You didn’t ask for it, but I know you’re curious. So here’s the complete list of video games I own that I’ve never played. This is not including re-releases that I haven’t played, but have played the original release (because there are lots of those too). Nor does it include games that I have played for at least one minute.
Prepare yourself, you are about to stare directly into the depths of my sickness.
I played The Last Of Us last month. I noted in the Monthend Wrap-Up that I wasn’t overly fond of it. That’s really only half the story though. Or maybe about a third of it. Because there’s a lot to like about the game! It’s just that the parts I didn’t like were so aggravating that it soured my opinion of the entire experience, which is completely opposite of how I usually roll.
Normally I’m able to overlook rough patches in games or movies or what-have-you and come out enjoying the product on the whole. I think it’s a good philosophy, as it lets me enjoy more things, and I spent less time sounding like a douchey nerd, complaining about stupid little things in an otherwise likeable product.
Like I said before, there are plenty of things about The Last Of Us that I liked. The story, for instance. At first glance, it’s just another stupid zombie game. But then you notice that the more dangerous zombies have mushrooms growing out of their heads. That’s… unusual? Because they are not affected by some silly man-made chemical or evil space-dust. These zombies are people who have been parasitized by cordyceps fungus. Which is a real Goddamn thing. Only in real life it doesn’t affect humans. Just bugs and possibly plants. I don’t know, I didn’t research it enough. But it’s spooky because it’s real and not totally outside the spectrum of plausibility. This is possibly the finest excuse for zombies that anyone has ever come up with.
The characters are also quite likeable. Joel, maybe not so much. He’s a gruff badass who eventually learns to open his heart, which is the stockingest character there is. Ellie, on the other hand, is his 14-year-old companion, and she is effing great. Yes, she’s an obnoxious teenager, but she’s a lovable kind of obnoxious teenager. Not the most original character either, but she’s written very well, and it’s a shame any time the two get split up. The only reason that I didn’t write off Joel completely is because they play off each other perfectly. A lot of the secondary characters are great too, even though they only stick around for a couple hours each.
The Last Of Us features some very nice stealth-based gameplay. Many encounters can be won by sneaking around all quiet-like and dispatching your enemies (with a good old fashioned choke) one by one. Sometimes you can even sneak your way through an area without killing anyone. And there are plenty of options for when you do want to kill people. You can throw trash around to distract them, or bonk them on the head with a bottle to stun them while you rush up to finish them off. Maybe you just want to lay down a home-made bomb as a trap, or toss a smoke bomb to cover your escape. It’s all quite wonderful, and if the entire game was just these stealth sections, I’d be over the moon.
But it’s not. Every once in a while, the game forces you into a shootout. If you mess up at being sneaky, you’re going to have to reset or finish the encounter with bullets. Sometimes you’ll just be automatically thrust into a firefight with bandits, or the zombies will just inexplicably know that you’re there and rush you all at once. Even worse, is when you meticulously clear out an area with stealth kills, and then trip an invisible event trigger that spawns a dozen enemies in that exact same area that you then have to fight with guns and fists. Those ones are the absolute worst, and they very nearly ruined the entire game for me.
In the early game at least, you have two options when you’re forced to fight zombies. You can try to melee them. This is a waste of time, because while you’re wailing away on one zombie (who will take 4-5 punches to kill), his six or seven friends are tearing you a new one. There are melee weapons laying about here and there, but they’re only a little more effective than your fists, and even then they’re only good for a handful of attacks before they break. Eventually you’ll have home-made bombs, too, but they’re much more useful to lay as traps while you’re in a stealth combat sequence.
Guns are a bit of a wash, too. Not only is it incredibly hard to aim (you can upgrade your aim wiggle, but it costs a small fortune in upgrade pills), but the zombies are brilliant at dodging about as they race towards you. They can’t tell the difference between your flashlight and natural light, but they’re incredibly adept at juking around to dodge your bullets. Yeah, sure. That’s a bit of a stretch there, guys. You don’t get very many bullets either, but that’s a feature that I can live with, and even sort of appreciate, having spent so much of my teen years with Resident Evil games.
There’s apparently a DLC pack for the game that includes the “Grounded” difficulty, which not only makes enemies stronger, but removes the HUD and your ability to sense nearby enemies, and slims the amount of scavengable resources down to the bare minimum. I won’t pay for this mode, but I have to assume that it’s literally impossible. A lack of bullets will be worse than ever since trying to shoot anything in this game is already a major pain, and melee combat is almost completely useless on the normal difficulty. I can imagine that you’ll play up until the first time you come upon a forced zombie fight, and then the game is over because there’s no way to win. It’s a terrible joke from the developers, and you have to pay them to suffer it.
So I guess that what I’m getting at is that I’d like for The Last Of Us to be more like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. In fact, it’s already an awful lot like Shattered Memories, but I’d love it to pieces if it traded in all the shooty sections for running away and stealth times. It would flip my opinion of the game right around, and I’d start to understand why it’s been almost universally praised. As it is though, it’s just another humdrum third-person shooter with a really great story and occasionally a really fun gameplay sequence.
