From Software

War. What is it Good for? Giant Walking Mecha.

HIGH I managed to keep a crewmember alive for two consecutive missions. A personal best!

LOW Kinect-based quicktime events in a timed mission against a boss that can one-shot me.

WTF Twenty of my thirty crew members died by the halfway point of the game due to my incompetency. Why am I in charge of the platoon again?

In this episode, Chi and Brad play Dawnguard, Richard plays League of Legends, Mike plays Demon's Souls (2 years late) and we ALL play The Walking Dead Episode Two. We also took some listener questions. Haven't you always wondered what Chi's favorite Pokémon is? WELL HERE IS THE CHANCE TO LEARN! With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard "We still hate Duck" Naik and Dylan Collins.

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Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

Being a 3DS and Kinect owner as well as a fan of Japanese robots/mechs, two neighboring games on the main exhibition hall of PAX East immediately caught my attention: Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor for the Xbox 360 and Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir for the 3DS. Both games are updates to game franchises that were once considered innovative back when they were first released.

So, after eighty-two hours with Dark Souls, I finally defeated the cheese-tastic final boss and completed the game. Whoopee.

I'm still putting a lot of time into Dark Souls. I decided to abandon my original Hunter and I've been focusing on my restart character, a Pyromancer. I've already surpassed the progress made on my first attempt, and it's only taken me about a third as long—the game goes quite a bit quicker once you know what you're doing. That said, at this point I think I've put (total) a little over fifty hours into it, and I'm starting to feel as though a short break might be welcome.

With my Hunter character, I put about forty hours in and had just gotten to Sen's Fortress before I decided that I wasn't happy with how my character was progressing. It wasn't terrible and it certainly wasn't awful to the point that I was unable to progress, but I just wasn't feeling great about the way I had built my character. I had a few regrets.

Dark Souls. Need I type more? Plus: Our most embarrassing gaming confessions, and indie hits Wizorb and Robotriot. Featuring Chi Kong "Not Sure Where These Quotes Go" Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik, and Tim Spaeth.

Download: Right click here and select "Save Target As..."
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Links:

• Dark Souls Review
• Demon's Souls Review
• Demon's Souls Second Opinion
• Dark Souls vs Skyrim

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

I read what had to be one of the weirdest articles I've come across in a while. Yes, I know it's IGN, but it's still about Dark Souls, and I wanted to see where they were going with the article. It didn't go very far. The points of the article irk me.  It's one thing to compare two relatively similar games, but this is almost going beyond apples and oranges into a whole other realm of incompatibility.

The Sirens are Calling

HIGH Clinging to the tiny sphere of light surrounding my character, squinting in a futile effort to penetrate the blackness that threatened to swallow me whole.

LOW Being one-shotted by a demon's sword that clipped through a pillar and being forced to replay the entire stage.

WTF That dragon just sat there and let me shoot it with 250 arrows.

The Aesthetics of Ruthlessness

HIGH Nightmarish art design, gameplay that feels both revolutionary and reactionary.

LOW Laying awake at night and plotting revenge.

WTF Dead enemies getting stuck to the player's shoe?