Captain America: Civil War

When there are no bad guys to fight, heroes must fight each other!

Thanks to more collateral damage while the Avengers are out doing their thing, the world has decided to reign in all these enhanced individuals to make them work for the UN. This divides the team on the accountability vs freedom front and one very lucky bad guy manages to leverage this into a more violent and entertaining conflict where heroes fight each other.

We're not fighting, I'm just repairing Cap's shield.

What's good? Marvel characters galore with quality acting, humorous segments that made me laugh along, nice action choreography and high budget CGI. Introducing even more characters in an already large line up seemed like a bad idea to me but they pulled it off just fine. I also quite like the idea they had behind the bad guy, who really is nothing special - a good contrast to all the powered folk of the Avengers.

On the negative side the biggest issue for me is that said bad guy was extremely lucky that so many things went his way for as long as they did. There's one bit where he would have had to get past a number of security check points AND somehow kill backup generators in what I'm guessing is a high level building, unless of course there are no backup generators in a world where they have underwater prisons and guys that fly in suits of armor?

It's not explained how he manages to do all of this, he just does, which is a bit annoying. The other problem will be for anyone who hasn't watched the Avengers or the previous Marvel films - you could get lost really quickly with "who is that again" even with the 3 minute intros. All up I enjoyed the film and give it 4 Vision lasers out of 5, even if it is a "moving pawns across the board for the next movie" sort of thing.

Dark Souls II: Of Ice and Fire

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

The frigid outskirts beyond Elysium Loyce were the furthest place I knew of to escape from Drangleic. I joined an expedition led by the Head of Vengarl (a barbarian), with familiar faces Abbess Feeva the healer and Manhunter O'Harrah the archer, who has upgraded to using explosive arrows from the last time I saw her in the Iron Keep.

We make our way across the snowfield, going slow to keep together for when the ice deer show up. In the scattered ruins there are also a few regular hollows and some hostile wandering knights but none pose much of a problem. Even the ice deer aren't so bad once we put a snow wall to one side of our group. Soon we find the lair of our quarry - a pair of black sabertooth cats (which is basically Aava x 2)!

Burning them is super effective!

While they do hit strong it's nothing my fully upgraded gear can't deflect, and with proper preparation of fire resin (which was effective for everything else leading up to here too) we soon take down both kitties with little effort, and no losses to the team. Making camp in a nearby cave afterwards Feeva and the others are already talking of heading back to escape the cold. What I sought wasn't there though, my road could only lead forward. Silently, I watched the flames of the bonfire as I waited ... to install Dark Souls III. :P

Dark Souls II: The Darksign Lives

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

It's the "B" team!

Upon our approach to the Throne, Bellclaire and I were joined by Benhart of Jugo and Bradley of the old guard which is a pretty strong team! Inside a duo who are a poor emulation of Ornstein and Smough try to stop but are so easily defeated by our superior numbers. Then as the Emerald Herald predicted, Nashandra arrived - looking much scarier than before and proclaiming all of us should join the dark... by dying.

Nasty AoE's meant it was archery time!

Her aura of curse kinda caught me by surprise so I opted to stay far away from her and snipe with my lightning short bow instead until her health was low enough to burst down. Bellclaire and Benhart fell to her scythe during the battle but my plan worked - soon Nashandra was just another corpse. Before Bradley and I could even recover, Aldia then shows up in all the glory of a flaming, magic casting and tentacled shrubbery.

Die you shrubbery!

Bradley tanks him effectively while I get his patterns down. While this eventually leads to victory it is not soon enough for the old guard who is impaled by the bastard bush. Just like Nashandra, Aldia is surprised by his own death - asking what is it that I will ask the throne (in both his voice and that of the Emerald Herald) before he dies. Aldia was Shanalotte all along!? It's then I notice the "throne" looks a hell of a lot like kiln of the first flame, and have vivid memories of Gwyn flooding back. "Narp," I say out loud to the room full of corpses and turn my back on it all.

There must be another way to break the curse of the darksign...

Dark Souls II: Keep your Kings close

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

My new sword was great, but Vendrick's sword was still bigger. He kept killing me and I kept coming back for more to the point where the baddies in between the bonfire and his boss chamber stopped spawning, just like at the dragon shrine. I don't know why it took me so long to work out but - my mistake in this fight turned out to be EVADING. Or at least, evading at the wrong time (vertical attacks = wrong time).

It's always the simplest solutions...

Instead of rolling, or blocking (because, good luck with that) I just needed to run and be point blank to the old king at all times. With that strategy, I probably would have won with a dagger *face palm*. Strangely Vendrick didn't drop a crown, not that it mattered much to me. I headed back to the castle to report to Queen Nashandra only to find she wasn't on her throne.