Unlike the last few Year of N64 games, Gauntlet Legends is one that I spent a ton of time with back in my youth. Or, at least I think that I did. Having played it through again, I’m not sure if it is quite as much of a timesink as I remembered it being.
Gauntlet Legends is essentially a reboot of the Gauntlet franchise long before reboots were a thing. The previous game, Gauntlet III: The Final Quest, came out in 1991, and Legends hit the arcades in 1998. The N64 port didn’t show up until the next year. I’ve only ever dabbled in “classic” Gauntlet games, so I don’t know how much Legends changes the formula, but it brought the franchise into the world of polygons, so that’s a big enough leap for me.
If you’ve never played Gauntlet anything, you’re missing out on a fairly entertaining multiplayer arcade experience. The game has you set up a character from a small roster of classes, then sends you on your way through a couple dozen stages, where you will collect cash and slaughter countless numbers of monsters. The goal of the game is more or less to survive and make your way to the end of each stage, but Gauntlet offers a little more than that.
Enter the “dreaded” RPG elements. You choose your character class, give them a name, and then they gain experience and level up as you play. Level ups increase your stats, and when you hit certain milestones, your character will gain special upgrades, like fancier weapons and a familiar that tags along and adds to your firepower. Each player also has their own inventory for stockpiling items, and can spend their accumulated gold on either items or stat boosts. Items can be useful, but I found that their true value was just selling them at the store so that I could buy the stat boosts instead.
The stages come in four colourful flavours: the mountain, the castle, the town, and the ice domain. Defeating the bosses of each world will unlock a pseudo-final stage in the cathedral, and when you beat that, you unlock the battlefield world. Finally, you will descend into the very depths of the underworld for the final showdown.
So there’s a fairly good variety of levels on display here. Even stages within the same world vary greatly, rather than simply having one default look and a handful of different layouts for example, the mountain world has you start at the lush base of the mountain, then as you ascend, it becomes more barren and rocky. Eventually you find your way inside and have to work your way through a cave, culminating in a stage that takes place on a set of rocky platforms and catwalks suspended above a massive pool of lava.
The stage layouts are usually fairly good too. Almost all of them have twists and turns everywhere, but the critical path is usually not too difficult to follow. It wasn’t until the ice world that the levels started to get annoyingly complex and I found myself wishing that they were about half as long. Most of the stages are huge, and the amount of enemies that populate them is staggering; it’s a wonder that this game didn’t cause the Nintendo 64 to simply melt down. As it is though, there’s not even very much lag considering how many moving objects can end up on screen at once.
While most of the items you find during your adventure are power-ups of varying effectiveness, there are three important collectibles that you need to keep your eyes open for. There are plenty of hints to their locations, but actually sussing them out can sometimes be a hassle. Obelisks are scattered around the first three worlds, and you need to find all of them in one world to unlock the next. There are a total of thirteen Rune Stones to find, and without them all, you can’t enter the final showdown.
Lastly are the boss weapons, one in each of the four main worlds. These are not strictly necessary to complete the game, but they give you a slight advantage in the boss fights. And if you’re playing solo (as I did), you need all the advantages you can find. The bosses are brutal, and when they’re focusing all of their attacks on you, the fights generally just boil down to whose HP depletes first. They aren’t fun, and a solo player will have to grind his or her butt off before they even stand a chance against a boss. This stands in stark contrast to the regular stages, where you’ll generally never have to grind levels to progress.
The final boss, however, is a bit of an exception. You have to fight him twice, and the first time, he is just as bad as the rest. It’s a very difficult fight, but he drops four superweapons when he’s defeated. If you keep one of those weapons until your second fight with him, using it will make the final battle exceedingly easy. If you don’t, it’s basically impossible to win alone. I wanted to do it the normal way at first, so I leveled up to 90 and maxed out my defense stat through the shop. Still I died. So I used the cheap way, because nuts to that.
I should mention that grinding up to level 90 did not take very long. I burned through this game in a week, and it didn’t really seem to overstay its welcome. I remember having maxed out several characters back in the day, and I suppose that it would have been much less tedious because I was actually able to play with other people. I wanted to do this playthrough with my wife, but the fact of the matter is that the control sticks on my spare N64 controllers are almost completely limp, and I really didn’t care enough to buy a new one or attempt a repair.
So there you have it. It’s not a very deep experience, but I still have a pretty strong appreciation for Gauntlet Legends. So much so, that I kind of want to track down a copy of the incredibly buggy sequel (expansion?), Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, to give that a quick playthough. I also sort of want to try out the oft-maligned Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, but it seems to be so different that it might not be worth the investment. Anyway, Gauntlet Legends was a bunch of fun while it lasted, and I can only imagine that it would go down even smoother with a friend or three to share it with.
