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Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition |OT| Durante Does In 23 Minutes What From Can't

Looking forward to this. Playing it with my two mates. 1 of whom hasn't played it before. Were all gonna record the boss fights from each perspective and keep a YouTube record of it. Its gonna be great watching my friend die :)
 

Rapstah

Member
Is this game scary at all? Is it more akin to caves of zombies in Skyrim or crimson heads standing up outta nowhere in REmake?

There are stress scares. Realising that anything can cost you twenty minutes of progress and then having something happen can scare some people. The game doesn't really have any jump scares or dark caves or anything, though.
 

Anteater

Member
Is this game scary at all? Is it more akin to caves of zombies in Skyrim or crimson heads standing up outta nowhere in REmake?

It's not scary at all from what I've played so far (the original not the dlc of course), and I usually can't play games with dark/depressing atmosphere.

There are some open areas and it's bright for the most part, the dark areas usually have enemies standing still until you get close to them to fight them (other than archers), and most enemies are slow and are just typical skeleton/zombie enemies wearing armors and such. So I would say something like Skyrim.
 

Bedlam

Member
Stiil, RE4 had an option to change resolution (deja vu).
I'm with what Eusis stated above: resolution is far from being priority #1 for me. The missing lighting in RE4 PC was a far bigger disaster and no super high resolution could compensate for that.

Not that it's ok but that was 2007. This is 2012. It's not acceptable IMO. Also iirc you were trolling hardcore in the 'confirmed sub hd' thread as to how pc gamers should be grateful about a terrible port.
Yeah, if you consider "the port sure is disappointing but don't act like it's suddenly unplayable...the game is still great" to be hardcore trolling. I don't. And I still laugh at people who completely lose their shit and act like their eyes would fall out if they looked at a console game.
 

Eusis

Member
Most any horror from the game comes from the few jumps that come out of nowhere, and they aren't framed like they are in the likes of Dead Space to try to get a scare out of you. Instead it's more of a "shit I didn't see this thing and it might kill me", and that's doubly true when you go poking somewhere you shouldn't just yet and come across an enemy that will fuck you up, moreso when you simply can't escape it. It was a pretty big shock when
I tried to get rid of a Black Knight by going to the bonfire, only for it to keep coming. Then I died.

Atmosphere's pretty dark though, but I can really dig those whereas straight up horror is harder for me to deal with.
 

Clevinger

Member
Is this game scary at all? Is it more akin to caves of zombies in Skyrim or crimson heads standing up outta nowhere in REmake?

Not scary in a traditional way. But it is scary when you first see a gigantic, mean, ugly looking boss rushing toward you after you walk through the fog, and you have no idea how to fight it, or what it's capable of.

Besides that, the atmosphere of the game is much more depressing than scary. No jump scares, for the most part. Though there's a couple spots where an enemy is hiding in hard to see spots as you walk by and can surprise you. Actually, there is one type of jump scare, but I'm not going to spoil it for you. It's very rare though.
 

Geoff9920

Member
If it was any other game, I'd complely ingore it given the overall quality of the port. However, this is dark souls; I'll make an exception this once. Besides, Blighttown @ 30 fps will be a huge improvement! :p

Also, this is exectly the kind of hardcore game that gets fan fixes for framerate limitations, etc. out fairly quickly.
 

Bedlam

Member
Not scary in a traditional way. But it is scary when you first see a gigantic, mean looking boss rushing toward you after you walk through the fog, and you have no idea how to fight it, or what it's capable of.

Besides that, the atmosphere of the game is much more depressing than scary.
Pre-patch Tomb of the Giants was extremely tense. No skull lantern drops, so you had to go through the darkness until you found one down in the pit.
 

Minsc

Gold Member
There's other metrics I'd consider far, far more important to the quality of a port than just resolution, especially when said resolution is at least on par with consoles. It's profoundly dumb, but I'll take a locked frame buffer resolution over the shitfest that was Saints Row 2 out of the box (or even up to the latest official patch!), missing graphical options the PC could clearly dominate in like RE4 above showed, or just anything that runs profoundly unstable compared to console versions. This will probably go down as the most disappointing port, easily, but that's due to a combination of recognizing it'd be a good fit for PC, the fact the game's visuals could clearly benefit from a good, properly optimized PC port, and the simple fact the game is amazing.

