Troll Lord Games

Picked up Darksiders for the PS3 on tuesday in order to give my poor, abused Dragon Age disc a break.

Pretty sweet game, kinda like a Post Apocalyptic God of War rolled up in a great big ball of demonic hellfire.

Very GoW type game play, although that doesn't bother me. Brutal fighting, nifty graphics and just plain ol' mind numbing fun. Gives me something to do while I await Return to Ostagar DLC for DA:O.

Saw a preview for it; looked interesting. If I had a PS3, I might consider playing it... is it solo-play only? I'd rather get games that my wife can enjoy, too.
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Serl's Corner

Thanks for the mini-review. That's going on my Gamefly list.
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Baron Greymoor
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades Society

Looks interesting for sure.

~O
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Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Gotta say this is the first game I ever played where I got to deliver a smackdown to a heavily armored angel, steal his massive laser blasting rifle and use it to pigeon shoot the swarm of angels coming at me.

It's a solo player game Serl but me and my son have bee playing through it together, just taking turns as we die.

Also think its cool that it lets you know how much demon blood you have spilled. So far I've spilled 1742.75 gallons of demon blood.

xbox 360 version as well. I am considering it but a totally geekfest open beta MMO starts next week and I have my preorder code just waiting.... WARP SPEED SULU!!!

Sounds interesting. We just picked up a PS/3 (kids pooled their Gamestop gift cards and other funds), may check this one out.

I've been intrigued by Demon's Souls since seeing GameSpot's video on why they named it Game of the Year - anyone take a look at that one?
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"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

I should have gotten a PS3. I have DA:O for PC and it's a buggy mess. Random crashes to desktop in every conceivable PC configuration.

The PC forums at Bioware are a seething mass of rage, especially since they've announced an expansion pack without bothering to fix this POS first.
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Sir Fiffergrund, Lord Marshal of the Castle and Crusade Society.

He Who Hides Behind The Elephant's Back

CKDad wrote:
Sounds interesting. We just picked up a PS/3 (kids pooled their Gamestop gift cards and other funds), may check this one out.

I've been intrigued by Demon's Souls since seeing GameSpot's video on why they named it Game of the Year - anyone take a look at that one?

Yes sir, I played it for a while. Once I get through some of the other games I'm itching to play I'll go back to Demon's Souls for a more detailed run through.

It's a fantastic game with some very unique ideas, especially in the multiplayer area. It is, however, hard. And that's hard to the point of wanting to wing your controller across the room as you die from collapsing bridges, falling rocks and other horrors you didn't even know were there. Not to mention the combat and various other ways to end in a bloody mess. Moreover, a death requires you to start over again and if you die before reaching the last place you perished, you lose all the currency you had collected.

Having said that, if you enjoy a challenge this is a really good game. When you die, it's because you just got whipped, weren't paying attention or weren't moving fast enough. So the game kills you, says it doesn't care if you like it or not, and forces you to play better or quit.

Some will love it and others will hate it.

Fiffergrund wrote:
I should have gotten a PS3. I have DA:O for PC and it's a buggy mess. Random crashes to desktop in every conceivable PC configuration.

The PC forums at Bioware are a seething mass of rage, especially since they've announced an expansion pack without bothering to fix this POS first.

Sorry to hear that Fiff. I wasn't aware the PC version had so many bugs. From all the "mods are freakin awesome" hype I hear, I was starting to wonder if I'd picked up the wrong version. Now I'm glad I stuck with my PS3.
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Baron Greymoor
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades Society

Fiffergrund wrote:
I should have gotten a PS3. I have DA:O for PC and it's a buggy mess. Random crashes to desktop in every conceivable PC configuration.

The PC forums at Bioware are a seething mass of rage, especially since they've announced an expansion pack without bothering to fix this POS first.

I play DA:O on my computer and it works fine except with the exception of some massive load times after I been playing awhile. No serious bugs.

Fiffergrund wrote:
I should have gotten a PS3. I have DA:O for PC and it's a buggy mess. Random crashes to desktop in every conceivable PC configuration.

The PC forums at Bioware are a seething mass of rage, especially since they've announced an expansion pack without bothering to fix this POS first.

By chance are you using a AMD processor? I read a post on the DA:O forums that provided a work around for the long load times I was experiencing. Worked like a charm.

nwelte1 wrote:
By chance are you using a AMD processor? I read a post on the DA:O forums that provided a work around for the long load times I was experiencing. Worked like a charm.

Yeppers. It's an AMD PhenomII x4 64 bit. I'm running on Windows 7 64 bit, with an ATI Radeon HD 4670 x2 with CrossfireX enabled. All drivers are updated.

The system runs Oblivion, The Witcher, and NWN2 like butter. Smooth and really pretty. DA:O is really pretty too, until it crashes. It's not just a CTD, either - when I try to run something else, something in operative memory has been corrupted, and i need to reboot anyway.

I've tried going back to earlier releases of the Catalyst drivers, installing on my Win XP 32 bit boot, turning off Crossfire, turning off sound, dialing back all of the graphics options, full-screen, windowed, lower res. I opened the case (which has 8 fans already) in case it was a heat problem. Nothing fixes the problem.

I'm apparently not the only one, either. I'd be interested in seeing what steps you took for your problem. I did see something regarding processor affinity, but I heard that can heat up the core pretty badly. I'm also having issues setting affinity for the .exe - although I have admin rights, it's not letting me do it for all running processes.

