone and the horror is barely even there, a few jump scares that aren't even that well employed are the only things that make you nervous, at most. The story this time around is so convoluted and unbelievably disengaging that it is a miracle I could even understand half of what was going on. (I've got a short attention span don't judge me) Finally the setting this time around varies a bit more than in previous games which is nice but none of these places make you feel frightened, which to be honest is the whole point of a setting in a self-proclaimed survival horror game.

Explosions, yes, you'll be seeing a lot of them here, no more dark creepy hallways, just, well.. BOOM for you ;D

What bothers me the most about this entry is not a valid reason to give it a low score. It's just personal preference, but for a healthy mind's sake and more happy readers let me elaborate:

-On the first Dead Space, Isaac Clarke was a mute and even a faceless man for the vast majority of the game and that let me empathize with him, he wasn't speaking over radio transmissions every 2 seconds he was just grunting when he stomped item boxes and grunting even louder when apprehended by a necromorph. since DS2 he's been given a voice and not just for cutscenes, entire sequences are riddled with dialogues of him chatting over the radio with his allies and enemies and the constant speeches don't make you feel alone and helpless. You feel completely safe and the horror aspect of the game is broken to me, this only intensifies in Dead Space 3. Not only are you joined by a friend if you play co-op you also spend about 80% of the game in a conversation with someone which is just dumb, it completely kills the mood this series was known for back when Dead Space made its debut in back in 2008.

conversations, conversations everywhere

-The plot of the whole franchise has never been it's major strength, it isn't bad by any means but it's nothing to write home about if we're really honest. Some minor sub-plots though are very interesting and bring the story to life, they motivate you and make you care for Isaac. Since DS2 Isaac has become an inconsistent character, he seems like a complex character with deep issues but throughout the games you evidence he's just troubled for a couple of minutes at the worst point of his adventure and then he always gets back on the horse, finds a new girl and kills some more necromorphs so to me he basically lost all that made him relate-able. He just looks like a COD character in my eyes, and I mean that as a bad thing.

-During my play-throughs for both DS and DS2 I didn't encounter a single bug, glitch or error whatsoever. But Dead Space 3 was a whole different deal, it was one after the other it basically turned the whole experience into an endurance test for my patience as a player who despises glitches in a game. Here's a quick list of all the errors me and my friend encountered:

I was browsing the webz like a cute internet cat for glitch to show you guys 

and the first I found was one that actually made the game scarier so it doesn't quite help my cause

a) Aim fixation, my friend who used the keyboard to play it, found himself locked in an "aimed down the sight" state through about 2 chapters of the game after which he decided it was ruining his experience and decided to look for a fix online. After a few minutes he found one, it consisted of mashing the TAB key over and over again and this, ladies and gentlemen, fixed the issue lightning fast. But it was still pretty annoying, resetting the game, re-hosting it, changing hosts, rebooting his PC, none of this fixed it so that is one annoying problem to encounter if you ask me.

b) Out of sync cut scenes, this happened to us twice: One happened in a cut scene in which Isaac and his friend are captured by some human enemies and this was apparently followed by a shootout, only it wasn't followed. It happened at the same time, the NPCs were just standing there when we arrived at the scene and the cut scene suddenly triggered, some of the dialogue was past us and the other enemies were shooting at us while it happened. So there we were, listening to a menacing speech from the bad guy while we were being shot at. Want to know how I figured this was a mistake? well an NPC was grabbing me by the neck with his stump of an arm he just lost during the cut scene. Yes, the enemies shot their own friend's arm off and he was using a phantom limb to hold me down, the NPC that brought my friend into submission lacked a head by the end of the cut scene and we took a lot of shots too, they didn't kill us but our full health bar was nearly depleted when the cut scene ended and the real shootout began. The other time was just goofy and it won't be mentioned.

c) Invincibility, this sounds cool right? Well it happened, it didn't last long, not because it was a one time deal but because my friend was terrible at climbing sections. At one point in the game he started using the Bench (or crafting table) to make himself some weapons and he was caught by a necromorph. He forced himself out of danger and afterwards he was immune to damage, ALL DAMAGE. He could be mangled by a necromorph in a combat cut scene and he would receive no damage whatsoever, the only way he would die was if he let the creature devour him, but even then he would re-spawn with invincibility. He managed to turn it off accidentally when a chunk of ice the size of a truck fell on him during a climbing sequence but if he was any better at climbing he would have carried me like dead weight for the rest of the journey.*

And these 3 things my friends are basically legacy breaking flaws in my book. When you lose complete sight of what your amazing game was in the beginning, you let it's spark extinguish and it's magic disappear. Many friends of mine and I believed Dead Space to be Resident Evil's true successor but they both went down the same path, making over the top, explosion filled set pieces and overall action games that forget their true essence.

This                                is scarier than                                   This

So there is a problem here

Visuals: The game looked very good, there was an occasional frame rate drop but I blame our slow internet connections for it. Most of the particles and scenery were astonishingly well designed and just a pleasure to watch. So no downside here, just nothing transcendent. 8/10

Gameplay: If you can ignore the multiple and frequent bugs. The gameplay and controls are tight, everything is responsive and just fun to play. Though not only the survival and horror parts of the game's genre are gone, the difficulty was kicked down a couple notches. It is no longer vital to aim at the limbs in order to win an encounter with the dreaded necropmorphs, with the many overpowered weapons at your disposal and overall weaker enemies than in the previous games you can just aim at the torso and maul your foes which feels great but offers no challenge for the player. 5/10

Story: I personally didn't like DS2's story at all. The whole shock of hearing Isaac speak that much for the first time just killed it for me, but I still think it's better paced and well driven than the one Dead Space 3 offers. This time around you're just tasked to do one thing after the other and you lose sight of your true objective every 2 minutes. I'd bet this wasn't a bad plot on paper, but it was executed poorly from my perspective. 6/10

Music: Just as good as the pieces you can find in the previous games, which are OK, nothing to write home about but they do help you feel the intensity of the action set pieces and the mystery of an abandoned space station. 7/10

Final Verdict:

Dead Space 3 dismembered it's franchise's genre like Isaac used to dismember necromorphs, by removing the games Horror and Survival aspects and making it one of the easiest 3rd person shooter games I've played to date. It basically dishonored the Dead Space family name. There is still fun to be had, you do not need to have played the previous ones to enjoy or understand this one, Hell! I played the previous ones and didn't comprehend a single thing of what was going on for more than 2 minutes at a time. So if you're a fan of big action set-pieces, sci fi shooters with spooky looking enemies and games that allow you to play the whole story in co-op mode, get this game when its on sale or something, you'll have your fun. To those of you who are Dead Space fans: If you are afraid that playing this game might ruin your experience with the series as a whole, well that depends on your tolerance level, it only hammered in the last nail on the coffin for me. But I do go by a couple of wise words my older brother once spoke to me: "Don't knock it, till you try it".

6.5/10

Bubbye!

*For those of you would like to know about the conditions in which the glitches and bugs were triggered, we played the Origin version of Dead Space 3 on PC.

**For the native english speakers, I apologize for the grammar errors. I'm still getting the hang of this language, it is in my best interest to write as adequately as possible but please do not let those mistakes take away from the article's meaning and objective.

Remember to follow me on Twitter at "@pegasus_boots" and my new Instagram account "pegasusbootsgb" hope you enjoyed the read!