Quick Look: Dark Souls II (PC)

You can fight in the arena for unlimited crack eye orbs. Takes a good build to beat actual PvP players but it's fun and you can unlock it about 25% of the way through the game.

this is one of those games I enjoy watching more than playing!

Brad, try parrying instead of fishing for backstabs so much.

Though, it is good to see your skill improving.

Framerate looks good but I can't tell how good the textures are on my current PC setup. They look like shit on the HD downloaded version of this video.

I'm guessing this is just a slightly more technically competent version of the game I've already had the pleasure of spending about 45 hours with so far (but not yet finished!). I don't know why this has been anticipated like the second coming. Just play the game however you can!

In everyone's elses defense, technical stuff doesn't really bother me all that much (except screen tearing, blah, but that's why I have the PS3 version) so maybe I don't know any better.

Video doesn't play for streaming quality option :(

Improving? Did we watch the same video?

The quality of PC Dark Souls is so good, the video won't even load!

Kidding :) I'm sure it will be running soon for me.

@kinggiddra: I didn't say he was the best player ever, just that he's better than he was before. Aside from getting cocky in a few spots I didn't see anything fundamentally wrong with his play style.

still broken huh.

Ok it'll play on Youtube! Looks pretty good, will not be surprised if the new consoles have versions coming soon.

In that Quick Look they did on the PS3 they did look sorta rough. I also played on 360 and had neither problems with the load times or the framerate. The load times were quick enough where I wasn't able to finish reading some of the longer item descriptions and the framerate never dropped to anything resembling Dark Souls 1 levels - although in vanilla Dark Souls 1 you would get massive frame drops simply from backstabbing doods so the bar wasn't set very high for improvement.

Anyway, game ran solid on the xbox in every respect. It's a little silly to see people, Brad included, keep talking about how they're waiting for the "real version" or whatever. I played for over 40 hours by now if not way more, had a blast, and while the PC version looks sharper it doesn't look like this day and night difference or anything. People talk about the console version like it's trash or something.

Video won't work for me either, I can't even select quality options. Good thing there's the youtube channel!

This is a very great game. Glad this is a solid version.

Waited for the PC version, might have to check this out now.

Eh... its not easy to parry in this game, much harder than ds1.

Most of Brad's deaths come from poorly timed estus uses or from not understanding when to attack, pattern recognition stuff, which to be fair, probably is just due to playing on camera.

I wonder how fucked the PvP will be on PC. That's the thing people keep forgetting. Better frame rate and visual quality is a + but an online environment full of invincible hackers is something that would kill a good part of the experience for me.

@sexualbubblegumx: kind of a given nowadays. what's wrong with steam?

Video not working on my iphone or my PC. Just black screen.

@nate: Having the same issue on my desktop.

The mobile and medium quality download links also don't work. High is too big for my paltry internet :(

You guys honestly oughta consider just moving to Youtube full time at this rate.

Weird, not nearly the leap that I expected from the console versions. Still a long ways off from the early footage. Maybe they'll fix it with mods.

Anyone having trouble with watching the vid try switching to 'Progressive'

I don't get this excuse. If that was all it was, they could have just put more torches/sconces/light sources around the map. Problem solved and the babies can still see/ignore the torch, all without ruining the atmosphere. As a bonus, it would have hid some of those horrible, flat textures. Or people could have just turned up the brightness.

It's pretty obvious it was a performance issue for consoles and all versions were downgraded thanks to it. I think people would have been perfectly fine if From was just upfront about this just being a good console port, instead of lying about PC being the 'lead development platform', because that comes with certain expectations.

I can't download this @drewbert - anybody else have this problem?

the more they mention the lighting, the more i realize there are just straight up no light/shadow on most of the game.

No, I've seen and played a lot in 60 FPS. I'm totally used to it. I just always find myself liking 30 FPS better. I think 60 looks weird and to me 30 is just right.

This game looks incredible!!!... Oh no wait, I forgot it's not 2005 anymore. (hehehe) Jokes, it looks fine.

Looks great. I will say it's painful watching another person play a game in a different way than you would.

It's amazing the difference a few seconds of load time can make.

@darkhollow: Why would you cringe at someone using a controller to play DS2 on the PC? Maybe DS2 simply works better with a controller, like the AC games.

@theblue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YJPVIA8nmM so ----I'm looking forward so much on my PC version great, shame that with the light Effecten but hay is still MODS and to come. super

As he said, it is because you're used to 30. Having seen 60 often, doesn't mean you're used to it. You're seeing 30 more often and have seen it more often in the past.

I've seen a movie in 48fps a couple of times. It looked very weird to me. But I'm sure once (if?) all movies are going in that direction, I'll look back on 24fps movies and think: man... this looks jaded.

Didn't Brad say that he beat the Pursuer after his third try and that he took no damage? He solved his pattern, how come he died here? Did he unsolve it, because he hasn't played it in a while? Seems weird.

Those are dynamic lights, they are not casting shadows, static or dynamic. I know that's what Brad meant, but it'd be nice if the tightened up their terminology if they are going to comment on it. Also, chances are why some project shadows and some dont probably means they did a pass to flip that stuff on for the PC version and missed a bunch or something silly like that.

Shadow casting lights are super expensive, which is probably why most games dont have lights casting shadows.

What this game is suffering is just a lighting direction in most areas, the ambient light is straight up flat and bland.

"It's not Crysis..."

Man, Crysis was released in 2007 and it's still Brad's go-to for graphical comparisons. I haven't played it in years. I wonder if it really does look as good as we all remember.

Ended up getting the PS3 version because that's the platform I have the other two on. More specifically, wasn't sure how the PC version of this would turn out after the whole Dark Souls GFWL/direct port nonsense. This one is so much smoother though (and those load times ): )

@aceofspudz: Maxed out with full AA / Motion Blur - it still looks very very good - both technically and art design.

This makes me glad I decided to upgrade my PC next, instead of getting a new console.

Finaly after a whole month of waiting, ive been playing solid for 2 days and holy shit I love darksouls2 \□/

After playing Dark Souls on PC, the console versions were a real no-no for me. Yes I was spoiled.

Ok. So, I'm not very up to date on Dark Souls, I couldn't get the first one to run on my machine. Is Dark Souls II just a full PC build / re-master of the original? Vinny and Brad are talking about how much shinier this flying knight guy is than he "was". The only thing I can think of that fits is that this is a remake. Which is fine, but I would like to know.

@budwyzer: Dark Souls II is a full-on sequel to Dark Souls, not a remake. They are referring and comparing to the console version of Dark Souls II that came out a little more than a month ago.