My frame of reference for the DOOM series (I’m just going to capitalize the D from now on) exists in a time somewhere between 1994 and 2000. Doom II was one of the few full-version computer games we had back then that I was keenly interested in, and I played it was the only one. Of course, at some point, my taste for Doom and similar games (Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem 3D, etc) waned and I moved on to newer, fancier computer games.
Doom 64 doesn’t have the greatest reputation. It’s not particularly hated or anything, but the internet’s collective opinion is that the original games are better. In the interest of finding out for sure, I made sure to play through the entirety of the Xbox port of Doom so that I could have more than faded memories to make a comparison to.
The original Doom is fantastic. It’s a simplistic game that doesn’t even let you look along the vertical axis, but it felt much more satisfying to play than most modern first-person shooters. The first two chapters are breezy fun, the third dials it up to push your abilities, and the fourth (an add-on scenario) is simply there to beat you into the ground. What’s most remarkable is that Doom feels really great to play with a controller, as opposed to the keyboard controls (sans-mouse) that I was shackled to in my youth.
Having completed the entirety of Doom for the very first time, and having enjoyed roughly 95% of it (there are some really cheap traps later on), I was riding high and expecting Doom 64 to be a similar experience.
But then it turns out that Doom 64 is poop from a butt.
My very first mistake was playing on a difficulty level that was too much for me. I had chosen “Hurt Me Plenty” on Doom, which is the default setting and equates to what the “Normal” setting would be in other games. Doom 64 phrases it differently, where the equivalent is “I Own Doom.” Sure, it’s the default difficulty, and also a statement of fact. Why would I choose any other setting?
Assuming that it is, in fact, the average difficulty setting, Doom 64 is a brutal game. I was killed twice before I was able to finish the first stage. Secret doors containing monsters open silently behind you. The Average Joe Zombie has a very accurate shot. Rooms are filled with up to eight monsters.
None of this is helped by that fact that playing similar games on an Xbox 360 controller and then an N64 controller is like going from a fork to chopsticks. I figured that all my N64 playing over the last few months would have eased me into the controller, but it turned out to be a massive source of woes for me. I blame it entirely no having used the vastly superior 360 controller immediately beforehand, and it really shows how difficult it can be to adapt to different controllers.
I need to make it very clear though, that Doom 64 lets you customize your controls any damn way you like. Every function is remappable, and you can make changes to your control scheme at any point. It’s a really handy feature, as the default control setup is kinda weird. The only downside is that custom setups aren’t saved, and you have to remap all your buttons each time you power on.
The next big gripe about Doom 64 is the general atmosphere. the graphics, for one, are much darker and more bland than in the PC games. This is to accommodate a generally more horror-focused aesthetic. Doom has always been “scary” in that it incorporates monsters and gore, but the first two PC games were more about stright-up action than trying to frighten you. Doom 64 has this all backwards. The PC games have interesting, colourful visuals, while Doom 64 is awash in browns and grays.
I do appreciate that the team tried to make the graphics more detailed (which they are!), but they killed a lot of the character in the sprites by removing most of their colours.
The sound design has also gone entirely to pot. Doom’s characteristic heavy metal MIDIs have been replaced with subdues, spooky ambiance tracks. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More importantly though, the monsters barely make any sounds unless they’re attacking you. Being able to hear monsters lurking about was a very important part of Doom; you would usually know when a monster was lurking about by the hisses and growls echoing through the halls. Now, pretty much every encounter is a surprise, and monsters will be able to sneak up behind you with no problem at all.
So after having painfully made my way through one and a half stages, I quit, took a week-long breather, and started up again on the next rung down the difficulty ladder, “Bring It On!”
Let me also take an aside here to mention that Doom 64 does not save your game. It uses passwords, which is kinda bonkers. The nice thing is that the passwords save your state (health, armor, guns/ammo) as well as which level you’re on, which is nice. If they only saved your level, it would be a massive pain in the hiney to tackle later levels with only a pistol. No saving is still a big pain though, as mid-stage saves saved me a lot of time when going through the original game. Having to restart a level from the beginning after each death is a little disheartening. I hate sounding like a spoiled brat, but that’s what I am.
Not everything about Doom 64 is bad, though. I really like a lot of the level designs, they feel a lot bigger and more ambitious than in the older games. I suppose that stands to reason though. It’s not like a lot of games get smaller and humbler with each sequel. It’s really just too bad that the designers didn’t seem to have many good ideas for traps. It seems like they decided early on that having enemies appear out of thin air behind you was going to be their bread and butter. Still, the actual architecture of the stages is usually impressive, and I enjoyed navigating and solving them.
Doom 64 features the usual Doom weaponry, including Doom II’s super (double-barreled) shotgun and the totally sweet double chainsaw. It also has a new weapon that’s unique to only this game: the Unmaker. It’s an alien-tech laser gun, which doesn’t seem all that impressive at first. However, if you take the trouble to find the secret stages, each one contains a collectible artifact that adds to the Unmaker’s power. The first one speeds up its fire rate, and the second and third give it double and triple beams respectively. Even if you only find the one artifact, the sped-up Unmaker is a pretty awesome gun, burning through even Barons of Hell like a hot knife through butter. It’s pretty great.