But I'm taking a wait and see approach. If you ask me this will become the worst PC port if a litany of bugs and issues come pouring out once people actually get their hands on the game.

Not supporting modern resolutions is pretty bad though. Worse still that at no point does the game ever output a non-scaled image. It's bad enough the framebuffer is sub-HD, but on top of that, there is no way to actually play a crisp non-scaled output. Even at a windowed 1280x720 resolution the game is still scaling prior to outputting it. But you're right, there's been worse technical issues in games, that weren't even ports, like RAGE. That one didn't even run at release for a fairly large number of people.

I'm still hoping this is all one big mistake, and in a few days the problems will be easily fixable or we find out it at least uses a 1280x720 framebuffer. But if the game's as great as everyone says, ultimately I will forgot all the flaws and be lost in the atmosphere and world the game creates. That or wait a few months and hope things get straightened out. :)
 

Alastor

Member
Spoilers dude.

That was the gif from the cam recording of the first DS trailer. That's no spoiler, everyone saw this and everyone knew that Dark Souls gonna have a giant teethy vaginal monster.

Edit: I guess it IS a spoiler, lol. Damn you, people who didn't follow this from the start!
 

Sethos

Banned
So 1920x1080 is the maximum supported resolution? God damn the game is going to be the blurriest thing on earth in 2560x1600.
 

Antagon

Member
So 1920x1080 is the maximum supported resolution? God damn the game is going to be the blurriest thing on earth in 2560x1600.

Nope, the game always renders at 1024x720. Same res as the console versions.
I hope for you pc players that this gets fixed, but I'm guessing that some other code depends on the hardcoded framebuffer resolution (maybe shaders? Don't know much about game development, so could be totally wrong) which is why the devs haven't changed it.
 

Eusis

Member
Not supporting modern resolutions is pretty bad though. Worse still that at no point does the game ever output a non-scaled image. It's bad enough the framebuffer is sub-HD, but on top of that, there is no way to actually play a crisp non-scaled output. Even at a windowed 1280x720 resolution the game is still scaling prior to outputting it. But you're right, there's been worse technical issues in games, that weren't even ports, like RAGE. That one didn't even run at release for a fairly large number of people.
Oh yeah, it's definitely bad and outright stupefying for a non-2D game especially since it's at an odd resolution that'll never be native on anything unless you have a CRT or LCD monitor of that resolution and can somehow force a stretched image, and even then that switches the problem to aspect ratios. I just mean that failing to properly support multiple resolutions =/= worst port ever in and of itself, stuff like failing to support basic graphical features consoles had comes off as far worse.
 

Antagon

Member
Think you misunderstand, there's a difference between the internal render and the resolution of the game.

Obviously, but the final output image will be upscaled from that res. Though in your case I guess it will upscale twice, that is obviously pretty bad.
 

Sethos

Banned
Obviously, but the final output image will be upscaled from that res. Though in your case I guess it will upscale twice, that is obviously pretty bad.

Exactly what I meant, plus it's not even 16:10, so it'll be double blur with black bars ... ( Black bars are probably too technical, stretched perhaps? )

Holy shit.
 

Kiyo

Member
No, but at the same time I'm not so ignorant to think that this doing better than a game that actually did put some kind of effort into their product doesn't dissuade them from caring enough to do so again.



There's plenty of them in the other topic.



Because that's totally what I said, right?



That's all fine and dandy, but that doesn't change the fact of the matter that this is a really bad port.



I'd rather deal in reality than some hopeful future where namco *might* give a fuck next time around. As it stands, this is hands down one of the (if not the) worst console to PC ports I've seen in recent memory.

The only worse one I can think might be arguably worse than this was Saint's Row 2, but even then as bad as that port was (and believe me, it was BAD) the game didn't boot you back to the main menu because they failed to do a good enough job optimizing the product and you hit an FPS floor.

You claimed you were "really torn" so I addressed both your reasons for (friend says it's a great game, and it is) and against (don't want send the wrong message) purchasing it. I never claimed it wasn't a bad port. You want the "reality" so here it is, it's a bad port. It's still not as bad or expensive as the PS3 version you're considering getting. It's still a great game, the game that was getting 9-10s and goty nominations. You're right in that there's no guarantee Namco doesn't do this again with the sequel, but it can't get any worse than it is right now.

