Dark Souls

Dark Souls, as I'm sure by now you've heard, is hard. Very hard. Right from the tutorial-free opening you're punished relentlessly, and every time you overcome a impossible enemy you can be sure something even more brutal awaits around the next corner. To this end I cannot recommend it to all gamers, especially if you've never played an action-RPG. However, those with patience and determination will find it an immensely rewarding experience.

The game drops you in at the deep end, starting with your character breaking out of an 'Undead Asylum'. Your encounters here initially seem difficult but pale in comparison to what waits for you ahead. Your travels will take you to many varied locations ranging from a castle and its vast grounds to underground swamps, and most of these environments look stunning. Sometimes the visuals can admittedly look a little rough around the edges, but the sheer scope of the game more than makes up for it. Unfortunately the frame rate suffers in larger areas, especially in 'Blighttown' where on more than one occasion it broke down to the point of being unplayable.

Everything takes place in one colossal world where if you can see a location then chances are at some point you can go there. The level design is mostly fantastic and often ingenious, with many of the worlds connecting with eachother to prevent the need for endless backtracking. This also means that one bonfire can sometimes serve as the starting point for several different sections of the game (the Firelink Shrine in particular is one you will be revisiting many times). These bonfires act as Dark Souls' checkpoint system and should you die you will be resurrected at the last one you visited. You can also use them to level up your character, reinforce weapons and perform various other actions. However, your only relief is also something of a double-edged sword as fallen enemies are also resurrected each time you visit one. To add insult to injury, your own death will result in loss of any souls you may have acquired (souls are essentially XP and also serve as the game's currency). You can retrace your steps to where you were killed to get them back but if you die on the way then the souls are gone forever. What initially appears to be an unfair and tiresome gameplay mechanic actually serves to keep things challenging, although repeatedly slogging through some areas on the way to a boss fight only to be killed and have everything respawn can become infuriating.

The combat in Dark Souls is precise and most importantly fair. Your character will come accross many fearsome and deadly opponents, but all can be defeated with patience and skill. With the exception of occasional bugs it isn't often that the game feels cheap.

Speaking of bugs, Dark Souls has its fair share. In particular in combat there is a bizarre glitch where one of your attacks will randomly be delayed until several seconds after you've pressed the trigger. This doesn't happen a lot but when it does it usually ends in disaster. The camera, while perfect at any other time can go completely insane in tight spaces, especially when walking along very narrow platforms. There is an optional part of the game involving your character balancing on branches as you descend through an enormous hollow tree trunk. Several times here I had been cautiously edging my way across a narrow branch only for the camera to randomly swing ninety degrees and send me plummeting to my death. These bugs aren't frequent and perhaps wouldn't be so prominent in a more forgiving game. It should be noted that I do not have my Xbox 360 online and therefore have not been able to download any patches, so I'm not sure if these problems have been fixed.

For all of it's brutal enemies, merciless checkpoints and rage-inducing platform sections Dark Souls is an incredible game. While much of your time will be spent in sheer frustration, when you finally do make progress the experience is satisfying like no other RPG I've played. You know that feeling in other games when you defeat the final boss and bask in a sense of your own brilliance? Every time you make it to a new area, defeat a boss, uncover a secret location, find a rare item or even make the slightest progress in Dark Souls you get that feeling. Granted, you might break records for the frequency of your swearing, but it's totally worth it.

I enjoy playing games. I enjoy games like many other people do, through the medium of enjoyment. This is not an enjoyable game. You die and you die and you die and then you get a tiny bit further and then you die and you die and you die again and your inner monologue is screaming "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO YOURSELF?" but you carry on and you die and you die and you die again and finally you take it out of your Xbox and put it in the case and put the case on the shelf and try your best to forget all about it as your wide-eyed starving children ask you why there's no food on the table and what happened to that £20 you had.

Dark Souls may well be one of my favourite games of all time. It is competing with Super Castlevania 4 on the Snes, Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube and Renegade on the ZX Spectrum to give you an idea of what that means.

The environment is masterfully depicted and memorable for two distinct reasons. Firstly because it is so varied and bleak. Stone castles quickly give way to Tolkienesque caverns and lava pits. And you can go deeper and deeper and never seem to reach the edge of its world. In the beginning you have no idea where anything is or where you are going. There is no map and non player characters are deliberately obtuse and quite often mad. Secondly you really have to remember the levels to progress. Anyone who has played an old school MegaMan will know what this means. I've been killed in the Undead Burg (a very early level) enough times to know the exact location of each enemy. There are two next to the bonfire, one with an axe another with a crossbow, a third that jumps up the stairs, along the bridge there are the firebomb throwers...and so on. Now imagine how daunting a new area is when you know that it was only by committing enemies positions to memory that you made it through the last one? So it is part of the experience to shuffle forward through a new level with your shield at the ready, terrified of your own shadow.

Death has weight in this game. It could mean being sent back miles and the loss of tremendous amount of XP points. If you are careful in Dark Souls you will learn not to die but there is no handholding. To complete Dark Souls you almost have to study it and very much play by its rules. It cannot be overstated how much the sadistic difficultly makes the game a cohesive whole. Not only does it provide a sense of achievement when you beat a boss but also gives weight to its bleak and lonely atmosphere. It almost seems as if that Dark Souls is actually trying to break your spirit. The story is barely comprehensible and as a player you have little to no idea how you victories are actually influencing the world. The back slapping of other games cut scenes is absent here as well as, for the most part, any feedback on how real much progress you have made.

I do wonder how well the game will age. Dark Souls is deliberately mysterious but is it to the point where it could be superseded by a game with a more concrete narrative? Time will tell. But for the moment I am just amazed that a game like this has the nerve to do what it does. To leave players so in the dark and to have an entire level housed behind a how-on-earth-was-I-meant-to-know-that secret wall. Dark Souls really is something very special.