Dark Souls Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on October 3rd, 2011

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Dark Souls perhaps takes the whole 'dying' thing a bit too far. It was interesting and an added challenge in Demon Souls, the same can't really be said here. Dark Souls simply wants to punish you for failure, and you will feel it. Every time you have to go back to the last check-point, every time you realise you've taken too much damage to get through a section and so have to trundle back to the checkpoint , re-spawn the enemies, and try again, you will feel silly, you will feel stupid, you will feel incompetent... but when you finally succeed, you will feel like a God. If you can handle that, welcome aboard. If you can't, I suggest you turn back now.

Dark Souls requires intense focus. This isn't a lighthearted romp in a bright and colorful fantasy world; it's a methodical journey into the frightening unknown. And that's what makes it so riveting. Some games try to scare you with bump-in-the-night shocks and far-off howls, but Dark Souls doesn't require such predictable methods of terror. Its terrors emanate from its very core, each step bringing you closer to another inevitable death. How amazing that such a terrible place could be so inviting. The game's world is so memorable, and its action so thrilling, that it might invade your thoughts even when you aren't playing, silently urging you to escape the real world and return to this far more treacherous one. Dark Souls doesn't just surpass other dungeon crawlers; it skewers them with a razor-sharp halberd and leaves behind their soulless corpses.

It is a game that brazenly proves game design fashions are just that; transient, fleeting trends that, in attempting to lay down a set of rules only throw down a new challenge for how things might be done. No video game released this Christmas runs contrary to prevailing fashion as hard or fast as Dark Souls. And no video game is quite so exciting or exhilarating.

To make any final judgment as to whether Dark Souls is the equal, or even the better, of its forebear is a subjective one. The same ideas are spun out in near-identical fashion. Its eschewing of a somewhat cumbersome hub in favour of an organically flowing world should rightfully be commended as a step forward. That the majority of its gameplay hasn't changed while the inflation of expectation in the wider world marches on means that if anything, some aspects have taken a small step backwards. Either way, Dark Souls is a fine example of how great forethought and a less than tepid attitude towards taking risks pay dividends in the hands of real gamers. It is nothing short of extraordinary, though perhaps a couple of years on from Demon's Souls, it is also less surprising.

Dark Souls is a unique and compelling experience that's as hard to put down as it is to complete. It's not a modern RPG as we now know it, but it's certainly one that will very quickly get its hooks into you and not let go.

In short, Dark Souls stacks the deck against you at every turn, and not only by thrusting every monster in the book at your lonely hero. Beyond a very basic tutorial, Dark Souls does almost nothing to explain its many complicated systems, and the anemic instruction booklet doesn't do much to elucidate them either. Furthermore, the open world of Lordran, while impressive, is very confusing at first and players aren't given much direction. It's easy to go the wrong way and, thanks to the game's difficulty, it's easy to assume you're going the wrong way, only to realize later that you're expected to press through a seemingly impossible area.

Other things rankle as well, my personal gripe being that there doesn't seem to be a way to compare merchant's items with the ones you already have equipped (a feature found in just about, oh every RPG ever). The controls can be fidgety at times, making difficult maneuvers even more difficult, particularly jumping.

Still, after a while, I began to interpret these strange choices as just another facet of Dark Souls' relentless difficulty. After a few hours about fifteen in my case things begin to gel and the walls of Dark Souls start to crumble, revealing the delectable treats within.

The fearsome reputation of Demon's Souls put me right off ever looking at it and Dark Souls very nearly went under the radar with all of the other big releases on the horizon; don't let that happen. This game is the finest of it's kind, yes it will take an age to defeat and many may give up before the end, but if you don't even try then you'll be would be missing one of the best action games ever made.

If entertainment is fun without failure and progress without pain, you'll have to find it somewhere else. But you'll be missing out on one of the best games of the year.

All great art is challenging; whether it's the finest work of Shakespeare, Tupac Shakur, or David Lynch - it takes time to understand and interpret their literal and metaphorical meaning. In that same way Dark Souls may at first seem to be a fairly ordinary third person action with nothing but its perversely high difficultly level to distinguish it.

But playing it reveals so much more. not just about the game, but about yourself.

Despite my complaints, I can't help but feel a rush of adrenaline just thinking about Dark Souls. I spent around 60 hours playing it over the last month and died nearly 100 times while doing so. I screamed, I cursed, and I threw down my controller in defeat more times than I'm proud of. I can't wait to get back in and do it all over again. Dark Souls probably won't be the biggest or best game released this year, but I'm already sure it's the one I'm going to spend the most time playing.

Dark Souls gets the score it does because it's devilish, brave, bold and fantastic in its design. Understand that. Just know that this is not an experience for everyone. Those with the mettle are in for a hell of a ride, though.

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