The monsters in Doom 64 may at fist appear to be new, but really, they’re mostly your old favourites with fancy makeovers. Some are pretty familiar, like the standard zombies and the pinkies, but you probably won’t recognize Doom 64’s imp as an imp until you’re already choking down fireballs. Cacodemons and pain elementals have likewise gotten new sprites that barely resemble their older incarnations. The one new monster is barely new at all. Nightmare imps are just translucent blue imps, with purple fireballs that fly quite a bit faster than the standard imp’s. Doom 64 does have a unique final boss, the Mother Demon. She’s ugly and can tear you apart in record time (that also works the other way around with a powered-up Unmaker), but she looks pretty dumb. Kinda like a big, fleshy bug, if you ask me.
In the end, Doom 64 is caught in a weird place. On one hand, I really like a lot of the levels. On the other hand, pretty much everything else is different in a bad way. It’s reminiscent of Doom, but it doesn’t really feel like Doom, if that makes any sense at all. There really isn’t any reason to play Doom 64. Regardless of whether you’re looking to play a Doom game or an N64 shooter, there are a handful of better choices out there. Even if you’re intent on playing through the entire Doom canon, you might be better off trying one of the fan-made PC ports. Poor Doom 64 just isn’t quite the game it should be.
It’s no secret to anyone who knows me: I’m a child living an adult’s life. I appreciate a lot of things that people my age aren’t supposed to, if advertising and demographics have anything to say about it. Marketing is all a big load of crap, anyway.
I guess the point is that I don’t have any ideas in my head at the moment, and I don’t have the gumption to type up the weekly Dark Souls entry. Wait, no, that’s what I wasn’t supposed to say. I’m supposed to make it seem like I’m doing something inspired.
Anyway, I type about a lot of goofy things that are emblematic of childhood. Cartoons, Nintendo games, candy. If you scroll up from the bottom of the article list, you’ll see that it takes a long time to get to anything very grown-uppy. Or at least, that’s my interpretation of it. So that’s why today, I’m going to link you to a small selection of old articles that stand out as somewhat more mature among the sea of childish crap that I’ve written.
28 Days Later (2003) – The first movie I ever reviewed, and it’s a scaaary one. Probably because it’s one of the first (if not the actual first) movies with fast zombies. So it turns a kind of slow, tense staple into something much more fierce and immediately frightening. Please note that I have not watched this movie since then.
Catherine (2011) – Undoubtedly a truly mature game, as it deals with many very grown-up themes. Also there are boobies and monsters, but the heart of the game is literally about growing up, accepting responsibility, and figuring out what you want to do with your life.
Chicken Wings (2005) – Chicken wings are undoubtedly a fun finger food, which is pretty child-like, However, wings are most prominent where? Bars, that’s where. Kids don’t go to bars. They’re also one of the staple foods of sports-watching, or so I’ve been told, and sports-watching is a pretty grown-up kind of thing.
Mate1.com Hates You (2006) – To date, still the most popular thing I’ve ever published, if fan e-mails are anything to go by. Mate1.com, if you’re not already aware, is an online dating website. Those are most definitely not for children. It’s not really for anybody, as far as this article is concerned.
Remembering the Cottage (2007) – Yeah, it’s an article entirely about childhood memories, but that in and of itself makes it kinda grown-up, right? I mean, kids don’t reminisce. You have to be old and at least a little world-weary before you really understand nostalgia. Some might say that I’m not old enough to say something like that, but I respectfully have no comment.
True Crime: Streets of LA (2003) – The first video game that I wrote about that earned an M rating from the ESRB. I guess that’s all I really have to say about that. I haven’t written about a lot of games that feature non-laser guns.
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan prevailed over the nightmarish Gaping Dragon, and continued her descent through the Depths.
I awoke at the Depths’ bonfire, as I had so many times before, and rifled through my rucksack to see if I was carrying any items that would heal toxicity. I had a whole collection of Purple Moss Clumps, which would heal poison, but only one Blooming Purple Moss Clump, which also healed toxicity. It looked like I was going to have to be really careful about these blowdart fellows.
Upon returning to the shaft, I led both of the barbarians off the edge into the void, to save myself a little time and effort. As I approached the area where I was in the range of the blowdart guy, a couple of purple, sickly-looking corpses ran up to me and started attacking. I assumed they were just a different colour of the undead I’d been killing in droves up until now, but these ghouls had a deadly trick up their sleeves. They have an attack that consists of grabbing their victim and then biting like maniacs, which deals a fairly ridiculous amount of damage. Also it’s unblockable. You Died.
The third try through, I handled the barbarians and ghouls quite deftly, and approached the blowdart sniper carefully. It only took two darts connecting to inflict me with toxic, so I moved in on him very slowly, deflecting darts with my shield. And then I stabbed the motherbuzzer right in the gut, and he crumpled over like a rag doll. The real benefit here was that he wouldn’t respawn if I died or visited a bonfire, making future trips through this area much safer.
