Despite being very excited about this game and pre-ordering the collector's edition (contrary to my typical avoidance of pre-orders), it took a couple months before I was able to spend much time with it. My strategy guides for Civilization V: Brave New World was a lot of work and took up a lot of time. I was only able to play bits and pieces of Dark Souls II during that time and didn't make much progress. I was hoping to have a review out in time for the PC release, but that didn't happen. Then I was hoping to publish the review before the first DLC hit, but that didn't happen either. I'll probably review the DLC later, once all three have been released.
Full disclosure: I haven't actually finished the game yet, but I do feel that I've played enough of it to be able to write a review. If completing the game changes my opinion considerably, then I will revise this review as I've done with other games in the past (including the first Dark Souls). I've also considered getting the Steam version, since it may be better than the console versions. If I do play that version, I may revise this review to include opinions on that version.
But for now, I've only played the PS3 version,
Table of Contents
Is Dark Souls II a victorious successor to a masterpiece of design and storytelling?
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Tags:Dark Souls II, PS3, Dark Souls, From Software, Namco/Bandai, RPG, PSN, hack and slash, fantasy, Demon's Souls, PC, review, pre-order, XBox 360, Xbox Live, co-op, summon, PvP, invader, invasion, phantom, covenant, Drangleic, Majula
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a pretty tough story to screw up. The book was written as a simple children's adventure tale told from a singular point of view, and that is what it is loved for. Peter Jackson doesn't seem to understand what he's trying to do with the film adaptation. The movie struggles just to figure out what it is trying to do and tries so hard to pad itself with irrelevant Tolkien lore that it eventually starts to fall apart cinematically.
Not content to simply tell the first-person (well, technically "second person") account of Bilbo Baggins' adventure to The Lonely Mountain and back again, this Hobbit film tries to incorporate other plot threads from the complex tapestry of Tolkien's extended Middle-Earth lore. This creates two problems:
- The story loses its narrative focus and suffers cinematically from poor pacing and confusing scene transitions,
- The movie's tone shifts wildly from light-hearted fantasy to overly-serious forebodence.
If only you hadn't been blinded by your fanboyism, Stephen; you could have warned us!
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Tags:The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, orc, hobbit, wizard, fantasy, adventure, Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Stephen Colbert