Drugs are great, you take them too most like (caffeine, ethanol, theanine etc). It’s the power that fucked that shit head up.

Loads of people take ketamine and just like appreciate jazz or some other banal shit.

There is when sprinting. although it’s shared with interact but that only really comes up when sprinting to ladders

no I didn’t. I think this about on par with ds1

I actually love ds1 in its entirity. well until the Lord vessel then the game falls apart. I’m not one for fast paced games (arthritis) and really enjoy the exploration and navigation. Sometimes I just load up a save and run around for a bit to relax :p

I’m not sure my opinion is the one to listen to in your case, given it seems you prefer the later faster gameplay with more emphasis on bosses?

All I can really say is I haven’t enjoyed a souls game much since demons souls and dark souls (although sekiro was quite fun it’s very different) until now. I’m only about 10 hours in on my third area.

I do think many people’s complaints (but not all! there are some very idiosyncratic choices) are from not paying attention. Like recognising when you can pull out the lantern to do something, when you need to fully cross into death, making full use of all the tools (e.g. regenerating ranged ammunition, the map they give you, kicks, mid combo 1h 2h swapping, powerstancing), understanding how the level designers have set traps.

If you try play it like lies of P and just sprint in parrying everything you have a bad time and get swarmed. you also need to engage in the RPG parts more, swapping rings and armour for the current challenge and so on.

I thought lies of p was an absurdly tedious game tbh with the bosses requiring lots of memorisation. I think a lot of this is subjective.

You can place temporary bonfires pretty close to bosses using a consumable you can buy or loot from certain enemies. Some people seem to be running out of them, I have more than I need and I feel like I’m using them liberally.

It’s a very similar game to ds1. It’s that sort of slower, easier game where you spend most of your time methodically exploring a large interconnected world. Once you know what you’re doing you can run through a lot.

If you thought ds1 was a bad game you probably won’t like this. If you thought it was fantastic you probably will.

One thing I haven’t figured out is if perfect parry wither damage is variable.

Sometimes it feels like I take a lot of wither, othertimes not. I’m using a shield and 2hing a lot so I wonder if it’s a shield vs weapon parry thing? Or if it’s timing based like partial parry damage mitigation in ds3.

I was too engrossed to do testing so far, have you tried at all?

What weapons are you using btw? my wife uses a giant axe and seems to yeet herself a lot. Are the certain weapons with lots of lungy movements that might be tripping people up?

Look I’m in love but it’s a very polarising game. If you enjoyed playing ds1 blind, and saw something to love in ds2 underneath the weirdness then I’d recommend it but it is not the fast and nippy ds3 onwards style. Levels are confusing if you don’t figure out what the map is telling you, umbral exploration is fascinating but tense and you have to rush sections which can make you miss what you picked up.

There’s a few baffling decisions like auto filling your quick bar with new consumables when empty, not marking new items in inventory, lore being state gated (it miiight be some arty you get the story from various perspectives thing but I’m unconvinced yet), and many people find the ranged pressure unpleasant. You’re often being shot at till you clear an area.

hey man, we exported the fascist cooker that got their fascist cookers into power.

It’s an ouroboros! yaaaaaaaaaaay

I understand, today my own nation votes to slap down a hand outstretched in peace and warmth. In my own state police deploy anti terror powers to crack down on anyone attending a rally against Israeli militancy.

But if we give up nothing will improve, and everything good we have started small and grew into unstoppable movements.

Larger scale action takes smaller scale first

The Israeli government is able to pursue its horrible policies because of a lack of support for palastinian people.

Preventing protest in powerful nations stops public opinion changing. Public opinion allows the political establishment to continue to avoid historical responsibility.

If western nations drop support of Israel and start using sanctions etc it would be much harder to destroy Gaza.

This ban will allow the Israeli state to continue murdering an entire people unchecked

A lot of the Aussies you’ll chat to on the internet don’t realise how recent there was heavy segregation even among people broadly considered white now.

If you look at the last names of powerful people even now you’ll find that while they’re general all white dudes Irish last names are underrepresented, despite being around as long as English ones. A lot of migrants from Greece/Italy/Poland etc were heavily sidelined too.

Lets not even get into treatment of native peoples and non white migrants cause we’ll fucking be here all day.

This country is definitely heavily divided by class, last oecd report I read found 4 generation median time for bottom quartile income to next quartile up. That’s bonkers.

Everything is feedback cycles. Yes there’s homegrown bullshit but it’s naive to ignore how that is encouraged by for example the usa exporting neoliberalism and encouraging/bullying other countries to deregulate their own markets (like media ownership that lets people like Murdoch rise) for favourable political treatment.

It’s naive to ignore that when usa media, usa products, usa megacorps all arrive somewhere that they wont swing the culture.

The usa has almost certainly interfered in our elections ffs.

Being a country the usa has military interest in is incredible corrosive. It’s not just Australia where this has happened.

we elected a socialist in the 70s. It ended in a constitutional crisis and his successor was groomed by the CIA. rhymes with certain things no?

we had a publicly owned transport system, telephony, healthcare system, a thriving public service. Then we started getting leaned on.

We had a collectivist culture, government funding for our own media with our own values, then we started getting leaned on.

It goes on.

Even our slang is being replaced, people are pronouncing things your way, the media of the usa is replacing everything and that’s intentional government policy.

While it is true that insane propaganda is off the charts, for example in my own country Australia we’re chaining ourselves to the fading star of the usa and the UK militarily despite having:

• different trade interests
• different geopolitical interests
• different cultural interests

all while the usa government tries it’s hardest to undermine our economic policy, erase our culture, and distort our politics towards their own demended lines.

There is zero evidence the chinese government does not want to do the same. They have interfered in our media, our education systems, there has been stupid petty trade squabbles with both “sides” using us for their own ends.

When chinese diplomats speak to our media, even in excruciatingly fair interviews, the pattern is the same slimey deny deny deny and legal quibble that usa diplomats engage in. Their media is insanely critical of Australian life too.

There are no good guys in this power struggle and looking for one is childish thinking.

Even this article refuses to address the notion that the chinese government has ever conducted itself in a condemnable manner.

Not just the USA. Here in Australia (which amusingly was seen as a weird totalitarian state in the usa?) our politicians dragged their feet, encouraged people to go out to large events, discouraged masks, insisted schools stay open because “children couldn’t spread it” amongst other things.

Eventually we had action but it is still like the leading cause of death AFAIK so uhhh good job I suppose.

Kinda! I am a bit overloaded atm. Never finished elden ring due to an arthritis flare, absorbed with persona 5 atm, haven’t played disco Elysium yet either.

Trying to find more time for non gaming hobbies and even so a new update for oxygen not included just game out!

There’s been a glut of excellent games lately. Even stuff like Dave the diver is pretty absorbing. I’m keen to give it a go eventually though! after mechwarrior 5 proved too sloggy I’ve been a bit starved of mech games, so much so I’ll settle for weeb samuri suit shit ;p (I kid I kid it’s very silly aesthetically but we all squeeled with glee at the Pacific rim rocket punch)

I’m glad it’s not multiplayer so I can enjoy it at my leisure.

I admit to being out of the game for a while but how common is RAM encryption?

wouldn’t the overhead violate half the point of RAM?

Sure of course of course but umm have you seen software?

There are still windows xp computers on the internet.

It’s not insurmountable, and of course I have no idea if/how this will roll out.

Just it seems to mess with a rather deep assumption we have about how computers operate when we develop software and threat models.