Well I just finished the game, clocked around 40 hours on the character I stuck with and was SL 100 when i beat the last boss, I think the game is largely better than Dark Souls 1 but in some ways worse, I might change my opinion after playing more, I sunk hundreds of hours into the first one after all.

Things I think are better:

- Number of boss battles

- animations and visuals

- less ability to rely on extreme overtanking builds to cheese the game

- replacement for humanity/death mechanics

- World size

- Difficulty, personally I found this game harder than Dark Souls, I know some people think otherwise but trying to play as almost solely dual wielding was challenging.

- Enemy AI, this is leaps and bounds better than the brain dead enemies in Dark Souls

- Multiplayer coop/pvp it seems to work much better and is not a bit more flexible, all round improvement.

- Performance, playing on the Xbox 360 I didn't notice any fps issues like in the original.

Things I think are worse:

- Story (this is subjective and it'll be ages before people piece it together anyway) including the ending.

- World connectivity, what I mean is that the way the world fit together in Dark Souls felt much more natural and well crafted than this game.

- Multiple enemies + bosses in small rooms, the camera wasn't still a piece of shit i'd not have as much complaint here, but some of the encounters while not particularly hard, are frustrating due to the camera.

- Music, the music is in my opinion generally bad, compared to the fantastic Dark Souls soundtrack this was very disappointing.

All in all I think they did a very good job, it's not quite as special as the first one but it isn't a disappointment.

I've never felt the need to write a blog before and probably never will again, but the recent news of Ryan's passing hit me harder than i'd expect.

A few years ago back when I was in college I needed something to keep me entertained on the long train and bus rides I took every day and gaming podcasts filled this space, I didn't get to the Bombcast straight away but it is the natural end for any search for great gaming podcasts. Long, entertaining and filled with the best voices on their side of the industry with Ryan at the head.

It was another year or so before I started to visit the website but once I was hear I realised what I had been missing and quickly dived into the backlog of Quick Looks and other videos since the founding of the site. I ended up a premium member and while there wasn't a lot of exclusive content it didn't (and doesn't) matter, just being able to support this group of people is enough of a reward.

Over the years Giantbomb has become the first website I check in a morning and the last at night, I watch every video religiously and Tuesday became my favourite day of the week, just the anticipation of another 3 hours (or more if lucky) of Bombcast was enough to get me through the day happy.

I've never felt an attachment to a person i've never met or really had any interaction with, but Giantbomb is such a personality driven team you come to feel like you know each one of the staff like a real friend even if they don't even know who you are.

So Ryan Davis was to me, a friend and a companion on many journeys, many evenings, many late nights.

Rest in peace Ryan, you'll be missed by more people than you can imagine.

Starting Arkham City on the PC, GOD IT LOOKS SO PRETTY.