lylebot

Buy. Renting is a huge ripoff.

Here's another ripoff to look out for: for my most recent cable setup, I chose the buy option. They asked if I wanted the "setup package" for something like $15 + shipping and handling. I said sure OK. When it came, it was like a coax splitter, a coax cable, and a couple of screws. Nothing I needed for anything, and not even any instructions.

I voted Vita. I don't know if that's true or not--I suspect I actually use my PS4 a bit more--but just wanted to represent. There is a lot I dislike about that thing, but being able to play while I'm with the kids makes up for a lot. And Remote Play works amazingly well when I'm not at home (somehow it works better when I'm connecting over the Internet 20 miles from home than when I'm using my own home network).

@pompouspizza: same. I played around with it a while back, liked it but sucked at it, and felt like I didn't have time to invest to get better. Then last month when my wife was out of town, I watched some videos on how to do some of the missions, picked it up again, and played for about 4 hours straight (which I can rarely do for any video game these days). I even dreamed about it at night. Cannot wait for Phantom Pain.

None of the E3 press conference videos are working for me. When I try to play them, I just get endless loading; when I download them they come through with size 0MB. They work on the site itself, and all the other videos seem to work fine in the app, so I'm not sure what the issue could be.

Thanks, love the app, keep up the great work!

I have no problem with anyone not liking Souls games, but I'm always happy to see someone skeptical of those games giving them a real chance.

It was kind of odd---Todd VanDerWerff, now of Vox, previously of the AV Club, mentioned the Giant Bombcast rather offhandedly in one of the billions of articles he wrote each day. I actually barely followed videogame news at the time, but I was looking for something to listen to on my commute, so I gave it a try. The first I heard them was the GOTY deliberations of 2011. I loved it and have listened to every single podcast since then.

@ezekiel: I agree that those are all material improvements over Dark Souls, yet (IMO of course) their cost was the loss of the heart and soul of the game. Dark Souls has a certain je ne sais quoi, something hard to describe but clearly lacking in Dark Souls II. The overarching world design is a big part of it.

I love DS2, I've put in 160+ hours which I think is more than I did for DS1, I've had a lot more fun with the PvP (I never had any fun with it in DS1), but to me it's just not as good even though so many of the mechanics and systems are better.

Never have. I am very skeptical of Kickstarters in general for reasons that I find a bit hard to articulate. I guess it has something to do with how things necessarily get rethought and revised during development. With privately-funded projects you'd never know anything about it; as far as you know, the final product is what was intended all along (even though that is rarely the case). But somehow with a Kickstarter it either has to be extremely well-thought-out from the beginning (which costs money in and of itself), or run a high risk of requiring more money to cover unforeseen development challenges, leading to backlash and unsatisfied backers. It just seems antithetical to both crowdfunding AND software development.

I was trying to think of a type of project I might consider backing. Maybe if someone came up with an idea for some kind of Ultima 7/Dark Souls hybrid? Like, I would be totally excited about that in theory... but I still don't know if I could see myself backing it imagining the probable development challenges that could arise.

Got a 2.5yo and a 1yo, and play after they go to bed (and sometimes during the day if I'm home and one is napping). They're in bed by 9 at the latest, so it leaves a couple hours. I guess it won't work out as well when they get older, but hopefully they'll want to play with me then :)

It hasn't changed the types of games I play. I still like long open-world games and RPGs. I just play one game for months on end. I also have no problem with picking up something way late. I played Skyrim for the first time last year for example. I've found that even with games that have a significant online component it's not a big issue---there were still people playing Demon's Souls online when I played it 3-4 years after it came out.

Very interesting interview, but I don't think we can point to any particular incoherent/messy bit as evidence of that rethinking. The one example the developers give---the original intention for Lucatiel to have a sidekick, who was repurposed as the Bell Keeper covenant dude---didn't result in anything that seems incoherent to me. The things that do seem incoherent in the final game---such as taking the elevator up from Earthen Peak to Iron Keep---could have been like that from the beginning for all we know. Given that he is "confident that none of this will be felt by the players", I wonder whether he's actually talking about any of the things that seem incoherent in the final product.