If it's something that works for me and I can pass it along, a lot of people would be very happy to have a great working game.

[edit: how big is your power supply? Mine is 600w. I heard somewhere that power fluctuations on high loads on the ATI cards are causing issues. Not sure how that can be when I'm running the other games ok, but I am curious)
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Sir Fiffergrund, Lord Marshal of the Castle and Crusade Society.

He Who Hides Behind The Elephant's Back

Fiffergrund wrote:
Yeppers. It's an AMD PhenomII x4 64 bit. I'm running on Windows 7 64 bit, with an ATI Radeon HD 4670 x2 with CrossfireX enabled. All drivers are updated.

The system runs Oblivion, The Witcher, and NWN2 like butter. Smooth and really pretty. DA:O is really pretty too, until it crashes. It's not just a CTD, either - when I try to run something else, something in operative memory has been corrupted, and i need to reboot anyway.

I've tried going back to earlier releases of the Catalyst drivers, installing on my Win XP 32 bit boot, turning off Crossfire, turning off sound, dialing back all of the graphics options, full-screen, windowed, lower res. I opened the case (which has 8 fans already) in case it was a heat problem. Nothing fixes the problem.

I'm apparently not the only one, either. I'd be interested in seeing what steps you took for your problem. I did see something regarding processor affinity, but I heard that can heat up the core pretty badly. I'm also having issues setting affinity for the .exe - although I have admin rights, it's not letting me do it for all running processes.

If it's something that works for me and I can pass it along, a lot of people would be very happy to have a great working game.

[edit: how big is your power supply? Mine is 600w. I heard somewhere that power fluctuations on high loads on the ATI cards are causing issues. Not sure how that can be when I'm running the other games ok, but I am curious)

That stinks dude. Im running it on a core i7 quad on win 7 x64 and ati 4670 1gb video (this is my gaming laptop) and it's never once crashed but there is no excuse for them not to fix a known issue while running on specific processors. The biggest problem Ive seen is some severe load times after playing for an hour or two (memory leak, anyone?).

Fiffergrund wrote:
Yeppers. It's an AMD PhenomII x4 64 bit. I'm running on Windows 7 64 bit, with an ATI Radeon HD 4670 x2 with CrossfireX enabled. All drivers are updated.

The system runs Oblivion, The Witcher, and NWN2 like butter. Smooth and really pretty. DA:O is really pretty too, until it crashes. It's not just a CTD, either - when I try to run something else, something in operative memory has been corrupted, and i need to reboot anyway.

I've tried going back to earlier releases of the Catalyst drivers, installing on my Win XP 32 bit boot, turning off Crossfire, turning off sound, dialing back all of the graphics options, full-screen, windowed, lower res. I opened the case (which has 8 fans already) in case it was a heat problem. Nothing fixes the problem.

I'm apparently not the only one, either. I'd be interested in seeing what steps you took for your problem. I did see something regarding processor affinity, but I heard that can heat up the core pretty badly. I'm also having issues setting affinity for the .exe - although I have admin rights, it's not letting me do it for all running processes.

If it's something that works for me and I can pass it along, a lot of people would be very happy to have a great working game.

[edit: how big is your power supply? Mine is 600w. I heard somewhere that power fluctuations on high loads on the ATI cards are causing issues. Not sure how that can be when I'm running the other games ok, but I am curious)

There was a problem with the Phenom line of chips with service pack 1 or 2. I fixed it by following the instructions in the first post in this thread.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/156838

Since then I have been running incredibly smooth.

I used the Phenom fix described, and got excellent results....for everything except Dragon Age, which is still crashing. It's definitely a video problem, as I'm seeing artifacting just before crash. I underclocked both cards to reduce heat - no dice. Something isn't playing nicely with ATI cards, I think.

However, Oblivion is glorious with the fix applied. I have everything maxed, and I'm getting 60 fps.

Wonderful. Not a single hiccup. Oblivion is still the gold standard, IMHO.

So, thank you for pointing me in that direction!! I'm going to try NWN2 tonight to see if I can crank it up a bit more as well.
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Sir Fiffergrund, Lord Marshal of the Castle and Crusade Society.

He Who Hides Behind The Elephant's Back

Fiffergrund wrote:
I used the Phenom fix described, and got excellent results....for everything except Dragon Age, which is still crashing. It's definitely a video problem, as I'm seeing artifacting just before crash. I underclocked both cards to reduce heat - no dice. Something isn't playing nicely with ATI cards, I think.

However, Oblivion is glorious with the fix applied. I have everything maxed, and I'm getting 60 fps.

Wonderful. Not a single hiccup. Oblivion is still the gold standard, IMHO.

So, thank you for pointing me in that direction!! I'm going to try NWN2 tonight to see if I can crank it up a bit more as well.

Did you have Phenom fix installed before I pointed it out? Just curious as to how many people know of the Phenom problem.

No, I didn't. I'd say very few people know it. And those that do may not realize the problem continues with Phenom IIs and into Windows 7.

I set up an automatic task to run the .exe at login so I automatically turn the thing off. It's great.
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Sir Fiffergrund, Lord Marshal of the Castle and Crusade Society.

He Who Hides Behind The Elephant's Back