Delphouneso

Bed of Chaos is an awful boss. Actually all 4 of the bosses I've fought down here in fire town have been pretty disappointing.

I've passed them now (thanks to some manic dodging) but I'm not sure my shield choice would've made a difference. I'm still using the Grass Crest shield which is 95% I think, the issue was they just trapped me against a wall and smashed through my stamina. I only ended up inside the painting in the first place because I coincidentally saw it in a Gameranx video a coupld of days before. Anor Londo looks nice. Iron Golem was.. a boss? Currently navigating a(nother) narrow walkway whilst being shot with giant arrows by two giant armoured knights. Genuinely feel like the environment has been my most challenging enemy thus far, even most of the enemies seem to fall off things just as often as I do.

**** those skeleton wheels.

Nice one @Designer1, is that with all bosses or are there some skips involved? I've not really looked into DS1 challenge runs for fear of spoilers. I'm not certain I could manage a run without falling off a ledge to be honest, let alone beat the rest of the game. My achilles heel is forgetting where I left lifts and going straight down the shaft [/Kenneth]. Had a couple of decent sessions recently and have now beaten Capra Demon (contender for most annoying boss run?), Gaping Dragon, Quelaag, the Butterfly, and Sif. Capra Demon was the only one that gave me any trouble, thankfully, because if Quelaag was actually difficult I might've started to get annoyed about having to start the fight poisoned. I've all but abandoned my shield since Capra Demon, on bosses at least seen as I'm not tanky enough to tank them and you seemingly can't parry them. I'm finding it a bit more frustrating than BB, I guess it's an earlier game and it's a bit rougher around the edges - case in point I got stuck in a tree in Darkroot Garden yesterday, lost all my HP but didn't die, just hung there suspended making death noises - and it seems to punish you for more annoying things. The bosses themselves haven't so far been that challenging or frustrating, there's just a lot of claustrophobic areas with narrow walkways/tunnels/ledges and lots of enemies with janky hitboxes and questionable AI which leads to lots of falling or getting stuck in doorways. Not being able to heal through poison/toxins is annoying, you get half way through an area and get poisoned and don't have any moss you're dead, may as well hurl yourself down a lift shaft (maybe it's just the game telling me I should've gone Darkroot > Blightown, as I now have a tonne of moss and no longer need it). I also spent a good while trying to cast chaos fireballs with a staff, not realising I needed a Pyromancer's Flame, which I now have and well, fireballs are a bit.. limp? I'm having fun. Sometimes.

The lastest patch notes. Glad to see they're prioritising gameplay issues.

I made a mental note to keep an eye out for this, played for a little while, decided to have a root through my inventory and discovered I already have it. No idea where I picked it up but I'll take it. Upon equipping it I also realised I'd been using it at one point because I'd wondered what those green arrows were under my stamina bar. Also bought a Scimitar because it had the highest dex scaling of the weapons the blacksmith sells and my purchase was almost instantly justified when my character started doing cartwheel attacks. We all know the most important stat in Souls games is flamboyance.

Light bulb moment when I realised stamina regen is slowed when your shield is up, gargoyles smited. It's a good mechanic too, I like it. I also switched to a faster weapon which helped. Couple of questions for you vets: is Dex ths game's Skill? Does it affect visceral/riposte/backstab damage the same way? And is a shield + dex weapon build a thing? I like the idea of a quick and nifty shield parry build, seems like a decent middle ground that feels quick and familiar but also forces me to learn to use a shield. Finally is it worth upgrading some of these earlier weapons or are the decent ones further down the road?

I'm not much of a summoner. I get that it's been put in the game to be used, and it does change the fight somewhat, but I just wouldn't get any satisfaction from beating a boss with a summon. These 'goyles for example the challenging part of the fight is managing both mobs simultaneously in the second phase right? I'm assuming a summon just solves that problem for you, which removes the 'fun' from the fight for me.

Might just be a case of better learning the iframe timing or adjusting my dodge direction, my instinct to dodge in/through seemed to be getting punished a lot more. Also I should probably just embrace the Souls games and go shield first playthrough, force myself to learn a new playstyle rather than try to play it like Bloodborne, as tempting as it is and as much as I miss my Blades of Mercy.

Picked up all three Souls games in the sales and I've just started 1. Combat feels a lot slower and more one dimensional than Bloodborne and that's taking some adjustment, as is using a shield - I basically ignored it at first but dodging doesn't seem to be the play here. Just got to the gargoyle boss(es), had a few attempts, fell off the roof twice in a row and called it a day.

