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Sekiro Guardian Ape Boss Guide: How To Beat The Brutal Beast
Most of the tough bosses in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice are sword-wielding warriors, forcing you to fight through their blows and take them down when their guard is broken. Occasionally, though, you’ll face some huge, mythic beasts, like the Blazing Bull or the Great Serpent. The Guardian Ape is another such ridiculous monster, and its wide variety of moves and effective ranges make it a difficult beast to best.
You’ll find the Guardian Ape on your road through the poisonous swamps of the Sunken Valley. The boss guards a flower you need to advance Sekiro’s story, so you’ll have to deal with it sooner or later–although if you can bulk up with Prayer Beads or by finishing off other bosses first, you might want to do so. Amping your attack power against the Guardian Ape is very useful, since you’ll have to do a lot of damage to it during the fight.
We’ve got everything you’ll need to know to deal with the Guardian Ape, from its poop-throwing antics to its sword-swinging mayhem. For more Sekiro guides, check out our giant (and growing) knowledge center about the game.
Slash Away To Do Damage
The Guardian Ape isn’t a boss you’re going to parry away at to knock down his posture. Instead, you need to deal damage to lower its Vitality, which means looking for openings to wail away at it with your sword. A lot of those openings are tough to find, and you won’t be able to do much damage. You’ll want to balance between being close to the Guardian Ape, so you can get in and do damage, and staying clear of some of its tougher moves. Stay at mid-range, and use the whole arena to get away from moves you can’t handle, while staying away from the walls so you don’t get hemmed in.
Be Sure To Parry
Just because the Guardian Ape isn’t using a blade doesn’t mean you can’t parry its attacks. In fact, the Guardian Ape is too quick and its arms too long for you to avoid most of its strikes; parrying is the only real way to stay in the fight and to keep close enough to do damage. The best time to attack is after the Ape’s big four-move combo–it starts with a swing from each arm, followed by an attack that’ll push you pretty far away, and ending with the Ape leaping in from above. Parry all of them, but especially the last two, and you’ll open up the Ape for a counterattack. This is one of your best opportunities to deal damage. Another is after the vertical swing the Ape does, in which it follows through to land on its back and flail around like it’s throwing a tantrum. Sprint around toward its head and get in a few attacks as it finishes rolling around, then get clear.
Grapple In And Go For The Face
One of the best opportunities for damaging the Guardian Ape comes from using your grappling hook. When the Ape stops to roar, it’ll expose the sword in its neck that lets you grab it to swing in. If you have it unlocked, use the Ashina skill that lets you attack after a grapple and you can come in and get two good swings at the boss’s face before you even hit the ground. You can also sometimes grapple in when the Ape is walking around the battlefield. You’ll need to stay relatively close, though, so you don’t miss the grapple opportunities, which are basically free damage.
Stay Away From The Back And Dodge That Poop!
One set of moves will have the Guardian Ape swinging away at you, then coming around into a sitting position with its back to you. That makes a tempting target, but keep your distance, because the Ape has two ways of responding to your presence. The first way is to quickly spin around, pound the ground, and open up with a big swinging attack, all of which you’ll need to block or parry to stay alive. The second is to stand up more slowly and rip off a huge fart that drops green gas all over the area, which is poisonous. It’s better just to stay away.
The fart move is almost always followed by the Ape’s dangerous ranged attack, in which it poops in its hand, leaps into the air, and throws the giant turd in your direction. This is a tough attack because it’ll do quite a bit of damage, as well as potentially hit you with poison. If your poison meter is low, the most reliable way to handle the attack is to block it and take the poison hit. But if you’re risking poison affliction, try sprinting away and hitting the dodge button just as the turd would hit you to avoid it. Be aware that if you stay too far away from the Ape, you’re likely to trigger this attack as well, so it’s better to stay relatively close.
Use The Firecrackers
Most enemies are distracted by the Firecrackers prosthetic, and it’s very effective against animals like the Guardian Ape. That doesn’t mean it’s foolproof, but you can often interrupt the Guardian Ape’s attacks with Firecrackers, giving you a chance to get in close and knock out a few slashes. Like any boss, be careful not to use the Firecrackers when you’re already vulnerable, as they won’t always stop an attack animation that’s already started. They’re great for getting in a few good hits or for getting a little breathing room to heal.
Watch That Head
Once you lop off the Guardian Ape’s head, you’re actually not done fighting it–you’ll face it in a second round as a headless, sword-wielding monster thanks to its status as an Infested. The head is still dangerous, though. If you stay too close to the Guardian Ape, it’ll smash its head back against its neck and start screaming. The scream is a visible shimmer around the ape and if you’re too close, you’ll take damage–and you’ll experience Terror. If the Terror bar fills up, it’ll kill you, so make sure you get away from the Ape as fast as you can when you see the Perilous symbol appear. The best way is to just sprint directly away; look for the start of the move, which is the Ape starting to bring the head up toward its neck.