I continued along the rickety bridge through the tunnel, taking down ghouls left and right along the way. Then, in the distance, I saw light. As I drew closer, I could see that I had reached an area suspended far above the ground. It consisted of a dark maze of wooden walkways and ladders. This area was the kind of place that caused the worst nightmares. This was Blighttown.
Blighttown was awful. Everything about it made me hate to more. The place was littered with ghouls and blowdart snipers, and also some tiny dog-like creatures that could breathe huge jets of flame at me. Fighting was a pain on the narrow pathways, and some floors were even so weak that they would give out under my weight, though luckily, none of those sent me to my doom. At least, not without the help of a pack of ghouls waiting at the bottom. You Died.
There was a bonfire right near the mouth of the tunnel that led to upper Blighttown, but it was still difficult to reach because of the winding paths. It was certainly nice to have a spot where I could let my guard down for a minute and assess what I could of the area. I noticed a shining item perched out on top of a wooden barricade, but the only way to get to it was to take a running leap from a much higher ledge. It was… a difficult jump to make. You Died.
Indeed, much more difficult than I’d assumed. You Died.
The prize, an Iaito, wasn’t even worth the effort, as I had no interest in learning to properly wield a katana at that point. No, my Drake Sword and pyromancy were enough for me for the time being.
Navigating the walkways and levels was difficult enough, and trying to find the path to all the treasures scattered about make the task even worse. I managed to collect everything after running around like a mad person and making more than a few dangerous leaps. Of course, whenever things seem to be going well, there’s a blowdart sniper waiting to toxify you, and you have no idea how to get back to the bonfire from wherever you’d managed to end up. You Died.
It took a long time to finally reach the bottom of Blighttown, and it wasn’t a whole lot better than the top. The blowdart snipers and ghouls were gone, replaced by a bunch of different creepy crawlies. The flame-spewing cragspiders were easy enough to deal with, but the giant mosquitos buzzing around were the most annoying enemies that I’d encountered up until that point. They were hard to hit, and would follow me around endlessly, biting me and flinging blood at me, both of which were poisonous attacks.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the entire area was a poisonous swampland dotted with torches, where a safe place to stand was hard to find. I’d used up a lot of my Purple Moss Clumps before I finally found my way to a safe tunnel that concealed a bonfire.
Just as I left the safety of the tunnel, a phantom that called herself Maneater Mildred appeared out of nowhere and rushed me. Mildred wore nothing but a couple lean strips of leather over her girthy frame, and a simple sack over her head. She carried a sad-looking wooden shield in one hand, and a fighteningly oversized butcher knife in the other. She was certainly a sight to behold, but that’s about the most you could say about Mildred. The poor girl’s grossly overweight body and oversized weapon slowed her down to the point where she posed little to no threat to me, and I vanquished the phantom without breaking a sweat.
I wasn’t in much of a rush to explore the poisonous swamp that was lower Blighttown, so I settled back down by the bonfire and reflected on my journey up until now. It seemed like it had been ages since I set off, but what I didn’t know what that my adventure had really only just begun.
Tune in next week for Part 15: Webs N’ Boulders
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan left the sewers to explore the jungle, and slayed a gigantic magical butterfly.
The Watchtower Basement Key was an exciting find, but the Divine Ember was more immediately useful. On my way out of Darkroot Garden, Andrei noticed me lugging the thing around and told me that if I gave it to him, he could make divine weapons for me. I had no use for the thing, so I gave it to him, and had him forge my battle axe into a divine battle axe. It didn’t seem like a great tradeoff at the time, because divine weapons draw power from the Faith stat, of which Morgan was lacking. However, a few updates later, it would prove incredibly useful.
Back to the Watchtwoer Key, I paraded all over the damn place looking for the locked door that it belonged to. Eventually I found it, at the bottom of the Taurus Demon’s tower. It led down into the basement (just like it said it would), and at the bottom I met a big, mean knight. His name was Havel and he wielded a massive Dragon’s Tooth as a weapon. Also he could kill me in one hit if my guard was down. You Died.
Havel was one tough cookie, and the key to beating him was definitely to try to roll away from his attacks rather than blocking them. This caused trouble for me in three ways. 1. I was pretty accustomed to blocking, and hadn’t really bother learning how to dodge when blocking was working so well. 2. I was wearing armor a little above my weight threshold, and as such it slowed my movements enough that dodging his attacks was hard. 3. He hit so hard that even a successful block would still result in me losing a chunk of my health. It was also hard to get a swig of Estus in without him noticing the huge opening. You Died.
This was the point where I had to finally switch out my +7 chain mail armor and Fang Boar Helm for lighter equipment. The speed penatly had been offset by a strong defense until now, but that wasn’t working here. Fortunately, gaining the ability to roll properl helped out a lot against Havel. It wasn’t quite enough on its own though. You Died.