It seems you had made up your mind already and weren't "really torn" at all though. I was just trying to address your concerns of sending the wrong message while reinforcing the "it's a great game" comments.
 
First review? By PC Gamer UK, quoting this post from SPUF:

Got my subscriber copy of the latest UK magazine (Should be out for everyone within a few days) and they've reviewed this. Odds are the review will be up on their site over the weekend too. Figured you'd want to see. Well, first up is the score, 89%.

But on to the important stuff. Most of the pre-release worries are confirmed. It is just the console version, no texture/hud improvements, no real PC optimisations. 30FPS lock. GFWL. No FoV/Vsync options or anything like that. Best played with a controller, obviously. Other than that, apparently it runs very well for what it is, reasonably stable with quicker loading times.

The review doesn't seem to touch on the new content and I've not played the console original so I couldn't really tell you how the rest of the content compares, though I imagine its similar enough.

May be worth waiting on some more reviews before picking it up.

Nothing that we didn't knew. Still, good news about peformance.
 
I can totally understand the letdown on this port but let me just say that this game was amazing on the consoles. If you go into this thinking only of the story and allow yourselves to play, youre going to find that its an amazing adventure, unforgiving but fair. You will see yourself improve in combat and relish the exploration, witnessing the masterful ways the world is connected. Once you beat it there is a ton of replay value as well due to the abundance of gear and playstyle around said gear.
If you havent played this yet I envy you and heres to hoping you decide to play.
 

Sentenza

Member
I'm with what Eusis stated above:
Well, I'm not.
There's nothing I hate more than being forced to play with anything but native resolution. I will gladly renounce to AA, shaders, lighting.
Hell, I would even play in wireframe as far as resolution is native and animations are good.
 

ponpo

( ≖‿≖)
I read about these guys before I even played the game and when I came across them.. they didn't live up to the hype.

Like most things in the game it becomes easier with time / once you learn about it, but they were quite the point of frustration at one point. I remember seeing them for the first time on Japanese streams prior to the NA release and the stream chat was in a collective (゚o゚;;
 
I have a feeling there are quite a few modders chomping at the bit to get their hands on this game so they can be the first to remove the caps. I have a feeling by the end of the weekend we'll know if they are making progress.
 
I faced the archers in new game and new game + and both times my tactic was to
wait for them to shoot, then run full speed up the flying buttress without hesitation and straight to the archer on the right until I was face to face. Once I was face to face I blocked his attacks with my shield and counter attack between shots, both times he ended up falling off the ledge. I probably got lucky but it worked out perfectly both times for me.
Those are the right archers, right?
 

Lombax

Banned
Despite the resolution and stupid GFWL integration I am looking forward to finishing this game. My 5th and final 360 died just as I was at the end, the extra content has me psyched.

prob. not day 1 but glad it exists.
 

Eusis

Member
Well, I'm not.
There's nothing I hate more than being forced to play with anything but native resolution. I will gladly renounce to AA, shaders, lighting.
Hell, I would even play in wireframe as far as resolution is native and animations are good.
I won't argue about its status as a potentially big deal breaker, it's certainly going to frustrate me far more on a 1680x1050 monitor than a 1366x768 TV where nothing's native resolution anyway, I just don't see something like that alone making it the "worst port" over others that actively throw out features that were there on consoles, especially true if we go way back rather than simply in the last 5-10 years. This is squandering the potential of PC in blind pursuit of equality (if they didn't actively screw it up in a way it CAN'T easily scale up), not being straight up objectively inferior to the console versions. It takes the 15 FPS limit being a serious problem or GFLW continually eating saves to properly go there.
 
I thought this was coming out at midnight, but it appears I was incorrect. I'm looking forward to hear some impressions from GAFfers later on. Hopefully there are pleasant surprises...
 
Someone got in contact with the dude that created Widescreen Fixer, he has fixed more than 20 games to support Widescreen, Triple screen and custom FOV changes as needed.

He says he is really excited about the game.

So there is hope :), I will start playing the game as is and hopefully run the fixer as soon as he figures it out, I have a lot of faith in him.
 
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