[smartblue]

It's like the day before your birthday uih.

Amazon has billed me for mine, and even if I get it tomorrow I don't think I'll even have time to play it since I have class all day and night. Looks like the real Dark Souls starts Wednesday.
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[CubaLibre]

My first job in a month starts tomorrow. :(
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Let's Play, starring me.

[costel]

[Sniper Honeyviper]

When I called to ask when the store I preordered it at would have Dark Souls, the guy was obviously going down a checklist of "Do you want to preorder Rage? It's out tomorrow!" "You can cover the cost by trading in games!" "You can pay off the preorder now!"

[costel]

[Sniper Honeyviper]

We're all just nervously anticipating its release tomorrow. This topic will explode with discussion then.

[Flylighter]

Guys my best buy opens at 10:00 guys, at 10:20 AM EST at the latest I will be playing this game

<3 costel for the inner workings anecdote! No, of course it's not nice to laugh outright at a dude for doing his job. But it can be guiltily funny at times!
(I pictured a solemn, head turned ever-so-slightly, eyes slightly-more-opened declaration of awe: "a 9.")
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I'm on Steam! ----- I'm on Youtube!

[Teflon]

[glossolalia]

i certainly didn't laugh at him, for the record. once i realized the point i said "oh, that's good. i really liked demon's souls, so." i probably stared blankly for a solid second, though, because i was just honestly baffled. i'm really pretty nice for an asshole.

[A New Duck]

Oh, crap, when I preordered this, I told it to go to my office instead of my apartment. But I don't have any reason to go into work tomorrow.

Except to get me some Dark Souls.
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3DS/PokéMagic Friendz Code: 1289-8272-6032

[remote]

Man, I can't wait until tomorrow.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[costel]

[smartblue]

Man Booj cut the guy some slack, he's just got the pre sacred cow launch jitters and he clearly isn't a marketing major (maybe to his credit).

TXTSWORD man, if your favorite game sells a bunch, that's good no matter what. Think about all the good games we love that will never get sequels because the publishers didn't throw enough cash at the marketing people. If Dark Souls sells like hotcakes, we'll probably get Dark Souls 2.

Actually though, that probably doesn't matter anyway. From is used to making sequels because they feel like making them, not because they will necessarily sell. Armored Core never really sells tons of copies, though maybe V will. Otogi 2 was really great, as was Otogi, and I think those games sold mostly on word of mouth and Penny Arcade strips. Lost Kingdoms 2? It was a good game but not a lot of people cared about games like that on the Gamecube where it couldn't stand easily above all the shovel ware. We will probably get another Dark Souls game anyway if they have more ideas for that universe. I think this is the main reason I love From Software so much, that their company is passion driven, not so much money driven.

edit: Sorry, this post is fine, just looks weird now because a bunch of shit was deleted. - remote

EDITED BY CURATOR
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[boojiboy7]

Yeah, though sadly From's publishers are often money driven, so I hope this sells well.

[analogos]

btw. btw dark souls btw.

[remote]

you heard?
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[scratchmonkey]

Crap, Newegg just canceled my preorder of the Collector's Edition as they only got regular editions.

[boojiboy7]

man that blows, VM. hope bestbuy doesn't pull that.

[Moogs]

Oh, the making-of disc is now a digital download?

[Sniper Honeyviper]

This is actually the advantage of buying from Gamestop: barring the rare Walmart/Target exclusive, they're always guaranteed to have whatever nerdy preorder extras are being packed with a game.

[Winona Ghost Ryder]

Has anyone had there Amazon order ship yet?

[Moogs]

I wasn't even aware there was a "regular edition," as all Amazon had for months was the collector's edition, and Gamestop told me that preordering automatically got me the collector's edition. I had no idea that it was the actual preorder bonus.

Just kind of sucks that everything except the art book is now a digital download. And you still get the steelbook case.

Price was the same regardless, so whatever.

[thestage]

The problem with the "discussion" of the "difficulty" in Demon's/Dark is it isn't even a discussion at all. For Demon's Souls, it was The Word From Japan, and for Dark it's the marketing push. These people are just repeating what they've been told. You can easily see that this is the case because there is no review of either of these games in existence that discusses the difficulty beyond "it is hard. when you die you lose your souls and the enemies respawn." Hell, most of them don't even go that far. And there is no other discussion of the game at all. Usually there's something like "the atmosphere is oppressive," or, if you're lucky, some brief description of the aesthetic, and then a link between the aesthetic and the difficulty. But that's it. Every review of Demon's Souls is the same thing, and I'm almost certain that you'll be able to take any review of Dark Souls and just run replace every instance of "Dark" with "Demon" and lose nothing from the review outside of the intro paragraph and The Part What Talks About Bonfires.

