Morning Hype Machine: Darksiders II

I have a morning hype machine. It looks a lot like a movie theater with a gigantic screen and a tablet for me to read news on. I read news, and when something clicks, whatever I'm interested in just pops up on the screen and I watch things about that subject until I'm all up to date on it. Then I usually talk to a bunch of people about it, and hype it up if I end up liking it because, well, that's what I do. I hype things that are awesome. And sometimes things that aren't (sorry about Brink, guys)

Today I'm feelin' some Darksiders II. Darksiders was one of those games which bravely came out in January 2010 (after CoD: Modern Warfare 2) and pretty good reception. Darksiders presented a sort of... I believe it was commonly referred to as God of War meets Legend of Zelda, and I agreed with that on my play through. Players donned the cowl of War, first horseman of the apocalypse as he brought the end of the world to Earth... prematurely. Or so he was told. War's journey to prove himself innocent and at the same time figure out why the apocalypse began without him. In typical adventure game style War starts with nothing and has to go find it all. Ultimately the game was very well done, and a very enjoyable experience, but many of the ideas were not fully fleshed out. At times, it made certain parts of the game seem too short-lived, and the implementation of fun mechanics was too shallow.

Luckily, the developers at Vigil games have heard the cries of us Earthicans, and seem to be implementing a lot of changes. Whenever I talk about Darksiders I say I always feel like the game needed to find its own true feel and style, something to separate it from just "God of War meets Legend of Zelda". The theme and story presented in the game warrant more than just a two-game comparison's worth of gameplay style. This time around, Darksiders II is going more "action-RPG", complete with quests, loot and skill trees. How all that will play in I'm not sure, and it leaves me curious, but not anxious, because I'm digging the changes. A faster, more responsive character (with an awesome mask) and more options sounds like awesome to me. Also leaving Earth is probably a good idea, going with less photorealism and more frenetic comic style will give this game more room to soar graphically, thematically and immersively.

I'm really hoping this game does well and gives me a quality Summer title. In fact, I feel like playing Darksiders again just to get a feel for it again.

Conversations #2 - Quick Skyrim Background Synopsis

[14:18] Emessai Zeal: Have fun being an Imperial. xD
[14:18] Kelly Mai: yeah I know right. XD
[14:18] Kelly Mai: they're the bad guys huh.
[14:20] Emessai Zeal: Eh.
[14:21] Emessai Zeal: It's implied, but they have an entire region/nation to keep pacified, and it's a sort of corporate parallel where the Thalmor influence the Imperials because they represent the elves, who are deeply offended that the Nords worship a mortal as though he were a god. In that light, the Imperials have to keep the peace between the two by sayin gno worshipping Talos.
[14:21] Emessai Zeal: Ideally, you'd be able to just... fight the Thalmor and convince the Aldmeri Dominion that they need to get the fuck over it.
[14:21] Emessai Zeal: But y'know. Whatever.

WharrlllggooofHWJAAAAAH!!!! - Skyrim Adventures #1

As you can tell by the awesome title, I've got Skyrim. It's very... adventure-ish. Much like Oblivion there's sort of a go through with a "tutorial" ish area where you can't do stuff for a while, but then you can, and there's a person and he's like "I'll help you!" and you're like "Yay!" so you run and you go and you escape and huzzah!

Then it opens up and says "Let's split up, go here to (progress the storyline)" and you're like FUCK THAT! My first adventure included leaving, heading... East I believe, climbing a bunch of mountains (I doubled back around Helgen) then finding some rude Half-orc who I tried to persuade into leaving me alone, and instead she killed me. What a bitch. So the second time I progressed the story just enough to do that love triangle quest in the first little town, then I skipped the claw thing thinking it wasn't important. Apparently it was indeed important, but I went to the main town (after much meandering) to see what would be there.

Eventually I got a little quest to do some smithing which was awesome. First of all I love that Skyrim has added a crafting system because crafting is bosstastic and secondly that they gave me a quest encouraging that I both use smithing and learn how it works, giving me a greater chance of retaining that knowledge and using the smithing throughout the game. Which I intend to do. Because I love crafting.

Anyways did the claw quest with relative ease, but I had to drop the difficulty level back to Adept as I wasn't properly equipped to deal with higher difficulty levels yet. I have noticed however that archery is far more valid than it was before, scoring sneak attacks with the bow doesn't necessarily mean I won't be able to make another one, so I've been having a bit of a fun time sneaking and shooting whereas in Oblivion it seemed entirely useless, like you might as well just run in at everyone. Speaking of running in, combat isn't the intense dodge-centric brawlfest that Dead Island is, but it's still fun. Counters and the "independant hand" system have made it more interesting, allowing dual wielding to be a bit more viable and interesting. For instance for charge attacks I can lead with a larger blade, then when I'm in close follow up with dagger attacks. I have no idea if that's working or not, but it seems fun.

More updates to come, currently level 10 with rather decent proficiency in one-handed, archery and sneaking. Which is awesome. Also got freaked the fuck out by a bear, which was not awesome.