If there were ANY doubts that Dark Souls II would “go casual” among the pack of journalist-types who attended Namco Bandai’s Global Gamers Day last week here in NYC, those were squashed VERY flat by the mighty throwing of one VERY large axe by an enemy during a demonstration of the game. While the team at FromSoftware’s main design goal is to make the game more “accessible” to players, to the producers that word (which means “casual” to some gamers) meant accessibility ONLY in terms of making sure the game’s pacing put players into even MORE dangerous situations much faster than in Demon’s Souls and the first Dark Souls. Fetch-questing for NPCs has been minimized and backtracking through enemy infested areas is out (although you CAN choose to explore anywhere you like), replaced by a refined warp system and areas where surviving enemies and the insanely deadly environments will become your primary challenges. Continue reading
So, last week was verrrry interesting for at least a few people at Microsoft as they had to fight off the wrath of some (well, more than some) on the Internet who went quite ballistic after some Twitter posting from Microsoft Studios’ creative director about their upcoming console requiring an always online connection even for single player retail games. Naturally, to the millions of Xbox 360 owners without a decent online connection as well as those with decent connections who know what a terrible idea this is, some opinions of this potential plan were pretty vocal about their dislike for such a foolish forced deal. It didn’t help one bit that that this smug fool proceeded to tell people they should more or less stop whining and “deal with it” because EVERYONE is always online and we all have connected devices up the wazoo, right?
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 