It's just.

I mean, you know no one that gets paid to talk about video games can actually talk about video games. But the Demon's Souls stuff really lays it out for you.

(also Demon's Souls isn't even particularly hard. "hard" is code for "death has some moderate consequences and there is no health regen (even though there is health regen (if you want it))")

[scratchmonkey]

Demon's Souls is "hard" because the game is far more punitive than other games when you slip up. It's not horribly challenging in terms of avoiding making mistakes, especially once you have the level layouts memorized and depending on how reckless your play style is (which is why most folks on here who've played the game a lot champion the melee approach, as the added risk of playing that way makes it a more exciting experience).

Gonna drop by the local Gamestop on the way home from work and see what the lay of the land is in terms of reserving a normal/CE copy that I can pick up tomorrow.

[TXTSWORD]

Ye thank you thestage. I'm not saying I don't want the game to sell well
or that it's stupid for them to market the game the way they are - I was questioning the value in it being popular considering that the game's actual merit is by and large being ignored in favor of having the very shallow "dis hard" disussion. It's great for From to profit an it's great for it to be succesful and I'm not "upset my nerd game is being played by jocks" or whatever. I'm simply asking if it's naive of us to be excited by it's success when people aren't really seeing the great game we are and it's impact on gaming as a whole may likely be minimal. I don't think that's an unreasonable talking point?

[Moogs]

Wait, Demon's Souls did pretty well in the States, didn't it? I mean it did become a greatest hits release.

[smartblue]

I think it is a really fine line in discussing what is hard about the game for most review sites. If they talked about what made Demon's Souls "hard," they would likely feel like they were spoiling the game. A lot of Demon's Souls challenge lies in discovering what obstacles await you and figuring out a way through or around them. If reviewers talked about the exact things that challenged them or killed them, it wouldn't really be a review as it would a let's play.

I think it is okay that the finer points of these games are obfuscated a little bit. It's not like you don't have an eye for it, or an audience to discuss it with. At any rate, much of the charm of Demon's Souls and likely Dark Souls is having experiences that are completely unforeseen and sudden. It gives us something to talk about, to brag about and to freak out about because either games have largely forgotten how to make us do these things so easily or we have been around the block enough times to know what to expect. Reviewers are probably in that boat I just described, all falling apart at the seams dying to tell us their stories and perils they faced, but they can't in good faith do that. They don't want to be the movie trailer that tells you everything about the movie before you see it. You might be sad that they can't talk about the game the way you want them to, but it is getting out to its audience regardless, and more people will buy it and find out about the goods on the recommendations these websites. It's win win in this particular case.

Lastly, who the fuck here cares to read video game reviews on IGN etc. anymore? Seriously. It's a lost cause.
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[thestage]

[Wilkes]

I wonder if it's weird for From Software to find -- after having made games for nearly twenty years -- serious commercial success doing basically exactly the same thing they've been doing since they started.

[thestage]

that kind of thing happens all the time.

well, not in video games, I guess.

[thestage]

UGGGHHHHH MY COPY JUST SHIPPED

guys I'm actually excited.

my goal is to see how viable Giant Man in Giant Heavy Armor is in this game. pretty bad in Demon's, but it works for a while and its totally cool and I know they want you in the thick of shit more in this game so here's hoping.

[TXTSWORD]

Just trying to kill time until midnight release. Man I feel like such a goon but holy shit. This game is all I want. More than I want my life back on track.

[smartblue]

TXTSWORD reach for those stars man :(
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[Sniper Honeyviper]

Won't be getting it until tomorrow afternoon, but yeah, I'm more than a little preoccupied by this right now.

Having never played Demon's Souls, I'll be going into this 100% blind.

[Rud31]

My newegg preorder was just cancelled. Christmas is RUINED.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[A New Duck]

Mine apparently shipped a couple hours ago. They still say it's showing up tomorrow. I fucking hope so!
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3DS/PokéMagic Friendz Code: 1289-8272-6032

[Focus]

i am a bit freaking out because my release date shipping shipment hasn't shipped yet and i fear i might lose my collectors edition and i am going to be thinking about this game all of the time tomorrow but i don't have any thing to do wednesday besides _dark souls_
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[thestage]

I really shouldn't even have bought this, much less pre-ordered it. This is kind of an important month for me.

Dark Souls is going to ruin my life

From Software invaded my hopes and dreams with a black phantom

[scratchmonkey]

[CubaLibre]

I wonder if they're gonna make armor worth a damn.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[TXTSWORD]