Completely agree with this but where do you draw the line? I think penalties like the Harry Kane one against us should never be given, I'm sure we also had a handball given against us from a shot that was going off target last season, and those ones where a player gets a toe on the ball then gets taken out by the keeper when they're never getting to the ball anyway, I think those ones are easy. But then beyond that there's a massive grey area where you could argue a case either way in a lot of situations over what is and isn't a goal scoring opportunity. I think ultimately referees need to just start applying common sense rather than blindly following the rule book to the letter, if a shot that's going out of play hits a hand it's not a **** penalty.

I've never wanted a match to end so fast when we're losing just to shut the **** commentary off.

I was hoping they'd be braver, rip the plaster off and leave MW19/BOCW behind, implement some bigger changes to gameplay (I was a big fan of the Iron Trials mode they did a while back, more of that sort of thing), as is once the novelty of the new map wears off I'm not sure there's enough to get me playing regularly again, but maybe the map design combined with the minor changes they've made will prove me wrong and shake up the gameplay loop a bit. It does seem a bit silly having three games worth of weapons though, particularly with so many duplicates now, and when we all know they'll make sure it's the Vanguard weapons that are meta anyway. Console only crossplay would be nice too, but I doubt they'll ever implement that.

The commentator just said 'in rugby that's a try'. Lets just start giving 3 points for skying it and having waist high tackles as well shall we?

Not sure what the Palace fans are annoyed about, Milivojevic should've been booked, we should've had a pen (and Milivojovic a second yellow?), Cash got booked for being pushed in the face, and Kouyate somehow hasn't been booked for committing roughly 900 fouls that half. Nakamba, Targett, Ramsey, and Mings playing really well.

I think I've mentioned this on here before but I get the feeling COD's yearly releases going forward will essentially serve as expansion packs for Warzone, they're making more money from selling cosmetics for WZ than they are from developing standalone multiplayer games every year. I think all the additional content for Cold War is to compensate for how little it launched with - from what I gather Treyarch took over Cold War late into development after there was a fallout with another studio so it was rushed out - whereas Vanguard has launched with a lot more content so it'll be interesting to see how much more they add, not to mention half the additional maps for CW were remakes. As for BF2042 I think they're sat on a gold mine with Portal, and I think going forward that's probably where they should focus their efforts - particularly if they want to go head to head with WZ/COD, they've basically given the player base the keys to the city to make the game they want to play. I could definitely see them moving to a F2P model with that in the future.

It's free to play this weekend by the way, just download 'Vanguard Free Access' from your respective console's game store. Handy opportunity to level a few weapons for anyone who plays WZ but doesn't plan on buying MP.

Actually really like the way Vanguard feels to play, I like the option of combat pacing (even if it does ignore my choice most of the time), I like most of the maps I've played, but my word is the game an absolute mess right now. Weapon balance is all over the place, the spawns are terrible, and there are tonnes of bugs. I can't help but feel they're sat on a great game that they've potentially made unmanageable by introducing copious amounts of attachments that they'll never be able to balance properly. Patrol has the potential to be a good addition to the game but the mobile capture point seems to wreak even more havoc with the spawns.

Struggling with the amount of hand-holding in the game. I'm about 30 hours in now, I know how to give heart, Drippy. I also find it weird how spells just interrupt eachother in combat, for example I'll cast mugshot with Swaine then Oliver will cast Ward or something so his spell animation takes over the screen, when it returns to the battle screen I have no idea whether Swain actually ended up using mugshot, whether I stole anything or not, or whether Oliver's spell just cancelled mine, and if so did it still use my MP? Rest of the game is great, looks great, music is okay, familiar system is fun, I'm having fun exploring.

Games or areas in games where the camera flips when you go through a door/loading screen, so continually holding the thumbstick in the same direction ends up sending you back through the door you just came from. IIRC the early Resident Evil games were pretty bad for this.

This is it for me. I loved the game but I think they somewhat sent themselves down a cul-de-sac with the story they chose to tell and the way they chose to tell it, which resulted in some pacing issues and awkward clunky segments where I found myself thinking 'this isn't how I would've done this, but I'm not sure how else they could've done it'. It's still so good though, they nailed so many aspects of this game, it just doesn't quite hit like it could have.

I was looking forward to BF2042 but the specialists have really dampened my enthusiasm, I'm just not a fan of hero shooters.

Tidy.

Finally got round to starting Ni No Kuni. Playing with Japanese audio and English subs, is Drippy supposed to be Scottish?