The Vertical Slash Gives You An Opening
A few moves are worth parrying to protect yourself or to get an opening, but there’s one key attack that you absolutely want to parry every single time you see it. That’s the vertical smash strike the boss does with its sword. You’ll know it because it’s a bit of a dancerly move, with the Guardian Ape raising the sword into the air and sort of wavering back and forth. It’s a bit of a delayed attack and takes a try or two to get the timing right, but parrying it is essential. A perfect parry on that move will cause the Guardian Ape to pitch forward and fall, lying on the ground for a few seconds so you can slash away at it. If you don’t go for any other attack opportunities, make sure you go for this one. The massive damage you can do will make the fight go pretty quickly.
(Spoilers!) Guardian Ape Redux
Once you’ve beaten the Guardian Ape, you can continue through the Sunken Valley to the poisonous Ashina Depths, where you’ll eventually find a giant cave. Inside is your old pal Guardian Ape, now seemingly forlorn because he has to carry his head around with him everywhere, and yet cannot die. You can fight the ape one last time to get another Memory to increase your attack power.
The fight is broken into two phases. The first proceeds the same as your last fight with the headless version of the Guardian Ape did, and is generally pretty easy–especially if you remember to block the vertical attacks that stagger the boss and let you get in a bunch of free hits.
The second half of the fight is the tough one. Once you land a deathblow on the Guardian Ape, it’ll roar and call in its mate, a smaller brown ape that fights with many of the same moves the original, headed version of the Guardian Ape did. You’re now fighting two enemies at once, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. Target the brown ape, which is much weaker than the Guardian Ape, but try to keep both on your screen as much as you can. Focus on killing the brown ape as fast as possible. You should be able to do it pretty quickly, since the brown ape’s Posture doesn’t recover as fast as the Guardian Ape’s did, and it has much less health. Just do your best to keep the Guardian Ape in your peripheral vision so it doesn’t hack you up while your back is turned.
Once the brown ape is down, it’s a simple matter to finish off the Guardian Ape and land that final deathblow to sever its immortality.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sekiro-guardian-ape-boss-guide-how-to-beat-the-bru/1100-6465875/
Journey To The Savage Planet Is A Weird Satire Of Late-Stage Capitalism In The Interstellar Age
First revealed at The Game Awards 2018, Journey to the Savage Planet takes a decidedly more strange and self-aware approach to the premise of the lone space adventurer exploring a distant world. Instead of seeking knowledge and charting new areas of the universe for the betterment of humanity, it’s your job as an interstellar adventurer to make way for the inevitable push of capitalism by prepping the planet for your employer–a mid-tier corporation that has an endless flow of products to sell.
We spent some time with Journey to the Savage Planet during GDC 2019 and spoke with Typhoon Studios co-founder and creative director Alex Hutchinson about the developer’s approach to the familiar premise, why he’s proud the game features no procedurally generated content, and how players will always be within reach of consumerist tendencies, even in the furthest reaches of space.
Playing as an unnamed planetary settler for Kindred Aerospace–the fourth-best interstellar corporation in the universe–you’ll explore a distant planet housing strange wildlife and plentiful resources. With the intent on making the planet ready for colonization, you’ll quickly find that the creatures of the planet are more than capable of defending their territory from invaders. To make things more complicated, the planet possesses signs of intelligent life, and prominently features some ominous ancient ruins hinting at something hidden deep within the planet. In order to complete your lonely mission, you’ll need to collect as much data as you can and uncover the secrets of the ruins, and this is all while enduring constant advertisements for Kindred products.
In a similar vein to the adventurous jaunts found in No Man’s Sky, the key to accomplishing your goals in Savage Planet is to explore as much as you can, scan everything in sight, and collect resources. But in contrast to the scale and breadth of procedurally generated content found in the former game, Typhoon Studios’ self-aware take on the space-adventure is set entirely on one planet, allowing you to get acquainted with all the bizarre sights found within. Your only safe haven on the planet is your makeshift base. If you die, a 3D-printed copy of yourself will respawn here, allowing you to continue your mission.
Typhoon Studio worked to present a setting that shows personality and nuance, Hutchinson said, setting Savage Planet apart from other games that rely heavily on tech that creates content on the fly.
“It’s kind of like we’re a hipster game, we made all of the content in-game by hand,” said Hutchinson while explaining Typhoon’s approach to world design. “Personally, I don’t think anything made by an algorithm is worth looking at. The meaning of anything creative for me is why you did it and how you did it. If no one did, then I don’t really find it that meaningful. It’s like you’re missing the point by relying on that technology too much. Also, we made a very funny game, and there really aren’t a lot of games like that out there. I remember growing up with games like the Super Nintendo and the Amiga 500, and playing these new games you’d see these bright blue skies, and it had an optimistic outlook in them where you would actually like to be in those cool worlds. That was really attractive to me, and it’s something that’s somewhat absent now.”
