Breaking Brad: Breaking Brad: Demon's Souls: Part 13

Woot.

Yes, yes it will poison his judgement

Thanks for the quick turn around, y'all!

Only Crystal Lizards can break Brad.

Edit: I think my personal Breaking Brad is watching him pump more and more souls into vitality.

baby soles: Shoemaker Edition

brad : old king :: rust cohle : yellow king

Souls!

The climax of this one was the clash between titans.

Potato_Marshal vs Creeping_Evil. It lasted but a few fleeting moments. The two titans left nothing of each other. Only Floogan was left as witness to the battle.

Gimme dat video

Go Brad!

This is the real Demon's Souls experience. Showing it raw, with all of it's ups and downs. Great show guys.

But wait.. If Brad beats it, you guys won't do these videos anymore. We've got to stop him! None of us are ready for this.

Oh good, he finally killed Doran. I had to leave about an hour in.

The hour & a half long battle with doran made me want to drink more so I can at least say something positive about it :)

This was quite an ordeal.
At least you gave him an honorable death...............

Well one or two more and we're done... after the good ol' doran I think the rest of the challenges will probably be a breeze. Lets just not get obsessed with killing the blue dragon ok?

Will be interesting to see how quickly or how long it takes for him to do Maneaters. I think his obsession with lock-on mechanic will bite him in the ass with that fight.

Now I have two episodes stacked up. Whatever will I do...?!

It's a bit annoying how Brad keeps talking poorly about Firestorm when he refuses to pump any more points into magic. It's ridiculously powerful if your magic is high.

"He just walks up and fucks me every time I try to eat."

Brad Shoemaker

I love this feature so, so much.

I laughed fucking hysterically when Ol' Doran backstabbed Brad live.....it was phenomenal. Just too good.

Playing Dark Souls a bit today and it is definitely very different from watching it (or Demon's Souls in this case.) Some defeats, while definitely not huge setbacks, can just tire you out and drain motivation from you. It's a hard game, but it is definitely one of endurance and knowledge for the most part. If you know what's going on, know the layout of the area, the enemies there, and have the right build & gear, (which comes from knowing a lot about the game) the game is a lot easier. Just add the right amount of patience and good dexterity and you can do okay.

The problem with that is discovering a good amount of that almost all on your own is key to enjoying the game, but there's definitely a limit. Especially in the seamless world of Dark Souls to know if the path you are going on is the "right" one at the moment or you're wasting your time butting your head up against a wall or into a bee's nest and there is some other path that's more balanced to where you are in the story. The scope, layout, and mechanics can just becoming bewildering to a lot of people who aren't accustomed to it, or may be able to handle it but don't want to spend the time. Even then, they feel looking most things up is practically needed, but also defeats the point. Something Brad is coupling with on this stream that really helps him along the way. And when people when they say they want all games to be like Souls series it's just silly to me - while I think they may have something to teach plenty of games, it is almost like saying all albums should be akin to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart. While I do have an affinity for Beefheart's work, it's so specialized, abrasive, abstract, and expressive to the point where too much of it can get lost on you, and spreading it all around to everything would greatly dull it, not to mention it is simply outside of the realm of many peoples' tastes, no matter how ingeniously conceived, creatively crafted, and well-executed on it is. Not everyone can take it in and enjoy it in some way. But I'm glad it exists and enjoy it though - even if I might not be able to sit through that entire double LP every day.

Before I drone on some more, in closing the Souls games are a wonderful series, thought still has a lot of rough patches that need some kind of mindful addressing. Hopefully Dark Souls II (which I have pre-ordered) addresses them without losing the integrity (or shall I say dignity), mystery, and difficulty that lies at the core of its strength. Hopefully they have gotten to grips with making a game where the technical aspects and translation is notoriously rough and flimsy.

Who here is hotly anticipating the World 3-3 boss fight?

Potato Marshal

: potatoe

This is the closest I've seen Brad broken by this game. I'm actually glad this feature has been living up to its name.

On that note I'm so happy Brad ended Doran the way he did. Just perfect.

The world needs Brad men. We keep the other Brad men from the door.

Oh GOD... Jeff is the Potato Marshall. That clever bastard!

The final confrontation.

Potato Marshall's a feature regular now.

Well done.

Potato Marshal secretly the star of this series.

This was amazing and terrible at the same time. Still don't understand why Brad cares so much about what the chat might think of his play style. Who cares if you cheese a guy. At least it keeps things going.

Anyways, now we have two epic fights for all eternity:

Vinny vs. Athorias

Brad vs. Old King Doran

(And the secret champions: the crystal lizards.)

I liked that Brad tried summoning, even if it was for a brief moment.

And we'll probably never see it again...

But poison cloud I believe is now going to be Brad's go to strat going forward. Fucking poison wizard.

I was only there because I was trying to invade Brad to drop him a Pure Darkmoonstone. Annoying that PM knocked me off the ledge as I killed him, but hopefully I can get another chance at Old Monk.

Why was Brad so obsessed about healing when he was fighting the king? Wouldn't it have been better if he had just concentrated in not getting hit?

VINLAND LEGACY

Brad, watching you walk up to those lizards with Warding selected was one of the most painful things ever. Head in hands inevitability.

@sessh said:

Yeah, when he finally started using Poison Cloud, he was all "How angry is the chat at me for cheesing it like this?" Like, NOT ALL DAWG. The frustrating part was watching Brad spending 90+ minutes dying to Doran like 9 times without really adjusting his strategy and never learning how to evade Doran once Doran starts 2-handing his sword.

I still can't believe that he kept raising his shield once Doran was 2-handing. It's so futile since a single swing from Doran was staggering the fuck out of Brad and almost immediately led to Brad's death. As soon as Doran went into a 2-hand stance and actually jogs toward Brad instead of slowly walking towards him, Brad stopped being able to get hits in because his only strategy (block with shield, retreat, hope for the best) didn't do anything.

There is only 1 boss who can possibly be harder than Doran and that is a player controller Old Monk.

I hope plenty of strong Giant Bomb members will be ready for Brad when he tries to beat him.

It will be my successor the potato marshal.

@hassun: players can control the Old Monk? I had no idea. That sounds awesome. Time to check out the wiki again.

I hated the first half of the fights against Doran, but by the second half I realised he couldn't walk away now. It needed to be seen through. Even though he could easily have finished the game in that stream if it wasn't for that detour.

I'm glad he's done with Crystal Lizards now, every time he walked up to one then paused, and then seemed surprised when it ran away.... then chased after them with a wand.... AGH he never learned from his mistakes.

Other than that this is by far my fav feature on the site at the moment.

P.s. Who would win in a fight between Potato_Marshal and Flake83? ;)

Pretty sure Potato Marshal has to be stream-griefing if he's staying in invading level range.

Can anyone give me time stamps for the highlights (Brad getting backstabbed, Potato Marshall)? I had this on in the background but missed the key parts :(

@godmil: The player controlled boss is one of the coolest things in all of Demon's Souls. So cool that a variation of it will return in Dark Souls 2.

It's a cool idea, but when I played through the game a few months ago the players just kept losing connection/dropping out and I ended up having to fight the AI.

Good triumphs over evil!

DOX POTATO_MARSHALL

@strainedeyes: Even worse for me, I was never able to fight a human Old Monk boss at all. No matter how much I tried. Maybe the European version is/was a lot less active and popular than the Asian or American versions but it was a huge bummer for sure.

I knew I should have just bought a US version of the game...

Ugh, why is Brad so hesitant to make decisions. He is near the end of the game and has barely touched any of the extra armour or weapons. Really enjoyed Load Our Last Souls but this series is frustrating.