In the end, I triumphed over Havel by chucking firebombs and magical fire orbs at him while he plodded up the stairs towards me. I ran out of stock before he died, but he’d been weakened enough that I was able to finish him before he killed me again. My reward was a ring that allowed me to increase my weight burden, allowing me to wear heavier gear without the speed penalty. I would never equip this ring.
I was much more excited to see what was on the other side of the door at the bottom of the tower. As it turned out, it was Darkroot Basin. Hooray. I decided I might as well explore a little, since I wasn’t quite sure where I came out. But as I walked into a nearby clearing, I heard the sound of watery doom heading my way, and I had just enough time to slide behind a boudler as the water shots crashed all around me. I ran back to the door as fast as I could.
Out of other ideas, I worked my way back through Lower Undead Burg and the Depths until I’d reached the bonfire there. I rested up a bit and then went back in as deep as I’d been before. The huge gate was still locked, and I proceeded into the courtyard blocked by a Fog Gate. The area just screamed “boss fight” but it was unusually quiet. I meandered around a bit, but nothing happened and there was nothing to find. Until I got closer to the far ledge…
Suddenly, a grotesque lizard-looking creature peered over the side, and I backed away slowly. But as the creature rose into view, it began to take much bigger, more fearsome appearance. The Gaping Dragon was a massive six-legged abomination whose entire torso was a giant mouth filled with gnashing teeth. I did not want to be anywhere near it, but the Fog Gate kept me from running away with my tail between my legs.
I tried my best to keep my distance from the creature as best I could, getting in a few hits here and there when it would charge past me. The monster was far quicker than its size suggested, and I was only able to maintain my distance from the beast as it ambled towards me. I ducked away from swipes of its lengthy claws, and just barely avoided being sucked into the whirling mass of teeth. The fight was going well until the dragon leapt into the air. It hovered there for a moment, and I dashed away, hoping to find cover from whatever was about to happen. Then the beast slammed down on me hard and squashed my body like a tube of yogurt. You Died.
I went back right away for a second round with the Gaping Dragon, and it didn’t go nearly as well as the first. While I did manage to avoid a dive-bomb this time around, I didn’t inflict nearly as much damage on it before it grabbed me and thust me into its horrifying maw. You Died.
Taking a cue from the fight with the Bell Gargoyles, I decided to turn human before round three. Not relishing the idea of grinding for it, I used up one of my humanity items and became human again. As luck would have it, Solaire had posted a summon sign right in front of the Fog Gate, and I called on his help for the fight. It was all for naught though, as the Gaping Dragon tore Solaire to pieces before he could turn the tide in our favour.
I was stunned by Solaire’s death, and before I came back to my senses, the dragon scuttled over to me and barfed all over me, which heavily damaged any of my equipment that it didn’t instantly break. I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on after that, and the dragon gleefully finished me off. You Died.
Tune in next week for Part 13: Deeper and Deeper:
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan left the sewers to explore a forest, nearly got pulverized by a high-pressure water blast, and fell off a cliff like a dork.
I was wary of heading back down into the Darkroot Basin, but I had to recover the large bundle of souls and few humanity points that I was toting around. It took me a while to spot my bloodstain, but I finally caught a bit of a break and was able to pick it up without drawing the attention of the Black Knight that had scared me off the cliff in the first place.
I trekked back up to Darkroot Garden, intent on discovering what the upper path held in store for me. I was a bit unnerved to learn that there were bottomless pits all over the place up there too, but there was a lot more solid ground to maneuver around on, and the weed enemies were a big joke compared to the Black Knight and the crystal golems.
Near the end of the trail I came across a huge door that appeared to be sealed with magic. I remembered noticing that Andrei was selling an amulet or something that was supposed to open a door deep in a forest, but it cost far more souls than I was willing to part with, and I didn’t want to know what was behind such a secure door anyway.
To the right of the door was a path leading downward, which led to a Fog Gate and a small clearing off to the side. In the centre of the clearing was a treasure box holding a pithy amount of souls. And then of course, the trap is sprung and three weed monsters ambush me. They are pitiful alone, but the team-up causes me a notable bit of damage. So I ran back to the bonfire in the Parish to heal up before going through the Fog Gate.
When I come back here a million updates later, I will discover a bonfire behind a false wall right by the sealed door. And then I will slap my forehead hard enough to knock myself off balance.
I headed back to the Fog Gate, and breathed a sigh of relief as it dissipated behind me. I wasn’t at a boss yet. I’m not sure why some Fog Gates are randomly scattered around like that; maybe just to psych players out. There were some big new enemies in the next area: stone soldiers. These guys are big and slow, but they hit hard and liked to cast spells that made me slow as well. There were a half dozen or so of them scattered around the large room, and they only caused trouble when they teamed up with the weed monsters.
Pretty drained from the fight, I turned to leave the area and saw… A huge, quivering tree. It stood out pretty plainly from all the other trees, and I had no idea what it’s deal was. So I swung my sword at it, and wouldn’t you know, the thing up and died like a monster. And that was it. Odd.