In keeping with those retro roots, Savage Planet has a lot in common with games like Metroid and Castlevania, focusing on the exploration of an interconnected environment. Over the course of your expedition, you’ll gradually find some rare materials to upgrade your suit and weaponry. With the planet divided into four distinct biomes, each area requires certain gadgets to traverse. For instance, the grappling hook upgrade can open up new shortcuts and sections of the planet, and is surprisingly useful when trying to evade certain enemies.
Just when you think you’ve gotten used to the strange wildlife, such as non-hostile creatures that howl with an ear-piercing screech if provoked, you’ll encounter some of the more dangerous critters. During the demo, we came across a larger beast that could fire out mortar strikes from its back.
Personally, I don’t think anything made by an algorithm is worth looking at. The meaning of anything creative for me is why you did it and how you did it.
One of the more interesting twists on the larger plot is that your character is an extension of the larger corporation that’s come to colonize the planet. Though the game doesn’t outright refer to you as a colonizer or an invader, it’s not hard to see that you’re clearly encroaching upon territory that isn’t yours, especially when it’s your job to disrupt the environment for a company that can just as easily clone you as it tries to sell you on more of its products. With no means of two-way communication, your only link back to civilization is with constant live-action advertisements that mimic late-night ’90s infomercials. These ads all praise the corporation’s mid-tier achievements while hawking bizarre goods that are mostly useless for your mission–even more so in the grander scheme of trying to find ancient life on the planet.
“We often joke that you’re basically coming to this alien world to ruin it,” said Hutchinson. “But everything we’ve placed in this game has a point. When a game says ‘you’re on an adventure!’ it’s usually not for no reason, there is a broader point to be made, a payoff. You have your goal and your core missions to find and accomplish, and you can accomplish those goals at any time in your own way. But also, we’re going to bombard you with weird advertisements along the way.”
What I found most interesting about Journey to the Savage Planet is how it managed to blend satire with the experience of an isolating exploration game, which felt surprisingly more intimate than expected. That feeling of isolation is often punctuated with the obnoxious live-action advertisements, which are the closest connection you have to civilization and a friendly face. Though it’s still a ways out from launch, planned for a Q1 2020 release, Typhoon’s new game seems to be striking a particular tone that aims to be more thoughtful with the pulpy premise than it initially lets on.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/journey-to-the-savage-planet-is-a-weird-satire-of-/1100-6465868/
Best Buy Just Launched A Flash Sale On Games, PC Accessories, Computers, And More
If you’ve been keeping your eyes peeled for deals on gaming computers and accessories, today’s a great time to stock up on whatever you need: Best Buy is running a flash sale for today only on some great hardware, including laptops, desktops, TVs, tablets, headphones, keyboards, and way more. Plus, some Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One games are included as part of the sale, as well as Xbox One bundles. The sale ends tonight at 9:59 PM PT / 12:59 AM ET, so these deals will be gone by tomorrow.
PC gamers should definitely check out the discounts on PC accessories, like this Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard with back lighting–it’s built with an aircraft-grade aluminum frame to last you for years. It’s also $60 off, selling for only $110 now. This Corsair laser gaming mouse has 4.7 stars and over 1,000 reviews–and it’s marked down 50% at only $30. Need a new headset you can wear comfortably for hours? The Razer Kraken Pro V2 headset is marked down to $60 and has great sound quality at an affordable price. A couple of Gamdias Talos mid-tower PC cases on on sale too–one with three dual-ring RGB fans that’s discounted at $140, and another with two fans you can get for only $75. There are also some gaming chairs available, like this Gamdias Achilles gaming chair that comes in multiple colors–it’s $30 off, so you can get it for $240 instead of $270.
On the games side, the most notable deals include Red Dead Redemption II for $40, Battlefield V for $30, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle for $20, Far Cry 5 for $20, and FIFA 19 for $30. Browse all of the discounted games here.
There are also some console deals–if you buy one of these Xbox One bundles, you’ll get a $50 e-gift card for free from Best Buy. The bundles eligible for the free gift card include the The Division 2, Fortnite, NBA 2K19, Battlefield V, Anthem, and the Metro Saga. Even better: choose among these select consoles (many of them overlap with the aforementioned bundles), and you’ll also get $20 off a controller and $10 off a 3-month or 6-month Xbox Live Gold card in addition to the $50 gift card. Not bad!
Shop all the deals in Best Buy’s flash sale »
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/best-buy-just-launched-a-flash-sale-on-games-pc-ac/1100-6465872/
