Dark Souls on PC...

[KingIsaacLinksr]

So I thought I'd pick people's brains on this game. I haven't a clue if anyone actually is playing this game, or knows anything about it. For those that don't know, the game was originally released on consoles which got PC gamers to petition Namco to bring a PC port of the game, figuring it would be great for us. I'm kind of surprised that Namco did, but they did allow the port. But...

Basically, the port is bad. Keyboard and Mouse do not work, textures look awful, screen resolution is terribly low for those of us with bigger monitors, 30 FPS locked, Games For Windows Live and many other problems. Though it does sound like the game itself works and is stable. You just have a really subpar experience. I watched a video (before it got removed) of it and it looks awful. Especially when I compare it to games that I'm currently playing like Metro 2033, Legend of Grimrock or heck, AI War. So while it has a challenging and brutal world to play in, you have to deal with a lot of problems and have the chance that GFWL may corrupt your save files.

So I'm curious what you guys think about it. Have you/will you buy it and why or why not?

I also mused about it recently on my blog if you really want my longer thoughts on it. This was before the port was made publicly available. http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/musing-about-dark-souls-coming-to-the-pc/ I will also say, I have not played this game. But I so badly wanted to when I heard about it. But this port is keeping me away from it. GFWL alone is a deal breaker for me.

So thoughts?

[keith.lamothe]

I had intended to get it, but GFWL? Ew.  I could live with that, probably, if the port was good.  But both problems?  Probably not.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I had intended to get it, but GFWL? Ew.  I could live with that, probably, if the port was good.  But both problems?  Probably not.

Yeah, I'm refusing to allow GFWL on my machine. I wish devs would quit using it. Microsoft doesn't support it and there are so many better alternatives out there.

[keith.lamothe]

I dealt with it for WH40k Dawn of War 2 + first expansion (second expansion ditched GFWL, yay!) and Section 8, and the former is one of the games I've enjoyed most in the past couple years, but GFWL is definitely an "Ew" point on any game with it.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I dealt with it for WH40k Dawn of War 2 + first expansion (second expansion ditched GFWL, yay!) and Section 8, and the former is one of the games I've enjoyed most in the past couple years, but GFWL is definitely an "Ew" point on any game with it.

Yeah, Section 8 was the last game I tolerated GFWL in before I outright banned it from my computer. GFWL was one of the bigger problems with that game. When your matchmaking system cannot find a server that does indeed exist and someone your talking with is on that same server, there is something horribly wrong with your software.

[Mánagarmr]

Section 8 was a FANTASTIC shooter (replaced by Tribes these days), but MAN was the server browsing and matchmaking system absolute trash. I cannot understand why they went with GFWL, because that service is just horrible.

[madcow]

I played dark souls on xbox and loved the game.

Sucks that the port didn't work out very well, but the developers did the good thing of manning up about it and admitting they don't do PC games and saying beforehand that the port wouldn't be very good, that they were doing it by popular request.

[keith.lamothe]

Maybe the GFWL part was their way of making sure we knew to not get our hopes up about the port quality

[madcow]

As a mac user, I've never even had the chance to try out GFWL. I only get to hear how horrible it is second hand.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I have a bit of a GFWL horror story. I was trying to play Bulletstorm. One attempt, I told GFWL to not install, as I can with Steam's installer thingy. I can cancel its access to my computer and it'll just not work. Well, I couldn't even get past the title screen. In fact (more of the game's fault) there was no quit button on the title screen. What do I have to do? I have to crash the entire game in order to exit it.
What's worse, though, is I finally let it install. Over the course of 45 minutes, I have to try to set up my account with a significantly reduced frame rate thanks to the overlay. Granted my computer was awful then anyway, but the game thought my computer was good enough for high settings and I couldn't change the options without a GFWL account connected online. So, with all the account set up going on, I got bizarre error messages. Among them, was a "Your account is corrupt, please delete it and try again." How does that even make sense. Well, I got mad, but I didn't delete it. I just logged in a few more times and it eventually worked. I played two chapters of Bulletstorm, oddly appropriate catharsis given what just happened...
And then I never played it again, because GFWL has been upped from "I heard this was bad" to the "Deal breaker" level of my scale of the things-to-tolerate list. I'm impressed it rocketed from a 4/10 to a 10/10... but that does mean I don't get to play Dawn of War, outside of Retribution. Darn.

[Mánagarmr]

I've had pretty much the same experience with it as you, Thesaurus. I had to try about 5-6 times before I could create an account, adding DLC took days of agony to get working and the server browser flat out didn't work about 9 times out of 10. Probably more.

I knew the server in question was up and not full, because my friends were on it, but when I searched, GFWL either reported the server down (ORLY?) or nonexistant. I tried to join directly "Join Friend", and it claimed "Your friend is not in a joinable game." ORLY?

Searched again. Again. Again. Again. After about 15-20 searches, the server shows up and I can join.  WTF Microsoft? How can you botch it THIS badly?

[keith.lamothe]

How can you botch it THIS badly?

I kinda wonder that too.  I mean, it seems like they would have realized fairly early on that "the only compelling reason to release this platform is if we want to seriously alienate people from our platform"

They have a bunch of teams, which explains the vast quality differences, but they have some good teams and know what quality software is like (Visual Studio, for example), and therefore knew that GFWL was NOT THAT

So it does kind of baffle the mind.  In a way it's almost worse than the Ubi-always-on-stuff: with Ubisoft I know upfront that the platform is there to make it hard for me to enjoy the game.  With GFWL it's like they were ostensibly trying to make it a genuinely helpful service, failed miserably, intentionally made it worse so that it would be remembered in song for something, but didn't make it obvious that "yes, we know it's that bad"

[KingIsaacLinksr]

How can you botch it THIS badly?

I kinda wonder that too.  I mean, it seems like they would have realized fairly early on that "the only compelling reason to release this platform is if we want to seriously alienate people from our platform"

They have a bunch of teams, which explains the vast quality differences, but they have some good teams and know what quality software is like (Visual Studio, for example), and therefore knew that GFWL was NOT THAT

So it does kind of baffle the mind.  In a way it's almost worse than the Ubi-always-on-stuff: with Ubisoft I know upfront that the platform is there to make it hard for me to enjoy the game.  With GFWL it's like they were ostensibly trying to make it a genuinely helpful service, failed miserably, intentionally made it worse so that it would be remembered in song for something, but didn't make it obvious that "yes, we know it's that bad"

I'm pretty sure its Microsoft wants everyone to go to the XBOX 360. Thus they aren't really supporting GFWL all that much. Not that I would go to the 360. I don't think I could trust my Primary gaming experience being "overlooked" by the manufacturer anymore, not after the way iOS gaming has been handled. I can play iOS games on the side, but I am thankful I have a PC for gaming or I would have found a new hobby by now.

[LaughingThesaurus]

^ Microsoft gets more money from us if we all go to Xbox 360. That would be an incentive, would it not? They'd have no reason to care about PC if game sales on their consoles made them more money than making a competent service did. I've also heard a little about windows 8... and only a little. I think if I had heard more, it would have made me actually sick.

[Mánagarmr]

Windows 8 is all but designed with anti-gaming in mind. Whatever gaming will happen anyway has to go through the Microsoft store, which means 30% cut taken by Microsoft...It's not looking good.