After a trip back to the Parish bonfire, I ran the statue-man room again, this time having taken slightly less damage. Moving on, I found another Fog Gate. Foolishly assuming it was another fake-out like the previous one, I stepped through and was horrified to see that it had not vanished behind me, and that I was now locked on the top of a rather thin wall. Then a massive butterfly showed up.
The Moonlight Butterfly attacked exclusively with magic shots. The first one wa a large burst that connected directly and cleaved off a goo two-thirds of my life bar, so I drank up two of my remaining Estus charges and decided that I’d have to play on the defensive to survive this battle. The boss was too far away to hit, so it’s not like I even had a choice. The Butterfly’s other shot was a spreader, which was easier to avoid than the large blast, and did less damage besides.
After dodging a few more shots, the Butterfly flew over the wall and came in for a landing on the side. Seeing my opening, I ran up to it and hit it with everything I had. I had taken it down to less than half of its HP when it resumed flight and hit me with another blast. I drank the last of the Estus and crossed my fingers that it would land again soon. It hit me with another magic bolt, and at that point, I’d die if I was hit with even the spread shot. It was down to the wire, and my heart skipped a beat with every shot I successfully dodged.
Finally the Butterfly landed again, and I murdered it with reckless abandon. My rewards were the Butterfly’s soul, and passage both forward and back. While it was risky, I decided to venture forward, and ascended another long stairwell. At the top was a dead end, but I did grab myself a Divine Ember (whatever that is) and a Watchtower Basement Key. When I was done pillaging, I started back down the stairwell but misstepped and tumbled down the shaft to my death. You Died.
After a short trip back to collect my souls, I started the hunt for the door that my new key would unlock.
Tune in next week for Part 12: Back to the Sewers
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan fell down a bunch of holes and faced the most horrible monstrosities the sewer could conjure up, but managed to survive it all.
It was time for a short reprieve from the sewers. Nobody likes a sewer level, especially when it’s full of giant rats, horrifying frog mutants, and brain-sucking slimes.
I hauled my tuchus out of the Depths real quick-like, and started making my way towards the Undead Parish. The Depths are huge and confusing, so I don’t know if I’d explored every inch of the place, but I was sad that I hadn’t yet found a shortcut back to Firelink Shrine. Having to trudge all the way back out was a pain in the butt. Maybe there would be one in Blighttown.
After the long journey, I met with Andrei the blacksmith and bought the Weapon Smithbox, so that I could upgrade my weapons without trekking back to the Undead Parish every time. My goal completed, I breathed a heavy sigh and prepared myself to go all the way back to the Depths.
Then I saw the door across from Andrei. Somehow I’d completely missed it the handful of times I’d been there before. On the other side of the door was a huge ruined hall, and in the middle was a giant stone monster who started chucking lightning bolts at me immediately. The bolts were easy to dodge, but trying to get close to score a few hits was a little trickier. The statue monster had a very long staff, and a single unblocked blow was enough to cleave off most of my life. By the time I was able to fell the beast, my Estus Flask was empty and I was about ready to keel over.
Fortunately, that monster is one of the few who don’t respawn after visiting a bonfire, so I was able to skip across the hall and into the Darkroot Garden. A lush, foresty setting, Darkroot Garden didn’t seem so bad. A couple weed monster popped out of the ground and tried to whip me with their vines, but they were about as easy to kill as the basic undead enemies.
It was when I came across a split in the trail that things started going downhill. Literally. I decided to go right first (that seems to be a recurring choice), and ended up on a ledge high above the area known as Darkroot Basin. I saw a shiny item way off in the distance, and started making my way down the long, winding trail, hugging the wall so that I didn’t accidentally slip off into the abyss.
When I finally reached the bottom, it became very clear that this was not a place I wanted to be in for very long. Far in the distance, beyond the trees, I could see something writhing about in the fog. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I got all the information I relly needed: it was big. I should have just booked it right then, but curiosity got the best of me and I started inching closer to get a better look.
Then the crystal golems came out of nowhere and started trying to bash my head in. A pair of them has noticed me, and I could see others lurking deeper into the wooded expanse. These guys were big, but not very quick, and not nearly as tough as they looked. Fighting two at once was a chore, but they shattered to pieces after only a few hits each.
Confident in my ability to take them down, I headed into the trees to try to lure another one over. But before I could get its attention, I heard a strange noise that I couldn’t quite place. I looked up, and saw a cluster of huge water blasts tearing through the trees. I dashed away from them and slid behind a large rock as the projectiles slammed into the ground around me. Maybe finding out more about the giant on the other side of the forest could wait until another day.
I began heading back up the cliffside trail, and about halfway up I saw another shiny item on a corpse on a dangerous-looking outcropping. I carefully made my way over, and nearly took a halberd to the face for my efforts. A Black Knight was waiting just around the corner to ambush treasure-seekers.
