Patch Notes: Dark Souls II

Dark Souls has a reputation of being very difficult, but fair. Patience and observation are rewarded. Death typically comes on the heels of overconfidence. The series is more about understanding your limitations than button mashing your way through a grinder. With the first official patch for Dark Souls II, however, From Software seems to have thrown all sense of fairness out the window.

General Updates + Fixes

• Added a small cloud to hover over the player's head. It never stops raining.
• Imported a few key features from other games. Players now start with malaria like the protagonist in Far Cry 2. Unlike that game, there is no medicine to treat the disease in Dark Souls II. Upon death, players must wait while the Valkyrie from Too Human descends and does its thing. Also added the timer from every bad game with timed missions. They all run at the same time and result in a game over upon reaching zero.
• Tweaked the dodging mechanic. Now when you roll there is a 33% chance that your healing items will fall out of your pocket and break upon the ground. 100% of the time you will jam your keys against your tailbone.
• Some users were upset by the rate of item deterioration. We have fixed this issue. There are no longer weapons or armor for the player to equip. Enemies still have all their stuff.
• Souls are no longer vacuumed up automatically. They simply fall to the ground and twinkle. When the player approaches they slide away.
• Removed all sound effects that might alert players to approaching enemies. Replaced these sounds with more enemies, many of which are invisible.

Class Balance

• The Knight now runs out of breath after running for five seconds or performing one action (swinging a weapon, opening a door, suffering damage, taking a breath).
• Upon starting the game, Explorers are consumed by flames. They drop to the ground and die screaming. Every time they come back to life, the cycle repeats.
• Each casting of a Cleric's healing spell comes at the cost of one of the Cleric's hands.
• The Warrior's character model has been replaced with a baby. A tiny baby. All stats are adjusted accordingly.
• The Bandit now has very poor depth perception, absolutely no sense of balance.
• The Swordsman now grips his weapons by the blades and takes constant bleeding damage as a result.
• The Sorcerer can not equip any items on his or her feet. Related: Added broken glass and tickley feathers to every surface in the game.
• The Deprived already had it rough. The lowest starting level. Completely average stats. No equipment whatsoever. To add an appropriate level of challenge, we made The Deprived the only class that does not allow the player to save their game.

Titanfall
Titanfall 2 will probably live up to most of the hype surrounding Titanfall, but what we have now is a better Brink with fewer colors, worse textures, mechs, less customization, and more long term support - most likely in the form of paid DLC. 7/10

Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall
Bigger, better written, and more polished than the fantastic base game, now with skill checks on everything from bluffing your way past security to buying a damn good cup of coffee. 9/10

South Park: The Stick of Truth
The transition from show to RPG feels so natural that I'm slightly less bothered by the sidequests launching you face-first into the level cap long before the game ends. 8/10

Dark Souls II
The only good reason for not buying this is that you are patient enough to wait for the PC release next month. 9/10

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)