Curious, I looked around and was joined by Pilgrim Bellclaire, who I suppose was adventuring. It's cool that wearing the king's ring makes all the previously hostile statue knights dormant so we could explore at our leisure. In the basement was a big locked door I totally forgot about. Behind it was the Throne of Want, and the Emerald Herald (erm, how the heck did you get in here). After telling me her real name is Shanalotte, she advises me that Nashandra is going to come after me once I approach the throne. Thanks for the heads up!

Dark Souls II: Size Compensator

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Before facing Vendrick again I thought I'd go explore more of those ash towers, finding I missed huge sections with more ash statues to destroy as well as a chamber full of invading Prowlers which was different. At the top there was also some ancient armor that took me into a memory segment fighting the katana knights again and their lord, Sir "forever" Alonne, a very samurai themed dude wielding a daikatana who turned me into sushi.

Meanwhile at the bottom of the tower was a cave filled with a gauntlet of horrible scum which led to a blue smelter demon. Sunbro Miloradinko tried to help me fight it, but the fiend was just too much with his sword that kept getting bigger. That's what actually gave me the idea: I NEEDED A BIGGER SWORD! Looking through my pack, I found the biggest sword I could wield (a greatsword) and upgraded it as much as I could.

That's what she said.

With this magnificent new weapon I went back to face Mr. Forever Alonne with allies Drifter swordsman Aidel and Steelwilled Lorrie (possibly related to Ellie) and slammed him so hard that he couldn't even down one of us. Next stop was the blue demon, again with Aidel and Lorrie. To his credit the demon slew both my companions, and was close to defeating me too but thanks to my new extended reach - I was the victor. With a crazed grin on my face, I made my way back to the Undead Crypt. This time Vendrick. This time, I'll get you!  

For some reason he's scarier when he's blue.

Dark Souls II: Meat Grinder

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Since I wasn't getting anywhere against Vendrick, I opted to return to the Dragon Shrine and try my luck against the Ancient Dragon again, requiring I beat three giant warriors and Transcendent Edde to reach it. They weren't a problem (though duels with Edde did take a long time). The dragon though, totally stomps. Literally and figuratively. In my mind I could hear the other non-hostile dragon knights snickering at my increasing death count.

Run run run run run!

It got so bad that the enemies on the path stopped spawning (apparently the game detected I sucked that much) which was a slight relief. It didn't stop Gamesting (player) from invading though, and he showed me that parrying still works since he both backstabbed and parry countered me during our little duel. Best I could do was annoy him a tiny bit with turtling. Sigh.

Eventually I managed to find the dragon's weakspot though: the big toes on his hind legs. You can almost control the beast by simply going for those, and once he became predictable - he became defeated soon after. Gahh that was tough! Having finally avenged Bashful Ray I decided to face Vendrick again as a true dragon slayer! And the old guy whooped me with his WTF overhand swing. It's almost like a feint as he begins the attack, or seems to - then waits for your dodge to finish BEFORE slamming the giant sword on your head. FFS. I'm gonna get you Vendrick!

Just like I got this one.

Dark Souls II: The Crown Collector

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

After proving myself to be the "true" Havel cosplayer, I decided to revisit the locked door beneath the Iron Keep finding that I could open it this time and soon found myself standing upon a set of towers covered in ash. This place was home to comparatively weaker ash undead empowered by ash statues, ghost archers, lightning rogues, as well as cowardly bomb carrying goblins who were the foil to the very dangerous giant headless warriors that lurked around.

Odd that explosive ogres worship a flaming torch...

One tower also had flammable half ogres who worshipped a flaming stick, which obviously I needed to steal to "power up" the main tower. Lol. The invader Quicksword Rachel tried prevent this theft but she couldn't live up to her name. Eventually I reach the bottom of the place, finding an ash covered dome protected by four ash statues. After destroying them and activating the nearby bonfire, I stepped through the fog gate and was confronted by the fume knight (possibly named because he's high on fumes) who promptly kicked my butt.

Dude's not good at handling multiple opponents.

The second attempt was much better since brought the ever persistent Ellie and the Sunbro's Zou and Kikimimi. The fume meister killed Zou, but didn't have enough gas to endure the rest of us, leading to his demise. Behind him was a roasted corpse and another king's crown. Awesome. Thank you Zou and Kikimimi! Feeling that I was on a roll, I returned to Vendrick for a rematch ... and got totally p0wned. Damn this guy hits hard.