I carefully backpedaled up the path with my shield drawn, trying carefully to block the Black Knight’s attacks while keeping my balance. I drew him further up the trail, where there was a more open area to duel in, and started to fight back in earnest. The Black Knights don’t mess around though, and it was looking like I’d need to try to escape if I didn’t want to get cut down.
That plan didn’t work out so well though. As I circled around the knight in an effort to reach the path leading up and away from the basin, I miscalculated a dodge of his blade and lost my footing near the cliff’s edge. Down I tumbled into the blackness of the canyon, wondering where my bundle of souls and humanity would end up. You Died.
Tune in next week for Part 11: Flutter By, Butterfly
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan killed the Capra Demon with an incredibly cheap tactic, and butchered a butcher.
Ugh. The sewer level. The absolute worst part of pretty much any video game that doesn’t star a team of adolescent turtles. Although this isn’t a turn-based RPG, so at least we won’t have to deal with a stupidly high random battle encounter rate.
The kitchen area had a flooded lower area with a few dogs and a single zombie. It seemed like a dead-end at first, until I noticed a section of the wall that had crumbled away, which I climbed up into a hallway. I chose to check out what was to my right first, and I made it all the way around the corner and to a far door before I heard somethign stomping up behind me.
It was another butcher, though where he had come from, I had no idea. The hallway had seemed empty when I got there, but I decided to go back and investigate the room that was on the opposite end of the hall, to make sure there weren’t any more butchers waiting to stalk me.
The far room was filed with nothing but barrels and boxes. Or so it seemed. In the far corner, I saw a head poking out of one of the barrels. I approched, and the head informed me that his name was Laurentius and begged for me to free him before the monsters turned him into lunch. I shattered the barrel with a single kick, as slicing it open with my sword seemed like it would do more harm than good. Laurentius thanked me profusely and ran his hippie ass back to Firelink.
Heading back though the door on the other end of the hall, I descended some stairs into the sewer proper. There I saw a corpse with a shiny item, and as I went to claim it, a huge blob of goo dropped onto my head and started sucking away my life. Eventually I was able to shake it off and stabbed the thing like mad until it dissolved into the grimy water. The bundle of souls I pilfered from the corpse afterward was probably worth the damage I took from the slime, though.
I wandered through the sewers, slaying zombies and slimes as I went, until I came to a small room with iron bars separating it from a larger room. In that larger room was the biggest freaking rat you’ve ever seen. The thing could have easily swallowed me whole, and I was eternally grateful that those iron bars were keeping it from doing just that. The huge rat stared at me as I passed through the room, and I was all to happy to leave there.
Just outside of the giant rat’s observation chamber, I came across a small pack of more reasonably-sized (but still way too big) rats. There were at least five of them, and they all started running from me the moment they noticed me. Assuming this would just be a handful of easy souls for me, I approached the rats and started stabbing them. They didn’t like that, and by the time I had killed them all, I was covered in bites and horribly poisoned.
Having no antidote of any description, and the poison very swiftly depleting my life, I had no choice but to start running the marathon back to Firelink. Through the sewers and taking the shortcut through the Lower Undead Burg, I sipped the last of my Estus, hoping I had enough to make it back to the bonfire before succumbing to the poison. I dashed down the aqueduct and pushed past the undead guarding the staircase to Firelink, and collapsed in front of the bonfire with only a sliver of health left.
Restored, I sought out the dirty hippie Laurentius, to see how he’d repay me for saving his life. He gave me a Pyromancy Flame and told me that he’d sell me some pyromancies. I didn’t really understand any of it, but bought Combustion and Fireball. Equipping the Pyromancy Flame instead of a real weapon allowed me to use the spells I’d just purchsed, and I immediately felt buyer’s remorse. Combustion was absolute garbage, just creating a poof of fire in front of my hand. Fireball was a little better, as I was able to actually throw a little ball of flame a distance. I practiced by torching a few undead, and then traveled all the way back to the Depths.
I took my revenge on the gang of rats by burning them alive with my new fireball spell. I noticed a shiny on one of their corpses, and investigating it I found… a humanity? This was easily the most unlikely thing that had happened for the duration of the adventure up until now.
The rats also managed to get one last laugh, As I strolled away from the scene of the slaughter, a rather unsuspecting box burst apart and a rat flew at me, scaring the absolute bejesus out of me. Needless to say, I quickly turned the rat into little more than chunks of rancid meat floating in the sewer water.
Venturing even deeper, I found another grate looking into the giant rat’s nest, and pressed up against the bars was most of a man’s body. He held on him a key. From here, I had three options: I could head down a narrow waterway to my right, follow a hallway through a Fog Gate to my left, or head back to a locked door I’d passed earlier and see if the key worked on it.
A little exhausted from splashing through the sewers, I decided to try the door. Much to my surprise, the key worked! And even better, there was a nice quiet room with a bonfire inside! I kindled the fire, and sat down to rest for a while. I really wasn’t looking forward to whatever the rest of the sewers had in store for me.
Tune in next week for Part 9: Who Am I, James Sunderland?
